And yet the bishop of Puy, and the more virtuous portion of the clergy used every effort to reform the manners of the Crusaders. They caused the voice of religion to hurl its thunders against the excesses of libertinism and licentiousness. They recalled to their minds all the evils that the Christian army had suffered, and attributed them entirely to the vices and debaucheries of the defenders of the cross. An earthquake which was felt at this time, an aurora borealis, which was a new phenomenon to great part of the pilgrims, were pointed out to them as an announcement of the anger of Heaven. Fasts and prayers were ordered, to avert the celestial indignation. The Crusaders made processions round the camp, and hymns of penitence resounded from all parts. The priests invoked the wrath of the Church against all who should betray the cause of Christ by their sins. To add to the terrors which the threats of religion inspired, a tribunal, composed of the principal leaders of the army and the clergy, was charged with the pursuit and punishment of the guilty. Men surprised in a state of intoxication had their hair cut off; whilst blasphemers, or such as gave themselves up to a passion for play, were branded with a hot iron. A monk accused of adultery, and convicted by the ordeal of fire, was beaten with rods, and led naked through the camp. As the judges became aware of the guilty, they must have been terrified at their numbers. The severest punishments could not entirely stop the prostitution which had become almost general. They determined upon shutting up all the women in a separate camp—an extreme and imprudent measure, which confounded vice and virtue, and produced crimes more disgraceful than those they desired to prevent. Among all these calamities, the camp of the Crusaders was filled with Syrian spies, who daily bore into the city accounts of the plans, the distress, and the despair of the besiegers. Bohemond, in order to deliver the army, employed a means of a nature to disgust even barbarians. My pen refuses to trace such pictures, and I leave William of Tyre, or rather his old translator, to speak. “Bohemond,” says he, “commanded that several Turks, whom he held in close confinement, should be brought before him. These he caused instantly to be executed by the hands of the officers of justice, and then ordering a great fire to be lighted, he had them spitted and roasted, as flesh prepared for the supper of himself and his troops; at the same time commanding, that if any one made inquiries about what was going on, that they should be answered in this fashion: ‘_The princes and rulers of the camp have this day decreed in council, that all Turks or spies that shall henceforward be found in their camp, shall be, in this manner, forced to make meat with their own bodies, as well for the princes as the whole army_.’”