Titans of History

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  But Eleanor had quickly become disillusioned with her husband: “I thought I had married a king, and found I had married a monk,” she lamented. The crusade was a disaster. Louis was as inept as a warlord as he was joyless as a husband. Louis’s army was almost defeated on route through Asia Minor. In Antioch, Eleanor flirted with her worldly, debonair uncle Prince Raymond of Antioch, “the handsomest of princes,” causing one of the greatest sexual scandals of the era. It was claimed Eleanor was “unfaithful.” Louis kidnapped her and took her as a virtual prisoner to Jerusalem. But the crusader attack on Damascus failed and the unhappy couple returned to France. When their marriage finally ended in divorce, with no male heirs, Eleanor refused to retreat into a convent, as was expected. Rather, she took her future into her own hands. She knew what a prize her lands were. Having already thwarted two abduction attempts by would-be suitors, she proposed marriage to Duke Henry of Normandy by messenger. At the time of their marriage he was only nineteen, eleven years her junior. Just over a year later Henry succeeded to the English crown, as Henry II, and Eleanor became queen of England, uniting their vast territories to form the Angevin empire. It comprised Aquitaine, Anjou, Brittany, Gascony, Maine and Normandy—half of modern France—as well as England and Ireland. Later, when Henry’s bullying rule became intolerable, it was Eleanor who marshaled her sons into a rebellion against their father—a rebellion that she persuaded Louis to support. Henry II imprisoned her for a decade. On Henry’s death, he was succeeded by Richard I the Lionheart, who ultimately freed her.

  Eleanor helped secure her sons’ inheritance. She had always governed well in her beloved Aquitaine, and as regent for Richard I, her favorite son, while he was on crusade, Eleanor demonstrated her capacity as a ruler. She thwarted repeated threats to his throne, including his brother John’s rebellion. When the holy Roman emperor captured Richard, Eleanor secured his freedom via complex negotiations and by raising the vast ransom demanded. She also sent several fierce letters reprimanding the pope for his failure to protect a crusader. After Richard’s death, Eleanor secured the succession of the unpopular John. Traveling long distances across the Angevin lands, Eleanor successfully campaigned for the support of the barons of England and Normandy over rival claimants to the throne. At eighty, Eleanor crossed the Pyrenees to choose a bride for Louis VIII personally from among her Castilian granddaughters to cement the Anglo-French alliance. Her judgment was unerring: Blanche of Castile, as queen of France, became a ruler as formidable as her grandmother had been.

  Eleanor’s life consistently tested her powers of endurance. Her independence provoked Europe’s chroniclers to revile her as first an incestuous whore, then a shrew, censuring her “pagan” southern wildness and her hold over Louis VII. When rebellion broke out against Henry II, Eleanor was the focus of the blame. “The man is the head of the woman,” thundered the archbishop of Rouen, publicly threatening her with excommunication.

  Eleanor was kidnapped innumerable times: at the age of twenty by pirates when she was on crusade; sixty years later by local barons on her journey to Spain. Both her husbands imprisoned her. After Eleanor sided with her uncle Raymond over a matter of crusade tactics, Louis forcibly removed her from Antioch.

  A woman of indomitable spirit, Eleanor triumphed over every one of her enemies. She refuted allegations of barrenness by bearing Henry eight children, mostly boys. Henry’s attempt to force Eleanor through imprisonment to renounce her Aquitaine lands in his favor failed. Fortunately she did not live to see the downfall of her youngest son, King John.

  SALADIN

  c. 1138–1193

  He was a man wise in counsel, valiant in war and generous beyond measure.

  William of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea (1170)

  The Kurdish-born sultan Saladin became the ideal of the warrior-king, he was an efficient commander and a tolerant ruler devoid of fanaticism. Ruling an empire stretching from Libya to Iraq, Saladin drew together disparate elements of the Arab and Turkish world in the struggle between Islam and Christendom for control of the Holy Land. A merciless warlord in his rise to power, and never quite the liberal gentleman of Victorian romance, he nevertheless embraced the code of chivalry and was respected by his enemies. By the standards of medieval empire-builders, he was indeed an attractive character.

  Yusuf ibn Ayyub, who later adopted the name Salah-al-Din, the Goodness of the Faith, was born to a Kurdish family in Tikrit, now in northern Iraq (and much later the birthplace of the tyrant Saddam Hussein), son of the local governor and nephew of a lieutenant of Nur ad-Din, ruler of Syria. At twenty-six, Saladin set off with his mace-wielding and very fat uncle Shirkuh to defeat the crusaders in a war to win control of Fatmid Egypt. They succeeded but Shirkuh died of a heart attack. In 1171, Saladin seized Egypt on his master’s behalf after massacring 5000 Sudanese guards. Three years later Nur ad-Din died, and Saladin took control of Syria as well.

  Ruling from Damascus, Saladin built an empire based on a combination of political cunning, ruthless order, military prowess and Islamic justice. After a lifetime killing his fellow Muslims in his quest for a personal empire, he now devoted himself to the jihad to liberate Jerusalem from the crusaders of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem. By 1177 Saladin had built up an army capable of opposing the Christian occupiers of the Holy Land—as holy to Muslims as to Christians. Yet at the Battle of Montgisard his army of 26,000 was surprised and routed by a far smaller crusader force under the “Leper King” of Jerusalem, Baldwin IV.

  This was the last major reverse in Saladin’s struggle against the Christian interlopers. Though a truce was called in 1178, the following year Saladin resumed his jihad against the crusaders, besieging and capturing the castle the crusaders were building at Jacob’s Ford, which presented a strategic threat to Damascus. Saladin razed the castle to the ground.

  During the 1180s Saladin was dragged into increasingly serious skirmishes with the crusaders, in particular Prince Raynald of Chatillon. Unrestrained by weak kings in Jerusalem, Raynald intensified the conflict when the crusaders could ill-afford the risk, harassing Muslim pilgrims on haj, showing a total disregard for the sanctity of the Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina. All this only served to fire Saladin’s determination to win his holy war.

  By 1187 he had raised sufficient forces to invade the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which had been weakened by the long illness of Baldwin IV, the infighting of its barons and the weak ineptitude of the new King Guy. The crusaders were annihilated at the Battle of Hattin, only a few thousand escaping the field. Saladin took King Guy of Jerusalem and Prince Raynald as prisoners. He gave King Guy iced water later—but personally beheaded Raynald. In October Jerusalem itself fell, ending eighty-eight years of crusader occupation.

  The fall of Jerusalem opened a new chapter in the history of the crusades: Saladin’s rivalry with Richard I of England, known as Richard the Lionheart. Richard arrived in the Holy Land in June 1191, and the following month Acre fell to the crusaders. In September Richard defeated Saladin at Arsuf but not decisively. With both sides’ resources depleted, the Lionheart could not take Jerusalem so they agreed a truce in autumn 1192. Richard won a partition of Palestine: the crusaders got a rump along the coast centered on Acre but he had lost the great game because Saladin kept Jerusalem and his empire of Egypt, Syria and Iraq. Saladin demonstrated his tolerance by agreeing to allow unarmed Christian pilgrims into Jerusalem. Richard left the Holy Land shortly afterward. Though the two never met again, and Saladin died the following year, the relationship between the two men passed into legend. Richard seems to have been genuinely struck by Saladin’s skill, tolerance and magnanimity as a ruler and battlefield commander.

  There is no denying that Saladin could be merciless toward prisoners of war. Like Richard, he thought little of massacring them if the conditions of war demanded it. After Hattin, he slaughtered all the Knights Templar in cold blood. Such were the standards of medieval religious warfare. But chroniclers on both sides sang the pra
ises of Saladin the lawgiver, just ruler and great prince. He could inspire men to take to the battlefield despite daunting odds, and he was usually courteous and chivalrous toward his Christian enemies.

  After Saladin’s death, the Muslim chronicler Baha al-Din called him “one of the most courageous of men; brave, gallant, firm, intrepid in any circumstance.” Saladin, sultan of Egypt and Syria, left an Ayyubid empire to his brother Safadin and the family dominated until 1250. The preeminent Kurd in history, he became a symbol of Arab pride in the 20th century, with revolutionary Egypt, Iraq and Palestinian groups adopting his eagle symbol.

  RICHARD THE LIONHEART & JOHN SOFTSWORD

  1157–1199 & 1167–1216

  Richard was a bad son, a bad husband and a bad king, but a gallant and splendid soldier.

  Steven Runciman

  Richard I was one of the most capable and glamorous of English kings; his youngest brother John was one of the most inept and unattractive. They were the sons of King Henry II and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, who together ruled England and half of France—the Angevin empire. Henry was to spend much of his reign repelling attacks by the ambitious Philip II of France, who was determined to extend his own borders.

  Henry had four legitimate sons. The first—also Henry—was known as Young King after Henry II had him crowned while he himself was still alive, and who died in his twenties. The second was Richard, who ultimately succeeded to the throne as Richard I; Geoffrey became duke of Brittany and earl of Richmond; John was the fourth. The rivalry between the old king and his greedy, jealous and violent sons was so vicious that they were known as the Devil’s Brood. However, the overbearing and dominating Henry II, a swashbuckling royal titan, often favored John, perhaps because he was the weakest and least able—and therefore the lesser threat to his own power.

  More legends have accrued around Richard I than any other English king. His chivalrous rivalry with Saladin during the Third Crusade was the subject of famous ballads and tales across Europe, as was his long, Odysseus-like journey home. Richard was the archetypal Angevin king. Like the rest of his family, he had a furious temper and could be irresponsible and impulsive. And, being an Angevin with huge European interests, he simply regarded England as another fiefdom to defend and a resource to fund his conquests.

  Brash, tall, with red-golden hair, he adopted scarlet as his color, and wielded a sword he called Excalibur. Highly intelligent, energetic and flexible, he was capable of gruesome cruelty and ruthlessness. He massacred thousands of Muslim prisoners in cold blood outside Acre and, on another occasion, arranged the heads of executed Muslims around his tent—yet he also once stripped naked and whipped himself in church for his sins. He was not interested in women except as political pawns, though he did father at least one bastard (it is unlikely he was gay as claimed by some scholars). War was his ruling passion and outstanding talent.

  Richard was invested with land and power from the age of eleven, when he was raised to duke of Aquitaine. He became duke of Poitou four years later and immediately allied with his brothers and his mother in a failed rebellion against their father Henry II in 1173–4. A harsh lord, Richard himself provoked rebellion among his subjects in Gascony in 1183, and a few years later was rebelling again against his father, this time in alliance with Louis, the king of France and his mother’s former husband.

  In 1188, Henry finally lost patience and declared he no longer saw Richard as his heir, which propelled the future Lionheart once more to come out in open rebellion. Initially, John fought alongside Henry, but, in what was to become a familiar pattern, he switched sides when it was clear Richard was set to triumph. King Henry died shortly afterward, heartbroken at the betrayal by his sons: in 1189 Richard succeeded as king of England and ruler of the Angevin empire. But his focus was on Jerusalem, which Saladin had conquered in 1187. After mortgaging as much of his kingdom as he could and taxing England with the so-called Saladin tithe, Richard sailed for the Holy Land via Sicily in 1190. “I’d have sold London if there had been a buyer,” he said.

  He ravaged Sicily then conquered Cyprus on the way. On arrival he fought hard and bloody battles against Saladin’s forces, besieging and capturing Acre, butchering 3,000 Muslim prisoners to counter Saladin’s delaying negotiations and winning the Battle of Arsuf with a cavalry charge, but he failed to take the main prize of Jerusalem. Despite their violent struggle, Richard and Saladin held for each other a chivalrous respect. Each thought and spoke with the highest regard of the other. When Richard was sick and thirsty, Saladin sent him fresh fruit and water, and when he was in need of a horse, Saladin sent him one of his finest.

  During their peace negotiations, Saladin was dazzled by Richard’s scarlet-clad exploits—especially his last-minute rescue of Jaffa, wading into the sea right under Saladin’s nose. The sultan is said to have called Richard “so pleasant, upright, magnanimous and excellent that, if the land [Jerusalem] were to be lost in my time, he would rather have it taken into Richard’s mighty power than to have it go into the hands of any other prince whom he had ever seen.” When both sides had fought themselves to exhaustion, Richard offered Saladin a unique and imaginative deal: his brother Safadin would marry Richard’s sister and rule Palestine together from Jerusalem. It did not work of course but it shows Richard’s dynamic flexibility.

  In his absence, John, now raised to count of Mortain and granted huge estates to assuage his greed—in return for agreeing not to visit England at all—was plotting to seize power and meddling in English politics, breaking his ban. Richard had to settle things in the Holy Land and rush home. But on his way back his enemies Emperor Henry VI and Duke Leopold of Austria captured him and held him to ransom, giving John the opportunity, in January 1193, to control England. John, however, failed in an attempt to invade England with the assistance of King Philip II of France, and then unsuccessfully attempted to bribe Richard’s captors to hand him over to his custody. As Richard once put it, “my brother John is not the man to win lands by force if there is anyone at all to oppose him.”

  On his return (after the astonishing sum of 150,000 marks had been raised for his release), Richard showed incredible leniency to his wayward brother and officially declared him his successor before leaving the country to make war against Philip of France. So, when Richard was killed in 1199 by crossbow bolt at a siege in France, John became king of England and duke of Normandy and Aquitaine.

  King John lost most of his empire, broke every promise he ever made, dropped his royal seal in the sea, impoverished England, murdered his nephew, seduced the wives of his friends, betrayed his father, brothers and country, foamed at the mouth when angry, starved and tortured his enemies to death, lost virtually every battle he fought, fled any responsibility whenever possible and died of eating too many peaches. Treacherous, lecherous, malicious, avaricious, cruel and murderous, he earned his nicknames Softsword for military cowardice and incompetence, and Lackland for losing most of his inheritance.

  On his succession, his nephew, Arthur, duke of Brittany, the son of Geoffrey II and Constance, was a serious rival to the throne, considered by many as the rightful king, so John quickly arrested the boy, at age fifteen, and—in a crime not unlike that of Richard III and the Princes in the Tower—had him murdered the following year. Arthur’s murder provoked a rebellion in Brittany and a humiliating retreat for John’s armies, who were forced to withdraw from the region in 1204. By 1206, Softsword had lost nearly all of England’s territorial possessions in France, putting up only limp resistance. In fact, when Normandy—England’s last possession on the continent—was seized by the French, John reportedly stayed in bed with his wife, as his soldiers fell in the rout.

  Richard, for all his faults, had been admired for his chivalry, unlike the priapic John, who had countless mistresses and illegitimate children, often trying to force himself on the wives and daughters of important noblemen. His treatment of prisoners was particularly odious; he starved to death the wife and son of one of his enemies.<
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  Stranded on English soil and short of funds, John imposed large increases in taxation and mercilessly exploited his feudal prerogatives, giving rise to the popular legend of Robin Hood holding out in Sherwood Forest against royal extortion. Between 1209 and 1213, when John was excommunicated by Pope Innocent III, he shamelessly plundered the revenues of the Church.

  From 1212, John faced increasing opposition from the nobility, who began to plot against him. After another thoroughly disastrous military campaign in France in 1214, rebellion finally broke out in England. At a famous meeting in a meadow by the Thames at Runnymede on June 15, 1215, the barons forced John to seal Magna Carta, the foundation of modern English liberties, guaranteeing them rights against the arbitrary rule of the king. John had no intention of keeping his word, and quickly betrayed his promise to abide by the charter, prompting a return to civil war. As he tried his rally his forces, his entourage—with his treasure and bags—was almost lost as he crossed the Wash. The tides rose unexpectedly, and in his frantic efforts to save his possessions he lost the Great Seal of England. As the king betrayed his promises of Magna Carta, he faced a French invasion and a general baronial revolt: his power was slipping away when he fell ill. His death too became him: the king succumbing to dysentery after an excessively voracious meal of peaches and ale.

  GENGHIS KHAN

  c. 1163–1227

  The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters.