The inhabitants of this interesting city appear to have been much attached to their king, Guy de Lusignan, and his queen Sibylla. They had received them when they came from Jerusalem, as fugitives from the wrath of Baldwin IV., and protected them against the power of that monarch. The sultan imposed such conditions upon the prisoners as were necessary for his own security. They were to quit Palestine never more to return, and were in the mean time, until a fitting opportunity for their embarkation to Europe could be found, to take up their abode at Naplous, under the surveillance of the Moslem garrison. Immediately after the capture of Ascalon, Saladin pitched his tents beneath the walls of Gaza, the great fortress of the Knights Templars. He had been repulsed by the military friars with great loss in a previous attack upon this important station, and he now surrounded it with his numerous battalions, thirsting for vengeance. The place surrendered after a short siege; the fortifications were demolished, but the fate of the garrison has not been recorded. Having subjugated all the country bordering upon the sea coast, Saladin moved forward in great triumph towards the sacred city of Jerusalem. He encamped the first night at Bersabee, the ancient Beersheba, around the well digged by Abraham, in the land of the Philistines, and on the spot where Abraham delivered the seven ewe lambs, and made the covenant with Abimelech, and planted a grove, and called “on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God.” The next day Saladin marched towards Bethlehem, halting on the way before a castle of the Hospitallers, which he summoned to surrender, but in vain. Leaving a party of horse to watch the place, he pitched his tents the same evening around Bethlehem, and the next morning at sunrise, the Moslem soldiers might be seen pouring into the vast convent and the magnificent church erected by the empress Helena and her son Constantine, over the sacred spot where the Saviour of the world was born. They wandered with unbounded admiration amid the unrivalled Corinthian colonnade, formed by a quadruple row of forty ancient columns, which support a barn-roof constructed of the cedar of Lebanon. They paused to admire the beautiful mosaics which covered the lofty walls, the richly carved screen on either side of the high altar, and the twenty-five imperial eagles. Saladin was present in person, and no serious disorders appear to have been committed. The inhabitants of the town had all fled to Jerusalem, with whatever property they could carry with them, and in the afternoon, after establishing a garrison in the place, the sultan commenced his march towards the Holy City.