sely pursued by another fanatic, the monk Godescal, whose
sermons had swept away fifteen or twenty thousand peasants from the
villages of Germany. Their rear was again pressed by a herd of two
hundred thousand, the most stupid and savage refuse of the people, who
mingled with their devotion a brutal license of rapine, prostitution,
and drunkenness. Some counts and gentlemen, at the head of three
thousand horse, attended the motions of the multitude to partake in
the spoil; but their genuine leaders (may we credit such folly?) were
a goose and a goat, who were carried in the front, and to whom these
worthy Christians ascribed an infusion of the divine spirit. Of these,
and of other bands of enthusiasts, the first and most easy warfare was
against the Jews, the murderers of the Son of God. In the trading cities
of the Moselle and the Rhine, their colonies were numerous and rich; and
they enjoyed, under the protection of the emperor and the bishops,
the free exercise of their religion. At Verdun, Treves, Mentz,
Spires, Worms, many thousands of that unhappy people were pillaged and
massacred: nor had they felt a more bloody stroke since the persecution
of Hadrian. A remnant was saved by the firmness of their bishops, who
accepted a feigned and transient conversion; but the more obstinate
Jews opposed their fanaticism to the fanaticism of the Christians,
barricadoed their houses, and precipitating themselves, their families,
and their wealth, into the rivers or the flames, disappointed the
malice, or at least the avarice, of their implacable foes.

Between the frontiers of Austria and the seat of the Byzan tine
monarchy, the crusaders were compelled to traverse as interval of six
hundred miles; the wild and desolate countries of Hungary and Bulgaria.
The soil is fruitful, and intersected with rivers; but it was then
covered with morasses and forests, which spread to a boundless extent,
whenever man has ceased to exercise his dominion over the earth. Both
nations had imbibed the rudiments of Christianity; the Hungarians were
ruled by their native princes; the Bulgarians by a lieutenant of the
Greek emperor; but, on the slightest provocation, their ferocious nature
was rekindled, and ample provocation was afforded by the disorders of
the first pilgrims Agriculture must have been unskilful and languid
among a people, whose cities were built of reeds and timber, which were
deserted in the summer season for the tents of hunters an