Richard & John: Kings at War (38 page)

Conrad’s murder threw crusader politics into turmoil. All the carefully planned arrangements put together since the beginning of April now seemed questionable. Who was to be the next king of Jerusalem and who would be the decision-makers? Ambroise says the French faction under the duke of Burgundy tried to preempt the issue by seizing Tyre, but Conrad’s pregnant widow Isabella foiled them by fleeing to the citadel and shutting herself up there with the garrison. There she announced that the French could have Tyre only if Philip returned from France to claim it; meanwhile she would obey Conrad’s dying request and hand the keys of the city to Richard.
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Guy of Lusignan would presumably have had a good claim to resume his kingship had he not already accepted Richard’s more lucrative offer of Cyprus and, initially at least, the Pisans urged him to reclaim his title. The position of Isabella and her first husband Humphrey of Toron was particularly chaotic. Theological diehards said that Conrad had been punished for his ‘unlawful’ marriage and that Isabella should return to her first (and only true) husband. At this juncture Henry of Champagne returned from Acre, and influential people begged him to accept the Crown and seal the compact by marrying Isabella.
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Henry dithered both about the Crown and the marriage, and asked Richard for the final decision. Richard evidently gave him the nod very quickly for, in what seems an extraordinarily rushed affair, Henry married Isabella on 5 May. Some said he should not have married a woman pregnant with another man’s child, while others asserted that the bride was under duress.
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Whatever doubts might have been entertained about the match in canon law, in terms of
raison d’état
Richard now had exactly what he wanted: neither a weak, unpopular ally like Guy of Lusignan nor an over-independent loose cannon like Conrad, but a faithful and deferential servant. It was the very convenience of the outcome of the dispute over the kingship of Outremer that convinced the sceptics that it, and Conrad’s death, were all part of a devious, long-prepared, master plan by Richard. In many ways the elevation of Henry was a stroke of political genius - either that or the ultimate in serendipity - for Henry was Philip’s nephew as well as Richard’s. The outcome for Henry was less happy, for he was never crowned king of Jerusalem, was constantly assailed by doubts about the validity of his marriage, and in 1197 he stepped backwards through an open upper-storey window and was killed. There was clearly something jinxed or ill-starred about Isabella, because her fourth husband died ‘of a surfeit of fish’ in 1205. She thus achieved the dubious distinction of being widowed three times and divorced once by the time she was thirty-three.
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Henry’s position as titular leader of Outremer satisfied the duke of Burgundy, who at last returned to full cooperation with Richard. With the whole crusader force now once more under his command, Richard was able to widen the scope of his military activities. Until the chaos caused by Conrad’s murder and Henry’s succession, Richard had been out every day on horseback in the country between Ascalon and Jerusalem, once more involved in skirmishes, patrols, night attacks and, when no Saracens appeared, hunting; his horsemanship during the pursuit and killing of a wild boar was especially praised.
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But once he had the duke of Burgundy’s troops under his aegis, he ordered an assault on Darum, twenty miles south of Ascalon, another coastal target that, when taken, would put additional pressure on Saladin and further menace the trade routes between Egypt and Syria. The impetuous Richard did not wait for the French to muster but rushed ahead with his vanguard of knights, secured a beachhead and began supervising the ferrying of supplies from the fleet. Saladin sent reinforcements to the Darum garrison, but its commander seems to have been spectacularly incompetent, since Richard encountered little resistance when he unloaded three engines brought from Ascalon by sea.
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Richard did not have enough men for a close investment of Darum, but his brilliant military mind had detected a weak spot in the principal tower (one of sixteen). After enduring three days and nights of accurate artillery fire, covering a meticulous sapping operation, the garrison, which remained unsupported by the so-called relieving force, surrendered on 22 May on condition that they, their families and their property would be spared. When Henry of Champagne and the duke of Burgundy finally arrived, Richard made a point of handing over his conquest to the new overlord of Jerusalem - an action which performed wonders for morale in the coalition.
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Leaving a Christian garrison in Darum, the crusaders advanced to al-Hasi (the ‘Cane Brake of Starlings’) on 28 May, fanning out in a wide circle to catch all Saracens within the net. The Saracens tried to play down the success of these operations, but the truth is that Saladin was hard pressed, with all his men not yet back from their winter furlough. His hopes of a diplomatic alliance against the crusaders had been stymied when an envoy from the Byzantine emperor at Constantinople arrived in Jerusalem on 15 May with a demand that Saladin restore the Cross to him, allow Christian priests in the churches at Jerusalem and join him in an attack on Cyprus. Saladin impatiently refused all the demands.
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But luck was with him, for Richard was simultaneously receiving the same kind of bad news. The envoy John of Alençon arrived with the latest instalment of Prince John’s treachery in England, including the disquieting news of an alliance with Philip of France directed against Richard. The Lionheart immediately wondered whether he should throw up the crusade and return to England with all speed. He summoned a council, attended by the leaders of all the regiments: English, French, Norman, Poitevin, Angevin. This time there was little wrangling, and a unanimous decision was taken to advance on Jerusalem a second time, whether Richard stayed with them or went home.
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Rumours spread through the camp about a possible crisis when a new leader was chosen to replace the Lionheart but, after a week’s depressed and gloomy reflection in Ascalon, where he withdrew the army for supplies and remustering, Richard sent his personal confessor with a message that he would stay in Palestine until the following Easter (28 March 1193) and would lay siege to Jerusalem if this proved practicable.
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All the indications are that Richard was unconvinced about the ability of his army to take Jerusalem, but feared his sudden departure would lead the crusade to implode. His reasoning was that of a master chess player. If he was able to take the Holy City in the summer, when there was no more mud and rain to impede his army, he would cut the ground from under the feet of Philip and John and so square the circle involved in the either-Crusade-or Angevin-empire conundrum. He then returned from Ascalon to al-Hasi, rested two days, then began the march on Jerusalem. The mood in the army was optimistic, and in some quarters euphoric.
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Even so, the desertion level continued high, and Richard sent Henry of Champagne back to the fleshpots of Acre to round up the latest quota of skrimshankers and backsliders. He then set up his headquarters at Beit Nuba, 13 miles from Jerusalem, where he would remain for a month.
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The advance to Beit Nuba saw the euphoria continuing, for the crusaders ambushed a Saracen raiding party on the way, and congratulated themselves on having accomplished in five days a march it took them two months to complete the year before. The only Christian losses during this period were two deaths from snakebite. On 12 June the fighting took a more serious turn when a large party of Saracens attacked the Franks near Beit Nuba, gradually sucking in more and more French troops, Hospitallers and Templars by feigned retreat until they were ready to spring the trap. Vicious hand-to-hand combat ensued, and the Hospitaller knight Robert de Bruges distinguished himself in single combat with the Arab champion, but things were going badly for the crusaders when suddenly the bishop of Salisbury and the count of Perche arrived with reinforcements and swung the balance.
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Richard was absent from this fracas, as he himself was turning the tables on a party of would-be ambushers at the Pool of Emmaeus. He killed twenty of the enemy, captured Saladin’s herald and bagged a number of horses and mules. Traditionally, it was said to be during his pursuit of his outwitted foes that he rode to the top of a hill called Montjoie and saw his first and only sight of Jerusalem. Legend has embroidered the incident.
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It seems just too pat that this should be the selfsame hill from which the men of the First Crusade should also have first seen the Holy City, while the story that Richard collapsed in tears and begged God not to allow him to glimpse a city he could not deliver to him is almost self-confessedly apocryphal; it does not square with the known personality of Richard, who was no-nonsense and avoided histrionics, and it is also too obviously a variant on the story of Moses viewing the Promised Land from Pisgah but destined never to enter it.

The prime aim of Saracen raiding parties was to intercept supply convoys between Jaffa and Beit Nuba. On 17 June there was a major assault on a Christian caravan near Ramleh, commanded by Baldwin de Carron. Another large-scale engagement escalated from the primary assault, involving French nobles named as Clarembaud de Montchablon, Ferric de Viane (Henry’s deputy), Manasser de l’Isle, Richard de Orques and the knights Theodoric, Philip and Otho.
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A well-timed attack by Turkish horsemen on the rearguard caused initial panic, and then the attackers moved in, wielding great iron clubs to deadly effect. Once again the French were rescued from a tight spot, this time by the arrival of the earl of Leicester, who put the enemy to flight.
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The increasing severity of Saracen attacks and the non-appearance of Henry, who seemed, said the grumblers, to be taking an unconscionable time about rounding up deserters in Acre, began to affect morale. Perhaps it is not being overly cynical to query the fortuitous appearance at exactly this juncture of yet another fragment of the True Cross, whose authenticity seemed guaranteed to Ambroise simply because its location was divulged by an old hermit with a grey beard.
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But the real situation was more accurately signalled by yet another grand council convened by Richard to reconsider the decision to march on Jerusalem. Richard made an impassioned speech, pointing out the crusaders did not have enough men to invest the city properly, stressing the fragile supply lines and underlining that, once in the hills around Jerusalem, the Franks would be as vulnerable to Saladin’s counter-attacks as the Athenians had been at Syracuse in 414-413 BC, and everyone knew that that venture had ended in consummate disaster. In a pointed jibe at the French, he said he was well aware that he had enemies in Europe (Philip), and maybe in the present assembly, who wanted him to fail and to blame him for the fiasco of an aborted crusade. Once again Richard revealed himself a master politician. Ostenstibly keeping out of the decision-making process he appointed a committee of twenty to decide the matter once and for all. Five Frenchmen were appointed, five Hospitallers, five Templars and five representatives of the kingdom of Outremer. Richard knew perfectly well from all past experience that this would provide a 15-5 vote in favour of abandoning the march and concentrating on a campaign against Egypt; and so it proved.
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When the decision was announced, Richard greeted it with enthusiasm, dilating on the possibilities of besieging Cairo and sending a fleet up the Nile. Yet the French instantly disabused him of such high hopes. For them it was Jerusalem or nothing and to them the Egyptian campaign was a meaningless irrelevance. In vain Richard remonstrated that, even if Jerusalem fell, it would have to be abandoned soon afterwards, since most of the crusaders would simply complete their pilgrimage and return to Europe. But the duke of Burgundy and the other French nobles refused to cooperate.
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Richard tried to compromise: he was quite prepared to accompany the French as a private soldier but he could not in all conscience proceed there as their commander. The French remained adamant and obtusively unreceptive to all overtures. Matters had reached an impasse when suddenly the logjam was broken by external events. Richard’s spy system was efficient, and the lure of
baksheesh
had seduced many Arabs from ideological allegiance to Islam. In addition, if we may believe Ambroise, a Syrian Christian named Bernard had anticipated Sir Richard Burton by seven hundred years, and moved freely in disguise through the bazaars and markets of Cairo.
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From a number of different sources the Lionheart now learned that Safadin’s half-brother Falak al-Din was bringing up a fresh army, with hundreds of horse and mules, new supplies and a plethora of trade goods, to relieve the hard-pressed Saladin in Jerusalem. It must be remembered that, although the wiser heads in the crusader army doubted their ability to take the Holy City, the enemy did not know of their doubts and indecisions, and were seriously dismayed at the prospect of facing the great Melek Ric and his army. Saladin, aware that the issue of morale was crucial, set great store on the arrival of the new army from Egypt. Richard, with his lightning reflexes for strategy, saw at once that Falak al-Din’s caravan might be the hinge on which the whole war turned. He made rapid preparations for an attack.
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