But nearer still was a memorial yet more holy, a pledge of divine favor yet more assuring.  On a hillock hard by was raised the relic of the true cross, and this hillock was many times a rallying point during this bloody day.  There was little of generalship perhaps on either side; and where men are left to mere hard fighting, numbers must determine the issue.  The hosts of Saladin far outnumbered those of the Latin chiefs; and for these retreat ended in massacre.  The King and the grand master of the Templars were taken prisoners; the holy relic which had spurred them on to desperate exertion fell into the hands of the infidels.

The victory of Saladin was rich in its fruits.  Tiberias was taken.  Berytos, Acre, Caesarea, Jaffa opened their gates; Tyre alone was saved by the heroism of Conrad of Montferrat, brother of the first husband of Queen Sibylla.  Not caring to undertake a regular siege, Saladin marched to Ascalon, and offered its defenders an honorable peace, which after some hesitation was accepted.

The rejection of Raymond’s advice had left Jerusalem practically at the mercy of Saladin.  It was crowded with people, but the garrison was scanty, and the armies which should have defended it were gone.  Their presence would not, probably, have availed to give a different issue to the siege; but it must have added fearfully to its horrors.  Saladin had made up his mind that the Latin kingdom must fall, and he would have fought on until either he or his enemies could fight no longer.  Numbers, wealth, resources, military skill, instruments of war, all combined to give him advantages before which mere bravery must sooner or later go down; and protracted resistance meant nothing more than the infliction of useless misery.

Saladin may have been neither a saint nor a hero; but it cannot be denied that his temper was less fierce and his language more generous than that of the Christians who under Godfrey had deluged the city with blood.  He had no wish, he said, so to defile a place hallowed by its associations for Moslems as well as Christians, and if the city were surrendered, he pledged himself not merely to furnish the inhabitants with the money which they might need, but even to provide them with new homes in Syria.  But superstition and obstinacy are to all intents and purposes words of the same meaning.  The offer, honorable to him who made and carrying no ignominy to those who might accept it, was rejected, and Saladin made a vow that entering the city as an armed conqueror he would offer up within it a sacrifice as awful as that by which the crusaders had celebrated their loathsome triumph.  Most happily for others, most nobly for himself, he failed to keep this vow to the letter.