To deliver his capital from these destructive guests, Alexis furnished them with vessels, and got them shipped off across the Bosphorus." [Illustration: The Assault on St.Jean d'Acre----386] Whilst the crusade was commencing under these sad auspices, chieftains of more sense and better obeyed were preparing to give it another character and superior fortunes.

Two great and real armies were forming in the north, the centre, and the south of France, and a third in Italy, amongst the Norman knights who had founded there the kingdom of Naples and Sicily, just before their countryman, William the Bastard, conquered England.

The first of these armies had for its chief, Godfrey de Bouillon, duke of Lorraine, whom all his contemporaries have described as the model of a gallant and pious knight.

He was the son of Eustace II., count of Boulogne, and "the lustre of nobility," says Raoul of Caen, chronicler of his times, "was enhanced in his case by the splendor of the most exalted virtues, as well in affairs of the world as of heaven.

As to the latter, he distinguished himself by his generosity towards the poor, and his pity for those who had committed faults.