SECOND SIEGE, A.D. 1149.
Being compelled by the interest they inspire, to give at considerable length several of the sieges in which the Crusaders were engaged, we cannot spare room for more than a notice of that of Damascus, referring our readers for details, which will repay the research, to the pages of Michaud and Gibbon.
Louis VII., king of France, in company with Conrad III., emperor of Germany, who had led armies from Europe for the recovery of the Holy Land, laid siege to Damascus, one of the most delightfully situated and splendid cities in the world. By its populousness and wealth, Damascus excited the envy of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Tripoli, which were in the hands of the Christians, and probably affected their commerce. But it was neither the religion of the inhabitants nor the beauty of its position that tempted the Crusaders; it was enough for them to know that it was one of the richest cities of the East: nothing so soon induced a knight of the Cross to buckle on his spurs and take his lance, as the prospect of the plunder of an Oriental city. Damascus was well fortified on the east and on the south; but on the north, a multitude of gardens, inclosed with hedges and canals, formed its principal bulwark. And let not our readers smile at such a fortification; when every one of the innumerable hedges formed admirable ambuscades, and when every one of the thousands of trees was filled with archers instead of birds, the Crusaders found these gardens no “bed of roses.” It was these places, cut through by a vast number of sinuous paths, in which the Crusaders had to make their first assaults; and it required five days to carry all the positions, which were defended with the greatest firmness by the Saracens. They would have taken Damascus, if their usual enemy, Discord, had not prevailed among the Crusaders: like the bear-hunters of the fabulist, they quarrelled for the sovereignty of the city before they had taken it. By the perfidious advice of the Syrian barons, they abandoned the attack on the northern side, to make others on the east and the south. The Saracens immediately repossessed themselves of the gardens, which was the only point on which the city was weak: Damascus was missed, and the Crusaders disgracefully raised the siege.