by Douglas Boyd
Ignoring pleas from Philip Augustus to hasten to Acre with all possible speed and not waste time fighting Christians, albeit of the Orthodox rite,23 Richard pursued Isaac to Famagusta, his army travelling partly on land and partly by sea. Isaac retreated to Kantara in the north of the island, placing his faith in the reputed impregnability of the fortress-port of Kyrenia and the castles of Kantara, St Hilarion and Buffavento, which, although ruined, are still impressive works of fortification today. The inland city of Nicosia was among those that surrendered without bloodshed. At some point Richard fell ill, probably from malaria, which had troubled him for years, leaving it to Guy de Lusignan to command the force that captured Kyrenia. Isaac’s queen and their daughter had taken refuge in the castle of Kantara, but when she saw the army approaching, the daughter came out to throw the castle, her mother and herself on Richard’s mercy.
Realising that all was lost, Isaac had fled to the furthest point on the island, at Cape St Andrew on the extremity of the Karpas Peninsula, where he finally surrendered on 21 May, pleading with his captors not to treat him like a common criminal by putting him in irons. As one king to another, Richard agreed, but had chains made of gold and silver before delivering his prisoner thus fettered as a hostage to the Knights of St John, who kept the self-appointed emperor of Cyprus confined at their castle of Margat in the principality of Antioch for three long years. Before sailing away, Richard entrusted the island to Robert of Turnham and Richard of Camville as regents in his absence.
Isaac’s daughter, who was referred to simply as la demoiselle de Chypre, joined Joanna and Berengaria for the rest of the voyage, arriving at the siege of Acre on 1 June and returning to Europe with them.24 It was, for her, the start of an adventurous life that reads like the plot of a novel. After being bought from the Plantagenets as part of Richard’s ransom agreement negotiated in 1193, she was released – as was her father – into the care of Duke Leopold V of Austria, who was a distant relative of her branch of the Comnenus family. In 1199 she was recorded as living in Provence, where she met Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, who was then married to Joanna, the former queen of Sicily. Joanna was pregnant by Raymond for the second time but, shortly after what one supposes was a happy reunion with her erstwhile travelling companion, Countess Joanna was dumped by Raymond, who set up home with the Cypriot princess.
That did not last: in 1202 she married a bastard son of the Count of Flanders named Thierry, with whom she set sail, ostensibly on the Fourth Crusade. While the main body of the European crusaders forgot their sworn oaths and turned aside to sack the Christian city of Constantinople, thus destroying Europe’s bulwark against the Muslim Turks, the two adventurers headed for Cyprus with the ambition of reclaiming Isaac Comnenus’ realm in the name of his daughter. In the interim Richard had, although briefly styling himself ‘king of Cyprus’, sold the island to the Knights Templar for 100,000 bezants, 40,000 down and the balance on a mortgage. Unfortunately, the Templars’ rule of the island proved as unpopular as Isaac Comnenus’ had been, the heavy taxation of the islanders causing a series of uprisings. These culminated in Nicosia on 5 April 1192, when the Templars were forced to take refuge in the citadel, emerging to beat off their attackers in a savage combat in which they narrowly missed being wiped out. Wisely, they returned the island to Richard, who sold it again – to Guy de Lusignan, the exiled king of Jerusalem, under whose descendants it knew comparative peace and prosperity for many years. The impromptu invasion by Isaac Comnenus’ daughter and her lover failed dismally. They were last reported seeking asylum in Armenia.
NOTES
1. For the balance of Professor Pryor’s paper on these ships, see www.cogandgalleyships.com/blog/497372-ships-of-the-crusade-era-part-11/
2. William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. R.B.C. Huygens (Turnhout: Brepols, 1986), p. 927.
3. Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, 1095–1127, ed. and trans. F.R. Ryan (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee, 1969), Vol 2, p. 239.
4. Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta Henrici, Vol 2, p. 126.
5. Ibid, p. 133.
6. Gerald of Wales, De Principis Instructione, p. 282.
7. Roger of Howden, Chronica, Vol 3, p. 99.
8. A mark was at that time worth two-thirds of a pound sterling, or 66 pence.
9. E.R. Labande, ‘Les filles d’Aliénor d’Aquitaine – Etude Comparative’, Cahiers de Civilisation Mediévale, XXIX (1986), p. 109.
10. Pierre of Longtoft, The Chronicle of Pierre de Longtoft, ed. T. Wright, Rolls Series 47 (London: Longmans, 1886–88), Vol 2, p. 49.
11. Personal communication from Professor Pryor, who points out that there are four contemporary, but mutually contradictory, accounts of the voyage from Messina. Even in the same account, a given ship may be referred to as an esnecca and a nef, plural nes or otherwise, just for the sake of rhyme.
12. Gertwagen, ‘Harbours and Facilities’, p. 97.
13. Joinville and Villehardouin, Chronicles of the Crusades, ed. M.R.B. Shaw (London: Penguin Classics, 1963), p. 196.
14. Gertwagen, ‘Harbours and Facilities’, p. 98, quoting Cristoforo Buondelmonte, and p. 104.
15. Alexander Neckham, Alexandri Neckham De Naturis Rerum Libri Duo with the Poem of the Same Author, De Laudibus Sapientiae, ed. T. Wright, Rolls Series 34 (London: Longmans, 1863), facsimile edition (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2010), p. 183.
16. Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta Henrici, Vol 2, p. 162.
17. Gertwagen, ‘Harbours and Facilities’, pp. 97–8.
18. Hyland, The Medieval Warhorse, p. 146.
19. Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta Henrici, Vol 2, p. 163.
20. Ibid, Vol 2, p. 164.
21. Personal communication from Professor Pryor.
22. Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta Henrici, Vol 2, p. 165–6.
23. J. Bradbury, Philip Augustus (London: Longmans, 1998), p. 89.
24. Roger of Howden, Chronica, Vol 3, p. 111.
15
If it be God’s Will …
On 5 May 1191 the Plantagenet fleet sailed away from Famagusta after Richard had restored the former laws of the island under the less tyrannical rule of Byzantium before Isaac Comnenus’ coup d’état. He arrived at Tyre in a flotilla of twenty-five of the fastest ships, with the slower transports following and several of them lost en route. On the orders of Conrad, the garrison of the city denied entrance to the new arrivals, obliging them to camp outside the walls, which cannot have put Richard in a good mood.
Setting sail down the coast for Acre, the lookouts aboard his flagship Trenchemer espied a very large ship flying the French flag. Since Philip had no such vessel in his fleet, the faster galleys approached to board her – at which the crew took up arms, revealing themselves as Saracen reinforcements for the garrison at Acre who initiated combat using arrows and Greek fire. After a short and bloody fight the Saracen ship was rammed or otherwise damaged so severely that it sank, to Richard’s great satisfaction. There were allegedly 1,500 men aboard, all of whom drowned with the exception of the few taken hostage.1 The crusader flotilla arrived at the siege of Acre two days later, on 8 June 1191 – a week after Joanna, Berengaria and Isaac’s daughter, who had been escorted there by another flotilla.2
With the German contingent having largely aborted the crusade after their emperor Frederik Barbarossa drowned in Turkey and the Sicilians having departed after the death of William II, plus all the other departures, the brunt of the recent fighting had fallen on Philip’s men. So, despite the disputes between the two kings on Sicily, Philip had good reason initially to be glad to see the Plantagenet reinforcements. The great rejoicing in the crusader camp produced a corresponding gloom in the garrison, watching from the city walls as all these well-armed, relatively healthy and well-equipped European knights and foot soldiers disembarked on the open beach to the south of the city, instead of the 1,500 reinforcements they had been expecting to sail into the harbour.3
Philip had succeeded in damaging the
city walls with his largest catapult called Malvoisin, or Bad Neighbour. But it and the siege engines of the Templars and Hospitallers had not created any breach large enough for an attack to break through into the city. In the camp many men were ill from the midsummer heat, which made a mail cotte uncomfortable even when covered by a surcoat and turned a helmet into an oven around the head. Among the victims of the lack of hygiene and bad food was Philip Augustus himself, suffering from what they called arnaldia. Later known as la suette in France, this was possibly a viral contagious fever with copious and debilitating sweating and skin rashes, and which caused the nails and hair to fall out, lips to peel painfully and whole strips of skin to fall away from the body. During several medieval and later epidemics in England it was called ‘the sweating syknes’ and last appeared in northern France in 1906.
Scenting a new source of profit in all the hungry bellies Richard brought with him, both the Pisan and Genoese merchants wished to swear allegiance to him. Knowing the bonds between Philip and the Genoese, he sent them away empty-handed, allowing the Pisans to do homage, which placed them under his protection. His siege engines, shipped dismantled from Europe and swiftly erected near the walls, proved more effective in breaching those walls than had Philip’s, which were burned down by Greek fire at the Accursed Tower whilst left unmanned.4 A worse blow to Philip’s pride was Richard’s poaching of his locally recruited mercenaries by offering them 4 gold bezants a month, as against the 3 bezants Philip had been paying them.
Morale was already at a low ebb: on occasions groups of besiegers cheered a telling sortie against crusaders from another country or who spoke another language.5 One of the sorties from the city reached as far as the ‘red light area’ of the crusader camp. But hostilities were not continuous: in the way of medieval warfare, the kings and nobles took time off for sport. On one occasion when Philip Augustus’ white falcon flew into the city, he sent a messenger offering a reward of 1,000 bezants for its return, but the bird was apparently considered more valuable as meat by whoever caught it. As just one proof that business was still business, the debt contracted by Jean de Chastenay on Sicily was repaid by his son Gautier the month that he died, and the pawned valuables were returned to him by the lender.6
During quieter periods, courtesy visits were exchanged between the knights of both sides. In the Saracen camp Richard was known as malik al-Inkitar – meaning ‘the king of England’, Inkitar being an Arabic transliteration of ‘Angleterre’, which the Muslims had heard used by speakers of lingua franca in the East. Despatching a Moroccan prisoner under a flag of truce, Richard asked for an interview with Saladin, to get the measure of his adversary. He perhaps also wanted to impress him with his red hair and tall stature, compared with Saladin’s swarthy skin, short stature and slight build. The historian Baha al-Din, who was a member of Saladin’s court at the time, commented that Richard’s intention was to reconnoitre the weaknesses of the Saracen positions. Instead, Saladin sent his brother al-‘Adil, known to the crusaders as Saphadin, to a meeting with the message: ‘Kings meet only after an accord, for it is unthinkable for them to wage war once they know each other and have broken bread together.’7
It was soon Richard’s turn to succumb to la suette, so that for a while both kings were ill. Richard also suffered a return of the malaria that had troubled him for years. Both diseases were then common in Europe, let alone in the unsanitary hell of a midsummer siege camp in the Middle East. It is also extremely probable that all the crusaders had brought with them one or more species of parasitic intestinal worms. Recent state-of-the-art analysis of the soil excavated from two crusader-period latrines at Acre has also revealed evidence of rampant amoebic dysentery.8 Cholera might break out at any moment and rats feeding on the refuse and corpses brought the risk of plague. To the illnesses caused by lack of sanitation and contamination of drinking water must be added severe, and sometimes fatal, fevers from ticks and sand flies biting men who slept on the ground, whether under cover or not. And wounds, however slight, were liable to go septic, leading to gangrene and death.
Night and day, the crusaders catapulted into the city missiles of stone and iron and fire, as well as living and dead prisoners and putrid carcases of animals designed to spread disease among the defenders, who in turn operated counter-batteries of catapults, often returning the same missiles, and raining down on the besiegers a hail of arrows, stones and fire. At night the thudding of catapults and rams, the yells of exultation and screams of the wounded made sleep impossible for those who were not exhausted. The elegant pavilions of the nobles gave some respite from the clouds of flies breeding in the open latrines, and the sand flies and mosquitoes that bit every inch of exposed flesh, but many men slept in the open, even on the ground, despite the risk of scrub typhus. Nor was rank any protection; those who died included many of the nobles.
Whether through sickness or to spite Philip Augustus, Richard refused to take part in the attack on the city after Saladin’s nephew Taqi tried to break through to its relief on 3 July, when the wall was breached. The unsupported French attack was driven back by the defenders’ use of Greek fire. Philip then had a relapse of la suette, but nevertheless insisted on being carried on an armoured litter to within crossbow range of the walls, so that he could take pot shots at defenders incautious enough to show themselves, as Richard was also later to do.
More to the point, the catapults and siege towers brought from England were causing so much damage to the walls that desperate people were throwing themselves off the battlements. Eight days after the failed French attack, Richard’s men made a breach and attacked, but were likewise driven off. By 4 July, when some spokesmen of Richard were in Saladin’s camp requesting fresh fruit, sherbets and snow to cool his drinks, the city of Acre had been cut off, except for the intermittent blockade-runners and one relief by land, for nearly two years. Its inhabitants were literally starving, infants and old people dying of thirst. When messages reached Saladin that the garrison could no longer hold and had made an offer of surrender, he wept bitter tears and sent heralds through his camp to summon his emirs for one final attack on the crusader army. The initiative came to nothing because they refused to take part, considering such an attack as a useless waste of life.9
Relations between the Plantagenet and French armies deteriorated still further. Philip adopted Conrad as a curialis – a member of his court – and possibly on his advice, dunned Richard for half of Cyprus in accordance with the pact they had sworn in France and renewed at Messina. After the death of Count Philip of Flanders, Richard retorted that, since the agreement covered all the gains of both kings during the crusade, he would expect in return half of Flanders and half of all the possessions of all Philip’s other vassals who had died on the expedition. To put an end to this pointless haggling where neither would give way, the masters of the Templars and Hospitallers were appointed to rule on the claims – and there the matter rested, in the hands of the lawyers, so to speak.10
In that age of superstition and ignorance, rumours were rife. One, which may have been true, was of a Christian spy living inside the city who wrote news of events there, the state of morale, food supplies and weapons, and gave warning of planned sorties. His letters were wrapped around arrows and fired over the walls to land in the siege camp, each bearing the authentication formula In nomine patris et filii et spiritu santi [sic] – in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Since his identity was never established before or after the siege ended, no one could say whether this was just a rumour or the work of a spy caught and executed by the garrison or killed by chance when the crusaders eventually entered the city.11 About the only thing on which Richard and Philip could now agree was that, when the English army was making a major attack on the walls, the French would guard the landward ditch against any incursion by Saladin’s investing army, and vice versa.
Superstition and ignorance also preyed heavily when a total solar eclipse on 23 June lasting three hours made the who
le sky so dark that the stars were seen shining brightly. This was taken as an evil omen and caused great terror in the Christian camp, except by the teams of sappers labouring in the cramped tunnels beneath the walls of Acre, who were unaware of the event. Their technique was to excavate a tunnel to a spot exactly beneath the foundations of the walls and there hack out a large cavern whose roof was supported by beams and props. When this was considered sufficiently large, the props were liberally smeared with pitch. Pig carcases, barrels of oil and other inflammable material were hauled into the cavern and set alight. When the props burned through, the roof fell in, bringing down the wall above it. At least, that was the theory. The Saracens naturally suspected what was going on and dug counter-mines to break into the crusader tunnels and kill the sappers in them. In one case, when the counter-mine broke through, the crusader sappers were surprised to hear themselves addressed in lingua franca, for the ‘enemy’ were Christian prisoners labouring underground in fetters. Furious to find that these slaves had been helped to escape along the mine back to the crusader camp, the garrison then blocked both tunnels.12 After another team of sappers succeeded in undermining a significant section of wall near the Accursed Tower, Philip’s marshal Albéric Clément led many French knights into the assault, proclaiming, ‘Aut hodie moriar, aut in Achon, Deo volente, ingrediar.’ This day I shall perish, or, God willing, I shall enter Acre.13
