Deputies were sent out to propose a capitulation on the terms which he had first proposed. He sent them back without one word of hope. But one day as the deputies were pleading with unusual earnestness, Saladin pointed to his standards just placed upon the walls saying: "How can you ask me to grant conditions to a city which is already taken?" But he spoke too confidently, for at that moment they were stricken down again. As they went down Baleau the leader of the Christian forces spoke up: "You see Jerusalem is not without defenders. If we can obtain no mercy from you we will form a terrible resolution which will fill you with horror. These temples and palaces you are so anxious to conquer shall be destroyed. The riches which excite your cupidity shall be burned. We will destroy the mosque of Omar. We will pound into dust the stone of Jacob which is an object of your worship. We will stay our women and our children with our own hands that they shall never be your slaves. When the Holy City shall become a ruin--a vast tomb--we will march out of it armed with fire and sword and no one of us will ascend to Paradise without first consigning ten Mussulmen to hell. We shall thus obtain a glorious death and in dying shall call down on your head the maledictions of the God of Jerusalem." Saladin was awed by this terrible speech: told the deputies to return the next day, when the terms of capitulation were signed in the tent of the great sultan, and Jerusalem passed again into the hands of the infidels, after having remained for eighty-eight years in the possession of the Christians. The Saracens boast that they retook the Holy City on Friday, the anniversary of the day on which Mohammed ascended from it into heaven: but the complete conquest of the Holy Land by the Turks was to be delayed yet an hundred years. Finally, however, before Mamelukes of Egypt, Jerusalem, and all the cities of the coast fell, and Acre became the last stronghold of the crusaders. Against it marched the Sultan Khali at the head of sixty thousand horse and one hundred and forty thousand foot. After a siege of thirty-three days the double wall was forced, the towers yielded to their engines, the Moslems stormed the city May 18, (A. D., 1291) carried it by the sword; and death or slavery was the lot of sixty thousand Christians. By the command of the Sultan the churches and the fortifications of the Latin cities were demolished, and a mournful and solitary silence prevailed along the coast which had so long resounded with the World's Debate; and hundreds of thousands of warriors had found the "Paradise that lies under the shade of swords."