Three only of these bodies are worthy of particular notice, that of the English, Danes,[513] and Flemings, who assisted Baldwin at the unsuccessful siege of Sidon--the Norwegian expedition which succeeded in taking that city--and that of the Venetians, who afterward aided in the capture of Tyre. The Genoese[514] and the Pisans, also, from time to time sent out vessels to the coast of Palestine; but these voyages, which combined in a strange manner the purposes of traffic, superstition, and warfare, tended rather to the general prosperity of the country by commerce, and to its protection, by bringing continual recruits, than to any individual enterprise or conquest. Many anecdotes are told of the first crusaders by their contemporary historians, which--though resting on evidence so far doubtful as to forbid their introduction as absolute facts--I shall mention in exemplification of the manners and customs of the time. The number of women and children who followed the first crusaders to the Holy Land is known to have been immense; but it is not a little extraordinary, that in spite of all the hardships and dangers of the way, a great multitude of both arrived safe at Jerusalem. The women we find, on almost all occasions, exercising the most heroic firmness in the midst of battles and destruction; and Guibert gives a curious account of the military spirit which seized upon the children during the siege of Antioch. The boys of the Saracens and the young crusaders, armed with sticks for lances, and stones instead of arrows, would issue from the town and the camp, and under leaders chosen from among themselves,[515] who assumed the names of the principal chiefs, would advance in regular squadrons, and fight in the sight of the two hosts, with a degree of rancour which showed to what a pitch the mutual hatred of the nations was carried. Even after the crusaders had fallen in battle or had died of the pestilence, their children still pursued their way, and getting speedily accustomed to fatigue and privation, evinced powers of endurance equal to those of the most hardy warriors.