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1091.

The continued intestine discord among the barons was alone in that age destructive; the public wars were commonly short and feeble, produced little bloodshed, and were attended with no memorable event. To this Norman war, which was so soon concluded, there succeeded hostilities with Scotland, which were not of longer duration. Robert here Commanded his brother’s army, and obliged Malcolm to accept of peace, and do homage to the crown of England. This peace was not more durable.

1093.

Malcolm, two years after, levying an army, invaded England; and after ravaging, Northumberland, he laid siege to Alnwick, where, a party of Earl Moubray’s troops falling upon him by surprise, a sharp action ensued in which Malcolm was slain. This incident interrupted for some years the regular succession to the Scottish crown, Though Malcolm left legitimate sons, his brother Donald, on account of the youth of these princes, was advanced to the throne; but kept not long possession of it. Duncan, natural son of Malcolm, formed a conspiracy against him; and being assisted by William with a small force, made himself master of the kingdom. New broils ensued with Normandy. The frank, open, remiss temper of Robert was ill fitted to withstand the interested, rapacious character of William, who, supported by greater power, was still encroaching on his brother’s possessions, and instigating his turbulent barons to rebellion against him. The king, having gone over to Normandy to support his partisans, ordered an army of twenty thousand men to be levied in England, and to be conducted to the sea-coast, as if they were instantly to be embarked.

1094.

Here Ralph Flambard, the king’s minister, and the chief instrument of his extortions, exacted ten shillings apiece from them, in lieu of their service, and then dismissed them into their several counties. This money was so skilfully employed by William that it rendered him better service than he could have expected from the army. He engaged the French king by new presents to depart from the protection of Robert; and he daily bribed the Norman barons to desert his service; but was prevented from pushing his advantages by an incursion of the Welsh, which obliged him to return to England, tie found no difficulty in repelling the enemy; but was not able to make any considerable impression on a country guarded by its mountainous situation. A conspiracy of his own barons which was detected at this time, appeared a more serious concern, and engrossed all his attention.

1095.

Robert Moubray, earl of Northumberland, was at the head of this combination; and he engaged in it the count d’Eu, Richard de Tunbridge, Roger de Lacy, and many others. The purpose of the conspirators was to dethrone the king, and to advance in his stead Stephen, count of Aumale, nephew to the Conqueror. William’s despatch prevented the design from taking effect, and disconcerted the conspirators. Moubray made some resistance; but being taken prisoner, was attainted and thrown into confinement, where he died about thirty years after.

1096.

The count d’Eu denied his concurrence in the plot, and to justify himself, fought, in the presence of the court at Windsor, a duel with Geoffrey Bainard, who accused him. But being worsted in the combat, he was condemned to be castrated, and to have his eyes put out. William de Alderi, another conspirator, was supposed to be treated with more rigor when he was sentenced to be hanged.

But the noise of these petty wars and commotions was quite sunk in the tumult of the crusades, which now engrossed the attention of Europe, and have ever since engaged the curiosity of mankind, as the most signal and most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation. After Mahomet had, by means of his pretended revelations, united the dispersed Arabians under one head, they issued forth from their deserts in great multitudes; and being animated with zeal for their new religion, and supported by the vigor of their new government, they made deep impression on the eastern empire, which was far in the decline with regard both to military discipline and to civil policy. Jerusalem, by its situation, became one of their most early conquests; and the Christians had the mortification to see the holy sepulchre, and the other places consecrated by the presence of their religious founder, fallen into the possession of infidels. But the Arabians or Saracens were so employed in military enterprises, by which they spread their empire, in a few years, from the banks of the Ganges to the Straits of Gibraltar, that they had no leisure for theological controversy; and though the Alcoran, the original monument of their faith, seems to contain some violent precepts, they were much less infected with the spirit of bigotry and persecution than the indolent and speculative Greeks, who were continually refining on the several articles of their religious system. They gave little disturbance to those zealous pilgrims who daily flocked to Jerusalem; and they allowed every man, after paying a moderate tribute, to visit the holy sepulchre, to perform his religious duties, and so return in peace. But the Turcomans or Turks, a tribe of Tartars, who had embraced Mahometanism, having wrested Syria from the Saracens, and having in the year 1065 made themselves masters of Jerusalem, rendered the pilgrimage much more difficult and dangerous to the Christians. The barbarity of their manners, and the confusions attending their unsettled government, exposed the pilgrims to many insults, robberies, and extortions; and these zealots, returning from their meritorious fatigues and sufferings, filled all Christendom with indignation against the infidels, who profaned the holy city by their presence, and derided the sacred mysteries in the very place of their completion. Gregory VII., among the other vast ideas which he entertained, had formed the design of uniting all the western Christians against the Mahometans; but the egregious and violent invasions of that pontiff on the civil power of princes had created him so many enemies, and had rendered his schemes so suspicious, that he was not able to make great progress in this undertaking. The work was reserved for a meaner instrument, whose low condition ir life exposed aim to no jealousy, and whose folly was well calculated to coincide with the prevailing principles of the times.

Peter, commonly called the Hermit, a native of Amiens, in Picardy, had made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Being deeply affected with the dangers to which that act of piety now exposed the pilgrims, as well as with the instances of oppression under which the eastern Christians labored, he entertained the bold, and, in all appearance, impracticable project of leading into Asia, from the farthest extremities of the west, armies sufficient to subdue those potent and warlike nations which now held the holy city in subjection.[*] He proposed his views to Martin II., who filled the papal chair, and who, though sensible of the advantages which the head of the Christian religion must reap from a religious war, and though he esteemed the blind zeal of Peter a proper means for effecting the purpose,[**] resolved not to interpose his authority till he saw a greater probability of success. He summoned a council at Placentia, which consisted of four thousand ecclesiastics and thirty thousand seculars; and which was so numerous that no hall could contain the multitude, and it was necessary to hold the assembly in a plain.