In 1160 died Queen Milicent. Against her moral character, since the scandal about Hugh of Jaffa, no word had been breathed. But she was ambitious, crafty, and intriguing, like her sisters, not one of whom lived happily with her husband. She founded a convent on the Mount of Olives, in return for which the ecclesiastical biographers, as is their wont, are loud in their praises of her. Her youngest sister was made its first abbess. She died of some mysterious malady, for which no cure could be found. Her memory failed, and her limbs were already long dead when she breathed her last. No one was allowed to go into the room where she lay save a very few, including her two sisters, the Countess of Tripoli, widow of Raymond, and the Abbess of Saint Lazarus of Bethany. Probably the disease she suffered from was that which broke out in her grandson, Baldwin IV., leprosy. The year before her death the king had contracted a splendid marriage, advantageous from every point of view. He married Theodora, niece to the Emperor of Constantinople. The new queen was only thirteen: she was singularly beautiful, and brought, which was of more importance, a large dowry in ready money. Baldwin was passionately fond of his young bride, and from the moment of his marriage gave up all those follies of which he had been guilty before. But he had a very short period of this new and better life. Renaud de Chatillon, who had made his peace with the emperor, by means of the most abject and humiliating submissions, got into trouble again, and was taken prisoner by the Mohammedans. Baldwin, affairs in the north falling into confusion in consequence of this accident, went to aid in driving back the enemy. Here he was seized with dysentery and fever, diseases common enough in the Syrian climate. His physician, one Barak, an Arab, gave him pills, of which he was to take some immediately, the rest by degrees. But the pills did not help him, and he grew worse and worse. They said he was poisoned. Some of the pills were given to a dog, which died after taking them—the story is, however, only told from hearsay, and is probably false. He was brought to Beyrout, where he languished for a few days and then died, in his thirty-third year, leaving no children.

Great was the mourning of the people. Other kings had been more powerful in war; none had been braver. Other kings had been more successful; none had so well deserved success. And while his predecessors, one and all, were strangers in the land, Baldwin III. was born and brought up among them all; he knew them all by name, and was courteous and affable to all. In those degenerate days he was almost the only man in the kingdom whose word could be trusted; moreover, he was young, handsome, bright, and generous. The only faults he had were faults common to youth, while from those which most degrade a man in other men’s eyes, gluttony and intemperance, he was entirely free. Even the Saracens loved this free-handed chivalrous prince, and mourned for him. When some one proposed to Nûr-ed-dín to take advantage of the confusion in the country and invade it, he refused, with that stately courtesy which distinguished even the least of the Saracen princes. “Let us,” said he, “have compassion and indulgence for a grief so just, since the Christians have lost a prince such that the world possesses not his equal.”

The wiseacres remembered how, when he stood godfather to his brother’s infant son, he gave him his own name, and on being asked what else he would give him, “I will give him,” said the king, with his ready laugh—it was his laugh which the people loved—“I will give him the kingdom of Jerusalem.” The gossips had shaken their heads over words so ominous, and now, with that melancholy pleasure, almost a consolation, which comes of finding your own prognostications of evil correct, they recalled the words of fate and strengthened themselves in their superstition.

Ill-omened or not, the words had come true. Baldwin was dead, his brother was to succeed him, and his nephew was to come after. And henceforth the days of the kingdom of Jerusalem are few, and full of trouble.

The kingdom of Jerusalem, like a Roman colony, was founded by men alone. Those women who came with the Crusaders either died on the way, unable to endure the fatigue, heat, and misery of the march, or fell into the hands of the Turks, whose mistresses they became. The Crusaders therefore had to find wives for themselves in the country. They took them from the Syrian Christians or the Armenians, occasionally, too, from Saracen women who were willing to be baptized. Their children, subjected to the enervating influences of the climate, and imbibing the Oriental ideas of their mothers, generally preserved the courage of their fathers for one or two generations, when they lost it and became wholly cowardly and sensual and treacherous. But the kingdom was always being reinforced by the arrival of new knights and men at arms, so that for all practical purposes it was a kingdom of the West transplanted to the East. All the manners and customs were purely European. Falconry and hunting were the most favourite sports. They amused the Saracens, when they came to have friendly relations with them, by tournaments and riding at the quintain. Indoors they beguiled the time which was not taken up by eating, drinking, or religious services, in chess, dicing, and games of chance. They were all great gamblers, and forgot in the chances of the dice all their misfortunes and anxieties. Those who were rich enough entertained minstrels, and had readers to read them the lives of illustrious warriors and kings. Later on, but this was always done with the greatest secrecy, even by Frederick II., who cared little enough what was said of him, they learned to admire the performances of dancing girls. Richard of Cornwall was so delighted with their voluptuous dances that he carried a number of them to England. As for their manner of living it was coarse and gross. They brought their Western appetites to the East, and, ignorant of the necessity of light food and temperance in a hot climate, they made huge meals of meat and drank vast quantities of wine. This was probably the main cause of their ungovernable temper, and the sudden outbursts of rage which sometimes made them commit acts of such extraordinary folly. And this was most certainly the cause why they all died young. And though they imbibed every other Oriental habit readily—Oriental voluptuousness, Oriental magnificence, Oriental dress—they never learned the truth that Mohammed enforced so rigidly, that to preserve life we must be temperate. Fever destroyed them, and leprosy, that most miserable of all diseases, crept into their blood, possibly through the eating of pork, of which they were inordinately fond.

For the rest, they swore enormous oaths, vying with each other in finding strange and startling expressions; they were always rebelling against the authority of the Church, and always ready to be terrified by the threats of the priests and to repent with tears. In religion they exercised a sort of fetish worship. For it was no matter what odds were against them so long as the wood of the True Cross was with them; it mattered little what manner of lives they led so long as a priest would absolve them; there was no sin which could not be expiated by the slaughter of the Mohammedans. Every Crusader had a right to heaven; this, whatever else it was, was an escape from the fires of hell. The devil, who was always roaming up and down the world, appearing now in one form and now in another, had no power over a soldier of the Cross. Everybody, for instance, knows the story of the Picard knight. He had made a bargain with the devil, to get revenge—this obtained, he could not get rid of his infernal ally. He took the Cross and the devil ceased to torment him. But when Jerusalem was taken, and he returned home, he found the devil there already, awaiting him in his own castle. Therefore he took the Cross again, went outre mer, stayed there, and was no more troubled. And every Crusader was ready to swear that he had never himself met any other devil than the black Ethiopians of the Egyptian army. The saints, on the other hand, frequently appeared, as we have seen.

Such, in a few words, were the manners of the Christians over whom ruled Baldwin III.; an unruly, ungodly set, superstitious to their fingers’ ends, and only redeemed from utter savagery by their unbounded loyalty to their chiefs, by their dauntless courage in battle, and by whatever little gleams of light may have shone upon them through the chinks and joints of the iron armour with which they had covered, so to speak, and hidden the fair and shining limbs of Christianity.

CHAPTER XII.
KING AMAURY. A.D. 1162-1173.

“I had thought I had had men of some understanding

And wisdom, of my council; but I find none.”