• The High Court, or those members of it collected at Nablus, did plan to crown Isabella and Humphrey as rival (legal) Queen and King of Jerusalem, but Humphrey de Toron slipped away in the night to pay homage to Guy de Lusignan. As Isabella could not rule without a consort, this ended the baronial opposition to Guy de Lusignan’s usurpation of the throne.
• Baldwin (Barry) refused to swear allegiance to Guy de Lusignan as King of Jerusalem, turning his lands and titles over to his son Thomas and naming Balian Thomas’ guardian until he came of age, before leaving the Kingdom to start a new life in Antioch. He is never heard of again. There is also no other trace of “Thomas,” so the dates of his birth and death are unknown—but since I have postulated that Ramla would not have abandoned a young child that he loved, I have invented the older boy and made Thomas an infant too small and sickly to have yet earned his father’s affection. Also unexplained in the story of Baldwin’s (Barry’s) renunciation of his baronies is what happened to his wife. Again, since she did not appear to figure in the equation at all, I have presumed she too was dead. However, some sources suggest she lived long enough to be widowed and remarry one of Tripoli’s stepsons.
• Balian tried to reconcile Raymond de Tripoli and Guy de Lusignan in 1187, allegedly talking Guy out of a full-scale attack on Raymond in the fall of 1186. The negotiations dragged on. The next year he set out with the Templar and Hospitaller Masters to try to negotiate an agreement between the two men, but due to a short detour for personal business, he avoided the disaster at the Springs of Cresson.
• The slaughter of eighty Templar Knights, including the Marshal, and the Hospitaller Grand Master in an ill-advised attack on a much larger Saracen raiding force (some sources claim it was seven thousand horsemen) at the Springs of Cresson is historical fact.
• Accounts of the Battle of Hattin are both incomplete and contradictory to some degree. Undisputed is the fact that Tripoli commanded the advance guard (leading units) and that Balian and the Templars made up the rear guard during the advance from the springs of Sephorie. It is clear that the bulk of the army was caught on the plateau behind the Horns of Hattin, more or less surrounded by Saracens, although it is not clear how dense the troops were to the west and south.
• All accounts agree that Tripoli led a charge toward Hattin (i.e., north), whether on his own initiative or on the orders of King Guy, but that his charge was not reinforced, and the Saracens again closed the encirclement after he and “his knights” got out. Some sources speculate that only a handful of mounted men escaped with Tripoli.
• Since Joscelin de Courtenay was not recorded at the Battle of Hattin but shortly after the battle negotiated the surrender of Acre, there is good reason to assume he was not at Hattin at all. He commanded no troops, after all, and was already an elderly man.
• There is no question that Balian fought his way out of the encirclement on the Horns of Hattin and reached Tyre with some of his knights. Some sources say he was part of Raymond de Tripoli’s charge—but other sources, notably the “Lyon Eracles,” which are the most comprehensive and detailed chronicles for the period 1184-1197 and are probably based on eyewitness accounts, assert that Balian made a separate breakout. Furthermore, Arab sources speak of charges by Christian knights after Tripoli had broken out. One of these charges threatened Salah ad-Din himself. Therefore, I have opted to put Balian in command of one of these later attacks, leading to a separate breakout. After all, if Balian had come close to capturing Salah ad-Din, it might explain Salah ad-Din’s respect for him in the months that followed.
• Historians estimate that approximately three thousand infantry also survived the battle, but no source I have found explains how they broke out of the encirclement. It seems most reasonable that some infantry managed to fall in behind one of the cavalry charges and escape through the gap torn in the enemy lines by the cavalry. Since it is widely reported that none of the infantry got out with Tripoli, I have described them as following Balian’s charge. This makes sense if, as I hypothesize, Tripoli led to the north and Ibelin led to the east, past the slopes on which the Christian infantry had retreated.
• Following the battle, Salah ad-Din did order the execution of the approximately 230 surviving Templars and Hospitallers, with the exception of Grand Master Ridefort. The Sufis were given the “privilege” of carrying out the executions, and it is recorded that it sometimes took five blows to sever the neck of the victim. It is unclear where the executions took place, and some claim they took place near Hattin (with Salah ad-Din standing by, grinning and showing his approval). Other sources place the executions in Damascus, in which case Salah ad-Din could not have been personally present. I have opted for the latter version as the more plausible. There were many madrassas in Damascus from which to draw the Sufis, and the execution spectacle was for the “masses” and the civilians, not for the fighting men, who had probably had enough slaughter by then. Last but not least, Salah ad-Din ordered the executions because he saw the Templars and Hospitallers as dangerous fanatics, but it is not particularly in character for him to want to watch—much less enjoy—the executions.
• Balian obtained a safe-conduct from Salah ad-Din to remove his wife and “family” from Jerusalem after Hattin. Salah ad-Din granted the safe-conduct on the condition that Balian go to the city unarmed and stay only one night.
• Balian was greeted in Jerusalem like a savior, and he was begged to take command of the defense of the city. Balian sent word to Salah ad-Din, explaining the situation, and Salah ad-Din responded by sending fifty of his own men to escort Maria Comnena and Balian’s children to safety in Tripoli.
• When Balian discovered there were only two knights in the city (including himself, presumably), he knighted approximately eighty youth “of good family”—probably from both the merchant class and the feudal elite that had taken refuge in Jerusalem.
• Although it is frequently asserted that Orthodox Christians were “better off ” under the Muslims and were not loyal to the Latin Kingdom, there is no evidence of this. On the contrary, the First Crusade was launched because of the oppression of Orthodox Christians, and from the beginning the Latin rulers repealed the extra taxes leveled on Christians, ended the periodic massacres and indignities they had suffered under the Muslims, and allowed Orthodox Christians to practice their religion openly under their own leaders, with the exception of appointing Latin bishops to previously Greek Orthodox sees. The native Christians responded with loyalty, providing troops for the Christian army and contributing to the defense of Jerusalem.
• Despite the lack of trained fighting men, Balian organized a highly effective defense of Jerusalem, including early foraging expeditions into Saracen-controlled territory to ensure the city had enough provisions to withstand a siege.
• During one of these sorties, the Christians clashed with a Saracen patrol and a famous emir was killed; neither the location nor the names of the commanders are recorded.
• After the siege was established, Balian led successful sorties against Salah ad-Din’s siege engines, and one Christian sortie drove the Saracens right back to their camp.
• On September 25 Salah ad-Din withdrew his army, and many Christians in the city thought they had been saved. People took to the streets singing hymns, and thanksgiving Masses were read in all the churches.
• When Salah ad-Din returned, he focused his attacks on the same section of the wall (the northeastern wall) where Godfrey de Bouillon had breached the defenses in 1099. He is said to have had a trebuchet (then a new invention) and twenty mangonels, but at this point he concentrated his efforts on undermining the walls.
• After the walls of Jerusalem had been undermined, the nerves of some of the defenders (understandably) cracked, and Salah ad-Din used a close adviser of Syrian Christian faith to try to coax the Syrian population into betraying the defenders. Before anything came of this, Ibelin negotiated the surrender. The fact that Syrian Christians were ready to negotia
te after almost ten days of siege does not prove that they had been traitorous or disloyal all along.
• Ibelin led a mounted sortie out of the Jehoshaphat Gate on the night of September 29. Historians can only speculate about the objective, but as it was directed at the Mount of Olives, where Salah ad-Din had set up his command tent, it is not unreasonable to think the objective was to kill the Sultan.
• Ibelin did force Salah ad-Din to negotiate terms of surrender after the Saracens had breached the walls by threatening to kill all the Muslim prisoners in the city, and all the Christian residents as well—after destroying the holy sites of all religions. The bargaining about the height of the ransom and how many poor could be bought by what lump sum was, allegedly, even more lengthy than I have made it here, with the Sultan consulting his emirs and other advisors.
• Salah ad-Din agreed to ransoms for the residents of Jerusalem, and when at the end of the forty-day grace period thousands were still in the city unransomed, he “gave” a thousand to his brother and five hundred each to the Patriarch and Ibelin. Balian offered to remain as a hostage for the payment of ransoms for the rest, but Salah ad-Din refused. According to Arab sources, the number of Christians Ibelin rescued from slavery through payment of a lump sum varied from eight thousand to eighteen thousand, but all sources agree that roughly fifteen thousand Christians whose ransoms could not be raised went into slavery.
• Last but not least, Balian really did have a squire named Ernoul (possibly a variant of Arnuld/Arnold), who was with him at the Springs of Cresson and Hattin, and who later in life wrote an account of the events leading to the loss of Jerusalem in the vernacular. This original source, however, has since been lost, and all we now have are later chronicles that were in part based upon the original account written by Ernoul. The depiction of events credited to the lost “Chronicles of Ernoul” is colorful and contains many details about people that the more serious Church chroniclers skip over as irrelevant. Ernoul is therefore considered by modern historians to be a “lightweight,” but also an invaluable, source. He is also presumed to be shamelessly biased in favor of the Ibelins. While it is correct to assume that he understood the Ibelin perspective on historical events, it is wrong to assume that that bias makes everything he said a mirror image of reality. The Ibelins, and specifically Balian d’Ibelin, just might have had a very valid view of what was happening in the Kingdom of Jerusalem! The fact that Arab sources—which are not inherently biased in his favor—also attribute nobility and wisdom to Balian d’Ibelin suggests that Ernoul’s version of events might be a lot closer to the truth than the revisionist histories of more recent historians that attribute shameless ambition and evil intent to the Ibelins without a shred of evidence. In any case, this novel is based on the Ibelin view of history and so relies heavily on Ernoul.
Let me now turn to the features of the novel for which more literary license was necessary:
• As I noted in Book I, the character of Henri d’Ibelin is completely fictional, and so is his role in Reynald de Châtillon’s raids and in the Red Sea.
• The death of the Greek Emperor Manuel I occurred one year earlier than noted in the novel. There was simply too much going on in 1180 for me to give proper attention to it between the marriage of Sibylla and Guy and the betrothal of Isabella and Humphrey, so I moved it back one year to a point in the novel where I could give it the kind of attention it deserved. This means that it was not Manuel I, but the young Alexius II or his Regent (Maria Comnena’s uncle), who paid Ramla’s ransom.
• Baldwin d’Ibelin (Barry) actually married twice after his suit of Sibylla failed, but I have merged them into a single character to reduce confusion and simplify the plot.
• Humphrey’s age at the time of his marriage to Isabella is sometimes given as seventeen, but the fact that he was still living in Kerak under his mother and stepfather’s tutelage suggests he was either very immature, even backward, for his age—or that he was, in fact, younger. Since I have found no hard evidence of his date of birth, I have elected to make him just fifteen at his wedding to Isabella.
• William, Archbishop of Tyre, was excommunicated by the Patriarch Heraclius most probably (although accounts differ) in the spring of 1183 or 1184. The reasons for the excommunication are obscure. Ernoul claims it was because of an attack on Heraclius’ unchaste lifestyle, but historians suggest it was more likely a conflict over the independence of his see. Neither theory is supported by strong evidence. Since this was the time when Baldwin IV was seeking an annulment of Sibylla’s marriage, and William of Tyre was an unwavering opponent of Guy de Lusignan while Heraclius was a client of the Queen Mother and so the Lusignan faction, conflict over this crucial question between the two most prominent churchmen of the realm is almost certain. Hence, while not historically documented, an attempt by Tyre to annul Sibylla’s marriage to Guy de Lusignan is entirely plausible. The “arrangement” between Ramla and Sibylla would likewise have been the most obvious grounds for such an annulment, given the fact that the Byzantine Emperor and Salah ad-Din both thought Ramla was the designated next husband of Sibylla at the time of his capture on the Litani.
• The historical record is unclear on when William of Tyre ceased to be Chancellor to Baldwin IV. I have chosen to make this break at the time of Heraclius’ appointment to increase the dramatic tension: the sense of Baldwin being torn between his mother, sister, and their clients and the traditional elite including Raymond de Tripoli and William of Tyre.
• While we know that William Marshal was in the Holy Land during the period in which he appears in this novel, no one knows exactly where he was, who he met, or what he did. His role in the siege of Nablus is thus completely fictional, albeit based on a real incident when Henry II was fleeing from his son Richard and Marshal alone turned to face the pursuers, covering Henry’s flight. In that incident he killed Richard’s horse under him, but wisely refrained from killing the unarmed heir to the English throne.
• Eschiva of Tiberias had four sons by her first marriage: Hugh, William, Ralph, and Odo. To simplify things, I’ve reduced them to two, William (to avoid name duplication) and Ralph.
• Salah ad-Din received the delegation from Jerusalem during his siege of Ascalon, not Tyre, but Balian received his “safe-conduct” at Tyre. To keep the story moving, I elected to move the date of the delegation forward so I could cover both events in a single scene.
• William of Tyre describes the blood bath in Jerusalem in 1099 in vivid detail, and then a few pages later talks about the Christians “dwelling in Jerusalem” giving “heartfelt thanks to Peter the Hermit.” He does not explain how these Christians had managed to escape the slaughter. I have hypothesized that the Christians had knowledge of some places to hide—which they later revealed to the Kings of Jerusalem, who in turn passed these on to the Templars.
• While Balian did lead sorties out of Jerusalem that damaged or destroyed some of Salah ad-Din’s siege engines, the leper sortie is my own invention.
• Salah ad-Din actually consulted with his leading commanders after Balian threatened to destroy the holy sites and kill everyone in Jerusalem, and they agreed with the idea of letting the Christians ransom themselves. I eliminated this step in the negotiations for dramatic effect.
• The dialogue (with the few exceptions noted in the text), the physical descriptions, and the supporting characters are all fiction. This is a novel—one based on historical fact—but a novel nevertheless.
Note on Leprosy
BALDWIN IV OF JERUSALEM SUFFERED FROM leprosy from the time he was a boy. He was diagnosed by his tutor William, later Archbishop of Tyre, while still a schoolboy, and he was recognized as a leper by contemporary society.
In writing this book, where Baldwin IV is a central character, it was important to understand both the disease as we know it today and what medieval man knew and thought about leprosy. I have relied heavily on Piers D. Mitchell’s essay titled “An Evaluation of the Leprosy of King Baldw
in IV of Jerusalem in the Context of the Medieval World,” which appears as an appendix in Bernard Hamilton’s The Leper King and his Heirs: Baldwin IV and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the excellent study of attitudes toward leprosy published by Timothy S. Miller and John W. Nesbitt, Walking Corpses: Leprosy in Byzantium and the Medieval West.
It was important to me that the actual evolution of the disease as depicted in this novel be consistent with both the historical record and the stages of the disease recognized by modern medical knowledge. For example, we know from William of Tyre that Baldwin’s leprosy first manifested itself as a lack of feeling in his right hand, but we also know that Baldwin was an agile rider as a young adult. It is further recorded that he commanded his armies in person at Montgisard, on the Litani, at Le Forbelet, and even as late as the relief of Kerak. However, his body was in fact decaying progressively and noticeably. William of Tyre also noted a particularly dramatic deterioration of his health in the year 1183, and by the time he died in 1185 just short of his twenty-fourth birthday, he had gone blind and did not have the use of any of his limbs.
Based on the historical descriptions of Baldwin’s initial illness, which state he had lost the feeling in his arm but that there were no other symptoms such as discoloration or ulcers, Mitchell suggests that Baldwin IV initially had primary polyneuritic tuberculoid leprosy, which deteriorated into lepromatous leprosy during puberty. There was, according to Mitchell, nothing inevitable about this deterioration—however, puberty itself can induce the deterioration, as can untended wounds (going unnoticed due to loss of feeling) that cause ulcers to break out. Historically, Baldwin led the dangerous campaign against Salah ad-Din that led to the surprise victory at Montgisard when he was in puberty, just sixteen years old. I hypothesize that it was in part because of this campaign—which required camping out in the field and going without the usual bathing of his feet and hands—that his disease took a turn for the worse. According to Mitchell, children who develop lepromatous leprosy are likely to die prematurely, and so once Baldwin’s leprosy had become lepromatous, it inevitably took its course through the gruesome stages of increasing incapacitation to an early death.
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