aving obtained anything more for Christendom, except fresh reverses.

[Illustration: RICHARD COEUR DE LION HAVING THE SARACENS BEHEADED.----7]

On the 31st of July, 1191, Philip, leaving with the army of the crusaders
ten thousand foot and five hundred knights, under the command of Duke
Hugh of Burgundy, who had orders to obey King Richard, set sail for
France; and, a few days after Christmas in the same year, landed in his
kingdom, and forth-with resumed, at Fontainebleau according to some, and
at Paris according to others, the regular direction of his government.
We shall see before long with what intelligent energy and with what
success he developed and consolidated the territorial greatness of France
and the influence of the kingship, to her security in Europe and her
prosperity at home.

From the 1st of August, 1191, to the 9th of October, 1192, King Richard
remained alone in the East as chief of the crusade and defender of
Christendom. He pertains, during that period, to the history of England,
and no longer to that of France. We will, however, recall a few facts to
show how fruitless, for the cause of Christendom in the East, was the
prolongation of his stay and what strange deeds--at one time of savage
barbarism, and at another of mad pride or fantastic knight-errantry--were
united in him with noble instincts and the most heroic courage. On the
20th of August, 1191, five weeks after the surrender of St. Jean d'Acre,
he found that Saladin was not fulfilling with sufficient promptitude the
conditions of capitulation, and, to bring him up to time, he ordered the
decapitation, before the walls of the place, of, according to some,
twenty-five hundred, and, according to others, five thousand, Mussulman
prisoners remaining in his hands.

[Illustration: Richard Coeur de Lion having the Saracens beheaded.----37]

The only effect of this massacre was, that during Richard's first
campaign after Philip's departure for France, Saladin put to the sword
all the Christians taken in battle or caught straggling, and ordered
their bodies to be left without burial, as those of the garrison of St.
Jean d'Acre had been. Some months afterwards Richard conceived the idea
of putting an end to the struggle between Christendom and Islamry, which
he was not succeeding in terminating by war, by a marriage. He had a
sister, Joan of England, widow of William II., king of Sicily; and
Saladin had a brother, Malek-Adhel, a valiant warrio