To the Latins the exaltation of Saladin signified the formation of a really formidable power on their southern frontier.  Their alarm prompted embassies to the court of the Eastern Emperor and the princes of Western Christendom.  But the time was not yet come for a third crusade; and only from Manuel was any help obtained.  His fleet aided the Latins in a fruitless siege of Damietta; and a terrible earthquake which laid Aleppo in ruins and shattered the walls of Antioch saved them from attack by the army of Noureddin which was approaching from the north.  Still, in spite of conspiracies or revolutions of the old nobility, the power of Saladin was growing, and at length he dealt with the mock sovereignty of the Fatimites as Pepin dealt with that of the Merovingians.  The last Fatimite Sultan, then prostrate in his last illness, never knew that the public prayer had been offered in the name of the Caliph of Bagdad; but Saladin had the glory of ending a schism which had lasted two hundred years, and from Mostadhi, the vicar of the Prophet, he received the gift of a linen robe and two swords.

But the healing of one schism led only to the opening of another.  Saladin was the servant of the Sultan of Aleppo, and he had been recognized and confirmed in office by Mostadhi strictly on the score of this lieutenancy.  But the new wazir of Egypt had no mind to obey any longer the summons of his old master, and to his threat of chastisement Saladin in his council of emirs retorted by a threat of war.  His vehemence was cooled when his own father declared before the assembly that, were he so commissioned by Noureddin, he would strike his son’s head off from his shoulders.  In private, he let Saladin know that his mistake lay not in thinking of resistance, but in speaking of it; and a letter sent by his advice sufficed for the present to smooth matters over.  But the time of quietness could not last long.  The designs of Saladin became continually more manifest, and Noureddin was on his way to Egypt when he was struck down by illness and died at Damascus.

The widow of Noureddin held the fortress of Paneas; and her husband’s death encouraged Almeric to undertake the siege.  A bribe to abandon it was at first refused.  A fortnight later it was accepted; but Almeric returned to Jerusalem only to die.  His life had lasted only five years longer than that of his predecessor Baldwin; but it had been long enough to win for him a reputation for consummate avarice and meanness.  His son and successor, Baldwin IV, was a leper, and his disease made such rapid strides as to make it necessary to delegate his authority to another.  His first choice fell on Guy of Lusignan, the husband of his sister Sibylla, but either the weakness of Guy or the quarrels of the barons brought everything into confusion, and Baldwin, foiled in his wish to annul his marriage, devised his crown to Baldwin, the infant son of Sibylla by her first marriage, Raymond II, Count of Tripoli, being nominated regent and Joceline