Among the princes who took the oath to fight against the Mussulmans, was Andrew II., king of Hungary. Bela, the father of the Hungarian monarch, had made a vow to go to the Holy Land; but not having been able to undertake the pilgrimage, he had, on his death-bed, required his son to accomplish his oath. Andrew, after having taken the cross, was for a long time detained in his states by the troubles to which his ambition had given birth, and which he had great difficulty in suppressing. Gertrude, whom he had married before the fifth crusade, made enemies of the whole court and nobility by her pride and her intrigues. This imperious princess[193] committed such extraordinary insults against the magnates of the kingdom, and inspired them with so violent a hatred, that they formed conspiracies against her life, and introduced murderers even into her palace. Disorders and misfortunes without number followed these crimes, the greatest of which, doubtless, was the impunity of the guilty. In such circumstances policy would certainly have pointed it out to the king of Hungary, as his duty, to remain in his own states; but the spectacle of so many unpunished crimes, without doubt, alarmed his weakness, and strengthened his desire of getting at a distance from a court filled with his enemies. Like his mother, the widow of Bela,[194] he expected to find in the places consecrated by the sufferings of Christ, an asylum against the griefs which beset his life; the Hungarian monarch might likewise think that the holy pilgrimage would make him more respected by his subjects, and that the Church, ever armed in favour of royal crusaders, would defend the rights of his crown better than he himself could. He resolved at length to perform the vow he had made before his dying father, and earnestly set about preparations for his departure for Syria. Andrew then reigned over a vast kingdom,—Hungary, Dalmatia, Croatia, Bosnia, Galicia, and the province of Lodomira obeyed his laws, and paid him tribute; and throughout all these provinces, so lately enemies to the Christians, the crusades were preached. Hordes wandering amidst forests, listened to the complaints of Sion, and swore to fight against the infidels. Among the nations of Hungary, who, a century before, had been the terror of the pilgrim companions of Peter the Hermit, a crowd of warriors eagerly took the cross, and promised to follow their monarch to the Holy Land. Vessels and fleets for the transport of the Crusaders were equipped in all the ports of the Baltic, the ocean, and the Mediterranean; and yet, at the very same time, a crusade was being preached against the inhabitants of Prussia, who still remained in the darkness of idolatry. Poland, Saxony, Norway, and Livonia armed their warriors to overthrow the idols of paganism on the banks of the Oder and the Vistula, whilst the other nations of the West were preparing to make war against the Saracens in the plains of Judæa and Syria.