of Courtenay the guardian of the child.  But within three years the leper King died, followed soon after by the infant Baldwin V, and in the renewed strife consequent on these events Guy of Lusignan managed to establish himself, by right of his wife, King of Jerusalem.  He was still quite a young man, but he had earned for himself an evil name.  The murderer of Patric, Earl of Salisbury, he had been banished by Henry II from his dominions in France; and the opinion of those who knew him found expression in the words of his brother Geoffrey, “Had they known me, the men who made my brother king would have made me a god.”

Guy was king; but Raymond of Tripoli refused him his allegiance.  Guy besieged him in Tiberias, and Raymond made a treaty with Saladin.  But Saladin was now minded to seize a higher prey.  He was master of Syria and Egypt:  he was resolved that the Crescent should once more displace the Cross on the mosque of Omar.  Pretexts for the war were almost superfluous; but he had an abundance of them in the ravages committed by barons of the Latin kingdom on the lands and the property of Moslems.  Fifty thousand horsemen and a vast army on foot gathered under his standard, when he declared his intention of attacking Jerusalem; but their first assault was on the castle of Tiberias.  On hearing these ominous tidings Raymond of Tripoli at once laid aside all thought of private quarrels.  Hastening to Jerusalem he said that the safety of his own city was a very secondary matter, and earnestly besought Guy to confine himself to a strictly defensive war, which would soon reduce the invader to the extremity of distress.  The advice was wise and good; but the grand master of the Templars fastened on the very nobleness of his self-sacrifice and the disinterestedness of his counsel as proof of some sinister design which they were intended to hide.

Had it been Baldwin III to whom he was speaking, the insinuation would have been thrust aside with scorn and disgust.  To the mean mind of Guy it carried with it its own evidence; and it was resolved to meet the Saracen on ground of his own choosing.  The troops of Saladin were already distressed by heat and thirst when they encountered the Latin army from Jerusalem.  The issue of the first day’s fighting was undecided; but the heat of a Syrian summer night was for the Christians rendered more terrible by the stifling smoke of woods set on fire by the orders of Saladin.  Parched with thirst, and well knowing that on the event of that day depended the preservation of the Holy Sepulchre, the crusaders at sunrise rushed with their fierce war-cries on the enemy.  Before them the golden glory of morning lit up the radiant shores of the tranquil sea where the Galilean fisherman had heard from the lips of Jesus of Nazareth the word of life.