The famous Saladin, about the same time, began his career of conquest in the East. Tiberius, Acre, Jaffa, Cesarea and Berytus were the trophies of his victories. One hundred thousand people flying from the sword of the Turks crowded into Jerusalem, and the feeble garrison was not able to defend them. Saladin, unwilling to stain with human blood the place which even the Moslems held in reverence, offered the inhabitants peace on condition of the surrender of the city, and money and lands in Syria; but the Christians declared that they would not resign to the Infidels the place where the Saviour had suffered and died. Indignant at the rejection of his offer, Saladin swore that he would enter the city sword in hand and retaliate upon the Franks the carnage they had made in the days of Godfrey de Boulogne. For fourteen days the battle raged around the walls with almost unexampled fury. The Moslem fanatic fearlessly exposed his life, expecting that death would give him at once to drink of the waters of Paradise,—the Christian, hoping to exchange an earthly for a heavenly Jerusalem, poured out his blood in protecting the Holy Sepulchre. When it was found that the wall near the gate of St. Stephen was undermined, all farther efforts at defence were abandoned; the clergy prayed for a miraculous interposition of heaven, and the soldiers threw down their arms and crowded into the churches. Saladin again offered favorable conditions of peace. The miserable inhabitants spent four days in visiting the sacred places, weeping over and embracing the Holy Sepulchre, and then, sadly quitting the hallowed precincts, passed through the enemy’s camp, and took their disconsolate way towards Tyre, the last stronghold of the Latins in Palestine.
Thus after the lapse of nearly a century, the Holy City that had cost Europe so much blood and treasure, once more became the property of the Infidel. The great cross was taken down from the church of the Sepulchre and dragged through the mire of the street, the bells of the churches were melted, while the floors and walls of the mosque of Omar, purified with Damascene rose-water, were again consecrated to the worship of the false prophet. The melancholy tidings of this event occasioned the greatest sensation throughout the Christian world. The aged pontiff died of a broken heart. The husband of Joanna put on sackcloth and vowed to take the cross. Henry, Philip, the new King of France, the Earls of Flanders and Champagne, and a great number of knights and barons resolved to combine their forces for the redemption of the Holy City.
Immediately upon the death of Rosamond, Henry had made all the reparation in his power to her injured name, by acknowledging her children and placing them at Woodstock to be educated with his son John. The boys grew up to manhood, and developed a perfection of personal elegance and strength of character more befitting the sons of a king than any of the children of Eleanor. He promoted them to offices of honor and trust, and made Geoffrey chancellor of the realm.
Everything was now ready for the king’s departure. In a general council held at Northampton it was enacted that every man who did not join the crusade should pay towards the expense of the expedition one tenth of all his goods; and the Jews were fined for the same purpose one fourth of their personal property. Henry wrote letters to the emperors of Germany, Hungary and Constantinople, for liberty to pass through their dominions, and receiving favorable answers, passed over to France to complete the arrangement with Philip, when the whole plan was defeated by that monarch’s demanding that his sister Alice should be given to Richard, and that the English should swear fealty to the prince as heir-apparent to the throne. Henry refused; and his son Richard, in the public conference, kneeling at the feet of the French monarch, presented him his sword, saying, “To you, sir, I commit the protection of my rights, and to you I now do homage for my father’s dominions in France.”
The king, amazed at this new act of rebellion, retired precipitately from the council, and prepared with some of his former alacrity, to meet the combination against him. But Fortune, that had hitherto smiled upon him, seemed now to forsake him. He was defeated in every battle, driven from city to city, his health became impaired, his spirits failed, and at last he submitted to all the demands of his enemies, agreeing to pay twenty thousand marks to Philip, to permit his vassals to do homage to Richard, and above all, to give up Alice, the cause of so much domestic misery.
He stipulated only for a list of the disaffected barons who had joined the French king. The first name that caught his eye was that of John, the idolized child of his old age. He read no further, but throwing down the paper, fell into one of those violent paroxysms of rage to which of late years he had been so fearfully subject. He cursed the day of his birth, called down maledictions upon his unnatural children and their treacherous mother, flung himself upon the couch, tore the covers with his teeth, and clutched the hair from his head, and swooned away in a transport of anger and grief. A raging fever succeeded; but in his lucid moments he superintended an artist, who, at his command, painted upon canvass, the device of a young eaglet picking out the eyes of an eagle. Day after day the monarch lingered and suffered between paroxysms of pain and grief, and intervals of lassitude and insensibility; and when others forsook his bedside in weariness or alarm, Geoffrey, unconscious of drowsiness or fatigue, stood a patient watcher by his dying father. The feeble monarch recognized in the voice of this son the tones which his ear had loved in youth, and obeyed its slightest bidding; and the only alleviation of his agony was found in gazing upon the face that revived the image of his lost Rosamond. Taking the signet-ring from his finger, he placed it upon the hand of Geoffrey; “Thou art my true and loyal son,” said he. “The blessing of heaven rest upon thee for thy filial service to thy guilty sire. Commend me to thy brother William and his beautiful bride. As for the others, give them yon parable,” pointing to the picture of the eagle, “with my everlasting curse.” He leaned his head upon the breast of his son, and supported in his arms, expired.
Eleanor survived her unhappy consort more than twenty years, and in that time made some amends for the follies and vices of her early life. The first step of her son Richard on his accession to the throne, was to release his mother from her confinement, and make her regent of the kingdom. She employed her freedom and her power in acts of mercy and beneficence, making a progress through the kingdom, and setting at liberty all persons confined for breach of the forest-laws, and other trivial offences, and recalling the outlawed to their homes and families. During the absence of Richard in the Holy Land, she administered the government with prudence and discretion, and after the accession of John, resumed the sceptre of her own dominions, slowly and painfully gathering, in the crimes and miseries of her children, the fruit of the evil counsels she had given them in their childhood. At the age of eighty she retired into the convent of Fontevraud, and three years after died of sorrow, when the peers of France branded her son John as the murderer of Arthur.