example 272 THE DECLINE AND FALL soldiers trusted their fortunes to God and their master : the spoils of a Turkish emir might enrich the meanest follower of the camp ; and the flavour of the wines, the beauty of the Gre- cian women,^2 were temptations more adapted to the nature, than to the profession, of the champions of the cross. The love of freedom was a powerful incitement to the multitudes who were oppressed by feudal or ecclesiastical tjTanny. Under this holy- sign, the peasants and burghers, who were attached to the servitude of the glebe, might escape from an haughty lord, and transplant themselves and their families to a land of liberty. The monk might release himself from the discipline of his con- vent ; the debtor might suspend the accumulation of usury and the pursuit of his creditors ; and outlaws and malefactors of every cast might continue to brave the laws and elude the punishment of their crimes."" Influence of These motivcs were potent and numerous: when v/e have singly computed their weight on the mind of each individual, we must add the infinite series, the multiplying powers of example and fashion. The first proselytes became the warmest and most effectual missionaries of the cross : among their friends and countrTnen they preached the duty, the merit, and the recompense of their holy vow ; and the most reluctant hearers were insensibly drawn within the whirlpool of persuasion and authority. The martial youths were fired by the reproach or suspicion of cowardice ; the opportunity of visiting with an army the sepulchre of Christ was embraced by the old and infirm, by women and children, who consulted rather their zeal than their strength ; and those who in the evening had derided the folly of their companions were the most eager, the ensuing day, to tread in their footsteps. The ignorance, which magnified the hopes, diminished the perils, of the enterprise. Since the Turkish con- quest, the paths of pilgrimage were obliterated ;^the chiefs them- selves had an imperfect notion of the length of the way and the amounted to one abbey and ten castles, of the yearly value of 1500 marks, and that he should acquire an hundred castles by the conquest of Aleppo (Guibert, p. 554. 555)- '■^ In his genuine or fictitious letter to the Count of Flanders, Alexius mingles with the danger of the church, and the relics of saints, the auri et argenti amor, and pulcherrimarum fcEminarum voluptas (p. 476) ; as if, says the indignant Guibert, the Greek women were handsomer than those of France. [For the letter see above, p. 251, note 64.] ^ See the privileges of the Crucesignati, freedom from debt, usury, injury, secular justice, &c. The pope was their perpetual guardian (Ducange, torn. ii. p. 651, 652)-
