This had been going on for nearly a year before Richard and Philip left Vezelai. From Vezelai to Lyons the kings marched together; then Philip set out for Genoa, Richard for Marseilles. Richard coasted along the Italian shore, whiling away the time until his fleet arrived. The ships had gone, of course, by the Bay of Biscay and Straits of Gibraltar, where they had been drawn into the constant crusade going on between the Moors and the Portuguese, and lost time also by sailing up to Marseilles, where they expected to meet the king. Notwithstanding the delay they arrived at Messina several days before Richard. Philip, whose fleet, such as it was, had assembled at Marseilles, reached the place to rendezvous ten days before him. [Sidenote: The English at Acre. ] Immediately on Richard’s arrival, on September 23, Philip took ship, but immediately put back. Richard made no attempt to go farther than Messina until the spring. It was an unfortunate delay, but it was absolutely necessary. The besiegers of Acre were perishing with plague and famine; provisions were not abundant even in the fleet. To have added the English and French armies to the perishing host would have been suicidal. Some of the English barons, however, perished. Ranulf Glanvill went on to Acre, and died in the autumn of 1190; Archbishop Baldwin and Hubert Walter, the Bishop of Salisbury, took the military as well as the spiritual command of the English contingent; but the archbishop died in November, and Hubert found his chief employment in ministering to the starving soldiers. Queen Sibylla and her children were dead also; and Conrad of Montferrat, separating her sister, now the heiress of the Frank kingdom, from her youthful husband, prevailed on the patriarch to marry her to himself, and so to oust King Guy, and still more divide the divided camp. The two factions were arrayed against one another as bitterly as the general exhaustion permitted, when at last Philip and Richard came. [Sidenote: The kings at Messina. ] [Sidenote: Richard and Tancred. ] [Sidenote: Richard sails from Messina. ] [Sidenote: Acre taken, 1191. ]