CHAPTER XIV
Three weeks the French armies lay encamped without the walls of
Constantinople, while the Emperor of the Greeks used every art and
every means to rid himself of the unwelcome host, without giving
overmuch offence to his royal guests. The army of Conrad, he said, had
gained a great victory in Asia Minor. Travel-stained messengers arrived
in Chrysopolis, and were brought across the Bosphorus to appear before
the King and Queen of France, with tales of great and marvellous deeds
of arms against the infidels. Fifty thousand Seljuks had been drowned
in their own blood; three times that number had fled from the field,
and were scattered fainting and wounded in the Eastern hills; vast
spoils of gold and silver had fallen to the Christians, and if the
Frenchmen craved a share in the victories of the Cross, or hoped for
some part or parcel of the splendid booty, it was high time that they
should be marching to join the Germans in the field.
Yet Louis would have tarried longer to complete the full month of
devotions and thanksgiving for the march accomplished, and many of his
followers would cheerfully have spent the remainder of their days on
the pleasant shores of the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn; but the Queen
was weary of the long preface to her unwritten history of arms, and
grew impatient, and took the Greek Emperor's side, believing all the
messages which he provided for her imagination. And so at last the
great multitude was brought over to Asia by boat, and marched by quick
stages to the plain of Nicaea.
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