126 THE HISTORY OF THE ORDER OF [book i.

who supplanted the Turks. Should not all Islamunited be able to beat off whom neither the ram-parts of Antioch nor innumerable armies couldcheck on their victorious march? But the cru-saders, melted down as they were in numbers, werefar too few to invest the entire city; so had toconfine themselves to the half of it. And when,after various attempts during forty days, they tookit by assault at last, without any of the aids ofmodern warfare and little of the engineership thenpractised, not from want of talent and informationbut want of timber, without even ladders, but onlya few machines made o.n the spot—far from the sea—and with scarcity of wood and iron—there issomething very like a miracle in their ever havingtaken it at all. Bloody was the struggle—indeeda giant fight —and too bloody necessarily the firstunsparing blast of victory.

Glad am I to be able to dispense myself fromspeaking of atrocities committed during many days.Butchered it is said were seven thousand souls inOmar’s Mosque alone; nor is it. easy to flatter one’sself it is a grievous exaggeration, since vaunted ofby the Christians themselves, and rather admittedby the Moslem chronicles, that proclaimed it withindignation; and indeed one of them goes so far asto labour to extenuate it, by affirming that from