Wherever the united army of Crusaders went, they agreed in few points
except in gaming, drinking, and quarrelling, in a most unholy manner;
in debauching the people among whom they tarried, whether they were
friends or foes; and in carrying disturbance and ruin into quiet
places. The French King was jealous of the English King, and the
English King was jealous of the French King, and the disorderly and
violent soldiers of the two nations were jealous of one another;
consequently, the two Kings could not at first agree, even upon a joint
assault on Acre; but when they did make up their quarrel for that
purpose, the Saracens promised to yield the town, to give up to the
Christians the wood of the Holy Cross, to set at liberty all their
Christian captives, and to pay two hundred thousand pieces of gold. All
this was to be done within forty days; but, not being done, King
Richard ordered some three thousand Saracen prisoners to be brought out
in the front of his camp, and there, in full view of their own
countrymen, to be butchered.
The French King had no part in this crime; for he was by that time
travelling homeward with the greater part of his men; being offended by
the overbearing conduct of the English King; being anxious to look
after his own dominions; and being ill, besides, from the unwholesome
air of that hot and sandy country. King Richard carried on the war
without him; and remained in the East, meeting with a variety of
adventures, nearly a year and a half. Every night when his army was on
the march, and came to a halt, the heralds cried out three times, to
remind all the soldiers of the cause in which they were engaged, ‘Save
the Holy Sepulchre!’ and then all the soldiers knelt and said ‘Amen!’
Marching or encamping, the army had continually to strive with the hot
air of the glaring desert, or with the Saracen soldiers animated and
directed by the brave Saladin, or with both together. Sickness and
death, battle and wounds, were always among them; but through every
difficulty King Richard fought like a giant, and worked like a common
labourer. Long and long after he was quiet in his grave, his terrible
battle-axe, with twenty English pounds of English steel in its mighty
head, was a legend among the Saracens; and when all the Saracen and
Christian hosts had been dust for many a year, if a Saracen horse
started at any object by the wayside, his rider would exclaim, ‘What
dost thou fear, Fool? Dost thou think King Richard is behind it?’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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