But the count of Tholouse and Provence was
suspected of a voluntary indisposition; the duke of Normandy was
recalled from the sea-shore by the censures of the church: Hugh the
Great, though he led the vanguard of the battle, embraced an ambiguous
opportunity of returning to France and Stephen, count of Chartres,
basely deserted the standard which he bore, and the council in which
he presided. The soldiers were discouraged by the flight of William,
viscount of Melun, surnamed the Carpenter, from the weighty strokes of
his axe; and the saints were scandalized by the fall [971] of Peter the
Hermit, who, after arming Europe against Asia, attempted to escape from
the penance of a necessary fast. Of the multitude of recreant warriors,
the names (says an historian) are blotted from the book of life; and the
opprobrious epithet of the rope-dancers was applied to the deserters
who dropped in the night from the walls of Antioch. The emperor Alexius,
[98] who seemed to advance to the succor of the Latins, was dismayed by
the assurance of their hopeless condition. They expected their fate in
silent despair; oaths and punishments were tried without effect; and to
rouse the soldiers to the defence of the walls, it was found necessary
to set fire to their quarters.

[Footnote 95: See the tragic and scandalous fate of an archdeacon of
royal birth, who was slain by the Turks as he reposed in an orchard,
playing at dice with a Syrian concubine.]

[Footnote 96: The value of an ox rose from five solidi, (fifteen
shillings,) at Christmas to two marks, (four pounds,) and afterwards
much higher; a kid or lamb, from one shilling to eighteen of our present
money: in the second famine, a loaf of bread, or the head of an animal,
sold for a piece of gold. More examples might be produced; but it is the
ordinary, not the extraordinary, prices, that deserve the notice of the
philosopher.]

[Footnote 97: Alli multi, quorum nomina non tenemus; quia, deleta de
libro vitae, praesenti operi non sunt inserenda, (Will. Tyr. l. vi. c.
5, p. 715.) Guibert (p. 518, 523) attempts to excuse Hugh the Great, and
even Stephen of Chartres.]

[Footnote 971: Peter fell during the siege: he went afterwards on an
embassy to Kerboga Wilken. vol. i. p. 217.--M.]

[Footnote 98: See the progress of the crusade, the retreat of Alexius,
the victory of Antioch, and the conquest of Jerusalem, in the Alexiad,
l. xi. p. 317-327. Anna was so prone to exaggeration, that she
m