for the movement was the cross, which Pope Urban bade the
Christian warriors wear on their breasts or on their shoulders, as the
sign of Him who died for the salvation of their souls, and as the pledge
of a vow that could never be recalled.)

In the enterprise to which Latin Christendom stood committed, the
several nations or countries of Europe took equal parts; or, rather, no
_nation_, as such, took any part in it at all; and in this fact we have
the explanation of that want of coherent action, and even decent or
average generalship, which is commonly seen in national undertakings.
For the crusade there was no attempt at a commissariat, no care for a
base of supplies; and the crusading hosts were a collection of
individual adventurers who either went without making any provisions for
their journey or provided for their own needs and those of their
followers from their own resources. The number of these adventurers was
naturally determined by the political conditions of the country from
which they came. In Italy the struggle between the pope and the antipope
went far toward chilling enthusiasm; and the recruits for the crusading
army came chiefly from the Normans who had followed Robert Guiscard to
the sunny southern lands. The Spaniards were busied with a crusade
nearer home, and were already pushing back to the south the Mahometan
dominion which had once threatened to pass the barriers of the Pyrenees
and carry the Crescent to the shores of the Baltic Sea. About ten years
before the council of Clermont the Moslem dynasty of Toledo had been
expelled by Alfonso, King of Galicia: the kingdom of Cordova had fallen
twenty years earlier (1065), and while Peter the Hermit was hurrying
hither and thither through the countries of Northern Europe, the
Christians of Spain were winning victories in Murcia, and the land was
ringing with the exploits of the dauntless Cid, Ruy Diaz de Bivar. By
the Germans the summons to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre was received
with comparative coldness; the partisans of emperors, who had been
humbled to the dust by the predecessors of Urban, if not by himself,
were not vehemently eager to obey it. The bishops of Salzburg, Passau,
and Strasburg, the aged duke Guelph of Bavaria, had undertaken the
toilsome and perilous journey: not one of them saw their homes again,
and their death in the distant East was not regarded by their countrymen
as an encouragement to follow their example. In England