great councils of the church, one of them held at Placentia, and the other at Clermont, in Auvergne, attended by prelates, princes, and immense multitudes of the common people, declared enthusiastically for the war (1095). The pope himself attended at the last, and Peter and he having both addressed the multitude, they all exclaimed, as if impelled by an immediate inspiration, 'It is the will of God! it is the will of God!' These words were thought so remarkable, that they were afterwards employed as the motto on the sacred standard, and came to be looked upon as the signal of battle and rendezvous in all the future exploits of the champions of the cross. Persons of all ranks now flew to arms with the utmost ardor. The remission of penance, the dispensation of those practices which superstition imposed or suspended at pleasure, the absolution of all sins, and the assurance, of eternal felicity, were the rewards held out by the church to all who joined the enterprise; and 'to the more vulgar class,' says Mr. Hallam, 'were held out inducements which, though absorbed in the over-*ruling fanaticism of the first Crusade, might be exceedingly efficacious when it began to flag. During the time that a Crusader bore the cross, he was free from suits for his debts, and the interest of them was entirely abolished; he was exempted, in some instances at least, from taxes, and placed under the protection of the church, so that he could not be impleaded in any civil court, except in criminal charges or questions relating to land.'
It was in the spring of the year 1096, that Peter set out for Judea, at the head of a promiscuous assemblage of 80,000 men, with sandals on his feet, a rope about his waist, and every other mark of monkish austerity. Soon after, a more numerous and better disciplined force of 200,000 followed, including some able and experienced leaders. Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert, Duke of Normandy (son of William the Conqueror of England), the Counts of Vermendois, Toulouse, and Blois, are a few of the more illustrious. The progress of this immense mass of human beings on their journey was marked by misery and famine. They had vainly trusted to Heaven for a supernatural supply of their wants, and in their disappointment they had plundered all that came in their way. 'So many crimes and so much misery,' says Mr. Hallam, 'have seldom been accumulated in so short a space, as in the three years of the first expedition;' and another historian says that a 'fresh supply of German and Italian vagabonds,' received on the way, were even guilty of pillaging the churches. It is certain that before the hermit reached Constantinople, the number of his forces had dwindled down to 20,000. Alexis Comnenus, then emperor of Constantinople, who had applied to the states of Europe for assistance, without much hope of obtaining it, in order that he might be enabled to resist a threatened attack by the Turks upon himself, was surprised and terrified at the motley group of adventurers who had now reached the shore of his dominions. He readily afforded them the means for transporting themselves across the Bosphorus, and performed the same friendly office to the larger force which followed under Godfrey and others; glad, apparently, to have the barbarians of the north, as his subjects called them, out of his dominions. The Sultan Solyman met the army of the hermit, if army it could be called, and cut the greater part of it to pieces on the plains of Nicea. The second host proved more successful. In spite of their want of discipline, their ignorance of the country, the scarcity of provisions, and the excess of fatigue, their zeal, their bravery, and their irresistible force,
