first Crusaders lost their lives, either by fatigue and hunger or by disease and the weapons of the Saracens, before they rescued a single city from their grasp.
A.D. 1147.
Siege of Acre, A.D. 1189.
Armistice, A.D. 1192.
The second Crusade called into action the whole
of the West, from Rome to Britain. At its head were
displayed the banners of the dukes of Burgundy,
Bavaria, and Aquitaine; and the kings of Poland
and Bohemia obeyed the summons of the leader of
an army estimated at more than four hundred thousand
men. But the numbers appear to have been
still greater in the third Crusade, which was made
both by sea and land, and included the siege of Acre,
graphically described by Gibbon[1] in his "Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire." After the surrender
of Acre, and the departure of Philip, Richard
of England, whose name was long an object of
terror among the Saracens, led the Crusaders to the
recovery of the sea-coast; and the cities of Cæsarea
and Jaffa, afterwards added to the fragments of the
kingdom of Guy de Lusignan, fell into his hands,
as Jerusalem would also have done, had he not been
deceived by the envy or the treachery of his companions.
But Plantagenet and Saládin became, in
time, alike weary of a war so tedious and disastrous
in its results, especially as both had suffered in health.
An agreement between them was, after much delay,
brought about, and was, naturally, disapproved by
the zealots of both parties alike—the Roman pontiff
and the Khalif of Baghdad. Its leading features were,
that Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre should be
open, without hindrance or tribute, to the pilgrimages
of the Latin Christians; and that during three years
- ↑ Gibbon, c. lix.
