[56] Among the causes of the First Crusade we mentioned the influence of the spirit of commerce on the love of pilgrimages. That spirit was afterwards mingled with the desire of conquest, particularly in the case of the Egyptian polities. Situated between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, Egypt was the communication between Europe and the Indies; and the possession of that country would have rendered the Europeans masters of commerce.
[57] There was a decree in these statutes forbidding a crusader to take any woman with him, except a laundress on foot of good character. This qualification of the exception was necessary; for in the Middle Ages the words “lotrix” and “meretrix” were synonymous.
[58] It will not be worth while to inquire whether the emperor bathed in the Cydnus or the Calycadnus: “If he went in to wash himself, he neither consulted with his health nor honour. Some say, his horse foundered under him as he passed the water; others, that he fell from him. But these several relations, as variety of instruments, make a doleful concert in this, that there he lost his life; and no wonder, if the cold water quickly quenched those few sparks of natural heat left in him at seventy years of age.”—Fuller.[i]
[59] The Christian camp was so well fortified, that the Saracens used to say, “not even a bird can enter it.”
[60] Thus, as has often been the case, the extreme of misery produced the effects of the extreme of luxury. Pagans and Christians considering God as the author of temporal good and evil only, and observing that the virtuous suffered as much as the wicked, concluded that moral conduct was disregarded by heaven. Unbounded licentiousness followed. No laws of God limited the people: the laws of man were equally inefficacious, because the criminal thought that he might die before the day of trial, or if he should live to that time, those who would have been his accusers might have perished in the general calamity. Compare Thucydides’ account of the plague at Athens.
[61] [Richard of Devizes[e] calls her “a wonderful ship, a ship than which, with the exception of Noah’s ark, we do not read of any being greater.” He says the Turks “fought fiercely because ‘the only hope for the conquered is to have nothing to hope for.’”]
[62] [On the other hand Richard of Devizes[e] quotes Saladin’s brother as saying, “Thanks be to God, Richard was burdened with the king of the French and hindered by him like a cat with a hammer tied to its tail.”]
[63] [The Arab historian Imad ad-Din[d] speaks thus concerning the prisoners put to death by Richard. “After the retreat of the Christians into the town, we found the Mussulman martyrs exposed quite naked on the sands. We went to inspect them. They recognised their friends and related what they had suffered for God’s cause, what honours they had received, what benefits they had acquired by martyrdom, what felicity they enjoyed at the price of their blood.”]
[64] Defensive war was so completely the object of the crusaders, that each man was covered with pieces of cloth, united together by rings, on which he received without injury the enemy’s arrows. Boha ad-Din[f] (who narrates this curious circumstance) adds, that he himself saw several of the Christians who had not one or two, but ten arrows adhering to their backs, and yet who marched forwards with a quiet step, and without trepidation. “So close did they march, that if an apple had been thrown, it must have struck either a man or a horse,” says Vinsauf.[g]
[65] According to Boha ad-Din[f] and Abulfeda,[j] in all these negotiations, the people of the two armies lived in friendly intercourse, and mingled in the tournament and dance. More than this, through the whole of the war, Saladin and Richard emulated each other as much in the reciprocation of courtesy, as in military exploits. If ever the king of England chanced to be ill, Saladin sent him presents of Damascene pears, peaches, and other fruits. The same liberal hand gave the luxury of snow, in the hot seasons, according to Hoveden.[h] Saladin could not but have felt some kindness for gallant warriors, whether Christians or Mussulmans, if it be true, that as soon as he was old enough to bear arms, he had requested and received the honour of knighthood from a French cavalier, named Humphrey de Thoron. See Vinsauf.[g]