But, alas! this enthusiasm, this zeal, this heroism, displayed by all classes of European society, were destined to end in miserable disaster. The insubordination of the troops, the want of foresight and co-operation of their leaders, and the treachery of the Greek emperor Manuel, prepared a fatal ending for this ill-omened undertaking, which saw its host melt away long before their arrival in the Holy Land. After more than a year of tremendous efforts and sanguinary reverses, its remnants struggled painfully back to the West, leaving the kingdom of Jerusalem in a far more precarious position than before the arrival of the combined forces. “And on all sides,” relates a chronicler, “were heard complaints and reproaches against the Abbot of Clairvaux, whose promises of victory had been so little realised, who, it was said, had sent so many brave men to a useless death, and who had plunged so many noble families into mourning. The holy man was mortified to the very depths of his soul, but rather than doubt the beneficent wisdom of the Almighty, he exclaimed, ‘If they must murmur, it is better that they should murmur against me than against God. I am rejoiced that the Lord has condescended to use me as a shield. I am willing to be humiliated, provided always that His glory be unassailed.’” Forty years later, after the terrible battle of Tiberias (1187), where so much generous blood was spilt around Guy de Lusignan, the last King of Jerusalem, the Sultan Saladin, one of the most remarkable characters in Mussulman history, seized the holy city, which henceforth was only destined once, and then but for a short time, to fall again into the hands of the Christians. In 1181 the Third Crusade was undertaken, and Philip Augustus, the King of France, and Richard, the King of England, whose great deeds in this holy war obtained for him the surname of Cœur de Lion, forgetting their own personal quarrels, put themselves at its head. Subsequently, Frederick Barbarossa, the Emperor of Germany, who had previously taken part in the Second Crusade, joined the undertaking, in which he was destined to meet his death. After having shed more blood and displayed more bravery than would have sufficed to conquer the whole of Asia, after the long and memorable siege of the city of Ptolemais, after many signal successes, the Christian armies, discouraged and diminished by more than one half, returned to Europe, bringing with them “moult de gloire,”[8] says a chronicler, but without having in reality obtained any material or lasting advantage over the unbelievers, who it was true had lost St. Jean d’Acre, but who still retained possession of Jerusalem.