The Arabian writers express their astonishment at the number of the christian captives, and give a heart-rending account of their sorrows and misfortunes. One of them tells us that he saw in his native village a fair European woman, bright as the morning star, who had two beautiful children. She seldom spoke, but remained the live-long day absorbed in melancholy contemplation; there was, says he, such a sweetness and gentleness in her deportment, that it made one’s heart ache to see her. “When I was at Aleppo,” says the historian, Azz’eddin Ali Ibn-Al’atsyr, who fought in Saladin’s army, and was present at the battle of Tiberias, “I had for a slave one of the christian women taken at Jaffa. She had with her a little child, about a year old, and many a bitter tear did she shed over this tender infant. I did my best to comfort her, but she exclaimed, ‘Alas, sir, it is not for this child that I weep; I had a husband and two sisters, and I know not what has become of them. I had also six brothers, all of whom have perished.’ This is the case of one person only. Another day I saw at Aleppo a christian slave accompanying her master to the house of a neighbour. The master knocked at the door, and another Frank woman came to open it; the two females immediately give a loud cry; they rush into each other’s arms; they weep; they sit down on the ground and enter into conversation. They were two sisters who had been sold as slaves to different masters, and had been brought without knowing it to the same town.”[73] Thus fell the holy city of Jerusalem, eighty-eight years after its conquest by Godfrey de Bouillon and the crusaders. Our excellent chronicler, Radolph, abbot of Coggleshale, who was redeemed from bondage by payment of the ten golden bezants, throws a pitying glance upon the misfortunes and miseries of the poor captives, but attributes the fall of Jerusalem, and all the calamities consequent thereon, to the sins and iniquities of the inhabitants. “They honoured God,” says he, “with their lips, but their hearts were far from him.” He speaks of the beautiful women who thronged Jerusalem, and of the general corruption of the city, and exclaims, in the words of the prophet, “The Lord hath said unto the heathen, Go ye up against her walls and destroy, take away her battlements, for they are not the Lord’s.”