One day in 1144, Fulke, walking with the queen in the neighbourhood of Acre, put up a hare in the grass. Calling for a horse and a lance, he rode after it; and the horse falling, brought him down with such violence that he fractured his skull. He lingered four days in a state of insensibility, and then died, leaving two sons, of thirteen and seven years respectively, by his wife Milicent.
FULKE LE RECHIN. │ ┌────────────────────┼───────────────┐ │ │ │ = Hildegarde = Hermengarde. │ │ (his first wife). │ │ │ │ │ Hermengarde. Geoffrey Martell. │ │ ┌─────────────────┘ │ = Bertrade [= Philip K. │ de Montford │ of France. │ ┌────────┼────────┐ Fulke K. of │ │ │ Jerusalem. Florus. Philip. Cæcilia. │ = Tancred. │ = Pons of Tripoli. │ │ │ Raymond. │ ┌─────┴──────────────────────┐ │ │ Ermentrade = = Milicent of │ Jerusalem. │ │ ┌──────┼─────────┬───────┐ ┌──┴─────┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ Elie. │ Matilda.[63] Baldwin Amaury. │ │ III. │ Geoffrey Plantagenet Sybille │ = Matilda of England. = Thierry C. of Flanders. │ │ │ │ │ │ │ Henry II. of England. &c. ┌──────────┬───┴───┐ │ │ │ Baldwin IV. Sybille. Isabelle.
Betrothed to the young prince William, son of Henry I. After his death she went into a monastery.
CHAPTER XI. KING BALDWIN III. AND THE SECOND GREAT CRUSADE. A.D. 1144-1162.
“Seigneurs, je m’en voiz outre mer, et je ne scais se je revendré. Or venez avant: se je vous ai de riens mes fait, je le vous desferai l’un par l’autre, si comme je ai accoutumé à tous ceulz qui vinront riens demander ni à moy ni à ma gent.”—_Joinville._
“Hitherto,” says William of Tyre, whom we have been principally following, “hitherto the events I have described were related to me by others. All that follows I have either seen with my own eyes or have heard from those who actually were present. I hope, therefore, with the assistance of God, to be able to relate the facts that I have yet to put down with greater accuracy and facility.”
He was a young man when Fulke died, and preserves in his history that enthusiasm for his successor which one of his own age would probably entertain, and which Baldwin’s early death, if not his admirable qualities, prevented from dying out. He writes of him as one might have written of Charles I., had he died five years after he came to the throne, or of Louis XIV., had he finished his reign thirty years earlier.