One of the greatest sources of trouble and difficulty which Richard experienced in managing his heterogeneous mass of followers was the quarrel which has been already alluded to between the two knights who claimed the right to be the King of Jerusalem, whenever possession of that city should by any means be obtained. The reader will recollect, perhaps, that it has already been stated that a very renowned Crusader, named Godfrey of Bouillon, had penetrated, about a hundred years before this time, into the interior of the Holy Land, at the head of a large army, and there had taken possession of Jerusalem; that the earls, and barons, and other prominent knights in his army had chosen him king of the city, and fixed the crown and the royal title upon him and his descendants forever; that when Jerusalem was itself, after a time, lost, the title still remained in Godfrey's family, and that it descended to a princess named Sibylla; that a knight named Guy of Lusignan married Sibylla, and then claimed the title of King of Jerusalem in the right of his wife; that, in process of time, Sibylla died, and then one party claimed that the rights of her husband, Guy of Lusignan, ceased, since he held them only through his wife, and that thenceforward the title and the crown vested in Isabella, her sister, who was the next heir; that Isabella, however, was married to a man who was too feeble and timid to assert his claims; that, consequently, a more bold and unscrupulous knight, named Conrad of Montferrat, seized her and carried her off, and afterward procured a divorce for her from her former husband, and married her himself; and that then a great quarrel arose between Guy of Lusignan, the husband of Sibylla, and Conrad of Montferrat, the husband of Isabella. This quarrel had now been raging a long time, and all attempts to settle it or to compromise it had proved wholly unavailing.
A delicate question.
The ground which Guy and his friends and adherents took was, that while they admitted that Guy held the title of King of Jerusalem in the right of his wife, and that his wife was now dead, still, being once invested with the crown, it was his for life, and he could not justly be deprived of it. After his death it might descend very properly to the next heir, but during his lifetime it vested in him.
Conrad, on the other hand, and the friends and adherents who espoused his cause, argued that, since Guy had no claim whatever except what came in and through his wife, of course, when his wife died, his possession ought to terminate. If Sibylla had had children, the crown would have descended to one of them; but she being without direct heirs, it passed, of right, to Isabella, her sister, and that Isabella's husband was entitled to claim and take possession of it in her name.
The Crusaders' motives.
It is obvious that this was a very nice and delicate question, and it would have been a very difficult one for a company of gay and reckless soldiers like the Crusaders to settle if they had attempted to look at it simply as a question of law and right; but the Crusaders seldom troubled themselves with examining legal arguments, and still less with seeking for and applying principles of justice and right in taking sides in the contests that arose among them. The question for each man to consider in such cases was simply, "Which side is it most for my interests and those of my party that we should espouse? We will take that;" or, "Which side are my rivals and enemies, or those of their party, going to take? We will take the other."
How Richard and Philip took sides in the quarrel.
It was by such considerations as these that the different princes, and nobles, and orders of knights in the army decided how they would range themselves on this great question. As has already been explained, Richard took up the cause of Guy, who claimed through the deceased Sibylla. He had been induced to do so, not by any convictions which he had formed in respect to the merits of the case, but because Guy had come to him while he was in Cyprus, and had made such proposals there in respect to a conjunction with him that Richard deemed it for his interest to accept them. In a similar way, Conrad had waited upon Philip as soon as he arrived before Acre, and had induced him to espouse his, Conrad's, side. If there were two orders of knights in the army, or two bodies of soldiery, that were at ill-will with each other through rivalry, or jealousy, or former quarrels, they would always separate on this question of the King of Jerusalem; and just as certainly as one of them showed a disposition to take the side of Guy, the other would immediately go over to that of Conrad, and then these old and half-smothered contentions would break out anew.
Thus this difficulty was not only a serious quarrel itself, but it was the means of reviving and giving new force and intensity to a vast number of other quarrels.
The reason of the importance of the quarrel.