180 THE HISTORY OF THE ORDER OF [book n.

how terribly he abused the weakness of the Chris-tians; it was the price of truce . 1

And Kelaoun thought it expedient to remove theinterference of even distant Armenia, so crossedthe Euphrates; and to escape a war, that Christianking underwent the insult of swearing an oath ofKelaoun’s own concoction: “ I swear by God, byGod, by God; in the name of God, of God, of God;by the verity of the Messiah, of the Messiah, of theMessiah; by the verity of the four Evangelists,and of the twelve Apostles, and of the three hun-dred and eighteen Fathers of the first Council ofNice; by the verity of the most Holy Virgin andSt. John the Baptist; by the verity of the Lent,and every Christian dogma; and by the verity ofthe Cross, by the verity of the Gospel, by the verityof the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; andif I leave any of my promises unperformed, I vowto make thirty times the pilgrimage to Jerusalem,naked feet and head .” 2 Yet not satisfied with suchoaths from any party in that land, he also kept am-bassadors in the Courts of Europe, and paid spiesthere to instruct him of any movement of Franks,and into every commercial, or other treaty, withthem was foisted an article as into that of Arragon,by which that king and his brothers obliged them-1 Arab. Cliron., 546. 2 Id., 556, 557.