Thus the king of Jerusalem and the sultan of Damascus entertained the same views, and both made preparations for the same conquest. In the churches of the Christians, as in the mosques of the Mussulmans, prayers were put up for the success of a war about to be carried on on the banks of the Nile. As each of the two parties sought to give the best colour to their projects and proceedings, at Damascus it was asserted that the caliph of Egypt had made an impious alliance with the disciples of Christ, whilst at Jerusalem it was asserted that the vizier Chaver, in defiance of treaties, kept up a perfidious correspondence with Noureddin.
The Christians were the first to violate their treaties. Amaury set out at the head of a numerous army, and appeared in the character of an enemy before Belbeis, which place he had promised to the knights of St. John, as a reward for the ardour and zeal they had shown for his expedition. This city, situated on the right bank of the Nile, was besieged, taken by assault, and after being pillaged, consigned to the flames.
The misfortunes of Belbeis spread consternation throughout Egypt, and the people, irritated at the account of the cruelties practised by the Franks, took up arms and drove the Christian garrison out of Cairo. Chaver assembled troops in the provinces, fortified the capital, and set fire to the ancient city of Fostat, which burnt for more than six weeks. The caliph of Cairo again implored the assistance of Noureddin, and to excite his pity and prove his distress, he sent him in a letter the hair of the women of his seraglio. The sultan of Damascus attended with joy to the prayers of the caliph of Egypt, and as an army was ready to march, he gave orders to Chirkou to cross the desert and hasten to the banks of the Nile.
Whilst the Syrians were coming to the aid of Egypt, threatened by the Christians, Chaver employed every means in his power to stop the king of Jerusalem in his march, and suspend in his hands the thunderbolt ready to fall upon Egypt. Ambassadors were sent to implore the pity of Amaury, and to give some weight to their prayers, offered him two millions of crowns of gold. The offer of so enormous a sum, which Egypt, for so long a time devastated, could not possibly have furnished, seduced the king of the Christians, who was as much influenced by a love of gold as an ambition for conquests. He allowed himself to be thus deceived by the Mussulmans, to whom he himself had been wanting in faith; and whilst he was waiting for the treasures they had promised him, the Egyptians restored the fortifications of their cities, and assembled everywhere in arms. The Christians looked in vain for the fleets promised by Manuel, and soon, instead of welcoming auxiliaries, they learnt that Chirkou had arrived for the third time in Egypt at the head of a formidable army. Then Amaury opened his eyes, and set about repairing his error. He flew to meet the Syrians, and offer them battle; but their general avoided the encounter, and united his forces with those of the Egyptians. The evil was irreparable; the king of Jerusalem could not resist the two united armies, and ashamed of being deceived by those whom he had himself sought to deceive, he returned to his kingdom, and was pursued to the verge of the desert by the troops of Noureddin.
Before the enterprise, hopes of success had dazzled the minds of all; but when it had failed, they, as generally, perceived the injustice of it. The Christians all became aware of the evils with which Jerusalem was menaced, and reproached Amaury with not being able to preserve peace, or knowing how to make war. In the mean time Noureddin’s general entered the capital of Egypt in triumph.
Chirkou hoisted his standard on the towers of Cairo, and Egypt, which thought it had received a liberator into its bosom, soon found that he was a master. Chaver paid with his life the evils he had inflicted upon his country; he was killed in the camp of Chirkou, and his authority became the reward of the conqueror. The caliph, who, in order to save himself, had demanded the head of his first minister appointed the general of Noureddin as his successor, styling him in his letters, the victorious prince. It was thus that the degraded monarch of Egypt jested with his own favours by flattering a man he did not know, and for whose death he was, most likely, desirous; an image of blind fortune, who scatters at hazard good and evil, and views her favourites and her victims with equal indifference.
Some time after, the caliph of Cairo, always invisible in his palace, was deposed by the orders of Noureddin, and died peaceably without knowing that he had lost his empire. His treasures served to appease the murmurs of the people and the soldiery; the black flag of the Abassides displaced the green standard of the children of Ali, and the name of the caliph of Bagdad was heard of only in the mosques. The dynasty of the Fatimites, which reigned more than two centuries, and for which so much blood had been shed, was extinguished in a single day, and found not even one defender. From that time the Mussulmans had only one religion and one cause to defend; Egypt and Syria obeyed the same chief, and the richest provinces of the East were united under the powerful hand of Noureddin.
The sultan of Aleppo and Damascus had spread the terror of his arms from the banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris to the sources of the Nile; he had everywhere governors and armies; and posts of pigeons, which he had established, carried at the same time his orders into the principal cities of Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia. The justice of his laws and his victories over the Christians had created for him such a reputation for sanctity among the Mussulmans, that a shower of rain which fell in the midst of a drought, was considered by them as a miracle granted to his prayers. During the war of Egypt he had taken several fortresses belonging to the Franks; and the destruction of the Christian colonies was still the aim of all his labours and all his exploits. Full of confidence in the protection of Mahomet, the devout Noureddin employed his leisure in constructing, with his own hands, a pulpit, which he meant himself to place in the principal mosque of Jerusalem.
The sultan of Damascus was preparing to commence what the Mussulmans called a sacred war, and for the success of which public prayers had been offered up, but this glory was reserved for a young warrior brought up in armies, whose name was yet unknown in the East.
Saladin,[298] this young warrior, was sprung from the people who inhabit the mountains situated beyond the Tigris. His father Ayoub, and his uncle Chirkou, after the example of the warriors of their nation, who fight for pay under Mussulman powers, had left Curdistan to serve in the troops of the sultan of Bagdad. They had both attained high military employments; but Chirkou, a violent and brutal man, having run through the body with his sword an officer of justice, the two brothers were obliged to take to flight, and came to offer their services to the Attabeks of Syria, whom they assisted in their wars against the Christians. The young Saladin, although he was brought up at the court of Damascus, under the eye of an ambitious father, did not at first appear to be eager for either fortune or glory. In his youth he was fond of dissipation and pleasures, and remained a long time a stranger to the cares of politics or the dangers and labours of war. Having followed his uncle Chirkou in his first expeditions to Egypt, he had distinguished himself by the defence of Alexandria; but he suffered so much, that when Noureddin commanded him to return to the banks of the Nile, he sought pretexts to avoid obedience. When the sultan repeated his orders, Saladin set out, as he himself said afterwards, with the despair of a man who is led to death. “Thus it is,” says the historian Hamad Eddin, who was for a long time his secretary, “that men know not what they refuse or what they desire; but God, who knows all things, sports with their designs, which always terminate according to the views of Providence.”
At the death of Chirkou, the caliph of Egypt, who trembled for his power, named Saladin to the post of vizier, because he thought him the least capable, by his talents or reputation, of usurping the supreme authority. The son of Ayoub deceived both the king and the army, who saw