Note 30 — BOOK IX.

Fuller, an English historian, speaks of this disaster at great length. As his work is scarce, I will translate the passage from it relative to this crusade, in which the impartial reader will find the gross misrepresentations of a violent enemy of the Crusaders. “In this war,” says he, “we may contemplate an episcopal army which might have served for a synod; or, more truly, it offers us a picture of the Church militant. Many captains returned home secretly, and when the soldiers wanted to fight, the officers went away: what remained of this army fortified themselves in Jaffa. The feast of St. Martin, that great saint of Germany, fell at this time. This holy man, a German by birth, and bishop of Tours in France, distinguished himself eminently by his charity. The Germans changed his charity for the poor into excess for themselves, observing the 11th of November in such a manner that it ought no longer to be called a saint’s day, but a day of festivity. Drunkenness reduced them to such a state, that the Turks, falling upon them, killed more than twenty thousand of them. This day, which the Germans write in red letters in their calendars, takes its colour from their own blood, and as their camp was a slaughter-house, the Turks were their butchers. We may compare them to the oxen of St. Martin, which differ little from droves of drunkards.”—Nicol. Fuller, b. ii. chap. xvi. p. 133. [I really cannot see that old Fuller is so very widely wrong.—Trans.]