In further explanation of this, he tells us how a certain Henry, Count of Champagne, who had now used up the whole of his store of provision and money, came to his king, Philip of France, for relief. The latter, trying to take a mean advantage, offered him a large sum if he would give up his rights over Champagne; to which the Count replied, "I have done what I could and what I ought; now I shall do what I am compelled by necessity. I desired to fight for my king, but he would not accept of me unless I gave up what is mine own; I will go to him who will accept me, and who is more ready to give than to receive."
Richard received him with the utmost kindness and liberality, and his men, "at the report of so great a largess, took King Richard to be their general and lord; the Franks only who had followed their lord remained with their poor king of the French."
This did not endear Richard any the more to Philip, but for a while these private grudges were forgotten in the assault upon the walls of Tyre.
"The King of the English, unused to delay," says Richard of Devizes, "on the third day of his arrival at the siege, caused his wooden fortress, which he had called 'Mate Grifon,' where it was made in Sicily, to be built and set up; and before the dawn of the fourth day the machine stood erect by the walls of Acre, and from its height looked down upon the city lying beneath it, and there were thereon by sunrise archers casting missiles without intermission upon the Turks."
While the Kings of England and France were thus engaged, Conrad and Guy were once again at variance. With Philip's promise of support at his back, Conrad now returned to Tyre and took no further part in the siege. The sultry heat of the plain then struck down both Philip and Richard for awhile, but the recovery of the former led to an assault which showed the Saracens they had little hope of holding out, and Richard, determined not to be outdone, struggled back to the walls from his sick-bed, and struck them another heavy blow. Four days later a long procession of the citizens filed out from the gates, bearing a flag of truce and offering to surrender the city. Richard was for "letting the vanquished pay their heads for the ransom of their bodies," but Philip, more politic as well as more thrifty, held out for a ransom of two hundred pieces of gold, the restoration of the True Cross which Saladin had seized at the Battle of Tiberias, and the release of all Christian captives.
So the two years' siege came to an end, but not without a deed which blackens the name of Richard and Philip for all time.
Saladin had delayed to furnish the ransom or to give up the relics of the Cross; whereupon the King, who was in name the follower of Him who taught His people to love their enemies, had two thousand seven hundred prisoners led to the top of a hill from which all that went on could be seen in Saladin's camp; and there, at a given signal, all these innocent followers of Mohammed were cut down in cold blood. Almost at the same time, by the orders of Philip, nearly as many victims suffered on the walls of the city itself.
The taking of Acre was the signal for a violent quarrel between Richard, Philip, and Leopold, Duke of Austria.