[400] This was in the summer of 1097. The whole body of crusaders, including monks, women, children, and hangers-on, may then have numbered three or four hundred thousand, but the effective fighting force was not likely over one hundred thousand men. [401] The crusaders reached Nicaea May 6, 1097. After a long siege the city surrendered, although to the Emperor Alexius rather than to the French. [402] This battle--the first pitched contest between the crusader and the Turk--was fought at Dorylaeum, southeast of Nicaea. [403] Romania (or the sultanate of Roum) and Cappadocia were regions in northern Asia Minor. [404] The country immediately southeast of the Black Sea. [405] Antioch was one of the largest and most important cities of the East. It had been girdled with enormous walls by Justinian and was a strategic position of the greatest value to any power which would possess Syria and Palestine. The siege of the city by the crusaders began October 21, 1097. [406] Bohemond of Tarentum was the son of Robert Guiscard and the leader of the Norman contingent from Italy. Raymond of St. Gilles, count of Toulouse, was leader of the men from Languedoc in south France. [407] The modern Orontes. CHAPTER XVIII. THE GREAT CHARTER 54. The Winning of the Charter The reign of King John (1199-1216) was an era of humiliation, though in the end one of triumph, for all classes of the English people. The king himself was perhaps the most unworthy sovereign who has ever occupied the English throne and one after another of his deeds and policies brought deep shame to every patriotic Englishman. His surrender to the papacy (1213) and his loss of the English possessions on the continent (1214) were only two of the most conspicuous results of his weakness and mismanagement. Indeed it was not these that touched the English people most closely, for after all it was rather their pride than their real interests that suffered by the king's homage to Innocent III. and his bitter defeat at Bouvines. Worse than these things were the heavy taxes and the illegal extortions of money, in which John went far beyond even his unscrupulous brother and predecessor, Richard. The king's expenses were very heavy, the more so by reason of his French wars, and to meet them he devised all manner of schemes for wringing money from his unwilling subjects. Land taxes were increased, scutage (payments in lieu of military service) was nearly doubled, levies of a thirteenth, a seventh, and other large fractions of the movable property of the realm were made, excessive fines were imposed, old feudal rights were revived and exercised in an arbitrary fashion, and property was confiscated on the shallowest of pretenses. Even the Church was by no means immune from the king's rapacity. The result of these high-handed measures was that all classes of the people--barons, clergy, and commons--were driven into an attitude of open protest. The leadership against the king fell