The prowess of King Richard soon attracted towards him the eyes of the crusaders and of the Mussulmans themselves. Stricken with the fever, he would cause himself to be carried upon a litter to the ramparts, and would there direct the movements of the troops. He distributed among the knights the money taken at Cyprus. The jealousy of King Philip gained ground day by day. {188} Accustomed to consider himself superior to the King of England, who was his vassal, Philip was annoyed at seeing his own authority lessened in consequence of the prodigious valor of Richard, the "king," as he was called everywhere in the East, in defiance of the rights of the King of France. The French knights and their adherents on the one hand, the English knights and their allies on the other, had vainly endeavored to take the town by storm. Saladin, the sultan of the Arabs, kept aloof, watching for an opportunity to relieve Acre. But the Christian army completely surrounded it--"as the eyeball the eye," say the oriental historians--so completely, in fact, that at the moment when the chiefs of the Christian army, temporarily reconciled, were preparing to attack the town in unison, the Mussulman garrison surrendered, their lives being spared, on the 12th of July, 1191, and Saladin retired into the interior of the country. Philip and Richard immediately entered Acre at the head of their armies, and planted their banners upon the ramparts. The King of England had taken possession of the sultan's palace, without troubling himself to find a residence for Philip, and when he learnt that the Arch-duke of Austria, Leopold, had set up his banner at the side of the standard of England, he went and tore it down with his own hands, and threw it into the trenches, indignantly asking how a duke could have any pretensions to the honors exclusively reserved for kings. Richard was destined to pay dearly for these haughty proceedings. Scarcely had the crusaders entered Acre when King Philip announced his intention of returning to Europe. In vain was he urged to persevere in the holy enterprise; in vain his emissaries who were entrusted to announce this news to King Richard were so ashamed of it that they wept and said nothing. [Image] Richard Removing The Archduke's Banner. {189}