But already had he won for himself the name of “The Scourge of God.” He had united all the forces and riches of Egypt and Asia under his sword and now (1187 A. D.) hastened with eighty thousand horse to the deliverance of Palestine.
Three months after the battle of Tiberias (July 4 and 5, 1187) he appeared in arms before Jerusalem. When Saladin had partially completed its investment, he invited its principal inhabitants to meet him in council. When they were assembled he said: “I acknowledge that Jerusalem is the House of God. I do not wish to profane its sanctity by the shedding of blood. Abandon its walls and I will bestow on you a part of my treasures, and I will bestow on you as much land as you will be able to cultivate.” To which the Christians replied: “We cannot yield the city in which our God died: still less can we give it up to you.”
This refusal enraged Saladin, and he swore to destroy the towers and ramparts of Jerusalem, and avenge the death of the Mussulmen slaughtered by the soldiers of Godfrey of Bouillon.
The siege went on. Many and fierce the sorties from the gates of the city: but fight as they would the operations of the infidels could not be stayed. Despair set in, mingled with wailing, tears and prayers. Jerusalem was filled with sobs and groans.
Deputies were sent out to propose a capitulation on the terms which he had first proposed. He sent them back without one word of hope. But one day as the deputies were pleading with unusual earnestness, Saladin pointed to his standards just placed upon the walls saying: “How can you ask me to grant conditions to a city which is already taken?” But he spoke too confidently, for at that moment they were stricken down again.
As they went down Baleau the leader of the Christian forces spoke up: “You see Jerusalem is not without defenders. If we can obtain no mercy from you we will form a terrible resolution which will fill you with horror. These temples and palaces you are so anxious to conquer shall be destroyed. The riches which excite your cupidity shall be burned. We will destroy the mosque of Omar. We will pound into dust the stone of Jacob which is an object of your worship. We will stay our women and our children with our own hands that they shall never be your slaves. When the Holy City shall become a ruin—a vast tomb—we will march out of it armed with fire and sword and no one of us will ascend to Paradise without first consigning ten Mussulmen to hell. We shall thus obtain a glorious death and in dying shall call down on your head the maledictions of the God of Jerusalem.”
Saladin was awed by this terrible speech: told the deputies to return the next day, when the terms of capitulation were signed in the tent of the great sultan, and Jerusalem passed again into the hands of the infidels, after having remained for eighty-eight years in the possession of the Christians. The Saracens boast that they retook the Holy City on Friday, the anniversary of the day on which Mohammed ascended from it into heaven: but the complete conquest of the Holy Land by the Turks was to be delayed yet an hundred years.
Finally, however, before Mamelukes of Egypt, Jerusalem, and all the cities of the coast fell, and Acre became the last stronghold of the crusaders. Against it marched the Sultan Khali at the head of sixty thousand horse and one hundred and forty thousand foot.
After a siege of thirty-three days the double wall was forced, the towers yielded to their engines, the Moslems stormed the city May 18, (A. D., 1291) carried it by the sword; and death or slavery was the lot of sixty thousand Christians. By the command of the Sultan the churches and the fortifications of the Latin cities were demolished, and a mournful and solitary silence prevailed along the coast which had so long resounded with the World’s Debate; and hundreds of thousands of warriors had found the “Paradise that lies under the shade of swords.”
Again must we go to the “roof of the world” to behold the great eruption of Moguls and Tartars whose fierce and rapid and cruel conquests can only be compared with the destructive forces of nature in her wildest moods when she lets loose upon the earth fire and flood, earthquake, avalanche and volcano. From these spacious highlands the tides of emigration and the floods of war have repeatedly been poured. In the twelfth century the various tribes akin to Hun and Turk were united and led to conquest by the formidable Jenghiz Khan, i. e. the most great Khan or Emperor of the Moguls and Tartars.