To Gerard de Riderfort succeeded the Knight Templar, Brother WALTER.[217] Never did the flame of enthusiasm burn with fiercer or more destructive power than at this famous siege of Acre. Nine pitched battles were fought, with various fortune, in the neighbourhood of Mount Carmel, and during the first year of the siege a hundred thousand Christians are computed to have perished. The tents of the dead, however, were replenished by new comers from Europe; the fleets of Saladin succoured the town, the christian ships brought continual aid to the besiegers, and the contest seemed interminable.[218] Saladin's exertions in the cause of the prophet were incessant. The Arab authors compare him to a mother wandering with desperation in search of her lost child, to a lioness who has lost its young. "I saw him," says his secretary Bohadin, "in the fields of Acre afflicted with a most cruel disease, with boils from the middle of his body to his knees, so that he could not sit down, but only recline on his side when he entered into his tent, yet he went about to the stations nearest to the enemy, arranged his troops for battle, and rode about from dawn till eve, now to the right wing, then to the left, and then to the centre, patiently enduring the severity of his pain."... "O God," says his enthusiastic biographer, "thou knowest that he put forth and lavishly expended all his energies and strength towards the protection and the triumph of thy religion; do thou therefore, O Lord, have mercy upon him."[219] At this famous siege died the Patriarch Heraclius.[220] CHAPTER VII. Richard Coeur de Lion joins the Templars before Acre--The city surrenders, and the Templars establish the chief house of their order within it--Coeur de Lion takes up his abode with them--He sells to them the island of Cyprus--The Templars form the van of his army--Their foraging expeditions and great exploits--Coeur de Lion quits the Holy Land in the disguise of a Knight Templar--The Templars build the Pilgrim's Castle in Palestine--The state of the order in England--King John resides in the Temple at London--The barons come to him at that place, and demand MAGNA CHARTA--The exploits of the Templars in Egypt--The letters of the Grand Master to the Master of the Temple at London--The Templars reconquer Jerusalem. "Therefore, friends, As far as to the sepulchre of Christ (Whose soldier now under whose blessed cross We are impressed and engag'd to fight,) Forthwith a power of English shall we levy, Whose arms were moulded in their mother's womb, To chase these pagans, in those holy fields, Over whose acres walked those blessed feet, Which, fourteen hundred years ago, were nail'd, For our advantage, on the bitter cross." [Sidenote: WALTER. A. D. 1191.] [Sidenote: ROBERT DE SABLÉ. A. D. 1191.]