Though the First Crusade affected the Jews of France only indirectly, it none the less marks a definite epoch in their history. The fanaticism it engendered wreaked its fury upon the Jews, against whom all sorts of odious charges were brought. They were placed in the same category as sorcerers and lepers, and among the crimes laid at their door were ritual murder and piercing of the host. The instigations of the clergy did not remain without effect upon a people lulled to sleep by its ignorance, but aroused to action by its faith. The kings and seigneurs on their side exploited the Jews, and expelled them from their territories. Rashi had the good fortune not to know these troublous times. But he discerned in a sky already overcast the threatening premonitions of a tempest, and as though to guard his fellow-Jews against the danger, he left them a work which was to be a viaticum and an asylum to them. When one sees how Rashi's work brought nourishment, so to speak, to all later Jewish literature, which was a large factor in keeping Israel from its threatened ruin, one is convinced that Rashi, aside from his literary efforts, contributed no slight amount toward the preservation and the vitality of the Jewish people. Even if the Crusades had not involved persecution of the Jews and so provoked the noble intervention of Rashi, they would nevertheless have made themselves felt in Champagne. Count Hugo, among others, remained in the Holy Land from 1104 to 1108; and his brother was killed at Ramleh in 1102. According to a rather wide-spread legend, Rashi stood in intimate relations with one of the principal chiefs of the Crusade, the famous duke of Lower Lotharingia, Godfrey of Bouillon. Historians have found that the part actually played by the duke in the Crusades is smaller than that ascribed to him by tradition, yet the profound impression he made on the popular imagination has remained, and legend soon endowed him with a fabulous genealogy, making of him an almost mythical personage. A favorite trick of the makers of legends is to connect their heroes with celebrated contemporaries, as though brilliance was reflected from one upon the other. Thus Saladin was connected with Maimonides and with Richard the Lion-Hearted, and, similarly, Rashi with Godfrey of Bouillon.