When he heard of the departure of the emperor, Gregory was in the little city of Assisi, occupied in the canonization of St. Francis. During several days, he had sung nothing but hymns of hope and joy: “Francis,” said he, “had appeared like the star of morning, like the orb of day, like the moon in its splendour.” This language of peace, this festive pomp, were all at once interrupted by the maledictions that the pope pronounced against Frederick: the sovereign pontiff repaired to the foot of the altar, and there implored Heaven to confound the pride of impious monarchs, and frustrate all their sacrilegious enterprises.
The emperor, notwithstanding, arrived safely on the coast of Syria, and was received at Ptolemaïs by the patriarch, the clergy, and the grand masters of the military orders. For some days, the Christians of the East viewed him as the liberator and the king of Jerusalem; but a change speedily took place. Two disciples of St. Francis, sent by the pope, came to announce to the faithful that they had received a prince rebellious to the will of the Church. From that moment, contempt, hatred, and mistrust took place of respect and submission. They began by perceiving that Frederick was followed by only a small number of warriors, and that he had not troops enough to render him formidable to either the Saracens or the Christians. Nothing was talked of in Ptolemaïs but the excommunication of the pope, and the means of withdrawing themselves from obedience to a heretic prince: never had the deliverance of Jerusalem been less thought of.
At the moment in which Frederick arrived in Syria, Conraddin, sultan of Damascus, died; and the death of this prince gave birth to more discords among the Mussulman powers. The principality of Damascus was governed by a young inexperienced prince; and the spirit of license and insubordination, which had, in the last wars, been already observed among the troops of Syria and Egypt, made, every day, greater progress, and put all the Mussulman thrones in peril.
The sultan of Cairo, when informed of the arrival of Frederick, came into Palestine, at the head of an army. Some asserted that he came to defend Jerusalem, and to fight with the Christians; but his true design was to take advantage of the chances of war, and of the discords which everywhere prevailed, to get possession of Damascus, and defeat the plans of the enemies that jealousy and ambition had raised up against him among the Mussulmans and princes of his family.
The emperor of Germany marched out of Ptolemaïs, at the head of his small army, and directed his course towards the mountains of Naplouse. He had sent Count Thomas de Celano to Melik-Kamel, to remind him of his promises, and to tell him, that, being master of the most vast provinces of the West, he was not come into Asia for the purpose of making conquests; that he had no other design but that of visiting the holy places, and taking possession of the kingdom of Jerusalem, which belonged to him.[236] The sultan received the ambassador of Frederick with due respect; but whether he was ashamed to make peace before he had begun the war, or whether he feared to draw upon himself the hatred of the Mussulmans, by showing too much deference for a Christian prince, he at first made no reply to the propositions that were made to him.
Nevertheless the two princes sent fresh ambassadors, charged on both sides to express a desire for peace; both were placed in embarrassing circumstances, being surrounded by enemies who blamed their proceedings, and did not allow them to publish all their sentiments freely. The Mussulman army from Damascus, encamped in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, watched all the movements of the sultan of Egypt, and seemed much more disposed to fight with him than to repulse the Christians. The emperor of Germany found himself in the presence of two hostile armies, and that which he himself commanded inspired him with no more confidence than he inspired in it. The Hospitallers and Templars had left him, and followed him at a distance; in the camp of the Christians no one durst pronounce the name of the prince who commanded the army. Frederick had been obliged to withdraw the standard of the empire, and his orders were only issued to the soldiers of the cross in the name of God and of the Christian republic.
In this difficult situation, Frederick and Melik-Kamel were equally sensible of the necessity for peace, and of the danger of commencing war; they therefore gave more employment to their ambassadors than to their soldiers; this crusade was nothing but a long negotiation, disapproved of by both Christians and infidels. As the two sovereigns covered their policy with a veil of profound mystery, it was easy for hatred to spread and procure countenance for sinister reports. Criminal intentions were discovered in the simplest actions. In the Christian army it was conceived that Frederick had committed a crime by sending his sword and cuirass to the sultan of Cairo, as a pledge of his wish for peace. Among the Mussulmans, Melik-Kamel was reproached with seeking an alliance with the enemies of Islamism, by sending to the leader of the Franks an elephant, some camels, and the rarest productions of Arabia, India, and Egypt. The scandal reached its height when the emperor received as a present from the sultan of Cairo, a troop of girls, brought up, according to the custom of the Orientals, to sing and dance in the banqueting-hall.
At length prejudices were carried so far on both sides, that Frederick was judged more favourably of by his enemies than by his own army; and Melik-Kamel would sooner have found grace among the Christians than among his own troops. The infidels regarded the emperor of Germany as a prince full of wisdom and moderation; Abulfeda, and all the Arabian authors, have celebrated the qualities and virtues of the monarch of the Franks, whilst the continuator of William of Tyre only speaks of this prince with bitterness, and reports in his history, that all the apostles and other Christians had great doubt and great suspicion that he was far gone in infidelity, and warm in his belief in the law of Mahomet.
Hatred soon broke out in acts of treachery and the most odious plots. As the emperor had expressed an intention of going to bathe in the waters of the Jordan, the Templars addressed a letter to Melik-Kamel, pointing out the means of surprising the head of the Christian array in his pilgrimage: the sultan of Cairo despised such treachery, and sent the letter he had received to Frederick. At the same time Melik-Kamel learnt that the sultan of Damascus had declared war against him, and would be joined by several other Mussulman princes. The sultan of Cairo and the emperor of Germany had carried on their negotiations for peace during several months, but now, pressed on all sides by enemies, and surrounded by dangers, even in their own camp, they at length resolved to end the matter, and conclude a treaty, which would permit them to dispose of their forces for their security or for their personal ambition. They agreed between themselves, that they would make a truce of ten years, and that Jerusalem, Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Thoron should be given up to Frederick or his lieutenants.[237] According to the conditions of the treaty, the Mussulmans were to retain in the holy city, the mosque of Omar and the free exercise of their worship: the principality of Antioch and the county of Tripoli were not comprised in the treaty. The emperor of Germany undertook to divert the Franks from every kind of hostility against the subjects or lands of the sultan of Egypt.
When the articles of the treaty became known in the two camps, the peace was considered by both as impious and sacrilegious.[238] The imauns and cadis, invoking the name of the caliph of Bagdad, loudly condemned a truce which conveyed away from the Mussulmans the holy city, which they called the house of God, the city of the prophet. The prelates and bishops, speaking in the name of the pontiff of Rome, declaimed vehemently against a treaty which left mosques standing by the side of the Holy Sepulchre, and in some sort confounded the worship of Mahomet with that of Christ. When the envoy of the emperor of Germany went to Damascus, to procure the ratification of the treaty which had been concluded, the sultan and his vizier refused to hear him. The peace made with the Christians was a subject of affliction and scandal for all true believers. One of the most celebrated orators of Islamism pronounced the panegyric of Jerusalem in the great mosque; and, when recalling in pathetic terms the loss the Mussulmans had experienced, he drew tears from all the assembled people.