Lionheart moe-4

by Stewart Binns

  The two men spent the warm days of July 1187 hunting and feasting. Philip showed Richard his plans to add to the magnificence of the cathedral of Notre Dame and to pave the streets of Paris and strengthen its walls. The armies shared military training techniques and ideas in preparation for the challenge that we knew was coming in Palestine. It was a challenge that became much more pressing towards the end of the month.

  We were all having breakfast in King Philip’s great hall in Paris when Father Alun brought in a young Templar knight who had been found exhausted by the altar of a small monastery on the road from Toulon. Both looked ashen-faced, the knight bedraggled and thin, his crimson pectoral cross almost obliterated by the dirt on his surplice. He had refused any care from the monks at the monastery, insisting that he must reach Paris as soon as possible. The King’s stewards brought him a chair and gave him food and drink, but he was in no fit state to relay the news he had carried. Instead, in his clear authoritative tone, Father Alun told his story.

  ‘My Lords, on the morning of 4th July, a great calamity was inflicted on us all. First of all, you will be horrified to hear that when the Sultan Saladin issued his Jihad in the spring, the Christian armies in the Holy Land, added together, could only muster 1,800 knights and 8,000 infantry to meet the challenge.’

  There was a look of horror on the faces of all at the table. We all knew then that there had been a catastrophe.

  ‘Saladin has been building his army for years and can call on a force of over 50,000 men. He took Tiberias on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, eighty miles north of Jerusalem, on 1st July, killing many and holding hostage the Countess Eschiva, wife of Count Raymond – who was with the King, in Jerusalem. Despite long and bitter arguments about the wisdom of going to the aid of the embattled Countess, Guy of Lusignan, King of Jerusalem, took the fateful decision to sally forth from the city and confront Saladin. He got only as far as a dry open plain five miles to the west of Tiberias, beneath pillars of rock known as the Horns of Hattin, from where Our Lord delivered his Sermon on the Mount. The heat was overwhelming and they were unable to find water for the men or the horses.’

  Some heads in the room had already dropped; experienced soldiers, they knew what was coming.

  ‘Saladin set fire to the parched scrub of the plain, sending thick smoke into the Christian ranks. A makeshift camp was made and the army spent a fearful night deprived of water and proper sleep. When daylight came, they saw that they had been completely surrounded by the Muslim host. Even though the army carried the True Cross, held aloft by the Bishop of Acre, they knew that their position was almost hopeless. Saladin waited for the sun to reach its blistering zenith before attacking.

  ‘The Christian army fought for its life, knowing that no quarter would be given and that the future of Jerusalem depended on their bravery. Few survived the battle. Those who did – especially the Templars and Hospitallers, who the Muslims fear and despise – were beheaded in mass executions. Despite a courageous final redoubt around the True Cross, Guy of Lusignan, King of Jerusalem, and Gerard of Ridefort, Master of the Templars, were captured and taken prisoner. Raynald of Châtillon was executed by Saladin in person for his previous crimes of cruelty. The Bishop of Acre was killed and the True Cross was defiled. It was tied upside down on a cart pulled by donkeys and sent back to Jerusalem.

  ‘Raymond, Lord of Tiberias, and Balian of Ibelin escaped – Raymond to his castle at Tripoli, and Balian to Jerusalem – to begin the process of defending the city. It is said that when he reached the city, he found only twelve knights to add to the two who had escaped the battle with him.’

  There was a silent disbelief in the room. Father Alun paused for several moments before delivering the final, shocking piece of information.

  ‘There are almost no knights left in Palestine to defend the remaining citadels. Jerusalem only has its walls to protect it. This noble knight here before you, who fought at Hattin and has travelled to Paris with the news, says that every acre of the Holy Land will be under Saladin’s heel by Christmas.’

  Philip Augustus ordered that the Templar knight be cared for by the monks of Paris and immediately sent heralds around his French realm to order a gathering of all the magnates of France. Richard did the same for Aquitaine and sent word to his father in Caen.

  Within a month, a new tax had been agreed, the Saladin Tithe, to pay for a new Crusade. Word also arrived from Aachen that the Emperor Barbarossa would take the cross and join the Crusade.

  News from the Levant continued along its inevitable path. Beirut and Sidon fell; Saladin then moved south, taking Caesarea, Arsuf and Jaffa. Ascalon capitulated, leaving the ring around Jerusalem complete. The holiest place of them all was now at the Sultan’s mercy. Previously an open city under Muslim rule, after slaughtering its inhabitants the Christians had closed it to Muslims for the last ninety years. The world waited for Saladin to exact his revenge.

  When the end came, it was a different story. The Muslim attack began on 26 September 1187. It was said that Saladin’s army was so numerous that the dust from their marching obscured the midday sun and that the hail of Muslim arrows was so dense that not even a finger could be raised above the city’s walls without being hit.

  Balian of Ibelin, who had escaped from Hattin, had taken charge of the defence of the city. A fine and chivalrous soldier, he had given the population hope; to bolster its manpower, he had made knights of merchants, artisans, old men and young boys. After several days of fighting, Jerusalem’s walls began to crumble under the relentless barrage from Saladin’s siege engines. When it was clear that the city could hold out no longer, Balian rode out himself to plead for the innocents within its walls. Saladin, recognizing a fellow man of honour, put to one side the crimes previously committed in Jerusalem by the Christians and agreed to the city’s surrender. On 1 October 1187, the Christian population of Jerusalem began to leave the city and head for the coast.

  The next day, Saladin marched his army into the holiest city in the world. Many of his emirs and clerics begged him to destroy the Holy Sepulchre and to defile the site of Calvary, but he refused, ordering only that the doors to the Sepulchre be locked.

  Three days later, he ordered that they be opened again and that Christians be allowed to enter if they wished to. He also issued invitations to Jews to return to the city, in the hope that it would become the free city it had been before.

  The only act of retribution he allowed was the removal of the gold cross from the top of the Dome of the Rock. This was sent as a gift to the Grand Caliph of Baghdad, who had it embedded in the steps of the city’s mosque, so that the faithful could walk on it on their way to prayers. By the end of 1187, only the citadels in the coastal cities of Tyre, Tripoli and Antioch were still in the hands of Latin princes.

  None of this chivalrous generosity of spirit made much difference in Europe, where the mood was one of outrage and vengeance. Stirred up by Rome and every priest in his pulpit, the Church preached that soldiers of Christ must take up arms to slaughter the Muslims.

  By contrast, as Father Alun pointed out, when Muhi al-Din, the Grand Caliph of Baghdad, gave the first Muslim sermon in Jerusalem in three generations, he said: ‘Beware, lest Satan make you imagine that this victory was due to your sharp swords, your fleet steeds and your fearlessness in battle. No, by Allah! Victory cometh not from the Mighty, but from the Wise.’

  It was reminiscent of what the Abbess Hildegard had said in Rupertsberg, and we all remembered it well – especially the Lionheart. Duke Richard took the cross in Tours, in the autumn of 1187, in the new cathedral that was rising above the old one. His father was horrified to hear the news. With old age looming, he faced the prospect of his heir leaving for the Holy Land, just at the time when he would be needed to bring stability to the Plantagenet Empire.

  While the Saladin Tithes were being collected and we prepared our armies for the Third Great Crusade, we spent the next year dealing with new squabbles in the south, especially with R
aymond, Count of Toulouse.

  All the while, the Lionheart’s martial skills improved and his generalship matured. He remained an unpredictable mix of ruthlessness and generosity, and his temperament continued to be volatile. But he was learning to unleash his anger only in extreme circumstances. Alun’s calming influence grew all the time, and he was often able to bring the Duke back from the brink.

  Count Raymond repeatedly asked King Philip for aid and, occasionally, the goodwill we had built up with Philip Augustus became strained. There was much posturing, threats were made by both sides, and there were small-scale skirmishes. But the situation in the Holy Land stopped the pot from boiling over, and our friendship with the King of the Franks survived.

  The issue of Richard’s intended marriage to Alyse, Philip’s sister, and the settlement of her disputed lands in Berry and the Vexin, still churned away beneath the surface, and Philip would not let it rest. Old King Henry tried to interfere, sometimes as peacemaker, sometimes as agent provocateur. But either way, he invariably made matters worse.

  The once great master of the chess game of European politics was losing his cunning. He had sent Queen Eleanor back to England, where her movements were restricted and she was closely watched. His suspicions about her loyalty and her intentions towards him had surfaced once again.

  King Henry spent the Christmas of 1188 in Saumur. Few of his magnates responded to his invitation to join him. They knew that the future was in the hands of the young Lionheart and the even younger Philip Augustus. The King had become a broken man, unable to cope with the waning of his powers and the growing influence of Richard and Philip.

  The bickering went on into 1189. Finally, at Easter, a papal legate, John of Anagni, arrived to organize a peace negotiation. It was held near La Ferté-Bernard, in Maine, twenty-five miles north-east of Le Mans, and was arbitrated by a council of wise men. John of Anagni was joined by the archbishops of Rheims, Bourges, Rouen and Canterbury. The Pope’s intention was to man the council with enough ecclesiastical muscle to make even kings take notice and, possibly, to make them behave themselves. All three protagonists brought personal bodyguards who were heavily armed; the atmosphere was tense.

  After we had made camp, the Lionheart called us together. As always, he was very clear with his instructions.

  ‘Father Alun, I want you at my right elbow at all times. Ranulf, stay close, my father is bitter and unpredictable and King Philip has lost patience with both of us over Princess Alyse. But you both need to know this: I have already come to an agreement with Philip Augustus. I will marry Alyse and acknowledge her rights in the disputed estates; King Henry will acknowledge me as his heir; and my brother John will take the cross and accompany me to the Holy Land.’

  The Lionheart had a self-satisfied look on his face. Not so Father Alun, who was exasperated.

  ‘Sire, I wish you would consult me before agreeing to things like that.’

  ‘Why, it solves all the problems!’

  ‘No, sire, it does not. If anything, it’s likely to make matters much worse.’

  The Lionheart looked perplexed, and his anger began to flare.

  ‘Explain yourself!’

  ‘My Lord, first of all, it gives King Philip exactly what he wants, something you and your father have denied him for years. And secondly, your father will not even discuss it. We’ll be back where we started.’

  ‘But I get what I want, which is for the King to confirm me as his successor.’

  Father Alun smiled benignly at his liege, as if he were a tutor pointing out the obvious to a not very clever pupil.

  ‘But, my Lord, the succession is yours by right anyway. The King’s confirmation doesn’t add anything to your claim!’

  The Lionheart stared at Father Alun with a stunned expression on his face. The priest was right, of course, and the Duke had just realized it.

  ‘Very well, I concede. That’s why I want you at my elbow today.’

  In the course of the negotiations, Father Alun was proved right.

  While the Lionheart sat impassively, King Philip outlined the three points that he had secretly agreed with Duke Richard. King Henry listened politely until all the points had been made, then sat for a moment before fixing his gaze on the learned men of God to his left. He roared a torrent of abuse at them, at Philip and at Richard.

  It ended with a closing tirade.

  ‘So you can take that back to the Pope in Rome and tell him to shove it up his holy arse!’

  He then turned to his son and spoke to him in a hushed tone, but one laden with bile.

  ‘As for you, if you ever do another deal that insults your father with this little Capetian upstart from Paris, try to make your treachery a little less obvious!’

  With that, King Henry pushed back his chair and stormed out of the gathering with his retinue scurrying in his wake.

  Father Alun’s prediction had been accurate; Richard had been embarrassed by his father in front of the man he needed as an ally for the Crusade.

  The boiling anger we had witnessed several times before in Richard began to rise. The next morning, the Duke bade farewell to the clerics and thanked them for their patience and understanding. He made his apologies to King Philip and then, before we had gone no more than five paces from Philip’s tent, he issued his orders.

  ‘We ride to Le Mans; I am going to make my father listen to me for a change.’

  I felt compelled to advise him how dangerous such a plan might be.

  ‘Sire, we have only one conroi; Le Mans is heavily fortified. We would be like a mouse nibbling at a bear.’

  ‘Then send for the army! We ride within the hour.’

  I did as I was bid and sent a messenger to Poitiers to mobilize the army and ride north. I considered pointing out to the Lionheart that the army was in training for Palestine, not for another Plantagenet squabble.

  But I thought better of it.

  All through the spring of 1189, we harassed the King across Maine and Normandy. He was not prepared to fight his son, nor to concede to him – even though he had only a single conroi of bodyguards. When our army finally arrived from the south, the Duke began to attack the King’s strongholds in the hope that it would force him to fight. We took Tours at the beginning of July, which gave us effective control of the whole of Maine and Normandy, and Philip Augustus joined us shortly afterwards to add to the pressure on the King.

  Henry was at his ancestral home at Chinon; his condition had worsened, as had his prospects. He was unable to find any supporters who would come to his aid, all of whom realized that the Plantagenet Empire had reached a watershed in its history.

  Eventually, we received a message that the King would meet us at Ballon to discuss terms. Ballon was nearby, only half a day’s ride north of Le Mans. Duke Richard and King Philip prepared for a gathering to settle – at least for the duration of the impending crusade – the ancient feud between the Capetians and the Plantagenets.

  The King had chosen Ballon deliberately. It was only a small settlement. The local lord had a hall no bigger than a modest barn, and Henry wanted to be well away from prying eyes – especially from the high and mighty archbishops of his realm, the men he had insulted at La Ferté-Bernard in January.

  Hugh of Ballon, an ageing but proud knight who had fought in the Second Great Crusade, and his villagers were in awe of the circumstances. Two kings and a duke who would soon be a king descended on them with all their regal paraphernalia, retainers and military escorts. Hugh had provided food and refreshments, which must have exhausted his stores for the entire year, and gave up his modest hall for the gathering.

  When King Henry came in, he was in a sorry state. He needed help to walk and looked like half the man he had been in his prime. His eyes were sunken and the once notorious fire that smouldered in them had gone out.

  Even though I was in the service of the Lionheart, I found what came to pass very sad. Duke Richard and King Philip had drawn up a set of draconian requests de
signed to humiliate the old King and strip him of his power. Father Alun had been unable to persuade them to be less harsh; they were in no mood to compromise. It was like watching an ageing stag being driven out from a mob of deer, facing a forlorn death deep in the forest.

  Although it was a fait accompli rather than a negotiation, Father Alun was cast as mediator. The pained expression on his face was plain to see as he presided over the coup de grâce. There was no haggling; King Henry agreed to everything that was asked of him. Within less than an hour, Father Alun stood and announced the details of the concord, which the scribes immediately began to commit to vellum.

  Let it be known that on this day, 4 July 1189, in the County of Maine, that our Lord, Henry Plantagenet, King of England, Duke of Normandy, Count of Anjou, Count of Maine, Count of Nantes, Lord of Ireland, has agreed with his son, Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, and his friend, Philip Augustus Capet, King of the Franks, the following terms:

  1. He will pay to the King of the Franks the sum of 20,000 marks.

  2. In all things he will submit to the judgement of the King of the Franks.

  3. The Princess Alyse will be handed to a guardian nominated by Duke Richard and that when he returns from the Holy Land he will take her hand in marriage.

  4. The loyal subjects of King Henry, both here and in England, will swear their allegiance to Duke Richard.

  5. The date for the muster for the new Great Crusade to the Holy Land will take place at the Abbey of Vézelay in Burgundy, where St Bernard of Clairvaux launched the Second Great Crusade, and is set for Lent in the year of Our Lord 1190.

  Finally, it is acknowledged that should King Henry fail to abide by these terms, all his lords and subjects are to transfer their allegiance to Duke Richard and King Philip.