by Robert Payne
They liked each other and worked well together, but it is possible that they never understood one another. William of Tyre was profoundly shocked by the king’s lechery. Even more shocking was the king’s questioning of certain established teachings of the Church.
Fascinated by the king who was so strange, so close, and yet so distant, William of Tyre speaks of his “rare beauty,” which was perhaps a beauty of manner rather than of physical features, or perhaps it was the beauty of his strangeness. It was not Amaury’s fault that there should emerge during his reign an adversary of power and genius, Saladin, who never doubted the validity of his faith.
Amaury’s first task was to harass Egypt, and he went about it with his usual intelligence. He sent a reconnaissance expedition to Egypt in September 1163, reaching Bilbeis after nearly annihilating an Egyptian army outside the city. The survivors fled behind the walls of Bilbeis, and Amaury made a show of besieging the city until the Egyptians opened the dikes. In danger of being drowned by the flooding Nile, the Christian army retired with more than enough prisoners and booty to defray the cost of the expedition.
In the spring of the following year, Nur ed-Din sent an army across the desert in the hope of adding Egypt to his growing empire. The army was commanded by a Kurdish chieftain called Shirkuh, a general of formidable military accomplishments, who captured Bilbeis.
Shawar, Vizier of Egypt, in alliance with King Amaury, besieged Shirkuh. The combined armies of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Egypt were so large, so well disciplined, and so determined that Shirkuh was in danger of being overwhelmed. But just at this time Nur ed-Din succeeded in capturing the fortress of Harim near Antioch and the fortress of Banyas on the frontier of the territory of Damascus. Instead of continuing the siege of Bilbeis, King Amaury sent envoys to Shirkuh suggesting that both the Christian army and the army of Damascus should retire from Egypt. Shirkuh, in danger of losing his army, agreed. The siege was lifted, and both armies set out from Bilbeis, the Christians following the coastal road, Shirkuh marching across the desert. Shawar, now sultan of Egypt, returned to Cairo to meditate on the fact that he was now, as a result of the king’s stratagem, master of his own country with no enemies in sight.
Shawar was a trusting man. He was perfectly prepared to live at peace with the Crusaders, whom he no longer feared because he regarded them as allies against the dreaded army of Damascus. Early in 1167, Shirkuh, maneuvering his army in great secrecy across the desert, set out for Egypt again. Shawar called on the king of Jerusalem for help. The king led his troops to Cairo to find Shirkuh already besieging the city. Shirkuh, seeing that his army was hopelessly outnumbered, withdrew across the Nile and set up his camp at Giza in the shadow of the pyramids. The Crusaders set up their camp in the eastern suburbs, while Shawar and the king discussed a treaty of perpetual peace and the gift of four hundred thousand pieces of gold if the king would guarantee not to depart from Egypt until the army of Shirkuh was destroyed or driven from the country.
This was the first time a king of Jerusalem had been in Cairo. The Crusaders were amazed by the size and splendor of the city. Only two Crusaders entered the palace of the Fatimid Caliph, the ultimate spiritual and temporal ruler of Egypt. They were Hugh of Caesarea and Geoffrey Fulcher, a Templar knight, who probably served as an interpreter. Hugh of Caesarea was charged with the mission of seeing that the caliph himself put his hand to the treaty.
The huge fortress-palace of al-Kahira was one of the great wonders of the world, more luxurious than any other palace known to history. William of Tyre heard about it from Hugh of Caesarea: the colonnades, the gilded ceilings and marble fishpools, the aviaries full of strange singing birds, and the menageries with animals never seen or imagined before, and the seemingly endless corridors leading at last to the throne room. A curtain of gold cloth heavily ornamented with pearls was suddenly drawn, and there, on a golden throne, with his councillors and eunuchs beside him, sat the youthful caliph in all his splendor.
The sixteen-year-old caliph was the fountain of religious truth, the ultimate judge, and the owner of all Egypt. Shawar, although he was the sultan, treated the caliph with respect bordering on abject terror, making all the proper prostrations while wearing a sword hanging from his neck as a sign of submission. The proceedings were long-drawn; the caliph’s councillors were puzzled by the demeanor of the Crusaders, who talked so freely to their caliph. He stretched out his gloved hand to Hugh of Caesarea, a sign of friendship and a token of agreement. Hugh of Caesarea quite properly suspected there might be some significance in a gloved hand. He pointed out that a naked hand ensured true friendship, while a covered hand suggested reservations and a lack of sincerity. The caliph, finally, yielded; “with extreme unwillingness, as if it detracted from his majesty, yet with a slight smile that greatly aggrieved the Egyptians, he put his uncovered hand into that of Hugh.”
This was a moment of some importance in the history of the Crusades: a moment when caliph and Crusader met, explored each other’s understanding and willpower, and remained on equal terms. Out of this common need to defeat Shirkuh a real friendship was growing. If Sultan Shawar and the Caliph al-Adid had lived, the alliance of Egypt and the Kingdom of Jerusalem might have survived.
Nur ed-Din and Shirkuh were determined that Shawar should not survive. Shirkuh’s army was still on the other side of the Nile. The allied armies made several efforts to do battle with him, but he slipped away into Upper Egypt. At a place called Beben, at the edge of the desert, the allies caught up with him, only to discover that Shirkuh occupied some low hills, which gave him an advantage, and between the two armies there was a stretch of sand difficult for the heavily armored knights to cross on horseback. There was heavy hand-to-hand fighting. Here, at Beben, the young Saladin, in command of a division, first distinguished himself. Hugh of Caesarea, with a large number of knights, attacked Saladin’s army and was completely overwhelmed; many of his knights succeeded in escaping from the battlefield, but Hugh was taken prisoner. King Amaury’s army drove back the enemy, or at least thought they were driving back the enemy, until it became clear that they had fallen into a trap. They had advanced far beyond the Egyptian army, which was being chopped up by Shirkuh’s forces. The king’s army wheeled around, rode back to the assistance of the Egyptians, finding them with difficulty among the desert dunes. When at last the armies met, the king set up his standard on a high place, reformed his troops, drew them up in close formation, and marched straight toward Shirkuh’s troops, which were established on two hills. The Christians marched between the hills with the enemy on either side of them. Shirkuh could have ordered his troops to race down the slopes and savage the Christians, but there was something about the way they marched, in tight order and perfect discipline, which suggested that it would not be easy to break this column, where the most heavily armed rode on the outside to protect those within. He therefore made no attempt to bar their progress to Cairo. He had made his own secret plans. He would race north, capture Alexandria, establish himself there, and make the seaport his base for the conquest of Egypt.
He had not counted on the combined fleets of the sultan and the king, which prevented any help coming by sea. The land walls of the city were surrounded by the king’s troops, who waited quietly until Alexandria showed signs of dying of starvation. The orchards outside Alexandria were leveled: the wood was used for the making of siege engines. Shirkuh decided that diversionary tactics were necessary. With a large part of his army he slipped out of Alexandria at night, leaving Saladin in charge of the city with only a thousand knights. Shirkuh went on a rampage, took property and treasure wherever he could find it, and advanced on Cairo, which was held by a strong force. Was he strong enough to conquer Cairo? Unsure of himself, he invited Hugh of Caesarea, his prisoner, for a discussion. It appeared that Shirkuh was prepared to leave Egypt once again, leaving Alexandria to the king, who in turn would give the city to Shawar. The king would march back to Jerusalem, Shirkuh to Damascus. All prisoners would
be exchanged, no indemnity would be paid, and once the treaty was signed the people of Alexandria would be free of punishment and molestation by the soldiers.
But Shawar decided that the Alexandrians must be punished for allowing themselves to be conquered by Shirkuh. He demanded a vast indemnity and condemned to death all those who had worked actively with Shirkuh. To others he distributed favors with kindly largesse. He appeared to regard the surrender of Alexandria as the inevitable result of his carefully wrought policies.
Saladin was a welcome visitor to the camp of King Amaury. He appears to have stayed several days with the king, but William of Tyre does not tell us what they discussed. The Kurdish emir was given a bodyguard, for it was feared that he might be insulted or even assassinated by someone who had suffered at the hands of his soldiers. The king offered to provide ships so that the wounded could be taken back by sea to Syria; Saladin accepted the offer gratefully. There were the customary exchanges of gifts. Outwardly they were friends, while at a deeper level they remained mortal enemies.
In Alexandria there were scenes of festivity. Crusaders walked about the city like sightseers, gaping at the mosques and churches, the battlements, the ornamental gates, the colonnades, the many fountains, and the Pharos, the great lighthouse, which lay at the end of a little tongue of land jutting into the sea. But after a few days the Crusaders who came by sea returned home in their ships, and the others took the coastal road with all its dangers.
Having, as he thought, contracted a treaty of friendship and perpetual peace with Egypt, Amaury decided that the time had come for a similar treaty with Byzantium. Ambassadors were sent to Constantinople to negotiate for a Byzantine princess. The emperor was agreeable, and the bride chosen for Amaury was Maria Comnena, who could not by any means be considered beautiful, but she was the emperor’s grandniece. She arrived with her attendants at Tyre; the marriage was performed with great fanfare in the cathedral, and she was crowned Queen of Jerusalem. She brought with her in her retinue two high officials of the Byzantine court, who were empowered to conduct negotiations leading to an alliance.
About this time, a certain Andronicus Comnenus, a cousin of the emperor, arrived in the Holy Land bent on mischief. He had been the Byzantine governor of Cilicia, had amassed considerable wealth, and seemed to believe that it might be possible to marry the young widow of Baldwin III and thus establish himself in a very high position in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He made himself very agreeable to Amaury, who gave him Beirut as his personal fiefdom. From Beirut he journeyed to Acre, which belonged to the dowager Queen Theodora, now twenty-one and more beautiful than ever. Andronicus and Theodora fell in love, and the queen came to Beirut to be with her lover. It was a great scandal. The emperor was incensed; the king of Jerusalem was all the more angry because he was seeking the emperor’s goodwill. The emperor demanded that Andronicus should be extradited. Andronicus and Theodora fled to Damascus, where they were cordially received by Nur ed-Din, who sought to find some way to put a dowager queen of Jerusalem to some use. They were permitted to visit Baghdad. A Muslim emir gave Andronicus a castle on the Paphlagonian border, where he practiced the trade of a professional bandit. When Theodora and their two sons were captured by the emperor, he begged permission to join them in prison. Soon he charmed the emperor into giving him another governorship. It was his custom to rise high and to fall low. When the Emperor Manuel died, leaving the eleven-year-old Alexius II to rule the empire, he saw his opportunity, marched on Constantinople, which had just witnessed an appalling massacre of the Latin inhabitants, and seized the throne. Alexius II was murdered, and Andronicus proclaimed himself emperor.
It is worthwhile dwelling for a moment on this extraordinary man, who by his guile and audacity did much to weaken the Byzantine empire. At first he ruled well, protected the poor, ensured that the rich paid their taxes in full, made a covenant with Venice that included an indemnity for their losses during the massacre, built a church of the Latin rite in the midst of Constantinople, the heart and center of Orthodoxy, and struck down the power of the aristocracy. No emperor had ever been so popular with the people. Then Theodora died and he married the twelve-year-old Princess Agnes of France, the daughter of Louis VII. He was now aged sixty-two. Slowly, he grew more arbitrary in his judgments; his police used torture; the people began to murmur against him. In 1185, a Sicilian army attacked Thessalonica; his army deserted him; his bodyguard refused to guard him. He tried to flee to Asia but was caught in Constantinople and tortured to death by his own people, who had grown to hate him as avidly as they had once admired him.
Earlier, in 1168, when Andronicus was a refugee in Baghdad, Manuel Comnenus was still the emperor and the empire was stable. Amaury was coming to the belief that Egypt, riddled with conspiracies, would have to be completely annexed if it was to present no problem to the southern border of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Shawar was becoming weak and undependable. A concerted attack against Egypt by the Crusaders and the Byzantine army was an idea that appealed to him. He therefore sent William of Tyre to Constantinople to open negotiations, while various groups within the kingdom and the principalities debated the issue. The Hospitallers were for the invasion, the Templars against it. Some of the important knights wondered why it was necessary to share the treasure of Egypt with the Byzantines. The Templar fortress at Gaza commanded the southern frontier. The Templars saw no urgent need for an invasion; they had their own agents at the court, and there was substantial trade, often financed by the Templars, between Egypt and the Italian seaports. The Templars, well informed about the affairs of Egypt, regarded an invasion as an invitation to disaster.
Without waiting for news from William of Tyre, Amaury marched out of Ascalon at the head of his army and ten days later he was outside the walls of Bilbeis, demanding immediate surrender. The garrison troops refused, Amaury brought up all his siege engines, and three days later he was master of the city. Just as Godfrey of Bouillon had employed terror in order to conquer Jerusalem, the Crusaders employed terror at Bilbeis in the hope of terrifying all Egypt into submission. Men, women, and children were hacked to pieces in the onslaught, and every soldier was free to take whatever loot he wanted. Bilbeis became a desert. Shawar was shocked into making overtures to Nur ed-Din, whom he had regarded until recently as his mortal enemy. At the same time he offered the king a huge indemnity if only he would get out of Egypt. The king was adamant. He marched on to Cairo, set up his siege engines, and erected wickerwork screens so that the inhabitants would have no idea what was happening behind them while fearing the worst. A son and a nephew of Shawar had been captured at Bilbeis. Shawar offered two million pieces of gold for their release. The king was tempted by this vast sum; the knights were tempted by the promise of loot to be obtained during the sack of Cairo. Only a small part of the money was paid, and the army was never able to plunder Cairo, for on Shawar’s orders a large part of the city was set on fire.
A few days later the king and his army returned to Palestine. Immediately after the king left Egypt, another enemy arrived. It was Shirkuh, at the head of a large army, and in his retinue was his nephew Saladin. Thereafter, events happened very quickly. Nur ed-Din, too, wanted to annex Egypt, and within a few days, almost without effort, the annexation took place. Shawar, who had shown himself to be a resourceful general in the defense of Cairo, showed that he possessed some virtues dangerous to himself. He was trusting and generous, and it never seems to have occurred to him that his life was in danger. On January 18, 1169, ten days after Shirkuh’s forces had set up their camp outside Cairo, Shawar was invited to accompany some emirs from Damascus in a pilgrimage to the shrine of a local saint. It was an invitation he could hardly refuse; such pilgrimages were holy acts, and it was unthinkable that any harm would come to him. Shawar rode beside Saladin, and they had scarcely set out on the pilgrimage when Saladin leaned over, seized Shawar by the collar, and ordered him placed under arrest and taken to the camp. There Shawar was beheaded.
Egypt,
which a few days earlier had almost fallen to the army of the king of Jerusalem, now fell into the hands of Shirkuh and his chief adviser, Saladin. It had been an easy and treacherous victory, and it would never have happened if Amaury had taken the advice of the Templars.
Muslim authority now stretched from the Euphrates to the Sudan; the kingdom was confronted with a disaster of incalculable proportions. There was only one thing the Crusaders could do. They called on the Byzantine empire and all the kings and princes of Europe for immediate help.
But help was slow in coming. The Emperor Manuel Comnenus, who realized the gravity of the situation, took a long time to assemble a fleet for the combined attack on Egypt. About 225 ships arrived at Tyre at the end of September 1169. By this time Saladin had destroyed the last remnants of opposition to his rule in Egypt and was the master of a land with enormous wealth and vast human resources.
This was the testing time: the fate of the kingdom was now being decided in Cairo by a thirty-one-year-old general who said openly, “When God gave me Egypt, I felt sure he intended to give me Palestine as well.” Shirkuh had died. Power streamed out of Saladin’s five-bladed hands. By his willpower and his strategies, the kingdom would be tested as it had never been tested before.
The tragedy of the kingdom was that it produced at this time no one who was a match for Saladin. Amaury was slow, dogmatic, fearful unless he possessed overwhelming forces. Shawar had been too trusting and too confident for his own good; Amaury showed too little confidence and too little trust in his advisers. The Crusaders had decided on a direct attack on Damietta. But when the army had marched out of Ascalon, and the huge Byzantine fleet was patrolling Egyptian waters, and they came in sight of Damietta, Amaury became afraid. He ordered a delay. The admiral of the Byzantine fleet wanted an immediate attack: his own ships were in the Nile, Damietta had been caught by surprise and was not equipped with a powerful defense force, and all the advantages lay with the assault force. But Amaury, looking up at the huge towers of Damietta, counseled caution; and from too much caution Damietta was lost to them. Delay worked in favor of Saladin, who had time to rush troops to Damietta and to concentrate on the defense of the fortress that guarded the approach to Cairo.