volume one

362 HISTORY OF THE CETJSADES.
worthy of lier, warmly solicited the king to delay his departure
for the holy city. The king, iu addition to an austere devotion,
possessed a jealous and suspicious disposition ; the motives
therefore that made the queen desirous of remaining at Antioch
strengthened his determuiation to go to Jerusalem.
The instances of Eleanor filled his mind with suspicions, and
rendered him still more inexorable ; upon which Raymond,
disappouited in his hopes, was loud in his complaints, and
determined to be revenged. This prince, says AVilliam of
Tyre, " icas impetuous in his iciU, and of so choleric a disposition,
that iL'hen he was excited he listened to neither rhyme
nor reason.^' He easily communicated his indignation to
the mind of Eleanor, and this princess at once boldly formed
the project of separating herself from Louis YIL, and of
dissolving their marriage, under the plea of relationship.
Ea^Tnond, on his part, swore to employ force and violence
to detain, his niece in his dominions. At length the king of
Erance, outraged both as a husband and a sovereign, resolved
to precipitate his departui'e, and was obliged to carry off his
own wife, and bear her into his camp by night.
The conduct of the queen must have scandalized both the
infidels and the Christians of the East ; and her example was
likely to produce fatal effects in an army in which there were
a great number of women. Among the crowd of knights,
and even of Mussulmans, who during her abode at Antioch
by turns were favoirred by her partiaUty,* a young Turk is
particularly mentioned, who received costly presents from
her, and for whom she desired to abandon the king of France.
In such affairs, ingeniously remarks Mezerai, " more is frequently
said than there is ; hut sometimes also there is more
than is said." However that may be, Louis ATI. could not
forcret his dishonour, and felt oblio:ed some years after to repudiate
Eleanor, who married Henry II., and bestowed the
duchy of Gruienne upon England, which was for Erance one
of the most deplorable consequences of this second crusade.
* Some romancers, and even some historians, have advanced that Eleanor
of Guieune was in love with Saladin, who founded the dynasty of the
Ayoubites. Saladin, the son of Ayoub, was born the same year that
Eleanor married Louis YII., and was scarcely ten years old at the time
of the second crusade. Her second son, by Henry II. of England,
became the great rival of Saladin in military glory. Trans.
—