EDWARD I. OF ENGLAND 109 the Christians unceasingly, would require in the telling volumes. Many volumes indeed have been devoted to this history. His two great achievements were the reunion of Islam and the destruction of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. The latter at least, he effectually accomplished. Western Europe was incapable of a second effort so great as that mighty wave of enthusiasm which won back the Holy Land and covered the plains of Asia Minor with the bones of Crusaders. Richard Coeur de Lion and Philip Augustus, Frederick II., the kings of Cyprus, the Knights of St. John, carried on the long, interminable struggle, but Jerusalem was lost. Of the chivalry and honor of Saladin his biographers are never weary. When, for instance, the Christians took Jerusalem they slaughtered every soul in the place ; their horses were knee-deep in blood. When Saladin took the city he suffered none to be slain ; when there was no more money for ransom he suffered thousands to go free ; to the weeping widows and fatherless girls he gave purses of money and suffered no outrage to be done to them. He divided them into three bands and assigned an escort to each company. And then was seen the strange spectacle, when the women and children grew fatigued, of the victors placing them on their horses and walking afoot, or even carrying the children in their arms. Again, why has no one painted that famous scene when Richard Cceur de Lion wanted no oaths, but instead gave his hand to Saladin in token of respect for his enemy and his own loyalty ? Such is the brief history of Saladin, a soldier first, always a soldier, spending his whole life on the battle-field ; the perfect knight of the Mohammedans, fierce in fight, generous in victory, faithful to his word, true to his religion, of a larger heart and nobler soul than Coeur de Lion, the only antagonist who can be named with him ; one of the few out of the countless millions of humanity, whose name lives and whose memory will never die ; his life an example ; his history a monu- EDWARD I. OF ENGLAND BY THOMAS DAVIDSON (1239-1307) I., King of England, was the elder of the two sons of Henry III., by his queen, Eleanor, daughter of Count Raymond Berenger of Provence, and was born at Westminster, June 17, 1239. His name was given him by his father out of reverence for the memory of Edward the Confessor, and in its English sound, as well as in the honest English temper, no less than the yellow hair and stalwart figure with which the young prince grew up, Englishmen might well have read the promise, that once more, after two hundred years, England would be ruled by
