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Authors: Thomas Asbridge

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BOOK: The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land
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The Lionheart probably set foot on the road to Jerusalem in late October 1191 with little or no intention of actually prosecuting an attack on the city. This means that his advance was effectively a feint–the military component of a combined offensive in which a show of martial aggression augmented intensive diplomatic contact. Richard sought that autumn and winter to test Saladin’s resolve and resources, but was ever ready to step back from the brink if a clear opportunity for victory failed to materialise. In all this, the king acted according to the best precepts of medieval generalship, but he failed to account for the distinct nature of crusading warfare.

The impact of the retreat upon Christian morale and the overall prospects of the crusade were catastrophic. Even Ambroise, the Lionheart’s vocal supporter, acknowledged that:

[When] it was realised that the army was to turn back (let it not be called retreat), then was the army, which had been so eager in its advance, so discouraged, that not since God created time was there ever seen an army so dejected and so depressed…Nothing remained of the joy they had had before when they were to go to the [Holy] Sepulchre…Everyone cursed the day he was born.

 

Now a stunned and bedraggled rabble, the army limped back to Ramla. From there, depression and disillusionment ripped the expedition apart. Hugh of Burgundy and many of the French decamped. Some returned to Jaffa, others went off to Acre, where food and earthly comforts were plentiful. Richard was left to lead a severely weakened force south-west to Ascalon.
90

REGROUPING

 

The Lionheart reached the ruined port on 20 January 1192 amid horrendous storms that further dampened morale. As the crusaders struggled to come to terms with their retreat from Jerusalem, Richard did his best to recover from the first real setback of his campaign. He put his remaining troops to work rebuilding Ascalon, determined to salvage something from that dismal winter by making practical and visible progress on the coast. Henry of Champagne had remained loyal to his uncle and lent his aid to the project, but the refortifying of so devastated a city was a mammoth undertaking–one that would ultimately take five months of hard labour and cost Richard a fortune.

In late February, a crisis erupted in northern Palestine–one that revealed enduring divisions among the Franks. Even though the war for the Holy Land was far from over, the Latins began openly fighting over Acre. Genoese sailors tried to take control of the city, probably with the connivance of Conrad of Montferrat and Hugh of Burgundy, and it was only the fierce resistance put up by Richard’s Pisan allies that prevented the port from being united with Tyre. Enraged by what he saw as a brazen act of betrayal, Richard travelled north to parley with Conrad, and the pair met halfway between Acre and Tyre. ‘Long discussions’ were apparently held, but no lasting agreement could be forged and the marquis returned to Tyre.
91

Richard’s military fortunes had turned in the hills of Judea, and now on the northern coast his gift for sure-footed diplomacy seemed also to desert him. Frustrated by his failure to bully Conrad into submission, the Lionheart immediately instituted an assembly and had the marquis officially deprived of the share of the kingdom of Jerusalem’s revenue allotted to him in summer 1191. In truth, though, this was little more than an empty gesture. Conrad had two telling advantages: an unassailable centre of power at Tyre, and a growing body of support among Outremer’s remaining Frankish barons, including the likes of Balian of Ibelin. The marquis may have been a devious, self-serving opportunist who was willing to negotiate with Saladin against the interests of the crusade, but his marriage to Isabella of Jerusalem gave him a claim to the throne. He also had proven himself a stronger leader than Guy of Lusignan (his rival for the Jerusalemite crown) and, unlike Richard, showed every sign of being committed to a permanent career in the Levant. That February the Lionheart chose to ignore the obvious, but eventually he would have to acknowledge the uncomfortable reality. Conrad could be neither broken nor turned and, therefore, he would have to be accommodated in any lasting political and military settlement in the Near East.

Around this time, channels of negotiation between Richard and Saladin were reopened. The sultan, once again, was represented by his brother al-Adil, while Humphrey of Toron spoke on the Lionheart’s behalf. Meetings were held near Acre in late March and, at one point, it appeared that terms–including a partition of Jerusalem–might actually be agreed. In early April, however, Richard broke off the dialogue and sailed south to spend Easter in Ascalon. The reason for this sudden change of policy is uncertain, but it is likely that the king had heard rumours that Saladin’s exhausted armies were showing signs of insubordination and that the sultan was also facing Muslim insurrection in Mesopotamia. Seizing upon this possible vulnerability, Richard seems to have convinced himself that he now had no need to agree to anything other than the most advantageous terms. Once back in Ascalon, he began preparing to launch a new offensive.

CRISIS AND TRANSFORMATION

 

On 15 April 1192 Robert, prior of Hereford, arrived in Ascalon having sailed east from Europe. He bore news that overturned all of Richard’s plans. The king’s aide and representative William of Longchamp had been exiled from England by Prince John, and Richard’s ambitious brother was now making moves to increase his own power in the kingdom. After ten months of crusading in the Holy Land, this was a stark reminder of Richard’s duties and obligations as monarch of the Angevin realm. The Lionheart immediately recognised that, with a crisis looming in the West, he could ill afford to tarry in the Levant; but neither did he wish to abandon the crusade and return home a failure. Richard seems to have judged that he had time to dedicate one more fighting season to the cause of the cross. But to bring the Palestinian war to a swift and successful conclusion, he would need to unify the disparate Latin forces ranged across the Holy Land.

Reconciled to compromise, the Lionheart convened a council of crusader barons on 16 April. He announced that, in light of events in England, he might soon have to depart and instructed the assembly to resolve the issue of the Jerusalemite crown. A unanimous decision was reached, almost certainly with Richard’s tacit approval, to offer the kingdom to Conrad of Montferrat. Guy of Lusignan, meanwhile, was to be compensated handsomely for his loss of status–Richard arranged for the Templars to sell Guy the island of Cyprus for 40,000 bezants, a move that allowed the Lusignan dynasty to establish a powerful and enduring lordship in the eastern Mediterranean. Henry of Champagne was deputised to sail north to Tyre and inform the marquis of his sudden promotion, and, more importantly, to persuade him to unite his forces, and those of Hugh of Burgundy, with the crusader army gathered at Ascalon so that the holy war might be waged.

Within a few short days Conrad received the news and by all accounts he was ecstatic. After months of waiting in the wings, proceeding ever with caution and cunning, his dreams of threading a path to regal power had been realised. For all his earlier intransigence and hesitation, the marquis immediately initiated preparations for a military campaign. Unbeknownst to Richard or the Franks, he also sent an urgent message to Saladin, explaining that an unexpected agreement had been reached among the Latins, and threatening that unless Saladin finalised ‘a settlement [with Conrad] in the next few days’, a full-scale confrontation would follow. According to a Muslim eyewitness in the sultan’s court, Saladin took this approach extremely seriously. Threatened by impending civil unrest in Mesopotamia, ‘the sultan believed…that the best plan was to make peace with the marquis’ and on 24 April he dispatched an envoy to Tyre to finalise terms. In the last days of April 1192, then, King Richard and Saladin believed that they had found ways to conclude the war for the Holy Land: the one through renewed battle; the other through peace. The plans of both centred upon Conrad of Montferrat.
92

On the evening of 28 April Conrad travelled to the French crusader Philip bishop of Beauvais’ residence in Tyre to have supper. The pair seem to have struck up a friendship in the course of the crusade and Conrad was in a relaxed, celebratory mood. Riding home through the city later that night, attended by two guards, the marquis passed the Exchange building and entered a narrow street.

[There] two men were sitting on either side of the road. As [Conrad] came between them they rose up to meet him. One of them came and showed him a letter, and the marquis held out his hand to take it. The man drew a knife and plunged it into his body. The other man who was on the other side jumped onto the horse’s rear and stabbed him in the side, and he fell dead.

 

Conrad’s two assailants were subsequently revealed to have been members of the order of Assassins sent by Sinan, the Old Man of the Mountain. One of the pair was decapitated immediately; the other captured, interrogated and then dragged through the streets until he died. But though their link to the Assassins was established, the original instigator of the attack remained less certain. Hugh of Burgundy and the French in Tyre spread the rumour that King Richard had contracted the killing, while in some parts of the Muslim world it was rumoured that Saladin was involved. Given recent developments, however, neither ruler actually stood to gain much from Conrad’s death. The truth of the matter is impossible to determine–Sinan may even have acted independently to eliminate the marquis, having deemed him to be a dangerous long-term threat to the balance of power in the Levant.
93

The political situation among the Latins was in disarray. Hugh of Burgundy tried to seize control of Tyre, but he seems to have been thwarted by Conrad’s widow Isabella, the heiress to the kingdom of Jerusalem. With yet another outbreak of infighting threatening, a new settlement was pushed through quickly. Count Henry of Champagne was chosen as a compromise candidate–because as nephew to both King Richard and Philip Augustus he represented Angevin and Capetian interests–and within a week he was married to Isabella and elected as titular monarch of Frankish Palestine.

The exact extent of the Lionheart’s involvement in the engineering of this rapid solution is unclear. By and large, however, the new order suited his interests and those of the Third Crusade. Henry of Champagne’s appointment finally united all the Latin armies in Palestine–from the native Franks of Outremer, to Hugh of Burgundy’s French troops and Richard’s Angevin forces. Given Henry’s and Richard’s recent history of alliance, there was also a good chance that the pair would be able to cooperate effectively.

Through May 1192 the Lionheart set about bolstering his foothold in southern Palestine, conquering the Muslim-held fortress of Darum, while the work of refortifying Ascalon neared completion and Count Henry and Duke Hugh mustered armies to the north. With Christian morale reinvigorated, the stage seemed set for the launch of a decisive campaign–although, given Richard’s recent expansion down the coast towards Egypt, the target of any venture still might be subject to debate.

On 29 May, however, another Angevin messenger arrived from Europe with a dispatch confirming the Lionheart’s worst fears. Ever since his rival Philip Augustus of France had left the crusade in midsummer 1191, Richard had been deeply concerned that the Capetians might threaten Angevin territory in his absence. He now learned that King Philip had made contact with Prince John, and that together the pair were busy plotting. The envoy warned that unless something was done ‘[to restrain] this abominable treachery, there was a danger that very soon England would be taken from King Richard’s authority’. The Lionheart was said to have been ‘disturbed to hear this news, and afterwards…sat for a long time in silence, turning things over in his mind and weighing up what should be done’. In April he had resolved to remain in the Holy Land, but this latest grave report from the West reopened the issue. According to his supporter Ambroise, Richard was ‘melancholy, downcast and saddened…his thinking confused’.
94
Christendom’s great warrior had reached the critical moment of decision–would he fight on as a crusader, or heed the call of his Angevin realm and return home as a king?

18
RESOLUTION
 

With the approach of summer in 1192, Saladin began to reassemble his armies, girding Islam for a renewed Christian offensive. Over the preceding year the sultan had faced a series of ruinous setbacks. He had watched in impotent humiliation as Acre fell on 12 July 1191, and then suffered the shock of King Richard’s cold-blooded execution of the city’s Muslim garrison on 20 August. All efforts to halt the Lionheart’s march south to Jaffa had failed and, on 7 September at Arsuf, Saladin’s armies had been driven from the field of battle. Forced to reconsider his strategy, the sultan moved on to the defensive, demolishing the fortresses of southern Palestine, shadowing the crusaders’ grinding inland advance, yet ultimately retreating within the confines of Jerusalem itself around 12 December, there to await attack.

Since the glory of his victories at Hattin and the Holy City in 1187, Saladin had remained resolute in his commitment to
jihad
–if anything, his dedication had deepened. But even so, he had gradually lost the initiative to the Franks. Debilitated by recurrent illness, hamstrung by the faltering morale and physical exhaustion of his troops, and distracted by the wider demands of his Ayyubid Empire, the sultan had been slowly driven to the edge of defeat. Then, on 12 January 1192, the crusaders retreated from Beit Nuba, offering Islam a new lease of hope and gifting Saladin the chance to regroup and recover.

AYYUBID STRATEGY IN EARLY 1192

 

Having survived the Christian advance on Jerusalem, Saladin took stock of his position in the first months of 1192. The Ayyubid realm was in a worrying state of disrepair. After years of neglecting the management of his treasury, the sultan’s financial resources were profoundly overstretched, and without a ready supply of money he was struggling to pay for the manpower and materials necessary for war. Egypt’s continued prosperity offered a lifeline, but Richard’s reoccupation of Ascalon posed a considerable threat to communications between Syria and the Nile region.

These economic woes were linked to a second concern: the dwindling availability and waning loyalty of his armies. Through the near-constant campaigning of the preceding four years, Saladin had made enormous demands of the troops drawn from his own domains in Egypt, Syria and the Jazira. Likewise, he had asked much of his allies in Mesopotamia and Diyar Bakr. It was a testament to Saladin’s remarkable charisma as a leader, to the effectiveness of the political and religious propaganda he disseminated, and to the devotional appeal of
jihad
that even potential rivals such as the Zangid Izz al-Din of Mosul and Imad al-Din Zangi of Sinjar had continued to honour their commitments to the holy war by answering the Ayyubid sultan’s calls to arms. But these demands could not be met indefinitely. If the conflict in Palestine continued unabated, it would be only a matter of time before the bonds of loyalty and common purpose uniting the Muslim world began to fracture. This was why Saladin took the risk of disbanding his army in December 1192.

To the sultan’s dismay, these manifold problems were compounded by the first flickerings of disloyalty within his own family. Back in March 1191, Saladin had allowed his trusted and able nephew Taqi al-Din to take possession of a parcel of territory in the Jazira, east of the Euphrates, which included the cities of Edessa and Harran. In November of that same year, in the midst of the Latins’ advance on the Holy City, the sultan was deeply saddened by news of Taqi al-Din’s death from illness. By early 1192, however, Taqi al-Din’s adult son al-Mansur Muhammad began to show what one of Saladin’s aides described as ‘signs of rebellion’. Fearing that he might be deprived of an inheritance, al-Mansur sought to cajole his great-uncle, the sultan, into either confirming his rights to the Jaziran lands or granting other territory in Syria. The approach was evidently underlined with the implied threat that, if thwarted, al-Mansur would incite anti-Ayyubid insurrection in the north-east.

Saladin was appalled by this lack of fidelity in a member of his own bloodline, and his mood did not improve when al-Mansur attempted to use al-Adil as a mediator–indeed, the conniving tactic apparently left the sultan ‘overcome with rage’. This whole affair proved to be a problematic distraction, one that rumbled on into early summer 1192. Saladin initially responded by sending his eldest son al-Afdal to subdue the Jazira in April, empowering him to request further aid from his brother al-Zahir in Aleppo if necessary. By late May, however, the sultan had relented. Al-Adil seems to have applied some pressure as an arbitrator, and the Emir Abu’l Haija also pointedly advocated leniency during an assembly held to discuss the case, observing that it was not possible to fight fellow Muslims and ‘infidels’ at the same time. Saladin duly granted al-Mansur lands in northern Syria and endowed al-Adil with rights to Harran and Edessa. However, this rather abrupt reconciliation caused something of a rift with al-Afdal. Angered by his father’s vacillation and the decision to reward al-Adil, al-Afdal showed a marked reluctance to return to Palestine, tarrying first at Aleppo and then at Damascus, depriving Saladin of valuable manpower.
95

In early 1192 Saladin faced financial insecurity, troop shortages and sedition. Not surprisingly, he further refined his approach to the holy war. During the preceding autumn he had adopted a more defensive strategy, avoiding decisive confrontations with the Franks but still maintaining relatively close contact with his enemy. From spring 1192 onwards, the sultan withdrew almost all of his soldiers from the field. Barring occasional skirmishing forays and opportunistic raids, the Ayyubid armies held fast in defensible positions across the length of Palestine, waiting to repel any Christian attack. In a related development, Saladin instituted a widespread work programme to strengthen his major fortresses and Jerusalem’s battlements.

These preparations were reflective of a fundamental change of policy. In 1192 Saladin evidently concluded that he could no longer realistically expect to achieve outright victory against the Third Crusade. This realisation prompted him to re-engage with the diplomatic process–establishing dialogue with Richard I and Conrad of Montferrat. It also forced the sultan to re-evaluate his bargaining position. A deal based on a partition of the Holy Land, in which the Latins would retain control of a coastal strip of territory, was now deemed acceptable. As yet, however, Saladin retained two firm demands: Islam must retain dominion of Jerusalem; and Ascalon, the gateway to Egypt, must be abandoned.

Saladin’s overarching strategy of defence and diplomacy was now underpinned by a singular objective–to survive the Third Crusade. He knew that the Latin Christians who had come east in their thousands to wage a war of reconquest would one day return home. King Richard, in particular, could not afford to remain in the Levant indefinitely. Saladin’s goal was to withstand the storm: limiting his losses wherever possible; avoiding decisive confrontation at all costs; but bringing the Palestinian war to a swift conclusion, before the Ayyubid war machine collapsed. Then, once the crusaders had sailed from the eastern shores, the sultan could turn his mind to thoughts of recovery and reconquest.

THE CRUSADERS’ SECOND ADVANCE ON JERUSALEM

 

Saladin had done his best to prepare for an attack on either Jerusalem or Egypt. In late May and early June 1192 troops from across the Near East began to regroup in the Holy City. The sultan also deployed a number of scouting forces, including one under Abu’l Haija, to monitor the movements of the Franks, who now were based in the region of Ascalon.

Indecision

 

On 6 June Saladin received an urgent warning that the crusaders were marching in strength north-east from Ascalon–a move that obviously heralded an advance on Jerusalem. It appeared that Richard and the Latins had resolved to make a second attempt to besiege and capture the Holy City. In fact, Richard had spent the first days of June in a tortured state of indecision. Badly shaken by the prospect of an alliance back in Europe between his acquisitive brother John and Philip Augustus, the Lionheart was torn between returning to the West and remaining in the Levant to fulfil his crusading vow. The English king’s dilemma was compounded further by the thorny question of strategy. The Third Crusade’s primary objective was the recovery of Jerusalem, but Richard still considered the city to be an unrealistic target. In some respects, the Franks were better placed to prosecute an inland campaign than they had been six months earlier. Now united, they could rely on stable summer weather and use the network of rebuilt fortifications established in late 1191. But in all other respects the proposition had not changed–the challenge remained almost insurmountable, the risks immense. Even if, by some miracle, the attack succeeded, Jerusalem would be virtually impossible to hold. Richard, therefore, favoured an attack on Egypt: a strike that would threaten the very foundations of the Ayyubid Empire, and likely force Saladin to agree a truce on terms of the Lionheart’s choosing. In military terms, Richard’s plan made sense, but it largely ignored the driving devotional dimension of crusader warfare. If the king was to press home his strategy–winning over the hearts and minds of the Christian host, persuading the Franks that the path to ultimate victory led through the Nile–he could afford none of the equivocation witnessed in autumn and winter 1191. He would have to offer clear-cut, compelling leadership, commanding with unfaltering vision and force of will.

Instead, after 29 May, Richard vacillated, withdrawing into private contemplation to ruminate on his options and stratagems. And as he did so, events began to overtake him. Popular opinion within the crusader army was crystallising. In the Lionheart’s absence a group of Latin barons, presumably spearheaded by Hugh of Burgundy, held a council on 31 May and decided to march on Jerusalem with or without the Angevin monarch. News of this judgement was leaked, probably quite deliberately, and immediately spread through the army, eliciting a ‘wildly joyful’ reaction that left the troops dancing until after midnight.

Even Richard’s most ardent promoter, Ambroise, admitted that the king became paralysed at this point, reflecting that he ‘was not at all happy, but lay down, very upset about the news that he had heard’, adding that ‘he continually pondered [the tidings from England] in his tent and gave himself up to this pondering’. As the Lionheart wavered and the days passed, a potent surge of enthusiasm swept over the camp, with one thought at its core–the call of Jerusalem. According to Ambroise, Richard experienced a form of spiritual epiphany on 4 June, having wrestled with his conscience. As a result, the king abruptly proclaimed that ‘he would remain in the [Holy Land] until Easter [1193] without turning back and that everyone should be prepared [to lay siege] to Jerusalem’. Perhaps the Lionheart did have a stirring change of heart, but it is far more likely that, in the face of mounting public pressure, he bowed to popular sentiment. He certainly seems to have harboured as yet unexpressed ambitions for an Egyptian campaign and continued to have deep misgivings about the viability of any assault on the Holy City. Nonetheless, he agreed to advance into Judea. This capitulation signalled that, for now at least, Richard had lost control of the Third Crusade. Thus, even as Saladin interpreted the Frankish mobilisation as a sign of new-found intent on 6 June, grievous fissures were starting to appear in the Christian command structure.
96

The threat posed

 

Once begun, the crusaders’ march on Jerusalem proceeded with remarkable rapidity. By 9 June the Franks had arrived at Latrun and, on the following day, they pushed on to Beit Nuba. In autumn 1191 it had taken the Christians months to reach this same position. Now, after only five days, they once again were within striking distance of the Holy City, just twelve miles from its hallowed walls. Saladin ordered Muslim raiding parties to harass the near-constant stream of Latin supply convoys coming inland from Jaffa, but other than intermittent skirmishing assaults, he made no serious attempt to threaten the crusaders’ main forward camp at Beit Nuba. Instead, the sultan began positioning his troops within Jerusalem ahead of the impending attack.

After the first flurry of movement, however, the Frankish offensive seemed to stall. In fact, this delay was caused initially by the Latins’ decision to wait for Henry of Champagne to bring further reinforcements from Acre. But as the days passed, the deep-seated divisions within the crusade that had remained submerged at Ascalon began to surface, and the Franks were soon locked in a furious argument over strategy and leadership.

On 20 June, Saladin’s scouts reported that a large contingent of crusaders had moved off from Beit Nuba. This raised the sultan’s suspicions, because at that very moment he was awaiting the imminent arrival of a massive supply caravan from Egypt. Concerned that the Franks might seek to intercept this column and appropriate the vital resources it contained, Saladin immediately dispatched troops to warn the Muslim convoy. The two Ayyubid parties rendezvoused successfully and were making watchful progress inland towards Hebron, when just before dawn on 24 June Richard I launched a searing attack. As Saladin feared, the Lionheart had been alerted to the caravan’s movements by one of his spies and, galvanised by the prospect of rich plunder, immediately rushed south. The Angevin king spent three days tracking the caravan through his network of local informants and then unleashed a well-timed surprise assault. After a vicious fight the Latins prevailed. The bulk of the Muslim escort escaped, but they left behind a veritable hoard of booty: precious goods, including spices, gold, silver and silks; weapons and armour; tents; food supplies, including biscuits, wheat, flour, pepper, sugar and cinnamon; and ‘a great many cordials and medicines’. Perhaps even more significantly, the Christians also took possession of literally thousands of camels, dromedaries, horses, mules and asses.

BOOK: The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land
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