HAVOC 147leave could take their property and depart, Christians who wanted to stay
could do so and practice their religion unmolested, Christian places of wor-
ship would be protected, and pilgrims would be welcome to come and go.
The Franj indignantly rejected giving up Jerusalem, their main prize and the
whole point of these Crusades, so Saladin encircled the city, took it by force,
and then dealt with it as Khalifa Omar had done: no massacres, no plunder-
ing, and all prisoners set &ee upon payment of a ransom.
Despite the gentility of it, Saladin's recapture of Jerusalem did fully re-
verse the gains of the First Crusade, arousing new consternation in Europe
and leading the continent's three most important monarchs to organize
the famous Third Crusade. One was the German Frederick Barbarossa,
who fell off his horse in a few inches of water and drowned on the way to
the Holy Lands. One was French monarch Phillip II of France, who made
it to the Holy Lands, took part in the conquest of the port of Acre, and
then went home exhausted. That left only the English king Richard I,
known to his countrymen as the Lionheart. Richard was a formidable war-
rior, but scarcely deserved the reputation he enjoyed back home as a
paragon of chivalry. He broke promises lightly and did whatever it took to
win battles. He and Saladin danced around each other for about a year,
and Richard won the main battle they fought, but by the time he laid siege
to Jerusalem in June of 1192, illness had reduced his strength and the heat
had him panting. Saladin sympathetically sent him fresh fruit and cool
snow and waited for Richard to realize that he didn't have the men to re-
take Jerusalem. Finally, Richard agreed to terms with Saladin, which were
roughly as follows: Muslims would keep Jerusalem but protect Christian
places of worship, let Christians live in the city and practice their faith
without harassment, and let Christian pilgrims come and go as they
pleased. Richard then headed home, preceded by the news that he had
won a sort of victory at Jerusalem: he had forced Saladin to be nice. In fact,
he had secured exactly the terms Saladin had offered from the start.
After this Third Crusade nothing of much significance happened, un-
less you count the Fourth Crusade of 1206 in which the Crusaders never
even made it to the Holy Land because along the way they got preoccu-
pied with conquering and sacking Constantinople and defiling its
churches. By the mid-thirteenth century the whole crusading impulse had
grown feeble in Europe and at last it just died away.