Richard & John: Kings at War (20 page)

Saladin at once appealed to Guy of Lusignan, as king of Jerusalem, to restore his sister and offer an apology and compensation for the attack on the caravan. Guy agreed that some such action was due, but Reginald of Châtillon, backed by the diehard leader of the Templars, Gérard de Rideford (another anti-Islamic fanatic), brutally rebuffed him, telling him in effect that events in the environs of Kerak were none of his business. Saladin methodically collected the largest army he had ever put in the field (some 25,000 strong), and then asked Raymond of Tripoli, his nominal ally, for permission to cross his territory so as to be able to strike back at Reginald de Châtillon. Raymond was thus in a terrible dilemma, bound on the one hand to an ally but on the other forced to betray his co-religionists if he honoured the alliance. The hawks, led by Châtillon and de Rideford, poured out all their venom on Raymond, alleging that he had ‘gone native’ and was a traitor to the Christian religion. Threshing around desperately to find a way out of this conundrum, Raymond hit on the idea of suggesting that Saladin’s forces arrive in Tiberias by sunset but be gone by sunrise the next morning without any raiding en route.
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He salved his conscience by warning Guy of Lusignan that an attack was coming. But nothing could stem the Christian fanatics. When Saladin’s forces crossed the River Jordan into Lower Galilee on 1 May 1187, a small force of Western knights, mainly Templars, engaged them at Cresson, two miles from Nazareth. Despite having merely hundreds to launch against thousands, Gérard de Rideford attacked. The Muslim army simply opened up like the biblical Red Sea, swallowed up the mailed knights, then closed up again, engulfing the Franks in frightful slaughter; miraculously de Rideford and four horsemen escaped, but they left behind over one hundred slain knights, the cream of the kingdom’s chivalry.
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The debacle meant the end for Raymond of Tripoli’s fence-sitting diplomacy. His ‘treachery’, not de Rideford’s folly, was blamed for the disaster, and he came under massive pressure, even from his own troops, to abandon his alliance with Saladin. Bowing to the inevitable, Raymond went to Jerusalem with his men and swore allegiance to Guy of Lusignan.

News of Cresson made even hesitant Arab warriors keen to join Saladin, who declared that this was a critical moment in the history of Islam, requiring a supreme effort. With an army of 25,000 men, Saladin at last had the manpower to offset the Franks’ advantage in technology and discipline. But the Franks too were now waging Holy War. The remainder of the kingdom’s 1,200 knights joined Guy’s 20,000 foot to make up the most formidable Christian host yet seen in the Latin kingdom. Saladin next began by tempting Guy’s army to move out of its secure rendezvous point at La Safouri. He laid waste the lands of Raymond, his erstwhile ally, even defiling the cone of Mount Tabor, the scene of the biblical Transfiguration. Since Raymond’s wife had remained at Tiberias, that walled city was Saladin’s next target, and soon the Arab army had breached the outer walls. At a council of war called by Guy of Lusignan, Reginald de Châtillon and Gérard de Rideford predictably urged immediate rescue but Raymond, the immediately injured party, advised waiting Saladin out and making a stand at Acre instead.
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In the contest between the cautious and intelligent Raymond, backed by the Hospitallers, and the firebrand de Châtillon, backed by de Rideford and the Templars, it was perhaps inevitable that the hawks would prevail. But legend has it that it was only when de Rideford stole into Guy of Lusignan’s tent after the council and accused him of arrant cowardice that Guy, seeing the issue as a point of personal honour, finally snapped and gave the order for an immediate attack.
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The crusader army proceeded to make every mistake in the book. Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee lay fifteen miles east of La Safouri, at first over the arid plain of Lubiya and then up onto the ridge of Hattin, with the final stage of the march over a waterless wilderness. Since it was only possible for a large, heavily encumbered force to march 6-7 miles a day in such conditions, the Christian army did not reach the village of Turan, with the last waterhole before the lake of Galilee itself, until noon on 3 July. They then set out immediately to march the nine miles to the lake, having to face the prospect of a battle without water if Saladin opposed them. As soon as they left Turan, Saladin sent riders to cut off their retreat. By nightfall Guy and his men were encamped in the middle of the desert, waterless and with the horn of Hattin, scene of the Sermon on the Mount, ahead of them. During the night of 3-4 July the Arab army surrounded them. Saladin positioned his archers carefully, telling them to aim at the horses for, without mounts, the fearsome Frankish knights were powerless. By morning, having spent a parched, thirsty night in great agony, the Christian troops were beaten before battle was even joined. Saladin could have finished his enemy off at dawn but, prolonging the agony, waited until the sun was high in the sky before attacking and destroying the Christian host piecemeal.
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Defeat for Guy of Lusignan was total and the massacre fearful. Somehow Raymond of Tripoli escaped from the bloody battlefield, but Guy, de Rideford and Reginald de Châtillon were captured and brought before Saladin. After giving Châtillon the chance to convert to Islam, which Reginald contemptuously rejected, Saladin cut him down where he stood, leaving his guards to administer the
coup de grâce
. Guy feared a similar fate but Saladin shrugged and said to him: ‘Real kings do not kill each other. But that man was no king and had overstepped the mark. So, what happened, happened.’
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Saladin was not so merciful towards the captured Templars and Hospitallers, whom he ordered executed to the last man. The True Cross, which Guy had brought from the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem to the field of battle, was sent on to Damascus. Saladin’s armies then swept over the kingdom of Jerusalem. Acre, Beirut and Sidon surrendered without a fight. Only Tyre, whose defence was masterminded by Conrad of Montferrat, an adventurer who had made himself prince of the city, held out. Unable to make an impression on Tyre, Saladin moved on to take Caesarea, Arsuf and Jaffa. His next target was Ascalon, one of the five cities of the biblical Philistines. His idea was that he would barter Guy of Lusignan’s freedom for Ascalon’s surrender, but at first Guy returned empty-handed; fortunately for him, Ascalon soon afterwards had second thoughts and ran up the white flag. De Rideford gained his freedom in a similar way, after persuading the Templar castle of Gaza not to resist Saladin.
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Instead of concentrating on strategic objectives, Saladin now decided that the propaganda coup of taking Jerusalem was irresistible. Jerusalem faced his coming with trepidation, for this was the scene of the massacre of some 40,000 Muslims by the Franks in the climax to the First Crusade in 1098. A vigorous defence of the Holy City by Balian of Ibelin convinced Saladin that a negotiated surrender was best; he knew reinforcements would reach the Franks from the West and he could not afford to lose manpower in a costly siege. Nonetheless, the terms of surrender were harsh. Those who could afford to pay steep ransoms were allowed to depart; those who could not were enslaved. Among the latter were many Christian women who suffered mass rape and enforced concubinage.
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But atrocities were largely forgotten in the more general shock sustained by Christendom when Saladin entered Jerusalem on 2 October 1187. The archbishop of Tyre toured Europe preaching the crusade, while Pope Gregory VIII issued the encyclical
Audita Tremendi
on 29 October, calling on the faithful to rally to the rescue of Jerusalem and granting a plenary indulgence and other benefits to all who took the Cross.
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Dramatic and convulsive as these events were, they took time to make an impact on the feuding French and Angevins in Western Europe, where for a time it was still ‘business as usual’. Tired of the entire running farce over Alice and determined to solve the issue once and for all, Philip next threatened an immediate invasion of Normandy unless Henry either returned Gisors and the Vexin or compelled Richard to marry Alice forthwith. But, in a surprise twist of events, at the supposedly ‘final’ conference at Gisors in January 1188, impassioned rhetoric from the archbishop of Tyre persuaded both kings to take the Cross themselves. Neither Henry nor Philip wanted to go on crusade - they regarded it as a tiresome diversion from the real arena of their interests in France - but they were increasingly being swept along by a force of public opinion that was more typhoon than tide.
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Passions were running high, with those reluctant to crusade being sent ‘womanly’ tokens of wool and distaff - the twelfth-century equivalent of white feathers. Crusaders were offered important concessions: the freezing of all debt until return from the Holy Land; the protection of the Church for their property while they were away; and a plenary indulgence which wiped out all sin and removed the fear of Hell and Purgatory. Henry and Philip were caught in the whirlwind of history - Henry particularly, who had pledged himself to crusade since 1172 but had done nothing about it.
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The two kings now had to raise the money for the expedition, and a special Saladin Tithe was ordained in England - the first tax in English history levied on personal property other than real estate. But it was agreed that both monarchs would need at least a year to prepare a host sufficient to deal with Saladin, so that the proposed General Passage through Europe would have to be postponed into 1189. Nonetheless a major crusading conference was held at Le Mans in early 1188, where it was agreed that French troops would wear red crosses, the English white and the Flemish green. Philip sent advance envoys to the king of Hungary and the emperor at Constantinople to secure safe passage for the armies, while Richard, planning a seaborne approach across the Mediterranean, wrote letters to his brother-in-law King William of Sicily, requesting merchant shipping there. But the recruiting masterstroke among the many decrees at Le Mans was the exemption of all crusaders from paying the Saladin Tithe, which led many an ungodly knight to take the Cross.
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Even while these complex matters were being thrashed out at Le Mans, yet another rebellion broke out in Aquitaine, featuring Richard’s old adversaries Geoffrey de Lusignan, Ademer of Angoulême, Geoffrey de Rancon and the Taillefers, who followed the rebel banner even though Richard had given up his original demand that Angoulême should be inherited by Vulgrin’s daughter Matilda. The rising was something of a rerun of the events of 1179, with the castle of Taillebourg once more featuring as the centrepiece of the insurrection, but it was as futile as the one nine years earlier, for Richard simply hurried south and repeated his former exploits, taking all rebel castles and laying waste their territories with fire and sword. If the rebels had had any sense, they would have waited until Richard was safely on crusade in the Holy Land. But now, foreseeing that there would be another rising once he was out of the country, Richard pardoned the insurgents on the express understanding that they would all take the Cross.
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Yet no sooner had he put this revolt down than he became involved in fresh hostilities with count Raymond of Toulouse; being duke of Aquitaine seemed like an everlasting game of Chinese boxes. Raymond had visited some atrocities on a party of Aquitaine merchants - either he blinded them or castrated them - and Richard, in a revenge raid, captured Raymond’s right-hand man Peter Seillan. Raymond retaliated by taking prisoner two of Henry II’s knights, on their way back from pilgrimage at Compostela. The stand-off soon turned into outright war - Philip of France tried to arbitrate but was rebuffed by both sides. Richard’s Brabançon mercenaries assailed Toulouse while he himself took seventeen castles in a sweep to the north as far as Cahors. When Richard’s combined army approached the gates of Toulouse, the citizens made it clear they were willing to do an immediate deal with him.
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Seeing disaster looming, Raymond appealed to the king of France. Philip did not want to fall out with his new friend Richard, and in any case that would leave Richard nowhere to go but back to Henry, which would defeat the point of Philip’s anti-Angevin campaign. So, instead of replying to Raymond, he duplicitously complained to Henry about his son’s behaviour at Toulouse. Henry replied that events in Aquitaine were nothing to do with him. In fact he was playing a double game, apparently with the intention of stopping Richard from going on crusade this year. He hated the idea of Richard’s having an independent command that was proceeding ahead of the overland armies by sea, partly because he feared his son would win the renown as a general he felt should be his alone. Not only did he disavow Richard’s actions, but Richard soon found evidence that his father had given moral and financial backing to both the Aquitaine rebels and Count Raymond. This was the end of the road for Richard as far as Henry was concerned.
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Once Philip realised that Richard now harboured an implacable hatred for his father, he turned on his erstwhile friend and invaded Berry, in retaliation for the attack on Toulouse. Philip claimed, unconvincingly, that the attack on Toulouse was a breach of the January 1188 accord, but in fact Raymond had not agreed to take the Cross so was not covered by its provisions. Philip was being doubly disingenuous for Raymond, as a rebel against a declared crusader, should have been anathematised by the general decree of excommunication pronounced at Le Mans against all who hindered or delayed the General Passage. The real reason for Philip’s intervention was that he regarded Toulouse as an integral part of France and could now be reasonably confident that Richard and Henry would not combine in the field against him. His invasion of Berry was a fully-fledged affair, with a full complement of siege engines. On 16 June he easily took the fortress of Châteauroux - so easily that it was reliably reported that a fifth column had treacherously delivered it to him. Once Berry switched its allegiance to Philip, the lord of Vendôme followed suit.
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