by
example, and impelled by necessity. The multitude of the adventurers
soon became so great, that their more sagacious leaders, Hugh count of
Vermandois, brother to the French king, Raymond count of Toulouse,
Godfrey of Bouillon, prince of Brabant, and Stephen count of Blois,
became apprehensive lest the greatness itself of the armament should
disappoint its purpose; and they permitted an undisciplined multitude,
computed at 300,000 men, to go before them, under the command of Peter
the Hermit and Walter the Moneyless. These men took the road towards
Constantinople through Hungary and Bulgaria; and trusting that Heaven,
by supernatural assistance, would supply all their necessities, they
made no provision for subsistance on their march. They soon found
themselves obliged to obtain by plunder, what they had vainly expected
from miracles; and the enraged inhabitants of the countries through
which they passed, gathering together in arms, attacked the disorderly
multitude and put them to slaughter without resistance. The more
disciplined armies followed after; and passing the straights at
Constantinople, they were mustered in the plains of Asia, and amounted
in the whole to the number of 700,000 combatants....

After the adventurers in the holy war were assembled on the banks of the
Bosphorus, opposite to Constantinople, they proceeded on their
enterprise; but immediately experienced those difficulties which their
zeal had hitherto concealed from them, and for which, even if they had
foreseen them, it would have been almost impossible to provide a remedy.
The Greek emperor, Alexis Comnenus, who had applied to the Western
Christians for succor against the Turks, entertained hopes, and those
but feeble ones, of obtaining such a moderate supply, as, acting under
his command, might enable him to repulse the enemy: but he was extremely
astonished to see his dominions overwhelmed, on a sudden, by such an
inundation of licentious barbarians, who, though they pretended
friendship, despised his subjects as unwarlike, and detested them as
heretical. By all the arts of policy, in which he excelled, he
endeavored to divert the torrent; but while he employed professions,
caresses, civilities, and seeming services towards the leaders of the
crusade, he secretly regarded those imperious allies as more dangerous
than the open enemies by whom his empire had been formerly invaded.
Having effected that difficult point of disembarking them s