in Europe.  His army had entered Cilicia, and was preparing to cross the rapid mountain stream of the Seleph.  On June 10, 1190, they marched slowly across the narrow bridge, and the Emperor, impatient to get to the front, urged his horse into the stream, intending to swim to the opposite shore.  The raging waters suddenly seized him, and hurried him away before the eyes of the people.  When he was drawn out, far down the river, he was a corpse.

Boundless lamentations resounded throughout the army; the most brilliant ornament and sole hope of Christendom was gone; the troops arrived at Antioch in a state of the deepest dejection.  From thence a number of the pilgrims returned home, scattered and discouraged, and a pestilence broke out among the rest, which was fatal to the greater number of them.  It seemed, says a chronicler, “as though the members would not outlive their head.”  The Emperor’s son, Duke Frederick of Swabia, reached the camp before Ptolemais with five thousand men, instituted there the Order of the Teutonic Knights—­who were destined hereafter to found a splendid dominion on the distant shores of the German Ocean—­and soon afterward followed his father to the grave.

The highest hopes were soon destroyed by this lamentable downfall.  It seemed as if a stern fate had resolved to give the Christian world a distant view of the possibility of victory; the great Emperor might have secured it, but the generation which had not understood him was doomed to misery and defeat.  A second winter, with the same fearful additions of hunger and sickness, came upon the camp before Ptolemais, and the measure of misfortune was filled by renewed and bitter quarrels among the Frankish princes.  King Guy was as incompetent as ever, and so utterly mismanaged the Christian cause that the marquis Conrad of Montferrat indignantly opposed him.  Queen Sibylla, by marriage with whom Guy had gained possession of the crown, died just at this juncture.  Conrad instantly declared that Sibylla’s sister Eliza was the only rightful heir, and, as he held every step toward advancement to be laudable, did not for a moment scruple to elope with her from her husband, to marry her himself, and to lay claim to the crown.

Amid all this confusion and disaster the eyes of the crusaders turned with increasing anxiety toward the horizon, to catch a glimpse of the sails which were to bring to them two fresh leaders, the kings of France and of England.  Their preparations had not been very rapid.  Henry II of England had, even since his oath, got into a new quarrel with Philip Augustus of France, which only ended with his death, in 1189.  His son and successor, Richard, whose zeal had led him to put up the cross earlier than the rest, instantly began to arrange the expedition with Philip.  In his impetuous manner he exulted in the prospect of unheard-of triumphs; the government of England was hastily and insufficiently provided for during the absence of the King; above all, money was needed in