Lion-Heart "loved the lime-light," and his overbearing nature and lack of tact made it impossible for him to coöperate with others. He characteristically went his own way, paying scant attention to Philip and acting as if the leadership of the expedition belonged to himself as a matter of course. Relations became strained during the sojourn at Messina and grew worse in Palestine, where the affairs of the Latin kingdom and the rivalries of lesser princes added fuel to the flame. "The two kings and peoples," says an English chronicler, "did less together than they would have done separately, and each set but light store by the other." Sick of the whole enterprise, after four months in the East, Philip seized the first excuse to return home, departing in August, 1191.
Richard stayed a year longer in Palestine, yet he never entered Jerusalem and had finally to retire with a disappointing truce and to spend another year, and more, languishing in German prisons. The events of these months do not concern the history of Normandy, but if we would behold Richard in his fairest light we must see him as he rushed to the relief of Joppa on the first of August, 1192, wading ashore from his red galley with the cry, "Perish the man who would hang back," covering the landing of his followers with his crossbow, making his way by a winding stair to the house of the Templars on the town wall, and then, sword in hand, clearing the town of three thousand Turks and pursuing them into the plain with but three horsemen; or, four days later,
