Meanwhile the lesser folk were growing tired of waiting for Henry, and impatiently asking whether they were or [Sidenote: _June 16-20_] were not really going to Jerusalem this time. Some of the French nobles urged Richard to lead the host at once to Jerusalem and begin the siege. He refused. He pointed out the risks which such a step would involve; he reminded them how easy it would be for Saladin, who always knew all their movements, to swoop down with his army into the plain in their rear and cut off their supplies and their communication with the sea, the circuit of the walls being too extensive to admit of the division of so small a force as theirs into two bodies, one to form the siege and the other to protect the besiegers and keep the ways clear for convoys. He would not, he said, be the leader of such an undertaking, because he had no mind to incur the blame for the disaster in which he believed it would result. He knew well, he added, that both in Holy Land and in France there were some persons who wished that he might wreck his reputation in some such way, but he was not minded to satisfy their desire. Moreover, he and the French were alike strangers in the land; it was not for them to take the responsibility, but for the Military Orders and the feudataries of the realm. “Let them decide whether we are to attempt the siege, or to go and take Babylon, or Beyrout, or Damascus. So shall there be no discord amongst us.”[937] The decision was committed to twenty umpires representing every division of the host except the subjects of Richard: five Templars, five Hospitaliers, five knights of Syria, and five barons of France. The first fifteen gave their award for an expedition against “Babylon”; but the French would not agree to this; they declared they would go to Jerusalem and nowhere else. Richard did his utmost to restore unity. He held out every possible inducement to the French to accept the Cairo project: “See, my fleet lies at Acre, ready to carry all the baggage, equipments, and accoutrements, biscuits and flour; the host would go all along by the shore and I would lead from here at my own charges seven hundred knights and two thousand men-at-arms; no man of mine should be lacking. But if they [that is, the French] will not do this, I am quite ready to go to the siege of Jerusalem; only be it known that I will not be the leader of the host; I will go in the company, as leader of my own men, but of no others.” And forthwith he bade all his men assemble in the quarters of the Hospitaliers, “and arrange what help they would give to the siege when they got to Jerusalem.”[938]