Walter started first. Marching down the banks of the Rhine, he experienced no difficulties with the Germans. These, slow to follow the example of the fiery French, and, moreover, not yet stimulated by the preaching of a Peter, still sympathised with the object of the army, which they doubtless thought was but a larger and a fiercer band of pilgrims, like many that had gone before, and assisted those who were too poor to buy provisions, to the best of their power. Passing, therefore, safely through Germany, the disorderly host, among whom all sorts of iniquities were already rife, entered Hungary. The Hungarians, by this time christianised, had yet no kind of enthusiasm for the objects of the Crusaders or desire to aid them; but their King, Coloman, gave them guides through his vast marshes and across his rivers, and permitted them to purchase what they wanted at the public market-places; and by great fortune no accident happened to them, save the beating of a few laggards after the crossing of the river Maros. Judging it idle to avenge an insult which it cost little to endure, Walter pushed on till he reached Belgrade, the frontier town of the Bulgarians. These were even a ruder people than the Hungarian Christians; they refused to recognise the Crusaders as their brethren: subjects of the Greek crown, they refused any submission but that which was extorted by arms, and living in the midst of inaccessible forests, they preserved a wild and savage independence which made them the terror of the pilgrims, whom they maltreated, and the Greeks, who tried to reduce them to submission. Here the first troubles began. The Governor of Belgrade refusing them permission to buy provisions, the army found themselves reduced to the greatest straits for want of food; and seeing no other way for help, they left the camp and dispersed about the country, driving in the cattle, and laying hands on everything they could find. The Bulgarians armed in haste, and slaughtered vast numbers of the marauders, burning alive a hundred and forty who had taken refuge in a chapel. Walter broke up his camp in haste, and pressing on, left those to their own fate who refused to obey his order to follow. What that fate was may easily be surmised. With diminished forces, starving and dejected, he pushed on through the forests till he found himself before Nissa, when the governor, taking pity on the destitute condition of the pilgrims, gave them food, clothes, and arms. These misfortunes fell upon them, it will be observed, in Christian lands, and long before they saw the Saracens. Thence the humbled Crusaders, seeing in these disasters a just punishment for their sins—they were at least always ready to repent—proceeded, with no other enemy than famine, through Philippopolis and Adrianople to Constantinople itself. Here the emperor, Alexis Comnenus, gave them permission to encamp outside the town, to buy and sell, and to wait for the arrival of Peter and the second army.