something there, after consulting with our leaders, that I should not pass over silently; when the inhabitants of the city understood that our men were struggling because of the scarcity of food, our men proceeded to yoke bulls to the plow, to dig up and seed the ground in sight of the city. By this means the inhabitants of the city understood that no cause could compel them to abandon the siege that they had undertaken, since they were in the process of growing food for the next year. These and other remarkable things were done on this expedition, which we think can be described in their entirety by no one. No one in any age has ever heard that any nation, without a king, without a prince, departed from its own lands and that, under God only, both the lowly and the great learned to carry the yoke, so that the servant did not serve a master, nor did the lord claim anything more than brotherhood from the servant. Thus, I say, we cannot offer examples from the past to match this, nor do we think that anything like this will occur in the future. Our argument is based most of all on the fact that, after the capture of Jerusalem, we saw so many Christian nations moving, so many people of great dignity, so many battalions of noble knights, such a great number of foot-soldiers setting out after those who had preceded them and opened the way, that we understood that in wealth and in number we might judge that this second movement was scarcely inferior to the first. For who could describe how great a crowd of nobles, burghers, and peasants, from Frankish lands alone (of the others I say nothing) accompanied count Stephen, whom we mentioned earlier, and Hugh the Great, brother of king Philip, when, later on, they again undertook the journey to the tomb of the Lord? Not to speak of the count of Burgundy, what shall I say of the count of Poitou, who brought not only a large group of knights, but a crowd of young girls as well? When his renown had been established everywhere, he came to Constantinople and held a conference with the tyrant Alexis, the most abominable of men. This wretched traitor informed the Turks by letters of his arrival, before the count had left the royal city. "Lo," he said, "the fattest sheep from France are moving in your direction, led by a foolish shepherd." What more can I say? The count went beyond the borders of the tyrannical prince; suddenly before him stood an army of Turks, who scattered, preyed upon, and conquered the disorganized foreigners. There Hugh the Great, struck in the knee by an arrow, after a long illness died, and was buried at Tharsa in Cilicia. They say that these things were done in the province called Satyria.[248]