Great designs may be started and the spirit of them inspired by enthusiasts, but cool heads are required to bring them into form.  The Pope, not relying solely on Peter, called a council at Clermont, where an infinite number of people of all sorts were assembled.  Here he dispensed with a full hand benedictions and indulgences to all persons who should engage in the expedition; and preaching with great vehemence in a large plain, towards the end of his discourse, somebody, by design or by accident, cried out, “It is the will of God!” This voice was repeated by the next, and in a moment it circulated through this innumerable people, which rang with the acclamation of “It is the will of God!  It is the will of God!"[76] The neighboring villages caught up those oracular words, and it is incredible with what celerity they spread everywhere around into places the most distant.  This circumstance, then considered as miraculous, contributed greatly to the success of the Hermit’s mission.  No less did the disposition of the nobility throughout Europe, wholly actuated with devotion and chivalry, contribute to forward an enterprise so suited to the gratification of both these passions.  Everything was now in motion; both sexes, and every station and age and condition of life, engaged with transport in this holy warfare.[77] There was even a danger that Europe would be entirely exhausted by the torrents that were rushing out to deluge Asia.  These vast bodies, collected without choice, were conducted without skill or order; and they succeeded accordingly.  Women and children composed no small part of those armies, which were headed by priests; and it is hard to say which is most lamentable, the destruction of such multitudes of men, or the frenzy which drew it upon them.  But this design, after innumerable calamities, began at last to be conducted in a manner worthy of so grand and bold a project.  Raimond, Count of Toulouse, Godfrey of Bouillon, and several other princes, who were great captains as well as devotees, engaged in the expedition, and with suitable effects.  But none burned more to signalize his zeal and courage on this occasion than Robert, Duke of Normandy, who was fired with the thoughts of an enterprise which seemed to be made for his genius.  He immediately suspended his interesting quarrel with his brother, and, instead of contesting with him the crown to which he had such fair pretensions, or the duchy of which he was in possession, he proposed to mortgage to him the latter during five years for a sum of thirteen thousand marks of gold.  William, who had neither sense of religion nor thirst of glory, intrenched in his secure and narrow policy, laughed at a design that had deceived all the great minds in Europe.  He extorted, as usual, this sum from his subjects, and immediately took possession of Normandy; whilst Robert, at the head of a gallant army, leaving his hereditary dominions, is gone to cut out unknown kingdoms in Asia.