men we have passed over, who followed the same path that Peter did,
but in a far more restrained and fortunate way.

Duke Godfrey, the son of count Eustace of Boulogne, had two brothers:
Baldwin, who ruled Edessa, and succeeded his brother as king of
Jerusalem, and who still rules there; and Eustace, who rules in the
county he inherited from his father. They had a powerful father, who
was competent in worldly affairs, and their mother was, if I am not
mistaken, a learned Lotharingian aristocrat, but most remarkable for
her innate serenity and great devotion to God. The joys she received
from such exemplary sons were due, we believe, to her profound
religious belief. Godfrey, about whom we are now speaking, had
received a duchy in Lotharingia as his maternal heritage. All three,
in no way inferior to their mother in honesty, flourished in great
military deeds, as well as in the restraint of their behavior. The
glorious woman used to say, when she marveled at the result of the
journey and the success of her sons, that she had heard from the
mouth of her son the duke a prediction of the outcome long before the
beginning of the expedition. For he said that he wanted to go to
Jerusalem not as a simple pilgrim, as others had done, but forcefully,
with a large army, if he could raise one. In accordance with this
divinely inspired intuition, fortune later smiled on his project.
The three brothers, heedless of the great honors they already had,
set out on the journey. But even as Godfrey was wiser than his other
brothers, so he was equipped with a larger army. He was joined by
Baldwin, Count of Mons, son of Robert, the paternal uncle of the
young count of Flanders. With the splendid knightly ceremony and
spectacle, the band of powerful young men entered the land of the
Hungarians, in possession of what Peter was unable to obtain: control
over his army. Two days before Christmas, the first of the French