MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

BOOK III.

HENRY VI—PHILIP—OTHO IV.

CHAPTER I.

KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM. SIBYLLA AND GUY  

[1189—1191.

Continuation of the Third Crusade—Preparations of Kings of France and England—State of Sicily—Transactions there— State of Palestine—Defence of Tyre—Siege of Acre—Death of Sibylla—Contest for the Crown—Origin of the Teutonic Knights. [1189—1191.

The Crusade, of which the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa was the chosen leader, had, after his death, so little connexion—save in its somewhat remote consequences—with the Holy Roman Empire, that it will be most convenient to dispose of this portion of the affairs of the Syro-Franks, if a little prematurely, before entering upon the reign of Henry VI. Thus, the preparations of the Kings of France and England are the first points to be considered.

Such was the unreasonable procrastination of these preparations, owing to both monarchs turning their arms, despite Papal prohibitions and their own oaths, against each other, that one of them, Henry II, did not live to perform his vow. He was, however, the least to blame for the delay; the first transgressor being Philip Augustus, in prosecution of his almost uninterrupted endeavours to wrest from the English crown some of its French possessions. Raymond Comte de St. Gilles, as a male collateral, had contended with the lineal female heir, Queen Elinor, Duchess of Aquitaine, for the county of Toulouse. The King of France, almost as a matter of course, pronounced in his favour, and he was invested with the county. Henry and Elinor had, it should seem, submitted to the award: but, when Richard, already invested with his mother’s duchy, was eagerly making ready for the Crusade, Earl Raymond, who had done homage and sworn fealty to him as his mesne Lord, chose to allege that the young Duke was about to revive and inforce his mother’s claim to the county, and took the opportunity of a revolt in Guienne, to attack him. Philip adopted Raymond’s quarrel, Henry naturally supported his son; and it is said that these really perjured Crusaders thought to obviate the charge of violating their oath, to maintain peace amongst themselves until their hallowed enterprise should be achieved, by laying aside, whilst engaged in this war, the Crosses they had assumed when they took that oath. But its details, complicated by the artifices of Philip, and the mutual jealousies, political and domestic, which he sedulously enkindled and fomented in the English royal family, together with the contradictory statements of French and English princes, of French and English chroniclers have no other relevancy to the subject of the present narrative, than as they delayed the operations of these divisions of Crusaders, who were to have moved simultaneously with the Emperor. Suffice it to remind the reader that in this same year, 1189, Henry II died, it was believed, of the shock of finding the name of his favourite son John in the list given him of the rebels to be included in the amnesty; and that Richard, struck thereupon with remorse for his own unfilial conduct, was no sooner crowned than, postponing all other cares, he diligently prepared for the Crusade.

Richard’s zeal exciting Philip’s, Easter week, of 1190, was fixed for the time of their departure; and upon the last day of 1189, the two monarchs met at the bridge of St. Remy, near Nonaincourt, to make their final arrangements. They there took measures for the maintenance of internal peace in France and England, analogous to Frederic’s in Germany; and not only bound themselves and their respective vicegerents by treaty, to respect each other’s rights during the Crusade, and reciprocally afford assistance in any emergency, but pledged themselves so deeply to each other for the expedition, that, should either die in Palestine, the survivor was, for the accomplishment of their common object, to inherit the army and treasure he there left. They likewise published, as Frederic had done, codes of discipline to be observed in their several armies.

Each of the former Crusades had begun by a massacre of Jews; and, as if Fate grudged mankind the credit of such progress in civilization as abstinence from wanton bloodshed would indicate, the third was not to escape the same stain. The stain was, however, less black; the butchery of the defenceless victims of prejudice being, at least in England, unpremeditated. At the festivities attendant upon Richard’s coronation, some Jews indiscreetly intruding, in defiance of an explicit order for their exclusion, into the palace, the attendants, exasperated at what they deemed unwarrantable insolence, violently ejected them. Any appearance of scuffle or affray would naturally produce a tumult amongst the excited London populace, crowding around the palace, to witness as far as possible the celebration of the rite; and those, who were in debt to the Jews, were prompt, as usual, to catch at any opportunity of freeing themselves from troublesome creditors. Thus, dishonest insolvency stimulating bigotry, this casual ejection of half a dozen impertinently intrusive Israelites became the signal for horrible slaughter; which, beginning in London, notwithstanding the active exertions of Government, spread over the whole kingdom. At York, five hundred of the persecuted race sought shelter in a castle, where they defended themselves till their provisions were exhausted. They then proposed to capitulate, and were offered life as the price of apostasy. Many wavered; but Josius or Jocenus, a learned Rabbi, the wealthiest amongst them, indignantly said: “Are we to question God, why dost thou so or so? We are freely to sacrifice our lives when he requires them; not to live apostates upon the alms of his and our enemies.” He then, with his own hand, slew his wife, his two children, and set fire to the castle; which done, he stabbed himself. The majority followed his example, and the few who accepted the offered terms gained little by their cowardice. They were treacherously murdered as they came forth. Richard very severely punished the ring­leaders in these atrocities, some being even burnt to death. But what more strongly marks progress in opinion is that the King, upon hearing that one of the survivors, the well-known, wealthy Benedict of York, had received baptism, sent for him; inquired whether he were really a convert, or had dissembled to save his life; and, when Benedict confessed the dissimulation, permitted him to resume the profession of the religion in which he believed. The words, in which the Archbishop of Canterbury sanctioned the royal permission, are more mediaeval and less Christian: “If he will not be a Christian, e’en let him be the Devil’s liegeman.”

The example of crime was more infectious than the dread of punishment was preventive. A similar massacre of Jewish creditors by debtors, who called and really believed themselves Christians, followed in France; but not a similar punishment. Germany had not, upon this occasion, been so polluted.

These sanguinary incidents had not interrupted the preparations of the two Kings, which nevertheless advanced leas rapidly than had been expected. It was late in June ere Richard joined Philip at Vezelai, whence they proceeded together to Lyons. But the numbers thus congregated being found inconvenient, alike to move, to lodge, and to feed, the monarchs separated. Philip marched to Genoa, where he embarked for Messina, the appointed rendezvous for the French and English armaments. Richard descended the Rhone, and proceeded to Marseilles, the port at which, when he landed in France, he had directed his English fleet to meet him. But the rapidity of his movements had outstripped calculation; his ships had not arrived when he reached Marseilles, and, impatient of delay, he hired the vessels he found in that port to convey himself and as many as could be therein accommodated, to Sicily, leaving the bulk of his army to await its prearranged means of transport. Richard’s impetuous temper soon became equally impatient of the monotony of a sea voyage. He incessantly landed, to ride on hired horses, with or without attendants, from point to point of the coast, in a reckless, knight-errant style, but too indicative of the self-willed character, more chivalrous than regal, which afterwards, involving him in enmities, exposed him to calumny and imprisonment. But, ere narrating the incidents that marked the sojourn of the royal Crusaders at Messina, it will be proper to state what was then the condition of the kingdom of Sicily.

Richard’s brother-in-law, William II, with whom all their arrangements had been made, was no more. In November, 1189, at the early age of thirty-five, he expired; but not with him expired the cabals and intrigues that had distracted his whole reign. The English Archbishop of Palermo—who had effected the recognition of Constance as presumptive heiress, and her marriage with the King of the Romans—immediately claiming the crown in her name and her husband’s, despatched messengers to Germany with, intelligence of the event, and an urgent summons to come and take possession. But the affairs of the Empire then inevitably detaining Henry in Germany, he contented himself for the moment with sending his Chancellor Diether, and the Archbishop of Mainz, to assist the Sicilian prelate in maintaining his and his wife’s right, and further to report upon the state of her heritage. Had Constance herself accompanied them, she would probably not have been the less welcome for presenting herself alone to her vassals and subjects, and much bloodshed might have been avoided. That she did not, can only be explained by the young king’s jealous temper, that feared if his consort assumed her hereditary crown alone, she might establish her authority independently of his control. But, whatever the cause, Constance did not in person assert her right; and the Archbishop of Palermo’s chief rival, the Protonotario Matteo, who, if he had been once defeated had by no means abandoned the game, found the circumstances of the moment propitious to his purpose of barring her accession. She and her husband were absent; their German emissaries—apparently confining their investigations and endeavours very much to Apulia, whilst Sicily was the focus of intrigue—sent favourable accounts that lulled Henry into security. Broils, in fact a civil war, that was always threatening, broke out during the virtual interregnum.

A large portion of the Sicilian population still consisted of Saracens: of whom those inhabiting the mountainous districts acknowledged no authority but that of their own Chiefs; and the loyalty of Moslem Chiefs to any Christian king was so doubtful, that scarcely could they be properly deemed subjects or vassals. On the other hand, those who had settled in towns were, like their brethren in Spain, far advanced beyond their Christian fellow-countrymen in civilization, in knowledge, and in all mechanical arts. Hence the favour they enjoyed at Court, the high offices they held in the Government, which excited the envy and the anger of all who thought themselves supplanted by misbelievers. The suspension of all control by royal authority, upon William’s death, through the absence of his heirs, was to the mortified Christians an opportunity for revenge too auspicious to be missed. The Christian townsmen attacked and worsted their Mohammedan neighbours, who, too few in number to defend themselves, fled to their fierce co-religionists in the mountains; and the mountaineers, proud of their own independence, rose in arms to protect and avenge their compatriot fellow-worshippers, the citizens. This civil war, combined with the absence of the sovereign, appeared, in like manner, to the higher nobility—who under the two Williams had broken the iron yoke imposed upon them by the two Rogers—a favourable moment for substituting an aristocratic republic for the monarchy. With such views they of course delayed and hesitated to acknowledge Constance and Henry; and, in this complicated confusion, Matteo, in his turn, per­ceived an opportunity of seating a king, who should be his creature, upon the throne, in lieu of those whom he had made his enemies.

For this king, he made choice of an illegitimate scion of the royal race, whose name has already been mentioned, and whose pretensions must here be explained. Prince Roger, the gallant and generous eldest son of King Roger, having been sent, according to the custom of the times, for chivalrous education, to the castle of a nobleman, the Conte di Lecce, had fallen in love with the daughter of his host. The lady requited his passion, and two sons, Tancred and William, were the fruit of this attachment. The Prince then solicited his father’s consent to his marriage with the mother of his children; by which subsequent nuptials, according to the canon law, as well as the law of Sicily, the illegitimately born offspring would have been rendered legitimate. Whether the King did, or did not give that consent was a question warmly disputed by the respective partisans of Constance and of Tancred; though apparently little material, no one alleging that the marriage took place; and it must be observed, that no claim had been advanced in his behalf, in opposition to either of the Williams, his uncle and cousin, who, if he was legitimate, were usurpers. What is certain is, that Prince Roger, worn out, it is averred, by licentious excesses, died of a decline, unmarried; and that, upon his death, the King accused the Conte di Lecce of having sought to entrap the Crown-Prince into an unequal marriage. The Conte fled with his family, and took refuge in Greece, leaving behind him his two illegitimate grandchildren, who were kept by their royal grandfather in a sort of honourable captivity at Palermo. The youngest died; Tancred recovered his liberty in Bonello’s first insurrection, and was implicated in all the following plots and conspiracies. When the King gained the ascendency, he fled to Athens; where he resided for some time with his mother, and was one of those whom Queen Margaret, as Regent, amnestied; which, had she feared him as a possible rival to her son, he would hardly have been. By his personal beauty, address, courage, liberality, and musical talents, it may be presumed, rather than by his reported proficiency in astronomy and mathematics, Tancred became a popular as well as a court favourite. William II employed him in divers high offices, gave him his maternal grandfather's county of Lecce, and, it has been seen, in 1185, associated him with his Grand-Admiral Margaritone, in the command of an expedition against the Eastern Empire.

This was the person, whom Matteo selected for the antagonist of Henry and Constance, and whom he proposed to the Barons assembled at Palermo as their King. The arguments that he addressed to them against the lawful heiress, wife to the King of the Romans, are so precisely identical with those which have been used for the last few years against Austrian domination in Lombardy, that their universal currency makes it quite supererogatory to trouble the reader with their repetition or enumeration. His other arguments are more worthy of notice. Tancred’s own oath of prospective allegiance to Constance, taken at William Il’s command, he endeavoured to neutralize by alleging that, in a King, it was more sinful to keep than to break an oath sworn contrary to the interest of his country. He urged, that the son ought not to suffer, because his father died before he had done justice to the mother, and thus concluded: “Even were his hereditary right insufficient, have not we the same elective rights that our ancestors exercised, when they placed his ancestors on the throne? And were all these deep-seated reasons unavailing, is not this argument conclusive,—that rebellion is raging in the land, and we need a present King”

As a political intriguer the Archbishop was no match for the Protonotario, who appears to have long preconcerted this move with Tancred. The Barons, who perhaps hoped to extort greater privileges from an usurper than from the rightful heir, were won, and a deputation waited upon the Conte di Lecce with an offer of the crown. He affected to hesitate, and urged his scruples on account of his oath of allegiance to his aunt Constance. But Clement III, then already the occupant of St. Peters chair, naturally dreaded the annexation of Southern Italy and Sicily to the dominions of the Swabian Emperors, and a papal dispensation from the obligations of that oath was ready to relieve his conscience. Tancred thereupon accepted the birthright of the aunt, to whom his allegiance was solemnly sworn. In January, 1190, he was crowned at Palermo, and received investiture of the kingdom from the papal sanctioner of perjury and usurpation, as Lord Paramount. He immediately repaid, and stimulated, Matteo’s exertions with the post of Grand-Chancellor.

Tancred was now King; but not even his suzerain’s protection could seat him securely upon a contested throne. In Apulia, Henry’s deputies were asserting the rights of the lawful and recognised heir. In Sicily, the Saracens were in arms against Christian sovereignty; the Archbishop of Palermo, and all the partisans of Constance, were avowedly dissatisfied; so were the proud nobles who had hoped to be the rulers of a republic; and yet others, who thought that, if the lineal heir were to be set aside, they, as legitimate Norman nobles, had better claims to the vacant throne than a base-born Hauteville. The last two classes of malcontents, speedily discovering their own objects to be unattainable, coalesced with the Archbishop, as head of the legitimatist party; and conjointly they despatched a deputation to Germany, to urge Henry to lose no more time in recovering his wife’s heritage from the usurper. There, for the moment, the matter rested.

Although this change in the condition of Sicily could not be matter of indifference to the royal Crusaders, they persevered in their purpose of there assembling their forces, thence to proceed together to the Holy Land. Richard’s voyage having been delayed, partly by his indulgence of the whims before mentioned, partly by his reluctance so far to precede his fleet as should cause him to appear at the rendezvous shorn of his might—was that his real motive for the censured indulgence?—Philip reached Messina first. Richard, upon his arrival, found that the French King had not only taken up his quarters in the town, but had so taken them as to leave no fitting accommodation for his brother monarch;—whether actuated by sheer selfishness, or in assumption of superiority as suzerain, may be questionable. Possibly Richard’s consciousness of superior power prevented his feeling any suspicion of such an assumption; certainly he betrayed nothing like cap­tiousness upon the occasion, but, good-humouredly giving way, encamped with the troops accompanying him outside the walls. .

Two reasons might tend to reconcile the lion-hearted King to this position. The one, that he found the large portion of his army, which his fleet had brought prior to his arrival, and which had lodged itself in Messina, involved in quarrels with the citizens, whom—as mongrels between Greeks and Saracens, nicknamed Griffons—they despised, whilst they delighted in provoking their Oriental jealousy of their women. Blood had already been shed in these idle quarrels. The other reason was, that Richard, from information received during his voyage, landed highly dissatisfied with the new King of Sicily. Tancred had not only hitherto withheld from Queen Joanna, Richard’s sister, the dower assured to her by her marriage contract, and the several articles of great value, assigned by Sicilian law to royal widows—conduct to which he was impelled by want of money to maintain his usurped throne—but, fearing the Queen-dowager’s influence in favour of Constance, he had actually placed her in confinement. Indignantly, the King of England demanded justice for his sister and the fulfilment of the treaty concluded, preliminarily to her marriage, between her father and her husband. Tancred, who in prevision of Richard’s anger had sedulously courted the King of France, resisted the demand; asserting that he had already satisfied the lawful claims of the Queen-dowager with a large sum of money. He however released her from captivity, when she hastened to seek her brother’s protection.

Pending this dispute, the ill-will between the Messinese and the English increased from day to day; and the ground being thus prepared, the violence of a market-woman produced a formidable outbreak. An English archer having, probably for the boyish pleasure of irritating her, offered an offensively low price for her wares, she screamed murder. Her countrymen flew to take her part, the English Crusaders to take their comrade’s; and presently the whole of both city and camp were in commotion. Richard was obliged to interpose in person; and though he could collect but twenty men to support his interposition, the broil ended in the capture and plunder of Messina by the English.

Philip’s jealousy of his royal vassal having, apparently, been excited or revived by the superior magnificence that Richard had displayed, since his landing in Sicily, now revealed itself; inducing him, whilst he forbore actively to interfere, very decidedly to favour the Messinese throughout the affray. Upon their complete discomfiture, he, nevertheless, demanded half the booty made in the city—the agreement touching booty made from the misbelievers in the Holy Land,—and that his banner should float upon the walls beside the English. A breach seemed inevitable. But the wrathful Richard suffered himself to be persuaded by his barons to yield upon the latter pretension, and the rapacious Philip found it necessary to abandon the former. When this dispute was settled, Philip interposed as a mediator between the Kings of England and Sicily; and his efforts were greatly assisted by a hostile demonstration of Richard’s, in consequence of an attempt on Tancred’s part to starve him into terms. In the end, Tancred paid Joanna 40,000 ounces of gold in full compensation of her claims, and Richard promised the hand of his nephew and presumptive heir, Prince Arthur, to a daughter of Tancred’s, whom he, on his part, promised to dower as beseemed a royal bride.

These various dissensions and hostilities had detained the royal Crusaders, till the season was too far advanced to allow of their safely prosecuting the scarcely begun voyage; and it became necessary to winter in Sicily. During the delay, new differences arose betwixt them. Philip learned that Richard, either in utter disregard of his long-standing contract to the French Princess Alice, or in confirmation of all the scandalous reports respecting her and his father, Henry II, had engaged himself to Berengaria of Navarre, with whom, having seen her whilst resident in Aquitaine, he had fallen in love. He learned further, that the Queen-dowager of England was even then bringing the Spanish bride to her son; and, resenting the indignity thus put upon his sister, he sent a haughty message to Richard, by which he required him instantly to wed Princess Alice by proxy, and get ready to set sail for the Holy Land in March. What answer Richard returned to the first part of this message is not recorded; and indeed it is difficult to conceive what excuse he could make to the slighted lady’s brother,—the true one, to wit, his conviction that she had been his father’s paramour, being of all others the most offensive. To the second, he replied that his ships needed repairs, that he was building battering engines—the Sicilian Arabs probably excelled, like their Spanish brethren, as engineers—and that he could not be ready before summer. Philip commanded him, as a vassal, to obey his Liege Lord, upon which condition he would pardon his desertion of Princess Alice. Richard haughtily denied that any such obedience was due; Philip called upon all Richard’s French vassals to leave their mesne Lord and follow him, as Lord Paramount, and Richard denounced the forfeiture of their fiefs as the penalty of compliance with the French King’s demands. From this day, whatever the subsequent semblance, the reality of friendship, if it ever had existed betwixt the rival monarchs, disappeared. Nevertheless, the Earl of Flanders succeeded in negotiating a convention, by which Richard was released from his engagement to Alice, upon paying 10,000 marks to her brother, and pledging himself, should he have two sons, to sever his French dominions from the crown of England. Princess Alice afterwards married a French nobleman, the Comte de Ponthieu.

After this nominal reconciliation, the two Kings associated and sported together; and a singular scene occurred at a tilting match with mere sticks, illustrative of the Lion-heart’s temper and character. In Philip’s train was a knight, named Guillaume des Barres, who, in the last French war, had justly incurred Richard’s displeasure. Having been made prisoner in a skirmish preceding a pitched battle, upon plighting his word not to attempt escape (rescue or no rescue), he was, according to chivalrous custom, left free; but during the engagement broke his parole, seized a page’s horse, and fled. Des Barres, notwithstanding this dishonourable act, was admitted to joust with the Kings and their nobles; he w as a man of extraordinary corporeal powers, and, in this tilting, Richard found it not only impossible to unhorse the false knight, but so difficult to keep his own saddle against him, that, becoming excited even to exasperation, he suddenly exclaimed: “Away with thee! And beware I never see thee again. For between me and thee, and all thine, is henceforward eternal enmity!” In vain Philip and the noble Crusaders of both armies strove to appease the mortified tilter; yet before either party quitted Sicily he had frankly pardoned his powerful antagonist.

During the winter, petty causes of irritation were for ever occurring between the crusading monarchs, which the manoeuvres of Tancred (who might fairly think the disunion of his two potent guests essential to his own safety) so aggravated, that a complete breach seemed inevitable. The mistrustful Sicilian invited Richard, whom he now courted in preference to the French King, to his palace at Catania; and there, amidst the festivities with which he strove to win his favour, informed him that a design of seizing Sicily for himself was imputed to him by Philip, even showing in proof of his words, a letter to this effect, which the Duke of Burgundy, he said, had brought him from the King of France. Philip, when taxed with, denied the calumny, declaring the letter to be a forgery of Richard’s. A defence so extraordinary as to give Tancred’s accusation a tinge of verisimilitude; since it is impossible to divine how any object of the King of England could be promoted by such a forgery, although some of the King of Sicily’s might. Again the Earl of Flanders, interposing, effected a reconciliation, and Richard freely lent his acknowledged suzerain ships, to transport himself and his troops to Palestine.

In these English vessels Philip, towards the end of March, sailed for the Holy Land. Queen Elinor, who, in consideration, partly of the dignity of her future daughter-in-law, and partly of the feelings of the rejected bride’s brother, had hitherto remained quietly at Naples, with Berengaria, now, upon his departure, took her over to Sicily. But the moment was inappropriate; Lent was not over, and marriage, it has been seen, could not then be solemnized without a breach of the reverence due to the season of mortification. The Queen-mother, therefore, when, after passing twelve days with her children, she embarked for England, committed to her daughter Joanna the care of the affianced Princess. Richard now made ready for his voyage, and his preparations were more consonant with its sacred character and with that of the season than might have been anticipated from his disposition. He made confession of his sins, and, in penance for them, permitted his bishops to “scourge the offending Adam out of him.” That done he embarked, but either from  respect to decorum, the marriage not having yet taken place, or that he might be more free for any warlike adventure that should chance to offer, he did not perform the voyage in the company of his bride, who, with the Queen-dowager of Sicily, sailed in a separate vessel. But, ere land­ing any of the Crusaders in Palestine, it will be proper to see what had there ensued since the fall of the Holy City; in what state they were to find the kingdom they had armed to defend, or rather to recover.

When Saladin was fully established in possession of Jerusalem, he proceeded, in November, 1187, to besiege Tyre. The Prince of Sidon had left it for Tripoli; and the Governor, although the inhabitants were bent upon defending themselves, judging resistance to be hopeless, refused to make their condition worse by so vain an attempt. He therefore offered to treat, and Saladin sent him two standards to hoist in sign of submission. This, however, he would not risk the fierce anger of the Tyrians by doing, until the Sultan’s army should actually be before the city. It appeared, and the day of surrender was fixed; when an arrival from Europe changed, or for many years postponed, the fate of Tyre.

The new comer was Marquess Conrad of Montferrat, the captor of the warlike Archbishop of Mainz. He had left Italy with his father at the head of a small band of armed pilgrims, but had quitted him by the way. The old Marquess, hurrying forward to the fulfilment of his vow, had arrived with his crusaders in time to participate in the disastrous defeat of Tiberias. His son had directed his course to Constantinople, there—the previous marriage that had obliged him to cede the Emperor Manuel’s daughter to his younger brother Rinieri, being probably dissolved by death—to celebrate his wedding with the Emperor Isaac’s sister, Theodora, to whom he was already contracted. He found a rebel general, named Alexius Brancas, encamped at the city gate, and the indolent voluptuary Isaac, upon the point of yielding to him. Marquess Conrad, known as a brave soldier, breathed new life into all. He made the Emperor pawn his jewels for money with which he hired Turks and Saracens as auxiliaries, and he induced the Franks in the city to arm. When the Greeks saw efficient troops under efficient leaders, they too joined the ranks of the loyalists, and an imperial army was assembled. Isaac stimulated and assisted by Conrad, led forth the army, thus formed, gave battle, and defeated Brancas, whom Conrad slew with his own hand. The dead rebel’s head was cut off, and it is said that Isaac—cowards and voluptuaries are generally cruel—after it had been played with as a ball at a banquet, sent the sanguinary trophy to the imprisoned widow of the slain. Conrad was immediately created Caesar, and Isaac would fain have detained him to exercise supreme authority at Constantinople. But he was disgusted with either the Constantinopolitans, or his imperial brother-in-law, or his new wife—inflamed with honest crusading zeal, it is difficult, from his subsequent conduct to believe him— and made his escape, by smuggling himself on board a ship at the moment of her sailing. In this ship he reached Tyre, as before said, the very day prior to that appointed for hoisting the Moslem flag.

Conrad arrived full of exultation at his recent deliverance of the Eastern Empire, and recoiled indignantly from the impending surrender. The martial citizens inquired whether he would undertake the command and defence of the city; and upon his confident “Yes,” joyfully proclaimed him Prince of Tyre, by what right—Tyre being part of the kingdom of Jerusalem—is not so apparent. Diligently the new Prince prepared for a regular and obstinate defence; and when summoned by Saladin to execute the convention, answered that he had made none. The Sultan thought at once to vanquish him by sending for the old Marquess, one of his Hittin prisoners, to the camp, and threatening to put him to death if his son did not at once surrender. But Conrad coolly replied to the message that not for any individual’s sake would he surrender a single stone of the walls he had pledged himself to defend; and that, at his father’s age, with only a few years of infirmity to expect, the crown of martyrdom would be the first of blessings. And as if to demonstrate the truth of this asserted opinion, he would not even direct his engineers to avoid hitting the places where his father should be exposed. Saladin was however too generous to execute his threat, and the old Marquess of Montferrat lived to be one of the fellow-prisoners released with Guy. Conrad conducted the defence of Tyre with equal skill and courage; by stratagem he destroyed the Egyptian fleet blockading the port, and before the end of January 1188, Saladin, impatient seemingly of tedious operations, raised the siege.

This check scarcely interrupted his career of conquest. During the whole of this year, and the first half of 1189, he continued to overrun and subdue the previously unoccupied, rather than unconquered, provinces. He then turned his arms northward against the principality of Antioch, where Bohemund appears not to have made even an attempt at defence; but upon Saladin’s advance, to have immediately agreed, if not relieved by foreign succours within seven months, to surrender both his own dominions and Tripoli, so recently bequeathed to his second son. He was spared part of the shame he had incurred, as well as all the loss consequent upon his dastardly conduct, by the timely arrival of the Sicilian fleet;—the first division of the third Crusade, it will be remembered, that was ready to act. It was commanded by the Grand­Admiral Margaritone, and upon reaching the Syrian coast narrowly escaped capture at Acre, where the Saracens kept the Christian standard displayed, in order to insnare European vessels. This Margaritone, when upon the point of entering the harbour, fortunately discovered. He then steered northward, visiting Tyre, where his aid was no longer needed; but the position of Tripoli and Antioch, being there made known to him, he hastened to their relief. Thus were all these important places preserved for the present to Christendom.

In the midst of Saladin’s rapid conquests, occurs one of the very few dishonourable actions imputed, even by his enemies, to this admired prince, and that one for which it is difficult to imagine any motive sufficiently strong to be really a temptation, whilst it is little consonant with subsequent history. The accusation is this. Instead of releasing Guy and the twelve companions of his choice, in March, 1188, the price at which he purchased the surrender of Ascalon, he not only detained them in captivity till May, but when, upon the earnest remonstrances of Sibylla, who seems to have merely visited Guy, he then set them free, he compelled them further to purchase the liberty already paid for; Guy, by abdicating the crown, and all the thirteen, by swearing a solemn oath never again to bear arms against the Mohammedans. Assuredly, Saladin’s appreciation of Guy must have been very different from that of the King of Jeru­salem’s enemies, if he could think it worth while to violate a solemn engagement, merely to avoid encountering him at the head of the Syro-Franks. Be this as it may, Guy, it is added, was no sooner at liberty than he and his companions obtained dispensations from their unjustly extorted oaths; he resumed the government, as they did their arms. Nor does it appear either that, in Guy’s subsequent contest for the crown, this abdication was ever brought forward as an argument against him, or that Saladin ever reproached him or those released with him, with having broken their oaths. Some old authors name the Grand­Master of the Templars as one of the twelve, but it was actually impossible that he should take such an oath in direct contradiction of his Templar’s oath, and the more general opinion is that the Order, either before or after Guy’s release, ransomed him by the surrender of one of its castles.

The first fruit of Guy’s release must have taught Saladin to regret having so long detained him; being a schism in the small remainder of the kingdom. With Sibylla he immediately repaired to Tyre, as the strongest and most important place remaining to them; but Conrad, proclaiming himself independent Prince of Tyre, refused them the admittance they demanded, as sovereigns, of their vassal. The Pisans, who were legally masters of a part of the city, and whose fleet occupied the harbour, in vain urged the right of the King and Queen to the recognition and admittance they claimed; Conrad called, and called successfully, upon the Tyrians to join his own few followers in opposing them, should they attempt to force an entrance. Many fugitives from the fatal field of Hittin, and from divers of the lost towns, had already gathered around the royal standard; but Guy was too prudent to superadd a civil war to his struggle for existence against a conqueror. He withdrew from before Tyre; visited Antioch and Tripoli, and spent the year in endeavours to secure vassals and allies, and to raise troops in order to resume hostilities. In the early part of 1189, he is allowed by Arab historians to have defeated a body of the Sultan’s troops, and towards the end of August, 1189, he attempted to carry Acre by surprise. For a moment he seemed not unlikely to succeed; but an idle rumour of Saladin’s approach in great force interrupted the assault, and when it was renewed the opportunity had fled. Upon his repulse he began a siege in form.

This was an operation so much beyond his means, his whole army consisting of 700 knights and barely 9,000 foot, that Guy was much dissuaded from undertaking it and blamed for his pertinacity. Experience had, perhaps, cured him of his too great pliability, and the measure, if somewhat bold, proved in the end judicious. It at once stopped the conquest of the kingdom, anxiety for the preservation of a sea-port town, esteemed then as now, the key of Syria, concentrating Saladin’s attention upon its defence, whilst Guy’s camp formed a nucleus, around which gathered all remaining warlike Syro-Franks, and, as they arrived, the small bands of Crusaders that preceded the royal armaments.

Acre is situate at the extremity of a projection of land that forms the north-western point commanding the mouth of the bay; the wall is washed by the sea on the western, and by the waters of the bay upon the southern side. The shore of the bay is a fertile plain of no great extent, girdled by the Phoenician and Galilean hills, with Mount Carmel as their southern termination. But the streams that give this plain its fertility render it unhealthy after heavy rains, when they overflow, and convert it into a morass.

Guy had not numbers to shut in Acre upon its two land sides, but he pitched his camp before it to the east. Saladin, the report of his vicinity having only been premature, presently appeared with his army. He entered the town, made all requisite arrangements for its defence, established a system of signals to enable the Commandant of the garrison to receive his instructions, so as to facilitate his acting in concert with him; and then encamped upon one of the nearest hills, to watch Guy’s movements. Bands of Crusaders now began to arrive; first Danes, then Frieslanders, despatched by King Henry to meet, as he hoped, his father in Palestine; then, with the same hope, came the Landgrave of Thuringia, who rendered Guy a double service. Making Tyre first, he urged Conrad, his kinsman by their mothers, to assist in the siege of Acre as a Crusader, and prevailed upon him to open a negotiation with Guy as to terms. Conrad required as the price of his aid, not only the independence of Tyre, but the promise that Sidon and Berytus should, when reconquered, be added to it. Prince Reginald of Sidon had forfeited all claim to them, by asking and receiving from Saladin lands in Damascus as compensation for the principality he renounced when submitting to him; and so urgent was the need of Conrad’s help, that the King and Queen acceded to these demands. The Prince of Tyre, in return, undertook to supply provisions for the whole besieging army, which he joined at the head of 1000 horse and 20,000 foot;—surely these numbers must have included both the survivors of his father’s Montferrat band, and the Landgrave’s Thuringians. He took post with the Hospitalers on the northern side of Acre, which was thus completely shut in by land.

The siege was long and peculiar, the besiegers being themselves in a manner besieged by Saladin’s far larger host. From its great prolongation huts were gradually substituted for tents in Guy’s camp; and from the condition of the kingdom non-combatant Christians repaired to it, as to the capital. Queen Sibylla, with her four daughters: by Guy, was domiciliated in this temporary wooden town, where huts of shopkeepers alternated with those of soldiers. For one while the frequent, often objectless, fighting, was intermingled with a strange sort of social intercourse between enemies, who, despite their reciprocal intolerance, had learned to respect each other. Upon one of the latter occasions, it seems to have struck the warriors as desirable that the children should share the toils, dangers, and glories of the adults, and thus be early trained to what appeared likely to form the business of their lives; and it was arranged that two Christian boys should encounter two Mohammedans of their age. Children abounded in the camp as in the city, so that no difficulty in providing the juvenile champions delayed this strange combat. The four boys fought; the young Moslems took one of the Christians prisoner; the victory was pronounced theirs, and the captive was ransomed, as had been predetermined, for two gold pieces. A curious, as illustrative, specimen of the feelings of the age.

In October, a more serious battle was fought, in which the excellence of Saladin’s previous arrangements, and the rashness of the Grand-Master of the Temple, gave the Saracens the advantage. At the head of his Templars, without waiting for the junction of other troops, he attacked, defeated, and incautiously pursued the enemies in front of him. Whilst Saladin was making prodigious exertions to prevent the infection of flight in his own ranks, and to profit by the gap thus left in those of the Christians, the garrison sallying, as they had beforehand been commanded, attacked the camp, for the guard of which, Guy’s brother, Geoffrey de Lusignan, had only a small corps. The absence of the Templars was now painfully felt; and the confusion created by a report of the danger of the camp—full it will be recollected of wives and children,—being increased by the indiscretion of some Germans, who, in their eagerness to recover a runaway horse, broke their array, Saladin gained the victory. During the engagement, Guy rescued Conrad from the enemy’s hands, into which the Grand-Master of the Templars fell; though whether dead or alive is uncertain. If the latter, he was either slain by Saladin’s orders or died of his wounds. The Saracens are reported by their own writers to have been much amazed, upon stripping the dead, to find three women in knight’s armour; and unable to conceive female purity, save in seclusion, at once set down these devout amazons as courtesans.

The victory was barren; each army resuming the position previously occupied, and the garrison of Acre being driven back into the town by the return of the Christians to defend their camp. An Egyptian fleet soon afterwards appeared off the mouth of the bay, which had been hitherto blockaded by the Sicilian and Italian squadrons. Not indeed completely; since Saracen barks, by displaying the Cross aloft, and swine upon their decks, had managed frequently to pass, with the fleets, for Christian vessels, and so slipping through, to enter the port; which, defended by strong towers, was still in the possession of the town. The Egyptian fleet now attacked those of the Crusaders, defeated, and chased them from their station. The sailors taken in the captured ships were forthwith hung upon, or externally from, the walls of Acre.

During the winter, Guy continued the siege, as did Saladin his watch upon the besiegers. The latter, however, removed his camp to a somewhat greater distance; and, judging active operations over for the next few months, permitted a large part of his army to return home for the unpropitious season. Guy similarly indulged those who had homes to retire to; and amongst others Conrad withdrew with his troops to Tyre. Occasional affrays diversified the winter; but the principal occupations of the Syro-Franks and the Crusaders were fortifying their camps and constructing battering engines; that of the Sultan’s troops, watching them; and the chief casualties that occurred, proceeded from disease.

With the return of spring, reinforcements poured in upon Saladin from all parts of his widely-spreading dominions. New bands of Crusaders joined Guy, and Conrad brought a fleet, with which he attacked, defeated, and drove away, in its turn, the Egyptian fleet. The cruelties practised upon the Christian sailors were now more than retaliated; and that mainly by the female camp followers, to whose vindictive fury the Egyptian prisoners were abandoned. From this time forward any intermingling of courtesy or sociability with hostilities was superseded—at least amongst all but the highest classes—by virulent enmity.

Still, the inferiority in point of numbers of the Christians to the army watching their every move, prevented any serious attack upon the town, and induced a prohibition on the part of the King and of the crusading leaders— the Landgrave of Thuringia and the Comte d’Avesnes, who alternately held the command of the Europeans—to fight, or even quit the intrenched camp, without orders. This the inferior Crusaders considered as sheer cowardice; they had come to fight, and fight they would. Their pertinacious disobedience in breaking out for desultory skirmishes, without knights for officers, cost thousands of lives; and, with the burning of the military engines by either naphtha or Greek fire, thrown upon them from the walls, were the only incidents that diversified the spring months, passed in anxious expectation of the Emperor Frederic, but cheered by intelligence of his capture of Iconium.

In the course of the summer of 1190, bodies of Crusaders arrived; one from England, under Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Ralph Glanville, ex-Grand Justiciary, with an auxiliary troop from Scotland, others from France, under the Comte de Champagne, and from Germany, under the Duke of Austria. But, to countervail the satis­faction of such reinforcements, came the crushing tidings of the Emperor’s death, and the consequent dispersion of the greater part of his army. Grievous indeed to Guy was the loss of the veteran Imperial Crusader, upon whom and his host he had so confidently relied, whose authority would have been undisputed, and whose arrival he was daily anticipating. Deeply did the calamity depress the spirits of the Germans already present, especially of the Landgrave who was even then in ill health; and thus perhaps enabled the Comte de Champagne, notwithstanding the superior rank of the Duke of Austria, to accomplish his object; to wit, monopolizing the command of the Europeans, upon the double plea of the numbers of French Crusaders in camp, and his own near relationship to both the expected kings;—his mother, being half-sister to both, as daughter of Lewis VII, by Elinor of Aquitaine. The mortification of being thus completely set aside, added to grief, personal and national, for the loss of his imperial uncle, increased the illness of the Landgrave ; and, in testimony of the high esteem in which he was held by foe as by friend, Saladin sent to offer him the services of his own physician. The offer was civilly declined; whereupon for medical aid the Sultan substituted a present of delicacies, suited to the appetite of an invalid, with a leopard trained to hunting, for his pastime:—a piece of courtesy that is said to have excited great jealousy amongst the French Crusaders. Ill, sad, and irritated, the Landgrave, abandoning the Holy Land, embarked for Europe; but landed in Cyprus for rest or refreshment; and there, in October, he died.

Guy conceived that the Duke of Swabia, with his 5000 men, the poor residue of the mighty host,—plenty at Antioch having again been abused, with the same noxious consequences as before—would be of most use to the common cause, by attacking the Mohammedans in that more northern region, and thus making a diversion in favour of the besiegers of Acre. But, if the King’s strategy were good, his policy in the choice of a negotiator was not. He requested the Prince of Tyre,—whom he perhaps thought his rescue of him had made his friend,—as the Duke’s kinsman, to visit, and concert with him such a plan of operations. Conrad readily undertook the mission; but if the accusation already whispered against him, of taking bribes from Saladin, were false, and improbable it then assuredly was, he bore little good will to the sovereign from whom he had wrested so considerable a portion of his dominions as the principality of Tyre, and studied his own interest in preference to the recovery of the kingdom. This interest he thought would be promoted by the presence of his imperial relation, as his supporter, in the camp; and accordingly, having gained Duke Frederic’s esteem and friendship, upon the 8th of October he again appeared before Acre, accompanied by him and his German Crusaders. But, however judicious the baffled plan might have been, the presence of the Duke of Swabia in the camp was not without advantages. The command of the Germans and Italians was immediately transferred to the son of their deceased Emperor; and, though he claimed no authority over the French, his superior rank and high reputation gave him great influence over the Earl of Champagne; whilst, having no possible object save that for which the Crusade was organized, his authority was a check upon all selfish views—even upon Conrad’s.

The dissentions in the camp increased nevertheless, and appear, more even than Saladin’s army, to have impeded active measures against the town. The remainder of the autumn was wasted in exploits of individual gallantry and irregular desultory fighting. Amongst the former, the assault of one of the castles commanding the mouth of the port may deserve mention. The Pisans, in whose squadron were some ships furnished with towers for attacking high walls, undertook the attempt upon this castle, in which the Duke of Austria joined them. He led the storming party, and led it so vigorously that, although severely wounded, he was on the summit of either the Pisan tower or the attacked castle, when the Greek fire was skilfully directed against the vessel bearing the former. It caught ship and tower, burned fiercely, and every hope of carrying the castle vanished. Leopold saw no chance for life but by leaping from his lofty position into the sea, and swimming to another bark. He did so, it is said, covered with blood, his white sword-belt alone excepted: and, in memory of the feat, henceforward bore, as his coat of arms, a red shield obliquely traversed by a silver beam, or in field gules a fess argent.

As an instance of the desultory fighting may be mentioned, that a party of Crusaders, going forth without orders or leaders, surprised the quarters of Malek-el-Adel at meal time, putting him and his whole division to flight. But, instead of prosecuting their victory, they fell to plundering the tents, and eating and drinking what they found there, and were surprised in their turn by Saladin. He forbade giving quarter, and they would have been entirely cut to pieces, had not an English priest prevailed upon the Princes to lead out the army for their protection; when, as usual, the Saracens could not stand the charge of the European chivalry.

The horror of the Mohammedans at finding women in , male attire amongst the slain has 6een mentioned. Such female warriors were numerous; and many, doubtless, were of the class of Archbishop Christian’s brigade of amazons. But many were wives and daughters of spotless reputation, who had made the pilgrimage in the company of their natural protectors, and, in the fervour of crusading zeal, fought by their side. Of one of these it is recorded, that, being mortally wounded by an arrow from the wall, whilst diligently labouring with those employed to fill the ditch of Acre (a measure indispensable to the advance of the moveable towers within reach of the walls), she entreated her husband to leave her corpse in the ditch, that, even after death, she might contribute to the success of the siege. Respecting another woman in the camp an anecdote is related, exhibiting Saladin in the truly chivalrous character that has made him a favourite hero of romance. A female Crusader one day rushed amidst the Saracen host, and flung herself at the Sultan’s feet, exclaiming that her child had been stolen by his people, that she had heard he was merciful, and came to implore him to have pity upon a bereaved mother. He ordered the stolen child to be sought, purchased it of the captor, and restored it to the mother, whilst he wept in sympathy with her delirious joy. And this same man could order the massacre of prisoners who refused to apostatize! Could there be a stronger proof, that it really was then esteemed a religious duty to kill God’s enemies,—holding as such all who worshipped God in a different form from the slayer?

Amidst such desultory warfare, autumn produced the marsh fever, already mentioned as habitual in the plain of Acre; and the disease swept away, in addition to thousands of ordinary crusaders, personages whose deaths complicated the existing dissentions. These were Queen Sibylla and her children. Conrad at once accused Guy of poisoning them; without however adducing, either any ground of suspicion, or any conceivable motive for the perpetration of a crime as suicidal as it would have been revolting, a crime destructive of all the hopes and views of the accused. More rationally, he argued that Guy, having been King only as husband of the Queen, could, after her death, have no pretension to the crown, which devolved to the next heir; and this heir, Sibylla having left no child, was her half-sister Isabel. Guy and his partisans, on the other hand, alleged that, having once been crowned, he could never more be deprived of the rights and the dignity that ceremony had given him. But let not Conrad be supposed to have had any intention of playing the gratuitous champion of legitimacy. Far from proposing to dethrone Guy in order to seat Isabel’s husband, Humphrey de Thoron, in his place, he appears to have for some time projected supplanting the latter in that capacity, and then advancing her claim, as Amalric’s only legitimate child, against Sibylla, whose death merely facilitated the scheme. Over the giddy and, judging from her conduct, heartless Princess he had acquired unbounded influence, and now easily induced her to sue for a divorce, upon the plea that her nonage at the period of her nuptials precluded a valid consent on her part. A tribunal was found to pronounce the divorce, with the sanction, it is said, of the Patriarch, who, as has been seen, was not very scrupulous in such matters, but who certainly took no active part in this transaction. The sentence obtained, it was a Crusader, the Bishop of Beauvais, who married Conrad, the husband of a living Greek Princess, to Isabel, the wife of a living Syro-Frank husband, whom she had acknowledged as such for years. The Archbishop of Canterbury, a person of more importance amongst the Crusaders, excommunicated all parties for such profanation of a sacrament.

Conrad and Isabel now assumed the titles of King and Queen of Jerusalem; Guy retained his of King; and of the Syro-Franks and the Crusaders, half adhered to the one, half to the other, of these contending candidates for the fragment of a kingdom. And where the right really lay, save with Isabel, it were hard to decide; Guy could have none, as a childless widower; Conrad none, not being the Queen’s lawful husband. The pretensions of her real husband, Humphrey de Thoron, no one thought of; and ere long he, for a good round sum, sold his consent to the divorce. But his consent could only avail against his own right to redress, not to dissolve a sacrament.

It should seem, however, that Guy had far the largest half of both subjects and army; for so indignant was Conrad at the preference given to him, that he withdrew with Isabel to Tyre; and, if he did not absolutely break his engagement as to feeding the besiegers, he confined his supplies to that portion of the camp which was occupied by his own partisans, and even their necessities he became very remiss in supplying. Nor was this sin of omission all the army had to complain of relative to this important matter, since he is accused of having detained at Tyre divers vessels freighted with corn for the market before Acre.

In consequence of these measures of Conrad’s, aided by the usual impediments to winter navigation, especially during the infancy of the science, scarcity soon prevailed in the camp. It lasted from the end of November till February, becoming from day to day more terrible. The bakers’ shops, or huts, were scenes of ever-recurring conflict, the purchasers actually fighting for the bread; whilst, upon the plea that these bakers were seeking to derive exorbitant profits from the general distress, even noble knights joined in plundering them. Valuable chargers were slaughtered for food; every kind of weed or animal, even the most disgusting reptiles, were devoured. And so recklessly did whoever obtained anything eatable satisfy his ravenous appetite, that one very unexpected result of the famine was, at its close, the imposing of almost general penances for non-observance of Church fasts. Extremity of hunger seduced many Crusaders into apostacy. For bread, they offered their services to Saladin, who was constantly well supplied from the country in his rear, and from Egypt by sea; a road to him, master of almost all the seaports of Palestine, ever open. He equipped vessels for these renegades, and, as pirates, they inflicted heavy losses upon their former friends, helping the famine; but the Sultan is averred, honourably, if inconsistently, to have refused his covenanted share of the booty when offered him. The sufferings of the besiegers were still on the increase, when, upon the 2d of February, 1191, a ship loaded with grain entered the bay, and the measure of corn, which the preceding day could hardly be procured for one hundred gold pieces, was offered for four.

The famine had, as usual, been accompanied by a fearful increase of the epidemic, which often carried off as many as a hundred victims in a day. Amongst these were knights, prelates, earls, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and superior to all these in importance, the Duke of Swabia, who died the 20th of January, 1191. But his brief sojourn in the camp before Acre, besides being marked by several gallant feats of arms, left one, if not imperishable, yet durable monument; viz., a new Order of Knights—the third Order already mentioned.

The masters of the Lubeck and Bremen vessels, that had brought the Earl of Holstein and his crusaders to the camp before Acre, being touched with the seemingly neglected and helpless condition of the indigent sick and wounded there, made a tent with their spare sails, as a hospital for such as needed the accommodation. Duke Frederic upon his arrival, charmed with this act of Christian charity, afforded the sea-faring good Samaritans all the assistance in his power; in consequence of which they, at their departure, made over their hospital tent to his chaplains and chamberlains, and the little establishment was immediately enlarged. To the tent was now added a hut, with an adjoining wooden chapel, for the spiritual wants of the patients. Amongst those, who proffered their services as nurses in this hospital, were several members of a charitable institution at Jerusalem, that had perished when the Holy City was lost. This was a German hospital, founded by a married couple of German pilgrims, whose names history has unkindly neglected to preserve. They thought that the Knights Hospitalers, being mostly French and English, with a few Italians, devoted their cares too exclusively to compatriot sufferers. Hence they built at Jerusalem a hospital for German pilgrims solely, endowed it amply, dedicated it to the Virgin, and placed it under the jurisdiction of the Grand-Master of St. John. Duke Frederic was as much delighted with the account given him of this German hospital of St. Mary, as he had been with the active charity of the Bremen and Lubeck sailors, and conceived the idea of blending the two into a German institution of Knights Hospitalers, who, under the rather long-winded name of the Order of the German House of our Lady at Jerusalem, might emulate the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. The idea took; German knights offered themselves for the twofold duties of champions and nurses of pilgrims, from amongst whom Heinrich von Walpot was selected as Grand-Master. Frederic, besides liberally supplying the present wants of the new Order, endowed it with Muhlhausen in his own duchy, secured for it the patronage of his brother Henry VI, and obtained from Celestin III—who had now succeeded to Clement III, in St. Peter’s Chair—the Papal sanction indispensable to its recognised existence. To this pontiff, the constitution of the new Order, in which those of the Templars and Hospitalers were virtually blended, was submitted and by him Highly approved. This Order adopted, as its distinctive garb, a white cloak with a black cross, and, overlooking if not discarding the before-mentioned verbose title, its members are designated indifferently the Marians, or the Teutonic Knights. The historians of the Order say the Marians early acquired their reputation; and German writers ascribe the absence of all mention of them in the chronicles of Richard Coeur de Lion’s Crusade, to their resentment of his treatment of the Duke of Austria (of which hereafter) and consequent resolution not to serve under the English monarch. That a degree of German nationality existed in the Middle Ages, very different from the narrow patriotism now severing Brandenburg, for instance, from Austria, there is no doubt. But without having recourse to it relatively to an offence relegated by many writers, and by probability, to the latter end of Richard’s Crusade, this silence is abundantly explained by the infancy of the Order at that time. French, English, and Syro-Frank chroniclers might well confuse the few Marians with the Hospitalers, their prototype: and in fact the expression of “early acquired their reputation” refers to the following century, when their fourth, really great, Grand-Master, Hermann von Salza, completed the institution of the Teu­tonic Knights, and, as will be seen, led them to fame. This monument of Frederic of Swabia’s piety and charity subsisted till involved in the sweeping destruction of continental institutions wrought by the French revolution, and the Emperor Napoleon I.

There is a report, too unlikely to be believed, but which should be mentioned, and which, in date, must precede the arrival of the crusading Kings. It is, that, at one period of the siege, Acre, being distressed, offered to capitulate, upon condition of the garrison and inhabitants being permitted to depart unmolested with their moveable property; that Guy was eager to recover so important a place so easily; but that the Crusaders, who wanted to have the sacking of the wealthy town, and Conrad, bribed by Saladin, prevented the granting of these terms. When Conrad’s intriguing negotiations with Saladin began, is not certain; but even were they already a-foot, and were the tale otherwise credible, it would not be necessary to accuse the Prince of Tyre of the meanness of taking bribes to betray the Christian cause, since enmity to Guy would have been motive strong enough to induce him to oppose whatever was beneficial to the rival King. But that Acre, under the Sultan’s very eye, should dream of capitu­lating until compelled by irresistible necessity, is utterly unimaginable.