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knights, who might expect the aid of two hundred more under the banner of the count of Tripoli; and each knight was attended to the field by four squires or archers on horseback. ^126 Five thousand and seventy sergeants, most probably foot-soldiers, were supplied by the churches and cities; and the whole legal militia of the kingdom could not exceed eleven thousand men, a slender defence against the surrounding myriads of Saracens and Turks. ^127 But the firmest bulwark of Jerusalem was founded on the knights of the Hospital of St. John, ^128 and of the temple of Solomon; ^129 on the strange association of a monastic and military life, which fanaticism might suggest, but which policy must approve. The flower of the nobility of Europe aspired to wear the cross, and to profess the vows, of these respectable orders; their spirit and discipline were immortal; and the speedy donation of twenty-eight thousand farms, or manors, ^130 enabled them to support a regular force of cavalry and infantry for the defence of Palestine. The austerity of the convent soon evaporated in the exercise of arms; the world was scandalized by the pride, avarice, and corruption of these Christian soldiers; their claims of immunity and jurisdiction disturbed the harmony of the church and state; and the public peace was endangered by their jealous emulation. But in their most dissolute period, the knights of their hospital and temple maintained their fearless and fanatic character: they neglected to live, but they were prepared to die, in the service of Christ; and the spirit of chivalry, the parent and offspring of the crusades, has been transplanted by this institution from the holy sepulchre to the Isle of Malta. ^131

[Footnote 118: Willerm. Tyr. l. x. 19. The Historia Hierosolimitana of Jacobus a Vitriaco (l. i. c. 21 - 50) and the Secreta Fidelium Crucis of Marinus Sanutus (l. iii. p. 1) describe the state and conquests of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem.]

[Footnote 119: An actual muster, not including the tribes of Levi and Benjamin, gave David an army of 1,300,000 or 1,574,000 fighting men; which, with the addition of women, children, and slaves, may imply a population of thirteen millions, in a country sixty leagues in length, and thirty broad. The honest and rational Le Clerc (Comment on 2d Samuel xxiv. and 1st Chronicles, xxi.) aestuat angusto in limite, and mutters his suspicion of a false transcript; a dangerous suspicion!

Note: David determined to take a census of his vast dominions, which extended from Lebanon to the frontiers of Egypt, from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean. The numbers (in 2 Sam. xxiv. 9, and 1 Chron. xxi. 5) differ; but the lowest gives 800,000 men fit to bear arms in Israel, 500,000 in Judah. Hist. of Jews, vol. i. p. 248. Gibbon has taken the highest census in his estimate of the population, and confined the dominions of David to Jordandic Palestine. - M.]

[Footnote 120: These sieges are related, each in its proper place, in the great history of William of Tyre, from the ixth to the xviiith book, and more briefly told by Bernardus Thesaurarius, (de Acquisitione Terrae Sanctae, c. 89 - 98, p. 732 - 740.) Some domestic facts are celebrated in the Chronicles of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice, in the vith, ixth, and xiith tomes of Muratori.]

[Footnote 121: Quidam populus de insulis occidentis egressus, et maxime de ea parte quae Norvegia dicitur. William of Tyre (l. xi. c. 14, p. 804) marks their course per Britannicum Mare et Calpen to the siege of Sidon.]

[Footnote 122: Benelathir, apud De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. part ii. p. 150, 151, A.D. 1127. He must speak of the inland country.]

[Footnote 123: Sanut very sensibly descants on the mischiefs of female succession, in a land hostibus circumdata, ubi cuncta virilia et virtuosa esse deberent. Yet, at the summons, and with the approbation, of her feudal lord, a noble damsel was obliged to choose a husband and champion, (Assises de Jerusalem, c. 242, &c.) See in M. De Guignes (tom. i. p. 441 - 471) the accurate and useful tables of these dynasties,