proceeded to the election of a king, to guard
and govern their conquests in Palestine. Hugh the Great, and Stephen of
Chartres, had retired with some loss of reputation, which they strove
to regain by a second crusade and an honorable death. Baldwin was
established at Edessa, and Bohemond at Antioch; and two Roberts,
the duke of Normandy and the count of Flanders, preferred their fair
inheritance in the West to a doubtful competition or a barren sceptre.
The jealousy and ambition of Raymond were condemned by his own
followers, and the free, the just, the unanimous voice of the army
proclaimed Godfrey of Bouillon the first and most worthy of the
champions of Christendom. His magnanimity accepted a trust as full of
danger as of glory; but in a city where his Savior had been crowned with
thorns, the devout pilgrim rejected the name and ensigns of royalty;
and the founder of the kingdom of Jerusalem contented himself with the
modest title of Defender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre. His government
of a single year, too short for the public happiness, was interrupted
in the first fortnight by a summons to the field, by the approach of the
vizier or sultan of Egypt, who had been too slow to prevent, but who was
impatient to avenge, the loss of Jerusalem. His total overthrow in the
battle of Ascalon sealed the establishment of the Latins in Syria, and
signalized the valor of the French princes who in this action bade a
long farewell to the holy wars. Some glory might be derived from the
prodigious inequality of numbers, though I shall not count the myriads
of horse and foot on the side of the Fatimites; but, except three
thousand Ethiopians or Blacks, who were armed with flails or scourges of
iron, the Barbarians of the South fled on the first onset, and afforded
a pleasing comparison between the active valor of the Turks and the
sloth and effeminacy of the natives of Egypt. After suspending before
the holy sepulchre the sword and standard of the sultan, the new king
(he deserves the title) embraced his departing companions, and could
retain only with the gallant Tancred three hundred knights, and two
thousand foot-soldiers for the defence of Palestine. His sovereignty was
soon attacked by a new enemy, the only one against whom Godfrey was a
coward. Adhemar, bishop of Puy, who excelled both in council and
action, had been swept away in the last plague at Antioch: the remaining
ecclesiastics preserved only the pride and avarice o