Note 179 — BOOK IV.

We shall content ourselves with repeating here the words of Raymond d’Agiles, Foulcher de Chartres, and Robert the Monk:—In eodem templo decem millia decollati sunt; pedites nostri usque ad bases cruore peremptorum tingebantur; nec fœminis nec parvulis pepercerunt.—Ful. Caen. ap. Bong. p. 398. Tantum enim ibi humani sanguinis effusum est, ut cæsorum corpora, undâ sanguinis impellente, volverentur per pavimentum, et brachia sive truncatæ manus super cruorem fluitabant.—Rob. Mon. lib. 9. In templo et porticu Solomonis equitabatur in sanguine usque ad genua et usque ad frænos equorum.—Raym. d’Ag. Bong. p. 179. These words of Raymond d’Agiles are evidently an hyperbole, and prove that the Latin historians exaggerated things they ought to have extenuated or concealed.... In a letter written to the pope, the bishops, and the faithful, by Daimbert, archbishop of Pisa, Godfrey of Bouillon, and Raymond de St. Gilles, is this remarkable passage: “If you desire to know,” say they, “what became of the enemies we found in Jerusalem, know that in the portico of Solomon and in the temple, our soldiers had the vile blood of the Saracens up to the knees of their horses.”—Si scire desideratis quid de hostibus ibi repertis factum fuerit, scitote quia in porticu Salomonis, et in templo nostri equitabant in sanguine fœdo Sarracenorum usque ad genua equorum.—See Novus Thesaurus Anecdotorum, tom. i. p. 282.