volume one

290 niSTOET OF THE CfiUSADES.
Baldwin, on his return to Lis capital, learnt with grief
that Grervais, count of Tiberias, had been surprised by the
Turks, and led prisoner, together with his most faithful
knights, to the city of Damascus. Mussulman deputies
came to offer the king of Jerusalem the liberty of Gervais in
exchange for Ptolema'is, Jaffa, and some other cities taken
by the Christians ; a refusal, they added, would be followed
by the death of Count Gervais. Baldwin offered to pay a
considerable sum for the liberty of Gervais, whom he loved
tenderly :
" As for the cities you demand," said he to them,
'" I would not give them up to you for the sake of my own.
brother, nor for that of all the Christian princes together."
On the return of the ambassadors Gervais and his knights
were dragged to an open place in Damascus, and shot to
death by the Saracens with arrows.
The Christians shed tears at the death of Count Gervais,
but they soon had to weep for a much more painful loss.
Tancred, who governed the principality of Antioch, died in
an expedition agamst the infidels. He had raised high in
the East the opinion of the heroic virtues of a French
knight ; never had weakness or misfortune implored his aid
in vain. He gained a great many victories over the Saracens,
but never fought for the ends of ambition. Nothing
could shake his fidelity, nothing appeared impossible to his
valour. He answered the ambassadors of Alexius, who re-
quii'ed him to restore Antioch :
** I would not give up the
city which is confided to me even if the warriors who presented
themselves to conquer it had bodies and bore arms of
fire." "Whilst he lived, Antioch had nothing to fear from
the invasion of the infidels or the discord of the inhabitants.
His death consigned the colony to disorder and confusion, it
spread mourning through all the Christian states of the
East, and was for them the signal of the greatest reverses.
The kingdom of Jerusalem had hitherto only had to contend
against armies drawn from Egypt ; the Turks of Syria,
much more terrible in war than the Egyptians, had never
united their forces to attack the Christians of Jerusalem.*
The sultans of Damascus and Mossoul, with several emirs
of Mesopotamia, assembled an army of thirty thousand
* The governor of Mossoul is called by the Latins Maledoctus, Mandult,
and by the Arabians Mauduts. Togdequin was prince of Damascus.