Within another year an army of 100,000 men had been gathered together, under the leadership of Peter, himself, and it poured across Europe as far as Constantinople, a disorganised and impotent mob. It met its fate as soon as it had crossed the Bosporus into Saracen territory, and only a shattered remnant, including the originator of the mad venture, ever returned to its home. In the meantime, however, a greater captain than Peter the Hermit, and of the same race, was gathering the enormous host that succeeded where he had failed. Godfrey of Bouillon, of the province of Liége, a great scholar and greater soldier, gathered 90,000 knights and men-at-arms in Flanders and Brabant, and set out for Jerusalem on the 10th of August, 1096. A month later the French under command of the King’s brother, and the Flemings under Robert, Count of Flanders, followed in his track. Baldwin of Bourg, the Counts of Hainault, Namur, Grez, Audenaarde, and Ypres, with knights of Dixmude, Alost, Bruges, Ghent, Brussels, and Tournai were amongst the leaders, and a concentration was effected at Constantinople when there were no less than 600,000 in all. Crossing into Asia, the great host swept onward from one victory to another; the battle of Dorylæum, fought on the 4th of July, 1097, proved them invincible. Tarsus and Antioch fell, and nothing lay between them and Jerusalem. The city was besieged and finally carried by assault, the attack beginning on the 14th of July, and after a week of incessant fighting on the walls and through the streets, Jerusalem was wholly in the hands of the Crusaders. But the host that set out from its many sources in Europe had vanished and only a tenth of the original number remained to fight the relieving army from Egypt at Ascalon, and to organise the victory. Five hundred thousand men had perished on the long march, died of disease, or fallen in battle. Godfrey of Bouillon became the first King of Jerusalem, the choice resting between him and Robert of Flanders. He reigned only a year, and was succeeded by his brother Baldwin, who had made himself Count of Edessa, and whose descendants continued on the throne for several generations. In all the succeeding Crusades, Flanders and Brabant, Lorraine, Champagne, and Burgundy played leading parts, and in the fifth, when the arms of the knights were turned from the relief of Jerusalem to the conquest of the Byzantine Empire, another Baldwin of Flanders was leader, and, after the fall of Constantinople, became the first Latin Emperor of the East, his dynasty continuing on the throne for fifty years.