BOUILLON, Godfrey de, on≡ of the foremost leaders in the first crusade, was born at Baisy, near Gemappe in Belgium, about 1060. His father was Eustace IL, count of Bouillon in the Ardennes; and through his mother Ida, daughter of Godfrey, duke of Lower Lorraine, he could claim descent from Charlemagne. In the contest between Henry IV., emperor of Germany, and Hildebrand, he espoused the imperial cause, and was the first to scale the walls of Rome when the emperor’s forces besieged that city in 1084. In reward for his services Henry invested him with the titles of marquis of Antwerp and duke of Lorraine. It is said that while suffering from fever, having heard of the preparations for the first crusade, he vowed, were his health restored, to seek Palestine; “whereupon,” says William of Malmesbury, “he shook disease from his limbs, and shone with renovated beauty.” Having pawned his lordship of Bouillon to the church of Liège for 1300 marks, he gathered around hirn 80,000 infantry and 10,000 horsemen, whom he led with rare ability through Germany to the borders of Hungary, where he shamed his brother Baldwin by offering to go in his stead as a hostage to the Hungarians. On arriving in 1096 at Constantinople, he obtained the release of his fellow-crusader Hugh of Vermandois from the wily Greek emperor Alexius, and in the strife which that monarch’s duplicity fomented evinced the sagacity and promptitude of a great general. After capturing Antioch and routing a vast Saracen host at Doryløeum in Phrygia, the crusaders arrived, in 1099, at Jerusalem, which was taken after a siege of five weeks, Godfrey entering the breach among the foremost, but tarnishing his glory by ruthlessly ordering a massacre of the infidels. A Christian kingdom of Jerusalem was then ...