Holy Warriors

by Jonathan Phillips

  A SECOND MARCH ON JERUSALEM: SALADIN FIGHTS BACK

  On June 7, 1192, the Christians prepared for another assault on Jerusalem. This time progress was rapid and within four days they had reached Beit Nuba. As he led a reconnaissance mission the king caught sight of Jerusalem on the horizon—but this proved the closest he would get to his goal. So near were the Christian forces that Saladin decided to poison all the wells around the city. The sultan was highly anxious and his men feared that after the defeat at Acre, Jerusalem would fall too. The strain of holding an alliance of the Muslim Near East was immense: ever more of the sultan’s time was spent trying to convince his coreligionists to come and help, and their inadequate responses tested his remarkable powers of persuasion to the limit. As Beha ad-Din noted, there were times when he needed “to mend feelings and to enhance his authority.” Yet he could still inspire his troops, as this rousing speech shows: “Know today that you are the army of Islam and its bulwark, as you are aware that the blood of Muslims, their property and their offspring depend on your protection. There are no Muslims who can face the enemy but you. If you turn your reins away, they will roll up these lands as one rolls up a scroll. This is your responsibility.”56

  The crusader army had to pause for a month to wait for King Henry to join them and during this time there was another debate as to strategy. In reality, the arguments of the spring had not changed: the French and the main army still wanted to besiege the holy city, but Richard and the local knights did not. The king also expressed another, perhaps more selfish motive, albeit a sentiment that showed his sense of honor and an awareness of a wider political and historical spectrum. When asked why he would not march on Jerusalem he answered: “You will never see me lead a people [in an undertaking] for which I can be criticised and I do not care if I am disliked for it.” He then explained that the defenses of the holy city were said to be formidable and that Saladin could cut his supply lines to the coast: “If I were to lead an army and besiege Jerusalem and such a thing were to happen to their loss, then I would be forever blamed, shamed and less loved.” Richard argued that “we must work through those who live in this land and [also] through the advice of the Templars and the Hospitallers.”57 The fact that it was now the height of summer and water was scarce sealed the decision to turn around. Again the rank and file were despondent as they headed back to Acre.

  Buoyed by this news, Saladin seized the initiative for the first time in months, and launched a lightning attack on Jaffa. His sappers quickly undermined the walls and the town fell, which left a small garrison of Franks trapped in the citadel. The sultan’s forces blocked help coming from overland, which meant that relief could only arrive by sea. Richard rushed south as fast as he could and once at Jaffa the Christian ships paused, unsure as to whether the entire town was already in Muslim hands. One defender escaped and swam out to the crusader fleet, where he reported that if the Christians landed immediately there was still a chance for the castle to hold on. Richard urged the boats toward the shore and even before they beached he leaped into the surf, firing his crossbow as he waded to land. Beha ad-Din was present (“all this went on before my eyes”) and he described the king, red-haired, in a red tunic accompanied by a red banner rushing into the fray.58 The Itinerarium peregrinorum conveys the ferocity of his onslaught: “With no armour on his legs he threw himself into the sea first . . . and forced his way powerfully on to dry land. The Turks obstinately opposed them on the shore. . . . The outstanding king shot them indiscriminately with a crossbow he was carrying in his hand and his elite companions pursued the Turks as they fled across the beach, cutting them down. At the sight of the king they had no more spirit in them; they dare not approach him.”59 The Muslims were terrified and fled; Richard reached the citadel and had his banner unfurled on top of the wall.

  Saladin’s men were ashamed by their rout and swore revenge. At dawn on August 5, 1192, they mounted a surprise attack on the crusader camp outside the city. Richard’s force was small, but despite being outnumbered the Christians vigorously resisted enemy charges before a signal from the Lion banner triggered the crusader countercharge. Once again, Richard led from the front; his superb fighting ability caused western writers to rhapsodize about his strength and prowess: “His right hand brandished his sword with rapid strokes, slicing through the charging enemy, cutting them in two as he encountered them.”60 Amid this desperate conflict the importance of chivalric etiquette remained apparent. Saphadin so admired the king’s bravery that he sent two fine Arab horses for Richard to use in the battle. Set against the background of a holy war such a gesture seems wholly paradoxical, yet it showed the shared values of the warrior elites and the close bond between these two individuals.

  For a while it appeared the Christians would be driven back into Jaffa but again, Richard’s daring—some might say reckless—charges pushed the Muslims back. At one point he was almost swallowed up by their ranks but he slashed his way free, and when he killed an important emir, the other soldiers lost heart and a space appeared around him. For the second time in five days the Lionheart had humiliated Saladin’s troops and shown himself worthy of a place in the pantheon of great warriors.

  THE CRUSADE ENDS: DIPLOMACY AND PEACE

  At this stage the king and the sultan were like two heavyweight boxers, who after fifteen rounds of brutal pounding are so weary they lack the strength to deal the knockout blow. Both suffered from ill health and each had domestic political troubles. News of Philip’s and John’s meddling continued to arrive from the West while, in the face of multiple setbacks, Saladin’s authority was in decline. Beha ad-Din wrote that the army was “weary and showing signs of disaffection,” and mentioned tensions in the east of the sultan’s domains and disputes with the caliph of Baghdad.61

  Further negotiations took place through August, gilded by the usual diplomatic courtesies. Richard’s illness left him with, apparently, a yearning for pears and plums. The fruit—properly iced—was duly sent to him; its delivery also provided another opportunity to gather information about Christian morale and resources. For a while the possession of Ascalon was a sticking point but in the end Richard conceded. On September 2, 1192, a three-year truce was agreed whereby the Christians would keep the coastline from Jaffa to Tyre. Pilgrims could enter Jerusalem freely, although the king himself refused to visit the holy city in such circumstances.

  Many of the crusaders did, however, make the pilgrimage where they were treated with considerable courtesy by the senior Muslims. In hugely emotional scenes they were able to venerate the Holy Sepulchre, Mount Calvary, and other important sites, weeping and kissing the places where Christ had lived and died; Saladin even showed some of them the True Cross. The bishop of Salisbury had a personal meeting with the sultan. Saladin offered to grant the bishop a wish and after due reflection he answered that he would like two Latin priests and two Latin deacons to worship at the Holy Sepulchre, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and in Nazareth, where they would live off gifts made to them by visitors: Saladin graciously agreed.62

  On October 9, 1192, Richard set sail for home from Acre, although it is clear that he intended to return. “Ah Syria! I commend you to God. May the Lord God, by his command grant me the time, if it is his will that I may come to your help! For I still expect to save you.”63 Events would prove otherwise: in the course of the crusade Richard had generated a comprehensive network of enemies across Europe, a situation that required him to travel home in disguise.64 By December 1192 he reached Vienna when he was discovered. The king spent the next fifteen months as a prisoner, first in the dungeons of Duke Leopold and then those of Emperor Henry VI of Germany. Finally, on February 4, 1194, after the payment of the colossal sum of 100,000 marks, Eleanor of Aquitaine was able to welcome her son home. It was the payment of this punitive sum, so soon after the expense of the crusade, rather than the cost of the expedition itself, that has done much to create the impression that the expedition almost bankrupted the country. After
a ceremonial recoronation at Winchester Cathedral in April 1194 Richard set about restoring order in his lands. With great generosity—or misjudgment—he pardoned John for his serial misdemeanors and then set about recovering the lands in Normandy taken by King Philip. This process would embroil him for years and it was in the course of one of these campaigns that he was wounded by a crossbow bolt at Chalus-Chabrol in the Limousin. The injury became infected and gangrene claimed the most famous warrior-king in English history on April 6, 1199.

  His performance during the Third Crusade had gained him an international reputation—across both the Christian and the Muslim worlds—as a leader and as a warrior. Perhaps the testimony from the latter group is most telling; after all, they dismissed the majority of westerners as greedy, unclean barbarians. Ibn al-Athir characterized him thus: “The king was an outstanding man of his time for bravery, cunning, steadfastness and endurance. In him the Muslims were tried by an unprecedented disaster.”65 Richard was not simply a violent lout. Wars were not just won on the battlefield, but by planning and administrative competence as well. Without doubt his military daring inspired his men, but alongside this, his meticulous attention to detail and strategic caution created the circumstances in which his bravery could shine through. He was also a keen diplomat; at times, such as in his dealings with King Philip, he showed no subtlety at all, but his carefully nurtured relationship with Saphadin constituted a vital subplot to the progress of the Third Crusade.

  In terms of outcome, the expedition failed to achieve its ultimate aim of the recovery of Jerusalem. It did, however, provide the Franks with a tolerably firm hold on the coastline and an economically viable territory. With Cyprus, Acre, and Tyre in Christian hands there existed a series of genuine bridgeheads for future crusades. Compared to the situation in late 1187 when Tyre survived thanks only to the chance arrival of Conrad of Montferrat, the position had been transformed. With regard to the development of crusading, apart from the raw power of the preaching bull Audita tremendi, the Third Crusade was notable for the dominant role played by the secular monarchs and the low-key involvement of the papacy.

  THE DEATH OF SALADIN

  Richard’s departure from the Holy Land was a cause of much fear in the Frankish East, but the existence of a truce and the king’s promise to return offered a breathing space.66 Ironically, had the king remained in the Levant over the winter of 1193—as he intended at one stage—circumstances would have presented him with a tremendous opportunity to reverse the gains made by Saladin. On March 4, 1193, worn out by six years of almost continuous campaigning, the sultan died in Damascus, where his simple wooden tomb can still be seen today. He was the hero of the Islamic world. The capture of Jerusalem was the apogee of his lengthy career and this gave him the credibility to survive the setbacks at Acre, Arsuf, and Jaffa. He could argue that he had seen off the challenge of the three greatest monarchs of the West and that Islam’s third most important city remained in Muslim hands. Had Saladin lived, once the three-year truce expired, he would have been free to renew the jihad against the settlers. Arguably his greatest achievement was to gather and then to hold together—just about—a broad coalition of the Muslim Near East in the face of increasingly poor military results. Saladin was not a great battlefield general and his triumph at Hattin was down more to Frankish foolishness than his own skill. His gifts were more as a man of huge personal charisma and consummate political ability. While he was undoubtedly a pious individual determined to accomplish the obligations of the jihad, he did not shrink from conflict with his fellow Muslims—and not just the heretical Shi’a, but also his political opponents in the Sunni world. His flagrant disregard of Nur ad-Din’s instructions during the early 1170s was redolent of spectacular self-interest, and this aspect of his career must always be borne in mind in the course of any wider discussion. Any final assessment might see him as primarily motivated by religion, yet not blind to political advantage, a man who used all the weapons at his disposal to draw his fellow Muslims together and to achieve Islam’s greatest success against the crusaders to date. The chronicler Abd al-Latif visited him in late 1192 and wrote these words soon after his death: “I found a great king who inspired both respect and affection, far and near, easy-going and willing to grant requests. His companions took him as a model. . . . [When he died] men grieved for him as they grieve for prophets. I have seen no other ruler for whose death the people mourned, for he was loved by good and bad, Muslim and unbeliever alike.”67

  “AN EXAMPLE OF AFFLICTION AND THE WORKS OF HELL”

  The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, 1204

  On January 8, 1198, Lotario de Conti di Segni was elected Pope Innocent III. At thirty-seven years old he was one of the youngest men ever to hold the title; during his dynamic pontificate (1198–1216) crusading reached new levels of intensity and diversity, both in theory and in practice: the enemies of the Church—inside and outside Christendom—were identified, challenged, and, in some cases, defeated. Innocent was convinced that the faithful could overcome the loss of Jerusalem and the failure of the Third Crusade. He believed passionately that God had called the crusades and that it was the duty of all Christians, not just the warrior classes, to support the true cause. Yet for the crusades to succeed, people had to win divine favor and to do this required a society purified from sin. This ambitious agenda often brought him into conflict with secular powers and, at times, Innocent’s desire far overreached his means but he, of all popes, had a clear aim in mind: “to eliminate from the Holy Land the filth of the pagans.”1

  Innocent’s pontificate saw crusading unleashed in new directions: against heretics in southern France (the Albigensian Crusade), against political opponents of the papacy in southern Italy, and, more by accident than design, against the Christian Byzantine Empire, an event that culminated in the horrific sack of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade. He also encouraged crusading in northeastern Europe and Spain, as well as the Holy Land. So great was contemporary enthusiasm for holy war that one of the most legendary episodes of the medieval age, the Children’s Crusade— a mass migration of the young intent upon reclaiming Jerusalem—also took place during his pontificate.

  THE PROCESSION IN ROME, MAY 1212

  Events in Rome during May 1212 reveal Innocent’s way of thinking and provide a truly startling demonstration of his understanding of a Christian society working through God to defeat His enemies—on this occasion in Spain.2 The struggle against the Iberian Muslims was at a critical point and the pope knew that King Alfonso VIII of Castile planned to fight a major battle in southern Spain the week after Pentecost on May 20. By way of securing divine favor for the Christians, Innocent decided to stage an enormous procession in Rome.

  Records show that Innocent ordered the entire population of Rome—probably about fifty thousand people—to gather on May 16: men, women, and the male clergy were instructed to assemble at three churches. Mass was sung and the processions set out. Each party marched behind a particular cross; nuns led the secular women, the men were led by Hospitaller brothers, and the clergy headed by monks. No one was permitted to wear gold, jewelry, or silk; everyone was to walk barefoot, to pray and to repent of their own sins and the sins of man, and to ask for salvation. As thousands of voices rose and fell in prayer and lamentation it must have created an amazing ebb and flow of sound. The three processions snaked their way through the streets of Rome and channeled their spiritual energy toward the heavens; eventually they reached the open space in front of the Lateran Church where all fell silent. Meanwhile the pope, the bishops, and the cardinals emerged from the chapel of the Sancta Sanctorum bearing a relic of the True Cross and then joined the waiting crowd in the Lateran square. Innocent preached a sermon that almost certainly emphasized Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and explained how a crusader would follow Christ and serve and repay Him through his efforts on earth. The assembly then divided. The women went to the Church of Santa Croce where they heard Mass and a prayer for Go
d’s intercession on behalf of his warriors in Spain, after which they dispersed. The men entered the Lateran Church, still in their subgroups of clergy and laymen, where Innocent presided over Mass; next they went to Santa Croce where the intercessory prayer was said to end the proceedings. Once home, unless sick, everyone was to fast on bread and water. While we can presume that children, the aged, and the infirm did not participate, and that some individuals must have chosen not to join in, the likelihood was that the majority of Rome’s inhabitants were involved. For Innocent even to conceive of the idea of directing an entire city to pray for a conflict taking place hundreds of miles away (and one with no direct Roman interest in it) shows the spectacular breadth of his vision of Christian brotherhood. Praying for crusaders overseas was not an innovation, but this rigidly prescribed focus by one city was indeed a novelty. No realistic parallel can be drawn in the western world today; maybe a major state funeral will interest large parts of a capital’s population or perhaps protests against a particular event, such as kidnappings in South America, have a similar effect, but the idea of trying to compel an entire city to gather for a higher cause is outside of our experience.