in all its glory, and it continued to supply armies for the Holy Land.
Poetry more than religion inspired the Third Crusade. The knights and
their retainers listened with delight to the martial and amatory
strains of the ministrels, minnesingers, and troubadors. Men fought
not so much for the holy sepulchre as to gain glory for themselves in
the best and only field where glory could be obtained. They fought not
as zealots, but as soldiers, not for religion, but for honor.

40. The first to take the field was the illustrious German emperor,
Frederick Barbarossa. Marching from Ratisbon at the bead of a
magnificent army in 1189, he fought his way through the Greek
dominions, advanced through Asia Minor, conquering as he went, and was
already on the borders of Palestine, when, imprudently bathing, he was
cut off in the seventieth year of his age. His army suffered greatly
from the difficulties of their march and the attacks of the Saracens.
The wrecks of it under Frederick's son, the Duke of Swabia, proved a
most valuable reinforcement to the Christians in Syria, who had by
this time rallied and combined against the domination of Saladin,
laying siege to the city of Acre on the sea-coast, a town of so much
importance that the possession of it was considered almost equivalent
to being master of the whole country.

41. Upon this siege, commenced in August, 1189, was concentrated all
the force at the command of the Christians in Palestine, the remnants
of the two great military orders the Knights Templars and the Knights
Hospitallers, the survivors of Frederick's army, together with such
bodies of crusaders as were continually arriving from Europe by sea.
Guy de Lusignan was the commander of the besieging forces, and so
skillfully was his army fortified that Saladin was unable to dislodge
him. For two-and-twenty months the siege continued, and many