Marche-les-Dames

Credits: Jean-Pol Grandmont

Photos of the abbey and cliffs of Marche-les-Dames, near Namur, Belgium. Today, Marche-les-Dames is best known for being the site of the tragic death of King Albert I. Yet it has a fascinating older history. According to Bradshaw' s Illustrated hand-book for Belgium and the Rhine (1897):

The village owes the first part of its name to its situation on the confines of the ancient district of Namur ( Marche, frontier limit), and the latter part refers to the foundation of the Abbey, which still attracts a number of visitors to Marche-les-Dames. An affecting tradition connects its origins with the first crusade. When in the reign of Albert III, the crusaders set off for the Holy Land, such of their wives as were unable to follow them assembled in the rustic and lonely valley...they raised a modest chapel, in which, praying for the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre, they waited for the return of their husbands. But out of the many warriors who had been to seek for glory on the burning plains of Palestine, very few, indeed, regained the green hills of their native land. When the crusaders who had escaped death returned to the banks of the Meuse, desolation reigned in the Valley of Notre Dame du Vivier, as it was then called. Most of those wives learned they were widows, and resolved to end their days in the retreat which they had chosen, and young girls, made fatherless, joined them. An abbey was founded there, which, in three centuries afterward, adopted the rule of St. Bernard...

Credits: Jean-Pol Grandmont

I always find it very poignant that King Albert died here; as a crusader ought to be, he was pious and heroic. Like the crusaders' wives, Queen Elisabeth waited anxiously and in vain for his return (in this case, from climbing the cliffs), and her husband's loss plunged her into mourning and desolation. 

(Credits)

Baldwin IV, King of Jerusalem (1161-1185)

An article from The Mad Monarchist on another King Baldwin. To quote: 

One of my favorite monarchs of all time was Baldwin IV of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. He was born in 1161 to King Amalric I of Jerusalem and Queen Agnes of Edessa. While playing as a child it was discovered that he had leprosy and thus could not be expected to live a long or happy life. However, even as a boy, he never let his terrible disease get the better of him. When he was only 13 he became King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem with Raymond of Tripoli as his regent. When he became old enough to rule, he ruled well, but even from day one this diseased young boy was a King to admire. In 1174 the barely teenage monarch led his troops in an attack on the Muslim forces threatening Damascus and Andujar. The following year when the great Muslim warrior Sultan Saladin of Egypt attacked Ascalon King Baldwin IV (better known as Baldwin the Leper) took a mere 500 men to march to the defense of the city...(more)