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Updated: June 17, 2025
The unwilling contention of the two parties increased the confusion; and when the Seljuks, recently arrived, having at length formed into some order, had regained the gate, they found to their dismay that the portal was barricadoed and garrisoned by the enemy.
First came the thick flight of their arrows, straight and deadly, going down with flashes into the sea of men; and then great stones rolled from the heights, boulders that crushed the life out of horse and man and rolled straight through the mass of human bodies, leaving a track of blood behind; and then more arrows, darting hither and thither in the sunlight like rock-swallows; and again stones and boulders, till the confusion and the panic were at their height, and the wild Seljuks sprang down the sides of the gorge, yelling for death, swinging their scimitars, to kill more surely by hand, lest they should waste arrows on dead men.
A full hour the Seljuks slew and slew, almost unharmed, and the Christians were dead in thousands under their feet. The King, with a hundred followers, was at bay by the roots of a huge oak tree, fighting as best he might, and killing a man now and then, though wounded in the face and shoulder, and sorely spent.
Those who did not fly were trampled underfoot and sabred down so mercilessly, that, out of the sixty thousand, only three thousand reached Constantinople, among whom was the Hermit. "We have sown our blood," he said; "our successors will reap." The Emperor of Constantinople had certainly for a long time waited for help from the West against the wild Seljuks, but he had expected armed men.
It found reinforcement from the scattered Turki groups introduced already, as we have seen, into the country; and even from native Christians, who, descended from the Iconoclasts of two centuries before, found the rule of Moslem image-haters more congenial, as it was certainly more effective, than that of Byzantine emperors. The creed of the Seljuks was Islam of an Iranian type.
It was the ill-treatment by the Seljuks of the Christian pilgrims to Palestine which aroused Christian Europe and led to the First Crusade. The feudal system adopted by the Seljuks caused endless dissension among their petty sovereigns, called "Atabegs", all of whom were nominally vassals of the Caliph at Bagdad.
But when his kingdom, like all others, fell to pieces, quite a new race had issued from the unknown parts of Central Asia and now the Seljuks ruled in Syria. The last Fatimide Caliphs had been very indifferent in matters of belief, and the renowned Al Asis, who had married a Christian wife and was himself a sceptic, had made his wife's brothers Patriarchs of Jerusalem and Alexandria.
Dunstan, who knew him well, brought his horse at the first alarm. "By your Grace's leave," said Gilbert, taking the bridle to mount, "I will take my men and do what I can to help them. I have explored the way round this mountain, and every man who follows me may kill ten Seljuks at an advantage, from above, just as the Seljuks are now slaying the King's men, below them." "Hurr! Hurr! Kill! Kill!"
But more often the Christians killed them, being stronger men and better armed, and Gilbert was ever the first to strike; and one day, as the fiercest of a band of Seljuks rode at him, whirling a crooked sword and shouting the cry, Gilbert cut off his arm at one stroke and it fell to the ground with the fist still grasping the scimitar; whereat Gilbert laughed fiercely and mocked the unbeliever's cry.
They thought of Hassan Subah and his Seljuks only as of victims, and of to-morrow only as of a day which was to commence a new era of triumph, freedom, and empire! Hassan Subah after five days' forced marches pitched his sumptuous pavilion in that beautiful Oasis, which had afforded such delightful refreshment to Alroy when a solitary pilgrim.
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