[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.  Furthermore, his humility, his extreme gentleness, his moderation, his justice, and his chastity were great; he shone as a light amongst the monks, even more than as a duke amongst the knights.  And, nevertheless, he could also do the things which are of this world, fight, marshal the ranks, and extend by arms the domains of the Church.  In his boyhood he learned to be first, or one of the first, to strike the foe; in youth he made it his habitual practice; and in advancing age he forgot it never.  He was so perfectly the son of the warlike Count Eustace, and of his mother, Ida de Bouillon, a woman full of piety, and versed in literature, that at sight of him even a rival would have been forced to say of him, ’For zeal in war, behold his father; for serving God, behold his mother.’  The second army, consisting chiefly of crusaders from Southern France, marched under the orders of Raymond IV., count of Toulouse, the oldest chieftain of the crusade, who still, however, united the ardor of youth with the experience of ripe age and the stubbornness of the graybeard.  At the side of the Cid he had fought, and more than once beaten the Moors in Spain.  He took with him to the East his third wife, Elvira, daughter of Alphonso VI., king of Castile, as well as a very young child he had by her, and he had made a vow, which he fulfilled, that he would return no more to his country, and would fight the infidels to the end of his days, in expiation of his sins.  He was discreet though haughty, and not only the richest but the most economical of the crusader-chiefs:  “Accordingly,” says Raoul of Caen, “when all the rest had spent their money, the riches of Count Raymond made him still more distinguished.  The people of Provence, who formed his following, did not lavish their resources, but studied economy even more than glory,” and “his army,” adds Guibert of Nogent, “showed no inferiority to any other, save so far as it is possible to reproach the inhabitants of Provence touching their excessive loquacity.”