It was an unexampled assemblage of the forces of two quarters of the world round one spot, unimportant in itself, and chosen almost by accident.  Our own times have seen a counterpart to it in the siege of Sebastopol, which, though in a totally different form, was a new act in the same great struggle between the East and the West.  Happily the western nations did not derive their warlike stimulus from religious sources, and they displayed, if not their military, at any rate, their moral superiority, in the most brilliant manner.

Although, in the fight around Ptolemais, the superiority was doubtless on Saladin’s side, there was a moment in which Europe threatened to oppose to the mighty Sultan an antagonist as great as himself.  In May, 1189, the emperor Frederick IX marched out of Ratisbon with his army for Syria.  He had already ruled thirty-seven years over Germany and Italy, and his life had been one of war and labor, of small results, but growing fame.  He was born a ruler in the highest sense of the word; he possessed all the attributes of power; bold yet cautious, courageous and enduring, energetic and methodical, he towered proudly above all who surrounded him, and had the highest conception of his princely calling.  But his ideas were beyond his time, and while he tried to open the way for a distant future, he was made to feel the penalty of running counter to the inclination of the present generation.  It seemed to him unbearable that the Emperor, who was extolled by all the world as the defender of the right and the fountain-head of law, should be forced to bow before unruly vassals or unlimited ecclesiastical power.  He had, chiefly from the study of the Roman law, conceived the idea of a state complete within itself, and strong in the name of the common weal, a complete contrast to the existing condition of Europe, where all the monarchies were breaking up, and the crowned priest reigned supreme over a crowd of petty princes.

Under these circumstances he appeared foreshadowing modern thoughts deep in the Middle Ages, like a fresh mountain breeze, dispersing the incense-laden atmosphere of the time.  This discrepancy caused the greatness and the misfortune of the mighty Emperor.  The current of his time set full against him.  When, as the representative of the State, he enforced obedience to the law, he appeared to some an impious offender against the Holy Church; to others, a tyrant trampling on the general freedom; and while conquering in a hundred fights, he was driven from one position after another by the force of opinion.  But so commanding was the energy, so powerful the earnestness, and so inexhaustible the resources of his nature that he was as terrible to his foes on the last day as on the first, passionless and pitiless, never distorted by cruelty, and never melted by pity, an iron defender of his imperial rights.