The first phase of the contest between Richard and Philip comes as a welcome interlude in the tale of border disputes and family rivalries which make up the greater part of the tangled story of Philip’s dealings with the Norman empire. It takes us over the sea to the fair land of Sicily and on to the very gates of the Holy City. In 1187 the capture of Jerusalem had crowned the long efforts of the great Saladin, and where a century before Christian knights had ridden “up to their bridles” in the blood of the slaughtered Moslem, a procession of knights and priests and poorer folk passed out of the gate of David and left the Holy Sepulchre to the infidel. To the Saracens a certain sign that they were the only people “whose doctrine was agreeable to God,” the fall of Jerusalem killed the aged Pope, plunged Europe into prayer and fasting, and brought on the Third Crusade, under the leadership of the emperor Frederick Barbarossa, Philip of France, and Richard of England. Richard, then merely count of Poitou, was the first western prince to take the cross in this holy war; his father and Philip soon sealed their crusading vows with a public reconciliation under a great elm on the borders of Normandy and France, and the chroniclers tell us that every man made peace with his neighbor, thinking no more of tournaments and fine raiment, the lust of the flesh and the pride of the eye, but only of the recovery of the Holy City. Such great waves of renunciation and religious enthusiasm are peculiarly characteristic of the Middle Ages, but their force was soon spent. Then, as in other times, there were few who could live as on a mountain-top. In spite of all that the church could do, Henry and Philip soon came to open war, and the cause of Jerusalem was swallowed up in a struggle for the Loire and for Aquitanian fortresses. Richard, as we have seen, was a central point in these conflicts, and his accession to the throne simply continued the struggle in another form.