Weird Tales/Volume 4/Issue 2/Distressing March of the Crusaders Through Phrygia

Distressing March of the Crusaders Through Phrygia

Three days after the battle of Doryleum the army commenced its march, and entered the mountainous country of Phrygia. Unforeseen distresses encompassed them. The co-operation of Alexius was cold and confined, when his great object, the reduction of Nice, was achieved; and his fears of the virtue of his allies had made him conceal from them the horrors of a passage through Asia Minor to Syria. From the ruins of the Nissian Seljuks, Saisan, the son of Kilidge Arslan, raised a force of ten thousand horsemen, and travelling into those countries which they knew would be traversed by the Croises, they represented themselves as victors. The people were unable to oppose assertions which could be supported by the sword; and they admitted the Turks into their towns. The churches were despoiled, the public treasures were robbed, and the stores in the granaries were eaten or destroyed. The miserable Christians followed their enemies through this wasted land. The soil too was dry and sterile; and Europeans could ill endure the heat of a Phrygian summer. In one day five hundred people died. Women, no longer able to afford sustenance to their infants, exposed their breasts to the swords of the soldiers. Many of the horses perished; the baggage (it was lamentable yet a laughable sight, says an eye-witness) was placed on the backs of goats, hogs and dogs. These animals too died of thirst and neither the dogs nor the chase nor the falcons could hunt the prey which the woods afforded. The Crusaders passed the Phrygian mountains and deserts, and reached a country where the very means of life were fatal to many. They threw themselves without caution into the first river that presented itself; and nature could not support the transition from want to satiety.