Jerusalem, the City of Herod and SaladinBesant, Walter
History
Jerusalem, the City of Herod and Saladin
Besant, Walter
Jerusalem -- Description and travel; Jerusalem -- History
The two remaining great chiefs were Bohemond and Tancred. Bohemond,
who was a whole cubit taller than the tallest man in the army, was
the son of that Norman, Robert Guiscard, who, with a band of some
thirty knights, managed to wrest the whole of Calabria, Apulia, and
Sicily from the Greeks. On his father’s death he had quarrelled with
his brother Roger over the inheritance, and was actually besieging
him in the town of Amalfi, when the news of the Crusades reached
him. The number of those engaged, the rank of the leaders, the large
share taken by the Normans, inspired him with the hope that here, at
last, was the chance of humiliating, and even conquering, his enemy
the Emperor of Constantinople. Perhaps, too, some noble impulse
actuated him. However that may be, he began himself to preach a
crusade to his own army, and with so much success—for he preached of
glory and plunder, as well as of religion—that he found himself in a
few days at the head of ten thousand horse and twenty thousand foot.
With these he joined the other chiefs at Constantinople. His life
was a long series of battles. He was crafty and sagacious; hence his
name of Guiscard—the wise one; quite indifferent to the main object
of the Crusaders—in fact, he did not go on with them to Jerusalem
itself—and anxious only to do the Greeks a mischief and himself some
good.
With him went his cousin Tancred, the hero of the “Jerusalem
Delivered.” The history of the First Crusade contains all his
history. After the conquest of Jerusalem, and after displaying
extraordinary activity and bravery, he was made Prince of Galilee,
and his cousin was Prince of Antioch. Tancred is a hero of romance.
Apart from his fighting he has no character; in every battle he is
foremost, but when the battle is over we hear nothing about him. He
appears however to have had a great deal of his cousin’s prudence,
and united with the bravery of the lion some, at least, of the
cunning of the fox. He died about the year 1113.
Hugh, Count of Vermandois, who was one of the chiefs of the army
brought by Robert of Normandy, was the third son of Henry I. of
France. He was called Le Grand, not on account of any mental or
physical superiority, but because by marriage he was the head of the
Vermandois house. He was one of the first to desert the Crusade,
terrified by the misfortunes which overtook the expedition; but,
like Stephen of Blois, he was obliged by the force of popular
opinion to go back again as a Crusader. The second time he was
wounded by the Turks near Nicæa, and only got as far as Tarsus in
Cilicia, where he died. Like Robert of Normandy, he joined to great
bravery and an extreme generosity a certain weakness of character,
which marred all his finer qualities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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