The Templars

by Michael Haag

  Saladin came to admire the chivalrous code of the Frankish knights, and he acted with courtesy and sometimes clemency in return. There was the famous instance when he laid siege to Raymond of Chatillon’s castle of Kerak. A marriage was being celebrated within, and when Raymond’s wife sent trays of the festive meal to Saladin outside he tactfully inquired in which chamber the bridal couple were lodged so that he would not bombard them on their wedding night. For gestures such as these Saladin became a legend throughout Christendom, a worthy and honourable adversary–a phenomenon some naively explained by supposing that he must have had an English mother. In fact Saladin was following the precepts of Islam’s own version of chivalry called futuwwa, which roughly means nobility.

  But in reality chivalrous relations were rarely the rule between the Crusaders and the Muslims. The massacre perpetrated by the Crusaders at the fall of Jerusalem in 1099 was disgraceful but it was hardly an exceptional event. Populations that did not surrender were marked down for death or slavery as Zengi showed when he captured Edessa in 1144 or as the Mamelukes would show when they stormed Acre in 1291 and beheaded every last person in the city. Not that surrender was a guarantee: the Mameluke Sultan Baybars, in spite of his oath, murdered nearly a thousand prisoners after the fall of Saphet in 1266.

  Saladin could be ruthless, and in the interests of policy he did not shrink from bloodshed. He was a devout Muslim who abhorred free-thinkers, and though he made many friends among the Christians, he never doubted that their souls were doomed to damnation. His famous magnanimity lay partly in his humanity but was also a matter of calculation. He did not shrink from cruelty when it suited his policy of instilling fear and asserting his dominance over his adversaries. In Cairo he ordered the crucifixion of his Shia opponents, and he was not averse to mutilating and executing his captives, as after the battle of Hattin when he slaughtered his Hospitaller and Templar captives in cold blood. It seems to have been only the threat made by the Frankish defenders of Jerusalem in 1187 that they would destroy all the sacred places, everything atop the Temple Mount, that caused Saladin to prefer a negotiated surrender to his original intention of purifying the city with Christian blood.

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  Factions in Outremer

  Behind the scenes of these events was a growing division within Outremer between those who wanted to pursue an aggressive policy towards Saladin and those who sought accommodation. Among the former was Raynald of Chatillon, while among the latter was Count Raymond III of Tripoli and the slowly dying king. But Saladin had his own policy, which was to annihilate the Christian states, and their internal differences only made it easier for Saladin to destroy them. But for the moment the forces of Outremer were able to make a united stand against Saladin, who in May 1182, at the expiry of the truce, rode out with an invasion army from Cairo. Baldwin, who was now almost blind and had to be carried in a litter, was waiting with his army on the west bank of the Jordan, accompanied by Heraclius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and the True Cross. Following a fierce battle Saladin was repelled but not defeated, and both sides claimed victory.

  The following June, however, Saladin finally captured Aleppo–and with it he gained full control of Syria. Not for two centuries had there been such a powerful Muslim ruler, his territories stretching from North Africa to the Tigris. Now Saladin was ready to unleash his jihad against the Christians. With Outremer encircled, the Templar and Hospitaller Grand Masters set sail in 1184 together with Heraclius to seek help from the West. The kings of France and England and the Holy Roman Emperor received them with honour and discussed plans for a great crusade, but they gave pressing domestic reasons for not going to the East themselves, and instead they paid barely sufficient money to cover the cost of a few hundred knights for a year. While in London early in 1185 Heraclius consecrated the new Temple Church, the one that stands there to this day. But the Templar Grand Master did not get that far; he had fallen ill en route, and died at Verona.

  At about the same time as Heraclius was consecrating the new Templar church in London, Gerard of Ridefort was elected the new Grand Master by the Templars in Jerusalem, his elevation coinciding with the culmination of the factional disputes within the kingdom. Baldwin IV died in March 1185 and was buried in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and his successor the child-king Baldwin V died in 1186, not yet nine years old. Raymond III of Tripoli, leader of the party seeking accommodation with Saladin, had been the boy’s regent according to his father’s will, which also stated that if the child died before the age of ten Raymond was to remain as regent until a new king was chosen through the arbitration of the Pope, the Holy Roman Emperor and the kings of France and England.

  Instead the boy’s mother, Sibylla, who was the sister of the leper king, claimed the throne for herself and her husband Guy of Lusignan. Backed by the party that supported an aggressive policy towards Saladin–among them Raynald of Chatillon, the lord of Oultrejourdain; Gerard of Ridefort, the Grand Master of the Templars; and Heraclius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who had also been the lover of Sibylla’s mother–Sibylla and Guy were quickly crowned at Jerusalem. All the barons of Outremer accepted what in effect was a coup d’état; all except Raymond of Tripoli, who felt he had been cheated of the kingship, and his close ally Balian of Ibelin.

  The Springs of Cresson

  Going from factional rivalry to treason, Count Raymond of Tripoli entered into a secret treaty with Saladin. Not only did it apply to Tripoli itself but also to his wife’s principality of Galilee, even though it was part of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which might soon be at war with the Muslims. Saladin also promised his support for Raymond’s aim to overthrow Sibylla and Guy of Lusignan and make himself king. In April 1187 Guy responded by summoning his loyal barons and marching north to Galilee to reduce it to submission before the expected Muslim attack began. But Balian of Ibelin, fearing the consequences of civil war, persuaded Guy to let him lead a delegation to Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee and try to negotiate a reconciliation between Raymond and the king. The delegation would include the Grand Masters of the Hospitallers and the Templars, and Balian would meet them at the Templar castle of La Fève on 1 May.

  Meanwhile Saladin had asked Raymond’s permission to send a reconnaissance party of Mameluke slave troops through Galilee on that day, and though the timing was embarrasing Raymond was obliged to agree under the terms of the secret treaty, stipulating only that the Muslims should traverse his territory within the day and be gone by dark, and do no harm to any town or village. Raymond broadcast the news that the Muslim party would be passing through and urged his people to stay indoors. But Balian had heard nothing of this when he arrived at Le Fève in the middle of the morning on 1 May expecting to join the Grand Masters there. Instead he found the castle empty, and after waiting in the silence for an hour or two, he set out again towards Tiberias, thinking the others had gone ahead, when suddenly a bleeding Templar knight galloped by shouting out news of a great disaster.

  Raymond of Tripoli’s message about the Muslim party had reached La Fève in the evening of the previous day, 30 April, where Gerard of Ridefort heard the news. At once he summoned the Templars from the surrounding neighbourhood and by nightfall ninety had joined him there. In the morning they rode north through Nazareth where forty secular knights joined the hunt for the enemy’s scouting party. But as they passed over the hill behind Nazareth what they saw was a large expedition of perhaps 7000 elite Mameluke horsemen watering their mounts at the Springs of Cresson in the valley below. Both the Templar marshal and the Hospitaller Grand Master advised retreat, but Gerard of Ridefort, the Templar Grand Master, insisted on attack. Charging furiously down the hillside, the 130 knights rode into the mass of the Muslim cavalry and were slaughtered almost to a man, only three Templars, Gerard among them, escaping with their lives.

  That at any rate was the account given by an anonymous chronicler who obtained much of his information from the lost chronicle of Ernoul, who was a member of Balian’s entourage.
But neither Balian nor Ernoul were at the battle, and any account issuing from Balian’s camp was likely to paint their factional opponent Gerard of Ridefort in the worst possible light. Another chronicle, the Itinerarium Regis Ricardi, apparently based on the lost journal of an English knight writing in about 1191, contradicts the story that Gerard rushed recklessly at the enemy; instead, and much more plausibly, it reports that the Templars were caught unaware and were the victims of a Muslim attack. Even so, Saladin’s expedition kept to his agreement with Raymond of Tripoli, for his horsemen rode home long before nightfall, and they had not harmed a town or village in Galilee. But fixed to the lances of the Mameluke vanguard were the heads of the Templar knights.

  The Horns of Hattin

  Shamed by this tragedy, which was much his doing, Raymond of Tripoli broke his treaty with Saladin and rode to Jerusalem where he made his peace with the king. The peril was far too great for Guy of Lusignan to do anything but welcome Raymond’s renewed loyalty to the kingdom, for at that moment Saladin was gathering a great army just over the frontier. Guy called every able-bodied man to arms at Acre, emptying the cities and castles of fighting men; at 12,000 strong, including 1200 mounted knights, the army was all that Outremer had to give. Against this Saladin had drawn on the Turkish and Kurdish occupiers of Egypt, Iraq and Syria, along with their Mameluke slave troops, and some Arabs too, for his invasion force of 18,000 men, and on 1 July 1187 he crossed the Jordan at Senabra where it issues from the southern end of the freshwater lake known as the Sea of Galilee.

  On the following day, as Saladin was laying siege to Tiberias, the Crusader army settled in a good defensive position, well watered and with plenty of pasturage for the horses, fifteen miles to the west at Sephoria. The Templars and the Hospitallers were there, also Raymond, the count of Tripoli, and Raynald of Chatillon, Balian of Ibelin and many other lords with all their men, together with the bishop of Acre, who carried the True Cross, and the plan they had all agreed with the king was to wait, confident that Saladin could not hold his large army together in the parched countryside for very long during the heat of summer. But that evening a message arrived from Raymond’s wife Eschiva, the countess of Tripoli, telling how she was at Tiberias holding out against Saladin’s attack. King Guy held a council in his tent where many of the knights were moved by her desperate situation and wanted the army to march to her rescue. But Raymond rose and spoke, saying it would be foolhardy to abandon their present strong position and make a hazardous march through barren country in the fierce July heat.

  ‘Tiberias is my city and my wife is there’, spoke Raymond, according to the chronicle De Expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum:

  ‘None of you is so fiercely attached, save to Christianity, as I am to the city. None of you is so desirous as I am to succour or aid Tiberias. We and the king, however, should not move away from water, food and other necessities to lead such a multitude of men to death from solitude, hunger, thirst and scorching heat. You are well aware that since the heat is searing and the number of people is large, they could not survive half a day without an abundance of water. Furthermore, they could not reach the enemy without suffering a great shortage of water, accompanied by the destruction of men and of beasts. Stay, therefore, at this midway point, close to food and water, for certainly the Saracens have risen to such heights of pride that when they have taken the city, they will not turn aside to left or right, but will head straight through the vast solitude to us and challenge us to battle. Then our men, refreshed and filled with bread and water, will cheerfully set out from camp for the fray. We and our horses will be fresh; we will be aided and protected by the Lord’s cross. Thus we will fight mightily against an unbelieving people who will be wearied by thirst and who will have no place to refresh themselves. Thus you see that if, in truth, the grace of Jesus Christ remains with us, the enemies of Christ’s cross, before they can get to the sea or return to the river, will be taken captive or else killed by sword, by lance, or by thirst.’

  By the time the council broke up at midnight it had resolved to remain at Sephoria. But Raymond’s earlier treaty with Saladin had created an atmosphere of bitterness and mistrust among some, and his motives were now suspect. Later that same night the Grand Master of the Templars, Gerard of Ridefort, came to the king’s tent and said that Raymond was a traitor and that to abandon Tiberias, which lay so close by, would be a stain on Guy’s honour, as it would be on the Templars’ own if they left unavenged the deaths of so many of their brothers at the Springs of Cresson. At this the king overturned the council’s decision and announced that the army would march at dawn.

  There were two ways to Tiberias: the one Saladin had taken via Senabra along the shores of the Galilee lake, the other across the parched hill country to the north. Leaving the gardens of Sephoria behind in the morning of 3 July, the Christian army marched across the barren hills towards the climbing sun. The day was hot and airless, and the men and horses suffered terribly for there was no water along the road. Guy was at the centre of the column and the Templars brought up the rear. As Raymond of Tripoli held Galilee in fief from the king it was his prerogative to lead the way. This led some to find treachery in the choice of route, for the choice was his. There may have been treachery from some quarter, for Saladin quickly discovered the line of the Franks’ advance, warned, it was said, by several secular knights, and sent skirmishers to harass and weary the vanguard and rearguard with flights of arrows, while he himself marched his army the five miles from Tiberias to Hattin, a well-watered village amid broad pastures situated where the road across the hills descended towards the lake. By the afternoon the Christian army had reached the plateau above Hattin, and here Raymond said they should camp; there was water there, he thought, but the spring turned out to be dry. According to one version it was the Templars who said they could go no further and the king who made the decision to set up camp, causing Raymond to cry out, ‘Alas, Lord God, the battle is over! We have been betrayed unto death. The Kingdom is finished!’ Between the Franks and the village from where the ground fell away towards the lake rose a hill with two summits. It was called the Horns of Hattin.

  There on the waterless plateau the Christian army spent the night, their misery made worse by the smoke and flames from the dry scrub on the hillside that the Muslims had set alight. Under cover of darkness, Saladin’s forces crept closer; any Franks who slipped away in search of water were killed; and by dawn the Christian army was surrounded on all sides. Soon after daybreak on 4 July 1187 Saladin attacked. Against him charged the Christian infantry desperate to break through his lines to reach water, but they were killed or driven back; so goes the account in one chronicle, but in another they simply ran away and refused to fight. By all accounts the knights put up a terrific fight and repeatedly checked Saladin’s cavalry attacks, but their real enemy was thirst and as their strength failed them their numbers were diminished.

  The Templars and the Hospitallers gathered round the king and the True Cross where they were surrounded by the confusion and press of battle, the Expugnatione describing how the Christians were ‘jumbled together and mingled with the Turks’. It goes on to tell how the king, seeing that all was lost, cried out that those who could escape should do so before it was too late. At this Raymond of Tripoli and Balian of Ibelin with their men charged the enemy line, hoping to break through. ‘The speed of their horses in this confined space trampled down the Christians and made a kind of bridge, giving the riders a level path. In this manner they got out of that narrow place by fleeing over their own men, over the Turks, and over the cross.’ As they bore down on Saladin’s line, it opened and let them pass through, then closed again; they were the last to get away. Soon the battle was over. The True Cross fell to Muslim hands. King Guy and those around him gave way to exhaustion and were taken.

  Saladin’s tent was set up on the battlefield, and here the king and his surviving barons were brought before their conqueror. Seating the king next to him, Saladi
n handed Guy a cup of water to slake his thirst. It also was a sign, for it was the custom that to give food or drink to a captive meant that his life was spared. But when Guy passed the water to Raynald of Chatillon, Saladin told the king, ‘You gave the man the drink, not I.’ Then he turned angrily on Raynald, reminding him of his brigandage and his raids down the Red Sea coast to the ports of Medina and Mecca, and accused him of blasphemy. When Saladin offered Raynald the choice between conversion to Islam and death, Raynald replied that it was Saladin who should convert to Christianity to avoid the eternal damnation that awaited unbelievers–at which Saladin struck off his head. The others were taken to captivity at Damascus where those who were worth a handsome ransom were treated well, the remainder sold into slavery.

  Saladin was not so clement towards the miltary orders. Though Gerard of Ridefort, the Templars’ Grand Master, was among the prisoners taken to Damascus, the other monastic knights faced a different fate. Frankish nobles were ‘irresponsible, thoughtless, petty and covetous’, thought al-Hawari who wrote a military treatise for Saladin, qualities which allowed them to be manipulated to suit Saladin’s purposes; but the Templars and Hospitallers were dangerous because ‘they have great fervour in religion, paying no attention to the things of this world’. Two days after his victory, wrote his secretary Imad al-Din, who was an eyewitness to the event, Saladin ‘sought out the Templars and Hospitallers who had been captured and said: “I shall purify the land of these two impure races.” He assigned fifty dinar to every man who had taken one of them prisoner, and immediately the army brought forward at least a hundred of them. He ordered that they should be beheaded, choosing to have them dead rather than in prison. With him was a whole band of scholars and Sufis and a certain number of devout men and ascetics; each begged to be allowed to kill one of them, and drew his sword and rolled back his sleeve. Saladin, his face joyful, was sitting on his dais; the unbelievers showed black despair.’