[Sidenote: Siege of Acre. ] [Sidenote: Crusade of Frederick. ] When King Guy, released from captivity, opened, in August, 1189, the siege of Acre, he was probably conscious that no more futile design was ever attempted. Yet it showed an amount of spirit unsuspected by the Western princes, and drew at once to his side all the adventurous soldiers of the Cross. If he could maintain the siege long enough, there were hopes of ultimate success against Saladin, of the recovery of the Cross and the Sepulchre, for the emperor and the kings of the West were all on the road to Palestine. Month after month passed on. The Danes and the Flemings arrived early, but the great hosts lagged strangely behind. The great hero Frederick of Hohenstaufen started first; he was to go by land. Like a great king, such as he was, he first set his realms in order; early in 1188, at what was called the Court of God, at Mentz, he called his hosts together; then from Ratisbon, on St. George’s day, 1189, he set off, like St. George himself, on a pilgrimage against the dragons and enchanters that lay in wait for him in the barbarous lands of the Danube and in Asia Minor. The dragons were plague and famine, the enchanters were Byzantine treachery and Seljukian artifice. Through both the true and perfect knight passed with neither fear nor reproach. In a little river among the mountains of Cilicia he met the strongest enemy, and only his bones reached the land of his pilgrimage. His people looked for him as the Britons for Arthur. They would not believe him dead. Still legend places him, asleep but yet alive, in a cave among the Thuringian mountains, to awake and come again in the great hour of German need. His diminished and perishing army brought famine and pestilence to the besieging host at Acre. His son Frederick of Swabia, who commanded them, died with them; and the German Crusaders who were left--few indeed after the struggle--returned to Germany before the close of the Crusade under Duke Leopold of Austria. Next perhaps, after the Emperor, the Crusade depended on the King of Sicily--he died four months after his father-in-law, Henry II. [Sidenote: Double siege at Acre. ] For two years the siege of Acre dragged on its miserable length. It was a siege within a siege: the Christian host held the Saracen army within the walls; they themselves fortified an entrenched camp; outside the trench was a countless Saracen host besieging the besiegers. The command of the sea was disputed, but both parties found their supplies in that way, and both suffered together. [Sidenote: Journey of Richard. ]