On the 15th of November, the Templars marched out of Jaffa with king Richard and his army, and proceeded through the plain towards Jerusalem. As they advanced, Saladin slowly retired before them, laying waste the surrounding country, destroying all the towns and villages, and removing the inhabitants. Between noon and evening prayers, the sultan rode over to the city of Lidda, where St. Peter cured Æneas of the palsy, and employed his army, and a number of christian slaves, in the destruction of the noble cathedral church erected by Justinian, and in the demolition of the town. He then fell back with his army to Beitnubah, a small village seated upon an eminence at the extremity of the plain of Ramleh, at the commencement of the hill country of Judea, and there encamped. “On Friday morning, at an early hour,” says Bohadin, “the sultan mounted on horseback, and ordered me to accompany him. The rain fell in torrents. We marched towards Jerusalem. We dismounted at the monastery near the church of the Resurrection, and Saladin remained there to pass the night.” The next morning at dawn the sultan again mounted on horseback, and rode round the walls of the Holy City. The whole population, together with two thousand christian captives, had for weeks past been diligently employed in the reparation and reconstruction of the fortifications. Forty expert masons had arrived from Mossul, together with engineers and artificers from all the Mussulman countries of Asia. Two enormous towers were constructed, new walls were built, ditches were hollowed out of the rocks, and countless sums, says Bohadin, were spent upon the undertaking. Saladin’s sons, his emirs, and his brother Adel, were charged with the inspection of the works; and the sultan himself was on horseback every morning from sunrise to sunset, stimulating the exertions of the workmen. Whilst Saladin was making these vigorous preparations for the defence of Jerusalem, the Templars halted at Ramleh, the ancient Arimathea, situate in the middle of the plain, about nine miles from Jaffa, and lingered with the crusaders amid the ruins of the place for six weeks. In one of their midnight sallies they captured and brought into the camp more than two hundred oxen. On New Year’s day, A. D. 1192, they marched to Beitnubah, and encamped at the entrance of the gorges and defiles leading to the Holy City; but these defiles were guarded by a powerful army under the personal command of Saladin, and the warriors of the cross ventured not to penetrate them. The weather became frightful; tempests of rain and hail, thunder and lightning, succeeded one another without cessation; the tents were torn to pieces by furious whirlwinds, and all the provisions of the army were destroyed by the wet. Many of the camels, horses, and beasts of burthen, perished from fatigue and the inclemency of the weather, and orders were given for a retrograde movement to the Mediterranean.