Tales of the Crusaders The betrothed Author:Walter Scott Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: TALES OF THE CRUSADERS. TALE I. THE BETROTHED. CHAPTER I. Now in these dayes were hotte wars upon the Marches of Wales. Lewis's History. The Chro... more »nicles, from which this narrative is extracted, assure us, that, during the long period when the Welch princes maintained their independence, the year 1187 was peculiarly marked as favourable to peace betwixt them and their warlike neighbours, the Lord Marchers, who inhabited those formidable castles on the frontiers of the ancient British, on the ruins of which the traveller gazes with wonder. This was the time when Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, accompanied by the learned Giraldus de Barri, afterward Bishop of Saint David's, preached the Crusade from castle to castle, from town to town ; awakened the inmost valleys of his native Cambria with the call to arms for recovery of the Holy Sepulchre ; and, while he deprecated the feuds and wars of Christian men against each other, held out to the martial spirit of the age a general object of ambition, and a scene of adventure, where the favour of Heaven, as well as earthly renown, was to reward the successful champions. Yet the British chieftains, among the thousands whom this spirit-stirring summons called from their native land to a distant and perilous expedition,, had perhaps the best excuse for declining the summons. The superior skill of the Anglo- Norman knights, who were engaged in constant inroads on the Welch frontier, and who were frequently detaching from it large portions, which they fortified with castles, thus making good what they had won, was avenged, indeed, but not compensated, by the furious inroads of the British, who, like the billows of a retiring tide, rolled on successively, with noise, fury, and devastation ; but, on each retreat, yiejded ground...« less