Friendly embassies continued to pass between the two camps;[698] but within the Christian camp there were dissensions. First the Crusaders who had been at the siege before the kings arrived—some of them ever since its beginning—claimed a share of the spoil, and threatened to desert if it were not given to them. The kings put them off with a promise. Then Richard proposed that he, the king of France, and all the men of their respective armies should bind themselves by oath not to leave the Holy Land for three years unless the whole of it should before the end of that time be surrendered by Saladin. Philip, however, refused to take such an oath.[699] Next day (July 21) Richard with his wife and his sister took up his abode in the palace.[700] It may have been either on his entry into the city on this occasion or on an earlier visit of inspection that in passing through the streets he noticed on one of the towers a banner which he did not recognize, and asked to whom it belonged. It was that of Duke Leopold of Austria, by whom the tower had been taken. The king ordered the banner to be pulled down and trodden in the mire, and further vented his wrath in insulting words addressed to Leopold himself.[701] He seems to have acted under the impulsion of one of those fits of unreasonable fury which were part of his Angevin heritage and by which every member of the Angevin house was liable to be occasionally goaded into blunders as well as into crimes. Blunder and wrong were united in this case, and were to be dearly paid for at a later time; for the moment, Leopold was only one of a number of crusading princes and nobles who chafed under Richard’s control. In spite of all the arrangements for an equal division of authority between the kings it was inevitable that the supreme command should fall to Richard, not only because he had the greatest number of troops, but also because Philip made no attempt to assert himself openly with regard to anything except the division of the spoils.[702] This last was in fact the only matter connected with the Crusade which had any real interest for Philip. His one aim was to get back to his own realm, that he might, first, secure for himself the heritage of the lately deceased count of Flanders, and next, make whatever profit could possibly be made out of the absence of the duke of Normandy and Aquitaine. His difficulty was to abandon the expedition without disgracing himself in the eyes of all Christendom. Four of [Sidenote: _July 22_] his barons went to the palace on the day after Richard took up his abode there, with a message of which they seem to have been so ashamed that they could not utter it for tears till Richard helped them by anticipating its tenour—the king of France wanted his counsel and assent for returning home. Philip, according to these envoys, said that unless he speedily left Syria he would die. “If he leaves undone the work for which he came hither,” answered Richard, “he will bring shame