Being compelled by the interest they inspire, to give at considerable
length several of the sieges in which the Crusaders were engaged, we
cannot spare room for more than a notice of that of Damascus, referring
our readers for details, which will repay the research, to the pages of
Michaud and Gibbon.
Louis VII., king of France, in company with Conrad III., emperor of
Germany, who had led armies from Europe for the recovery of the Holy
Land, laid siege to Damascus, one of the most delightfully situated
and splendid cities in the world. By its populousness and wealth,
Damascus excited the envy of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Tripoli, which
were in the hands of the Christians, and probably affected their
commerce. But it was neither the religion of the inhabitants nor the
beauty of its position that tempted the Crusaders; it was enough
for them to know that it was one of the richest cities of the East:
nothing so soon induced a knight of the Cross to buckle on his spurs
and take his lance, as the prospect of the plunder of an Oriental
city. Damascus was well fortified on the east and on the south; but on
the north, a multitude of gardens, inclosed with hedges and canals,
formed its principal bulwark. And let not our readers smile at such
a fortification; when every one of the innumerable hedges formed
admirable ambuscades, and when every one of the thousands of trees
was filled with archers instead of birds, the Crusaders found these
gardens no “bed of roses.” It was these places, cut through by a vast
number of sinuous paths, in which the Crusaders had to make their first
assaults; and it required five days to carry all the positions, which
were defended with the greatest firmness by the Saracens. They would
have taken Damascus, if their usual enemy, Discord, had not prevailed
among the Crusaders: like the bear-hunters of the fabulist, they
quarrelled for the sovereignty of the city before they had taken it. By
the perfidious advice of the Syrian barons, they abandoned the attack
on the northern side, to make others on the east and the south. The
Saracens immediately repossessed themselves of the gardens, which was
the only point on which the city was weak: Damascus was missed, and the
Crusaders disgracefully raised the siege.
ST. JEAN D’ACRE, or PTOLEMAIS.