God's War: A New History of the Crusades

by Tyerman, Christopher

  Within days of Richard’s arrival, both kings were struck down with what contemporaries called ‘Arnaldia’ or ‘Leonardie’, perhaps a form of scurvy or trench mouth, which caused the victims’ hair and nails to fall out.4 Richard almost died. Although both recovered, Richard more slowly than Philip, the effects of the illness remained. Philip, despite surviving another thirty-two years, never entirely lost the traces of this debilitating condition, while Richard’s health remained bad for the rest of his time in Palestine, more than once influencing his conduct of diplomacy and, perhaps, the war itself. Immediately, the sickness of the two kings shook morale. To counter any sense of drift or crisis, once the worst of his illness had passed, Richard had himself carried in a litter to within range of the city walls. There, under the protection of a specially constructed circular hut, he amused himself and inspired his troops by taking pot shots at the enemy with his crossbow.5

  Potentially no less debilitating was the rivalry between the two kings. Philip’s sense of grievance at his treatment in Sicily, slighted when Richard seized Messina and insulted by Richard’s repudiation of his sister in favour of Berengaria, was exacerbated at almost every turn. Richard received the allegiance of the Pisans; their competitors, the Genoese, supported Philip. The French king’s demands for half of Cyprus under the terms of the Vézelay agreement were brushed aside. While Philip hired knights at three gold coins a month, Richard offered four. When the count of Flanders died, it was Richard not Philip who acquired his siege engines. Each king attempted to negotiate separately with Saladin over surrender terms for Acre. This partly grew out of their respective support for the opposing claimants to the Jerusalem throne. Philip had formed a close alliance with Conrad of Montferrat, while Richard promoted the interests of Guy of Lusignan, once his vassal in Poitou. Guy, with a small army, had already campaigned with Richard in Cyprus. It says much for Philip’s political weakness and Richard’s practical dominance that, in spite of the French king having the favour of a majority of the important local Outremer barons and with most of the crusade leaders being his vassals, Conrad’s succession remained blocked. Such rivalry at times endangered the military operations, as one side or the other failed to coordinate attacks, which consequently failed. The cumulative effect of this rancour fatally undermined Philip’s commitment to the enterprise. A flavour of the bitterness of the kings’ relations was captured in a nasty little story that circulated in Outremer some years later. This had Richard telling a sick Philip that his only son, Louis, had died. He hoped Philip would die of shock and grief. In fact, Louis was not dead at all. But, the story went on, Philip was so shaken that he immediately arranged to return to the west.6

  Above all, Philip may have resented the personal dominance Richard asserted as soon as he reached Acre. With the most treasure and probably the largest number of troops in his pay, Richard was a veteran of proven ability and success. The seizure of Messina and conquest of Cyprus had merely confirmed his reputation, which he delighted in playing up to. He had embarked on crusade with what he claimed to be Excalibur, King Arthur’s sword. A useful prop, he traded it for transport ships and galleys with Tancred of Sicily. The gorgeous apparel, prancing steed, glittering saddle and gold- and silver-decorated sword with which he greeted Isaac Comnenus outside Limassol on 1 May was carefully designed to show ‘he was an exceptional knight’.7 Such visual pyrotechnics proclaimed a direct propagandist message readily understood by observers. When Richard landed at Acre on 8 June, the strenuous celebrations included recitations of stories of ancient heroes ‘as an incitement to modern people to imitate them’. Richard deliberately presented himself as just such an epic warrior, perhaps even in his lifetime earning the nickname ‘cœur de lion’.8 In all that he did, even if not always successful, Richard was formidable, in politics, in administration, in battle, in public relations and in diplomacy.

  Throughout the Third Crusade, Richard’s political objective was unequivocal: the restoration of Outremer, and especially the kingdom of Jerusalem, at least to its pre-Hattin extent. However, within days of landing, Richard opened channels of negotiation with Saladin, primarily though the sultan’s brother al-Adil. These he never entirely closed during his seventeen-month stay in the Holy Land. His conduct at Acre and after showed willingness to fight and to kill, but also to talk and to reach accommodation. As in the west, Richard used force as a means to an end. If Saladin could be threatened or intimidated into granting Richard’s demands, then battles and sieges were not necessary for their own sake. However, if Saladin refused terms, then Richard was prepared to force them from him. This elaborate and often delicate diplomatic dance, performed to the accompaniment of hard military campaigning, characterized the Palestine war of 1191–12, setting a precedent for subsequent crusades in the east. The struggle for advantage between Richard and Saladin was dominated by the mounting military and political problems each faced, yet it was far from the crude slogging match between enemies blind to each other’s interests or character that some portrayals of crusading, including those by contemporaries, imply. Richard was not alone in seeking a negotiated settlement; according to one eyewitness, Philip was involved in the early approaches to Saladin.9 However, according to Ibn Shaddad, who was also there, the policy proved controversial, at least before Acre fell, meeting with opposition from other Christian leaders. This was hardly surprising as, at the time, the events of the Third Crusade were depicted spiritually as a test of religious faith and temporally as a global contest, infidel Asia and Africa ranged against Christian Europe, the siege of Acre a new Trojan War. According to Ibn Shaddad, Richard brushed aside any criticism in typical style: ‘The reins of power are entrusted to me. I rule and nobody rules me.’10

  The negotiations, which began on 17 June, probed each side’s aims and vulnerability. Gifts were exchanged and initial bargaining positions staked out. Roger of Howden shrewdly identified Saladin’s irreducible insistence on retaining Jerusalem and Transjordan, the one the propaganda totem of his empire, the other the vital land bridge that held its Syrian and Egyptian halves together. However, Richard saw no need to compromise when the military situation increasingly favoured him, with the Christian siege machines maintaining an incessant bombardment of Acre’s walls. Saladin’s attacks and scorched earth policy failed to impede progress. Christian optimism was sustained by the traditional accompaniment of divine visions and stories of individual heroism. More prosaically, with neatly judged psychology, Richard offered to pay for every stone removed from the city walls, starting at two gold coins each but rising to four, a popular move with soldiers ‘as greedy for glory as for gain’.11 By extending his hiring of mercenaries, Richard was adding cohesion and direction to the siege. With no let-up in the attacks, it soon became apparent to the garrison commanders that they were facing an unpleasant but unavoidable choice: surrender or death. Saladin was reluctant, but his commanders in Acre capitulated on 12 July. The terms agreed, apparently negotiated mainly though the mediation of Conrad of Montferrat, spared the lives of the defenders, their wives and children, in return for a ransom of 200,000 dinars, the release of over 1,500 Christian prisoners, and the return of the relic of the True Cross taken at Hattin. Conrad received a hefty negotiating fee of 10,000 dinars. The entire contents of Acre, Saladin’s main armaments depot in the Holy Land, with provisions, artillery and perhaps as many as seventy galleys, were handed over to the Christians. The loss of much of his navy was as damaging militarily to Saladin as the fall of the city was to his prestige, Ibn Shaddad remembering that he ‘was more affected than a bereft mother or a distracted lovesick girl’.12 Now Saladin could only withdraw, prevaricate over the details of the surrender agreement and wait on events, perhaps hoping, not unreasonably, that in victory Christian rivalries would re-emerge to undermine their hard-won success.

  If so, he almost had his wish. As the two kings set about dividing Acre between them, those in the army attached to neither protested. Despite their contribution to the siege, they wer
e to receive nothing. Duke Leopold of Austria seems to have felt especially aggrieved that his claims to a share of the booty had been brusquely rejected. Some said that, on Richard’s orders, Leopold’s banner had been thrown down after the entry into Acre to signal the denial of his claim to the spoils. Leopold and others left the Holy Land in disgust.13 Although Richard received most of the blame for this policy, both kings clearly agreed to it. It fulfilled the assumptions that lay beneath the Vézelay accord and, more widely, recognized the special position of authority the barons of Jerusalem had for years been prepared to afford western monarchs in the Holy Land. As it was, both kings displayed a sense of this responsibility by sending help to Antioch. However, this unity proved deceptive. As Richard laconically wrote a few weeks later to his unpopular chancellor and viceroy in England, William Longchamp bishop of Ely, ‘within fifteen days the king of France left us to return to his own land’.14

  Even Philip II’s most ardent apologists found his sudden abandonment of the crusade hard to justify. It was easy to explain. The death of Philip of Flanders at Acre on 1 June activated a series of rearrangements to the lordships of the territories between the royal lands around Paris and the county of Flanders, which were vital to Capetian security. Philip stood to gain the strategically and economically important region of Artois and be able to manipulate the contested Flemish succession to his material advantage. But he needed to be present to ensure the process went smoothly. His own health, fears for that of his infant son, the need for him to find a new wife as well as the persistent humiliations, real or imagined, he had to endure from Richard added to Philip’s conviction that he must return home immediately. His departure, especially as he left most of his troops behind, may not have displeased Richard unduly as it consolidated his control over the enterprise.

  The speed with which Philip acted after the fall of Acre suggests he had already made up his mind but, with characteristic circumspection, had successfully concealed his intention, not least from his own allies, particularly Conrad of Montferrat, whose prospects were closely bound up with the French king’s presence and support. Having already declined to commit himself to remaining in the Holy Land for three years or until Jerusalem was captured, on 22 July Philip announced his decision to leave. This went down very badly with most of his followers. But when a hardly serious request to be given half of Cyprus in return for a commitment to stay was refused by Richard, the die was cast. On 28 July, after a two-day hearing on the merits of the claims of Guy and Conrad to the throne of Jerusalem, the two kings announced a compromise that reflected Richard’s ascendancy. Guy was to remain king for life, but the succession would devolve after his death on Conrad and Isabella and their heirs. The revenues of the kingdom were to be divided equally between Guy and Conrad, while the latter was granted a lordship in the north based on Tyre. To balance this, Guy’s brother Geoffrey was to receive the county of Jaffa and Ascalon if and when it was recaptured. There were echoes of the deal done in 1153 that transferred the English royal succession to Richard’s father, Henry II, but allowed the anointed King Stephen to retain the crown until his death. Guy, too, was an anointed monarch, but only by virtue of his now deceased wife. Unlike the 1153 agreement, the arbitration of July 1191 failed to stick.

  On 29 July Philip swore publicly that he would do no harm to Richard’s lands in the west. The next day he appointed the duke of Burgundy as leader of the remaining French troops and gave his half share of Acre to Conrad. The following day the Muslim prisoners were divided between Philip and Richard and on 31 July the French king, with his prisoners and a small entourage, left Acre for Tyre. There he transferred his prisoners to Conrad, thus giving him a share in the promised ransom from Saladin. On 3 August, Philip sailed from Tyre for home. His behaviour attracted almost universal opprobrium, even from normally sympathetic observers. His own followers made their views transparent by refusing to accompany him. Accusations of greed, fear and dereliction of duty compounded the shame heaped on him. Only his later successs in elevating royal authority in France to heights unseen since the Carolingian heyday of the ninth century redeemed his international reputation. Nevertheless, Philip’s actions left a sour taste for generations. At the time, although plainly anxious about the damage a resentful and humiliated Philip could do to Angevin lands in his continued absence, Richard could allow himself some understated sarcasm at the French king’s expense. Describing Philip’s departure, Richard remarked a few days afterwards: ‘We, however, place the love of God and His honour above our own and above the acquisition of many regions.’15

  FROM ACRE TO JAFFA

  Philip’s absence both simplified and complicated the situation facing the crusaders. Richard quickly moved to assert his influence over the remaining French army by lending their commander Hugh of Burgundy 5,000 marks, presumably until the French share of the Acre prisoners’ ransom was paid. But Conrad of Montferrat actually held these prisoners at Tyre, and only reluctantly handed them over to Duke Hugh on 12 August. Conrad’s independence had been bolstered by Philip’s grant of half of Acre as well as the confirmation of his autonomy in Tyre. Whenever members of the local Jerusalem baronage became disenchanted with Richard, Conrad offered a focus for dissent. More immediate was Saladin’s reluctance to honour the surrender terms. Although the relic of the True Cross had been inspected by Richard’s envoys in the Muslim camp on 2 August,16 negotiations stalled, only partly because not all of the prisoners had been returned from Tyre. Saladin evidently hoped that delay would increase the divisions within the Christian army, lower morale and delay Richard’s march south. Withholding the lucrative ransom and the True Cross appeared useful bargaining counters. The Christian desire for the return of the Cross and their leaders’ eagerness for the ransom money seemed to play into the sultan’s hands. With Acre lost, stalemate now served Saladin’s purpose.

  On 20 August, ten days after the deadline for the exchange of the first instalment of prisoners and ransom money, Richard called Saladin’s bluff. However much he wanted the relic and the money, Richard knew that further delay would only undermine the preparedness of his army for the tough campaign in prospect. He later described what happened:

  On Saladin’s behalf it had been agreed that the Holy Cross and 1,500 living persons would be handed over to us, and he fixed a day for us when all this was to be done. But the time limit expired, and, as the pact which he had agreed was entirely made void, we quite properly had the Saracens we had in custody – about 2,600 of them – put to death. A few of the more notable were spared, and we hope to recover the Holy Cross and certain Christian captives in exchange for them.17

  Ibn Shaddad was in Saladin’s camp a few miles away when the massacre occurred. Understandably, his account is more vivid.

  When the king of England saw that the sultan hesitated to hand over the money, the prisoners and the Cross, he dealt treacherously towards the Muslim prisoners… He and all the Frankish forces, horse and foot, marched out at the time of the afternoon prayers on Tuesday 27 rajab (20 August). They… moved on into the middle of the plain. The enemy then brought out the Muslim prisoners for whom God had decreed martyrdom, about 3,000 bound in ropes. Then as one man they charged them and with stabbings and blows with the sword they slew them in cold blood.

  The stunned Muslim advance guard watched helplessly while they sought orders from the sultan. By the time they tried to intervene, the killing was over. Next day they inspected the corpses and, Ibn Shaddad added, ‘were able to recognize some of them’.18

  Richard I’s butchery of his Muslim captives was an atrocity not uncommon in war. It was not an act of random sadism, less so, for example, than Saladin’s own execution of the Templars and Hospitallers after Hattin. It ranks, perhaps, with Henry V’s slaughter of his French prisoners at Agincourt in 1415, except that then the battle was still in progress. Even Ibn Shaddad recognized that Richard’s action contained logic: revenge for Muslim killing of surrendering Christians during the siege of Acre ‘or t
hat the king of England had decided to march to Ascalon… and did not think it wise to leave that number in the rear’.19 Richard and his apologists, and many observers not noted for their sympathy towards him, insisted on the justice of the killings, even their legality. One favourable source declared that, without the agreement with Saladin, the lives of the defeated garrison were forfeit jure belli, ‘under the rights of war’.20 The contrast between the control displayed when Acre fell and the cold-blooded savagery of the mass execution weeks later showed Saladin clearly the sort of adversary he faced. The sultan probably recognized the massacre for what it was, a deliberate act of policy for which his own actions were in part responsible. Over the following weeks he treated captured Christian soldiers with summary execution, occasionally allowing their corpses to be mutilated out of revenge. More seriously for the strategy of the war, he recognized that Richard had raised the stakes for all subsequent besieged Muslim garrisons. To avoid such consequences, Saladin moved quickly in September to dismantle the fortifications of Ascalon, one of Richard’s prime objectives, the key port in southern Palestine and the bastion on the route to Egypt. Yet Saladin understood the game both were playing and, judging from the respectful tone used of Richard by his close colleague Ibn Shaddad, appreciated the king’s skill at it. Whatever his public emotions, only a fortnight later he authorized his brother to resume face-to-face talks with Richard.21