We originally meant only to introduce Tasso’s description of the towers, and have been led on to protract the quotation to far greater length, from finding not only so lively, but there is all reason to believe so accurate, a description, making allowance for a little poetical exaggeration, of the mode of combat then in use. The poet has at least the merit of being true to the facts related by the historians. Two towers were constructed, one of which, intrusted to the charge of Raymond, Count of Toulouse, was burnt by the besieged; the other, directed by Godfrey in person, was brought safely up to the walls. Large beams were applied to prevent its close approach, as described by the poet, and these being cut away, were taken possession of, and proved very serviceable to the crusaders. The walls were cleared, not only by archery, but by a much less warlike and romantic device. The wind blowing into the town, the assailants set on fire a mattress stuffed with silk (_culcitram bombyce plenam_), and bags of straw, so that “they who were appointed to defend the wall, unable to open eyes or mouth, besotted and bewildered with the eddies of the smoky darkness, deserted their post. Which being known, the general with all haste commanded the beams which they had captured from the enemy to be brought up, and one end resting on the machine, the other on the wall, he ordered the moveable side of the tower to be let down; which being supported on them, served in the place of a bridge of suitable strength.”[19] This, it must be confessed, is a less romantic way of gaining entrance than fighting hand to hand with Solyman: but it is true, for the valour and personal prowess of Godfrey of Bouillon were unsurpassed, and there is no reason to suspect that flattering historians have perverted the fact, that Godfrey, noblest of the crossed chiefs in character as in station, was the third man to enter that holy city, for the delivery of which he longed so ardently, and had sacrificed so much. Two brothers named Letold and Engelbert, otherwise unknown to fame, were the first who won their way to these contested walls. For reasons above given the strong fortresses of feudal pride were more frequently carried by a sudden and vigorous attack, than by the tedious and expensive process of regular siege. Of such attacks some remarkable instances occur in the wars between England and Scotland, which at some future period we may perhaps notice; at present it is more to our purpose to quote from the graphic pages of Froissart this short passage, which is so completely ancient in character that change the names and it might pass for the act of a Roman army:—