There they pitched their camp by the
Lake of Ascanius, and waited for news of the Germans; for the
messengers had brought information that the German Emperor desired to
make Nicaea the trysting-place. But the messengers had all been Greeks,
and the French waited many days in vain, spoiling the country of all
they could take, though it was in the dominion of Christians, and no
man dared raise a hand to defend his own against the Crusaders.
Among the French, there were many, both of the great lords and of the
simple knights, and of poor men-at-arms, who would have counted it
mortal sin to take anything from a stranger without payment, who had
come for faith's sake, to fight for faith, and who looked for faith's
reward. Yet as there can be in logic nothing good excepting by its own
comparison with things evil, so in that great pilgrimage of arms the
worst followed the best in a greedy throng, as the jackal and the raven
cross the desert in the lion's track. And the roads by which they had
marched, and the lands wherein they had camped, lay waste as lie the
wheat-fields of Palestine in June, when the plague of locusts has eaten
its way from east to west.
When they came to a resting-place after many days' march, mud-stained
or white with dust, weary and footsore, their horses lame, their mules
overladen with the burdens of those that had died by the way, beards
half grown, hair unkempt, faces grimy, clothes worn shapeless, they
were more like a multitude of barbarians wandering upon the plains of
Asia than like nobles of France and high-born Crusaders.
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