Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 5.djvu/128

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74 WORKMEN AND HEROES by the complete submission of Isaac and the surrender of the whole island. Isaac was put into confinement, and remained a captive till his death in 1195. Meanwhile the island of Cyprus was made over by Richard, in 1192, to Guy of Lusignan, upon his resignation of the now merely titular royalty of Jerusalem to his rival Henry of Champagne ; and Guy's posterity reigned in that island till the year 1458. Having married Berengaria at Limasol, Richard set sail from Cyprus, on June 4th (1191), with a fleet now described as consisting of thirteen large ships called busses, fifty galleys, and a hundred transports ; and on the loth he reached the camp of the crusaders assembled before the fortress of Acre, the siege of which had already occupied them not much less than two years, and had cost the lives, it is said of nearly two hundred thousand of the assailants. But the pres- ence of the English king, although he was suffering from severe illness, and had to be carried to the trenches on a litter, immediately inspired so much new vigor into the operations of the Christian army that, on July i2th, the place surren- dered, and Saladin, who had been harassing the besiegers from the neighboring mountains, withdrew, in conformity with the terms of capitulation. This great event, however, was immediately followed by an open rupture between Richard and King Philip, whose rivalry had already exhibited itself in a variety of ways, and more particularly in the support given by Richard to the claim of Guy of Lusignan, and by Philip to that of Conrad of Montferrat to the vacant crown of Jerusalem. Philip, in fact, took his departure from Palestine on the last day of July, leaving only ten thousand men, under the command of the Duke of Bur- gundy. Richard performed prodigies of valor in the Holy Land, but, although a sig- nal defeat of Saladin on September yth at Arsur was followed by the capture of Jaffa and some other places of less importance, Jerusalem, which was the main object of the crusade, so far from being taken was not even attacked. Jaffa, however, after it had again fallen into the hands of Saladin, was recovered by the impetuous valor of the English king. At last, on October 9, 1192, Richard set sail from Acre -in a single vessel, his fleet, having on board his wife, his sister, and the daughter of the captive King of Cyprus, having put to sea a few days before. The three ladies got safe to Sicily ; but the first land the king made was the island of Corfu, which he took about a month to reach. He left Corfu aoout the middle of November with three coasting-vessels which he hired there ; but after being a few days at sea he was compelled by a storm to land on the coast of Istria, at a spot between the towns of Aquileia and Venice. After nar- rowly escaping first from falling at Goritz into the hands of Maynard, a nephew of Conrad of Montferrat (to whose murder in Palestine Richard, upon very in. sufficient evidence, was suspected to be an accessory), and then at Friesach from Maynard's brother, Frederick of Batesow, he was taken on December 2ist, at Erperg, near Vienna, by Leopold, Duke of Austria (a brother-in-law of Isaac of Cyprus), and was by him consigned to close confinement in the castle of Tyern- steign. under the care of his vassal, Baron Haldmar. In the course of a few