volume one

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478 nisTOEY OF the crusaces.
the camp of the sultan, SaLidin animated his troops "by his
whilst his brother, Malec-Adel, offered an example
presence ;
of bravery to the emirs. Many great battles were fought at
the foot of the hills on which the Christians were encamped,
and twice the Crusaders gave a general assault ; but on
both occasions were obliged to return hastily to their tents,
to defend them against Saladin.
In one of these attacks, a Christian knight singly defended
one of the gates of the camp against a host of Saracens.
The Arabian writers compare this knight to a demon
animated by all the fires of hell. An enormous cuirass*
entirely covered him ;
impression on him ;
arrows, stones, lance-thrusts, made no
all who approached him were slain, and
he alone, though stuck all over with javelins and surrounded
by -enemies, appeared to have nothing to fear. Ko weapons
or force being able to prevail, the Greek fire was at length
employed, which being poured upon his head, devoured by
flames, he perished like one of the enormous machines that
the besieged had burnt under the walls of the city.
Every day the Crusaders redoubled their efforts, and by
turns repulsed the army of Saladin, or made assaults upon
Ptolemais. In one of these assaidts, they filled up a part
of the ditches of the city witli the carcasses of their dead
horses and the bodies of their companions who had fallen
beneath the swords of the enemy, or been swept away by
disease. The Saracens raised up these horrid masses heaped
up under their walls, and cast them back again in fragments
upon the banks of the ditches, where the sword and lance
were for ever immolating fresh victims. Neither the spectacle
of death, nor obstacles, nor fatigue aftected the Christians.
When their wooden towers and their battering-rams
were reduced to ashes, they dug into the earth, and by subterranean
ways advanced under the foundations of the ramparts.
Every day they employed some fresh means or some
new machine to subdue the place. An Arabian historian
relates that they raised near their camp a hill of earth of a
prodigious height, and that by constantly throwing the earth
up before them, they brought this mountain close to the
* I would fain translate this word shield or buckler ; but as I cannot
find the word cuirasse ever used for one of these, am obliged to follow
my original.
Trans.