Whilst a new crusade was being earnestly preached in Europe, Saladin was following up the course of his victories in Palestine. The battle of Tiberias and the capture of Jerusalem had spread so great a terror, that the inhabitants of the Holy Land were persuaded the army of the Saracens could not be resisted. Amidst general consternation, a single city, that of Tyre, defied all the united forces of the East. Saladin had twice gathered together his fleets and his armies to attack a place of which he so ardently desired the conquest. But all the inhabitants had sworn rather to die than surrender to the Mussulmans; which generous determination was the work of Conrad, who had just arrived in that place, and whom Heaven seemed to have sent to save it. Conrad, son of the marquis of Montferrat, bore a name celebrated in the West, and the fame of his exploits had preceded him into Asia. In his early youth he had distinguished himself in the war of the Holy See against the emperor of Germany. A passion for glory and a thirst for adventures afterwards led him to Constantinople, where he quelled a sedition which threatened the imperial throne, and, with his own hand, killed the leader of the rebels on the field of battle. The sister of Izaac Angelus and the title of Cæsar were the rewards of his courage and his services; but his restless character would not allow him to enjoy his good fortune in quiet. Amidst peaceful grandeur, roused all at once by the fame of the holy war, he stole away from the tenderness of a bride and the gratitude of an emperor, to fly into Palestine. Conrad landed on the shores of Phœnicia a few days after the battle of Tiberias. Before his arrival, the city of Tyre had named deputies to demand a capitulation of Saladin; his presence revived the general courage, and changed the aspect of affairs. He caused himself to be appointed commander of the city, he widened the ditches, repaired the fortifications; and the inhabitants of Tyre, attacked by sea and land, become all at once invincible warriors, learnt, under his orders, how to repel the fleets and armies of the Saracens. The old marquis of Montferrat, the father of Conrad, who, for the sake of visiting the Holy Land, had left his peaceful states, was at the battle of Tiberias. Made prisoner by the Mussulmans, he awaited, in the prisons of Damascus, the time when his children would deliver him or purchase his liberty.