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286 THE DECLINE AND FALL days through tlie savage country of Dalmatia ^ and Sclavonia. The weather was a perpetual fog ; the land was mountainous and desolate ; the natives were either fugitive or hostile ; loose in their religion and government, they refused to furnish pro- visions or guides ; murdered the stragglers ; and exercised by night and day the vigilance of the count, who derived more security from the punishment of some captive robbers than from his interview and treaty with the prince of Scodra.^^ j^jg march between Durazzo and Constantinople Avas harassed, with- out being stopped, by the peasants and soldiers of the Greek emperor ; and the same faint and ambiguous hostility was pre- pared for the remaining chiefs, who passed the Adriatic from the coast of Italy. Bohemond had arms and vessels, and fore- sight and discipline ; and his name was not forgotten in the provinces of Epirus and Thessaly. Whatever obstacles he encountered were surmounted by his military conduct and the valour of Tancred ; and, if the Norman prince affected to spare the Greeks, he gorged his soldiers with the full plunder of an heretical castle. ^-^ The nobles of France pressed forwards with the vain and thoughtless ardour of which their nation has been sometimes accused. From the Alps to Apulia, the march of Hugh the Great, of the two Roberts, and of Stephen of Chartres, through a wealthy country, and amidst the applauding Catholics, was a devout or triumphant progress : they kissed the feet of the Roman pontiff; and the golden standard of St. Peter Avas delivered to the brother of the French monarch.*^* But in this visit of piety and pleasure they neglected to secure the season and the means of their embarkation : the winter was insensibly I The Familias Dalmaticre of Ducange are meagre and imperfect ; the national historians arc recent and fabulous, the Greeks remote and careless. In the year 1 104, Coloman reduced the maritime country as far as Trau and Salona (Katona, Hist. Crit. tom. iii. p. 195-207). [For the journey see Knapp, Reisen durch die Balkanhalbinsel wahrend des Mittelalters, in the Mittheilungen der k. k. geograph. Gesellschaft in Wien, x.xiii., 1880.] S2 Scodras appears in Livy as the capital and fortress of Gentius, king of the Illyrians, ar.x munitissima, afterwards a Roman colony (Cellarius, tom. i. p. 393, 394). It is now called Iscodar, or Scutari (d'Anville, G^ographie Ancienne, tom. i. p. 164). The sanjiak (now a pasha) of Scutari, or Schendeire, was the viiith under the Beglerbeg, of Romania, and furnished 600 soldiers on a revenue of 78,787 rix dollars (Marsigli, Stato Militare del Impero Ottomano, p. 12S). 63 In Pelagonia castrum haereticum . . . spoliatum cum suis habitatoribns igne combussere. Ncc id eis mjiiria contigit : quia illorum detestabilis sermo et cancer serpebat, jamque circumjacentes regiones suo pravo dogmate fcedaverat (Robert. Mon. p. 36, 37). After coolly relating the fact, the archbishop Baldric adds, as a phrase, Omnes siquidem illi viatores, Judaeos, haereticos, Saracenos asqualiter habent exosos ; quos omnes appellant inimicos Dei (p. 92). AraXa^oixevos a.Tro 'Pio/iirjs ttji- ;^pi)(rijt' tuO 'Ayi'ou TIeTpou (TTj/aoiar (.^lexiad, 1. X. p. 288 [c. 7]).