gy and the bishop of
Akbar, all imploring the mercy of God and the protection of the saints.
After him marched Tancred with forty knights and many foot. "Who then
may resist this people," said Turks and Saracens one to another, "so
stubborn and cruel, whom, for the space of a year, nor famine, nor the
sword, nor any other danger could cause to abandon the siege of Antioch,
and who now are feeding upon human flesh?" In fact a rumor had spread
that, in their extreme distress for want of provisions, the crusaders had
eaten corpses of Saracens found in the moats of Marrah.

Several of the chiefs, hitherto undecided, now followed the popular
impulse, whilst others still hesitated. But on the approach of spring,
1099, more than eight months after the capture of Antioch, Godfrey of
Bouillon, his brother, Eustace of Boulogne, Robert of Flanders, and their
following, likewise began to march. Bohemond, after having accompanied
them as far as Laodicea, left them with a promise of rejoining them
before Jerusalem, and returned to Antioch, where he remained. Fresh
crusaders arrived from Flanders, Holland, and England, and amongst them
the Saxon prince, Edgar Atheling, who had for a brief interval been king
of England, between the death of Harold and the coronation of William the
Conqueror. The army pursued its way, pretty slowly, still stopping from
time to time to besiege towns, which they took and which the chiefs
continued to dispute for amongst themselves. Envoys from the khalif of
Egypt, the new holder of Jerusalem, arrived in the crusaders' camp, with
presents and promises from their master. They had orders to offer forty
thousand pieces of gold to Godfrey, sixty thousand to Bohemond, the most
dreaded by the Mussulmans of all the crusaders, and other gifts to divers
other chiefs. Aboul-Kacem further promised liberty of pilgrimage and
exercise of the Christian religion in Jerusalem; only the Christians must
not enter, unless unarmed. At this proposal the crusader chiefs cried
out with indignation, and declared to the Egyptian envoys that they were
going to hasten their march upon Jerusalem, threatening at the same time
to push forward to the borders of the Nile. At the end of the month of
flay, 1099, they were all masse upon the frontiers of Phoenicia and
Palestine, numbering according to the most sanguine calculations, only
fifty thousand fighting men.

Upon entering Palestine, as they came upon spots known in sacred