t
the thighs and belly were scorched by the intense heat; he expired the
next day; and the logic of believing minds will pay some regard to his
dying protestations of innocence and truth. Some efforts were made by
the Provincials to substitute a cross, a ring, or a tabernacle, in the
place of the holy lance, which soon vanished in contempt and oblivion.
Yet the revelation of Antioch is gravely asserted by succeeding
historians: and such is the progress of credulity, that miracles most
doubtful on the spot, and at the moment, will be received with implicit
faith at a convenient distance of time and space.

The prudence or fortune of the Franks had delayed their invasion till
the decline of the Turkish empire. Under the manly government of the
three first sultans, the kingdoms of Asia were united in peace and
justice; and the innumerable armies which they led in person were equal
in courage, and superior in discipline, to the Barbarians of the West.
But at the time of the crusade, the inheritance of Malek Shaw was
disputed by his four sons; their private ambition was insensible of
the public danger; and, in the vicissitudes of their fortune, the
royal vassals were ignorant, or regardless, of the true object of their
allegiance. The twenty-eight emirs who marched with the standard or
Kerboga were his rivals or enemies: their hasty levies were drawn from
the towns and tents of Mesopotamia and Syria; and the Turkish veterans
were employed or consumed in the civil wars beyond the Tigris. The
caliph of Egypt embraced this opportunity of weakness and discord
to recover his ancient possessions; and his sultan Aphdal besieged
Jerusalem and Tyre, expelled the children of Ortok, and restored in
Palestine the civil and ecclesiastical authority of the Fatimites. They
heard with astonishment of the vast armies of Christians that had passed
from Europe to Asia, and rejoiced in the sieges and battles which broke
the power of the Turks, the adversaries of their sect and monarchy.
But the same Christians were the enemies of the prophet; and from the
overthrow of Nice and Antioch, the motive of their enterprise, which
was gradually understood, would urge them forwards to the banks of
the Jordan, or perhaps of the Nile. An intercourse of epistles and
embassies, which rose and fell with the events of war, was maintained
between the throne of Cairo and the camp of the Latins; and their
adverse pride was the result of ignorance and enthusiasm.