Many even of the leaders of the crusade[375] were reduced to absolute beggary, and several became completely dependent on the bounty of Godfrey for mere food, till he himself had no more to give. The people, accustomed to privation, still in some degree bore up, but the knights themselves gave way, and had it not been for the noble firmness of Adhemar, Bishop of Puy, Godfrey, Raimond, Boemond, and Tancred, the whole of the barons would have fled, and left the people to their fate.[376] The chiefs I have named, however, never ceased their exertions. They bound themselves by the most solemn vows not to abandon each other or the cause they had undertaken; and Tancred, always the first where chivalrous enthusiasm was concerned, pledged himself by oath not to turn back from the road to Jerusalem so long as forty knights would follow his banner. At length superstition came to animate the courage of the soldiery. Visions were seen promising victory to those who endured to the last. The apostles, the saints, and even the Saviour appeared to many of the priests, who took care that their miraculous visitations should be noised abroad.[377] Whether originating in the policy of the leaders, or in the cunning of the lower order of priests, these supernatural consolations had a prodigious effect upon people who, their reliance on every earthly means being gone, were fain to turn to heaven. Enthusiasm, supported by superstition, proved a most excellent nurse to hope. Activity, energy, resolution, returned; and the wan and ghastly herds demanded loudly to be led against the enemy. One more pious fraud[378] was destined to be committed before the troops were brought to the last resource of an almost hopeless battle. A clerk of Provence, serving under Raimond of Toulouse, sought out the chiefs of the armament, and declared that St. Andrew the Apostle had manifested himself in a vision, and had revealed to him that the lance with which our Saviour's side was pierced, at the crucifixion, might be found in a certain spot in the church of St. Peter of Antioch. Accompanied by this holy relic the army was directed by the saint to issue forth upon the Saracens with assurances of victory. The Bishop of Puy,[379] whose religious feelings were of too pure a kind to practise, or even countenance, such cheats, declared that the tale must be false, and several chiefs agreed with him in opinion:[380] but Raimond of Toulouse and others strongly supported the story; and the whole of the leaders soon became convinced that good policy required the lance should be found, a battle seeming the only resource. As no support could be given to the bodies of the emaciated troops, it was as well, also, to stimulate their minds as far as possible.