Two days later, a reply came back.
Please convey my warm regards to Melek-Ric. It is with regret that I cannot meet with you at the moment. The Sultan Saladin wishes to discuss Ascalon before we will discuss Jaffa.
The reasons for the refusal became clear on the evening of 4 August. Our groups repairing Jaffa’s walls had just finished their day’s work on walls that were far from secure. The Lionheart suddenly looked towards the east. I saw the alarm on his face, then I heard the distinctive rumble of massed horses. He barked his orders at me in quick succession.
‘Form a defensive line ten yards from the wall, with pikes firmly anchored in the ground, shields raised and locked like the English! Tell William to deploy the arbalests and archers behind us. Robert is to organize secondary positions in the gaps on the walls, and Mercadier will form a third redoubt outside the citadel gates. Baldwin must get everything valuable and all civilians inside the citadel and close the gates. Only on my signal will we fall back to each defensive position, as required.’
The King had been presented with a sudden emergency and, as always, had responded with a military solution as elegant and sound as any great general of the past could have devised. Harold of England, who made the shield wall legendary, and Hereward of Bourne, who stood with him behind the mighty shield wall of the English housecarls at Senlac Ridge, would have been proud of him.
Within minutes, our bulwark of spears and shields was ready. Many men had not had the time to don their hauberks, but our wall was solid. It had the appearance of a giant hedgehog as the Muslim cavalry came into view.
They were a terrifying sight as they bore down on us. Closely packed with lances couched, it looked like they would overwhelm us. But at thirty yards, the King ordered the first volley of arrows and quarrels. They caused mayhem when they struck, bringing almost all of the front rank of horses crashing to the ground. The fallen bodies then disrupted the momentum of those behind. Significantly, the men and their mounts could see our bristling spears, adding more hesitation. As the first wave of riders tried to regain momentum, the ranks of cavalry behind began to careen into them.
Eventually, some order returned and the attack resumed, but not with the same power or direction. Another volley of arrows did more damage. By the time the wave of horses reached us, few of them made any impact; several men and beasts just impaled themselves on our lances.
As soon as the Lionheart saw how weak their charge was, he ordered that we break our wall and strike out. He also had the horns sounded to call forward our other defensive lines to join our counter-attack. Inevitably, he led from the front, ruthlessly pulling a man from his rearing horse before running him through with his sword. He then jumped on to the mount, raised his sword and gave the crusaders’ cry.
‘For St George!’
By being the only Christian on a horse, and by loudly declaring his presence, the King had made himself the easiest target imaginable. But as the thrust of his sword reached its zenith, the setting sun caught the edge of his blade and cast a brilliant gleam into the eyes of the Muslim cavalry. Their reaction was astonishing; they must have thought they had seen a sign, a bolt of lightning from God, and they began to run like horses in a stampede. Some threw down their weapons, a few even fell to their knees and began to pray.
We all waited for the order to attack, but it did not come. Instead, the King dismounted, walked over to the Muslims who were praying and raised them to their feet. Those fleeing saw what he was doing and stopped, looking back in awe. The Lionheart, half a head taller than the men around him and looking glorious in his resplendent mantle of the Three Lions, was twenty yards beyond our lines. He was alone among two dozen Muslims, with hundreds more only yards beyond them.
Several of our men, fearing for their King, began to move towards him. But I raised my sword arm to stop them.
The King was perfectly at ease and in control. Without a hint of apprehension, he slowly walked towards the men in the massed ranks of the Muslim army, who stood motionless as he approached them. When he had covered half the distance, he raised his sword, as if in a salute.
We heard the chants in response.
‘Melek-Ric!’, ‘Melek-Ric!’, ‘Melek-Ric!’
Then, as calmly as he had walked towards them, the King turned and walked back towards us. As he did so, the Muslim army melted away in a hushed silence.
There was also silence in our ranks as the King walked past. No one who witnessed what happened that August day in 1192 outside the walls of Jaffa would ever forget it.
26. Campaign’s End
Within hours of the end of the Battle of Jaffa, a message from the Muslim leadership arrived, not from Saphadin, but from his elder brother, the Sultan Saladin himself. He wanted to open negotiations.
I wondered whether the reaction of his army outside the walls of Jaffa had persuaded the Sultan that the King was unbeatable in battle, or at least that his army thought so. In any case, he wanted to parlay, but he laid down one overriding condition: he must control Ascalon, to give him access to the sea. This was a concession the King steadfastly refused to accept. It was a stalemate even before negotiations had begun.
Conditions in Jaffa were difficult. There were bodies to be cleared, sanitation had been disrupted, and it was vital to restore fresh water and food. When the land army arrived from the north, it only made matters worse by adding more mouths to feed. The King was exhausted, despite his protestations otherwise. He became ill with a severe fever and took to his bed. We were concerned for him; he lost weight by the day, and became grey and gaunt.
In the meantime, Saladin’s position strengthened. I sent scouts to monitor his army. On 8 August, a large contingent of Kurdish light cavalry, Saladin’s own people, arrived from Mosul on the Tigris. Two weeks later, more Mamluks came from Egypt. And just two days later the Sultan’s nephew, al-Mansur, brought several hundred Yemeni desert cavalrymen and their dromedaries from the south.
The Muslims were tightening their grip around us.
I called a gathering of the Grand Quintet. We all agreed that if a compromise could be reached with Saladin, requiring the King to relinquish Ascalon, then we should persuade the Lionheart to do so. The Sultan had spies everywhere; if he found out that the King was ill, he would be sorely tempted to attack Jaffa. If he did so, we might be able to hold the citadel for a while, but not the walls of the city. This would mean putting most of the citizenry and half the army at peril and entombing the rest inside the citadel’s confined spaces.
William Marshal and I were designated to talk to the King, and Benoît of Geneva was asked to request that Saphadin meet with us in Jaffa.
Not the kind of man to cope well with the indolence of a sick bed, when we met with the King he had received news that had only added to his woes and made his temper worse. The revenge he had hoped to exact for the treachery of Hugh of Burgundy in refusing to participate further in the crusade had been thwarted by the man’s death from illness in Acre.
William Marshal tried some words to soothe his anger.
‘God will punish him, Richard, be thankful for that.’
‘That gives me no satisfaction at all. God’s vengeance is all very well, but what about mine!’
His outburst brought on a spasm of coughing that took some time to abate, leaving the King exhausted. We made our points regarding our current situation, and he listened carefully. At the end, he said little, merely asked that we summon his stewards to help him get washed and dressed.
As we left, he called after us.
‘I will see Saphadin here, alone. What I know I have to agree to, I don’t want anyone to hear pass my lips.’
Flanked by Christian knights in all their finery along every step of his way, Saphadin, dressed immaculately in his Arab coat and turban, walked into Jaffa alone on Tuesday 1 September 1192. Horns and trumpets sounded and drums beat. It was a momentous day for Christendom and for Islam. The King had tried manfully to make himself look fit and well an
d had ordered that those parts of the city that the Emir would see should look as clean and orderly as possible. What transpired between them was never revealed by either man. They talked for over two hours. As they did so, despite the fact that the heat of summer still held us in its fierce grip, the guard of honour remained in place and the entire population and the rest of the military stood in silence to await the outcome.
At last, the large oak door to the King’s apartment opened and the Emir Saphadin walked out of Jaffa, just as he had walked in, dignified and expressionless. The silence continued until, a moment or two later, the Lionheart appeared.
Without his usual agility, he clambered on to a nearby wall to speak to the crowd.
‘We have peace!’
A huge cheer echoed around Jaffa’s walls. It carried across to the ships at anchor and followed Saphadin as he and his entourage rode away into the hinterland.
The Third Great Crusade was over.
The following day, a Muslim emissary appeared with the terms of the peace beautifully transcribed on vellum in Arabic and Latin. It was a complicated compromise, but one that saved face for both sides.
• Ascalon will be ceded to Muslim control, but its fortifications will be destroyed and not rebuilt until at least Easter 1196.
• The Christians will retain Jaffa and the coastal plain to the north as far as Acre and east as far as Ramla and Nazareth without let or hindrance.
• The principalities of Antioch and Tripoli will remain secure and unmolested.
• All fighting will cease forthwith and both sides will be allowed to travel and trade freely.
• Jerusalem will remain under Muslim control, but Christians and people of all faiths will be free to travel to the city, trade in the area and worship at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
It took some weeks for all the formalities to be agreed. Every Christian lord and Muslim emir had to signify their concurrence with their signature and seal. The Lionheart paid all his debts and used large parts of his dwindling treasury to pay the ransom on several hostages being held by the Muslims. Many Christian lords took the opportunity to visit the Holy City and pray at the Holy Sepulchre.
But the Lionheart’s priorities lay to the north. He needed to retrieve his wife and sister from Acre, get his army home and confront the machinations at work in Europe, wrought by a wily brother and a conniving King of France.
A still stricken King had to be transported to Acre on a cart. When we reached the city, a distraught Bérengère and Joan set about nursing him back to health. Blondel became a constant companion, singing the chansons the King loved so much and playing chess with him.
Slowly, his condition improved and he began the task of getting his army home. The mission was fraught with difficulties – some ubiquitous, some peculiar. The permanent obstacles were the Mediterranean winds, usually blowing against those going west, and the autumn weather in the Atlantic, which was already upon us and all but impossible to negotiate. To avoid those obstacles, the King ordered his captains to make landfall where they could, as far along the Mediterranean coast as possible. They were to abandon their vessels and return home on foot. Thus, most of the army departed over the next two weeks.
The particular problems of our return home came as a shock to us all. Although we knew that John was plotting against the Lionheart at home and had enlisted the support of the King of the French, we did not know the full extent of his scheming until reports reached us in Acre at the end of September. It had become a contagion throughout Europe. In order to save face in not being involved in the crucial battles in Palestine, the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire and the French Kingdom had spread stories of Richard’s intransigence, bullying and brutality – especially his execution of his prisoners at Acre.
All the French and German allies had been recruited to the cause. The Count of Toulouse, the kingdoms and principalities of Italy – and even Pope Celestine – were all involved in a war of hateful words designed to destroy the King’s reputation.
Philip of Dreux, Bishop of Beauvais, who had been a close friend of Conrad of Montferrat, toured Europe, railing against the Lionheart. Some of his words reached us in a letter from Queen Eleanor to Bérengère.
The King of England betrayed our Lords, Philip of the French and Henry of the Germans, by negotiating with the heathen Saladin behind their backs. He conspired with murderers to have the throat cut of the noble Lord, Conrad of Montferrat, the rightful heir to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and he had the estimable knight Hugh, Duke of Burgundy, poisoned in his own hall. He is a savage man, capable of great cruelty and wicked deceit. Worst of all, he gave away the keys of the Holy City to the infidel.
Rather than reacting with justifiable anger, the King smiled when he heard the Bishop’s words read to him. However, his calm demeanour belied the fact that our route home was beset by difficulties and would have to pass through hostile territory. These were lands stirred up by a hysteria that claimed Richard the Lionheart was not the hero of a valiant war against a mortal enemy in the Holy Land – a war conducted largely on his own when his major allies returned home – but was an evil demagogue who had betrayed Christianity to Saladin, the Devil incarnate.
The King called us all together on Sunday 28 September, and we celebrated mass. Afterwards, he summoned what was, to all intents and purposes, a council of war.
‘Under the care of William, my beloved Bérengère and dearest Joan will depart with their households and my personal conrois on Tuesday. My other devoted friends – my Grand Quintet, as Sir Ranulf has dubbed them – will make their own way home by whatever method they think fit. Divided between them, they will carry home what is left of my treasury and belongings. As for myself, I will delay a while. It seems I am a wanted man across Europe and so I will travel home as a devout Knight Templar, Anselm of Poitiers, with only a sergeant and two men-at-arms. We will all rendezvous in Caen, at Christmas at the latest, for a celebratory feast together.’
There were handshakes and embraces all round, and everybody made their final preparations to leave. As I had not been mentioned in the King’s list of departers, I sought clarification from him.
‘Sire, what would you have me do?’
‘How old are you, Ranulf?’
‘I am forty-one, sire.’
‘Do you not want to retire to your estates in England and find a wife? I intend to extend your land when we return.’
‘You are very kind, sire, but I would prefer to serve you a little longer – and certainly until you return to your realm. As for a wife, I have known two remarkable women; I lost one to God and the other to the Devil. I doubt I will ever meet their like again.’
‘Another mystery for me! But I think I remember the one you lost to God. She was the sultry Basque beauty you took to Rupertsberg?’
‘Yes, my Lord; her name was Negu. But she decided to become a bride of Christ instead.’
‘That is indeed a shame, she was very beguiling. And the other… the one taken by the Devil?’
‘I’d rather not say, sire.’
‘I think I know. She was killed by the Devil’s agents, am I right? The Princess Anna, who was killed in Anatolia with Abbot Alun and your men.’
‘It was the worst moment of my life.’
‘I know, Ranulf. You were a different man when you came back.’
‘Sire, please keep that confidence to yourself; it is very important to me.’
‘Of course. I am only too aware of the sorrow of unfulfilled hopes. In my case, sweet Bérengère is still not with child. I hope she is not barren; if she is, I’ll have to put her aside and go to the Pope for a new wife…’
He paused, thinking about the implications of what he had just said. Then he returned to the subject at hand.
‘Now, what about the things in the Vatican we talked about; is it not time to retrieve them before I return home?’
‘It makes sense, sire.’
‘I intend to sail up the Adriatic Sea to Veni
ce. I will put you off at Brindisi or Bari, and you can make your way to Rome from there.’
‘Are you sure, my Lord? That will leave you very exposed, accompanied by just three men.’
‘But they are good men; I will be fine, and I think I am capable of looking after myself. Besides, you’re not much use to me with a hook for an arm!’
Although the King was teasing me, in essence it was true. I was only of marginal use in a fight. The King then embraced me warmly.
‘I will miss you, Ranulf. But we will see one another in Caen, at Christmas, when I hope you will be able to show me all those mysterious things I need to see.’
‘I will miss you too, sire.’
We finally left Acre ten days later. Neither of us would ever see the Holy Land again.
The King was adamant that one day he would return. He knew that Saladin was in his mid-fifties and might not live much longer. He also knew that his peace with Saphadin had a finite life of no more than three or four years. He made it clear to Henry of Champagne, the putative King of the Holy City and its patriarch-in-waiting, that he intended to return and lead a new crusade once he had brought stability to his Empire at home.
Although it broke his heart to do so, as a symbol of his intent, he left his beloved Fauvel with Henry, asking him to look after the mighty steed until his return.
Sadly, it never came to pass.
27. A King’s Ransom
It was a lonely voyage across a wild and windy Mediterranean. We were just four poor Soldiers of Christ and the small Genoese crew of a modest trading ship who, thinking us no more than fee-paying cargo, paid us little attention.
When the time came, it was difficult to leave the King. We had been almost constant companions for over fifteen years. Little did I know that our time apart would be far longer than either of us anticipated.
My journey to Rome was uneventful, but enjoyable. I was hailed wherever I went as an heroic crusader – and one with a severe injury to prove my valour. Monks fed me and gave me shelter; families took me in and invited their friends to come and hear my stories; people all along my route gave me food and gifts. I was asked to kiss babies, and some mothers even said they would name their sons after me.
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