history
or places of any importance, the same feelings of greed and jealousy
which had caused so much trouble in Asia Minor and Syria caused divisions
once more amongst the crusaders. The chieftain, the simple warrior
almost, who was the first to enter city, or burgh, or house, and plant
his flag there halted in it and claimed to be its possessor; whilst those
"whom nothing was dearer than the commandments of God," say the
chroniclers, pursued their march, barefooted, beneath the banner of the
cross, deplored the covetousness and the quarrels of their brethren.
When the crusaders arrived a Emmaus, some Christians of Bethlehem came
and implore their aid against the infidels. Tancred was there; and he,
with the consent of Godfrey, set out immediately, in the middle of the
night, with a small band of one hundred horsemen, and went and planted
his own flag on the top of the church at Bethlehem at the very hour at
which the birth of Jesus Christ had been announced to the shepherds of
Judea. Next day, June 10th 1099, on advancing, at dawn of day, over the
heights of Emmaus, the army of the crusaders had, all at once, beneath
their gaze the Holy City.

"Lo! Jerusalem appears in sight. Lo! every hand point, out Jerusalem.
Lo! a thousand voices are heard as one in salutation of Jerusalem.

"After the great, sweet joy which filled all hearts at this first glimpse
came a deep feeling of contrition, mingled with awful and reverential
affection. Each scarcely dared to raise the eye towards the city which
had been the chosen abode of Christ, where He died, was buried, and rose
again.

"In accents of humility, with words low spoken, with stifled sobs, with
sighs and tears, the pent-up yearnings of a people in joy and at the same
time in sorrow sent shivering through the air a murmur like that which is
heard in leafy forests what time the wind blows through the leaves, or
like the dull sound made by the sea which breaks upon the rocks, or
hisses as it foams over the beach."

It was better to quote these beautiful stanzas from "Jerusalem Delivered"
than to reproduce the pompous and monotonous phrases of the chroniclers.
The genius of Tasso was capable of understanding and worthy to depict the
emotions of a Christian army at sight of the Jerusalem they had come to
deliver.

We will not pause over the purely military and technical details of the
siege. It was calculated that there were in the city twenty thousand
armed inhabi