of the Emperor and the King The Murmurs against St. Bernard and his Apology The Conquest of Noradin after the raising of the Siege The Death of King Baldwin and his Elogy His Brother Amauri Succeeds him The History of that Princes Life who by his Avarice loseth the Opportunity of conquering all Egypt The History of Syracon who seizes upon the Kingdom of Egypt and leaves it to his Nephew Saladin The Elogy and first Conquest of that Prince The Death of Amauri and the Troubles and Divisions which it caused in the Realm The Conquests of Saladin thereupon The Raign of Baldwin the Leprous The Ambassage to the Princes of the West to desire their Help against Saladin The Negotiation of the Ambassadours with the Pope and Emperor in France and England with Henry the Second The Artifices of that King to elude this Ambassage A famous Care of Conscience proposed in the Parliament at London upon this great Affair The reasons on one side and the other The best opinion rejected by the Bishops as False The Displeasure of the Patriarch Heraclius against the King The Conference between Philip Augustus and King Henry which recommences the War The Apostacy and Treason of a Templer The Death of King Baldwin the Fourth and of the young King his Nephew The Artifice of Sybil Mother to the deceased Infant King to obtain the Crown for Guy de Lusignan her Second Husband The Despight of Raymond Earl of Tripolis thereupon His Character His horrible Treason and secret Treaty with Saladin who enters Galilee and besieges Tyberias Division in the Councel of War held by the King The unfortunate Battle of Tyberias which was lost by the Treachery of Count Raymond The Advantage which Saladin made of his Victory The Relation of the Siege and taking of Jerusalem by that Victorious Prince The sorrowful Departure of the Christians from Jerusalem and the Generosity of Saladin The Cruelty and miserable Death of the Earl of Tripolis The Triumph of Saladin An Account of the Preserving of Tyre by Marquis Conrade The Causes of the Loss of the Holy Land p. 113. BOOK II. The Death of Pope Urban III. upon the News of the Loss of Jerusalem The Decrees of Pope Gregory VIII and the Rules of the Cardinals to move God Almighty to Mercy and Compassion upon the Christians Gregory makes Peace between the Pisans and the Genoese Clement III. his Successor sends his Legates to the King of France and to the King of England The Conference at Gisors Where the Arch-Bishop of Tyre proposes the Crusade which is received by the two Kings The Ordinances which they made for the Regulation of it The War recommences between the two Kings which hinders the Effect of the Crusade Richard Duke of Guienne joins with King Philip against his own Father The Death of Henry II. King of England His Elegy and Character The Legates propose the Crusade at the Diet at Mayence The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa there takes upon him the Cross as do many other Princes and Prelates of the Empire The Description of that Emperor His March to Thracia where he is necessitated to Combat the Greeks The Character of the Greek Emperor Isaac Angelus The Reason why this Emperor betrayed the Ltains The History of the False Dositheus who seduced him and of Theodore Balsamon The Victories of Frederick in Thracia The stupid Folly of Isaac And his dishonourable Treaty with the Emperor The Passage and March of Frederick into Asia The Treachery of the Sultan of Iconium and the Defeat of his Troops by a pretty Stratagem of the Emperor ' s. An Heroick Action of a certain Cavalier The first Battle of Iconium The Description Assaulting and Taking of that City The Second Battle of Iconium The Triumph of the Emperor The March of the Army towards Syria The Description and the Passage of Mount Taurus The Death of the Emperor and his Elogy Frederick his Son leads the Army to Antioch after that to Tyre and from thence to the Camp at Ptolemais or Acon The Description of that City and the adjacent Country The Relation of the famous Siege against it begun by King Guy de Lusignan The Succours of two fair Naval Armies The Description of the famous Battle of Ptolemais The manner of the Christians Encampment The Reason of the length of the Siege The Death of Queen Sybilla and the Division between Guy de Lusignan and the Marquis Conrade who marries the Princess Isabella the Wife of Humphrey de Thoron A general Assault given to Ptolemais upon the Arrival of Frederick Duke of Suabia A brave Action of Leopold Duke of Austria The Death of Frederick and his admirable Vertue p. 149 BOOK III. The Beginning of the Reign of Richard Coeur de Lyon King of England and his Preparations for the Holy War The Preparations of Philip the August The Conferences of Nonancour and Vezelay between the two Kings The Portraict of Philip the August The Character of Richard King of England The Voyage of the two Kings to Messina An adventure of the English Fleet. A Quarrel between the English and the Messineses The taking of that City The Quarrel between the two Kings and their new Accomodation The Relation of the Abbot Joachim and his Character His Conference with King Richard The Departure of King Philip and his Arrival before Acre The Departure of Richard The Relation of the Conquest of the Kingdom of Cyprus by that Prince His Arrival before Acre A new Difference between the two Kings and the true Causes of it Their Accord The Reduction of the City of Acre The extreme Violence of King Richard The Return of Philip the August The March of Richard The Battle of Antipatris The single Combat between King Richard and Sultan Saladin A noble Action of William de Pourcelets who saved the Life of that King Richard presents himself before Jerusalem at an unseasonable Time and therefore retires and disperses his Army into Quarters The Marquis Conrade slain by two Assassins of the old Mountain The Description of that Government and those People A wicked Action of the Templers which hindred their Conversion The Cause of the Marquis his Death Richard accused of that Crime His Innocence is proved Isabella Marries Count Henry and is declared Queen of Jerusalem Guy de Lusignan made King of Cyprus Richard pretends a Second time to besiege Jerusalem defeats the Enemies takes the Caravan of Egypt but retires by a cunning Agreement A calumny against Richard which he clears by a most memorable Action The Battle of Jaffa and the taking of that Place from the Sarasins by Richard His Treaty with Saladin and his unfortunate Return He is taken and Imprisoned His Deliverance The Justice which he demanded and which he obtains A new division among the Princes of the East appeased by the Count de Champagne The Death of Saladin and his Elogy Division happens among the Infidels which gives occasion to a fourth Crusade p. 186. PART III.
BOOK I. THe little disposition which was found in Europe to this fourth Crusade The Pope resolves at last to address himself to the Emperor Henry VI. The Diet of Wormes where the Princes of Germany take up the Cross An Heroick Action of Margarite the Sister of Philip the August Queen of Hungary who takes upon her the Cross The Artifice of the Emperor who raiseth three Armies and makes use of one of them to assure himself of the Kingdom of Naples where he extinguishes the whole race of the Norman Princes The Arrival of the Armies by Sea and Land at Ptolemais The Truce broken by the Christians The deplorable Death of Henry Count de Champagne and King of Jerusalem Jaffa taken by Saphadin The Battle of Sidon gained against Saphadin by the Princes of the Crusade The greatest part of the Cities of Palestine taken by the Christians Emri Brother of Guy de Lusignan King of Cyprus made King of Jerusalem The Siege of Thoron unhappily raised by the horrible Treason of the Bishop of Wertzbourg and his Punishment Division among the Christians The Combat of Jaffa The Death of the Emperor Henry VI. The Description of that Prince A Schism in the Empire occasions the suddain Return of the Princes of the Crusade who abandon the Holy Land to the Infidels The Death of Pope Celestin III. Innocent III. succeeds him The Elogy and Portraict of that Pope He endeavours to set up a new and General Crusade Fouques de Nevilli preacheth it in France The Elogy and character of that holy Man The Crusade is preached in England King Richard engages many of his Subjects in it The Death of that Prince and his Penitence The Counts of Champagne Blois and Flanders take upon them the Cross Their Treaty with the Venetians by the Vndertaking of Henry Dandolo Doge of Venice The Description and Elogy of that Prince The Death of the Count of Champagne Boniface Marquis of Montferrat made chief of the Crusade in his place The Death of Fouques de Nevilli A new Treaty between the Princes of the Crusade and the Venetians for the Siege of Zara. A great division upon that Subject Henry Dandolo takes upon him the Cross The Siege and Taking of Zara. The History of Isaac and the two Alexises Emperor 's of Constantinople The young Alexis desires the Assistance of the Princes of the Crusade against his Vncle Alexis Comnenius who had usurped the Imperial Throne The Speech of his Ambassadours The Treaty of the French and Venetians with this Prince for his Re-establishment A new Division upon this Subject A new Accord among the Confederate in the Isle of Corfu The Description of their Fleet and their Arrival before Constantinople BOOK II. The Condition wherein the City of Constantinople was when it was besieged by the French and Venetian Crusades The Defeat of the Vsurpers Brother-in-Law by a small Party of the French The Passage and the Battle of the Bosphorus The taking of the Castle of Galatha The Venetians force the Entry of the Port. An Assault given both by Sea and Land â—o Constantinople The Venetians take five and twenty Towers A Sally made by the Emperor Alexis with a prodigious Army and his Infamous Cowardice His Flight and the Reduction of Constantinople The Establishment of Isaac and the young Alexis A Prolongation of the Treaty for a Year between that Emperor and the Confederate Princes Their Exploits in Thracia A Dreadful Fire at Constantinople The History of the horrible Treason of Murtzuphle The young Alexis suffers himself to be surprized by the Artifices of that Traytor and breaks with the Confederates The Speech of Conon de Bethune to the Emperors to oblige them to accomplish their Treaty War declared against them upon their refusal The Greeks attempt in Vain to burn the Venetian Fleet. The Description of that wild Fire The consequent Treasons of Murtzuphle The Election of Cannabus The double Treason of Murtzuphle who makes himself be proclaimed Emperor The Death of Isaac and of the young Alexis whom Murtzuphle strangles with his own Hands The Confederates make War against the Tyrant His Defeat by Henry the Brother of Count Baldwin The first Assault given upon the Port side of Constantinople wherein the Confederates are repulsed The Second Assault by which the City is taken by plain Force The Flight of Murtzuphle The Greeks lay down their Arms. The City plundered and the Booty there gained The Relicks from thence transported to several Churches of Europe Baldwin Earl of Flanders chosen Empeperor The Policy of the Venetians in the Election of that Prince His Elogy and Character The Election of a Patriarch The Destribution of the Provinces of the Empire The happy Beginning of the Emperor who reduceth all Thracia Murtzuphle surprized and betrayed by the Old Alexis who puts out his Eyes The Flight of Alexis and the taking of Murtzuphle He is brought back to Constantinople where for the Punishment of his Crimes he is thrown headlong from a high Columne Old Alexis taken His End The Glorious Success of this Crusade BOOK III. The unfortunate Success of those who abandoned the Confederates to pass into Syria The Care of the Pope for Constantinople who sends Doctors from Paris to reduce the Schismaticks The Death of Mary the Empress Wife of Baldwin The Death of Isabella Queen of Jerusalem The Princess Mary her Daughter succeeds in the Realm and Marries Count John de Brienne The Relation how that Prince and Count Gautier his Brother conquered the Kingdom of Naples The Exploits of King John de Brienne The Pope procures him Aid A piteous Adventure of some young Men who by a strange Illusion took upon them the Cross The design of Pope Innocent to procure a general Crusade favoured by the Victory of Philip the August against the Emperor Otho The Battle of Bovines The Relation of the Council of Lateran where the Crusade is Decreed The Pope himself Preacheth it His death in that Holy Exercise A Fable concerning his Purgatory The Election of Pope Honorius III of that Name His Zeal and Industry to promote the Crusade Andrew King of Hungary the Head thereof The Princes that Accompanied him and their Voyage Their Conjunction with King John de Brienne Their Expedition against Coradin The Description of Thabor and the Relation of the Siege of that Fortress which had been built there by Coradin The Return of the King into Hungary The Arrival of the Northern Fleet of the Crusades under the Earl of Holland The Relation of their Adventures and Exploits against the Moors in Portugal The Siege and Battle of Alcazar The Victory of the Crusades Their Voyage to Ptolemais The Reasons of the Resolution which they took to attack Egypt The Description of Damiata The Account of that memorable Siege which lasted eighteen Months The Attack and taking of the Tower of Pharus A Description of certain Engines of a new Invention The Death of Saphadin upon the News of the taking of that Place His
their Empire and delivering them into the Hands of the Philistins Chaldeans and other Infidel People who were the Executioners of his Justice so did he punish the horrible Crimes of the Christians whom he had brought into Palestine by the victorious Arms of the first Crusades by depriving them of that Kingdom and abandoning them to be Slaves to those People whom their Ancestors had with so much Glory so often vanquished But farther to give some natural Reason for this Change the first Conquerors of Palestine were warlike and most valiant Men accustomed to Fatigues and such as frankly exposed themselves to all manner of Dangers and were never known to recoil let the number of their Enemies which they were to incounter be never so Prodigious they esteemed it a Happiness to dye Martyrs in combating gloriously for the Faith and for the Name of Jesus Christ And the Orientals against whom they fought were at that time little skilled in Wars cowardly undisciplin'd and half-armed People who were not able to abide above one Shock as having nothing to trust to but their Bows and Arrows which they shot at Rovers and commonly rather slying than fighting Whereas on the contrary the Christians having exchanged with the Infidels for all their Vices had also gotten their Cowardice their esseminate and idle way of Living loving Repose and Pleasure and hating the trouble of War and the Severity of that Discipline which is so necessary to a Soldier and which they wholly neglected The Turks and Sarasins on the other hand were become mighty Warlike under their victorious Sultans Sanguin Noradin Syracon and Saladin who having learnt at their Cost to arm themselves like the Europeans with good Curiasses and strong Lances had also taught them to follow their Colours year 1188 to fight hand to hand and had inspired them with Courage and Considence both by their Examples and the fortunate Success of their Arms. And in short The Conquerors of the Holy Land under the first Kings were under one sole Head who uniformly governed the whole Body of his Estate and Army which acted according to the Measures which he prescribed with a perfect Unity without Division without diversity of Interests Inclinations and Opinions as if the whole Army had been as one Man according to the Expression so frequent in the Scripture Whereas the Turks and Sarasins were then divided almost into as many particular Estates as there were Cities in Palestine and Syria and therefore could raise no great Armies but what must be commanded by many Chiefs who for the most part never accorded very well by reason of the diversity of their Opinions and Interests which made them almost continually be overthrown though they were incomparably the stronger in number of Soldiers than their Conquerors But upon the falling of the Realm the Christian Army was composed of the Troops of diverse Chiefs those of the King of Jerusalem the Prince of Antioch the Earl of Tripolis and the great Masters of the Temple and the Hospital who all of them had different Prospects and Designs which did not at all agree one with the other On the contrary all the Estates of the Infidels bordering upon the Christians Egypt Arabia Mesopotamia the Realms of Damascus and Cilicia were at that time united into one single Monarchy under the great Saladin and so their Army had but one Captain and Head who being most Wise and Valiant gave one Impression and a constant regular Movement to this great Body which did not act but according to his positive Orders And certainly it is most particularly this Unity which hath always made great Armies Victorious as may be seen in all Ages and Histories but was never more manifested than in this last Campaign which was so glorious and so advantageous to the King of France For on the one part the Emperour and the Spaniards and great part of the Princes of the Circles of the Empire and the Hollanders being leagued and confederated against him had raised very strong and numerous Armies to invade France both by Sea and Land On the other side that King alone without imploying any other Power but his own and giving out himself those Orders which were with Fidelity Executed always prevented them I do not say from entring but so much as approaching France Beat them thoroughly to the very Islands and in Person by main Force conquered one fair and large Province and his Army alone in Flanders under his auspicious Fortune commanded by the famous Prince of Conde having to oppose them three great Armies of the Emperour the King of Spain and the Hollanders joyned in one Body under three Chieftains yet cut in pieces their Rere took their Baggage ravished from them more than one hundred Colours and shamefully chased them from before Oudenard and pursued them beyond the Scheld And there it was that their Commanders having at last the Leisure to take Breath and to complain one to another were constrained to avow by their Flight which they disguised under the name of a Retreat that as there is but one Soul in one Body to give it Life Movement and the Power to perform those admirable Operations of a Man so there ought to be but one absolute Monarch in a Kingdom and one General in an Army to procure the Felicity of the People and to inable them to triumph gloriously over all the Enemies which go about to trouble their Repose or rob them of their Happiness But after these Reflections which I have made according to my little Art in Politicks which possibly will not appear altogether Useless or at least Indivertive it is time to return to my Subject and pursue this History of the Crusade THE HISTORY OF THE CRUSADE OR The Expeditions of the Christian Princes for the Conquest of the Holy Land PART II. BOOK II. The CONTENTS of the Second Book The Death of Pope Urban III. upon the News of the Loss of Jerusalem The Decrees of Pope Gregory VIII and the Rules of the Cardinals to move God Almighty to Mercy and Compassion upon the Christians Gregory makes Peace between the Pisans and the Genoese Clement III. his Successor sends his Legats to the King of France and to the King of England The Conference at Gisors where the Archbishop of Tyre proposes the Crusade which is received by the two Kings The Ordinances which they made for the Regulation of it The War re-commences between the two Kings which hinders the Effect of the Crusade Richard Duke of Guinne joins with King Philip against his own Father The Death of Henry II. King of England His Elegy and Character The Legates propose the Crusade at the Diet at Mayence The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa there takes upon him the Cross as do many other Princes and Prelates of the Empire The Description of that Emperor His March to Thracia where he is necessitated to combat the Greeks The Character of the Greek Emperor Isaac Angelus The Reason why this
He came into France at the same time that Cardinal Henry the Bishop of Albano Legate from the Holy See arrived there And there are some Authors who assure us that Pope Clement honoured this Archbishop with the same Character and joyned him in Commission with the Cardinal to treat a Peace between the two Kings of England and France to the end they might unite in the Resolation of undertaking the War against Saladin That War which Philip the August had declared against Henry II. King of England for the Restitution of the Earldom of Vexin had been terminated by the Undertaking of Pope Vrban upon condition that the King of England as a Dependant for those Estates upon the Crown of France should in a time prefixed submit himself to the Judgment of the Court of France That Term being expired Henry not only still retained the Earldom which he was obliged to restore but also the Princess Alice the Sister of Philip who was designed to be married to Richard the Son of the King of England Philip resolved to do himself Reason for such a visible Injustice year 1188 was about to enter into Normandy with a potent Army where Henry also was expecting him with considerable Forces when the Archbishop of Tyre arrived very opportunely to suspend at least for a time the Anger of these two Princes And so it was that by the force of his Genius and his Eloquence he procured an Interview between them in a Plain between Trie and Gisors where they were used to meet when they treated one with the other The two Kings met there about the middle of January accompanied with the Princes Prelates and great Lords of both the Kingdoms And there it was that the illustrious Archbishop employed all the Power of his Eloquence and of his Wit to represent in that August Assembly The deplorable Estate into which the fatal Divisions of the Christian Princes of the East had reduced the Kingdom of Jerusalem which the first Crusades had from so many barbarous and Infidel Nations so gloriously conquered with their victorious Arms. He then remonstrated That of four puissant Estates which they had established upon the Ruins of the Mahomitan Empire and which extended the Dominions of the Christians from Cilicia to Egypt and from the Sea to the River Tygris there remained nothing to them now more than three Cities That Antioch dispairing to be able to preserve it self by its own Forces had already promised to surrender if it were not immediately relieved by those of the West That Tyre without necessary Succours was not in a condition to sustain a second Siege having in the first lost the greatest part of its Defendants That Tripolis was too weak to endure one and could no longer remain in Freedom than it pleased Saladin to present himself before it to add it to his other Conquests And that further after so lamentable a Loss as that of Jerusalem and the rest of the Holy Land there was great danger of losing also the very Hopes which remained to the Christians in those places from whence they might take a Beginning to re-establish the Kingdom of Christ Jesus if those two Kings the most potent of Christendom did not unite their Hearts and their Arms to run to the Relief of Christ and his Cause of whose only Grace and Goodness they held all which they did possess And in short he said upon that Subject so many pathetick things and in a manner so powerful and so touching that the two Princes whether they had in a former Conference which they had agreed this as one of the Articles of the Peace or that God in whose Hands are the Hearts of Kings to change them in a Moment by the extraordinary Working of his Power it is certain that they embraced one the other mutually in the Presence of the whole Assembly and did it with all the Marks of a perfect Reconciliation and a sincere and cordial Friendship as if there had never been any Subject of Discontent or Difference between them And at the same time might be heard on all sides the confused Voices of a Multitude of People who broak out into great Cries of Joy and from every Quarter was to be heard Long live King Philip Long live King Henry Let us go Let us go to this War against the Infidels under the Conduct of these two mighty Kings Let us deliver Jerusalem and extirpate the Enemies of Jesus Christ The Cross the Cross let it be given us the Sign of our Salvation and the Ruin of the Sarasins These Acclamations were also presently followed with that happy Success which attended the Legation of this brave Archbishop of Tyre that the two Kings first presenting themselves to receive the Cross from the hands of the Legates they were followed by Richard the Son of the King of England Duke of Guienne and Earl of Poitou who had voluntarily taken it before the Loss of Jerusalem but would now anew receive it from the hands of the Legates As also did Philip Earl of Flanders the Duke of Burgundy the Earls of Blois Dreux Champagne Perche Clermont Barr Beaumont Nevers James Lord of Avesnes and almost all the great Lords of France England and Flanders who were present at this Assembly And to distinguish the one from the other it was ordained that the French should take a Red Cross being the same they bore in the first Crusade the English a white one and the Flemmings one of Green It is said that at the same time there appeared one in Heaven bright and shining which helped to inflame the Devotion of those who took up the other as if God himself had manifestly called them to this Holy War by a sacred Signal from above And to render the Memory of so great an Action Eternal a Cross was erected and a Church built in the midst of the Field of this Conference which was ever after called The Holy Field year 1188 After this the Kings to support the Charges of this War and to prevent the Disorders which had been so injurious to the former Crusades resolved to publish these following Ordinances That all Persons who had not undertaken the Cross of what Quality soever even the Ecclesiasticks except the Chartreux the Bernardines and the Religious of Fontevraud should pay one Tenth of their Revenues and of their Moveables except their Arms their Habits Books Jewels and consecrated Vtensils and Ornaments which was afterwards called by the name of Saladin's Tenth by reason that it was raised upon the Occasion of making this War with Saladin That the Crusades should have liberty to raise a Tenth of all their Subjects who did not go to this War And that the Husbandmen who undertook to go and take the Cross without the Leave of their Lords first obtained should not be exempted from this Impost That all Interest upon Money lent should cease for all the time that the Debters were upon Service in the Holy Land That
all Persons might mortgage their Inheritances or their Benefices for three Years during which time the Creditors should peaceably enjoy them whatever happened to the Owners That all unlawful Games of Chance all Swearing Blasphemy and Disorders should be severely punished To which were also added very admirable Orders for the Regulation of Excess in Apparel in the Tables and the Retinues of the Crusades and above all that except some old Landresses there should no Women be suffered to go along with the Army as had been permitted in the former Crusades and which had occasioned great Disorders These Ordinances were received and solemnly published in both the Kingdoms where an infinite number of People enrolled themselves for the Cross some out of Zeal and true Devotion others to be exempted from the Tax which though it was consented to by the Bishops in the Parliament of Paris which was held this Year about Mid-Lent yet there were some Ecclesiasticks who declared themselves against it tartly enough Among the rest Peter de Blois one of the most knowing Men of his Age writ against it to Henry de Dreux Bishop of Orleans the King's Nephew in very hard Terms pressing him to oppose this Ordinance of the King which he said was a Breach of the Liberties and Privileges of the Ecclesiasticks from whom he pretended no other Aids ever were or ought to be exacted besides their Suffrages and Prayers But this Advice of this Archdeacon of Bath in England though otherwise an able Man prevailed nothing upon the Bishops of France whom he something too liberally accused of following too gentle and easie a Conduct For they as well as the Bishops of England with great Justice and Reason as well as Piety believed that such a part of the Goods of the Church might very lawfully be employed upon such an holy Occasion for the Deliverance of the Sepulchre of Jesus Christ and so many poor Christian Slaves and in a manner all the Oriental Churches from the Oppression and Tyranny of the Infidels See now how Zeal when it is a little over-heated easily becomes so false and foolish as to blind Men to that degree that they are not able to see that for good Sense which common Reason alone without other Theology discovers so plainly to the whole World Thus then all things were disposed for a happy Beginning to this Crusade if the Division which in a little time after broke out again between the two Kings had not turned those Arms against Christians which they had before prepared to fight against the Sarasins Among other Articles which were agreed upon at this famous Conference in the Field of Gisors it was ordained That all Matters in difference on one part and the other should remain in the same Estate wherein they stood before and that no one should enterprize any thing against his Neighbour till such time as the Holy War were determined In this time Richard Duke of Guienne and Earl of Poitiers to the prejudice of a Treaty so solemnly made concluded and ratified renewing the ancient Quarrel betwixt him and Count Raymond of Tholouse threw himself suddenly into that Count's Territories and presently took from him Cahors and Moissack Philip in mighty Indignation for this Action and moved with the Complaints of the Count who came to implore his Succour as his Soveraign immediately made a powerful Diversion in the Provinces of the English where he took Castle-Roux Busencais Argemon Levroux Montrichard and all the places which the English at that time possessed in Avergne and Berry Henry on his part did not fail to make haste to his Son's Assistance who went to joyn him in Normandy year 1188 Philip also marched thither with his Victorious Army where he obtained great Advantages against the English till at length a Conference for Peace was held near Bonmoulin at which the Earls of Flanders and Champaigne with divers other Princes continually importuned the King to conclude protesting to him that otherwise they would desert him for that they were resolved to accomplish their Vow in going to the Holy War There never was any Conference managed with greater Dexterity and Policy than this was by King Philip For knowing perfectly the Humour and the Interests of the King of England and his Son he only demanded that the Princess Alice his Sister whom the late King his Father had designed to be married to Richard and who was kept in Custody by Henry should be put into the hands of her intended Husband since they were now both of Age and that Richard should be declared joynt King of England with his Father as the deceased Prince Henry had been who had married Margaret the eldest Sister of the Princess Alice Henry against whom the Prince his eldest Son supported by the French had formerly made a most cruel War fearing lest Richard who was no less ambitious than his Brother should create him the same trouble or possibly having his Soul pre-possessed with another Passion less excusable but more strong than either Fear or Policy would by no means agree to these two Articles So that this Conference produced no other Effects but only a Truce of a few Months during the Winter and that which Philip had foreseen did not fail to happen to his advantage as well as according to his Expectation for Richard who was of a Temper extream ambitious and turbulent was so exasperated with this Denyal that he instantly abandoned his Father and passed into the Party and Interests of Philip did him Homage for all the Lands which he held in France and promised him an inviolable Fidelity and to serve him against all Persons whatsoever even his own Father as he did And indeed as soon as the short Truce which had been made came to be expired which it did the next Spring the King with all his Forces joyned with those of Richard who had drawn to his Party besides the Gascons and Poitenins his Vassals many Angevins and Bretons marched against Henry who lay with a very few Troops at Saumur But the Cardinal d' Anaigne the Pope's Legate who succeeded in the place of the Cardinal d'Albano who was dead not long before negotiated so happily with the two Kings that they promised to meet in Whitsun-Week near Ferte-Benard and there amicably to treat before him and the Archbishops of Reims Bourges Rean and Canterbury who were to decide all their Differences Whereupon these Prelates instantly pronounced an Anathema against all those of what Quality soever except the Persons of the two Kings who should any way go about to obstruct the Conclusion of a Peace so necessary to all Christendom and without which the Crusade would become wholly ineffectual The Kings and Richard Duke of Guienne and Earl of Poitiers accompanied with all the Great Men of both Realms being come to the place designed for the Conference Philip demanded as before That his Sister the Princess Alice who was affianced to Duke Richard should be delivered to
him by King Henry who contrary to all Justice had kept her from him And that John the third Son of King Henry usually called Sans-Terre Without Land to whom it seems the King to take off that ignominious Name had given his Interest in Ireland should also take up the Cross Henry on the contrary persisted obstinately in his Protestations that he would never suffer this Marriage although he said he would give his Consent or at least made that Pretence that the Princess should marry John the youngest Brother of Richard knowing well that that fierce and haughty Prince would never suffer tamely that Indignity to be put upon him Whereupon Philip seeing there was nothing further to be expected from that Conference broke it up and protested that he would do himself Justice by his Arms since he was refused it by Reason But the Cardinal d' Anaigne without considering that the Injury proceeded from him who obstinately refused to accomplish a Treaty so solemnly sworn whereas he ought to have pressed the King of England to keep his Promise and to restore the Princess Alice to her designed Husband year 1188 and not to put such an invincible Obstacle to the Peace by so manifest and unjust an Infraction of the Treaty fell upon Philip the August and spoke to him with a surprizing Confidence in such Language as without doubt Pope Clement had made no part either of his Commission or Instructions For he told him plainly That if he did not entirely accord Matters with the King of England he would put the whole Realm of France under an Interdict To which Philip who had a great Soul and who was perfectly acquainted with the Extent both of the Bounds of his own Power and that of the Church which are two Orders very different and which have both their just Limits answered him very readily That he did not in the least stand in fear of that Sentence and that being most unjust as there could be no doubt but it was it must therefore be mill and void That Rome never had any Right to make any Judgment against the Realm of France whether the King should take up Arms or not either to oblige his Enemies to do him Reason or to chastise his Rebellious Subjects And for any thing more the Sentence seemed to be the Product of English Sterling and not to proceed from a dis-interessed Legate whose Duty was to perform the Office of a common Father in the place of the Pope whom he was sent to represent This was to speak like a great King who without Emotion knew how to maintain the Rights of his Crown independent from any other but God alone and to preserve his Soveraign Authority without shocking that of the Church whose Kingdom is wholly spiritual and which it holds from Jesus Christ and therefore as he hath assured us is not of this World But Prince Richard who though he had seen as many Years as Philip was not by far so moderate nor so much Master of his Passion as to be able to contain himself in such reasonable Terms For finding himself particularly interessed in this Procedure of the Legate which wholly ruined all his Pretensions he was so transported that running furiously upon him with his Sword in his Hand without considering where he was or what he was about to do he had undoubtedly run him through if the Archbishops and Lords who assisted at the Conference had not all together rushed upon this violent Prince to stop his Fury and thereby given opportunity to the Legate half dead with Fear to secure himself by Flight from the greatest Danger that ever he had run in all his Life The Preliminary Discourse of the Peace being thus broken Philip who was powerfully armed pursued his Point so vigorously that he took Ferte-Benard Montfort Beaumont and some other places and afterwards attacked and by Force carried Mans from whence Henry who was retired thither did not without great difficulty escape to Chinon after having lost the greatest part of his Men in that Retreat which was little better than a Flight His Son John also whom among all his Children he loved the most tenderly abandoned him to joyn with Philip who at the Head of his Army passing the first over a Ford upon the Loir took Tours by Assault After which the King of England being in fear of his own Person and having no assured place of Retreat was forced to submit to the Law of the Vanquisher and accept such a Peace as he would please to give him which was upon these following Conditions That Henry should pay to Philip twenty thousand Marks in Silver for the Expences of the War That he should put the Princess Alice into the Hands of such as should be appointed by the King and Prince Richard who was to marry her after his Return from the Holy Land That the two Kings and Prince Richard should Rendesvouz in the Mid-lent of the Year following at Vezelay to begin together the Voyage which they were obliged to by their Vow That the Vassals of the King of England should take an Oath of Fealty to Richard and that those of them who had followed him in this War should not be obliged to render their Homage to Henry till such time as they were to go this Voyage to the Holy Land That the Great Men of England should promise to abandon the King in case he should fail in the performance of any one of these Articles and that in the Interim Philip and Richard should hold certain Towns in Hostage till such time as he should fully and truly have performed what was comprehended in the Treaty It is reported that as the two Kings were in a Treaty in the open Field towards the end of June between Tours and Chinon concerning the Articles of this Peace year 1189 which seemed very insupportable to Henry there happened two days successively two most terrible Claps of Thunder although the Heavens were so serene that there was not the least speck of a Cloud to be seen in the Sky at which Henry was so dreadfully amazed that if some of his Followers had not instantly run to him to support him he had fallen from his Horse and that being thereupon struck with mortal Apprehensions of some terrible Punishment from Heaven if he persisted longer to retard the Crusade by refusing the Peace he accorded to Philip whatsoever he demanded and immediately signed the Treaty He had nevertheless a few Moments after so many terrible Assaults of Shame and Grief upon his Soul and was in particular so sensibly touched with the undutiful Actions of his own Children who had from being one of the greatest and most glorious Princes in the Universe reduced him into that piteous Estate to comply so meanly and tamely to what was imposed upon him that he presently fell desperately sick and in three days time dyed in the sixty first Year of his Age upon the Octave of the Apostles St. Peter
to Sea in Easter-Week and after it had been soundly beaten with a Tempest which they say was miraculously calmed by Thomas of Canterbury who had raised many worse in his Life according to the credulous Humour of those Ages it being affirmed by some that he appeared upon the Deck of the great Ship called the London that Vessel came up with Cape St. Vincent over against the City of Silves nine other Ships entring the River of Lesbon where they came to an Anchor The Miramolin or King of the Sarasins of the Western Africa at that time made War with a potent Army against Sancho King of Portugal whom he had surprized and who with an inconsiderable number of Troops had put himself into Santaren This Prince believing that Heaven had sent him the Succour of these Strangers year 1190 as it had before done to the late King Alphonso his Father requested them to help him in this his pressing Necessity Whereupon five hundred of the bravest of them immediately went into his Service whilst that fourscore of the most valiant young Gentlemen who were aboard the London put themselves into Sylves for the Defence of that City But Fortune without giving them the liberty of drawing their Swords put an end to this War by the suddain Death of Mirmalion after which his Army immediately disbanded it self The English then returning to their Vessels sound there sixty three more of their Ships who had put in there to refresh themselves and all that great City in Arms against their People who had committed great Insolencies and Disorders against the Inhabitants insomuch that Blood had been drawn on both sides divers Houses plundred and burnt and some of the English committed to Prison But all these Matters being calmed by the Prudence of King Sancho who knew very well how to pacifie both Parties the English took their leave the 25th Day of July and the same Day joyning three and thirty great Ships with which Admiral William Fortz attended them at the Mouth of the Tagus they prosperously pursued their Voyage till they came to an Anchor before Salernum There it was that King Richard met his Fleet and the 30th of September arrived at the Port of Messina where he was received by the French and Sicilians with all possible Honour and with all the Marks of a sincere and perfect Friendship But this was not of any long Continuance and the good Understanding which at first appeared among these three Nations was presently interrupted and broken by two great Quarrels which Richard had and which were the Cause that the two Kings instead of presently pursuing their intended Voyage were obliged to defer it till the following Year and to pass all the Winter at Messina The manner was thus William king of Sicily being dead without Issue the Sicilians who were resolved to have a King of the Race of their Norman Princes placed his Cousin Tancred the Natural Son of Roger Duke of Pavia upon the Throne notwithstanding that before his Death William had caused Queen Constance his Aunt the Wife of the Emperor Henry VI. to be acknowledged their Queen and had declared her to be the Inheretrix of the Crown Now Richard without pretending to have any part in this great Difference between the Emperor and Tancred only desired of this new King that he would send to him Jane his Sister the Daughter of Henry II. King of England the Widow of the deceased King William that he would restore to him her Dowry with several other things to which he pretended and above all an hundred Ships which the late King had promised to his Father-in Law King Henry for his Voyage to the Levant Tancred immediately sent the Queen to him but deferring to give him Satisfaction in his other Pretensions Richard who was resolved that he should do him Reason seized upon two strong Places which lay upon the Straits This gave such a Jealousie to the Messineses who naturally are not too much given to forbearing that they took Arms against the English and beat them out of the City and the English no less naturally impatient of Beating but more hot and brave than the Sicilians ran immediately to their Arms and issuing in Battalia out of their Camp repulsed these forward Burghers into the City and put themselves into a Posture to attack it by Force There was however a few Moments Truce agreed to by the Interposition of Philip the August who endeavoured to accommodate this Difference between them But Richard having discovered or at least believing that the Messineses had an Intention to surprize him during the Preliminary Treaty of the Peace began the Assault upon the Town with so much Fury that he carried the Place but he left it again presently after he had received the Excuses of the Magistrates and the Satisfaction which he demanded of them out of Respect as he said to King Philip who had his Quarter in the City and who was not at all satisfied with these violent Proceedings of King Richard For this Reason Richard to strengthen himself against him by the Alliance of Tancred concluded a Peace with that King who offered him besides the Ships twenty thousand Ounces of Gold to quit all his other Pretensions and twenty thousand more for the Portion of his Daughter year 1190 who was to be married to Arthur Duke of Bretany Nephew to King Richard So that the Conclusion of this Quarrel was the Foundation of another incomparably more dangerous which hereby grew between the kings of France and England For Tancred perceiving that the French King had no reason to be satisfied with this Marriage which was surreptitious concluded without his Knowledge and which directly shocked all his Interests endeavoured to link himself more closely with the English as he did and to exasperate them against King Philip. And truly finding that these two Princes were already imbroiled upon the Subject of the Taking Messina where Richard having caused his Standards to be planted Philip sent to have them taken down He went to the King of England and shewed him the Letters which he assured him came from the King of France wherein he offered him the Assistance of all his Forces if he would make War with Richard who he said had no other Thoughts but to amuse him with the Shew of Peace thereby with more Ease to seize upon his Realm Richard although he was extreamly provoked with this Procedure yet was very well pleased to have so specious a Pretence to break with Philip. Philip complaining with Justice enough reciprocally against him that having so long since affianced his Sister Alice he had now altered his Thoughts and was designed to marry Berengera the Daughter of Garcias King of Navarre following therein the Counsel of Queen Eleonor who her self had conducted that Princess thither There seemed great Foundation for the Complaints on either side and their Spirits were wound up to that degree as indangered the Breaking of the holy
should fail he should be sure of the third and that though he lost two Thirds of his Alms upon two false Religions yet the other falling upon the true he should undoubtedly find Advantage by it for the good of his Soul Poor well meaning Prince He did not know that there is a vast difference between Temporal and Eternal Goods And that though those are submitted to the Empire of Fortune which gives or takes them according as she pleases to turn her sporting Wheel yet in these it is far otherwise and that Eternal Goods are never exposed to Hazard and Adventure but they are certainly lost The Death of Saladin presently made a Change in the Face of Affairs throughout all Asia For having divided his Dominions among his twelve Sons without leaving any thing to his Brother Saphadin who had most faithfully served him in all his Wars This Prince valiant and ambitious resolved to revenge himself upon the first Opportunity nor was it long before it was offered and by him laid hold of For his Nephew to whose Share in the Distribution Egypt fell being slain by a Fall from his Horse as he was hunting Saphadin with Ease made himself Master of that fair Dominion and presently raising a powerful Army all the Soldiers of Saladin who had served under him and esteemed him infinitely running in to him he attempted the Ruin of his other Nephews and in a short time either by Force of Arms or by Treachery of their Subjects he overthrew them all year 1195 except the Sultan of Alepo to whom his Subjects always preserved a most inviolable Fidelity Thus whilst the Infidels armed one against another and thought of nothing but how to destroy themselves it was believed in Europe that a fair Occasion was offered for the Recovery of the Realm of Jerusalem now almost entirely lost which gave occasion to a new Crusade which was also followed by three others as in the ensuing History may be seen The End of the Second Part. THE HISTORY OF THE CRUSADE OR The Expeditions of the Christian Princes for the Conquest of the Holy Land PART III. BOOK I. The CONTENTS of the First Book The little Disposition which was found in Europe to this fourth Crusade The Pope resolves at last to address himself to the Emperor Henry VI. The Diet of Wormes where the Princes of Germany take up the Cross An Heroick Action of Margarite the Sister of Philip the August Queen of Hungary who takes upon her the Cross The Artifice of the Emperor who raiseth three Armies and makes use of one of them to assure himself of the Kingdom of Naples where he extinguishes the whole Race of the Norman Princes The Arrival of the Armies by Sea and Land at Ptolemaïs The Truce broken by the Christians The deplorable Death of Henry Count de Champagne and King of Jerusalem Jassa taken by Saphadin The Battle of Sidon gained against Saphadin by the Princes of the Crusade The greatest part of the Cities of Palestine taken by the Christians Emri Brother of Guy de Lusignan King of Cyprus made King of Jerusalem The Seige of Thoron unhappily raised by the horrible Treason of the Bishop of Wertzbourg and his Punishment Division among the Christians The Combat of Jaffa The Death of the Emperor Henry VI. The Description of that Prince A Schism in the Empire occasions the suddain Return of the Princes of the Crusade who abandon the Holy Land to the Insidels The Death of Pope Celestin III. Innocent III. succeeds him The Elegy and Portraict of that Pope He endeavours to set up a new and general Crusade Fouques de Nevilli preacheth it in France The Elegy and Character of that holy Man The Crusade is preached in England King Richard engages many of his Subjects in it The Death of that Prince and his Penitence The Counts of Champagne Blois and Flanders take upon them the Cross Their Treaty with the Venetians by the Vndertaking of Henry Dandolo Doge of Venice The Description and Elegy of that Prince The Death of the Count of Champagne Boniface Marquis of Montferrat made Chief of the Crusade in his place The Death of Fouques de Nevilli A new Treaty between the Princes of the Crusade and the Venetians for the Seige of Zara A great Division upon that Subject Henry Dandolo takes upon him the Cross The Siege and Taking of Zara. The History of Isaac and the two Alexises Emperors of Constantinople The young Alexis desires the Assistance of the Princes of the Crusade against his Vnkle Alexis Commenius who had usurped the Imperial Throne The Speech of his Ambassadors The Treaty of the French and Venetians with this Prince for his Re-establishment A new Division upon this Subject A new Accord among the Confederate in the Isle of Corfu The Description of their Fleet and their Arrival before Constantinople year 1194 THere was very little probability for the Christian Princes of the East to hope for any Assistance from the Princes of Europe where there was now not the least favourable Inclination towards the Holy War The Kings of England and France upon whose Protection they had always chiefly depended were so far from uniting as they did before year 1195 in such a glorious Design they were engaged in a most cruel War which was only discontinued for some time by little Truces which served to no other purpose but to give them leisure to take Breath a little and thereby to put themselves into a Condition to attack each other with greater Fury than before The Emperor was wholly taken up with putting himself into the Possession of the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily in Right of his Wife Constantia the Empress In pursuit of which after the death of Tancred he extinguished the whole Race of those brave Normans who had so generously conquered and so gloriously possessed those Realms for above one Age. Pope Celestin III. wasted with Age and Fatigues being now advanced to ninety Years was in no Condition to undertake so difficult a Task as the Forming of a new Crusade And besides he was extreamly embroiled with the Emperor whom he had excommunicated for the Violence which he had used to the King of England so that he had little hope to engage him in the Enterprise Nevertheless after he was assured of the death of Saladin and the great Revolutions which that had made in his Empire which he understood by Letters from Henry Dandolo Doge of Venice he applied himself with the same Zeal which his Predecessors had done to form a Holy League among the Christian Princes to make advantage of this fair Opportunity for the re-gaining of Jerusalem For this purpose he sent his Legates throughout all Europe He did all that lay in his power to procure Peace between the two Kings of France and England and conjured them at least to send some Assistance to Palestine if the posture of their Affairs was such as would not permit them to go thither in Person to
done an insinite deal of Mischief in the World And after this there is nothing that thou canst do to me which I fear And since I am assured of thy Death I shall with Joy be ready to receive my own though it comes accompanied with all the Terrors and cruel Torments that can be inslicted on me And I replied the King immediately will for the Love of God that thou shalt live And thereupon he caused him presently to be set at liberty commanding that an hundred Pounds Sterling should be bestowed upon him and straitly prohibiting all his People to do him any Injury But presently after the death of the King the Lieutenant General of his Army causing him to be seized made him be hanged and roasted alive in a most barbarous and horrible manner At his Death the King commanded a good part of his Treasure to be distributed among his Domesticks and the Poor He ordered that his Body should be interred at Fontevraud at the Feet of his Father as it were to make some honourable Reparation by this little Humility at his Death for the ill Treatment which he had given him during his Life He bequeathed his Heart to the Church of our Lady at Roan which he had always particularly cherished And for his Soul he entirely submitted it to the Divine Justice offering himself after such an exemplary Repentance to suffer the Pains of Purgatory even till the Day of Judgment for the Expiation of his Crimes It is not my Province to judge of what it pleaseth God to determine and ordain but this is certain that three and thirty Years after his Death Henry Bishop of Rochester in England preaching after he had given holy Orders the Saturday before the Passion-Sunday on which Day the Church begins the Service with those words of Isaiah Ho! Every one that thirsteth come to the Waters saith the Lord Come and drink with Joy In the midst of his Sermon as if it had been by a suddain Enthusiasm he cried out Rejoyce my Brethren the Soul of the glorious King Richard after having till this time been purified like Gold in the Furnace is now passed into Heaven And he affirmed it with such an assured Air exposing to every Person all the Circumstances of the Revelation which he pretended to have had that the Authority of a Prelate who was known to be a most vertuous and learned Man and who was never accused for a Visionary made very many wise People believe that without Weakness they might give Credit to it However it be it is not so much upon these sort of Revelations which are liable to be doubted as upon the manner of the Death of this great Prince that one may reasonably found a Belief of his Salvation However I thought fit to recount these edifying Particularities of the Death of this King who had so great a Share in these Crusades that so Princes may understand that when they have had the happiness to render unto God any considerable Service by any Heroick Action as did this King Richard in being the first that took upon him the Cross in this Holy War where he performed so many brave things they have great reason to hope that the Divine Goodness which is never slow in rewarding the meanest Services will recompense them by the greatest of all Favours in permitting those to die well who have employed their Lives in his Service and for his Glory year 1199 In this time Fouques de Nevilli continued his preaching the Crusade with a most wonderful Success and after he had run through abundance of Provinces distributing an infinite number of Crosses among the People he at last happily sinished his Enterprise by the Engagement of two great Princes in his Design who could not but by their Example draw after them a great number of considerable Persons These two Princes were Theobald IV. Count de Champagne Brother to Henry II. King of Jerusalem who died by the unfortunate Accident at Ptolemais and Lewis his Consin-german Count de Blois and Chartres both of them nearly related to I hilip the August both by the Father and the Mother They were both young and both passionate of Glory And Theobald who was a magnificent Prince that he might declare himself with more Splendor and draw after him more Persons of Quality published a Tournament to be held at his Castle of Escri upon the River Aisne in Advent of that Year 1199. whither the principal Gentry of the Neighbouring Provinces assembled themselves to be Sharers in those Manly Exercises There it was that the brave Count Theobald amidst those noble Exercises of Chivalry which the French and particularly the Counts de Champagne have always so much delighted in resolving to pass magnificently from that gallant Representation of War to that true and holy War which he was about to undertake in most solemn manner took upon him the Cross together with the Count de Blois his Cousin They were immediately followed by two Lords of extraordinary Merit and high Reputation the famous Simon de Montfort and the valiant Renaud de Montmirail the Cousin of Count Lewis After which all those who were under any particular Obligation to these two Counts and many other Gentlemen and Barons especially of the Isle of France and of Picardy also followed their Example and took upon them the Cross The principal among these new Champions of Jesus Christ whose Names are most known and which I mention in this place reserving my self to speak of the others upon occasion of their brave Actions were Geoffry de Joinville Steward and Geoffry de Ville Hardouin Mareshal of Champagne who like a frank and generous Cavalier hath obliged Posterity with the History of this War the Counts Gautier and John de Brienne Gautier de Vignori William and Villain de Neully Erard de Montigni Manasses de l' Isle Guy de Chappes Renard de Dampierre Oliver de Rochefort Ives de Laval Anselme de Courselles Henry de Montreil Paien d'Orleans Matthew de Montmorenci Guy de Couci Robert de Malvoisin Enguerrand Hugh and Robert de Boves Counts d' Amiens to whom the Year following joyned the Counts Hugh de St. Paul Renand de Bologne and Geoffry de Perche and Stephen his Brother with divers other Lords which followed them And to take care of the spiritual Militia of this Army designed for a Holy War Garnier Bishop of Troies who had taken the Cross the Year before and Nevelon Bishop of Soissons resolved to accompany this Crusade Such a famous Action which could not fail of making a mighty noise in the World was the Parent of others great Examples being commonly very prolisick which were produced thereby in generous Minds and Hearts which were amorous of Glory The young Baldwin Earl of Flanders and Henault Nephew to the late Count Philip who died at the Siege of Acre seeing himself at liberty by the Peace of Peronne which he had concluded with Philip the August was resolved
in a Valley so deeply Sandy and loose that both the men and Horses who were soundly harrassed by the nights march had much difficulty to dragg their Legs out of this deep Sand. The Governour of Gaza who had by his Spies been advertised hereof laid himself in Ambush behind some little Hills and all of a suddain appeared upon the top of them with some of his Squadrons but without advancing as first resolving to observe the Countenance of the Christians And accordingly seeing that they made a Halt and shewed some surprize to find those People in order of Battle whom they had thought to have found asleep in their Beds he commanded some Squadrons to descend and charge them at full Speed and the light Arabian Horses running as freely upon these Sands as if they had been upon firm ground they made a furious discharge of their Arrows and then retreated to their main Body in a little time returning again in greater numbers shooting always without coming nearer than the distance of their Arrows and without danger of being pursued by the Christians who did not without difficulty advance over the heavy Sands so that wheeling and running round about the Army all day they harassed them till Night a Night that was to be spent in Arms without repose and repast and without the Possibility of advancing or retreating and in nothing but miserable trouble and waking dispair in which they were overwhelmed And indeed their Fortune was much more deplorable the next morning when the whole Army of the Sultan being joined to the Garrison of Gaza encompassed them on all sides and without fear attacking the poor Soldiers already half dead and almost unable to carry their Arms they came to charge them with the Sword and Lance. The Christians indeed performed in despight of their Fortune all that could be expected from men of Courage and infinitely above their Strength but there was a necessity that they must yield to multitude with which they were oppressed most of them being either slain or taken that miserable day Henry Count de Bar one of the most Valiant Princes of his time Simon Count de Clermont the Lords John de Barres Robert Malet Richard de Beaumont and many others of the Bravest and most remarkable men remained dead upon the place The Constable Amauri and seventy other great French Lords after having fought most courageously and by their long resistance given an opportunity to the Duke of Burgundy to make his escape were taken Prisoners and carried in Chains to Grand Caire Thus ended this unhappy Jealousie Ambition and Vain Glory which were governed by rashness and Imprudence in this fatal Encounter of our Ancient Worthies whose misfortune may teach all the Gallant men of our times that they can never be truely Brave unless their Courage be regulated by Prudence in the Commanders and Obediences in the Inferior Officers and Soldiers This unfortunate news did so astonish all the rest of the Army which was at Ascalon in no very good understanding among themselves that they presently returned to Ptolemais where the divisions which continued still among them as well as between the Sultans of Egypt and Damascus compleated the loss of all by two most Shameful Treaties with the Infidels For the Templers who had one part of the Army on their side made a Truce with Nazer Sultan of Damascus year 1240 upon condition that he should surrender to them the Castles of Beaufort and Saphet with all the Territory of Jerusalem and that they should assist him with all their Forces against Melech-Salah Sultan of Egypt who had dethroned his Brother Edel to possess himself thereof and the Hospitallers supported by the King of Navarr the Dukes of Burgundy and Bretany and the other part of the Army made a truce quite opposite to this with the Sultan of Egypt against the Sultan of Damascus After which the King of Navarr the Duke of Bretany and the greatest part of the Cusades embarking in the Port of Acre returned into their own Country almost at the same time that Richard Earl of Cornwall Brother to King Henry the third of England arrived in Palestine with good Troops of English Crusades This Prince who following the Example of his Uncle Richard Coeur de Lyon had taken the Cross with a great Party of the Nobility and Gentry of England embarked at Dover about Whitsontide and landing in France passed to Paris where he was magnificently received by St. Lewis who lodged him in his Palace and caused him to be royally treated and conducted to Lyons from whence passing by Roan to Arles where he was to be received by Count Raymond de Provence he came to Marseilles and about the middle of September he imbarked upon the Fleet which he had sent through the Straits and upon the eleventh of October in fifteen days after the departure of the King of Navarr he came to Anchor in the Road of Ptolemais The Sarasins had a strange fear upon them for this Prince whose very name was formidable to them renewing the memory of the famous Richard King of England who by his marvellous Feats of Arms was so terrible to these Infidels that the Women were wont to quiet their Children when they cried with threatning them with King Richard and the Horsemen to make a Skewish boggling Horse go forward would commonly say to him in clapping their Spurrs to him What dost think it is King Richard And certainly his Nephew wanted neither Spirit nor Courage neither Money nor Conduct to support a name so great and so terribly to the Sarasins He did all that could be expected from a very great Prince to put things into a Condition so that it might be hoped the War against the Infidels might be happily prosecuted for within three days after his arrival he caused it to be proclaimed by the sound of Trumpet through the whole City That if any one of those who remained in the Holy Land stood in need of Money he would furnish them during all the time of their Service But he quickly learnt that in the deplorable condition to which matters were reduced by the division which still continued among the principal Officers and above all the Templers and Hospitallers there was no appearance of succeeding by the way of Arms. And therefore seeing that it was impossible to bring them to any agreement and that the Sultan of Damascus did not at all observe the truce whereas he of Egypt offered to continue it with new advantages to the Christians he resolved at last by the advice of the Duke of Burgundy the great Master of the Hospital and the greatest part of the Crusades to accept of it upon these conditions That all the Prisoners an each side and especially those who were taken at the Battle of Gaza should be set at liberty and that the Christians should enjoy certain Lands which the Sultan possessed in Palestine Mean time the Earl whilest he staid for the
moment and desolated to that degree by the Mamalukes that it became a vast solitude as it still continues to this Day So little assurance is there of any thing in this World where there needs no more but one Moment to Ruin and Destroy what hath been growing a many Ages Thus Bendoedar who found no more Enemies in the Field to give the least check to his Conquests still pushed his good Fortune forward into Syria whilest the Christians of the East divided into divers Factions seemed to combine with him for their mutual destruction And in vain were any Succours expected from the West for the Assistance which the Armenians and the Tartars came to desire against the Sarasins were always either hindred or diverted by the Quarrels which continued between the Popes and the House of Suabia and which were not to be determined but by the downfal of that Noble House to raise upon its ruines that of France which consequently took up the design of that Crusade again And it is this which I am now obliged to relate for the finishing of this History of the Crusades After the Death of Frederick the Second Pope Innocent did not fail to Excommunicate Conrade the Eldest Son of that Prince because he stiled himself Emperor against William Earl of Holland whom some German Princes who were of the Pope's Party had chosen to oppose Frederick Conrade who wanting the good qualities of his Father had all the ill ones and all the fierceness the Cruelty the insatiable desire of Revenge and the implacable hatred against the Popes entred with great Forces into Italy where he was with joy received by the Gibelins and favoured by the Venetians upon whose Shipping he passed the Gulph into Pavia and having joyned the Troops of his natural Brother Mainfrey his Lieutenant General in that Realm year 1268 he reduced under his obeysance in a short time what ever had declared for the Pope and having at last taken Naples he there executed his most cruel Vengeance by the Desolation of that fair and flourishing City This so amazed the Pope Innocent who after he had struck him with the Anathema had no other Arms to which he might have recourse to oppose him that he believed he was obliged to cause a Crusade to be published against him which without doubt did not contribute much to the Success of that which proved so unfortunate against the Sarasins And at the same time he caused the two Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily to be offered first to Charles d' Anjou who would not then accept them without the consent of the King his Brother who was then in Syria and afterwards to Richard Brother to Henry the King of England but he also refused them not thinking it was at all agreeable to Justice or a good Conscience to despoil the young Prince Henry his Nephew to whom the Emperor Frederick had left for his share the Kingdom of Sicily Whilest matters stood thus Conrade who had underhand procured the Death of this little Prince his Brother that he might have his Kingdom died himself of Poison which as it was believed was given him by his Brother Mainfrey to whom as not suspecting him Guilty of his Death Conrade left the Tuition of his Son Conradin then an Infant of the Age of three Years Innocent resolving to take advantage of his Death went and presented himself before Naples where in hatred of Conrade he was received with great Applauses Mainfrey himself being surprized also submitted to him and was received with all Civil treatment But presently after throwing himself into Nocere whither the Emperor Frederick had transplanted the Sarasins of Sicily he raised an Army and took the Field and Fortune declaring her self at first in his favour he in a Battle defeated the Army of the Pope which was Commanded by the Cardinal de Fiesque the Nephew of Innocent who being then Sick when he received this News at Naples died in a few Days after Alexander the Fourth his Successor had also the same Fortune for having Excommunicated Mainfrey this Prince who from the Example of his Father had learnt not to fear these Roman Thunderbolts Marched directly against the Pontifical Army which had taken the Field under the Conduct of Cardinal Vbald and he not being so great a Captain as his Enemy also lost a Battle which was fought between them Hereupon Mainfrey fierce with these two Victories and sure of the Favour of the Populace which always follows the strongest side caused himself to be Proclaimed King of Naples and Sicily with as much ease as he had with dexterity caused the report to be spread of the Death of the little Conradin his Nephew After which he lead his Victorious Army into the Ecclesiastick Estates where finding little resistance he seized upon the County of Fondi and his Partisans being animated by the report of his Victories the Gibelin Faction became presently the most powerful but principally in Lombardy Tuscany and even in Rome it self Alexander astonished with this Progress and fearing that he should at last fall under the Power of such a formidable Enemy had recourse to the King of England and following the Example of Innocent he offered him the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily for his Son Edmund to whom he also sent the Investiture of them and to oblige that King to undertake the enterprise he absolved him from the Vow which he had made in taking the Cross to be of the Crusade against the Sarasins in the East by changing it into that which he caused to be Preached every where against Mainfrey Also fearing lest the Partisans of the House of Suabia should place Conradin upon the Imperial Throne in the room of Count William who had been slain in the War against the Frieslanders he sent Prohibitions to all the Electors requiring them under pain of Excommunication not to chuse that young Prince But all this which signified just nothing against Mainfrey did a World of mischief to the Crusade which was designed against the Sarasins The Parliament which the King of England had called at London upon the subject of the Neopolitan War would give the King no Money and afterwards all the great Men of the Realm happening to be Embroiled with the Royal House this Project of the Pope's did not Succeed And for Germany one part of the Princes having chosen for their Emperor Alphonso King of Castile and the other Richard Earl of Cornwall year 1268 Brother to the King of England there arose a Schism in the Empire which occasioned mighty Troubles and Disorders there So that Italy Spain England and Germany having so many troublesome Affairs upon their hands there remained only France in a condition to serve the Holy See to any purpose in this occasion and all Christendom indeed against the Infidels For this reason therefore Vrban the fourth the Successor of Pope Alexander having again vainly tried the way of a Crusade against Mainfrey which for want of
this Reason therefore passing from one Extreme to another he Disrobed himself of all his Authority and made the little Baldwin the Fifth his Nephew year 1182 be crowned King an Infant of about five Years of Age the Son of his Sister Sybilla by the Marquis of Montferrat her first Husband leaving the Government of the Kingdom to the Earl of Tripolis the Man whom he had before most disgraced and who was the declared Enemy of Earl Guy against whom he was so incensed year 1182 that he had recourse to Arms to be Revenged on him But these Matters were composed by the Prudence of William Archbishop of Tyre great Chancellor of the Realm year 1183 who found out Expedients to patch up a kind of Accord between these two quarrelling Lords Then it was Resolved to send with all speed a great Ambassage into the West to desire a quick and powerful Assistance against Saladin who now began to push his Conquests even into Palestine For this Purpose Choice was made of Heraclius the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the two great Masters of the Temple and the Hospital who were then the two most considerable Men of the Holy Land both in regard of the Number and the Valor of the Knights of these two Orders who were now become most Powerful and most Famous throughout all Christendom These Ambassadors Arrived happily at the Port of Brindes but their Negotiation was not answerably happy to that of their Voyage For the different Interests of the Christian Princes at that time were such as would not permit them to ingage in an Enterprise of such Difficulty as was the Leading of an Army of Crusades into Palestine as the Ambassadors desired William King of Sicily was ingaged in a War against the Cruel Andronicus to take Vengeance upon that Tyrant who had horribly Massacred all the Latins that were at Constantinople that so he might with greater Facility usurp the Imperial Throne by putting to Death the young Alexis the Son of Manuel Having therefore been able to procure nothing more from this Prince besides great Promises for the future they crossed through Italy to Verona where Pope Lucius and the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa held a great Assembly of Princes and Prelates to determine the Differences between them and to settle the Affairs of Italy The Emperor who was absolutely resolved to re-settle his Authority which the Wars during the Schism which had been made with the Papal See had so much weakned gave them nothing but fair Words and great Hopes and for the Pope as he ever distrusted the Romans who not long before had Revolted from him he was able to do no more than to give the Ambassadors his Letters to the Kings of England and France wherein he exhorted them to this Enterprise as Alexander the Third his Predecessor had before to little Purpose done The Patriarch therefore and the great Masters of the Hospitallers after having performed their last Duty to the Master of the Temple who Died at Verona passed into France There they were most magnificently Received and Treated by the Order of the King Philip Augustus at Paris to whom they presented the Keys of the Holy City of the Tower of David and the Holy Sepulchre with the Royal Standard in token that they put themselves under his Protection and to oblige him to Succor the Holy Land as if it were his own Kingdom now that it was reduced to such extreme Danger by the Infidels Whereupon a general Assembly of all the Prelates and great Men of the Realm was called at Paris to Debate this great Affair and they considering that the King was not above eight and twenty Years of Age and had no Issue were of Opinion That he ought not in Person to undertake such a dangerous Voyage only Philip promised the Ambassadors that he would move his Subjects throughout the whole Realm to inrowl themselves for this War and that he would at his own Cost furnish all those liberally for their Maintenance who would take up Arms for so Just and Holy a War This Answer was not at all to the Satisfaction of the Patriarch however he contented himself as well as he could upon the Hopes which he had that the King of England upon whom they did particularly rely in Syria would make himself the Head of the Enterprise That King was Henry the Second the Son of Geoffry Earl of Anjou who had married Maud the Empress the Widow of the Emperor Henry the Fourth she was Daughter to Henry the First King of England so that this Henry the Second was Grand-child both to Henry the First and to Fowk d' Anjou King of Jerusalem who was the Father to Geoffry Earl of Anjou and to Amauri King of Jerusalem and by reason thereof he was Cousin German to Baldwin the Fourth who was the late King of Palestine so that doubtless he was more particularly Obliged than any other Prince to Defend that Realm which might one Day descend to him by Inheritance He was also more especially Obliged to it for the Expitation of the Crime which he had Committed year 1183 in permitting the Assassins of St Thomas Archbishop of Canterbury to Murder him in his own Church and he had accepted it as a Penance from the Pope within three Years to lead an Army in Person to the Holy Land More than ten Years were already slip'd away since the Term prefixed and he had not done any thing towards the Accomplishment of his Promise of which he was by a Letter from Pope Lucius reminded in Terms sharp enough who told him plainly that it was impessible for him to escape the severe Judgments of God who would not permit himself to be mocked and whose Vengeance he would have cause to Fear if he persisted willfully in the breach of his Promise All these Considerations made the Patriarch hope for more happy Success to his Negotiation in England in regard that in this pressing Necessity it was probable either that the King would go in Person into Palestine for the satisfaction of his Promise or at least that he would send one of his three Sons to command the Army and bigg with these Expectations he crossed the Sea with his Colleague and in the beginning of the Year following came to London year 1185 Henry who was beforehand resolved not to grant what the Ambassadours came to desire would nevertheless save his Reputation and therefore he did them all the Honour imaginable and took the most plausible Courses to justify his Conduct He therefore sent for them to Reading where the Court then was and gave them a most favourable Audience He very graciously and with great marks of Goodness and Compassion heard the Patriarch Heraclius who in a most passionate Discourse after he had presented him with the Keys of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre represented the piteous Condition to which the Affairs of the Christians in the East were reduced who he said stretched out their beseeching Hands
and St. Paul at the Castle of Chinon bestowing his Maledictions upon his disobedient Sons which he would never be persuaded to revoke notwithstanding the repeated Instances which were made to him by the Bishops who waited on him in his Sickness He did however receive the Sacrament and Extream Unction with great Devotion giving manifest Tokens of his Repentance in submitting to the Divine Justice which he acknowledged had justly laid this great Change of Fortune upon him as a Punishment for those Crimes which he had committed in his Prosperity He had also the Misfortune that his Domesticks every one seizing upon something left him without any thing else but a poor Sheet to cover him But his Son Richard who had so furiously opposed him in his Life gave all the Testimonies of an excessive Sorrow for his Death and caused him to be carried most magnificently adorned in his Royal Robes to be interred at the Nunnery of Fontevraud where he had a desire to be buried This new King himself assisted at the Funerals where he testified by the abundance of his Tears that he was unfeignedly touched with Sorrow and Remorse for his Father's Death But it is reported that to his other Grief he had the Displeasure to be afflicted with an odd and unaccountable Accident for as he approached the Corps of the deceased King as he lay in the Coffin the Blood which gushed out of his Nostrils seemed to reproach him with his Ingratitude and unnatural Rebellion and even as the Discourse went the Parricide of his Father whom his Disobedience did in some measure seem to have hastned to his Tomb sooner than Nature which was yet strong and vigorous in him had intended He nevertheless stayed out the whole Ceremony till such time as the Royal Defunct was interred in the Quire of the Church of those Religious Nuns which verified the Revelation of a Monk who praying upon a certain time for the Prosperity of the King heard these words which he then did not understand but which were explained by the Event He shall take up my Sign and in carrying it shall be mightily tormented The Belly of his Wife shall rise up against him and at the last he shall be hid among the Veils For as he took the Cross for the Holy War he carried the Sign of Jesus Christ and he was immediately after cruelly tormented by the Persecutions of his Sons which continued till his Death after which he was covered with the Veil of Death being interred in a Quire of Veiled Nuns We must however do Justice to the Memory of this Prince who was one in this Crusade though it so happened that he never had his part in any Action in regard it was so long deferred by the War whereof he was the Occasion He was a French Man by Nation born in the City of Mans which he therefore used to call his Darling and most assuredly he was one of the greatest and most potent Kings that ever sat upon the English Throne and certainly had been the most fortunate if either he had never been a Father or if toward the latter end of his thirty and five Years Reign he had not met with the Opposition of the young and invincible Philip the August whose Fortune supported by his Courage and admirable Prudence was as a fatal Curb which according to the Prediction of the famous Morling was to tame this fierce and haughty Leopard or like a strong Dam which stopped short and broke that impetuous Torrent of his Power and Ambition year 1189 which menaced an Inundation over the rest of France whereof Henry already possessed a very great part For besides England where he reigned as Soveraign Monarch and Ireland which he had conquered Scotland which was Tributary to him he also possessed Normandy in the Right of Inheritance descending to him by his Mother Maud the Empress Daughter of Henry I. King of England and by Geoffrey Earl of Anjou his Father who was Son to Count Fowk he had Anjou Maine Touraine a great part of Berry and Avignion where he pretended to be Soveraign And in Right of Queen Eleonor his Wife whom Lewis the Young quitted to him by a Canonical Sentence he had Gascon Guienne Poitou and the other Countries which depended upon them Besides that Britanny fell to his third Son Geoffrey by the Marriage of the Heiress of that Country So that he was as potent on this Side the Sea where he was a Homager to the Crown of France as he was on the other side where he was King of England and Lord of Ireland He was of a middle Stature but of a Shape no way handsom by reason that he was extream gross and corpulent notwithstanding that he was not only very temperate but amidst the great Affairs in which he was always employed and which he managed with wonderful Application in continual Action either travelling or Walking or making use of the more violent Exercises of Riding the great Horse or Hunting that thereby he might abate the growing unwieldy by his Fatness to which his Sanguin Complexion had condemned him As for any thing else he was of Temperament robust and sound having a large full Breast and a big Head His Eyes were blew handsom and full of Fire His Hair yellow and soft inclining something too much towards the red His Voice hoarse his Speech rough and his Mind very fierce and Martial For his Mind he was very dexterous and of a penetrating Understanding but something more crafty than became so great a Prince He had however cultivated his Spirit with the Study of Ingenuous Learning which inabled him with a certain Eloquence very easily and naturally to express himself And there was in his Soul such a Stock of Vices as well as Vertues natural Perfections and Imperfections which were so blended together that if they would not permit it to be said of him that he was a very exceeding good Prince yet they very absolutely prohibit the fixing the Character of a very ill one upon him For he was gentle and sweet to every body when he was in dangers but harsh fierce and severe when he saw himself out of them he was complaisant abroad morose to his Domesticks liberal to Strangers and in publick but parsimonious to his own and too great a Husband in his private Affairs A great Promiser but a slender Performer above all things loving his Liberty and hating Constraint to that degree that he could not endure to be a Slave to his own Word or his Faith which he made no great scruple upon occasion to violate In matters of Justice he was too slow and sometimes by the Interposition of Money which he loved excessively he would wholly remit the Execution of it He drew great Sums from his Subjects with which he often chose rather to buy Peace than maintain War in which he did not delight though when he was forced to make War he did it like a great Captain and
by which the Army must certainly have perished if the Marquis had not taken Care from time to time to supply them abundantly with his Fleet. This absolutely gained him all the Commanders and the Souldiers who took his Part against Guy de Lusignan who now had nothing left but the vain Shadow of Royal Majesty without the least Substance of Power or Authority Thus the Army being extremely diminished did nothing now but act upon the Defensive in their Retrenchments opposing the Assaults of Saladin on the one side and the Sallies of the Besieged on the other till the Arrival of the two Kings whose Voyage and Actions it is now time for me after having given myself and the Reader a moments Breath to recount unto him THE HISTORY OF THE CRUSADE OR The Expeditions of the Christian Princes for the Conquest of the Holy Land PART II. BOOK III. The CONTENTS of the Third Book The beginning of the Reign of Richard Caeur-de-Lion King of England and his Preparations for the Holy War The Preparations of Philip the August The Conferences of Nonancour and Vezelaï between the two Kings The Portraict of Philip the August The Character of Richard King of England The Voyage of the two Kings to Messina An Adventure of the English Fleet. A Quarrel between the English and the Messineses The taking of that City The Quarrel between the two Kings and their new Accommodation The Relation of the Abbot Joachim and his Character His Conference with King Richard The Departure of King Philip and his Arrival before Acre The Departure of Richard The Relation of the Conquest of the Kingdom of Cyprus by that Prince His Arrival before Acre A new Difference between the two Kings and the true Causes of it Their Accord The Reduction of the City of Acre The extreme Violence of King Richard The Return of Philip the August The March of Richard The Battle of Antipatris The single Combat between King Richard and Sultan Saladin A noble Action of William de Pourcelets who saved the Life of that King Richard presents himself before Jerusalem at an unseasonable Time and therefore retires and disperses his Army into Quarters The Marquis Conrade slain by two Assassins of the old Mountain The Discription of that Government and those People A wicked Action of the Templers which hindred their Conversion The Cause of the Marquis his Death Richard accused of that Crime His Innocence is proved Isabella Marries Count Henry and is declared Queen of Jerusalem Guy de Lusignan made King of Cyprus Richard pretends a second time to besiege Jerusalem defeats the Enemies takes the Caravan of Egypt but retires by a cunning Agreement A Calumny against Richard which he clears by a most memorable Action The Battle of Jassa and the taking of that Place from the Sarasins by Richard His Treaty with Saladin and his unfortunate Return He is taken and imprisoned His Deliverance the Justice which he demanded and which he obtains A new Division among the Princes of the East appeased by the Count de Champagne The Death of Saladin and his Elogy Division happens among the Infidels which gives Occasion to a fourth Crusade year 1190 T The Crusade which had been so solemly sworn in the Holy Field and which the War that was kindled between the two Kings had so long time retarded had at length its Effect by the perfect Understanding which for some time there was between Philip the August and Richard sirnamed Caeur-de-Lion at the beginning of the Reign of this new King For so soon as he had received the Sword as Duke of Normandy at our Ladies Church in Roan and the Crown of England at Westminster with the general Applause of all his Subjects who saw that he took quite differing Courses from his Father who was not at all beloved he had no other Thoughts but of making Preparations for the Holy War Above all things he applied himself to the procuring a good Treasury of Gold and Silver but not by charging the People with the rigorous Exaction of Saladins Tenth as did his Father who when he had received it made use of it in the War between the two Crowns For this purpose he took the way of selling all the Dignities which he could all Offices and the Lands of his Demesnes at a very low rate thereby to intice the Avarice or the Ambition of unwary Purchasers who easily suffered themselves to be imposed upon with those cheap Bargains not foreseeing that he had Design of Reassumption after his Return as he did without any other Reimbursment than by allowing upon the Foot of the Account what they made over and above their Charges of the Demesnes during the time that they injoyed them But he dissembled the matter so well and on one side seemed so truly to have a design to sell all that he could and on the other shewed so many Marks of a ruined Constitution which both his constant Fatigues of War and his Debauches gained an easy Credit to that the Purchasers without any Difficulty suffered themselves to be perswaded that he would never return and that he had no other Prospect than of the present as not having any hopes of living long And for these Reasons it was that very many straitned themselves to lay hold of this occasion of Profit whereby he drew from them vast Summs turning every thing into Money even to protesting to those who were astonished at his Proceedings that if he could find a Chapman who was able to buy of him the City of London he should make no Difficulty to sell it to him But he drew the greatest Advantages from diverse Prelates of his Realm that were extraordinary Rich from whom he drew all the Money that they had by selling to them temporal Dignities which they were mighty glad to add to their Bishopricks or their Abbies It was by this Stratagem that he drew into the Net the Bishop of Durham year 1190 an old Man equally Covetous and Ambitious by persuading him to purchase the Earldom of that Province which he would unite to his Bishoprick For that Prelate who was ready to die with the Desire which he had to be Earl of Northumberland gave him for that Title all the Riches which he had for a long time been hoarding up out of the Revenue of his Bishoprick as well as those other less honest Markets which he had made And to this he threw in also all the Money which he had reserved purposely to defray his Expences in the Voyage which he had undertaken to make to Jerusalem thereby renouncing his Vow his Conscience and his Honour that so he might become great in this World out of which his old Age was even now ready to chase him which made the King very pleasantly to say when he had gotten all his Money That he was about to work a kind of Miracle and to make a young Earl out of an old Bishop He also seized upon all the Estate of
Geoffry Ridel Bishop of Ely for appearing before him with the Train of a King at the City of Winchester but all this magnifick Pomp could not prevent the Triumph of Death which seized imediately upon him by this Surprise and divested him of this stately Vanity so unbecoming the Sacred Character of a Bishop For this Prince believed that these great Riches might to much better Advantage be imployed in defraying the Expences of his Coronation than so foolishly lavished in the Pageantry of worldly Pomp and that he might thereby spare his own which he indeavoured to keep as a Reserve to support the Charges of his Voyage to the Holy Land He also surrendred to William King of Scots for ten thousand Marks Sterling the Castles of Rocksborough and Berwick which he had been constrained to yield to King Henry the Second for his Ransom he being taken Prisoner in the War between them He also acquitted him of the Homage which he was obliged by force to pay as one part of the Price of his Liberty And in short as on one hand he was resolved not to be incumbred with the multitude of the Crusades the Multitudes of which had done more Hurt than Service in the other Expeditions and on the other that he knew very well that diverse of the richest of his Subjects who had ingaged themselves two Years before to undertake that Voyage were willing enough to be dispensed with he therefore obtained Permission from the Pope to discharge all such from their Vow upon Condition that they should proportionably to their Estate contribute a summ of Money towards the Charges of the Holy War All this joyned to the Treasure of his Father which he had at first seized upon and which amounted to more than nine hundred thousand Livers in Gold and Silver gave him the Ability to live after the best manner and in a far more Royal Way than any of his Predecessors had ever done So that he caused to be equipped in all the Ports of England Normandy Bretany Poitou and Guienne a great number of Ships to compose one of the fairest Fleets which had ever before been put to Sea For when he weighed from the Road of Messina where he had passed the Winter he had one hundred and fifty great Ships fifty three Gallies besides Barks Tartanes and other small Craft which attended the Navy with Provisions and Munitions of War He gave the Command of the Fleet to Gerrard Archbishop of Ousch and Bernard Bishop of Bayonne to whom he joyned in Commission Robert de Sablé Richard de Chamville and William Fortz Earl of Albermarle three excellent Men in Sea Affairs who had order without sparing any to put in Execution those admirable Orders which were proclaimed for preventing of Disorders and Punishment of Offences in the Fleet. He could not for all that stop those which were at the same time committed almost all over England upon the Jews of which himself was the Occasion tho he did not command it For as the Jews whom his Father had always favoured were upon his Coronation Day contrary to his express Command entred into the Palace from whence they were thrust out and some of them treated very severely the People who imagined that it was the King's Inclination that they should exterminate that perfidious Nation who for their Extortion Avarice and other enormous Crimes were extremely hated fell upon them with such Fury that it was impossible to appease them And this Example spreading it self occasioned a most horrible Massacre among those miserable People in many Cities where the young People who had undertaken the Cross year 1190 and wanted wherewith to furnish themselves for so chargeable a Voyage were ravished with such opportunity of Plundring their Houses and thereby being inabled to put themselves into an Equipage at the Expence of these declared Enemies of Jesus Christ In this time Philip the August prepared for this Enterprise in a manner more regular and did not to procure Money take those Methods of selling Offices and temporal Dignities to the Prelates of his Realm who were more regular and modest than those of England Neither did he raise any Taxes or Contributions for the Expences of this Voyage in regard that all the French Lords who had taken the Cross were resolved to accomplish their Vow and he believed that he should have enough out of his good Husbandry of that Tenth which was given for this War and which still remained in Bank ever since the last Year For this Reason therefore he caused an Edict to be published and all concerned to be sworn in the Parliament which he held at Paris that they should render themselves at Vezelay in the Week of Easter from thence together to take the Voyage And this being done he sent Rotrou Earl of Perche into England to advertise King Richard of his Proceedings who on his side made those who had taken the Vow swear the same thing upon the Holy Evangelists in the Parliament at London After which the King having recommended the Care of the Realm to Queen Eleonor his Mother having delivered her from the Confinement in which the late King had for five or six Years last kept her and to William Longfield Bishop of Ely his Chancellor he imbarked the fourteenth day of December at Dover and landed the same day at Graveling from whence he went about the end of the Month to Confer with King Philip at Nonancour There it was that after they had mutually given the one to the other all the assurance of an inviolable Amity they caused Letters Patents in the Name of both the Kings to be dispatched whereby they fixed the time of their Departure with all their Subjects of the Crusade and promised to each other a most sincere and indissoluble Friendship according to the Faith which they had severally plighted to one another Philip King of France to Richard King of England as his Friend and faithful Liegeman and Richard King of England to Philip King of France as his Lord and Friend These are the very Words of these Letters dated the thirtieth day of December at Nonancour as they are reported by Radulph Dean of London who writ in that time such Matters as he himself was an Eye Witness of and in the Transaction whereof he had a considerable Share But in regard the Time which they had limited appeared too short for the Preparations which were of necessity to be made the two Kings had a second Interview at Vezelay where they lengthened the time of their Rendezvouz till the Week after Midsummer In which time they finished their Treaty which among others had these Articles That if either of them died in the time of the Holy War the other should make use of the Money and the Army of the deceased King to carry on and finish the War That the Lords of the two Kingdoms should maintain a fraternal Correspondence and that the Bishops should excommunicate all those who
and such as possibly King Richard would not have required of him but his Cowardly Fear dictated them to him year 1191 And he who in his Prosperity was so presumptuous to imagine he could not offer too little in this Reverse of his Fortune thought he could never offer enough The Conditions were these That he should own the King of England for his Soveraign and should do him Homage for the Island under the Title of the Realm of Cyprus That he should give his only Daughter and Heiress to whomsoever King Richard should nominate That besides delivering the Prisoners which he had taken he should pay twenty thousand Marks in Gold for Dammages to those whom he had plundred That he should go in Person with twenty thousand choice Men to serve the King in the War of the Holy Land That for the Security of his Promises he should instantly put all the Places in his Dominions into the King's Hands and that reciprocally the King should engage upon his Honour to restore them to him so soon as he had accomplished all his Engagements And to begin with what was most shameful he immediately came to do his Homage to King Richard in the Presence of Guy King of Jerusalem and Geoffrey de Lusignan his Brother Raymond Prince of Antioch and Bohemond Count of Tripolis his Son Aufrey de Thoren and the other Lords who were come to Cyprus to oblige King Richard to enter into their Interests against the Marquis of Montferrat Prince of Tyre whose Party King Philip the August seemed much to favour But this Peace did not last long for whether this unfortunate Tyrant was ashamed of his Cowardice or that some Person had advertised him secretly that there was a design to make him a Prisoner he fled the same Day and made it be told to the King That he was resolved never to keep such an unjust Treaty which being the Effect of Force and the suddain Disorder of his Judgment by Dispair was not at all obliging For this Reason Richard who was better pleased with War than Peace which how advantageous soever ravished from him a Conquest which he could not fail of obtaining instantly caused him to be pursued both by Land and Sea with so much Heat and Expedition that running over the whole Island with his Troops divided into several Parties all the Cities opened their Gates to him so soon as he or his Lieutenants appeared before them So that the miserable Isaac abandoned of all the World who had him in Detestation even in his better Fortune was constrained to surrender The Princess his Daughter who was in the Castle of Cherin was the first to implore the Clemency of the King who received her with great Civility and caused her to be conducted to Limisso where was the Queen his Sister and the Princess Berengera After which the Tyrant who had now no other Retreat left besides a Monastery fortified upon a Rock seeing that he was about to be attacked could not resolve to die honourably in making a noble Defence but by extream Lowness of Spirit resolved to beg a Life which ought to have been more insupportable than a thousand Deaths He came then from the Monastery in the Habit of a Mourner his Hair and Beard neglected his Eyes overflown with Tears throwing himself like a Slave at the Feet of the King and he who had so audaciously assumed the Title of an Emperor submitted himself entirely to his Mercy only making his Request that he would not put him in Chains which of all the things of the World he said was what he most feared and which would assuredly make him die with Grief Whereupon King Richard who naturally loved to divert himself with the most serious things and who was so far from being touched with any Compassion for the Misery of this Infamous that in regard of his woful Cowardice he had scarcely the Patience to see him turning himself to Raoul his Chamberlain to whose Charge he consigned this miserable Man and smiling he commanded him to use him as an Emperor and that therefore he should put upon him Manacles Fetters and Chains of Silver to distinguish him to be a Prisoner of Quality Which Raoul did not fail solemnly to put accordingly in Execution Thus the Realm of Cyprus was without any considerable Loss conquered in less than three Weeks by King Richard who at the same time married the Princess Berengera at Limisso and caused her to be Crowned Queen of England year 1191 and of Cyprus with all manner of Magnificence and as it were in a kind of Triumph after such a happy Conquest This done he sent the two Queens and the Princess the Daughter of Isaac with a good Party of his Fleet who arrived happily at Acre the 1st Day of June being the Eve of Whitsunday He caused the Tyrant to be conducted Prisoner to Tripolis and for himself after he had regulated the Affairs of his new Kingdom which he put under the Conduct of two Governors he received from his new Subjects the Value of half their Moveables which they offered him of their own Accord that so they might have from him the Confirmation of the Privileges which they had formerly enjoyed under the Emperor Manuel All which Matters being adjusted upon the 5th of June he parted from Cyprus with the King of Jerusalem and the Levantine Princes The next day he passed before Tyre where the Garrison of Conrade fearing he might seize upon the Place would not permit him to Land The next Day as he drew near to Acre he discovered the biggest of all the Ships that he had ever seen upon the Sea who had the Arms of France painted upon her Stem but suspecting it might be some Stratagem and sending out to hall her he found it was a Ship of Saladin's which had on Board her five hundred choice Men Provisions Arms and Munition as also Artificial Fire-works and two hundred most venemous Serpents in Glasses to throw into the Camp of the Christians Richard caused her to be attacked by his Galliots and after a long and furious Combat which was maintained with extraordinary Obstinacy by those desperate People till such time as being pierced in a great many places by the Stems of the Galliots who ran upon her with full Sails and Oars that she sunk to the Bottom all the Soldiers and Mariners who threw themselves into the Sea or into the Ships of the Christians to save themselves being either drowned or slain excepting two hundred of the principal Officers and Engineers who were taken Prisoners After which Richard landing the next day being the 8th of June entred as it were in Triumph laden with Spoils and Glory into the Camp before Acre Philip the August received him with the greatest Demonstrations of Joy and Friendship But that Prince too generous learnt quickly after by a dangerous Experiment that an Excess of Vertue which causes one to lose a fair Opportunity especially in Matters of
Church should give the fortieth penny of their Revenue and the Cardinals the tenth for the carrying on of this Holy War Obliging himself in particular to send considerable Summs of Money and store of Provisions for that purpose and to raise Money for those Expences he caused all his Plate both Gold and Silver to be melted down and would be served in nothing but earthen Wooden or Vessels made of Glass At the same time he sent Cardinals to Venice Genoa and Pisa to exhort those potent Republicks to rigg out their Shipping as well to transport the Crusades into Palestine as to attack the Sarasins by Sea He also took great care to pacifie the Troubles of Hungary which hindred the Effect of the Crusade there and which Duke Andrew the Youngest Son of the deceased King Bela had raised in that Realm against Henry his Brother who succeeded to the Crown But in regard the happy Success of this Crusade depended more especially upon the Kings of England and France the two most potent Monarchies of Christendom who were now engaged in a cruel War he sent the Cardinal Peter of Capua his Legate who negotiated so skilfully and with such Success between them that at length at a Conference which they had at Andeli they consented to a Truce of five Years in which time it was supposed the Enterprise of the Holy War might be happily concluded And in the mean time the Crusade was published in all Places but especially in France where that Devout man Fouques de Nevilli preached it by order from the Pope This so famous man who without Dispute was one of the greatest and most admirable Preachers that ever was was Curate of Nevilli upon the Marne not far from Paris a man of a great temporal Estate but most Zealous for the Glory of God and the Salvation of Souls which he endeavoured after by exercising with an incredible Fervency that extraordinary Talent which he had received from God to preach his Holy word This he did with all the Force imaginable not only in his own Parish Church but in all the adjacent Places and especially in Paris where he declared himself the Implacable Enemy of all Vices but above all of Usury and Impudicity which occasioned such horrible disorders in that time which he reproved boldly without fearing any person and with all the Heat and Zeal which his Temperament ardent and billious could furnish him with God who at the Beginning of his Ministry to elevate him by the Way of Humiliation permitted him for two Years to toil and labour without any Fruit whilest preaching with all his Power against those two Vices some mocking him others wholly abandoning him whilest a third sort took occasion outrageously to abuse his Sermons not any one seeming to reform or be converted by all his preaching insomuch that he was just upon the point of quitting and giving over his preaching despairing ever to do any good by it But God who was resolved to make use of him did so suddenly Change their Hearts and gave such Power to his words that piercing like flaming Darts into the most obdurate Hearts they made such a Prodigious Change upon the Manners of Men that to astonishment all France seemed to be reformed by him For he did not only abolish that Extravagant Extortion and unjust Usury which had so prevailed that neither the Ordinances of the King nor the Censures of the Church had been able to repress but he touched the Hearts of the Usurers so to the quick that publickly detesting their Crime they made restitution of what they had gotten by this kind of Robbery unto those whom they had oppressed by those horrid Extortions and where they could not sind those to whom they ought to make Reparation they came drowned in Tears throwing themselves at his Feet year 1198 and intreating him to take that unlawful Gain and destribute it among the Poor That which added still more Force and Efficacy to his Discourses was that it pleased God to bestow upon him the Gift of Miracles which he wrought in the Presence of the whole World either before or after his Preaching curing all sorts of Maladies and Infirmities by the sole Imposition of his Hands The Writers of those times tell us of great Wonders which he did and one among the rest assures us that he durst not recount all that he knew in regard of the great Incredulity of Mankind as for my own particular I believe that the greatest Miracle which he did was the clearing of Paris of those Infamous Places and the converting of so many lewd and debauched Women some of which making the Vow of Chastity silled the new Nunnery of St. Antonina whic'h he sounded for so pious a Design others of them publickly promised for the Future to lead a most austere and penitent Life and among the Young Women many who distrusted their Courage and their Power accepted the Favour which he offered which was a handsome Portion by the help whereof they easily passed from that danderous Condition wherein they were into that of an honest and lawful Marriage For this Purpose he procured mighty Contributions even the Schollars of the University raising for him five hundred Livres in Silver and the Burgers of Paris in a Body not reckoning the Particular Benefactions adding above a thousand more which was a very extraordinary Summ for those times So many Wonders which his Renown published of this admirable Preacher caused the Bishops to invite him into their Diocesses where he was received with extraordinary respect the People and Clergy flocking to him as if he had been an Angel sent from Heaven The good man did not hereupon grow proud and vain or distinguished himself by any foolish Affectation for he always went according to his Custom on Horseback decently habited like a man of his Profession he kept his Beard shavenaccording to the Custom of that Age his Diet which he always received with Benediction and giving of Thanks was indifferently what was offered him neither did there appear any thing singular either in his Person or in his manner of Living so that his preaching and his Miracles always produced good Effects wherever he came excepting in two Places in Normandy where he was very ill treated For coming to Lizieux and taking upon him with his usual Liberty and Vehemence to reprove the Disorders of the Ecclesiasticks who were very irregular they made him Prisoner but without being able to abridge him even in his Fetters of the Fredom which he took to reprehend them so that being ashamed to detain him after they were a little recovered from the Brutal Transport they set him again at Liberty After which as he preached at Caen doing his usual Wonders before the People The Governor of the Castle thinking he should do the King of England a great pleasure the good man having been very liberal in reproving his Debauches committed him to Prison from whence being in a marvellous way
delivered according to the Command of the Gospel he shook off the dust of his Feet against them and continued his preaching constantly to other Cities till such time as Pope Innocent being well imformed of the Vertue and the admirable Talent which this marvellous man had in preaching he appointed him by his Breve bearing Date November the fifth in the Year 1198 to publish the Crusade with all its Indulgences and prerogatives throughout all France Sometime after understanding that the Abbots of the Cistercian Order held their general Chapiter being accompanied with abundance of his Disciples he there solemnly took upon him the Cross as did also at the same time Garnier Bishop of Langress possibly to put himself into good Terms with the Pope who was not over well satisfied with him for his Conduct After which he made his Supplication to the Assembly that since there were met there so many Abbots famous for their Learning and their Vertue they would be pleased to appoint some one of their Number who might share with him in this glorious Employ for the Service of Jesus Christ and his Religion by assisting him in preaching the Crusade and accompanying him in this Holy Voyage But he could not meet with a Gratification in his Request it may be year 1199 because the Pope having already given Commission to some Abbots of the Cistercian Order to preach the Crusade in France Germany and Italy they did not judge it convenient to draw any more of their Abbots from their Charges to employ them in this Ministry So that Fouques departed from the Assembly and was scarce got out of the Gate of the Monastry where an Infinite Number of People were assembled upon the Report of the Arrival of this Holy Man but he began to preach up the Cross with so much fervency and Eloquence that all of them indifferently engaged themselves to take it upon them After which having made choice of one among his Disciples who was most capable to second him in this Exercise of preaching he travailed over almost all France where an infinite Number of Persons of all sorts and Conditions took upon them the Cross whilest Herloin a Monk of St. Dennis a very able and knowing man and well acquainted in the lower Bretanie did the same in all that Country and that those whom the Pope had commissioned to publish the Crusade in England proceeded there also with admirable Success For King Richard who ever since his return from the Holy Land wore the Cross as a mark of his Resolution to return thither made a most Magnisicent Entertainment at London where the greatest part of the Gentlemen who resorted thither to gain Honour in the Tilts and Tournaments which were held there engaged themselves after his Example to combat more nobly against the Sarasins for the Honour of Jesus Christ But whether this was done in reallity this Prince having an Intention to go once more to Palestine or that it was only in Appearance and to ingratiate himself with the Pope that so he might fix him to the Interests of his Nephew Otho and assure his Pretensions to the Empire is very uncertain but let it be which of them soever there presently after happened an Accident which put an end to his Intentions and Designs For having understood that the Poitouins were revolted from him he passed over with an Army so suddenly that by his only Presence he repressed the Rebels but though he knew how to overcome his Enemies yet he was not so happy in conquering his Passions and his Natural Temerity instigated by the Rebelious Vice of Covetousness brought this brave Prince to an untimely Grave when his Affairs were in the most flourishing and prosperous Condition For Vinomare Vicount of Limoges having found a mighty Treasure in some of his Lands offered him one half provided he might possess the other himself But King Richard who inordinately doated upon Money resolved to have it all alledging that the Treasure of right appertained to the Lord of the Fee and upon the Vicounts refusal he presently laid Siege to the Castle of Chalus where he imagined the Treasure was kept So soon as those of the Garrison saw their Prince in Person before the Place fearing to fall into his Hands they offered to surrender the place provided they might be permitted to march out of it honourably and with their Arms but this sierce Prince to discourage them commanded it to be signified to them that he did not use to capitulate with his Subjects that he was resolved to take the Place by Force and to hang every one of them who had dared to oppose him This terrible Menace reduced these poor people to Despair and that Despair begat in them a Courage and Resolution to defend themselves to the last Whereupon this Prince whose Heart was always a Stranger to fear coming to take a View of the place in order to attack it and approaching too near one Bertrand Gourdon a principal Officer of the Garrison knowing him took so true aim at him that he shot him out of a Cross-Bow with a barbed Arrow through the left hand and a little under his Shoulder the King inraged with the Wound caused the Place to be so furiously stormed night and day without Intermission that according to his Desire it was at last carried by Assault after which he caused all the Officers and Soldiers who defended it to be hanged Gourdon only excepted who had wounded him and whom after his recovery he resolved to put to death by the most cruel Punishments But it was in vain that he promised himself Health and Revenge For the Chirurgeon who when he attempted to draw out the Arrow left the Head behind being an unskilful Bungler made so many cruel and dangerous Incisions that the Wound Gangreen'd and the Cure became impossible year 1199 for in twelve days after he was hurt he died being in the forty second Year of his Age and the tenth of his Reign the sixth Day of April in the Year 1199. He died in the Arms of Gautier Archbishop of Roan with so many Sentiments and Marks of true Repentance as one shall rarely find greater among the most celebrated Saints So rigorously did he permit himself to be treated in those Extremities of his Life that by his Patience and Submission he might in some manner attone the Divine Justice by offering to God the Sacrifice of a Heart perfectly and truly humble and contrite and a Body mortified by the severe Pains which he endured besides those which he suffered by his Wound A little before his Death he caused Gourdon who had given him the mortal Wound to be brought into his Presence and calmly demanded of him Why he had endeavoured to take away his Life It is replied he siercely and very resolutely because thou hast slain my Father and my two Brothers because thou didst resalve by the ignominious Halter to take away my Life and because thou hast
Council and the fourth of Lateran and one of the greatest which the Church had ever had for besides the Pope who presided in Person the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Jerusalem and the Deputies of those of Antioch and Alexandria were present at it together with seventy one Archbishops four hundred and twelve Bishops with the Proxies of divers others above eight hundred Abbots and Priors and the Ambassadors of the Emperor Frederick II. Henry the Emperor of Constantinople of the Kings of England France Hungary Jerusalem Cyprus and Aragon The Pope who was a Man very learned and eloquent opened the Session by a Speech which is verbatim inserted into the Acts of the Council as he spoke it and therein after he had acquainted them that the principal Reason why he had assembled them was to consider how they might relieve the Holy Land he brought in Jerusalem addressing her self to the Christians of the West and to implore their Assistance in the Language of the holy Scripture representing in a manner so pathetick and moving the piteous Estate to which she was reduced under the Tyrannick Dominion of the Sarasins to the shame of the Christian Name that it was impossible but the whole Assembly should be moved with it or refuse taking the generous Resolution of employing all things for the Deliverance of the holy City from that cruel Servitude So that after they had established the Doctrines of the Faith against the Heresies of Berengarius Amauri de Chartres the Albigenses and the Abbot Joachim without meddling with his Person by reason that he submitted himself to the Judgment of the Holy See and after they had regulated such Matters as concerned Discipline and the Reformation of Manners the Fathers with the Consent of the Ambassadors of the Princes made these following Orders for the Crusade That the Bishops should cause it to be preached in their respective Diocesses above all enjoyning the Preachers to press it as a thing necessary for all those who took it upon them to put themselves by true Repentance into a State of Grace thereby to preserve themselves in the Favour of God year 1215 and to procure his Blessings upon them and the Vndertaking That they themselves should exhort the Kings the Princes and Persons of the greatest Quality to take upon them the Cross and to contribute to the Expences of the Holy War That the Bishops the Abbots the Priors and all other Ecclesiasticks should give the twentieth part of their Revenues and the Pope and Cardinals the tenth towards the carrying on the Crusade And to excite others by his Example to this Liberality the Pope promised that besides this Tax he would provide Shipping and great Sums of Money for the particular Maintenance of such of the Romans as should take upon them the Cross That the Crusades should have all the same Privileges Spiritual and Temporal which the former Popes had indulged to the first Crusades That they should all be in readiness to pass into Palestine by the 1st Day of June in the following Year That in the Interim those who resolved to be of the Land-Army should come to the Rendezvouz which should be appointed whither the Pope would send his Legate and that those who chose rather to go by Sea should repair to the Port of Brindes in Pavia or to Messina in Sicily where he himself would be present to take care and give Orders for what should be needful since he was not as he passionately desired permitted to pass beyond the Seas and take the Voyage with the Crusades That there should be either a Peace or a Truce among the Christian Princes for four Years and that during that time all publick Sports and Turnaments should be straitly prohibited That those who aided the Crusades or furnished them with Equipage should enjoy the Benefits of the Indulgences And on the contrary that such as favoured the Pyrates and such Christian Merchants as betrayed their Brethren by selling Arms and Ammunition to the Sarasins should as impious Traytors to God and Religion be exposed to all the Censures of the Church It must be avowed that our Ancestors who acted as exactly and prudently but with far fewer Intrigues of Nicity and Ceremony than we do at this Day were far more expeditious in the concluding of their greatest Affairs than in the succeeding Ages This great Council wherein so many and such important Matters were debated both in relation to Faith and Manners so many things of a differing Nature as the Policy and the Discipline of the Church the Peace among the Christian Princes and the War against the Insidels and almost the general Interests of all Europe was terminated in less than three Weeks continuing only between the Feast of St. Martin and that of St. Andrew a time which now would scarcely be thought sufficient for the regulating of one single Preliminary Article in an Assembly of far less importance than this was And that which is still more admirable the Execution immediately succeeded the Debates and Determinations no manner of Considerations Passions or Interests being capable of stopping or even so much as retarding it every one gladly contributing what was his part towards the Performance and Accomplishment of the whole Design The Bishops preached the Crusade in all places year 1216 with mighty Zeal and great Success and the Pope to give the greater Authority to it after he had published it in Rome went to preach it himself in Tuscany where there was an insinite of Crusades every one desiring to have the Honour to receive the Cross from his own Hands But as he was going to Pisa to accord the Differences between that Republick and the other of Genoa which did something hinder the Effect of the Crusade in his Passage by Perusa he was seized with a violent Fever occasioned by his great Pains and the excessive Heats of the Season which in a few days carried him out of the World He died the 6th Day of July in the 19th Year of his Pontificate and the 49th of his Life after having performed all the Duties of a Soveraign Pope in such perfection that there have been few of his Successors I do not say that have surpassed him but that have been equal to him and if we may give Credit to the unanimous Consent of all the Authors that write of him none greater either in Learning in Prudence in Firmness of Resolution in Authority over all the Powers of the Earth for the maintaining the Discipline of the Church in its Force and Vigour or any more zealous for the Purity of the Faith or more conversant than himself in all manner of vertuous Actions which as they are the Effects so they are upon Earth the most certain Marks of a most eminent Sanctity And from hence doubtless we may conclude year 1216 that there is nothing more Unjust or more Weak than the giving Credit to the Fable of the Apparition of this Pope being pursued by a
above fourscore of these miserable men being saved upon the broken Planks A Party also of Frieselanders who hitherto had so well behaved themselves having abandoned their Companions were no sooner returned into Frieseland but they were miserably swallowed up by the Sea which having this Year broken the Banks and passed all the Bounds overflowed all the Country with such a fearful deluge that above a hundred thousand Persons were swallowed up of the merciless Waves But nevertheless the loss which the Christian Army suffered by this desertion was quickly repaired by the Arrival of diverse Troops of Crusades who being excited by the Letters which Pope Honorius had writ continually to all the Princes of Europe arrived one after another during all the Autumm The Cardinal d' Albanâ— the Popes Legate for the Holy War arrived with the first accompanied with a fair Troop of the Nobility of Rome whom the Pope who was himself of the first of those orders had obliged to take upon them the Cross that so they might draw others by their Example There came also from Germany the Low Countries Venice Genoa and Pisa and many from France who inbarked at Genoa with Robert de Corceone an English man Cardinal of St. Stephen upon Mount-Coelius whom the Pope ordered to accompany them in this Voyage The most signal of those who with the consent of Philip the August went from France were the Counts Hervey de Nevers Hugh de la Marche Miles de Barr upon the Seine with his Sons and the Lords John d' Artois Ponce de Grancey Ithier de Tacy Savary de Mauleon and among the Prelates William Arch-Bishop of Bourdeaux William de Beaumont Bishop of Anger 's Gautier Bishop of Autun Miles de Chastillon de Nantueil Bishop Elect of Beauvais with Andrew his Brother and Peter de Nemours Bishop of Paris the Son of Gautier great Chamberlain of France and Brother to the Bishop of Meaux and Noyon This good Prelate after he had for ten years governed with great Wisdom the Church of the Capital City of the Realm where he took great care to maintain the Purity of the Faith against the Errors of Amauri of Chartres which he caused to be condemned resolved also to signalise his Zeal against the Infidels by taking upon him the Cross with which he gloriously consummated that kind of Martyrdom at Damiata where he died after the taking of the City Prince Oliver also the Son of Henry the third King of England came by the same passage in September with the Earls of Chester Winchester and Arundel and William de Harcourt accompanied with a Gallant Troop of English who had devoted themselves to the Holy War The Legate being arrived with so considerable a Succour presented to the King of Jerusalem the Duke of Austria and the other Princes the Letters by which the Pope after having extremely commended the Cardinal informed them that he had sent him principally to create and preserve a perfect Union in the Army and to animate them to do well by going before them not with the Pomp and Majesty of a Prince to command but with that humility worthy of Jesus Christ whom he represented and for whose Cause the Crusades in taking up his Cross had obliged themselves to combat But it must be avowed that this good Prelate did very ill acquit himself of his Charge and acted directly contrary to the Intentions of the Pope and the good Instructions which he had given him For at the first Conference which he had with King John de Brienne to whom all the Chief of the Crusades yielded Obedience he told him plainly and without a Complement that he was resolved to command the Army alledging for his reason that the Church having commanded the Crusade and that the Crusades who were come to the relief of the Holy Land were not Subjects of the King of Jerusalem but depended upon the Church by the Authority whereof they had taken upon them the Cross The King was extremely surprized with such a foolish Proposition which he had so little expected but as he was very discreet he did not declare it lest he should be obliged openly to break with a man whose Ambition year 1218 which keeps no measures especially when it is supported by a great name might carry him to dangerous Extremities in abusing a Power and Authority which Jesus Christ hath not given to the Church but for the spiritual Kingdom which is not of this World as he himself assures us and hath nothing to do with the Temporal On the other side notwithstanding this as this Prince had a great Soul he was resolved to do nothing to stain his Honour or to lessen the August Character of Royalty which he was resolved to support with the utmost Vigour against all that should enterprize any thing against it He therefore kept fair with the Legate he made no direct answer to any thing which he said but would turn the discourse to some other Subject always treating him with extraordinary Civility but in the same time he continued more positively than ever to give out his Orders independant of any other Person and caused them to be exactly obeyed and acted in all things so like an absolute Master and a King that the good Legate at last perceived that he had to do with a Prince who in rendring to God with a profound Veneration that which was due to him knew also continually how to maintain the Rights that appertained to Caesar This nevertheless did not fail to occasion some Trouble in the Army by dividing the principal Officers for those who found themselves any ways dissatisfied with the King inclined always to the Legate and he finding himself able to do nothing more usually came to the Council only to give his Opinion in contradiction to the King But at length the Arrival of the Sultan Meledin who came down the Nile to Damiata with a potent Army before the Christians had passed the River to besiege the City by Land obliged all the Commanders to re-unite and recover the time which they had wasted and lost by an extreme Negligence and seriously to dispose themselves to Combat the Enemy After some light Skirmishes wherein the Sarasins were constantly beaten upon the thirtieth of November there arose such a furious Tempest that the Sea repelling the Waters of the Nile and breaking over all the Banks the whole Army had like to have perished by the Inundation many of the Ships were driven ashoar and beaten in pieces and four great Vessels upon which there were Castles built in order to attack the City were driven by the Wind and the Waves against the Towers and the Walls where they were unfortunately Consumed by the Wildfire which the Besieged with ease threw into them in the sight of the Christians who during that dreadful Storm were not able to Relieve them Several Knights of the Temple who were in another great Ship which the Tempest had also forced to
proceeding of the Emperor so little obliging nevertheless as he desired nothing so much as to quiet all those discords and Wars which might be prejudicial to that which he so much desired should be made against the Enemies of Jesus Christ and his Church he did not forbear doing what was most advantageous for the Emperors Interest insomuch that he perswaded the greatest part of the Cities of Lombardy who were confederated against him to lay down their Arms and obliged himself to obtain their Peace and pardon with the Conservation of their Privileges and Immunities upon condition that they should at their own charge maintain a certain number of Soldiers to serve under the Emperor for two years in the Holy War It was for the same reason that he hindred Henry the third King of England from Enterprizing any thing against France whilest Lewis the eighth made War against the Albigenses That King prosecuted the War against them with so much heat and Zeal that he did not spare continually to expose his Royal Person to all hazards and dangers and after having taken Avignion and the greatest part of the considerable places in Languedoc he was seized with that dangerous Malady which was got into his Army year 1226 of which he died at Montpensier the eight of November in the fourtieth Year of his Age and the third of his Reign leaving for his Successor his eldest Son Lewis the ninth of the Age of twelve years under the Regence of the Queen his Mother Blanch of Castile This was he who by the August Sirname of Lewis the Saint which was given him by God by the Authority which he hath given to his Church hath made himself be more gloriously distinguished by that title since his death than all other Kings have done during their lives by all the most Illustrious Sirnames and most magnificent appellations which men have bestowed upon them At last the term drawing near wherein the Emperor had obliged himself to begin this Voyage and that all things appeared better disposed than ever they had been before to the undertaking the Pope believed that the deciding Blow which he had so long desired was now certainly to be given And therefore redoubling his Efforts as one shall see a Flambeau blaze out twice or thrice with mighty Force before it is extinguished so he pressed the Crusades with so much Ardour that an infinite number of them came from all Europe into Italy it is reported that out of England alone there came above sixty thousand men to whom the appearance of a marvellous Crucifix from Heaven all glorious and shining in which were plainly to be seen the five Wounds had given so much Courage that they desired nothing so much as to combat and to die for Jesus Christ But as this devout Pope believed that he should enjoy upon Earth the Fruit of so much care and pains as he had taken to assemble so many Crusades he was taken more happily for himself to receive them in Heaven from whence he might see though without trouble in a small time after that which would have sufficiently afflicted him in this life that the Success of this Crusade proved quite otherways than he had vainly flattered himself withal in the time of his Pontificate But that a man may therefore never be disappointed there is nothing better than for any Person constantly to do what he ought to do and what he can do without promising himself any certainty of future contingencies and Events for which God alone is able to answer year 1227 He died at Rome the sixth of March in the Year 1227 and two days after the Sacred College by common consent gave him for his Successor the famous Hugoline Cardinal of Ostia who took the name of Gregory the ninth He was Nephew to Innocent the third who had imployed him in the most important Affairs of the Church a man of a mighty Spirit well made and of a Port extremely Majestick very knowing a great Canonist and of an irreproachable Life to whom St. Francis whose order he took into his Protection had predicted that he should be Pope He was in short of great Courage and incapable of yielding even in the greatest dangers but withal too quick in Execution of what he proposed without fearing the Consequences how mischeivous soever they might happen to be The first thing that he did after his Exaltation was to pursue the Enterprise of his Predecessor and to press the Emperor Frederick to put himself as soon as it was possible into a Condition to perform what he had so solemnly promised This Prince who after so many delays durst no longer desire the time to be prolonged appointed the Rendevouz to be at Brindes where the Shipping lay all ready for the Transportation of that Infinite number of Crusades who descended from all parts of Italy But as they came into Pavia during the great heats of the Summer which in that Country are excessive an Epidemical Distemper began to disperse it self among them which took off a great number and made others withdraw themselves though few of them ever returned into their own Country but perished miserably by the Way That which further contributed to the diminution of the Army was that a certain Imposture set up by some of the Principal Persons in Rome who had no kindness for the Pope as it appeared presently after counterfeited an Authority and Power from Gregory who had appointed him his Vicar for that purpose to take of the Cross from such as desired to be dispensed with as to the Performance of the Voyage and to commute their Vow into some considerable Alms of which this Cheat made his own advantage It is true that he was taken by the order of the Pope year 1227 and paid the price of his imposture but it was not till after many who were very glad to be dispensed with from a Voyage which they found already to be troublesome and dangerous had quitted the Cross by this Way which they believed was a very lawful and authentick way of being disbanded In short those who remained into Pavia came to Brindes with the Emperor and Lewis Lantgrave of Thuringia and Hesse who had conducted a gallant Troop of Germans who were imbarked about the middle of August and sailed towards Syria not doubting but they should be followed by the Emperor who seemed continually disposed and ready to part thither also And accordingly so soon as he saw the Lantgrave a little recovered of some Fits of a Fever which he had gotten in a little Island near Brindes whether he had gone to divert himself he put to Sea the eight of September with this Prince and the Patriarch of Jerusalem and those few Troops which remained But he sailed not far for the third day of the Navigation he commanded them of a sudden to tack about and stand for the Port of Otranto alledging that he found himself much indisposed and that in the Condition
taken considering the mighty Earnestness which so many brave Men shewed so fresh and so resolute if King Philip who always acted with great sincerity had not been something too scrupulous upon this Occasion even to the disadvantage of the publick Interest For whereas one of the Articles of the Treaty which he had made with the King of England imported that they should equally share their Conquests he understood this Article to extend even to Glory and was resolved that Richard should share it with him in the Taking of the Town which he was in a Condition to take without him And therefore contenting himself with lodging at the Foot of the Wall he resolved to put off the Assault till his Arrival And in truth that Prince was resolved to put to Sea immediately after Philip but he was constrained to defer it some time by reason that Queen Eleonor his Mother who brought along with her the Princess Berengera arrived the same day that Philip sailed He caused these two Princesses to be magnificently received at Messina where he affianced this new Mistriss after which Queen Eleonor returning for England taking with her Jane his Sister and the Princess Berengera he commanded part of his Fleet to attend them and himself with the rest darted at last upon Wednesday in Passion-Week from Messina eighteen days after King Philip the August It is true the Sea was not at all propitious to him for upon Good-Friday he was met by a most furious Tempest but having till this time been ever mighty fortunate he drew a great Advantage from this Accident and the Tempest which scattered his Navy was worth to him the Conquest of the Island of Cyprus The manner whereof I will in short recount The Island of Cyprus one of the fairest and greatest of the Mediterranean Sea lying about some hundred Miles from Syria was at that time under the Dominion of the Emperors of Constantinople who sent thither some Duke or Lieutenant to be their Deputy-Governor Isaac a Prince of the House of the Comnenius's by his Mother who was Daughter of another Isaac Brother to the Emperor Manuel had seized upon that Government during the Empire of Andronicus by virtue of Letters Patents from that Emperor which this Cheat had counterfeited and not long after he very openly usurped the absolute Dominion of the Place by taking upon him the Title and Authoritâ— of Emperor After the Death of the unfortunate Andronicus he maintained himself in his Usurpation year 1191 against all the Forces of Isaacius Angelus whom he defeated with the Assistance of Margeritus Admiral of the Fleet of William King of Sicily After which as this Tyrant who was one of the most wicked of Mankind saw himself assured in his new Empire according to the custom and nature of Tyranny which is indifferently to commit all manner of Crimes to enjoy the first which is committed by revolting from a lawful Master there was no manner of Wickedness Injustice Robbery Extortion Violence or Cruelty which he did not exercise upon the poor Islanders whom he reduced even to the utmost Dispair Nor had he much more Humanity towards Strangers for three great Ships of the English Fleet which by the Violence of the Tempest had been thrown upon the Island and stranded in the View of Limisso anciently called Amathus upon the South side of the Island this Barbarian who presently run with his Soldiers to the Bank caused all those who escaped the Wrack to be taken and after having inhumanely despoiled them of all they had about them and in their Ships he caused them to be bound Hand and Foot and thrown into a deep Dungeon there miserably to perish by Famine Nor would he permit the great Ship on Board of which were the two Princesses and which was in manifest danger of being lost to come within the Port of Limisso as they had earnestly desired Permission of him to do but would have them ride it out exposed to the Mercy of the Seas and the Waves that so he might have the brutish and cruel Pleasure either to see them sink to the Bottom or split against the Rocks In this time the Tempest being appeased Richard who had taken Port at Candia and from thence had sailed to the Rhodes where he re-assembled his Ships and hearing of the ill Treatment which some of his Ships had met with in the Island of Cyprus he came and presented himself with the rest of his Navy in good Order before Limisso the 6th Day of May and immediately sent to the Tyrant to demand Satisfaction for the Affront had been done him with a peremptory Command to him instantly to set such of the English at Liberty as he had made Prisoners and to make full Restitution of whatever he had taken from them The furious Brute fiercely replied to the Envoys of the King That they should go tell their Master that he was so far from giving him the Satisfaction he foolishly demanded that if he did not make the more haste and take the advantage of his Sails and Oars he must expect the same Treatment for himself And thereupon he marched directly to the Shoar with all the Troops which he kept in Pay and a multitude of confused undisciplined People ill armed and worse ordered who ran down in hopes of Booty and not in expectation of Blows But he was mightily mistaken in the Man with whom he was to deal for Richard furiously exasperated by his Answer gave present Order that all his Army should make a Descent by the help of the Barks and Chaloups and putting himself into the first Row of the Barks at the Head of his Archers he rained such a Storm of mortal Arrows as he rowed to the Shoar upon the Heads of his affrighted Enemies that under the favour of that Consternation he leaped first ashoar and was followed so courageously by his Men who sound none to oppose their Descent that they charged so briskly upon these Barbarians with their Swords in their Hands and fell into the Battalions of these cowardly and disorderly Greeks they presently put them into Confusion and in a few Minutes to a manifest Flight and in the Pursuit made a dreadful Slaughter among them till they got to the Mountains where they saved themselves Then returning the victorious Army entred Limisso without Resistance the Soldiers who were to have kept it having for fear abandoned the place This happy Beginning was presently succeeded by a Conclusion no less fortunate for the Night following he surprized Isaac who having rallied his People came to encamp within five Miles of Limisso and having cut the best part of his Troops in pieces dissipated the rest and taken all his Baggage So that this miserable Wretch abandoned of the Cypriots who the next day after the Victory came to do Homage to King Richard was constrained in most humble manner to beg a Peace which he obtained upon Conditions hard enough and sufficiently ignominious
War is always a great Fault in a Prince or Captain And certainly he ought not to have made any Scruple of Taking the City as he might easily have done without King Richard whom he unprofitably staid for so long time while that King more cunning and less scrupulous and who had not for others such tender Concerns did without him take a whole Kingdom For in short the missing of this Opportunity gave Rise to many Accidents which had like to have entirely ruined the Enterprise For the Besieged made great advantage of that long Repose and the leisure which was given them by a kind of Truce of which they knew not the Cause however they employed it to the repairing of the Breaches and were so strengthned by little Succours which frequently slip'd into them that they found themselves in a Condition often to repulse the great Assaults which were given against them at unseasonable times the Opportunity being lost before Besides the King of France first and after some time the King of England fell sick of that dangerous Malady which made them lose their Hair Nails and Skin by its subtil and Corrosive Malignity which consumes all that Matter which is necessary for the Defence or the Ornament of the Body But the most dangerous Evil of all and which endangered the common Ruin was the Division which broke out more furiously than ever between the two Kings The ancient English Historians of that time lay all the Blame upon Philip whilst the French who writ at the same time accuse King Richard and lay all the Fault at his Door and the reason is plain that both the one and the other living at the same time and writing what was done in their own time either their Fear or their Hope their Love or Hate took from them the power and the liberty of writing the Truth sincerely and without Partiality For my own particular who besides the natural Love I have for it have always made Profession to speak and write when there is occasion with that frank and honest liberty which can never be taken from a good Man year 1191 and who am under no manner of Temptations from any of these Passions which may hinder me from speaking concerning these Kings what I believe to be true it cannot be supposed I should do otherwise since I have nothing either to hope or fear from them and that there is no danger four hundred Years after their Death any Person should so warmly espouse the Interests of their Ashes I say then that after having strictly examined whatever is written upon one side and the other concerning this great difference I find that Richard did not use King Philip with that Respect which was due to him as his Liege Lord for so many great and fair Provinces as he held of him in France For as he had amassed prodigious Sums of Money in England in Sicily and in Cyprus he spared no Cost to allure the bravest Men to his Party and to draw them to his Service by excessive Profusions and the extraordinary Advantages which he made them insomuch that understanding that Philip gave three Crowns in Gold by the Month to every Horse-man he promised four to such as would quit that Service and take Pay under him So that he seemed to endeavour to exhalt himself above his Master and to render him contemptible But then on the other side Philip who had a great Heart and who bore it very impatiently to be in this manner insulted over by his Vassal shewed so much displeasure that he gave those whom the Profusions of Richard had gained especially the Levantines who were most charmed with them occasion to believe that he was not able to support his Greatness and his Merit to be thus topped and overshaded Moreover as Philip before the Arrival of the English had so far advanced the Works and so beaten down the Walls and ruined the Defences that he might easily have taken the place if he had not been too scrupulous of taking all the Glory to himself whereas Richard to whom he had given the opportunity of taking his share by a strange Effect of Jealousie and Ambition would by no means have the City taken whilst Philip was there insomuch that when the French assaulted the Town this jealous Prince prohibited the English either to sustain them or to assault it on their side as had before been resolved upon at the Council of War This brought on Reproaches Quarrels and Hatred which daily increased and grew more violent between the two Nations than that of the War which had begun to break out before under King Henry there being besides naturally not too much Sympathy between them That which augmented this Division was also the Difference between Guy de Lusignan and the Marquis Conrade de Montferrat for the Realm of Jerusalem which the one pretended to keep and the other to have when as Saladin was yet possessed of it For King Philip carried himself openly for the Marquis in the Right of his Wife and for that being a great Warrier who had by his good Conduct preserved the small Remainder of that poor Realm it seemed much better that he should have it rather than his Rival who had lost it so unfortunately for want of Courage and sufficient Conduct On the contrary the King of England for that very reason opposed his Pretensions being unwilling it should fall into the hands of so brave a Man and therefore with all his Power he supported Guy of Lusignan by reason that that unfortunate Prince having much Weakness and little Merit Richard was in hopes of disposing of the Realm according to his own Will And in short the new Conquest which the King of England had made of the Island of Cyprus which he was resolved to keep did not at all please Philip who demanded the half of that Realm in virtue of the Treaty by which they were obliged to divide equally between them whatsoever should be gained by that Voyage But Richard maintained either that this Division was to be restrained to such Conquests as were made upon the Infidels or otherwise that by the same reason he ought to divide the Succession to the Earldom of Flanders with the King since by the Death of the Earl Philip pretended to have acquired a Right unto And by reason of this Division their Spirits were so exasperated that while nothing was done against the common Enemy both sides reproached each other with holding a secret Intelligence and Correspondency with the Infidels both the one Party and the other receiving Presents from Saladin And in truth this brave Sarasin Prince who was naturally generous and made War like a noble Enemy was used from time to time to send the most excellent Fruits of Damascus to the two Kings who in Return sent him some of the pretty Rarities of Europe year 1191 Thus matters were so far from being advantaged by the coming of these two mighty Armies
her self in this Holy War with the Resolution of a true Heroine and having joyned her Troops with the Army of the Princes of the Crusade she under went the Voyage with them with as great Zeal and Ardour as any of them and with far more Constancy and firmness of Resolution For being ashamed of the precipitate Return of the others who unworthily abandoned the Interests of Jesus Christ in the East in the very Heat of the War she only remained unmoveable in her first Resolution and passed all the Remainder of her Days at Ptolemais that so she might be always ready upon all Occasions which offered either to attack the Infidels or defend the Christians An Example which confirms what hath been frequently seen in other Princesses that Heroick Vertue does not at all depend upon the Quality of the Sex but that the weakness of Temper and Body may be supplied by the greatness of the Soul and the Vigour of the Spirit During this time the Letters of the Pope with those of the Emperor which were sent all over Germany produced such Effects upon the Minds of Men already filled and prepossessed with the haughty Idea's which they had conceived of a Crusade wherein the Empire only should be concerned so that every City willing to signalize themselves upon this Occasion furnished out a considerable number of Crusades Insomuch that the Emperor found wherewithal abundantly to satisfie not only the great Desire which he seemed to have to undertake the Holy War but also that which in reallity he had which was under this pretext to lead a potent Army into Italy to exterminate the Remainder of the Normans who had caused a Revolt in the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily And that he might play his Game with greater Success by covering his principal Intendment under this specious Appearance of a mighty Zeal he presented himself to take the Cross from the hand of the Legate protesting that for the Accomplishment of his Promise and to animate others by his Example he was resolved to march at the Head of his Army and in Person to combat against the Infidels But whether it were that they discovered his Artifice and saw that it would be an acceptable Service to him year 1195 to stop him in this Design or that they really believed that after the deplorable Accidents which happened to his Father and his Brother in the other Crusade it was not at all expedient that he should engage himself in Person to undertake this Voyage it is certain that all the Princes humbly intreated him to continue in the Empire remonstrating to him that thereby he would render greater Service to God by constantly taking care and providing the Necessaries for Subsistence and Recruits for the Armies which he should send into the East So that after some small Struggling and faint Oppositions he submitted to the Request of the Assembly and in conclusion resolved to set on foot three great Armies that so he might make profitable use of that infinite multitude of Soldiers who had taken upon them the Cross throughout all the Provinces of Germany The first of these Armies under the Conduct of Conrade Archbishop of Mayence accompanied by the Dukes of Saxony and Brabant and the greatest part of the Princes of the Crusade took its Way by Land to Constantinople where being imbarked upon the Fleet of the Greek Emperor whose Daughter Irene Philip Duke of Suabia Brother to the Emperor Henry had married they arrived happily at Antioch from whence they marched to Tyre and a few days after to Ptolemais The second Army passed by Sea and after having coasted along the Low Countries England France and Spain in their Passage they took the City of Sylves which the Sarasins had regained from the Portuguese and fearing lest the Infidels should again seize upon that important place which had been so ill defended by Dom Sancho the Crusades demolished it from the very Foundation After which they prosperously held on their Course and came to an Anchor in the Port of Acre where they joyned the first Army And for the third Army which was the strongest and composed of the best Troops drawn particularly out of the Dutchies of Suabia Bavaria and Franconia consisting in sixty thousand Combatants the Emperor in Person conducted it into Italy where in Execution of the Design which he had so artfully concealed under the specious pretext of the Holy War he surprized the Norman Princes and Lords who were confederated against him and without any trouble made himself Master of all the places which they yet held against him in the Realms of Naples and Sicily year 1196 putting those brave Unfortunates to death by all the ways of Rage and Cruelty Insomuch that the Empress Constantia unable to endure this horrible Butchery which was made of those of her Nation whom this cruel fierce and vindicative Prince resolved utterly to exterminate she conspired against him both to take away his Life and Empire And that her wicked Enterprise might prove successful she covered it and her Resentment for the present with a deep Dissimulation Henry who believed that he had now no more Enemies who were in a Condition to enterprize any thing against him caused the greatest part of his Army to be imbarked upon the Fleet which Conrade Bishop of Wirtzbourg his Chancellor and Lieutenant General in Italy had rigged the Year before who conducted them with a prosperous Voyage in a few days to the Port of Acre where they arrived very opportunely to reinforce the German Troops who for some time before had had all the Forces of the Insidels upon their hands For Valeran de Limbourg who with his Brigade having marched with the first was arrived in Palestine before the rest having broken the Truce which was made with the Sarasins they who before thought of nothing but how to ruin one another began immediately to re-unite under Saphadin against the common Enemy as they esteemed the Christians This Prince who was a great Soldier having presently raised a potent Army of his own Troops and those of his Nephews who upon this Occasion owned him as their General made a great Slaughter of all the Christians who fell into his Power thereby to revenge himself of Valeran who by an Action very little Christian and of most dangerous Consequence had in like manner treated the Sarasins whom he surprized upon his breaking the Truce After which by a wonderful Diligence preventing the Army of the Crusades he laid Siege before their Arrival to Jaffa into which the King of England had put a strong Garrison before he quitted Palestine year 1196 The young Henry Count de Champagne who had all the Authority of a Soveraign after his Marriage with Queen Isabella saw very well of what Importance it was to save that Place without which it was almost impossible to undertake the Siege of Jerusalem and therefore he resolved to march to relieve it with all the Expedition possible and
quitted Palestine the preceding year upon the new retardment of the Emperor's Voyage there were not then in Palestine remaining of the new comers more than about eight hundred men at Arms and ten thousand Foot besides the Knights which the Great Masters of the three Orders had upon the place All these Crusades had chosen for their General Henry Duke of Limbourg who after a long deliberation with the Officers of the Army the Patriarch and the Bishops of Caesarea and Nazareth and those of Oxford and Winchester in England seeing themselves too weak to attack Coradin they had imployed themselves in the rebuilding and Fortification of Caesarea and some other little Maritim places resolving to do the same to Jaffa in expectation of the Succours which were to come from Europe In this time Coradin died leaving for his Successor his Son Melesel of the Age of twelve years under the Tutelage and Regency of the Emir Esedinebec Hereupon the Sultans his Neighbours failed not to enterprize immediately against him and this doubtless was of great advantage to the Crusades who were not only delivered from the most formidable of their Enemies but saw them also engaged in Civil Wars This was the State of the Christian Affairs at the arrival of the Emperor who was not able to prevent it but that many of this small number of Crusades believing that they had satisfied their Vow by a Years Service returned by the Conveniency of passage which they had that Autumn On the other part the Sultan of Egypt who always maintained a good Intelligence with his Brother Coradin was come to the Assistance of his Nephew with a potent Army and was incamped at Napolose anciently Sichem or Sichar where he expected the coming up of all the Forces of Damascus who were to join with his Upon this whether the Emperor believed that he could not with those few Troops he had undertake this War but to his dishonour or whether it was that the matter was so preconcerted betwixt him and the Sultan before his coming thither as the common report went although there is no manner of Foundation for it in History or which is most probable that he had a great desire to return with all Expedition into Italy it is certain that he sent Count Thomas his Confident and Balian Lord of Tyre to Meledin to whom after they had in the Emperors name made magnificent presents they acquainted him That it was not at all the desire of their Master that there should be any thing betwixt them two which might prevent their living in perfect Amitie That Frederick who was the most potent Prince in Christendom was not come into the East to make new Conquests there for that he was possessed of such large Dominions in the West as were capable to satisfie the vastest Ambition That the great reason of his coming was to visit the Holy places and to redemand the Realm of Jerusalem which the Christians had conquered and for so long a time possessed and which appertained to his Son in right of the Empress Jolante his Mother who was the Queen and the lawful Inheretrix of that Kingdom That if he were satisfied in a demand so just and reasonable he was ready to return into Europe without drawing his Sword and therefore desired the Sultan that by an unjust refusal he would not be the occasion of sheding so much humane Blood which might be spared there having been so much already miserably spilt in so many cruel Battles as had been already fought upon this quarrel year 1228 Meledin who had a Soul naturally inclined to mildness and to peace as had most evidently appeared in the War of Damiata gave the Ambassadors a favourable Audience and promised that he would send Ambassadors of his own who should carry to the Emperor his Answer in an Affair of that Importance and having made them very rich Presents he sent them back to Frederick whilest these matters were in Agitation two Cordeliers who came immediately from Rome presented the Patriarch and the three great Masters of the Military Orders Letters from the Pope by which he strictly prohibited them from giving any Obedience to the Emperor and appointed the Patriarch to declare him Excommunicate now as this could not be done without making a mighty noise the Sultan was quickly by his Intelligencers made acquainted with it and therefore seeing that besides that the Emperor had but a very slender Army he was in danger of having the fortune to be ill obeyed but yet nevertheless being very willing to deliver himself from the continual Fear which he had of some new Crusade which was only to be done by some good and long Truce and not doubting but now he had an opportunity to do it as he pleased he put on a Countenance something fierce and haughty as if he were very indifferent in the matter however he sent his Ambassadors who from him were to acquaint the Emperor That he was far from refusing his Amity but for that which concerned the Article of Jerusalem that which was desired of him was of such a Nature that neither his Conscience his Honour nor his Religion would permit him to agree to it in regard that the Sarasins themselves had as great a Veneration for the Temple of the Lord whither they resorted from all Parts to worship God as the Christians had for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to which they came in Pilgrimage to adore Christ Jesus But that nevertheless if his Imperial Majesty would please to send new Ambassadors to their Master he would make such reasonable Propositions as that he should have cause to find himself very well satisfied And thereupon they presented the Emperor from him with a huge Elephant several admirable Camels and divers other rare Animals of Egypt and Arabia And Frederick after having magnificently treated them and honoured them with Noble Presents sent them back with his Ambassadors to treat with the Sultan That Prince who was resolved to come to his Ends in the manner which he had formed in his own Imagination did not presently give them Audience but only made them be informed that they must follow him to the City of Gaza whither he marched with his Army leaving that of the Sultan of Damascus his Nephew at Napolose This procedure made the Emperor Frederick believe that Meledin had a Design to affront him and therefore having caused all the Captains to Assemble he acquainted them that according to the resolution which they had taken he thought it convenient to march with the Army to Jaffa and to fortifie it thereby to secure the passage to Jerusalem they all submitted to his Orders except the two great Masters of the Templers and Hospitallers who said in plain terms that the Pope to whom they owed obedience had forbidden them to obey an Excommunicate Prince and that therefore if the Orders were issued out in his Name they would not obey them The Emperor extremely surprized by
Reigned in France year 1246 had gained over the Princes of the League over the Duke of Bretany the Counts of Tholouse and March and over the King of England and the Prince Richard his Brother who had indeavoured to support the Earl of March and by a pretty piece of Policy he carried along with him all the Princes and all the Great men of the Realm who might give any Suspicion or the least occasion to fear that they had either the Power the Will or the Temptation during his absence to trouble the Repose of his Dominions For of the two most mutinous Spirits of whom he had most reason to be distrustful he took one of them which was the Earl of March along with him and the other which was Raymond the Young who was Earl of Tholouse who had also taken upon him the Cross died before the Voyage leaving his Dominions to Alphonsus the King's Brother the Count of Poitiers who had married the Princess Joanna his Daughter and Heiress and the King for his greater assurance sent that Prince to establish himself in his new Dominion of Languedoc before he imbarqued himself as he afterwards did to go and joyn him in the East Moreover he deferred his Voyage for almost four Years to take the advantage of two fair occasions which presented themselves the one to reunite the County of Mascon to the Crown which he bought of the Countess who after she had distributed the money for which she sold it to the poor retired to the Nunnery of Maubuisson and there professed herself the other was to bring the County of Provence into the Royal House which had been separated from it for above three hundred Years For Raymond Berenger the Fifth of the Name and the last of the Catalonian Family who had reigned in Provence being dead the year preceeding the King knew with so much Art how to gain Romee de Villeneuve and Albert de Tarascon the Trustees and Guardians of the Princess Beatrix the remaining Daughter of the four which Count Raymond had had who was Sister to the Queen and the Heiress to the Count that he obtained her for Charles d' Anjou his Brother and without losing of time advancing towards Provence with one part of the Army which was ready for the Holy War he broke all the measures of James the King of Aragon Cousin German to the deceased Count and hindered his carrying the Princess away by force as he had designed if he could not procure her by other wayes in order to oblige her to marry his Son and by that means to retain this fair County in his Family which lay so conveniently for him During this time Lewis had all the leisure which could be reasonably desired to make his preparations and provisions year 1247 which were the greatest that ever had been seen and also to settle that Publick Peace and Tranquility which he had so happily given to all his Dominions and to assure himself on the side of England also For he prolonged the Truce which had been made with that King two or three Years before after the Victory of Taillebourg and also engaged the Pope to be the Guarranty that it should be inviolably observed as it was during all the time of his absence although the English hearing of his being taken Prisoner indeavoured to break it In short this Wise Prince neither went as the first Crusades had done by Land and thereby he avoided the dangers into which they had fallen of perishing by Famine and the miseries which attended those vast Desert Countries which were possessed by the Barbarians neither did he go with a confused Multitude of all manner of Persons and People who were to be gotten together who served for no other purpose but to put all into disorder but with a good Army consisting in betwixt thirty and forty thousand men which was such a number as the Great Alexander had when he went to the Conquest of Asia but this Army was composed for the greatest part of Gentlemen and choice Souldiers such as were capable of marching over the bellies of all that Egypt and Syria could oppose against them unless some accident should happen or some extraordinary misfortune befal them against which no humane Prudence can give any Warranty or Assurance And that which was most considerable the whole Army was absolutely at his disposal in regard that it consisted wholly of French for the King of England would not permit the Bishop of Berytus who went thither to preach the Crusade to publish it in his Dominions alledging that he stood in need of all his Subjects to defend himself against his Enemies if they should attack him year 1245 King Lewis having wisely provided all things necessary for his Voyage which he undertook in his very prime strength being about three and thirty Years of Age he had nothing further to do but to take care of the Government of his Realm in his absence and this he left to his Mother Queen Blanch the most able Woman and most capable of Governing of any of her time after which he went according to the Custom of those Ages to St. Dennis to receive the Oristame the Scarf and the Pilgrim's Staff which he did in great Solemnity for he parted from Paris upon the Friday after Whitsunday in the year 1248. accompanied with the two Princes his Brothers the Legate year 1248 and the most part of the Princes of the Crusade being preceded by all the Processions of the whole City which were followed by an infinite number of People who all in tears marched from the Palace to the Nunnery of St. Antonina singing Psalms and Letanies for the prosperity of his Voyage From thence he went by Burgundy to Lyons where he made his Entry with all manner of Magnificence for never any King was better acquainted with the Art of making his Royal Majesty most conspicuous in those Publick Ceremonies where he was minded to shew it and the Historians of that Age inform us that among other remarkable Circumstances of this Magnificent Entry there were an hundred Knights who being compleatly armed and mounted upon their great charging Horses caparisoned with their Coat Armor according to the manner of those times marched before him with their Swords drawn in their hands and this is that which our present King who in Magnificience and Grandeur surpasseth all his Predecessars hath revived in our dayes to render to the Majesty of our Kings that which St. Lewis himself as great a Saint as he was judged necessary upon some occasions for the manifesting his Lustre and his Greatness After this the Holy King having again conferred with the Pope who kept his Court at Lyons descended by the Rhone and went to take Shipping with the Queen upon the twenty fifth of August at Aigues-Mortes where the greatest part of his Fleet waited for him the remainder being at Marseilles there to take in the rest of his Army After which setting sail