would have made me a god."

Guy was king; but Raymond of Tripoli refused him his allegiance. Guy
besieged him in Tiberias, and Raymond made a treaty with Saladin. But
Saladin was now minded to seize a higher prey. He was master of Syria
and Egypt: he was resolved that the Crescent should once more displace
the Cross on the mosque of Omar. Pretexts for the war were almost
superfluous; but he had an abundance of them in the ravages committed
by barons of the Latin kingdom on the lands and the property of
Moslems. Fifty thousand horsemen and a vast army on foot gathered
under his standard, when he declared his intention of attacking
Jerusalem; but their first assault was on the castle of Tiberias. On
hearing these ominous tidings Raymond of Tripoli at once laid aside
all thought of private quarrels. Hastening to Jerusalem he said that
the safety of his own city was a very secondary matter, and earnestly
besought Guy to confine himself to a strictly defensive war, which
would soon reduce the invader to the extremity of distress. The advice
was wise and good; but the grand master of the Templars fastened on
the very nobleness of his self-sacrifice and the disinterestedness of
his counsel as proof of some sinister design which they were intended
to hide.

Had it been Baldwin III to whom he was speaking, the insinuation would
have been thrust aside with scorn and disgust. To the mean mind of Guy
it carried with it its own evidence; and it was resolved to meet the
Saracen on ground of his own choosing. The troops of Saladin were
already distressed by heat and thirst when they encountered the Latin
army from Jerusalem. The issue of the first day's fighting was
undecided; but the heat of a Syrian summer night was for the
Christians rendered more terrible by the stifling smoke of woods set
on fire by the orders of Saladin. Parched with thirst, and well
knowing that on the event of that day depended the preservation of the
Holy Sepulchre, the crusaders at sunrise rushed with their fierce
war-cries on the enemy. Before them the golden glory of morning lit up
the radiant shores of the tranquil sea where the Galilean fisherman
had heard from the lips of Jesus of Nazareth the word of life.

But nearer still was a memorial yet more holy, a pledge of divine
favor yet more assuring. On a hillock hard by was raised the relic of
the true cross, and this hillock was many times a rallying point
during this bloody day. There was little of