But personal interest and secret negotiations before long brought into the Christian camp weakness, together with discord.  Many of the barons were already disputing amongst themselves, at the very elbows of the sovereigns, for the future government of Damascus; others were not inaccessible to the rich offers which came to them from the city; and it is maintained that King Baldwin himself suffered himself to be bribed by a sum of two hundred thousand pieces of gold which were sent to him by Modjer-Eddyn, Emir of Damascus, and which turned out to be only pieces of copper, covered with gold leaf.  News came that the Emirs of Aleppo and Mossoul were coming, with considerable forces, to the relief of the place.  Whatever may have been the cause of retreat, the crusader-sovereigns decided upon it, and, raising the siege, returned to Jerusalem.  The Emperor Conrad, in indignation and confusion, set out precipitately to return to Germany.  King Louis could not make up his mind thus to quit the Holy Land in disgrace, and without doing anything for its deliverance.  He prolonged his stay there for more than a year without anything to show for his time and zeal.  His barons and his knights nearly all left him, and, by sea or land, made their way back to France.  But the king still lingered.  I am under a bond,” he wrote to Suger, “not to leave the Holy Land, save with glory, and after doing somewhat for the cause of God and the kingdom of France.”  At last, after many fruitless entreaties, Suger wrote to him, “Dear king and lord, I must cause thee to hear the voice of thy whole kingdom.  Why dost thou fly from us?  After having toiled so hard in the East, after having endured so many almost unendurable evils, by what harshness or what cruelty comes it that, now when the barons and grandees of the kingdom have returned, thou persistest in abiding with the barbarians?  The disturbers of the kingdom have entered into it again; and thou, who shouldst defend it, remainest in exile as if thou wert a prisoner; thou givest over the lamb to the wolf, thy dominions to the ravishers.  We conjure thy majesty, we invoke thy piety, we adjure thy goodness, we summon thee in the name of the fealty we owe thee; tarry not at all, or only a little while, beyond Easter; else thou wilt appear, in the eyes of God, guilty of a breach of that oath which thou didst take at the same time as the crown.”  At length Louis made up his mind and embarked at St. Jean d’Acre at the commencement of July, 1149; and he disembarked in the month of October at the port of St. Gilles, at the mouth of the Rhone, whence he wrote to Suger, “We be hastening unto you safe and sound, and we command you not to defer paying us a visit, on a given day and before all our other friends.  Many rumors reach us touching our kingdom, and knowing nought for certain, we be desirous to learn from you how we should bear ourselves or hold our peace, in every case.  And let none but yourself know what I say to you at this present writing.”