united in him with noble instincts and the most heroic courage. On the
20th of August, 1191, five weeks after the surrender of St. Jean d'Acre,
he found that Saladin was not fulfilling with sufficient promptitude the
conditions of capitulation, and, to bring him up to time, he ordered the
decapitation, before the walls of the place, of, according to some,
twenty-five hundred, and, according to others, five thousand, Mussulman
prisoners remaining in his hands.

[Illustration: Richard Coeur de Lion having the Saracens beheaded.----37]

The only effect of this massacre was, that during Richard's first
campaign after Philip's departure for France, Saladin put to the sword
all the Christians taken in battle or caught straggling, and ordered
their bodies to be left without burial, as those of the garrison of St.
Jean d'Acre had been. Some months afterwards Richard conceived the idea
of putting an end to the struggle between Christendom and Islamry, which
he was not succeeding in terminating by war, by a marriage. He had a
sister, Joan of England, widow of William II., king of Sicily; and
Saladin had a brother, Malek-Adhel, a valiant warrior, respected by the
Christians. Richard had proposals made to Saladin to unite them in
marriage and set them to reign together over the Christians and
Mussulmans in the kingdom of Jerusalem. The only result of the
negotiation was to give Saladin time for repairing the fortifications of
Jerusalem, and to bring down upon King Richard and his sister, on the
part of the Christian bishops, the fiercest threats of the fulminations
of the Church. With the exception of this ridiculous incident, Richard's
life, during the whole course of this year, was nothing but a series of
great or small battles, desperately contested, against Saladin. When
Richard had obtained a success, he pursued it in a haughty, passionate
spirit; when he suffered a check, he offered Saladin peace, but always on