who had quartered his troops in the town, endeavored to ac commodate the quarrel, and held a conference with Richard for that purpose. While the two kings, meeting in the open fields, were engaged in discourse on this subject, a body of those Sicilians seemed to be drawing towards them; and Richard pushed forwards in order to inquire into the reason of this extraordinary movement.* The English, insolent from their power, and inflamed with former animosities, wanted but a pretence for attacking the Messinese: they soon chased them off the field, drove them into the town, and entered with them at the gates. The king employed his authority to restrain them from pillaging and massacring the defenceless inhabitants; but he gave orders, in token of his victory, that the standard of England should be erected on the walls. Philip, who considered that place as his quarters, exclaimed against the insult, and ordered some of his troops to pull down the standard: but Richard informed him by a messenger, that though he himself would willingly remove that ground of offence, he would not permit it to be done by others; and if the French king attempted such an insult upon him, he should not succeed but by the utmost effusion of blood. Philip, content with this species of haughty submission, recalled his orders:† the difference was seemingly accommodated, but still left the remains of rancor and jealousy in the breasts of the two monarchs. Tancred, who for his own security desired to inflame their mutual hatred, employed an artifice which might have been attended with consequences still more fatal. [1191.] He showed Richard a letter, signed by the French king, and delivered to him, as he pretended, by the duke of Burgundy; in which that monarch desired Tancred to fall upon the quarters of the English, and promised to assist him in putting them to the sword as common enemies. The unwary Richard gave credit to the information; but was too candid not to betray his discontent to Philip, who absolutely denied the letter, and charged the Sicilian prince with forgery and falsehood. Richard either was, or pretended to be, entirely satisfied ‡ Lest these jealousies and complaints should multiply between them, it was proposed that they should, by a solemn treaty, obviate all future differences, and adjust every point Benedict. Abbas, p. 608. * that could possibly hereafter become a controversy between them. But this expedient started a new dispute, which might have proved more dangerous than any of the foregoing, and which deeply concerned the honor of Philip's family. When Richard, in every treaty with the late king, insisted so strenuously on being allowed to marry Alice of France, he had only sought a pretence for quarrelling, and never meant to take to his bed a princess suspected of a criminal amour with his own father. After he became master, he no longer spake of that alliance: he even took measures for espousing Berengaria, daughter of Sanchez, king of Navarre, with whom he had become enamored during his abode in Guienne : Queen Eleanor was daily expected with that princess at Messina ; † and when Philip renewed to him his applications for espousing his sister Alice, Richard was obliged to give him an absolute refusal. It is pretended by Hoveden and other historians, that he was able to produce such convincing proofs of Alice's infidelity, and even of her having borne a child to Henry, that her brother desisted from his applications, and chose to wrap up the dishonor of his family in silence and oblivion. It is certain, from the treaty itself which remains, that, whatever were his motives, he permitted Richard to give his hand to Berengaria; and having settled all other controversies with that prince, he immediately set sail for the Holy Land. Richard awaited some time the arrival of his mother and bride; and when they joined him, he separated his fleet into two squadrons, and set forward on his enterprise. Queen Eleanor returned to England; but Berengaria, and the queen dowager of Sicily, his sister, attended him on the expedition.|| The English fleet, on leaving the port of Messina, met with a furious tempest; and the squadron on which the two princesses were embarked was driven on the coast of Cyprus, and some of the vessels were wrecked near Limisso, in that island. Isaac, prince of Cyprus, who assumed the magnificent title of emperor, pillaged the ships that were stranded, hrew the seamen and passengers into prison, and even refused to the prin cesses liberty, in their dangerous situation, of entering the harber of Limisso. But Richard, who arrived soon after, took *Vinisauf, p. 316. Trivet, p. 102. W. Heming. p. 519. Rymer, vol. i. p. 69. Chron. Dunst. p. 44. H ample vengeance on him for the injury. He disembarked his troops; defeated the tyrant, who opposed his landing; entered Limisso by storm; gained next day a second victory; obliged Isaac to surrender at discretion; and established governors over the island. The Greek prince, being thrown into prison and loaded with irons, complained of the little regard with which he was treated; upon which Richard ordered silver fetters to be made for him; and this emperor, pleased with the distinction, expressed a sense of the generosity of his conqueror.* The king here espoused Berengaria, who, immediately embarking, carried along with her to Palestine the daughter of the Cypriot prince; a dangerous rival, who was believed to have seduced the affections of her husband. Such were the libertine character and conduct of the heroes engaged in this pious enterprise ! The English army arrived in time to partake in the glory of the siege of Acre or Ptolemais, which had been attacked for above two years by the united force of all the Christians in Palestine, and had been defended by the utmost efforts of Saladin and the Saracens. The remains of the German army, conducted by the emperor Frederic, and the separate bodies of adventurers who continually poured in from the west, had enabled the king of Jerusalem to form this important enterprise;† but Saladin having thrown a strong garrison into the place under the command of Caracos, his own master in the art of war, and molesting the besiegers with continual attacks and sallies, had protracted the success of the enterprise, and wasted the force of his enemies. The arrival of Philip and Richard inspired new life into the Christians; and these princes, acting by concert, and sharing the honor and danger of every action, gave hopes of a final victory over the infidels. They agreed on this plan of operations: when the French monarch attacked the town, the English guarded the trenches: next day, when the English prince conducted the assault, the French succeeded him in providing for the safety of the assailants. The emulation between those rival kings and rival nations produced extraordinary acts of valor: Richard, in particular, animated with a more precipitate courage than Philip, and more agreeable to the romantic spirit of that age, drew to himself the general attention, and acquired a great and splendid reputation. But this harmony was of short dura * Benedict. Abbas, p. 650. Ann. Waverl. p. 164. Vinisauf, p. 328. W. Heming. p. 523. Vinisauf, p 269, 271, 279. tion; and occasions of discord soon arose between these jealous and haughty princes. The family of Bouillon, which had first been placed on the throne of Jerusalem, ending in a female, Fulk, count of Anjou, grandfather to Henry II. of England, married the heiress of that kingdom, and transmitted his title to the younger branches of his family. The Anjevan race ending also in a female, Guy de Lusignan, by espousing Sibylla, the heiress, had succeeded to the title; and though he lost his kingdom by the invasion of Saladin, he was still acknowledged by all the Christians for king of Jerusalem.* But as Sibylla died without issue during the siege of Acre, Isabella, her younger sister, put in her claim to that titular kingdom, and required Lusignan to resign his pretensions to her husband, Conrade, marquis of Montferrat. Lusignan, maintaining that the royal title was unalienable and indefeasible, had recourse to the protection of Richard, attended on him before he left Cyprus, and engaged him to embrace his cause.t There needed no other reason for throwing Philip into the party of Conrade; and the opposite views of these great monarchs brought faction and dissension into the Christian army, and retarded all its operations. The templars, the Genoese, and the Germans, declared for Philip and Conrade; the Flemings, the Pisans, the knights of the hospital of St. John, adhered to Richard and Lusignan. But notwithstanding these disputes, as the length of the siege had reduced the Saracen garrison to the last extremity, they surrendered themselves prisoners; stipulated, in return for their lives, other advantages to the Christians, such as restoring of the Christian prisoners, and the delivery of the wood of the true cross; and this great enterprise, which had long engaged the attention of all Europe and Asia, was at last, after the loss of three hundred thousand men, brought to a happy period. But Philip, instead of pursuing the hopes of further conquest, and of redeeming the holy city from slavery, being disgusted with the ascendant assumed and acquired by Richard, * Vinisauf, p. 281. † Trivet, p. 104. Viņisauf, p. 342. W. Heming. p. 524. This true cross was lost in the battle of Tiberiade, to which it had been carried by the crusaders for their protection. Rigord, an author of that age, says, that after this dismal event, all the children who were born throughout all Christendom, had only twenty or twenty-two teeth, instead of thirty or thirty-two, which was their former complement. (p. 14.) and having views of many advantages which he might reap by his presence in Europe, declared his resolution of returning to France; and he pleaded his bad state of health as an excuse for his desertion of the common cause. He left, however, to Richard ten thousand of his troops, under the command of the duke of Burgundy; and he renewed his oath never to commence hostilities against that prince's dominions during his absence. But he had no sooner reached Italy than he applied, it is pretended, to Pope Celestine III. for a dispensation from this vow; and when denied that request, he still proceeded, though after a covert manner, in a project which the present situation of England rendered inviting, and which gratified, in an eminent degree, both his resentment and his ambition. Immediately after Richard had left England, and begun his march to the Holy Land, the two prelates whom he had appointed guardians of the realm, broke out into animosities against each other, and threw the kingdom into combustion. Longchamp, presumptuous in his nature, elated by the favor which he enjoyed with his master, and armed with the legantine commission, could not submit to an equality with the bishop of Durham: he even went so far as to arrest his colleague, and to extort from him a resignation of the earldom of Northumberland, and of his other dignities, as the price of his liberty. The king, informed of these dissensions, ordered, by letters from Marseilles, that the bishop should be reinstated. in his offices; but Longchamp had still the boldness to refuse compliance, on pretence that he himself was better acquainted with the king's secret intentions. He proceeded to govern the kingdom by his sole authority; to treat all the nobility with arrogance; and to display his power and riches with an invidious ostentation. He never travelled without a strong guard of fifteen hundred foreign soldiers, collected from that licentious tribe, with which the age was generally infested: nobles and knights were proud of being admitted into his train: his retinue wore the aspect of royal magnificence; and when, in his progress through the kingdom, he lodged in any monastery, his attendants, it is said, were sufficient to devour in one night the revenue of several years. The king, who was detained in Europe longer than the haughty prelate expected, * Hoveden, p. 665. Knyghton, p. 2403. + W. Heming. p. 528. † Hoveden, p. 680. Benedict. Abbas, p. 626, 700. Brompton, p. 1193, |