Forty- two years after that, in 1187, Saladin (Salah-el-Eddyn), sultan of Egypt and of Syria, had put an end to the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem; and only seven years later, in 1194, Richard Coeur de Lion, king of England, after the most heroic exploits in Palestine, on arriving in sight of Jerusalem, retreated in despair, covering his eyes with his shield, and saying that he was not worthy to look upon the city which he was not in a condition to conquer.

When he re-embarked at St.Jean d'Acre, casting a last glance and stretching out his arms towards the coast, he cried, "Most Holy Land, I commend thee to the care of the Almighty; and may He grant me long life enough to return hither and deliver thee from the yoke of the infidels! "A century had not yet rolled by since the triumph of the first crusaders, and the dominion they had acquired by conquest in the Holy Land had become, even in the eyes of their most valiant and most powerful successors, an impossibility.
[Illustration: Richard's Farewell to the Holy Land----10] Nevertheless, repeated efforts and glory, and even victories, were not then, and were not to be still later, unknown amongst the Christians in their struggle against the Mussulmans for the possession of the Holy Land.

In the space of a hundred and seventy-one years from the coronation of Godfrey de Bouillon as king of Jerusalem, in 1099, to the death of St.Louis, wearing the cross before Tunis, in 1270, seven grand crusades were undertaken with the same design by the greatest sovereigns of Christian Europe; the Kings of France and England, the Emperors of Germany, the King of Denmark, and princes of Italy successively engaged therein.

And they all failed.

It were neither right nor desirable to make long pause over the recital of their attempts and their reverses, for it is the history of France, and not a general history of the crusades, which is here related; but it was in France, by the French people, and under French chiefs, that the crusades were begun; and it was with St.Louis, dying before Tunis beneath the banner of the cross, that they came to an end.