Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/117

Rh the struggle to the last, until he eventually fell a prisoner into the hands of Bendocdar, in company with his brothers, the counts of Anjou and Poictiers.

That chief behaved towards his illustrious captives with a magnanimity and generosity rare in the annals of Moslem warfare; indeed, he treated them with the utmost consideration and respect. A treaty of peace was at once set on foot, the terms of which were not likely to require much discussion when one of the negotiating parties found himself in such a helpless position. As a ransom for himself and his army, Louis covenanted to pay the sum of 800,000 bezants, and to restore to the Saracens possession of Damietta. In order to assist in providing the necessary amount, the Hospitallers freely placed their treasury at the king’s disposal. The Templars, however, were not so complaisant, and urged that the rules of their Order forbade any such appropriation of their funds. Necessity, however, knows no law, and the king felt that the crisis was of too grave and imminent a character to admit of any delicacy on his part. He lost no time, therefore, in laying forcible hands on their treasury, by the aid of which he completed the sum demanded for his liberation. As soon as the terms of the treaty had been complied with on both sides, Louis and the relics of his army returned to Acre, utterly unable to attempt anything further for the good cause. Here he lingered for four years, principally owing to the entreaties of the military Orders, who considered his presence a great safeguard for the precarious remnant of the kingdom, but also partly because of his unwillingness to return to France whilst the disgrace of his reverse was still fresh in public memory.

During his residence at Acre Louis received a message from the chief of the Hassassins, demanding the payment of blackmail as a protection against assassination, and averring that all the other Christian monarchs who had warred in the East had subscribed to the custom, and purchased safety by payment of the toll. This tribe dwelt in the mountainous country contiguous to Tripoli. They were a numerous and fanatical body of men, whose chief was known by the name of the Old Man of the Mountain. They were regarded with terror throughout the East owing to the peculiarity of their tenets. Their religion,