Raymond of Poitiers was at this time lord and commandant at Antioch, and welcomed the King of France with the expectation of receiving his help in the conquest of Aleppo and Cæsarea, but as much, say the chronicles, for the sake of the ladies who accompanied him as for his military aid. Queen Eleanor was Raymond’s niece, and with her suite were several of the most celebrated beauties from the courts of Europe. Their presence promised to make Antioch again the brilliant and voluptuous city it had been of old. When the king proposed to move southward to Jerusalem his queen refused to accompany him. Some secret ambition, or a motive less creditable to her virtue, led her to such disregard for the king that she announced her rejection of her marriage vows, alleging as her reason some newly awakened scruples of conscience on the ground of premarital kinship with Louis. Her husband was compelled to kidnap his wife and carry her by force from the palace to the camp. This estrangement was the beginning of the rupture of relations between the King and Queen of France, that led to his ultimate repudiation of her and to her subsequent marriage with Henry II. of England, by whom she became the mother of Richard Cœur de Lion. At Jerusalem Louis and Conrad finally met, the latter without soldiers, having reached the city in the disguise of a pilgrim. After paying the proper tribute of devotion at the sacred shrines, the two Western sovereigns, with Baldwin III., King of Jerusalem, and their chief barons, gathered at St. Jean d’Acre to determine upon the coming campaign. The assembly was graced by the presence of Queen Melisende of Jerusalem and many ladies from the courts of Europe; but there came neither the Queen of France nor her advisers, Raymond of Antioch and the counts of Edessa and Tripoli.