Lionheart

by Douglas Boyd

  Unfortunately for archaeology, the site of the camp lies beneath the modern city of Akko, but it is known from the Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, written by Ambroise from notes he made during the crusade, that the Saracen siege lines extended in a loose crescent a couple of miles to the east of the crusader camp, and moved backwards and forwards as the fortunes of war favoured first one side and then the other in the intermittent skirmishes, a few of which could have qualified as minor battles. Even Saladin’s personal pavilion had to be moved several times. South of the camp, the Muslim siege lines extended nearly to the beach but to the north a corridor was kept clear by the crusaders, to permit convoys to enter and leave, evacuating casualties to Tyre and returning with supplies and reinforcements.17

  On arrival there, finding the Patriarch of Jerusalem ill, Archbishop Baldwin took his responsibilities as the senior churchman seriously until the atrocious conditions claimed him as yet another victim. He died in November, leaving a specific bequest to finance twenty knights and fifty sergeants-at-arms, the balance of his treasury to go to the over-stretched fund to provide for the increasing number of impoverished and sick crusaders. Hubert Walter rose to the occasion, negotiating with the leaders of the other contingents, providing for the sick and wounded, leading diplomatic missions to the Saracens and on occasion leading forays against them.18 He was to serve Richard and John, when he came to the throne, with loyalty and a perhaps excessive zeal.

  The one city Richard had no desire to see on his tour of Italy was the dilapidated field of ruins that had formerly been the Eternal City, because Pope Clement III was no friend of his and Italy was riven by tensions between the Holy Roman Empire occupying the north of the peninsula and the Norman kingdom of Sicily embracing a large part of the southern Italian mainland. Its mixed-race inhabitants spoke Latin, Greek and Arabic and were of western Catholic, Greek Christian and Muslim faiths. Under King William II, known as ‘William the Good’ and whose consort was Richard’s now 25-year-old sister Joanna, it had enjoyed two decades of quiet prosperous co-existence, symbolised by a coinage with Greek Christian images on one side and Muslim symbols on the reverse. The Norman kingdom had also been a considerable support for the crusader states, but when William II died on 11 November 1189 Grand Admiral Margaritus led the fleet back to Sicily on orders from William’s successor, formerly Count Tancred of Lecce, who was faced with insurrection by his Muslim subjects and incursions into his territory on the Italian mainland by German forces under the newly elected Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI Hohenstaufen.

  The last leg of Richard’s long ride down the length of Italy was apparently accomplished with only one companion.19 One has to wonder why a king would put himself at risk in that way, which nearly proved fatal at the small Calabrian town of Mileto, just off the modern A3 autostrada. The story is that he heard the cry of a hawk coming from inside a peasant’s hovel and assumed that common folk, as in his own possessions, had no right to own such a bird. Trying to steal it from them, he was badly beaten by the peasants before making his escape, which put him in a foul mood, no matter that his troubles were of his own making.

  Mooring in the port of Messina on 23 September and riding into the city in grand pomp, Richard was insulted that his ‘crusading brother’ had been accommodated in the royal palace, which he thought should have been reserved for him instead of a smaller palace outside the walls that Tancred made available. With the French and Plantagenet fleets bringing thousands of hungry men clamouring for fresh food, the profiteering inhabitants of Messina had put up the price of bread and all other provisions, leading to disputes and injuries on both sides. Knowing of the events during the stop over in Lisbon, the Greek-speaking inhabitants of Messina, whom the crusaders nicknamed Griffons, had no desire to see their city taken over by all these armed men pumped-up with adrenalin and spoiling for action after the confinement on board ship, but on 3 October a quarrel outside the walls over the price of food took on the dimensions of a riot, causing the city gates to be closed against the foreigners and Richard’s ships to be refused moorings in the harbour.

  The following day Philip tried to defuse the situation by arranging a meeting at Richard’s borrowed palace with Admiral Margaritus and a number of local notables. Whatever progress might have been achieved was undone when Richard heard himself being insulted, through the open windows, by a crowd of Messinans outside. Dismissing the negotiators in a fury, he decided to do what he always did when thwarted or insulted: use violence.

  The gates closed, the undisciplined civilians inside Messina loosed off volley after volley of arrows at the Plantagenet army outside the walls. Richard ignored this, waiting until their armoury was exhausted before launching his attack with a shower of crossbow bolts to clear the battlements of defenders. After only five hours’ fighting, his banners were raised on the battlements, symbolising that the city was his to loot as he wished. His men invaded the city, robbing everyone they met and pillaging houses, except in the quarter where Philip was lodging. All the important residents of Messina fled, among them Admiral Margaritus, who could have lent considerable support to the crusade, had Richard not driven him out of house and home and burned all his ships in the harbour. It was an ill-considered move that may have been critical, since Margaritus had been a pirate and a privateer before becoming William II’s admiral, and not only knew the eastern Mediterranean better than anyone else, but had also conducted a campaign against the tyrant of Cyprus, Isaac Comnenus.

  Using timber carried to make siege engines in the Holy Land, a wooden castle was erected close to the city walls and named Mategriffon or Kill the Greeks Castle. There seems to have been some disagreement as to whether it was the business of sworn crusaders to launch a small war against fellow Christians because, to ensure that all his vassals, knights and men-at-arms played their parts, Richard announced punishments for a less than enthusiastic participation. These included amputation of a foot for a rank-and-file soldier and deprivation of his privileged status for any knight found guilty of holding back.

  Philip, whose men did not take part in the fighting, insisted on his banner being raised alongside Richard’s on the battlements and claimed half the loot under the agreement made between the two kings. Some hard haggling ensued before Richard conceded him a share in the proceeds. For the rest of the stay on Sicily, Messina was the crusaders’ winter quarters, a well-used gallows between it and Mategriffon warning the natives to behave themselves.

  The stay at Messina was intended not only to avoid the winter storms which could easily have wrecked many ships. Roger of Howden recorded that most, if not all, of Richard’s fleet was hauled ashore at some point in order for timbers eaten by that curse of marine archaeology, the teredo wood-boring mollusc, to be removed and replaced with Sicilian timber.20

  NOTES

  1. Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta Henrici, Vol 3, lxvii.

  2. Howlett, R., Newburgh, Vol I, pp. 304–6.

  3. Rebuilt in stone in the thirteenth century.

  4. William of Newburgh, Historia Rerum Anglicarum, Vol 1, pp. 304–6.

  5. Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta Henrici, Vol 2, p. 107.

  6. R.B. Dobson, The Jews of Medieval York and the Massacre of March 1190, Borthwick papers No 45 (York: University of York, 1974).

  7. Roger of Howden, Chronica, Vol 3, pp. xlv–xlvi; Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta Henrici, Vol 2, p. 109.

  8. Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta Henrici, Vol 2, p. 110.

  9. Ibid, Vol 2, pp. 110–11.

  10. Gerald of Wales, De Vita Galfredi, ed. J.S. Brewer, Rolls Series No 21 (London: Longmans, 1861–91), Vol 4, p. 420, abridged by the author.

  11. Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta Henrici, Vol 2, p. 143.

  12. Runciman, A History of the Crusades, p. 6.

  13. Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta Henrici, Vol 2, p. 114.

  14. Ibid, Vol 2, p. 112.

  15. Ibid, Vol 2, p. 115.

  16. This is the best estimate of the siege camp’s positi
on and size, all traces of which have vanished due to subsequent intensive cultivation of the plain of Acre (personal communication with Professor Pryor).

  17. According to Carta catalogue (Paris: UNESCO 1971–72), p. 102.

  18. Tyerman, Who’s Who, pp. 241, 262.

  19. Runciman, A History of the Crusades, p. 37.

  20. Roger of Howden, Chronica, Vol 3, pp. 71–2; also Pryor, ed., Logistics of Warfare, p. 266.

  14

  A Bride for Richard

  Richard also at some point decided that many of the ships that had sailed from the North were not suitable for use in Mediterranean naval warfare, any more than the lightly built Mediterranean galleys would have been usable for much of the year in the weather conditions of the Channel and North Sea. He therefore hired an unknown number of galleys locally. These were either monoremes with single banks of twenty-five oars a side or biremes, with a total of 100 oars in two banks, one below deck and one above deck, pivoted either on a pin in the wale that later became the gunwale or poked through an oarport in a sort of outrigger that gave extra leverage. The rowers were not galley slaves, but paid labour. If life pulling an oar in the upper bank was hard, the conditions for men rowing in the lower bank below deck were appalling: cramped, dark, ill-ventilated and stinking.

  To take advantage of favourable winds, there were two masts carrying lateen sails, which gave many advantages over the square-rigged cogs, but required trained men to manoeuvre the rigid yard around the mast rapidly when going about on a new tack or if the wind changed direction. By this stage in the evolution of Mediterranean shipping, the standard ship’s complement was 108 men, plus officers, marines, a carpenter and the steersman (or men) to manhandle the two rudders fixed on either quarter at the stern. At just over 100ft long, these ships had after-castles and fighting castles just aft of the foremast. There was also a raised deck at the prow, below which it was the Byzantine custom to house the force pump that ejected a powerful jet of naphtha-based Greek fire for short distances as galleys closed for combat – a forerunner of the modern flame-thrower.1

  For the horses to be transported to the Holy Land, specially designed oared ships known to westerners as chalendres or taridae (from the Byzantine Greek chelandion and Arabic tarida) could carry forty or so horses each, with let-down ramps several metres long at the stern quarters for embarking and disembarking the animals, if necessary with their riders already mounted for rapid deployment into the shallows and up the beach after the shallow-draught galleys were driven ashore backwards in the medieval equivalent of an amphibious invasion. These ramps had to be soundly caulked with moss, tar and pitch before putting to sea, as they were hinged well below the water line.2 This was a great improvement on the former northern European custom of loading and unloading horses over the side of the ship one at a time in a sling suspended from temporary sheer-legs, as shown in the Bayeux Tapestry. Modifying a ship like this was not, however, without its dangers: in 1096 a horse-transport carrying horses and mules for Stephen of Blois and Robert of Normandy on the First Crusade broke up at sea, drowning all the crew, passengers and animals onboard.3

  The thousands of knights, men-at-arms and hangers-on having attracted merchants and moneylenders who saw a market for their goods and services, the long sojourn on Sicily made a considerable hole in the savings of many crusaders, since everything from food to clothes had to be purchased. Typical of the transactions is an extant document acknowledging a loan of 60 silver marks from a Genoese merchant to two squires in the retinue of Jean de Chastenay, a vassal of Hugues III of Burgundy, against a list of jewels he deposited as security.

  When Sicily’s King William II had died in November 1189 the council of nobles had elected his bastard nephew Tancred of Lecce to succeed him in order to prevent the German emperor from claiming the throne by virtue of his marriage to William’s aunt Constance. Not only had Queen Joanna’s dowry not been restored to her on William’s death, but she was also being held hostage by Tancred in his capital of Palermo, at the opposite end of the island from Messina. Richard demanded both her release and the delivery of valuables, provisions and two fully manned galleys that William II had promised to Henry as his contribution to the crusade. Hoping thus to hasten the departure of the two crusading armies on his island kingdom, Tancred liberated Joanna and had her escorted into her brother’s safe-keeping on 28 September with 20,000 ounces of gold in lieu of her dowry and a further 20,000 ounces to compensate for the legacy William II had left to Henry II for the crusade.

  Again, some of this wealth was shared with Philip, as agreed before the departure from France. Recently widowed himself, Philip welcomed Joanna to his palace, seeing in her a suitable replacement for his dead queen, for she was as beautiful and regal as her mother, and had been queen of Sicily for thirteen years. Richard again failed to seize the chance to unite the houses of Plantagenet and Capet. Instead of using Joanna’s marital availability in this way, he sent her across to the mainland, appropriating for her accommodation the priory of Bagnara.4

  Advised by his Muslim counsellors to play the two crusader kings off against each other so that they could not gang up against him, Tancred favoured Philip with gifts but sent none to Richard. Instead, he took him on a tour of the island’s holy sites, during which he disclosed letters allegedly received from Philip that described the king of England as an unworthy cheat against whom the French and Sicilians should unite. Richard was only too ready to suspect Philip of their authorship and had Robert de Sablé negotiate a treaty in his name that recognised Tancred’s title as king of Sicily, pledging to defend him against any conflicting claim from the German emperor. In an exchange of gifts, Tancred restored the last 40,000 gold bezants of Joanna’s dowry. Then Richard declared his 3-year-old nephew Arthur of Brittany his heir to the throne of England and all his continental possessions, and betrothed him to Tancred’s elder daughter in the ultimate gesture of feudal alliance.5

  When the news reached Eleanor, she must have been distraught. Richard’s adoption of a toddler was a declaration that he had no intention of marrying and begetting a legitimate heir. Not only that, but her carefully contrived political web to keep Prince John from grabbing power in the king’s absence was undone at a stroke, for once John learned that his quite reasonable chance of succeeding to the throne if Richard died on crusade had been wiped out like this, he had no incentive to behave himself. The final straw was that allowing a child of Arthur’s age, living in France and owing feudal obedience to Philip Augustus, to succeed to the title to the continental possessions was as good as handing them to Philip on a plate.

  The complications Richard was piling up for himself on Sicily were also alarming. When he showed Philip the incriminating letters bearing what appeared to be the Capetian seal, he was brusquely informed that they must be forgeries made by Tancred’s scheming Muslim counsellors to create tensions between two Christian monarchs. It was, Philip declared, yet another insult to the House of Capet that Richard had given them credence. His list of the insults endured at the hands of Henry and Richard included the unresolved matter of Alais: either Richard should marry her immediately or she should be returned to Philip with her dowry. To this, Richard retorted that it was unnatural for any man to wed his father’s former mistress, who had borne him a child.6 That final repudiation, after two decades of trickery and deceit by Henry, was all Philip needed to declare undying enmity between himself and the Plantagenets.7

  On 8 October the two kings met to agree frostily the future conduct of the crusade. Prices were laid down for foodstuffs, with profiteering to be punished – in extreme cases on the grim scaffold beside Mategriffon. It was also laid down that half of every knight’s money was to be devoted to the welfare of his men; debts contracted on the crusade must be honoured; and gambling was forbidden, except for knights and clerics – who were to be punished for excessive gaming, which the churchmen present said would include excommunication for transgressors.

  Other bones of content
ion between the two kings were less easy to resolve. One of the many nobles related by blood or feudal duty to both sides in their dispute was Count Philip I of Flanders, shortly to die at the siege of Acre. At some point during November he avoided a schism that would fatally have split the crusade by brokering a settlement under which Richard was released from any obligation to marry Alais in return for a promise to return her and her dowry to Philip Augustus at the end of the crusade, plus a compensation of 10,000 marks8 – which meant that she would be an asset for Philip Augustus to marry off to whomever he chose.

  Whether or not the two Philips knew the true reason for Richard accepting the deal is not recorded: he had to clear the decks for an adventure he would rather have done without. Casting about for a match that would, so to speak, kill two birds with one stone, his mother had travelled across the Pyrenees to the court of King Sancho VI of Navarre to obtain the hand of his 25-year-old daughter Princess Berengaria, whom she considered a suitable bride for a king with Richard’s notorious lack of interest in marriage. It is true that he had once, while visiting Sancho’s court, written a poem for Berengaria, but that was just gallantry and indicated no emotional relationship. Although Richard admitted paternity of a serving wench’s child begotten long since, there was no trace of the litter of bastards traditionally left in the wake of a heterosexual duke of Aquitaine.