Forty-six years afterwards, in 1145, the Mussulmans, under the leadership
of Zanghi, sultan of Aleppo and of Mossoul, had retaken Edessa. Forty-
two years after that, in 1187, Saladin (Salah-el-Eddyn), sultan of Egypt
and of Syria, had put an end to the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem; and
only seven years later, in 1194, Richard Coeur de Lion, king of England,
after the most heroic exploits in Palestine, on arriving in sight of
Jerusalem, retreated in despair, covering his eyes with his shield, and
saying that he was not worthy to look upon the city which he was not in a
condition to conquer. When he re-embarked at St. Jean d'Acre, casting a
last glance and stretching out his arms towards the coast, he cried,
"Most Holy Land, I commend thee to the care of the Almighty; and may He
grant me long life enough to return hither and deliver thee from the yoke
of the infidels! "A century had not yet rolled by since the triumph of
the first crusaders, and the dominion they had acquired by conquest in
the Holy Land had become, even in the eyes of their most valiant and most
powerful successors, an impossibility.

[Illustration: Richard's Farewell to the Holy Land----10]

Nevertheless, repeated efforts and glory, and even victories, were not
then, and were not to be still later, unknown amongst the Christians in
their struggle against the Mussulmans for the possession of the Holy
Land. In the space of a hundred and seventy-one years from the
coronation of Godfrey de Bouillon as king of Jerusalem, in 1099, to the
death of St. Louis, wearing the cross before Tunis, in 1270, seven grand
crusades were undertaken with the same design by the greatest sovereigns
of Christian Europe; the Kings of France and England, the Emperors of
Germany, the King of Denmark, and princes of Italy successively engaged
therein. And they all failed. It were neither right nor desirable to