s safety to
seek the German, and several days were spent in insincere negotiations.
Manuel at length agreed to furnish the crusading army with guides to
conduct it through Asia Minor; and Conrad passed over the Hellespont with
his forces, the advanced guard being commanded by himself, and the rear by
the warlike Bishop of Freysinghen.

Historians are almost unanimous in their belief that the wily Greek gave
instructions to his guides to lead the army of the German emperor into
dangers and difficulties. It is certain that, instead of guiding them
through such districts of Asia Minor as afforded water and provisions,
they led them into the wilds of Cappadocia, where neither was to be
procured, and where they were suddenly attacked by the sultan of the
Seljukian Turks, at the head of an immense force. The guides, whose
treachery is apparent from this fact alone, fled at the first sight of the
Turkish army, and the Christians were left to wage unequal warfare with
their enemy, entangled and bewildered in desert wilds. Toiling in their
heavy mail, the Germans could make but little effective resistance to the
attacks of the Turkish light horse, who were down upon them one instant,
and out of sight the next. Now in the front and now in the rear, the agile
foe showered his arrows upon them, enticing them into swamps and hollows,
from which they could only extricate themselves after long struggles and
great losses. The Germans, confounded by this mode of warfare, lost all
conception of the direction they were pursuing, and went back instead of
forward. Suffering at the same time for want of provisions, they fell an
easy prey to their pursuers. Count Bernhard, one of the bravest leaders of
the German expedition, was surrounded, with his whole division, not one of
whom escaped the Turkish arrows. The emperor himself had nearly fallen a
victim, and was twice severely wounded. So persevering was the enemy, and
so little able were the Germans to make even a shew of resistance, that
when Conrad at last reached the city of Nice, he found that, instead of
being at the head of an imposing force of one hundred thousand foot and
seventy thousand horse, he had but fifty or sixty thousand men, and these
in the most worn and wearied condition.

Totally ignorant of the treachery of the Greek emperor, although he had
been warned to beware of it, Louis VII. proceeded, at the head of his
army, through Worms and Ratisbon, towards Constantinople. A