Possibly the knowledge that the district about Jerusalem could furnish them no help led the leaders to listen to the counsel of a solitary hermit who dwelt on the Mount of Olives, and who promised in Christ’s name a successful assault if undertaken at once. It does not seem clear how an army without siege apparatus could take a place so strongly fortified. On the east the vast walls, rising from the valley of Jehoshaphat, were too lofty to tempt the most daring. Those on the south, overlooking the Kidron, were not less impregnable. The crusading army took every possibility of approach into consideration, and in imitation of Vespasian and Titus a thousand years before, stretched their lines on the north and west of the city. But only a blind faith in divine assistance could have led to the assault, even on these sides, without battering-rams or scaling-ladders. Yet at the trumpet’s call the Christians advanced. They joined their shields into a roof, which was a poor defence against the stones and boiling oil that descended upon them. Still the front ranks dug into the walls with pikes and axes, while the rear ranks of archers and slingers endeavored to drive the foe from the ramparts above. A few, finding a solitary ladder, mounted the walls, but were unable to withstand the crowd of Infidels who met them. In deep discouragement, they abandoned the assault, having learned the lesson that, even at Jerusalem, Heaven assures no enterprise which is conceived regardless of human discretion. Events soon occurred which turned this distrust of miraculous intervention into a belief that Heaven was actually fighting against the Christians. It was a summer of fearful heat even for that land. Tasso’s description of those fiery days is as truthful as it is poetic: “The fair flowers languish, the green turf turns brown, The leaves fall yellow from their sapless sprays; Earth gapes in chinks; th’ exhausted fountain plays No more its music; shrunk the stream and lakes; The barren cloud, in air expanded, takes Semblance of sheeted fire, and parts in scarlet flakes. Not a bird’s fluttering, not an insect’s hum, Breaks the still void; or, on its sultry gloom If winds intrude, ’tis only such as come From the hot sands, sirocco or simoom, Which, blown in stifling gusts, the springs of life consume.” _Jerusalem Delivered_, canto xiii.