[Footnote *: Raymond's advice would have prevented the
abandonment of a secure camp abounding with water near
Sepphoris. The rash and insolent valor of the master of the
order of Knights Templars, which had before exposed the
Christians to a fatal defeat at the brook Kishon, forced the
feeble king to annul the determination of a council of war,
and advance to a camp in an enclosed valley among the
mountains, near Hittin, without water. Raymond did not fly
till the battle was irretrievably lost, and then the
Saracens seem to have opened their ranks to allow him free
passage. The charge of suggesting the siege of Tiberias
appears ungrounded Raymond, no doubt, played a double part:
he was a man of strong sagacity, who foresaw the desperate
nature of the contest with Saladin, endeavored by every
means to maintain the treaty, and, though he joined both his
arms and his still more valuable counsels to the Christian
army, yet kept up a kind of amicable correspondence with the
Mahometans. See Wilken, vol. iii. part ii. p. 276, et seq.
Michaud, vol. ii. p. 278, et seq. M. Michaud is still more
friendly than Wilken to the memory of Count Raymond, who
died suddenly, shortly after the battle of Hittin. He
quotes a letter written in the name of Saladin by the caliph
Alfdel, to show that Raymond was considered by the
Mahometans their most dangerous and detested enemy. "No
person of distinction among the Christians escaped, except
the count, (of Tripoli) whom God curse. God made him die
shortly afterwards, and sent him from the kingdom of death
to hell." M.]
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