From the Rhine to the Danube the enthusiasm spread like an epidemic. No class had immunity from it. Even thieves and cutthroats were so far converted as to swear to rob and murder only Infidels. Bernard’s gift of persuasion was unsurpassed since the days of Pentecost, for men and races that could not understand a word he said were as readily persuaded as those who spoke the Frankish tongue. Roger of Sicily offered to convey the new armies to Palestine in his fleets, urging the hereditary treachery of the Greeks; for, though Alexius had “gone to his own place” below, his grandson Manuel occupied his place at Constantinople. The leaders, however, preferred the perils of the land route to the uncertainties of the deep. The government of France during the absence of Louis VII. was committed to the hands of Suger, Abbot of St. Denis. A wiser choice could not have been made. He had been the adviser of Louis the Fat, and to his astuteness rather than to that of the king were due the consolidation and development of French autonomy, which made that reign notable. An evidence of Suger’s foresight, as well as of his independence and courage, is the fact that he, almost alone of men, opposed the crusading scheme and predicted its fatality. Only at the command of the Pope did Suger assume the guardianship of the kingdom. Not distrustful of the king, but credulous of the heavenly mission of Bernard, the multitude, including the most noted warriors, called for the monk to become their military leader. Only the intervention of the Holy Father, who declared that it was sufficient for the saint to be the trumpet of Heaven without wielding the sword, allayed the universal demand. Thus at Whitsuntide, 1167, a hundred thousand Frenchmen set out for their rendezvous at Metz. Their monarch bore at their head the sacred banner of St. Denis, an oriflamme under which, at even that early day, the kings of France believed themselves invincible. But though royally commanded, the army was somewhat a motley array. Troubadours joined the host to relieve the tedium of the camp with their songs of expected triumph. Ladies of the court and soldiers’ wives graced and encumbered the enterprise. One troop of female combatants was commanded by an Amazon, whose gilded boots made her known as “the lady with the legs of gold.” Old men and children were carried along with the baggage. By the side of the saint trudged the libertine and the criminal, whose remorse had been kindled by the preaching of Bernard, and whose search for the remission of sins at Jerusalem was to poorly compensate the dissolute outbursts of their unchanged natures along the way.