diary, the homicide, arose by thousands to redeem their
souls by repeating on the infidels the same deeds which they had
exercised against their Christian brethren." Until experience had taught
them better, little precautions were taken to provide food or arms. Huge
concourses of people,[176] some led by a goose and a goat, into which it
was believed the Holy Ghost had entered, set out for the Holy Land, so
ignorant that at every large town or city they enquired, "Is this Zion?"
Although a religious expedition, small regard was paid to decency or
humanity. Defenceless cities _en route_ were sacked. Women were
outraged, men and children killed. The Jews were murdered wholesale.
Almost universally the slaughter of Jews at home were preparatory to
crusading abroad. Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria, although providing
contingents for the crusading army, suffered heavily by the passage of
these undisciplined, lawless crowds. As one writer says:--

"If they had devoted themselves to the service of God, they convinced
the inhabitants on their line of march that they had ceased to regard
the laws of man. They considered themselves privileged to gratify every
wish and every lust as it arose. They recognised no rights of property,
they felt no gratitude for hospitality, and they possessed no sense of
honour. They violated the wives and daughters of their hosts when they
were kindly treated, they devastated the lands of friends whom they had
converted into enemies, they resorted to wanton robbery and destruction
in revenge for calamities which they had brought upon themselves. They
believed that they proved their superiority to the Mohammedans by
torturing the defenceless Jews; and this was the only exploit in which
the first divisions of the crusaders could boast of success.... To the
leaders, who could not write their own names, deception and treachery
were as familiar as force; to their followers rapine and murder were so
congenial that, in the absence of Saracens, Jews, or townsfolk, it
seemed but a professional pastime to kill or to rob a companion in
arms."[177]

And of the behaviour of the crusaders on the first capture of Jerusalem,
1099, Dean Milman writes:--

"No barbarian, no infidel, no Saracen, ever perpetrated such wanton and
cold-blooded atrocities of cruelty as the wearers of the Cross of Christ
(who, it is said, had fallen on their knees and burst into a pious hymn
at the first view of the Holy City) on the captur