CHAPTER VI. THE FIRST CRUSADE. • *' The sound As of the assault of an imperial city, The shock of crags shot from strange engin'ry, The clash of wheels, and clang of armed hoof's, * * * and now more loud The mingled battle cry. Ha ! hear I not Έκ τόντω νίκη. Allah-illah-Allah !" Shelley. PETER the Hermit, the preacher and main cause of the first Crusade, was horn about the year 1050, of a noble family of Picardy. He was at first, like all men of gentle birth of his time, a soldier, and fought in some at least of the wars that were going on around him. For some cause —no one knows why—perhaps disgusted with the world, perhaps struck with repentance for a criminal or dissolute life —he withdrew from his fellow-men, and became a hermit. But it would seem that his turbulent and unquiet spirit could not stand the, monotony, though it might support the austerities, of a hermit's life, and he resolved about the year 1093 to go as a pilgrim to Palestine. He found the pilgrims miserable indeed. As most of them had been robbed or exorbitantly charged on the road, there was not one in a hundred who, on arriving before Jerusalem, found himself able to pay the fee demanded for admittance within the gates. The hapless Christians, starving and helpless, lay outside the walls, dependent on the small supplies which their brethren within could send them.