generalship perhaps on
either side; and where men are left to mere hard fighting, numbers
must determine the issue. The hosts of Saladin far outnumbered those
of the Latin chiefs; and for these retreat ended in massacre. The King
and the grand master of the Templars were taken prisoners; the holy
relic which had spurred them on to desperate exertion fell into the
hands of the infidels.

The victory of Saladin was rich in its fruits. Tiberias was taken.
Berytos, Acre, Caesarea, Jaffa opened their gates; Tyre alone was saved
by the heroism of Conrad of Montferrat, brother of the first husband
of Queen Sibylla. Not caring to undertake a regular siege, Saladin
marched to Ascalon, and offered its defenders an honorable peace,
which after some hesitation was accepted.

The rejection of Raymond's advice had left Jerusalem practically at
the mercy of Saladin. It was crowded with people, but the garrison was
scanty, and the armies which should have defended it were gone. Their
presence would not, probably, have availed to give a different issue
to the siege; but it must have added fearfully to its horrors. Saladin
had made up his mind that the Latin kingdom must fall, and he would
have fought on until either he or his enemies could fight no longer.
Numbers, wealth, resources, military skill, instruments of war, all
combined to give him advantages before which mere bravery must sooner
or later go down; and protracted resistance meant nothing more than
the infliction of useless misery.

Saladin may have been neither a saint nor a hero; but it cannot be
denied that his temper was less fierce and his language more generous
than that of the Christians who under Godfrey had deluged the city
with blood. He had no wish, he said, so to defile a place hallowed by
its associations for Moslems as well as Christians, and if the city
were surrendered, he pledged himself not merely to furnish the
inhabitants with the money which they might need, but even to provide
them with new homes in Syria. But superstition and obstinacy are to
all intents and purposes words of the same meaning. The offer,
honorable to him who made and carrying no ignominy to those who might
accept it, was rejected, and Saladin made a vow that entering the city
as an armed conqueror he would offer up within it a sacrifice as awful
as that by which the crusaders had celebrated their loathsome triumph.
Most happily for others, most nobly for himself, he failed to keep
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