d fighting men,
completely armed with the helmet and coat of mail. The value of these
soldiers deserved a strict and authentic account; and the flower of
European chivalry might furnish, in a first effort, this formidable body
of heavy horse. A part of the infantry might be enrolled for the service
of scouts, pioneers, and archers; but the promiscuous crowd were lost in
their own disorder; and we depend not on the eyes and knowledge, but on
the belief and fancy, of a chaplain of Count Baldwin, in the estimate of
six hundred thousand pilgrims able to bear arms, besides the priests and
monks, the women and children of the Latin camp. The reader starts;
and before he is recovered from his surprise, I shall add, on the same
testimony, that if all who took the cross had accomplished their vow,
above six millions would have migrated from Europe to Asia. Under this
oppression of faith, I derive some relief from a more sagacious and
thinking writer, who, after the same review of the cavalry, accuses
the credulity of the priest of Chartres, and even doubts whether the
_Cisalpine_ regions (in the geography of a Frenchman) were sufficient
to produce and pour forth such incredible multitudes. The coolest
scepticism will remember, that of these religious volunteers great
numbers never beheld Constantinople and Nice. Of enthusiasm the
influence is irregular and transient: many were detained at home by
reason or cowardice, by poverty or weakness; and many were repulsed by
the obstacles of the way, the more insuperable as they were unforeseen,
to these ignorant fanatics. The savage countries of Hungary and Bulgaria
were whitened with their bones: their vanguard was cut in pieces by the
Turkish sultan; and the loss of the first adventure, by the sword, or
climate, or fatigue, has already been stated at three hundred thousand
men. Yet the myriads that survived, that marched, that pressed forwards
on the holy pilgrimage, were a subject of astonishment to themselves
and to the Greeks. The copious energy of her language sinks under the
efforts of the princess Anne: the images of locusts, of leaves and
flowers, of the sands of the sea, or the stars of heaven, imperfectly
represent what she had seen and heard; and the daughter of Alexius
exclaims, that Europe was loosened from its foundations, and hurled
against Asia. The ancient hosts of Darius and Xerxes labor under the
same doubt of a vague and indefinite magnitude; but I am inclined to
bel