The impetuosity of the crusaders was soon stirred again by their proximity to the Turks. They refortified the deserted fortress of Exerogorgo; but scarcely were they within its walls when Kilidge-Arslan (“sword of the lion”), the Sultan of Roum, laid siege to and captured the place. He then surprised the town of Civitat, outside of which the crusaders had made their chief camp. A terrible massacre ensued. Out of a numberless multitude, but three thousand remained to contemplate, instead of proud cities they had hoped to wrest from the Infidel, the piles of bones which strewed the plains of Nicæa. Walter was slain, and the town into which the miserable remnant was huddled would have fallen into the hands of the Turks but for the opportune relief afforded by the imperial troops from Constantinople. It is estimated by Gibbon that not less than three hundred thousand lives were lost in these preliminary excursions before the more orderly hosts started from western Europe. CHAPTER XI. THE CRUSADE UNDER THE CHIEFTAINS, GODFREY, RAYMOND, BOHEMOND, TANCRED, HUGH, ROBERT OF NORMANDY. The age, though degenerate, had nourished an order of men of far loftier type than those we have described. Godfrey of Bouillon was the most prominent figure. The chivalric spirit of the middle ages enrolled him among the nine greatest heroes of mankind—Joshua, David, Judas Maccabæus, Hector, Alexander, Cæsar, Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey. He was of noblest lineage. His father was brother-in-law to Edward the Confessor of England, and through his mother, the beautiful and saintly Ida of Lorraine, he inherited the blood of Charlemagne. He was short of stature, but of such prodigious strength that he is reputed to have divided an opponent from helmet to saddle with one blow of his sword. He was equally endowed with courage and sagacity. In his war against the rival emperor, Rudolph, Henry IV. committed the imperial standard to Godfrey, who, though but a youth of eighteen, honored this charge by penetrating to the presence of Rudolph in the thick of the battle, plunging the spear of the standard through his heart, and bearing it aloft with the blood of victory. Yet such a deed in that age did not lessen his repute for gentleness and piety. Two ancestral spirits alternated their control of him, if we are to credit the praise given him by an old chronicle of the time: “For zeal in war, behold his father; for serving God, behold his mother.” When Rome was besieged by his imperial patron, Godfrey signalized his prowess by being the first to mount the walls. This exploit, however, troubled his tender conscience as a devout Catholic, and when the crusade was proclaimed he sold his lands and devoted himself to the holy war, in attempted expiation of what he had come to regard as his former impious deeds. At the head of ten thousand horse and seventy thousand foot, he set out for the Holy Land.