by Eugène Sue
The dwellers of the little hamlet had all fled at the approach of the army of the Crusaders, except one Arab and his wife. Both of them, bent with age and seated at the threshold of their house, held their beads in their hands and were praying, in calm resignation awaiting death, certain that some soldier or other of Christ would come and pillage and ravage their home. The old Saracen and his mate, seeing Joan and Fergan approach carrying in their arms the child, who moaned piteously, realized that they need not fear them as enemies, and hastened forward to their encounter. Ignorant of the language of the travelers as these were of theirs, the Saracen couple exchanged a few words among themselves, pointing sympathetically to the child, and while the woman went towards a little garden, the man motioned to Fergan and Joan to follow him into the house. This dwelling was whitewashed without, after the fashion of the country; it was crowned by a terrace, and had no other opening than a narrow door. Two mats served for beds. After motioning Fergan and Joan to lay the child upon one of these and then to bare his leg, the host, who seemed gifted with certain surgical abilities, lengthily examined Colombaik’s leg. He then stepped out, making a sign for Fergan and his wife to wait for him.
“Oh, Fergan!” exclaimed Joan, kneeling beside Colombaik, “with what solicitude did not that Saracen and his wife look upon our child! And yet we are strangers to them, enemies. The Crusaders whom we follow, ravage their country, massacre them, torture them to death! And yet see with what kindness these worthy people receive us!”
“It is natural. The Mohamedan priests, while preaching the sacred love of country and resistance to foreign oppression, also preach the holy laws of humanity towards God’s creatures of whatever faith. Alack! Certain Christian priests order, and themselves set the example of, the extermination of those who do not share their beliefs. An atrocious creed!”
The Arab returned with his wife. She carried in her hand a vase of water, some palm leaves just pulled off, and some herbs that she had pounded between two stones. The Saracen brought several splints of the length of Colombaik’s leg, together with a long bandage of cloth, with the aid of which she bound the splints firmly around the child’s leg, after having covered it with the crushed herbs. The leg being bandaged, the old Arab woman sprinkled it with fresh water, and covered the whole limb with the palm leaves. Colombaik felt eased as if by enchantment. Full of gratitude, and unable to express themselves in a tongue that was not theirs, Fergan and Joan kissed the hands of their hosts. A tear rolled down upon the aged man’s long beard, and he gravely pointed to heaven, meaning undoubtedly to tell his guests it was God that their thanks were due to. He then took the ass, which had remained standing at the door, and led it to the stable. The old woman brought in honey, fresh dates, sheep’s milk and a buttered roll of meal. Fergan and Joan felt deeply touched by such a generous hospitality. Their child’s sufferings were momentarily abating. The old man made them understand by a significant gesture, opening and closing his ten fingers three times and pointing to the child upon the mat, that he had to remain down thirty days, in order no doubt that the bones of his broken leg could again grow together and become strong. Thanks to the solitude where this house was ensconced in, the period necessary for the healing of the child ran peacefully by. They were the happiest days the serfs had yet known. After having exercised his hospitality towards them without knowing them, the aged Arabian grew attached to Fergan, Joan and Colombaik, touched by the gratitude that, to the best of their ability, they sought to manifest, and also by the tender affection that united Fergan and his wife. One day he took Fergan by the hand, led him up a stony hill, whence he pointed to the horizon, shaking his head expressive of uneasiness; he then pointed towards the foot of the hill at the tranquil habitation where they had dwelt nearly a month. Fergan understanding that he was urged to stay in that retreat, looked astonished at the Arabian. The latter thereupon folded his arms on his breast, closed his eyes, and, melancholily shaking his head, pointed to the earth, indicating that he was old, that soon he and his wife would die, and that, if Fergan was so inclined, the house, the garden, and the little field attached to it, would be his.
Fergan was but a poor serf, led to the Crusade by the urgency of escaping with wife and child the vengeance of his seigneur and the horrors of serfdom. Nevertheless, at that supreme moment, yielding obedience to the orders left by the Gallic chief Joel to his descendants, he achieved an act of self-sacrifice before which men more fortunately situated than himself might have recoiled. He might have accepted the aged Arabian’s offer and ended his days free and happy in this retreat, in the company of his wife and child. But he was the depositary of a portion of the chronicles and relics of his family. He knew that Gildas, the elder brother of Bezenecq the Rich, held the archives of their family back to the invasion of Gaul by Cæsar, while himself was charged with a latter portion of safe-keeping. Some day he hoped to be able, in obedience to the behest of Joel, to add to those chronicles the recital of his own and his family’s ordeals during the terrible period of the feudal oppression, and, in his turn, narrate the events they witnessed during this Crusade, one of the momentous crimes of Rome. Accordingly, Fergan considered it a sacred duty to make every effort to return to Gaul, and join his relation Gildas the Tanner in Laon. Moreover, since his arrival in Syria, he had heard that the inhabitants of several large cities in Gaul, more enlightened and more daring than the poorer rustic plebs, were beginning to stir. He had heard accounts of the insurrection of several cities of Gaul against their seigneurs, bishops and abbots, masters of the places. Perchance, those bourgeois revolts might lead to revolts among the serfs of the field. He conceived as possible a general revolt against the hierarchy of Church, monarchy and seigneurs, and he considered it a crime not to strive to be in Gaul at that hour of uprising and general enfranchisement. Fergan declined the Arab’s offer.
July 15, 1099, arrived. Forever indelibly fixed remained that fatal date upon the serf’s mind. Towards noon, leaning upon his mother and Fergan, Colombaik had been essaying his strength. For the first time in thirty days he had risen from his bed, and the two venerable hosts followed with tender solicitude the movements of the child. Suddenly the tramp of a horse was heard descending at a gallop the hill that rose above the house. The aged Saracen exchanged a few words with his wife and both stepped out precipitately. A few instants later they re-entered, accompanied by another grey-bearded Musselman covered with dust. His pale and disconcerted features expressed terror and despair. He spoke to the aged couple in abrupt words and panting for breath. Blood-stained bandages of linen around his right arm and leg betokened two recent wounds. Several times, in the midst of his excited words, the word “Jerusalem” was heard — the only word that the serfs could understand. As he spoke, fear, indignation and horror reflected themselves on the features of the aged Saracen and his wife, until presently their venerable faces were bathed in tears, and they fell upon their knees, moaning and raising their hands to heaven. At that moment the stranger, who in his pre-occupation had not noticed the serfs, recognized them by their clothes as Christians, emitted a cry of rage and drew his cimeter. Quickly rising to their feet, both the hosts ran to him, and after a few words, pronounced in a voice of tender reproach, the Saracen warrior returned his sabre to its scabbard and exchanged a few sentences with the aged couple. The latter seemed to conjure the stranger to remain with them; but he shook his head, pressed their hands in his, rushed out, threw himself upon his steaming horse, invoked the vengeance of heaven with a gesture, climbed the hill at a gallop, and vanished from sight. This friend of the aged couple had come to inform them of the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders. The recital of the massacres, the pillage, the unspeakable atrocities that the soldiers of Christ had soiled and dishonored their victims with, threw the aged couple into consternation. Anxious to ascertain the fact, Fergan addressed them, uttering the word “Jerusalem” in a sad and interrogating tone. Instead of answering, however, both drew brusquely away as if they extended to him the
horror that the Crusaders inspired them with. Fergan exchanged a sad glance with Joan, when the host, no doubt regretting his first impulse, returned to the serfs, leaned over Colombaik, who had been laid down again, and kissed him on the forehead. Joan and Fergan, understanding the delicacy of the sentiment thus expressed, were moved to tears. The old Saracen took Fergan for one of the soldiers of that ferocious and impious Crusade, and deposited a kiss of pardon and oblivion upon the innocent brow of the child of the reputed malefactor. The aged Saracen then left the house with his wife.
“Jerusalem has fallen into the power of the Crusaders,” Fergan said to Joan. “I can reach the city in a few hours. I desire to go there. There is nothing for me to fear. I shall be back early to-morrow morning. We shall then decide what to do.”
Although uneasy at the prospect of his departure, the sweet Joan sought not to keep her husband back. After embracing her and entrusting to her his little treasury and the belt containing his family records and relics, Fergan left for Jerusalem. Hardly upon the road, which passed at quite a distance from his late retreat, he encountered a troop of pilgrims. They were also hastening to the holy city, whose domes, towers, minarets and even ramparts they began to perceive from afar after four hours march.
That vast city formed a square a league long. The enclosure dominated from the west by the high mount of Zion, contained the four rocky hills on which Jerusalem was built in an amphitheatre, — to the east, Mount Moriah, on which rose the Mosque of Omar, built upon the site of the old Temple of Solomon; to the southeast, Mount Acra, to the north, Mount Bezetha; and further to the west the Mount of Golgotha, the Calvary where the young man of Nazareth was crucified under the eyes of Fergan’s ancestress Genevieve. At the summit of Calvary rose the Church of the Resurrection, built on the very spot where Jesus died, a magnificent church until then religiously respected by the Saracens, together with its treasures, despite the war of the Crusaders. Within the church stood the sepulchre of Christ, the pretext for this unhallowed war. Such was the distant view of Jerusalem. As the travellers approached, they saw more distinctly, within the ramparts of walls, the outlines of amphitheaters of white square houses, surmounted with terraces, and here and yonder, standing out against the deep blue of the sky, the domes of mosques, the steeples of Christian basilicas, and several bouquets of palm trees. Not a tree was visible in the environs of the city. The reddish, stony and parched ground, radiated the torrid heat of the sun that was westerning behind the hills. In the neighborhood of the camp, whose tents glistened only a short distance from the ramparts, a large number of Crusaders were seen dead or dying of the wounds that they received at the sortie made by the besieged. The wounded filled the air with pitiful wails, vainly imploring help. All the men, not the able-bodied alone, but even those whose wounds allowed them to walk, had precipitated themselves upon the city, in order to share in the sack. The abandoned camp contained only corpses, the dying, horses and beasts of burden. As the travelers drew still nearer to the city, whose gates had been knocked in after the siege, a confused and formidable noise struck their ears. It was a frightful mixture of cries of terror, of rage and of desperate supplication, above which ever and anon rose the fanatical clamor: “God wills it! God wills it!” After staggering and stumbling over thousands of corpses, strewn near the approaches of the gate of Bezetha, Fergan arrived at the entrance of a long street that issued into a vast square, in the middle of which rose the marvelous Mosque of Omar on the very site where once stood the ancient Temple of Solomon. It was as if the serf had stepped into a river of blood, red and reeking, and carrying in its current thousands of mutilated corpses, heads and disjointed members.
The street that Fergan stepped into belonged to the new ward, the richest of the city. Stately dwellings and not a few marble palaces, surmounted with balustraded terraces, rose on either side of this vast thoroughfare paved with wide slabs of stone. A furious multitude — soldiers, men, women and children, all belonging to the Crusade — swarmed over this long street, uttering ferocious yells. A young Saracen woman rushed out of the door of the third house to the right of Fergan. She was deadly pale with terror, her hair streamed behind her, and her rich clothes were in shreds. In her arms she carried two children, two or three years old. Behind her an aged man, already wounded, appeared on the threshold, walking backward and striving to defend her. The flow of blood covered his visage and clotted his long white beard, while he struggled to keep back two Crusaders. One of these, carrying on his left shoulder a bundle of costly clothes, pursued the aged Saracen with sword thrusts, and finally ran him through the breast, throwing him dead at the feet of the young mother. The second Crusader, who, no doubt disdaining to carry a heavy booty, had strung around his neck several gold chains pillaged in this house, immediately seized the young woman by the throat and rolled her over on a heap of corpses, while the first crushed under his iron-tagged heels the heads of the two children that had dropped from their mother’s arms. At that instant, one of the women who followed the army hastened by, a hideous and savage-looking hag, brandishing in her hand the stump of a knife, red with blood. A lad, about the age of Colombaik, accompanied the fury. “Each one his turn,” said she to the soldier; “leave for me those whelps of the devil, my son will dispatch them!” And placing the knife in the lad’s hand, she added: “Cut off their heads, disembowel those infidel dogs!” The child obeyed the hag’s orders and disemboweled the two little children.
Further away, a band of vagabonds and wenches, drunk with wine and carnage, was besieging a palace that the men of Heracle, seigneur of Polignac, had seized. As the symbol of possession, these had raised the embroidered banner of their seigneur upon the terrace of the splendid building. After throwing a shower of stones at the soldiers of the seigneur of Polignac, the vagabonds and wenches assailed the soldiers with sticks, pikes and cutlasses, shouting hoarsely in the midst of the bloody melée: “Death! To the sack! This house and its riches belong to us as well as to the seigneurs! To the sack! Death! Death!”
“Exterminate this band of vagabonds!” shouted back the soldiers, thrusting about them with their lances and swords. “Death to these jackals who mean to devour the prey of the lion!”
As Fergan advanced along this street he witnessed shocking scenes. The sight of a gigantic soldier carrying, strung on his upright lance, three little children from five to six months old, was a spectacle never to be forgotten. Suddenly he found himself shoved hither and thither, and presently shut in within a circle of armed men who seemed to be arranged in some kind of order before the entrance of one of the most splendid palaces on the street. Lemon and oleander trees, planted in boxes, but now broken in two and upset, still ornamented the moresque balustrades of the terrace. The band, among which there were several women, and that left a wide empty space free between itself and the walls, emitted yells of savage impatience. Presently, the sleeves of his brown frock rolled back to the elbows, and his hands red with blood, a monk leaned forward over the balustrade of the terrace. It was Peter the Hermit, the companion of Walter the Pennyless. The identical Cuckoo Peter, whose hollow eyes glistened with savage fanaticism, now called out to the crowd in a hoarse voice: “My brothers in Christ, are you ready? Draw near and receive your share of the booty.”
“We are ready, holy man, and have been long waiting,” answered several bandits; “we are losing our time here; they are pillaging elsewhere, holy father in God! We want our share of the booty.”
“Here comes your share of this great feast, my brothers in Christ. The vapor of the infidels’ blood rises towards the Lord like an incense of myrrh and balsam! Let not one of the miscreants, that we are about to throw down to you from this terrace, escape with his life!”
Peter the Hermit vanished and almost immediately the bust of a Saracen, clad in the purple caftan embroidered in gold, appeared above. Although bound hands and feet, the wild jumps of the unhappy man showed that he resisted with all his might the efforts of those who strove to throw him down
into the street. A few minutes later, however, half his body had been forced over the balustrade. He straightened up once more, but immediately was hurled into space and dropped, head foremost, thirty feet below. A joyous clamor broke out at the man’s fall, and redoubled when, with a dull thud, his skull struck the pavement and broke. He lived a few seconds longer, and strove to turn on his side while emitting violent imprecations. But soon, riddled with sword thrusts, broken with clubs and mauled with stones, there remained of him but a mangled lump in the midst of a pool of blood. “Father in God,” cried out the mob, “the job is done! Hurry up! Send us another!”
The hideous figure of Peter the Hermit re-appeared above the balustrade. He leaned his head forward and contemplated the remains of the Saracen. “Well done, my children!” The monk had hardly disappeared again, when two youths of fifteen to sixteen years, brothers no doubt, and bound face to face, were thrown down from the terrace. The violence of the fall snapped the bands that held them together. The elder was killed on the spot, the younger’s legs were broken. For a few moments he dragged himself on his hands, moaning piteously and seeking to approach his brother’s corpse. The Crusaders pounced upon these new victims. Women, monsters in human form, pulled out their entrails, indulged in obscene and infamous mutilations upon the two corpses, and throwing into the air the bleeding parts, cried out exultingly: “Let’s exterminate the infidels! God wills it!”
