The umpires at Beit Nuba had reasoned soundly from the premisses before them; and those premisses were sound likewise, except in one particular: the Franks did not—as we do from Bohadin—know what was passing behind the scenes in the Saracen headquarters. They therefore probably over-estimated the enemy’s powers of resistance. On the other hand, there was a similar miscalculation on the Moslem side; Saladin’s anxiety and alarm would scarcely have been so great had he realized how completely the unity of the Christian host was broken. Even when fully assured that the Franks had really withdrawn from the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, he was still extremely uneasy, fearing they might now take up again the project of an attempt on Cairo, and feeling by no means sanguine that they might not, with the coast of Palestine in their possession and with the supply of beasts of burden which they had recently acquired, bring it to a successful issue.[964] A new game of diplomacy now began. The first move in it was made, on the morrow, if not on the very day, of the retirement from Beit Nuba, in the name of the king-elect of Jerusalem, Henry of Champagne; but the Saracens at once recognized that the king-elect could be nothing more than a cipher so long as he was uncrowned and his uncle was in the land, and that the game was not worth playing with anyone except the king-guardian. From him overtures for peace arrived on July 6, and negotiations continued till the 19th. It is difficult to decide how far either the king or the Sultan was in earnest. Richard made so many different proposals that they cannot all have been seriously meant. He and Saladin alike seem to have been really disposed to content themselves with a division of the land; each of them hoping that the division would be merely temporary, and would serve as a breathing-space enabling his own party to recover strength for a new effort. On one point, however, both were equally determined not to give way. Saladin, while agreeing that the Franks should keep the sea-coast, made it an essential condition that Ascalon should be again dismantled. This Richard persistently refused; so on July 19 the negotiations dropped, and Saladin began to prepare again for war.[965]