by Jan Guillou
It was obvious who would lead the Templar knights, since Grand Master Odo de Saint Armand was in Ashkelon. But then he summoned the three knight-brothers of fortress master rank that were in Ashkelon—besides Arn from Gaza, the two masters of Castel Arnald and Toron des Chevaliers were Siegfried de Turenne and Arnoldo de Aragon. The matter immediately became more complicated. The Grand Master said that he would accompany the True Cross, and the standard of the Knights Templar with the image of God’s Mother, in the center of the army. He would take along a guard of twenty knights for this task.
Consequently one of the three fortress masters had to take command of the combined force of Templar knights. According to the rules, in that case it should be the master of Toron des Chevaliers, Arnoldo de Aragon, since he was the eldest of the three. Next in rank stood the master of Castel Arnald, Siegfried de Turenne, and third came Arn de Gothia. Yet God’s Mother had so clearly held Her protective hand over Arn when he attacked and conquered the Mameluke siege army, which was many times larger, so it would be an affront to Her demonstrated favor not to give Arn de Gothia this command.
The three fortress masters accepted their Grand Master’s instructions and bowed in acknowledgment that they would obey without question. The Grand Master left them alone then to attend to their own planning.
They took seats in a small and very simply furnished parlatorium in the quarter of the Knights Templar in Ashkelon. There was a moment’s silence before anyone spoke.
“It is said that our Grand Master is fond of you, Arn de Gothia, and it seems to me that he showed as much in his decision,” muttered Arnoldo de Aragon peevishly.
“That may be true. Perhaps it is also true that it might have been wiser to assign one of you the command, since your fortresses are located in the region you know best, and there we will meet Saladin,” replied Arn, speaking slowly, as if weighing his words carefully.
After a moment of cold silence he went on, “But tomorrow all three of us may be riding to our death. Nothing could be worse than allowing our thoughts to dwell on petty personal matters rather than vowing to do our best.”
“Arn is right; let us now agree on what is best instead of quarreling with each other,” said Siegfried de Turenne between clenched jaws that made his accent sound even stranger than usual.
After that none of the three took any notice of the fact that the Grand Master had made a decision that might be considered contrary to the normal rules. They were short of time and had important decisions to make.
Some things were easy to agree on. The force of Templar knights would ride heavy as usual: armor on the horses’ foreheads, as much chain mail along the horses’ sides as possible, as few provisions as possible. All this was assumed, because the only chance of success was to take an attack position in which the Mamelukes’ mobility was restricted for one reason or another; then weight and power would decide the day. In any other situation the knights’ power would be wasted against a swift Mameluke cavalry, so there was no sense in trying to save weight on the horses. The enemy’s speed and mobility were factors they could never equal.
The question of whether to place the Templar knights first or last in the army, however, required some discussion. In the event of a surprise attack by the enemy, which would probably come from the front, it would be best to have the strongest part of their forces in the front, which would save the most Christian lives.
But the Christian army was not very large, only five hundred secular knights, a hundred Templar knights, and about a hundred sergeants. If the enemy launched a frontal assault, the soldiers would first see the colors of the secular army and assume that their opponent was not as strong. Consequently they might attack too soon with a smaller portion of the now divided Mameluke army. Then it could be crucial for the Templar knights, under cover of the multicolored secular army, to ride forward and past them and meet the Mamelukes storming forward when they were too close to change direction. That seemed the wisest course. They would ride behind the secular army. Then they could also go out to the flanks and counter any attacks from the sides.
So far the three masters were agreed on all the plans. It took more time when Arn announced that he would be taking along as many Bedouins as possible.
The other two frowned at this proposal. The fortresses at Castel Arnald and Toron des Chevaliers had no Bedouins, and the other two had no experience with such dirty, unbelieving and, according to rumor, completely treacherous troops. Nothing good could come of this.
Arn agreed that his Bedouins were untrustworthy unless one was victorious, and that in the worst case tomorrow could end with all three of them being dragged behind camels to be sold to Saladin. The Bedouins no doubt knew that Templar knights were worthless captives because they could never be ransomed like worldly barons. But the Bedouins did have horses as fast as the wind, and their camels could easily traverse any mountain or rocky wasteland. So if you had them on your side, you could always get information about the enemy. As it looked now, such information, next to God’s grace, was the most important component of the coming battle.
The other two reluctantly acquiesced. They had probably seen from Arn that he had no intention of yielding in this matter. And as the Grand Master had decreed, he was the one who would make the final decision whenever there was disagreement.
To anyone who like Arn and his confanonier from Gaza had witnessed Saladin’s enormous Mameluke army parading for more than an hour simply to show off his cavalry, the Christian army that set out from Ashkelon on this early November morning must not have looked very strong.
The weather was raw and damp, with light winds from the northwest that refused to blow away the fog that came and went at will. The limited visibility could be advantageous to one side and a detriment to the other, but if any army was favored by the bad weather it was certainly the Christians, who knew the region well. This was especially true of the two leaders of the secular army, the brothers Baldwin and Balian d’Ibelin. But in the rear guard of the Christians were also the two fortress masters from Toron des Chevaliers and Castel Arnald, and the Christian army was headed directly inland between these two fortresses.
No one could understand how the Bedouins found their way in the fog. But they appeared and then departed, carrying various messages for Arn de Gothia from the first hours of the advance.
Around midday the Christians began to encounter small groups of heavily laden Egyptians, who preferred to give the approaching soldiers a wide berth. They wanted to keep their plunder rather than throw down the loot and pick a fight. It was clear from this that Saladin now knew that his enemy was on the way. That gave him the opportunity to decide when and where to engage them.
And as could be expected, soon a mounted army in tight formation appeared right in front of the Christian vanguard. They were now in the vicinity of the fortress Mont Gisard, not far from Ramle.
The secular army immediately went on the offensive, without first ascertaining how large the forces were before them. The army’s center was left behind with the king, the bishop of Bethlehem, the massed standards, and their guards.
Behind them came the Templar knights, but Arn gave no order to engage. Rushing out into the fog against an enemy they couldn’t see did not seem very wise, either to him or to his two closest officers, the two other fortress masters. Especially not when the Mameluke cavalry immediately gave way and fled in retreat. This was a well-known Saracen tactic. Anyone who chased such a fleeing center force would almost certainly be surrounded on both sides by advancing enemy forces. And when that flanking movement was done, horn signals would sound and suddenly the fleeing group would turn around and go on the offensive, so that those who had been pursuers were quickly surrounded on all sides.
Arn’s Bedouins arrived with news which showed that this was exactly what was happening, but only from one direction, from the south.
In that case Saladin would be coming straight across the lands of the Toron des Chevaliers fortress. And th
e fortress master Siegfried de Turenne knew the terrain like the back of his hand.
Arn ordered the column of Templar knights to halt, and they dismounted for a brief council. Siegfried drew a map on the ground with his dagger to show them a broad ravine that narrowed toward the south. Saladin would most likely be coming that way.
Quick decisions had to be made if the Christians were not to lose the opportunity. Arn sent a sergeant to the Grand Master in the center of the Christian army, which now had halted and taken up a circular defense. He brought word of the Templar knights’ plans. Then the Grand Master ordered the knights to advance at a brisk trot in the direction his brother Siegfried was riding, leading the way.
When they reached the ravine they were high atop a long, gentle slope at the place where the ravine narrowed like the neck of a Damascene bottle. If the enemy troops came that way, they would be able to surround the Christians from two directions. But right now there was only silence and the drifting fog that came and went, limiting their visibility.
There were two possibilities. Either the Templar knights had ridden to exactly the spot God had indicated for them to save the Christians, or else they were in the wrong place and risked leaving the secular army with no protection.
Arn ordered a general dismount and prayer. As quietly as possible all two hundred knights climbed down from their horses, holding the bridles as they knelt next to the horses’ forelegs. When the prayer was done, Arn ordered them all to take off their mantles, roll them up, and fasten them behind their saddles. It might be chilly to wait for a long time like this, and there was a risk they would get stiff with cold before the battle. But if the enemy came soon and caught them by surprise it would be worse to try and fight with their mantles in the way.
In silence they sat and stared down into the fog until one knight thought he heard something, though another said it was only his imagination. It was difficult to endure sitting still, because if they were waiting at the wrong place the day would end in defeat, and the blame would be on the Templar knights. If nothing happened in a while, they would have to return to the part of the Christian army where the True Cross was now held in great danger with far too few defenders. If the True Cross were lost to the unbelievers, then it would be Arn’s fault more than any other man’s.
He exchanged a few glances with Siegfried de Turenne and Arnoldo de Aragon. They sat with heads bowed as if praying under great duress; they were thinking the same thing.
But it was as if God’s Mother then filled him with confidence, as if he had received the necessary knowledge. He ordered his two fortress master brothers to ride cautiously out to the sides and each take command of one flank. They would ride out at the edges; like Arn they had a wide black border under the red cross on their horses’ side armor. In the fog they would lose track of one another if there weren’t at least some clear colors or signs to follow. The Templar knights’ white tunics and mantles were usually considered a disadvantage since they were always visible from far away. Yet perhaps they were also a warning that made the enemy flee if he was not of superior strength. But here in the fog the Templar knights seemed to blend into the whiteness and disappear.
As quietly as possible the knights began to form a line, as if they already knew the direction in which they should attack. But it was actually as if God’s Mother were holding Her hand over them, for suddenly they spied the first gleaming gold uniforms down below. They were Mameluke lancers, those who would lead the charge. They were proceeding in long columns down the hillside across from them, hidden in the fog. There was no way of telling how many they were; anything between a thousand and four thousand was possible. It depended on how large their center force was, which now functioned as bait to draw the secular Christian army into the trap.
Arn allowed about a hundred of the enemy to pass through the ravine’s bottleneck, even though Armand de Gascogne was squirming with impatience next to him. A new wave of dense fog then cloaked the entire enemy below in invisibility. Arn gave the order to advance, but at a walk so that they could better form a straight line and hopefully come so close to the enemy before being discovered that all their own men would be ready to spur their mounts on to a full gallop.
It felt unreal and dreamlike to advance at a walk. Down in the ravine the snorts of the horses and the ringing of their hooves on stone resounded from all directions, so it would be impossible for anyone to guess that two armies were now approaching each other.
Arn soon realized that he had to launch the offensive at full speed, hurtling straight out into the unknown. He bowed his head and prayed, but the Virgin Mary answered his prayer by showing something unrelated to the battle. She showed him Cecilia’s face, her red hair rippling in the air as she rode, her brown eyes smiling as always, and her childlike face covered with all those freckles. It was a brief but utterly clear image in the fog. But the next instant he saw instead a Mameluke horseman scarcely a lance-length before him. The Mameluke gaped in shock and seemed unable to do anything else when he looked around and discovered that he was surrounded by ghostlike, bearded white knights on all sides.
Arn lowered his lance and roared the battle cry Deus vult!, which was repeated by hundreds of voices both near him and far off in the fog. In the next instant the whole valley reverberated with the thundering stallions of the Templar knights, and almost at once came the clang of metal meeting metal and the screams of the wounded and dying.
At precisely this narrow pass in the ravine where the enemy was forced to squeeze together in multiple ranks to proceed, the iron fist of the Christian army struck hard. In an onslaught of heavy horses and sharp steel they tossed Mameluke riders in every direction, though many fell, pierced through by a lance. The Egyptian archers were in the rear and had no chance of hitting the intended targets with their arrows; soon they were overrun by riderless horses fleeing to the rear in panic. At the same time new Egyptian soldiers were rushing forward from the rear as they hurried toward the sounds of battle.
The Templar knights held the entire width of the narrow passage, and knee to knee they fought their way forward through hard-pressed Mamelukes. At such close range it was almost an impossible task to defend themselves against the long, heavy swords of the Christians which sliced their way forward like scythes during harvest.
The Egyptians who had made it through the bottleneck in the valley before the attack was launched now tried to turn around and ride to the aid of their comrades, but Arnoldo de Aragon had already anticipated this and on his own initiative countered them by taking twenty-five knights to form a front facing the other direction.
Where the battle was raging most fiercely in the middle of the valley, no man could see much farther than the end of his lance. For the Templar knights, who knew that they were so few in comparison with even those enemy soldiers they could see, this worked to their advantage, for all they needed to do was keep hacking their way forward through the heavily massed forces of the enemy. But for the Mamelukes who felt the weight of the Christians’ cavalry in this worst of all possible situations, this was a nightmare to end all nightmares.
Some of the Mameluke commanders finally brought their fear and their thoughts under control and blew the signal to retreat straight back, since it was too uncertain to try and climb up the hillsides.
Arn summoned the men nearest to him and asked them to call a council and regroup instead of pursuing the enemy into the fog. Siegfried de Turenne, out of breath, appeared at his side along with the section he had led. At first he and Arn looked at each other in shock, because they each expected to find a mortally wounded temple brother. Their white clothing was so drenched with blood that the red crosses on their chests were hardly visible.
“Are you really unhurt…brother?” panted Siegfried de Turenne.
“Yes, as are you…but the battle is going well for us so far. What do we do now? How are things in the direction they fled?” said Arn, realizing that he must look much like his fortress master brother.
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br /> “We’re regrouping and we’ll advance in a line at a walk until we spy them again. The valley ends in that direction, so we have them in a trap,” replied Siegfried, having regained his composure with astonishing rapidity.
No more needed to be said just now. Rather than lose their advantage it was now important to re-form the whole line of attack while advancing slowly, and spreading more widely across the widening valley. A breeze had come up and there was a risk that the fog, which had served the Christians for so long, might now vanish.
The Mameluke lancers and archers had also tried to regroup as they fled down the valley. But when they realized that they were trapped by steep cliffs, they found it difficult to turn around. Once they did, they decided to attack at speed before they were pushed together again in the narrowing part of the valley where they now found themselves. The horns blew among the Egyptians, calling for a rapid attack, and the valley was filled with the thunder of light, fast horses advancing.
But at the same time the horn signals for a swift pace were misunderstood by the supply train bringing provisions, spare horses, and plundered goods, following the fighting troops on their way down the valley. Now they tried to flee by cutting across, which led to the two Egyptian forces clashing together as if they were enemies.
At this sound Arn ordered another attack. The Egyptians who first saw the long, attacking line of Templar knights that in the fog looked like it was composed of thousands, were seized by wild panic and tried to flee to the rear through their own ranks.
The battle lasted for several hours, until finally the merciful darkness fell. The Knights Templar had never won such a brilliant victory.
As it transpired much later, the Egyptian center force which was to have served as bait for Saladin’s envelopment was finally captured by the secular army and forced to defend themselves without aid from the large force that never arrived. The realization that they were all alone without their main force stripped them of courage, and some began to flee. That was when the Egyptian defenses were completely shattered and the army was routed.