ieve, that a larger number has never been contained within the lines
of a single camp, than at the siege of Nice, the first operation of the
Latin princes. Their motives, their characters, and their arms, have
been already displayed. Of their troops the most numerous portion
were natives of France: the Low Countries, the banks of the Rhine, and
Apulia, sent a powerful reenforcement: some bands of adventurers were
drawn from Spain, Lombardy, and England; and from the distant bogs and
mountains of Ireland or Scotland issued some naked and savage fanatics,
ferocious at home but unwarlike abroad. Had not superstition condemned
the sacrilegious prudence of depriving the poorest or weakest Christian
of the merit of the pilgrimage, the useless crowd, with mouths but
without hands, might have been stationed in the Greek empire, till their
companions had opened and secured the way of the Lord. A small remnant
of the pilgrims, who passed the Bosphorus, was permitted to visit the
holy sepulchre. Their northern constitution was scorched by the rays,
and infected by the vapors, of a Syrian sun. They consumed, with
heedless prodigality, their stores of water and provision: their numbers
exhausted the inland country: the sea was remote, the Greeks were
unfriendly, and the Christians of every sect fled before the voracious
and cruel rapine of their brethren. In the dire necessity of famine,
they sometimes roasted and devoured the flesh of their infant or adult
captives. Among the Turks and Saracens, the idolaters of Europe were
rendered more odious by the name and reputation of Cannibals; the spies,
who introduced themselves into the kitchen of Bohemond, were shown
several human bodies turning on the spit: and the artful Norman
encouraged a report, which increased at the same time the abhorrence and
the terror of the infidels.

Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.--Part IV.

I have expiated with pleasure on the first steps of the crusaders, as
they paint the manners and character of Europe: but I shall abridge the
tedious and uniform narrative of their blind achievements, which were
performed by strength and are described by ignorance. From their first
station in the neighborhood of Nicomedia, they advanced in successive
divisions; passed the contracted limit of the Greek empire; opened a
road through the hills, and commenced, by the siege of his capital,
their pious warfare against the Turkish sultan. His kingdom of Roum
extended