back to Ptolemais, and
regularly besieged the Pisans, who were friendly to the English. Into
such a miserable state of confusion had the great European enterprise
fallen for want of a good leader and an adequate object.

In April news came from England that the King's brother, John, was in
open rebellion against him and in alliance with France; whereupon
Richard, greatly alarmed, informed the barons that he must prepare for
his departure, and that they must definitively choose between Guy and
Conrad as their future ruler. To his great disappointment, the actual
necessities of the case triumphed over all party divisions, and all
voted for Conrad, as the only able and fitting ruler in the country.
Nothing remained for Richard but to accede to their wishes, and as a
last act of favor toward Guy, to bestow upon him the crown of Cyprus.
Conrad did not delay one moment signing the treaty with Saladin, and
the Sultan left the new King in possession of the whole line of coast
taken by the crusaders, and also ceded to him Jerusalem, where,
however, he was to allow a Turkish mosque to exist; the other towns of
the interior were then to be divided between the two sovereigns.

What a conclusion to a war in which the whole world had been engaged,
and had made such incalculable efforts! After the only competent
leader had been snatched from the Christians by an angry fate, the
weakness and desultoriness of the others had destroyed the fruits of
conquest. The host of devout pilgrims had beheld Jerusalem from
Baitnuba, and had then been obliged to turn their backs upon the holy
spot in impotent grief. Suddenly a nameless, bold, and cunning prince
made his appearance in this great war between the two religions in the
world, a man indifferent to religion or morality, who knew no other
motive than selfishness, but who followed that with vigor and
consistency, and had already stretched forth his hand to grasp the
crown of the Holy Sepulchre.

But on the 28th of April Conrad was murdered by two Saracen assassins;
many said, at King Richard's instigation, but more affirmed it was by
the order of the Old Man of the Mountain, the head of a fanatical sect
in Lebanon. Everything was again unsettled by this event. The Syrian
barons instantly elected Count Henry of Champagne as their king; five
days after Conrad's death he married his widow Eliza, and was
perfectly ready to succeed to Conrad's alliance with Saladin, as well
as to his wife. But