e the less a defeat
because it was more than half a victory.

A curious cloud of confusion rests on the details of that defeat.
The Christian captains who acted in it were certainly men on a different
moral level from the good Duke Godfrey; their characters were by
comparison mixed and even mysterious. Perhaps the two determining
personalities were Raymond of Tripoli, a skilful soldier whom his
enemies seemed to have accused of being much too skilful a diplomatist;
and Renaud of Chatillon, a violent adventurer whom his enemies
seem to have accused of being little better than a bandit.
And it is the irony of the incident that Raymond got into trouble
for making a dubious peace with the Saracens, while Renaud got
into trouble by making an equally dubious war on the Saracens.
Renaud exacted from Moslem travellers on a certain road what
he regarded as a sort of feudal toll or tax, and they regarded
as a brigand ransom; and when they did not pay he attacked them.
This was regarded as a breach of the truce; but probably it would
have been easier to regard Renaud as waging the war of a robber,
if many had not regarded Raymond as having made the truce of a traitor.
Probably Raymond was not a traitor, since the military advice he gave
up to the very instant of catastrophe was entirely loyal and sound,
and worthy of so wise a veteran. And very likely Renaud was not
merely a robber, especially in his own eyes; and there seems
to be a much better case for him than many modern writers allow.
But the very fact of such charges being bandied among the factions
shows a certain fall from the first days under the headship of
the house of Bouillon. No slanderer ever suggested that Godfrey
was a traitor; no enemy ever asserted that Godfrey was only a thief.
It is fairly clear that there had been a degeneration; but most people
hardly realise sufficiently that there had been a very great thing
from which to degenerate.

The first Crusades had really had some notion of Jerusalem as a
New Jerusalem. I mean they had really had a vision of the place being
not only a promised land but a Utopia or even an Earthly Paradise.
The outstanding fact and feature which is seldom seized is this:
that the social experiment in Palestine was rather in advance of
the social experiments in the rest of Christendom. Having to begin
at the beginning, they really began with what they considered the best
ideas of their time; like any group of Socialists foun