stand against me I found not.' Hearing these words the Emperor said, 'If hitherto thou hast sought battles in vain, the time is at hand which will furnish thee with abundance of them. And I advise thee to place thyself neither before the phalanx, nor in its rear, but to stand fast in the midst of thy fellow-soldiers; for of old time I am well acquainted with the warfare of the Turks.' With such advice he dismissed not only this man, but the rest of those who were about to depart on that expedition."--_Alexiad_, Book x. pp. 237, 238. Ducange, as is mentioned in the novel, identifies the church, thus described by the crusader, with that of _Our Lady of Soissons_, of which a French poet of the days of Louis VII. says-- Veiller y vont encore li Pelerin Cil qui bataille veulent fere et fournir. DUCANGE _in Alexiad_, p. 86. The Princess Anna Comnena, it may be proper to observe, was born on the first of December, A.D. 1083, and was consequently in her fifteenth year when the chiefs of the first crusade made their appearance in her father's court. Even then, however, it is not improbable that she might have been the wife of Nicephorus Bryennius, whom, many years after his death, she speaks of in her history as [Greek: ton emon Kaisara], and in other terms equally affectionate. The bitterness with which she uniformly mentions Bohemund, Count of Tarentum, afterwards Prince of Antioch, has, however, been ascribed to a disappointment in love; and on one remarkable occasion, the Princess certainly expressed great contempt of her husband. I am aware of no other authorities for the liberties taken with this lady's conjugal character in the novel. Her husband, Nicephorus Bryennius, was the grandson of the person of that name, who figures in history as the rival, in a contest for the imperial throne, of Nicephorus Botoniates. He was, on his marriage with Anna Comnena, invested with the rank of _Panhypersebastos_, or _Omnium Augustissimus_; but Alexius deeply offended him, by afterwards recognising the superior and simpler dignity of a _Sebastos_. His eminent qualities, both in peace and war, are acknowledged by Gibbon: and he has left us four books of Memoirs, detailing the early part of his father-in-law's history, and valuable as being the work of an eye-witness of the most important events which he describes. Anna Comnena appears to have considered it her duty to take up the task which her husband had not lived to complete; and hence the Alexiad--certainly, with all its defects, the first historical work that has as yet proceeded from a female pen.