Having each a strength, it is said, of one hundred thousand men, they marched by Germany and the Lower Danube, at an interval of two months between them, without committing irregularities and without meeting obstacles so serious as those of the first crusade, but still much incommoded, and subjected to great hardships in the countries they traversed. The Emperor Conrad and the Germans first, and then King Louis and the French, arrived at Constantinople in the course of the summer of 1117. Manuel Comnenus, grandson of Alexis Comnenus, was reigning there; and he behaved towards the crusaders with the same mixture of caresses and malevolence, promises and perfidy, as had distinguished his grandfather. “There is no ill turn he did not do them,” says the historian Nicetas, himself a Greek. Conrad was the first to cross into Asia Minor, and, whether it were unskilfulness or treason, the guides with whom he had been supplied by Manuel Comnenus led him so badly that, on the 28th of October, 1147, he was surprised and shockingly beaten by the Turks near Iconium. An utter distrust of Greeks grew up amongst the French, who had not yet left Constantinople; and some of their chiefs, and even one of their prelates, the Bishop of Langres, proposed to make, without further delay, an end of it with this emperor and empire, so treacherously hostile, and to take Constantinople in order to march more securely upon Jerusalem. But King Louis and the majority of his knights turned a deaf ear: “We be come forth,” said they, “to expiate our own sins, not to punish the crimes of the Greeks; when we took up the cross, God did not put into our hands the sword of His justice;” and they, in their turn, crossed over into Asia Minor. There they found the Germans beaten and dispersed, and Conrad himself wounded and so discouraged that, instead of pursuing his way by land with the French, he returned to Constantinople to go thence by sea to Palestine. Louis and his army continued their march across Asia Minor, and gained in Phrygia, at the passage of the river Meander, so brilliant a victory over the Turks that, “if such men,” says the historian Nicetas, abstained from taking Constantinople, one cannot but admire their moderation and forbearance.” [Illustration: Defeat of the Turks----16]