On May 6th, the king with the rest of his fleet arrived from Rhodes, and learnt from Sir Stephen de Turnham of the manner in which the princesses had been treated by Comnenus,[1] and how the wrecked crews had suffered at the hands of his subjects. Richard, very indignant, sent two knights on shore to demand satisfaction. Comnenus returned an offensive reply, and provoked the king to make an immediate attack upon the town. Richard himself was the first to land, and the first to strike a blow.[2] The Crusaders came ashore in small craft from their great ships and galleys,[3] and after a very brief contest, Comnenus fled to the mountains. On the day following, the fleet, including the ship of the two princesses, anchored in the harbour. The English pressed their advantage so energetically that on or about May 11th, Comnenus sued for peace, appearing for the purpose before Richard, who was mounted on a Spanish charger, and dressed in a tunic of rose-coloured silk, embroidered with golden crescents. Comnenus undertook to do homage to the king, to resign all his castles, to serve in the Holy War with five hundred knights, to pay 20,000 marks of gold as compensation, to restore the imprisoned crew and their effects, and to hand over his daughter as a hostage. But he had scarcely concluded the treaty ere he broke it, and fled to the interior.
In the meantime Guy de Lusignan, King of Jerusalem, the Prince of Antioch, and others, had arrived to offer their services to Richard, and to swear fealty to him. The king put his army under the command of the Prince of Antioch, ordered him to pursue Comnenus, and divided the galleys into two squadrons. One he led himself, and the other he entrusted to Sir Stephen de Turnham, and the two, starting in different directions, swept the coasts of the island, and captured or destroyed every craft they encountered. By these methods, Comnenus was again induced to sue for peace; but Richard would trust him no longer. He ordered him to he thrown into chains of silver, and confined in a castle in Palestine.
Richard's celerity in dealing with and capturing Comnenus is shown by the fact that although the search for that prince appears not to have begun until the 11th, the king was back in Limasol, and was indeed married there, on the 12th of May.[4] On or about
