Often tournaments were arranged between Moslem and Christian in the sight of both armies. Knight and emir entered the lists, abusing each other with their tongues like twin Thersiteses, then fighting with the valor of Hector and Achilles. Women did not disdain rivalry for the palm in swordcraft, and bands of children from either side fought to the death in the presence of their parents. The Infidel played for the dance of the Christian, and the minstrel of Europe gave the rhythm to the feet of the Saracen. The table of Saladin was sometimes graced by the presence of the foremost European knights, and in turn emirs feasted at the board of those whom they most dreaded to meet on the field. Saladin so respected the courtesy and devotion of the true Christian knight that he willingly wore the decoration of Chivalry, while Richard rode into battle one of the two splendid steeds which were the gift of the sultan’s brother. The lowest vices of the East and the West became the open indulgence of the camps of both. But each party maintained the utmost outward reverence to the symbols of his own religion; Saladin pausing in the midst of battle to read a chapter of the Koran, and the King of Jerusalem advancing to fight with the Gospels borne aloft before him. The besieged in Acre were reduced to extremities, the Christians completely investing the city on the land side in spite of the forays of Saladin from the hills, and their fleets cutting off all succor from the sea. At length, after two years of incessant fighting, during which nine great battles were fought, the standard of the cross was seen floating from the ramparts of the city (July 12, 1191). The besieged had capitulated upon condition that their lives should be spared, and that Saladin should pay their ransom in two hundred pieces of gold. In the original proposal it was agreed to surrender the wood of the True Cross, the possession of which by the Infidels was imagined to be the cause of all sorts of disasters to the Christian world; among the least of which, if we are to believe a chronicler of the time, was that all children born in Christendom since the capture of the cross at Hattîn had but twenty-two instead of thirty-two teeth. Richard was not religious enough to insist upon the restoration of this precious symbol. Saladin, after the city had fallen, delayed in fulfilling the condition that the defenders of Acre had put upon him relative to their ransom money. Richard avenged this assumed breach of faith by massacring five thousand unarmed Moslems before the city wall. Philip, in disgust at this action, turned over his army to the Duke of Burgundy and returned to France.