Promotion
of Longchamp.
He also made great provision for John. He had him married, as soon as he could, to the heiress of Gloucester, to whom he had been so long betrothed, although the archbishop protested that they were too near akin. He gave him the counties of Dorset, Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, Derby, and Nottingham, with divers other castles and honors; but he would not recognize him as his heir or leave him with a settled share in the government. The real power he placed in the hands of a man whom he had found for himself, William Longchamp, who had gone through the usual training in the Chancery, and whom he now made Chancellor and Bishop of Ely. To him also he committed the justiciarship, in partnership with the Bishop of Durham, after the death of William de Mandeville, whom he had meant to leave as lieutenant-general of the kingdom; and before his final departure on the Crusade he made him sole Justiciar, and obtained for him the office of legate from Clement III.
Richard
starts on the
Crusade,
1190.
In order to remove the two greatest obstacles to peace he bound his two brothers John and Geoffrey to stay away for three years from England, so as to leave a clear stage for Longchamp. He then prepared for his departure. He left England in December. After arranging matters in Normandy and Poictou, he proceeded to Vezelai, whence he started with Philip soon after midsummer. It may be said that, in spite of good intentions, he took away with him the men whom it would have been wisest to leave behind, Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury, Ranulf Glanvill, and Hubert Walter, and left behind him the uneasy spirits whom he might have made useful against the infidel, John, Geoffrey, and Longchamp. And this the later history proves. At present we will follow Richard.
The Third
Crusade.
The third Crusade, in which he was the foremost actor, is one of the most interesting parts of the crusading history; the greatness of the occasion, the greatness of the heroes, and the greatness of the failure, mark it out especially. And yet it was not altogether a failure, for it stayed the Western progress of Saladin, and Islam never again had so great a captain. Jerusalem had been taken in the autumn of 1187. The king had been taken prisoner in the summer. Before or after the capture almost every stronghold had been surrendered within the territory of Jerusalem. Saving the lordship of Tyre and the principalities of Antioch and Tripoli, all the Frank possessions had been lost, and only a few mountain fortresses kept up a hopeless resistance. The counsels of the crusaders were divided; the military orders hated and were hated by the Frank nobility; and these, with an admixture of Western adventurers like Conrad of Montferrat, played fast and loose with Saladin, betraying the interests of Christendom and working up in their noble enemy a sum of mistrust and contempt which he intended should accumulate till he could take full vengeance.
Siege of
Acre.
Crusade of
Frederick.
When King Guy, released from captivity, opened, in August, 1189, the siege of Acre, he was probably conscious that no more futile design was ever attempted. Yet it showed an amount of spirit unsuspected by the Western princes, and drew at once to his side all the adventurous soldiers of the Cross. If he could maintain the siege long enough, there were hopes of ultimate success against Saladin, of the recovery of the Cross and the Sepulchre, for the emperor and the kings of the West were all on the road to Palestine. Month after month passed on. The Danes and the Flemings arrived early, but the great hosts lagged strangely behind. The great hero Frederick of Hohenstaufen started first; he was to go by land. Like a great king, such as he was, he first set his realms in order; early in 1188, at what was called the Court of God, at Mentz, he called his hosts together; then from Ratisbon, on St. George’s day, 1189, he set off, like St. George himself, on a pilgrimage against the dragons and enchanters that lay in wait for him in the barbarous lands of the Danube and in Asia Minor. The dragons were plague and famine, the enchanters were Byzantine treachery and Seljukian artifice. Through both the true and perfect knight passed with neither fear nor reproach. In a little river among the mountains of Cilicia he met the strongest enemy, and only his bones reached the land of his pilgrimage. His people looked for him as the Britons for Arthur. They would not believe him dead. Still legend places him, asleep but yet alive, in a cave among the Thuringian mountains, to awake and come again in the great hour of German need. His diminished and perishing army brought famine and pestilence to the besieging host at Acre. His son Frederick of Swabia, who commanded them, died with them; and the German Crusaders who were left—few indeed after the struggle—returned to Germany before the close of the Crusade under Duke Leopold of Austria.
Next perhaps, after the Emperor, the Crusade depended on the King of Sicily—he died four months after his father-in-law, Henry II.