Eleanor Of Aquitaine (41 page)

When Coeur-de-Lion stood forth upon his landing stage, he was the quickening soul of the whole crusading enterprise. In him were blended all those strangely incongruous stirrings, grand and grandiose, that toughened the crusader's sinews and melted his heart. No figure in the whole world was at the moment so suffused in glamor. The crowds upon the shore went wild with jubilation. Processions gathered to the music of drums and timbrels, horns and flutes. After the long drought, wine spilled in abundance in the streets of the port. So many tapers burned that Saladin, watching the arrival from the citadel with intelligent alarm, was persuaded that the "Christian dogs" had put the whole valley to the torch.

Without delay Coeur-de-Lion's forces were disposed in the arc thrown about the citadel where the Saracens were entrenched. Says the
Itinerarium
, nearly every man of renown in the Christian world, baron or prelate, besides thousands of foot soldiers, ranged themselves in order,
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each company with its own siege towers and mangonels named in contempt of Saladm.
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The eleventh-hour arrival of the King of England, with enough additional force to compel a surrender, made the fall of the city certain, but all the battalions that had borne the heat and burden of the protracted siege foresaw that the glory of routing Saladin would redound to the latest corner. For a time, however, the Franks, Burgundians, Teutons, and some of Conrad's forces, eager to claim their guerdon and their spoils, wrought together with a fury.

At the outset of the fresh attack, Richard fell victim to the quartan fever raging in the camp, and fear of his death smote the armies with dread. But he had himself wrapped in a silken quilt and borne in a litter to posts whence, in the intervals of his ague, he could direct the operation of the petaries and rally the crews of the siege towers, battering rams, and scaling ladders which were being deluged with Greek fire and burning pitch from the ramparts of the citadel — rivers of abominable stench and livid flame that, says the chronicler, "consumed both flint and steel." Day and night without ceasing, darts, arrows, and sling stones rained on the beleaguered city. The pressures of blockade and assault were at last made effectual, so that, after a little more than a month of carnage, Saladin's satraps, on the 12th of July, raised the white flag.

The victorious allies now stormed into Acre, each "nation" driving pell-mell to take possession of a favorable quarter and a share of the credit and the spoils. The Franks set up their bailiwick in the establishment of the Templars. The standard of Coeur-de-Lion went up over the palace of the kings.
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The knights of Leopold of Austria, though sweating as freely as others with victory, were, in the melee, shouldered out of a first-class rallying place of their own; so someone of the duke's following ran up his pennant beside that of the English king on the battlements of the palace. An unnamed partisan of Richard's dragged this proud banner down and cast it disdainfully into the filth and debris of the moat. The insult to the Duke of Austria was later imputed to the arrogance of Coeur-de-Lion, who was seen in all his doings to brook no rival to his supremacy. The incident gave substance to envious murmurings; and many factions among the Christian hosts took up the cause and shared the umbrage of Duke Leopold and vowed vengeance upon the haughty Plantagenet.

The capture of Acre was the first signal victory of the Christians since the occupation of Tyre. Its fame flew over western Europe; and from Damascus to Cairo a panic spread among the Saracens, so that, even beyond the Jordan, Moslem women stilled their babies with the threat that "Melek Ric" would get them.

*

It was certainly not the fear of God nor any stirring of penitence that inspired them; but pride and vainglory directed all their enterprise.

Pope Celestine III

Apart from Saladin, the person least moved to celebrate the arrival of Coeur-de-Lion in Syria was his brother-in-arms, the King of the Franks. Before Richard's arrival Philip Augustus, freed from the overweening presence of his vassal, had enjoyed an hour of prestige. He had been welcomed as the liberator of the Holy Land and the harbinger of more relief to come. But when Richard came ashore with his glitter and fanfare, all was changed again.

In spite of the pledges of the two kings at Vézelay to share and share alike, Philip's resources were conspicuously inferior, and they melted like wax under the necessity of supporting knights and prelates whose substance had been wasted in the long journey overseas. Without his bounty, some of the lesser ranks were driven into the bosom of Islam for the sake of food. Many went home.
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The extremes of the Syrian climate distressed the king. The trenches about Acre were anything but salubrious. In their pestilential foxholes, through the deluge of spring rains and the broiling summer heat, men of all ranks, afflicted with plague and vermin, died like flies. Philip could not sleep for the din of drums and tom-toms by which the wakeful hosts sought to drive off the swarms of mosquitoes and sand flies that made the night more awful than the day.
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The steady stream of corpses to the burial pits in the rear made him think seriously of all he was risking for his people and his infant heir by putting his own life in jeopardy. In the midst of his nightmares he too fell ill, and was horrified to lose his hair and the nails of his fingers and toes.
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Everything suggested the wisdom of his going home and leaving the holy war to him who would in any case contrive to claim the palm.

An incidental calamity in the siege of Acre brought Philip's manifold misgivings to a head. His high vassal, Philip of Flanders, lost his life in the early days of the siege, in the flower of his age.
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He died without direct heirs, leaving his rich estates in the Low Countries exposed to the villainy of the crafty and the strong. In this connection Philip thought inevitably of the Plantagenets. He soon commuted his suspicions to certainties, and from them he wove the tissue of a plot to betray and undo him. The lands of Philip of Flanders were contiguous to Gisors and the Vexin. Richard had cunningly retained these dower lands of the Capetian princess in his own hands; and the Princess Alais herself was the prisoner of the Countess of Poitou in the tower of Rouen. Nothing was plainer to Philip Augustus than that the Plantagenets were conspiring to violate the compact of Messina, swallow the Vexin and enrich themselves, heaven only knew to what extent, at his expense. Nothing was clearer than his duty to go home.

The French king's anxiety to quit the holy war was hard to conceal. It became public ten days after the fall of Acre. The most exalted among his following, his cousin, Philip of Dreux, the Bishop of Beauvais, and the Duke of Burgundy, together with other high magnates, waited upon Richard in his palace to make Philip's resolution known. The Capetians of the party were all endowed with the valued gift of tears. Coming into Coeur-de-Lion's presence, these heroes of crusade with one accord burst into such floods of weeping that they could not find words to give shape to their utterance. Richard's intuition helped them out.

"Give over tears," he said, "for I know what you have come to say. Your lord, the King of France, wants to go home, and you have come to get my consent to this breach of our compact as brothers-in-arms."

The Franks hung their heads in anguish. "Sire," said their spokesinan, "you have divined what is in our minds. We are compelled to ask your consent, for our lord king will surely die if he does not quickly leave this land." They then itemized the king's symptoms and described the alarming alteration of his mien.

Richard, who was still laboring with his intermittent fever, expressed his feelings with a touch of irony.

"It will be an everlasting shame to the Franks," he said, "if your king should return leaving unfinished the task for which he came. It is my belief that he ought not to go; but of course, if his life is in the balance, let him do as his advisers see fit."

When these oblique reproaches were brought to Philip Augustus, a quarrel ensued between the two kings. Employing attack as the best defense, Philip launched a demand for half the spoils of Cyprus,
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in accordance with the compact of Vézelay. Coeur-de-Lion riposted with a demand for half the spoils of Flanders.
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This made Philip certain that the Plantagenets had treacherous designs upon the heritage of the Count of Flanders. Vituperations on both sides rose so high that the magnates, says the chronicler, had great difficulty in preserving any semblance of brotherly accord before the rank and file.

*

The resolution of Philip Augustus to return to his own lands precipitated a fresh contention over the kingship of Jerusalem. Conrad was undisposed to speed his strongest partisan on his homeward way before the matter was concluded; and Richard by now so needed Conrad's support in the holy war that, in spite of his sympathy with Guy, his mood was somewhat conciliatory. The assembly of magnates met in Acre a few days after the angry colloquy of the two kings. Each contestant argued his own case. Guy was in possession of the crown and he had, as he declared, "done nothing to forfeit it."
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Conrad possessed the heiress and a stout following, and he had greater talents as an orator. After two days of dialectic, the assembly reached one of those just and equitable compromises that settle nothing. Guy should keep the crown and the title for his lifetime, with one half the revenues of the kingdom and the lordship of certain cities; Conrad and his heirs should succeed, and in the meantime should enjoy the revenues and lordship of certain other cities.

Philip Augustus committed his troops, under command of the Duke of Burgundy, to Richard's campaigns, and Conrad, who was sharply disappointed by the ambiguous outcome of the debate over the kingship, grudgingly promised the collaboration of his forces. The Frankish armies to be left behind were a doubtful blessing, because, although the man power was desperately needed, the support of the host was contingent upon Saladin's paying the ransom for the Moslem captives taken in the fall of Acre, a payment which failed to materialize. In the end, in order to make an example of the wages of perfidy, Richard felt obliged to massacre some five thousand of these hapless wretches in view of the Saracens and to undertake the support of the Franks with irredeemable loans.

It cannot be supposed that, in all the circumstances, Richard was easy in his mind over the departure of Philip Augustus. Before the King of the Franks took off, Coeur-de-Lion, in the presence of credible witnesses, both barons and bishops, required him to make an oath of fidelity, as one crusading king to another. With his hands on the Gospels and the holiest of relics, Philip swore that he would strictly maintain the Truce of God, and that he would not only do no injury to the realm of his brother-in-arms, but that he would protect, as if they were his own, all the lands and properties of the Plantagenets from injury by any traitors whomsoever.

Ten days later, on July 31, Philip Augustus left Acre
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with two or three galleys, which the English chroniclers declare were generously lent by Coeur-de-Lion, but which the French say were provided by the Genoese. With eagerness he cast the sand of Syria from his feet and went off reviling the inequities of fortune. As he sailed away with Conrad for the port of Tyre, he itemized his injuries and reviewed every prospect that Richard's enemies had been able to suggest for a condign revenge.

He visited Tyre and Antioch, put in for a little time in Rhodes, and, passing among the islands infested with Barbary pirates off the coast of Rumania, he made port in Corfu.
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Here he spent some time while his envoys sought safe-conduct from Tancred of Sicily. Early in October he landed in Otranto and journeyed thence to Rome. Pope Celestine entertained him for a week, in the course of which he judged the king by reason of his plague — the marks of which were plainly visible — quit of his crusader's vows, and bestowed upon him the cross and palm, with his benediction.

During these days Philip opened his heart to the pontiff and the cardinals. He disclosed that he had left Palestine in terror of his life because of the intrigues of Coeur-de-Lion. He lived in constant fear of poison or the dagger and was forced to keep a bodyguard about him. The King of England coveted Flanders, and no one could guess with what guile he would despoil the Franks. He recited the injuries of the Capetian princess at the hands of the Plantagenets. Finally, he held it only just that Celestine should give him a dispensation to right his wrongs by incursions in Normandy as soon as he could get home.

This eyewitness survey of the holy war and the Plantagenet's part in it must have shocked Celestine. However, he held the King of the Franks to his crusader's vow not to injure his fellow pilgrim during the latter's absence overseas, and forbade him, on pain of anathema, to seek redress by force of arms. The same vow, he made sure, would protect Flanders from Coeur-de-Lion. As for the matter of Alais, Celestine had probably reviewed her history thoroughly with Queen Eleanor in Rome and no doubt thought it best not to foment discord on that issue at the moment.

From Rome Philip passed northward and had a conference with Henry Hohenstaufen, the Holy Roman Emperor, who was in Italy settling those scores with Tancred that had prevented his joining the crusade. For Henry, Philip reviewed again the chronicle of the holy war. Here his accounts fell upon more sympathetic ears, for the head of the Hohenstaufen was related to the Duke of Austria and, through him, to the Emperor of Cyprus. The wanton dragging down of Leopold's banner in Acre, Richard embellishing himself with Isaac's treasure and disporting himself before the Christian hosts on Isaac's Arab stallion, Isaac himself in durance, the Cypriote princess the captive plaything of the English queen — these made telling incidents, and their exposure warmed the intercourse of the emperor and the king and forged a bond between them. Hoveden, reporting the interview, asserts that Henry vowed that, if Coeur-de-Lion should pass through his territories on his return from crusade, he would lay hands upon him.