[Illustration: The Christians of the Holy City defiling before Saladin.-- --28]
The news, spreading through Europe, caused amongst all classes there, high and low, a deep feeling of sorrow, anger, disquietude, and shame. Jerusalem was a very different thing from Edessa. The fall of the kingdom of Jerusalem meant the sepulchre of Jesus Christ fallen once more into the hands of the infidels, and, at the same time, the destruction of what had been wrought by Christian Europe in the East, the loss of the only striking and permanent gage of her victories. Christian pride was as much wounded as Christian piety. A new fact, moreover, was conspicuous in this series of reverses and in the accounts received of them; after all its defeats and in the midst of its discord, Islamry had found a chieftain and a hero. Saladin was one of those strange and superior beings who, by their qualities and by their very defects, make a strong impression upon the imaginations of men, whether friends or foes. His Mussulman fanaticism was quite as impassioned as the Christian fanaticism of the most ardent crusaders. When he heard that Reginald of Chatillon, Lord of Karat, on the confines of Palestine and Arabia, had all but succeeded in an attempt to go and pillage the Caaba and the tomb of Mahomet, he wrote to his brother Malek-Adhel, at that time governor of Egypt, “The infidels have violated the home and the cradle of Islamism; they have profaned our sanctuary. Did we not prevent a like insult (which God forbid!) we should render ourselves guilty in the eyes of God and the eyes of men. Purge we, therefore, our land from these men who dishonor it; purge we the very air from the air they breathe.” He commanded that all the Christians who could possibly be captured on this occasion should be put to death; and many were taken to Mecca, where the Mussulman pilgrims immolated them instead of the sheep and lambs they were accustomed to sacrifice. The expulsion of the Christians from Palestine was Saladin’s great idea and unwavering passion; and he severely chid the Mussulmans for their soft-heartedness in the struggle. “Behold these Christians,” he wrote to the Khalif of Bagdad, “how they come crowding in! How emulously they press on! They are continually receiving fresh re-enforcements more numerous than the waves of the sea, and to us more bitter than its brackish waters. Where one dies by land, a thousand come by sea. . . . The crop is more abundant than the harvest; the tree puts forth more branches than the axe can lop off. It is true that great numbers have already perished, insomuch that the edge of our swords is blunted; but our comrades are beginning to grow weary of so long a war. Haste we, therefore, to implore the help of the Lord.” Nor needed he the excuse of passion in order to be cruel and sanguinary when he considered it would serve his cause; for human lives and deaths he had that barbaric indifference which Christianity alone has rooted out from the communities of men, whilst it has remained familiar to the Mussulman. When he found himself, either during or after a battle, confronted by enemies whom he really dreaded, such as the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem or the Templars, he had them massacred, and sometimes gave them their death-blow himself, with cool satisfaction. But, apart from open war and the hatred inspired by passion or cold calculation, he was moderate and generous, gentle towards the vanquished and the weak, just and compassionate towards his subjects, faithful to his engagements, and capable of feeling sympathetic admiration for men, even his enemies, in whom he recognized superior qualities, courage, loyalty, and loftiness of mind. For Christian knighthood, its precepts and the noble character it stamped upon its professors, he felt so much respect and even inclination that the wish of his heart, it is said, was to receive the title of knight, and that he did, in fact, receive it with the approval of Richard Coeur de Lion. By reason of all these facts and on all these grounds he acquired, even amongst the Christians, that popularity which attaches itself to greatness justified by personal deeds and living proofs, in spite of the fear and even the hatred inspired thereby. Christian Europe saw in him the able and potent chief of Mussulman Asia, and, whilst detesting, admired him.