PARTVII 3 Third Crusade, a.d. 1187

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/39701/39701-h/39701-h.htm


http://www.gutenberg.org/files/39701/39701-h/39701-h.htm#Page_221





Third Crusade, a.d. 1187

When the Prince of Navarre returned to Pampeluna, he forbore to pain his sister’s heart by a recital of the [Pg 221]melancholy circumstances that had so affected his own, but he carried to her an assurance that Richard would wed only Berengaria, sealed with the mysterious jewel now reset as the signet ring of the King of England. He described the splendid coronation of his friend, the wealth of his new realm, and the enthusiastic rapture with which his new subjects hailed his accession to the throne. He also informed her that Richard, previous to his father’s death, had taken the cross for the Holy Land, and that all his time and thoughts were now occupied in settling the affairs of the realm for this object; and that the alliance with Philip, which had caused her so much anxiety, was an engagement, not to marry Alice, but to enter with the French monarch upon the Third Crusade.

The prospects of her mistress awakened all the enthusiasm of Elsiebede. She dreamed by night and prophesied by day of long journeys on horseback and by sea, and she interspersed her prognostications with agreeable tales of distressed damsels carried off by unbelieving Afrites, and miraculous escapes from shipwreck by the interposition of good Genii. But though her tongue was thus busy, her hands were not idle. She set in motion all the domestic springs to furnish forth the wardrobe of her mistress and herself with suitable splendor, and amused the needle-women with such accounts of eastern magnificence that they began to regard the rich fabrics upon which they were employed as scarcely worthy of attention.

In the beginning of the autumn of 1190, Queen Eleanor arrived at the court of Navarre to demand of her friend Sancho the Wise the hand of his daughter for her son Richard. The king readily accepted the proposal, for beside being Berengaria’s lover, the gallant Plantagenet was the most accomplished, if not the most powerful sovereign of Europe. Under the escort of the queen dowager the royal fiancée journeyed to Naples, where she learned to her mortification and dismay that her intended lord was not yet released from the claims of Alice, and that the potentates assembled for the crusade were in hourly expectation of[Pg 222] seeing the armed forces of Christendom embroiled in a bloody war to decide her title to the crown matrimonial of England.

The forebodings of Elsiebede did not increase her equanimity. “It is all the work of the fatal ring,” said the superstitious maiden. “Did I not tell thee it would thwart his dearest wish?” Berengaria could reply only by her tears. Other circumstances made her apprehensive concerning the fate of the expedition. The Emperor Frederic Barbarossa was among the first of those whose grief arose to indignation at the fall of Jerusalem. He wrote letters to Saladin demanding restitution of the city, and threatening vengeance in the event of non-compliance. The courteous Infidel replied, that if the Christians would give up to him Tyre, Tripoli and Antioch, he would restore to them the piece of wood taken at the battle of Tiberias, and permit the people of the west to visit Jerusalem as pilgrims. The chivalry of Germany were exasperated at this haughty reply, and the emperor, though advanced in age, with his son the Duke of Suabia, the Dukes of Austria and Moravia, sixty-eight temporal and spiritual lords, and innumerable hosts of crusaders, drawn out of every class, from honorable knighthood down to meanest vassalage, set out from Ratisbon for the East. The virtuous Barbarossa conducted the march with prudence and humanity. Avoiding as much as possible the territories of the timid and treacherous Greek Emperor, Isaac Angelus, he crossed the Hellespont, passed through Asia Minor, defeated the Turks in a general engagement at Iconium, and reached the Taurus Ridge, having accomplished the difficult journey with more honor and dignity and success than had fallen to the lot of any previous crusaders.

When the army approached the river Cydnus, the gallant Frederic, emulating the example of Alexander, desired to bathe in its waters. His attendants sought to dissuade him, declaring that the place had been marked by a fatality from ancient times; and to give weight to their arguments, pointed to this inscription upon an adjacent rock, “Here[Pg 223] the greatest of men shall perish.” But the humility of the monarch prevented his listening to their counsels. The icy coldness of the stream chilled the feeble current in his aged veins, and the strong arms that had for so many years buffeted the adverse waves of fortune, were now powerless to redeem him from the eddying tide. He was drawn out by the attendants, but the spark of life had become extinct.

The tidings of this melancholy event came to Berengaria, when her heart was agitated by the perplexity of her own situation not only, but by the intelligence that Richard’s fleet had been wrecked off the port of Lisbon, and that he was himself engaged in hostilities with Tancred. Cœur de Lion was indeed justly incensed with the usurper of his sister’s dominions. Upon the first news of the fall of Jerusalem, William the Good had prepared to join the crusade with one hundred galleys equipped and provisioned for two years, sixty thousand measures of wine, sixty thousand of wheat, the same number of barley, together with a table of solid gold and a tent of silk, sufficiently capacious to accommodate two hundred persons. Being seized with a fatal disease, he left these articles by will to Henry II, and settling upon his beloved Joanna a princely dower, intrusted to her the government of the island. No sooner was he deceased, than Tancred, an illegitimate son of Roger of Apulia, seized upon the inheritance and threw the fair widow into prison. The roar of the advancing lion startled Tancred from his guilty security, and he lost no time in unbarring the prison doors of his royal captive. But Richard required complete restitution, and enforced his demands by the sword. He seized upon Messina, but finally through the intervention of the French king, accommodated the matter by accepting forty thousand ounces of gold, as his father’s legacy and his sister’s dower. He also affianced his nephew Arthur of Brittany, to the daughter of Tancred, the Sicilian prince agreeing on his part to equip ten galleys and six horse transports for the crusade. Completely reconciled to the English king, Tancred, in a moment of confidence, showed him letters in which Philip had volunteered[Pg 224] to assist in hostilities against Richard. This treachery on the part of Philip brought matters to a crisis. Seizing the evidences of perfidy, Richard strode his way to the French camp, and with eyes sparkling with rage, and a voice of terrible power, upbraided him with his baseness. Philip strongly asserted his innocence, and declared the letters a forgery, a mere trick of Richard to gain a pretext for breaking off the affair with his sister. The other leaders interposed and shamed Philip into acquiescence with Richard’s desire to be released from his engagement with Alice. Some days after the French king sailed for Acre.

But though the hand of the royal Plantagenet was thus free, the long anticipated nuptials were still postponed. It was the period of the lenten fast, when no devout Catholic is permitted to marry. Eleanor finding it impossible longer to leave her regency in England, conducted Berengaria to Messina, and consigned her to the care of Queen Joanna, who was also preparing for the voyage. The English fleet, supposed lost, arrived in the harbor of Messina about the same time, and arrangements were speedily made for departure. As etiquette forbade the lovers sailing together, Richard embarked his sister with her precious charge on board one of his finest ships, in the care of the noble Stephen de Turnham, while himself led the convoy in his favorite galley Trenc-the-mere, accompanied by twenty-four knights, whom he had organized in honor of his betrothment, under a pledge that they would with him scale the walls of Acre. From their badge, a fillet of blue leather, they were called knights of the Blue Thong.

Thus with one hundred and fifty ships and fifty galleys, did the lion-hearted Richard and his bride hoist sail for the Land of Promise, that El Dorado of the middle ages, the Utopia of every enthusiast whether of conquest, romance or religion.