ed for nothing less than
the immediate sack of Cairo, they were told that they must remain idle
while the rest of the money was being collected. The wazir took care
that the gathering should not be ended before the soldiers of
Noureddin had reached the frontier, and Almeric found too late that he
was caught in the trap which his own greed had laid for him. He could
himself do nothing but retreat, and his retreat was as disastrous as
it was ignominious. The Greek fleet had shown itself off the mouths of
the Nile, and had sailed away again. The Greek Emperor could not be
punished; but a scapegoat for the failure of the enterprise was found
in the grand master of the Hospitalers, who was deprived of his
dignity by his knights.

The triumph of Shiracouh brought with it the fall of the wazir Shawer,
who was seized and put to death, while the man whose aid he had
invoked was chosen to fill his place. But Shiracouh himself lived only
two months; and then by way of choosing one whose love of pleasure and
lack of influence seemed to promise a career of useful insignificance,
the Fatimite Caliph made the young Saladin his minister. The Caliph
was mistaken. Saladin brought back his Kurds, and so used the
treasures which his office placed at his command that the new yoke
became stronger than the old one.

To the Latins the exaltation of Saladin signified the formation of a
really formidable power on their southern frontier. Their alarm
prompted embassies to the court of the Eastern Emperor and the princes
of Western Christendom. But the time was not yet come for a third
crusade; and only from Manuel was any help obtained. His fleet aided
the Latins in a fruitless siege of Damietta; and a terrible earthquake
which laid Aleppo in ruins and shattered the walls of Antioch saved
them from attack by the army of Noureddin which was approaching from
the north. Still, in spite of conspiracies or revolutions of the old
nobility, the power of Saladin was growing, and at length he dealt
with the mock sovereignty of the Fatimites as Pepin dealt with that of
the Merovingians. The last Fatimite Sultan, then prostrate in his last
illness, never knew that the public prayer had been offered in the
name of the Caliph of Bagdad; but Saladin had the glory of ending a
schism which had lasted two hundred years, and from Mostadhi, the
vicar of the Prophet, he received the gift of a linen robe and two
swords.

But the healing of one schism led only to