CHAPTER XIII. KING BALDWIN THE LEPER. A.D. 1173-1186. “Would I were dead, if God’s good will were so, For what is in this world but grief and woe?” _King Henry VI._ The only son of Amaury, by his first wife Agnes, daughter of the younger Jocelyn of Edessa, was placed, at the age of nine years, under the charge of William of Tyre. He was a studious bright boy, and at first raised the highest hopes of his future. But his tutor discovered by accident that he was afflicted with that dreadful and incurable disease which was beginning to be so prevalent among the Syrian Christians. In his boyish sports with the children of his own age, his tutor remarked that when the boys pinched each other in the arm, little Baldwin alone was able to bear the pain without any cry or apparent emotion. This awakened his suspicions, and he took the child to be examined by physicians. It was found that his right arm, of which he had appeared to have perfect command, was half paralysed. All sorts of fomentations and frictions were tried, but all proved fruitless, and it was soon apparent that the future king was a confirmed leper. Day by day the disease gained ground, seizing on his hands and feet, and gradually gaining hold of his whole body. He was handsome, too, and an accomplished horseman, passionately fond of reading history and hearing the stories of valiant knights, like his father and uncle. In person he exactly resembled his father, and, like him, he was troubled with an impediment of speech. He was thirteen when his father died, and four days after that event he was crowned in the Church of the Sepulchre with all the ceremonies customary at this important event. The regency was at first confided to Milo de Plancy, in spite of the opposition made by Raymond, who pleaded vainly his relationship to the king, his long services, and the importance of his dignity as Count of Tripoli. Milo was a native of Champagne, and a distant cousin of King Amaury. He was popular, because he was prodigal of promises, and full of that _bravoure_ which catches the eyes of the people. But he was arrogant, presumptuous, and full of ambition. Drawing upon himself the hatred of all the barons by his manifest contempt for them, he was set upon one night, by order of some unknown person, probably one of the barons, and murdered, after which Raymond succeeded as regent with no opposition. Raymond had spent nine years of his life in prison at Aleppo, and had employed the dreary years of his captivity in study, so that he was learned above the generality of laymen. He was a man of courage in action, of prudence, and of extreme sobriety in life. To strangers he was generous and affable: to his own people he was neither one nor the other.