volume one

HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES. 369
easy access to the place, saw nothing before them but towers
and impregnable ramparts. Scarcely had the Christians
seated themselves in their new camp when the city of
Damascus received vrithin its walls a troop of twenty thousand
Curds and Turcomans, determined to defend it. The
besieged, whose courage was raised by the arrival of these
auxiliaries, put on, says an Arabian historian, the buckler of
victory, and made several sorties, in which they gained the
advantage over the Cin-istians. The Crusaders, on their
part, made several assaults upon the city, and were always
repulsed. Encamped upon an arid plain, they were destitute
of water ; all the adjacent country had been devastated
by the infidels, and the corn that had escaped the ravages of
war was concealed in caves and subterranean hiding-places,
which they could not discover. The Christian army wanted
pro^dsions ; then discord revived among them ; nothing was
spoken of in the camp but perfidy and treason ; the Christians
of Syria no longer united with the Christians of
Europe in their attacks upon the city ; they were j?(.)Ou iiiformed
that the sultans of Aleppo and Mossoul were coming
with a numerous army ; then they despaired of taking the
city, and raised the siege. Thus the Christians, without
having exercised their constancy, or tested their courage,
abandoned, at the end of a few days, an enterprise, the preparations
for which had cost so much to Europe, and raised
such expectations in Asia. One of the circumstances of
this siege the most Avorthy of remark is, that Ayoub, chief
of the dynasty of the Ayoubites, commanded the troops of
Damascus, and that he had with him his son, the young
Saladin, who was destined one day to be so formidable to
the Christians, and render himself master of Jerusalem.
Tlie eldest son of Ayoub having been killed in a sortie, the
inhabitants of Damascus raised a tomb of marble to his
memory, which was to be seen under the ramparts of the
city many centuries after. An old Mussulman priest, who
had passed more than forty years in a neighbouring cavern,
was obliged to quit his retreat, and came into the city which
the Christians were besieging. He regretted his solitude
troubled by the din of war, and became ambitious of gathering
the palm of martyrdom. In spite of the representations
of his disciples, he advanced, unarmed, in the front of the