by Robert Payne
You enumerate all those who are leagued with you against us, you name them and say—the king of this land and the king of that land—this count and that count, and the archbishops, marquises and knights. But we wished to enumerate those who are in our service and who listen to our commands and obey our words and would fight for us, this is a list which could not be reduced to writing. If you reckon up the names of the Christians, the Saracens are more numerous than the Christians. If the sea lies between us and those whom you call Christians, then no sea separates the Saracens who cannot be numbered: between us and those who will come to aid us there is no impediment. The Bedouin are with us, and they alone would be sufficient to oppose all our enemies. And the Turkomans alone could also destroy them, and our peasants at our orders would fight bravely against any nations that invaded us and despoil them of their riches and exterminate them. And then we have the soldiers who opened up the land and took possession of it, and drove out our enemies. These together with all the kings of Islam will not be slow when we summon them, nor will they delay when we call them.
Whenever your armies are assembled, as you say in your letter, and whenever you lead them, as your messenger tells us, we will meet you in the power of God. We will not be satisfied with the land on the seacoast, but we will cross over with God’s good pleasure and take from you all your lands in the strength of the Lord. For if you come, you will come with all your forces and will be present with all your people, and we know that there will be none remaining at home to defend themselves or fight for their country. And when the Lord, by his power, shall have given us victory over you, nothing will remain for us to do but freely to take your lands by His power and with His good pleasure.
The army of the Christian faith has twice come against us in Babylon, once in Damietta and again in Alexandria; the Christian army reached into the land of Jerusalem, and toward Damascus, and into the land of the Saracens; in every fortress there was a lord who studied his own advantage. You know how the Christians returned every time and what happened to them. . . .
By the virtue and power of God we have taken possession of Jerusalem and its territories; and of the three cities that still remain in the hands of the Christians: Tyre, Tripoli, and Antioch, nothing remains but that we shall occupy them also. But if you desire war, we shall meet you with the power of God, who wills of his good pleasure that we shall occupy the whole land of the Christians. If you want peace, you have only to command the captains of these three cities to deliver them up to us, and we shall restore to you the Holy Cross, and we shall liberate the Christian captives in all our territory, and we will be at peace with you. We will allow you one priest at the Holy Sepulchre and we will restore the abbeys to their former state and we will do good to them. We will permit the pilgrims to come throughout our lifetime and we will be at peace with you.
If the letter that came to us by the hand of Henry is indeed the letter of a king, we have written this letter in reply and may God give us council according to His will. This letter is written in the year of the coming of the Prophet Muhammad 584, by the grace of the only God. And may God save our Prophet Muhammad, granting the salvation of our saviour, our illustrious lord and victorious king, the giver of unity, the true word, the adorner of the standard of truth, the corrector of the world and of the law—from the Sultan of the Saracens and the infidels, the servant of the two holy houses and the holy house of Jerusalem, father of victories, YUSUF son of AYYUB.
VI
THE RAGES OF KING RICHARD
A Journey
to Joachim
KING Richard I of England was one of those princes who inevitably command respect. He was tall, long-limbed, square-shouldered, possessing a peculiar grace of movement and an enchanting capacity to put people at their ease. He had the carriage of a king and the mind of a condottiere, clean-cut, ruthless, unyielding. In the Holy Land he would find a worthy enemy in Saladin.
King Richard I inherited his good looks from his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and from his father, King Henry II, he inherited demonic energy. Richard was an excellent poet and a superb musician, while his principal talents lay in military architecture and military strategy. He was proclaimed Duke of Aquitaine when he was fifteen, and thereafter he was constantly at war with neighboring principalities.
He was twenty-one when he undertook the most impressive of his early campaigns, an attack on the castle of Taillebourg, which was virtually impregnable, being surrounded by a triple ditch and triple walls, with a garrison of over a thousand well-armed men and provisions for a long siege. Richard set fire to the village that clustered about its walls and to all the other villages in the neighborhood. He had the insolence and bravado to pitch his own tents close to the castle. When at last the garrison troops made a fierce sortie, he was ready for them, attacked them mercilessly, and followed them through the castle gates. Afterward the survivors and his own troops tore down the castle until there remained only a heap of rubble. He was not yet Richard Coeur de Lion; he was Richard the Ruthless, without the least mercy or sympathy.
His mercy and sympathy were aroused in 1187, when he heard about the disaster at Hattin. Although the battle took place on July 7, he did not hear about it until the end of October. He took the Cross immediately, vowing to reconquer Jerusalem, to the surprise of his father, King Henry II, and the displeasure of his prospective father-in-law, King Philip of France.
In a field near Gisors, Philip and Henry met to discuss a host of misunderstandings. The archbishop of Tyre, who was visiting Western Europe to seek support for a new Crusade, arrived at Gisors just at this moment, and began to speak movingly about the loss of the Holy Sepulchre and the precarious situation of the Christians now clinging to a few fortresses on the shores of Palestine. He spoke so well that Philip and Henry forgot about all the problems that bedeviled them and listened intently to the archbishop, whose eloquence stirred them to take the Cross. Heaven favored the archbishop, for a huge Cross had appeared in the sky while he was speaking.
Once more, as in the days of Urban II, France was caught up in a wave of wild enthusiasm. Thousands took the Cross. It was agreed that the English should wear white crosses, the French red ones, the Flemings green.
These preliminaries were interrupted, however, when war broke out between the English and the French. Richard found himself embroiled in rebellions south of Aquitaine, and Henry fell ill at Chinon with his army in disarray, while Philip rode high in the saddle, dictating terms. Henry died miserably, muttering, “Shame, shame, on a conquered king.”
With Henry’s death, Richard acquired England. For him, England was booty. He had little interest in the country except as a source of revenue, of able-bodied men capable of fighting in Palestine, and of shipbuilders and shipwrights capable of building a fleet that would take them there. When he returned to England to be crowned at Westminster, the English thought he had come to stay. They could not have been more mistaken. He had come to loot in the name of the Crusade. He sold offices and titles to the highest bidder. He removed all sheriffs from their positions, and then ordered them under threat of imprisonment to buy back their sheriffdoms. Told that one of his acts of merchandising the state was particularly flagrant, he answered, “I would sell London if I could.”
He was able, by such dubious means, to raise a sum of money sufficient to pay for a fleet of nearly 250 ships and to buy thousands of horses, which were conveyed overland to Marseilles. He was in England only about four months, raging through the country like a giant predatory insect, and then he was off to his own dominions in France, having left England almost in ruins, and having proclaimed a general amnesty with the result that the prison gates opened wide and all the other thieves were allowed to depart freely.
For the same reason that Richard showed himself to be an admirable military architect and strategist, he could also, when it suited his purpose, be an admirable diplomat. King Philip of France was intensely aware of his responsibility to enlarge the frontiers of
his kingdom until it was as large as Charlemagne’s. In particular, he wanted Aquitaine, Champagne, and Flanders. That made him and Richard natural enemies; yet when the Crusade finally set out from Vézelay, Richard made the overtures that gave them the appearance of being perfect friends. They rode side by side, ate their meals together, engaged in endless friendly discussions, and slept in the same tent. Anyone who watched them together observed that they were in perfect agreement on all subjects and wonderfully gentle to one another, although in fact each would have liked to see the other dead.
In the history of the Crusades there was never quite such a procession as the one that left Vézelay on July 4, 1190. It was a very long procession, for it was estimated that a hundred thousand men took part in it. There were Englishmen, Frenchmen, Angevins, and Normans, a raucous and happy crowd, singing their Crusader songs with great relish far from the battlefields. The procession made its way through towns and villages, until the marchers reached Lyons. Villagers came out of their houses to offer bread and wine and cool water from the wells, and when they saw a great knight approaching on his caparisoned horse, with nodding plumes and silk cape flowing in the wind, they held up their babies to be touched in the belief that these lordly men on their way to the Holy Sepulchre possessed a special grace. At least a thousand black-robed priests accompanied the procession, the most colorful that had ever passed through France.
At Lyons, the two kings parted. Both Richard and Philip were terrified by sea voyages, but Philip was the more terrified. He, therefore, decided to take his army over the Alps and march along the Italian coast to Genoa. Richard, trusting that his immense fleet which had set out months earlier from Dartmouth would soon arrive in Marseilles, decided to march along the left bank of the Rhone until he reached the sea. On the whole, Richard was in a kindly mood during the journey through Provence, but when he reached Marseilles, and discovered the English fleet had not arrived, he was enraged.
The two kings had solemnly agreed to meet in Messina, at the foot of Italy, and the first one to arrive would wait for the other. Although they had also agreed that they should divide the spoils equally between them, they must have known that such an agreement was impractical; it was intended chiefly as testimony to their outward friendship.
Enraged because his fleet, together with the greater part of his army, had failed to arrive, Richard quickly hired two large transports and twenty well-armed galleys for the household troops who had accompanied him along the Rhone Valley, and sailed to Genoa, the ships keeping close to the shore.
Philip had already arrived in Genoa, and was ill and in low spirits. He had had a difficult journey over the Alps; moreover, he had recently learned that Frederick Barbarossa, the emperor of Germany, had been drowned in the Calycadmus River in Cilicia while on his way to the Holy Land, and thereafter his army had disintegrated. Only a few were able to reach Germany; the rest were slaughtered by the Turks or died of plague. Never had a powerful army vanished so quickly. The news weighed heavily on Philip, but Richard was not unduly alarmed. He spent a day comforting Philip and sailed off to Portofino and a leisurely jaunt down the Italian coast. He was at Salerno when he learned that his fleet had overtaken him, and was already approaching Messina.
Like all the kings who took part in the Crusades, Richard suffered from a strange dilatoriness. He had vowed to safeguard the Holy Sepulchre, but he was in no hurry. He spent ten days in Naples, rode to Salerno, visited the famous medical college. He acted as though he were on holiday. But when he finally reached the Sicilian shore and was rowed out to his ships, he assumed the stance of a conqueror. From his flagship he gave orders that the entire fleet should wheel around and make for the harbor, and he further ordered his sailors and soldiers to make such a sound with their clarions and trumpets that the white walls of Messina would quake and tremble as though in an earthquake. His loud and memorable entry into the city struck terror into the hearts of the inhabitants.
Philip welcomed Richard with the kiss of peace. He had recovered from his fever, and was in a mood to set out at once to the Holy Land. On that same day, or the day following, Philip ordered his fleet to set sail; but the wind shifted and he was forced to turn back. With their fleets riding at anchor, the two kings contronted one another, vying for advantage. Philip, having reached Messina first, occupied the royal palace, while Richard with his entourage occupied a villa surrounded by vineyards in the outskirts of the city.
Messina at this time was inhabited by three different peoples: Greeks, descendants of the early settlers of southern Italy; Italians; and Saracens. The Greeks had a special dislike for the Crusaders; they were in close contact with Constantinople, and they may have feared that Richard and Philip had designs upon Byzantium. The English and Angevin troops were camped on the seashore outside the city walls. There were frequent brawls. Some of the Crusaders had been killed. It would have been very easy to provide a provocative incident that would start a full-scale battle. Richard, already regarding himself as chief justice, set up a gallows in his camp and proceeded to hang all thieves and murderers, whether they were “Greeks” or his own soldiers.
It seemed that Philip never took the law in his own hands. From such superficial judgments, the two kings became known as “the Lion and the Lamb.” In fact, Philip could be just as lawless as Richard when it suited his purpose.
From Tancred, King of Sicily, who ruled from Palermo, there soon arrived the present that Richard desired most—his favorite sister, Joanna, who was beautiful and accomplished. She was the dowager queen of Sicily, having been married to King William II. She had been kept a virtual prisoner by Tancred. She now came with her “bed gear” and a million terzini, in lieu of her dowry. Richard demanded the rest of her dowry, which included a gilded table more than twelve feet long, a golden chair, and a dinner service of twenty-four gold and silver plates and cups. He also demanded the legacy bequeathed by William II to his sister. It was obvious that he doted on his sister Joanna, who was now twenty-five years old, and he also wanted some of this money and treasure for himself. As King of England, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and Earl of Anjou, he felt responsible for the young dowager queen of Sicily, who was also an English princess. In the course of time he would extract from Tancred every penny he felt was owed to him or to his sister.
To safeguard Joanna he seized the castle at La Bagnara, which was well fortified, and installed her in it, leaving some knights and men-at-arms to see that she came to no harm. His next step was to seize the monastery lying on an island in the Faro River; he expelled the monks and their servants, and filled the monastery with military provisions, which would not be needed until the spring, for it was quite evident that it was already too late in the year for ships to sail to the Holy Land. He would winter in Sicily, and he would seize Messina, if he could.
All he needed was an act of provocation, and these were happening daily. A squabble between English soldiers and a woman breadseller led to violent quarrels; the English took to arms, the Messinians closed their gates, mounted their walls, and prepared to defend their city. Richard arrived from his villa, made a tour of the outer walls, observed an unguarded postern gate, entered it with two of his soldiers by the simple process of breaking down the gate with a hatchet. While the English were still attacking outside, Richard was already inside the city. It was dark now; they were unobserved as they crept along the curtain wall, and they quickly reached the main gate, which was unattended. Richard with his two soldiers opened the gate and let the army in.
To celebrate the conquest of Messina, Richard ran up his own flag over the main gate of the city and around the walls, to the discomfiture of King Philip, who had watched the battle from the royal palace in Messina. Had they not formally agreed that all the spoils should be held in common? Richard was reluctant but he decided to order that the French flag be run up beside the flag of England. King Philip felt that the cause of friendship had been served by flying the two flags together.
Richard di
strusted and feared the people of Messina for good cause. How could he make sure that they would never desire to try to avenge themselves? Richard hit on a remarkable expedient. He had brought siege engines with him, and now he erected one of these huge towers with a drawbridge at the very summit close to the walls. This tower, which he called “Mategriffon” (“the Greek-killer”) had a profound psychological effect, for the tower overtopped the walls and appeared to be watching everyone in the city.
On October 8, two weeks after his arrival in Messina, Richard invited Philip to attend a council of war, which would deal with all matters concerning the Crusade. They swore friendship over holy relics; each army would help the other; both in going and in coming they would defend each other; and they would observe the laws of the Crusade which had never previously been promulgated. There must be no gambling except by knights and clergy, no knight or clerk was permitted to lose more than twenty shillings. If they lost more, they must pay a fine of a hundred shillings. This law did not apply to kings. Sailors, soldiers, and common men, when found gambling, would be whipped naked through the army for three days or thrown into the sea on three consecutive mornings. No one was permitted to hoard goods; no one in the army might buy bread to sell for profit. The price of bread was fixed at a penny a loaf. The price of wine was regulated, profits on all sales must not exceed 10 percent, and there was an express injunction against the purchase of dough. The laws were harsh and probably unenforceable. Richard had amused himself at Chinon before setting out for Vézelay by drawing up a code of laws for his seamen. If a sailor murdered another, he was to be bound to the murdered man and hurled into the sea. If a sailor cursed, swore, or reviled another sailor, he must pay an ounce of silver. A sailor who stole would have his head shaven, boiling pitch would be poured over him, and chicken feathers would be shaken on the pitch, so that he could be recognized for what he was, and at the next port he would be cast ashore. Richard enjoyed punishing.