⁂ While these volumes were passing through the press, the Tales of the Crusaders appeared. In the second of them is contained a series of supposed propositions from Saladin for peace between his nation and the English. The conclusion of those propositions is thus expressed:—“Saladin will put a sacred seal on this happy union betwixt the bravest and noblest of Frangistan and Asia, by raising to the rank of his royal spouse a Christian damsel, allied in blood to King Richard, and known by the name of the Lady Edith of Plantagenet,” vol. iv. pp. 13, 14. Upon this passage of his text the author remarks in a note: “This may appear so extraordinary and improbable a proposition that it is necessary to say such a one was actually made. The historians, however, substitute the widowed Queen of Naples, sister of Richard, for the bride, and Saladin’s brother for the bridegroom. They appear to be ignorant of the existence of Edith of Plantagenet. See Mill’s (Mills’) History of the Crusades, vol. ii. p. 61.”
In that work I observe, that “Richard proposed a consolidation of the Christian and Muhammedan interests; the establishment of a government at Jerusalem, partly European and partly Asiatic; and these schemes of policy were to be carried into effect by the marriage of Saphadin (Saladin’s brother) with the widow of William King of Sicily.”
M. Michaud, the French historian of the Crusades, makes a similar statement. He says that Richard “fit d’autres propositions, auxquelles il intéressa adroitement l’ambition de Malec Adel, frère du Sultan. La veuve du Guillaume de Sicile fut proposée en marriage au Prince Musulman.” Hist. des Croisades, vol. ii. p. 414.
Whether or no “the historians” are ignorant of the existence of “Edith of Plantagenet” is not the present question. The question is, which of the two opposite statements is consistent with historical truth. The statement of M. Michaud and myself is supported by the principal Arabic historians, by writers, who, as every student in history knows, are of unimpeachable credit. Bohadin, in his life of Saladin, says, that “the Englishman was desirous that Almalick Aladin should take his sister to wife. (Her brother had brought her with him from Sicily, when he passed through that island, to the deceased lord of which she had been married.”[6]) To the same effect Abulfeda observes, “Hither came the embassadors of the Franks to negotiate a peace; and offered this condition, that Malek al Adel, brother of the Sultan, should receive the sister of the King of England in marriage, and Jerusalem for a kingdom.”[7] That this sister, Joan, the widowed Queen of Sicily, was with Richard in the Holy Land is proved by a passage in Matthew Paris, p. 171. She and the wife of Richard are mentioned together, and no other person of royal rank.
Thus, therefore, “the historians” are correct in their statement, that the matrimonial proposition was made by the English to Saladin, and that the parties were to be the brother of Saladin and the widowed Queen of Sicily. The novelist has not supported his assertion by a single historical testimony; and we may defy him to produce a tittle of evidence on his side.
In the composition of his tales, the author of Waverley has seldom shown much respect for historical keeping. But greater accuracy than his no person had a right to expect in the text of a mere novel; and as long as he gave his readers no excuse for confounding fiction with truth, the play of his brilliant and excursive imagination was harmless. Thus in the Talisman, the poetical antiquarian only smiles when he finds the romance of the Squire of Low Degree quoted as familiar to the English long before it was written; and when, in the Betrothed, Gloucester is raised into a bishoprick three centuries and a half before the authentic æra, we equally admit the author’s licence of anachronism. On these two occasions, as in innumerable other instances, in which the novelist, whether intentionally or unwittingly, has strayed from the path of historical accuracy, he has never given formal warranty for the truth of his statements, and he is entitled to laugh at the simple credulity which could mistake his Tales for veracious chronicles: But his assertion respecting the marriage of Saladin with his “Edith of Plantagenet” is a very different case. For here he throws aside the fanciful garb of a novelist, and quits the privilege of his text, that he may gravely and critically vouch in a note for the errors of our historians, and his own superior knowledge. If this can possibly be done merely to heighten the illusion of his romance, it is carrying the jest a little too far; for the preservation of historical truth is really too important a principle to be idly violated. But if he seriously designed to unite the province of the historian with that of the novelist, he has chosen a very unlucky expedient for his own reputation; and thus, in either case, he has rather wantonly led his readers into error, and brought against others a charge of ignorance, which must recoil more deservedly on himself.
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.