Saladin in Jerusalem

The Conference Of Gisors

THE news of Saladin the Great having taken Jerusalem, filled Europe with surprise and consternation. The Pope, on receiving intelligence of the calamity, died of grief; priests journeyed from place to place, describing the plight of the Holy Sepulchre, trampled under the hoofs of horses; and Christians of the West forgot their own troubles to bewail the woes of the Christians of the East.




It had for some time been evident that the kingdom of Jerusalem could not be saved without aid from the warriors of Europe; and William, Archbishop of Tyre, author of a history of the Holy War, left the East to preach a crusade. After rousing the Italians, and persuading Frederick Barbarossa, the great Emperor of Germany, to take the cross, William of Tyre pressed onward to try his powers of persuasion on the sovereigns of England and France.


Henry Plantagenet and Philip Augustus were then at war. Nevertheless, a conference was appointed to take place on a plain near Gisors, and thither the King of England, then in his fifty-sixth year, and the King of France, not yet thirty, came to meet the Arch-bishopf with companies of knights, barons, and princes, all eager to hear tidings from the East, and none of them disinclined to encounter the infidel.


After reaching the ground, and presenting himself to the assembly, the Archbishop read the warriors an account of the fall of Jerusalem; he then delivered an eloquent address, reproaching them for not having gone to save Christ's heritage, and exhorting them to hasten to its rescue. His eloquence proved most effective. Henry and Philip, embracing in presence of the assembled warriors, agreed to suspend their quarrels to combat the enemies of Christ; and from all present arose shouts of "The cross!" "The cross!"


The cry thus raised around an elm-tree on the plain of Gisors, where a church was soon after built to commemorate the scene, was carried from city to city, and from province to province. The old spirit, in fact, revived -- mothers urged their sons, and wives urged their husbands, to devote themselves to the Holy War; and persons suspected of a wish to hang back, received a distaff and wool, as a significant hint that whoever declined would forfeit his title to be recognized as a man. At the same time, in order to defray the cost of the enterprise, a council of prelates and princes condemned all who did not take the cross to contribute a tithe of their revenues; and this tax, from the alarm associated with the name of the great Sultan, soon came to be described as "the Saladin tenth."


William of Tyre could now indulge in some hope for Jerusalem. The three most potent of the European sovereigns -- those of Germany, England, and Franco -- had pledged themselves to light lor the Holy Sepulchre, and all their subjects were astir with excitement and bustle. The expedition, indeed, met with some checks. Ere preparations were well begun, war broke out again in Europe; and ere they were completed, Henry, worn out with war and weary with thought, breathed his last at Chinon, and was succeeded by his eldest surviving son, Richard Coeur de Lion. The crusade, however, cannot be said to have suffered by the substitution of the son for the father. What was lost in wisdom was gained in vigor. Coeur de Lion had been among the first to take the cross at Gisors, and of all those who placed the sacred badge on their shoulder, he was the most enthusiastic and eager. Palestine, in fact, had become Richard's one idea; and English armorers were forging for him a ponderous battle-axe, and working twenty pounds of steel into the head of the weapon, that he might therewith break the bones of Saracen

.........(Extracted from -The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin, D. S. Richards)