by David Boyle
Historians confirm that Richard's strategic skills probably preserved the tottering Christian regime of Outremer for another century, securing Cyprus and the Palestinian coastal strip as a guarantee of its survival. But Christendom had hoped for the big prize, and had put its faith in Richard as its champion, and he had longed for it just as much, but it had eluded him. He knew very well that he could have captured Jerusalem — the temptation took him and the army all the way to Beit Nuba a second time — but he realized that, though it would have made him a hero to the whole of his world, it also would have been a kind of lie. The city would inevitably have fallen to Saladin again once the crusaders had drifted home. There needed to be a more permanent solution, and there is every indication that Richard was planning to return to provide exactly that. But it was too late to stamp his authority on the way the story of the campaign was being told back home. To the English, the hint of heroic failure arose in retrospect as a courageous dream. But the English — those of them who had survived — were still in Palestine, preparing to take advantage of the agreement with Saladin and pay their respects to the Holy City. Their French and German colleagues were already back home, telling the story without the heroic gloss.
'We who were there, who saw it and knew it at first hand, we who suffered there, we dare not lie about those who, as we saw with our own eyes, suffered for the love of God,' wrote the Englishminstrel Ambroise, explaining that those who had died there 'will be at the right hand of God in the heavenly city of Jerusalem, for people such as they conquered that other Jerusalem'. You can hear the note of hurt justification. Ambroise was hitting back specifically at tales that hinted at a very different story, spread by disaffected soldiers in the crusader camp and broadcast to the world by Philip Augustus: that the crusade had ended in failure because of Richard's plotting and his greed, and because he had insisted on negotiating with the infidels. Philip's early departure from the struggle was explained because he was a victim of this overweening ambition: his life had been threatened by Richard, and was still under threat. He had been forced to leave and, because of this, the crusade had been doomed.
Many of those in the combined army that had set out from Lyons in July 1190 would not return. Historians have never been able to agree how many there were to start with, but contemporary chroniclers claim that as few as one in twelve were left on the quayside in Acre, staring out towards the harbour at the Tower of Flies, getting ready to sail home. It was a very stormy autumn, and many of those who remained were destined to drown on the return voyage. Those who did manage to survive the disease, the battles and the journey home, found themselves not returning heroes, as they had naively expected, but the objects of ridicule because of how little had been achieved.
Though he never spoke their language and spent little time there, Richard seems to have been a hero to the English. Elsewhere, his reputation was a victim of his pragmatism, and his clear admiration not just of Saladin but of Islamic civilization as a whole. He had chosen the worst option — he had stayed in Palestine long enough to make sure that his enemies were first with the news in the great cities of Western Europe, but not long enough to outface them by actually capturing the city. Worse, despite the expectations of the Pope and Saladin alike, no attempt had even been made to lay siege to Jerusalem. Richard loved pomp and spectacle — especially if he was the heart of it — but he believed in his destiny as a crusader, and wanted the achievements of his crusade to be real.
It was true that he had overwhelmed the Muslims militarily. The fearsome name of Melee Ric — the Saracen name for King Richard — was used for centuries later to silence children or chivvy horses. 'What's the matter?' the Muslim rider would whisper in their horse's ear. 'Is England in front of us?' But as well as the stories told in Paris and Cologne of treasonous dealings with the enemy and a betrayal of the crusader ideals, there were other rumours circulating in the courts of Europe too. It seems likely that these included rumours about his exotic sex life in the East — separated from his new wife by miles of desert, possibly even tempted into new experiences at the hands of al-Adil. They certainly included allegations that he had planned to have Philip Augustus killed in the camp outside Acre. Worst of all, Conrad of Montferrat's old friend and supporter, the Bishop of Beauvais — the man he had wandered round to dinner with on the night of his murder — had taken the boat home some months before, convinced that it was his duty to spread the word that Richard had been the architect of his friend's assassination. 'At every stage of his journey he spread the word that that traitor, the king of England, had arranged to betray his lord, the king of the French, to Saladin,' wrote the Winchester monk and chronicler Richard of Devizes, 'that he had the marquis' throat cut, that he poisoned the duke of Burgundy; that he was an extraordinarily savage man, thoroughly unpleasant and as hard as iron, adept at deceit, a master of dissimulation.'
Richard had set out as the hero of a Europe united in faith and determination; he was about to return to a very different environment. He was only just becoming aware of the potential dangers of his complete failure to publish his version of the story first. It was a danger that could, he realized, make his journey home inconvenient at the very least. He did not know then the extent of Philip's efforts to denigrate his name, nor did he know about the crucial meeting between Philip and the new Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VI, outside Milan, but he knew enough to be concerned.
When news reached the West of the peace agreement with Saladin, it arrived as confirmation of all the worst rumours. Butthe truth was that it was signed only just in time. When Richard gave his final assent on 2 September 1192, unable to move from his sickbed or even read the text of the agreement in detail, he was almost penniless. He had spent the entire war chest that had been raised so mercilessly by William Longchamp and borrowed from the Lombardy bankers. He even spent his sister Joanna's dowry, which he had gone to the trouble of seizing from Tancred in Sicily on the journey out. And the urgent messages asking for more money to be arranged that he had sent home to the Abbot of Clairvaux — his main conduit for communications with broader opinion back home — had not resulted in any new funds arriving in Palestine.
He was aware that the political situation in England was precarious. He had known that English political life was likely to be dominated by power struggles between John and Longchamp. He had set up contingency plans to deal with this if it became uncontrollable, but he now knew that not even these were enough to guarantee his lands — hence the increasingly desperate messages from his mother as 1192 progressed. Most worrying was the arrival in April of a personal envoy sent by Eleanor to report the most dangerous threat yet to emerge to his rule and to urge his return. But most pressingly of all, he was very ill — too sick to walk, suffering from hallucinations and under the care of the Knights Hospitaller.
The Hospitallers were then in the forefront of medical knowledge, skilled at operations for hernia, gallstones and Caesarean births and at setting broken bones — they used herbs from the East as anaesthetics for operations and battlefield pain relief. This was an age when modern scourges like cancer and VD were rare, and there was also no distilled liquor, so little serious alcoholism, but they struggled with diseases caused by bad diet, poor hygiene and clothes that irritated the skin. In this case, it seems to have been hygiene that undermined Richard's health so disastrously, as a result of the hundreds of unburied bodies left in the ruins of Jaffa. Even camping outside the city had not prevented disease spreading through the crusader camp.
It is difficult to catch disease directly from bodies. But decomposing matter can mingle with dust and get into the human system through inhalation or open cuts. There can be a surge in the local rat population, bringing a whole range of other diseases. It is possible, therefore, that Richard was suffering from a form of typhoid fever, dysentery or possibly malaria, or a form of malaria like relapsing fever, all of which bring a debilitating combination of high temperature, headaches and stomach cramps which
made him send messages to Saladin begging for peaches and mountain snow. The illness was almost certainly exacerbated by his despair at what he saw as the failure of all his hopes. The Hospitallers feared it might be tertian fever, a form of malaria that recurs every other day, and treated him with leeches.
On 9 September, he handed over command of the army to Henry of Champagne, the new king of Jerusalem, and left him in charge of dismantling the defences of Ascalon, as agreed so reluctantly with Saladin. He was then carried on a litter along the coast road that he had marched down so dramatically the previous year in the days before the Battle of Arsuf. A few days later, he arrived at Haifa, across the bay from Acre, then a quiet and pleasant retreat at the foot of Mount Carmel, and stayed there to recover his strength. It was here that he heard the news of the death in Acre of Hugh, Duke of Burgundy, Philip's remaining representative on the crusade, whom he had come to detest cordially. The news cheered him up and he began to recover. Unfortunately this only added to the whisperings that the duke might have been one of Richard's victims.
Richard and Henry of Champagne had been concerned that there should be no rush by all their troops to visit Jerusalem, in case they simply decided to wander home afterwards, their pilgrims' vow fulfilled. They stipulated that nobody should be allowed through the Saracen lines without a letter signed by one or other of the two kings, and that pilgrims must visit the city in one of four organized parties — one of which was led by Richard's friend Hubert Walter, Bishop of Salisbury, tall, elegant and good-looking and about to play a major role in Richard's future. Withexactly the opposite object in mind, Saladin made strenuous efforts to allow as many Christians to visit the holy sites as he could.
Saladin also invited Hubert Walter to see him, the first time he had come face to face with a leading figure from the crusade on equal terms. They were not alone, and the main points of the conversation were noted down. It was clear that not only did they find each other congenial company but they also trusted each other enough to move the discussion on to the character of Richard himself. Saladin said he admired his opponent, but was also aware of his weakness. 'I have long been aware that your king is a man of honour and very brave, but he is also imprudent, indeed absurdly so, in the way he plunges into the midst of danger and his reckless indifference to his own safety,' Saladin told the bishop. 'I would like to have wisdom and moderation rather than excessive wildness.'
The long-awaited meeting between Richard and Saladin never took place. Richard was happy for his soldiers and commanders finally to wander the streets of Jerusalem, to pray at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and to fulfil the pilgrims' vows they made when they took the cross, but he was not prepared to go there himself. He did not intend to discharge his crusader vows yet.
Towards the end of September, Richard was well enough to move back into the royal apartments in Acre, to be cared for by Berengaria, Joanna and maybe also Blondel. His admiral Stephen de Turnham, Robert's brother, had prepared a seagoing galley, and on September 29 Turnham set sail with Berengaria and Joanna aboard, together with Isaac Comnenus (still in silver chains) and his daughter, whom, rumour insisted, Richard was infatuated with. They had an unevenful voyage to Sicily, where Tancred —Joanna's former gaoler — entertained them with lavish hospitality. From there they sailed to Naples and then travelled by road to Rome, where they remained. There were stories that Berengaria wanted to consult the Pope about the difficulties she was already experiencing with her marriage. But they were also returning crusaders, and entitled to the protection of the Church, and Richard must have calculated that — of all the cities in Europe — they would have been safest there.
The ten days after they had sailed were taken up with Richard's hurried and increasingly secret preparations for his own departure. He seems to have realized the danger posed by the rumours about his conduct, and he did what he could in the time available to him to tackle the problem of his reputation. Acre's town crier was soon announcing, on Richard's behalf, that all debts owed to the king would be cancelled. He also made strenuous efforts to ransom the gallant William of Preaux, who had saved him the previous year when he was nearly captured in woods near Lydda. Saladin eventually agreed to swap him for the ten most valuable Saracens in Richard's captivity.
It was all rather too late. His fiercest critics had long since left for home, to paint his leadership in the worst possible light. And as the days before departure went by, it was dawning on Richard — the start of a long process — just how dangerous his situation was. He was receiving a series of warnings that specific princes and pirates were lying in wait for him on the way home. Although theoretically he had the protection that the Church extended to returning crusaders, it was clear that there was a diplomatic hue and cry emanating from Paris, and that he was the heart of it. There would be a number of ambitious men prepared to take advantage of his vulnerability on the road or the high seas and to sell him to the highest bidder. And if his luck was out, that bidder might just be the king of France.
He chose a large buss rather than a galley, precisely because royalty habitually preferred the comfort and speed of a galley. He also chose a few companions to join him on the voyage: there would be no accompanying fleet and no escort. They would rely on secrecy and good navigation. The date and time of departure were closely guarded secrets, though the French chronicler Bernard le Tresorier reported that at least one spy slipped aboard in these few days. Richard's last effects were taken in small boats out to the eastern section of the harbour, because the ship was too large to come right up to the wharf at Acre. The realization that he really was leaving was greeted with a dismal sense of gloom in the city. People prayed openly in the street, convinced that hispresence was all that lay between them and complete Saracen victory.
Once night had fallen on Thursday 9 October — after the last date that it was believed to be safe to sail from one end of the Mediterranean to the other — he and his companions strode quietly down the rue de la Boucherie to the harbour and were rowed out to the ship that bobbed gently on the swell. The normally bustling quays of Acre were silent as they slipped past the Tower of Flies without an answering tolling of the bell. The king of England, joint leader of the most powerful army ever to set sail from Western Europe, was skulking home in very different circumstances from those he must have imagined even a few months before.
It was a clear night as the crew took bearings from the stars, and the ship turned north to hug the coast towards Tyre. Wrapped in a cloak at the stern and watching the shapes of Acre's towers disappear into the night, counting the days no doubt until Christmas, when he believed he would reach home, Richard was overheard making a very personal vow: 'O, Holy Land, I commend you to God,' he said, only partly to himself. 'In his loving grace, may he grant me such length of life that I may give you help as he wills. I certainly hope some time in the future to bring you the aid that I intend.'
Leaning against the rail of his ship, the triangular mainsail filling with wind above him as he headed for home, Richard had time to review the extraordinary events of the past three years — the culmination of his life so far — and wonder whether he might have acted differently. He knew he would have the time to do this: voyages were notoriously unpredictable, and this was dangerously late in a stormy autumn. A generation later, the French king Louis IX had his fleet scattered across the whole Mediterranean from a storm near Cyprus. When he was king in later years, Richard's brother John once spent eleven days just sailing across the English Channel. Richard also, no doubt, spent time thinking through his tactics for his return to England. He was at least two months out of date in his news of the upheavals among his rulingelite, and the imminent threat of an alliance between his brother John and Philip Augustus, and he knew his mother would not urge him home without good reason.
In fact, his arrangements for governing Aquitaine had survived well under the control of his nephew Otto of Brunswick, son of Frederick Barbarossa's great rival Henry the Lion of S
axony. His most difficult neighbour, Raymond V of Toulouse, had attempted to foment a rebellion, but had been frustrated by a dramatic intervention from the south led by Berengaria's brother, Sancho the Strong of Navarre. But England was deeply nervous, made worse by the appearance on a number of occasions through the year of a mysterious redness in the sky. This was the Northern Lights, seen as far south as London and described by one contemporary as 'twinkling with a kind of blood-stained light'. It was widely regarded as the harbinger of tragedy for the king.
Richard's arrangements for England had been designed to hold in check all the most ambitious figures in the land. He knew his first minister, William Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, was overwhelmingly ambitious but also wholly loyal. He had been Chancellor when Richard first set sail, but since appointing Longchamp as co-justiciar, he had managed to gather into his hands the positions not just of chief justiciar — which made him head of the royal finances and courts, as well as the government's administrative machinery — but also of papal legate. This final title gave him authority over the Church. Richard's decision to let his illegitimate brother Geoffrey go ahead with his consecration as Archbishop of York had been designed as a small check on Longchamp's ecclesiastical authority. There was also an arrangement if everything else failed. When she had been in Rome, Eleanor had taken the precaution of getting agreement from the Pope that — if it ever became necessary — Longchamp could be overruled as papal legate by the widely trusted Archbishop of Rouen in Normandy, Walter of Coutances — actually a Cornishman — who was given letters of authority if Longchamp was to overreach himself.