Lionheart
Page 22
11. The story of Mary, heavily pregnant with twins, travelling 60-plus miles across difficult terrain to Judean Bethlehem, was introduced into the gospels in spurious fulfilment of a prophecy by Ezekiel that the Messiah would be born of the House of David, i.e. in Judea.
12. Kelly, Eleanor of Aquitaine, p. 297.
13. Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta Henrici, Vol 2, p. 236.
14. Ibid.
15. Ralph of Diceto, Opera Historica, Vol 1, p. 434.
16. Richard, A., Histoire, Vol 2, p. 214.
17. Ambroise, Estoire de la guerre sainte, p. 393.
18. Roger of Howden, Chronica, Vol 3, cxxxv.
19. Ambroise, Estoire de la guerre sainte, p. 394.
17
Blood on the Sand, Blood in the Mud
On 22 August, when the work of disposing of those thousands of mutilated corpses must still been have ongoing, Richard handed responsibility for the reconstruction and defence of Acre to Bertram III of Verdun, who had faithfully served Henry II as sheriff and justiciar in England and also played an important part in Henry’s conquest of Ireland. His co-castellan was Étienne de Longchamp, yet another brother of the bizarre bishop of Ely. Leaving them in charge of the city that had cost so many lives, he headed south towards Jaffa, the port he considered essential to a successful siege of Jerusalem and holding it afterwards – as did Saladin.
The progress of Richard’s army of some 20,000 men followed the coast around the bay of Acre in the direction of Caiaphas. Scouts brought news that Saladin’s main force was moving south further inland and no sooner had the long column of crusaders set out than Saracen skirmishers commanded by al-‘Adil attacked the left flank and rear – riding in close at intervals on their nimble Arab and Turkmene mounts to loose arrows and throw spears before wheeling away out of bow-shot in the hope of luring the crusaders into a trap. For the marching men, the worst thing was the harassing fire of arrows. Unlike the wooden longbows of European archers, which were too long and unwieldy for combat use by the rider of a galloping horse, the Saracens used shorter recurved composite bone-and-sinew bows. Their range was somewhat less than that of the longbow, but they were far easier to manage in the saddle, the rider using both hands to knock an arrow to the string and fire it while controlling his mount by the pressure of his knees, even when heading away in the famous Parthian shot. The speed at which he kept moving throughout made him a difficult target for return fire.
Aware that the column could be attacked in force at any moment, Richard formed the mass of men and horses in such a way that it could swiftly turn left and face any attack, which was bound to be coming from the landward side. He divided his cavalry into twelve formations of 100 knights, positioning the Hospitallers, commanded by Brother Garnier of Nablus, in the rear and the Templars in the lead of the column under Robert de Sablé, who had been elected their Grand Master because of his record fighting the Muslims in Spain and Portugal. For linguistic reasons, the various contingents with a common language were kept intact, using their own tongues as the language of command, as was done in previous crusades: Poitevins and Gascons followed the Templars, the Bretons followed them; then came the Anglo-Norman knights, and the Flemings under Jacques d’Avesnes riding just in front of the Hospitallers. Commanding the vanguard was Guy de Lusignan; Richard placed Hugues III of Burgundy in command of the rearguard and positioned himself in the centre, from where he could most easily control the whole column. The vulnerable baggage train was placed on the right flank between the main column and the seashore.
The landward flank was composed of crossbowmen and archers, whose job was to break up the Muslim raids before they came too close. It was for a situation like this that all those thousands of arrows had been shipped out from England, for it would have been too dangerous to send men to recover undamaged arrows, as was often done after a battle in Europe. Keeping station just offshore was the crusader fleet, providing supplies at overnight stops and evacuation and a semblance of care for the daily quotas of wounded.
In this complicated military exercise Richard was in his element, controlling his large army on the march at battle-readiness. A recurring problem was restraining any impulse among the knights, unused to such strict discipline, to ride off in pursuit of the skirmishers, whose attacks were particularly difficult to bear in the early morning, when the sun was in the crusaders’ eyes. Despite the legends of folk-hero archers like Robin Hood and William Tell, able to split a willow wand or transfix an apple at extreme range, the military use of longbows was to provide a barrage of simultaneously released arrows that came down on a closely packed body of advancing enemy troops, turning a heavy cavalry charge, for example, into a chaotic confusion of wounded, terrified, plunging horses. Hitting fast-moving individual Saracen riders with individual shots was far more difficult. Conversely, every Saracen arrow seemed to claim a victim in the close-packed ranks they were targeting.
The crusaders marched only in the relative cool between dawn and noon, before stopping at a source of clean water and setting up a well-guarded camp for the night so as to minimise the risk of heatstroke that claimed lives at Hattin. With the constant need to fend off raids by Al-‘Adil’s mounted archers, progress was slow: on some days they advanced barely a mile. At Caiaphas on the southern tip of the bay, they found the walls torn down and the inhabitants fled inland. From there onward, they travelled through a land of scorched earth, with fortresses and crops destroyed. One lightning attack by the Saracens in greater than usual force saw Hugues of Burgundy’s rearguard briefly isolated from the main force until Richard’s generalship and speed of reaction succeeded in hacking a way through to them. It was about this time that Guillaume des Barres so distinguished himself in combat that Richard forgave him their previous differences.1 The constant skirmishing attacks were not an end in themselves, but intended to wear down and, more importantly, slow down the army’s progress while Saladin took a longer route inland to set a trap into which Richard must march. At one point, al-‘Adil came under a flag of truce to parley, although whether this was a genuine negotiation or yet another delaying tactic is open to question.
Principal cities and battles of the Third Crusade, with dates of the march from Acre to Arsuf and Jaffa
On the last day of the month of August the army was nearing the ruins of Herod the Great’s magnificent seaside palace, port and city of Caesarea Maritima, a small part of which near the port had been re-fortified by King Baldwin I in the First Crusade after slaughtering all the native inhabitants. This walled complex, less than a quarter the size of Herod’s city, was currently occupied by the enemy. It was usual practice in medieval warfare to fill in or poison any wells that might be used by the enemy and Saladin had also chosen to encamp his army on the banks of a nearby river in the hope of denying to the Christian host its much-needed water. With his troops and their animals thus suffering severely from thirst, Richard divided the army into cohorts and despatched the first wave under Jacques d’Avesnes to attack the blocking party at a ford. The charge was successful, but in the carnage hundreds of men on both sides were killed.2 Commanding the second wave, Richard then charged the centre of the enemy force and broke through to the river in a welter of blood and violence, so that his entire army was able to cross and replenish water supplies before moving on.3
However, the stress of the march was telling, especially on the infantry, so many of whom had to double as beasts of burden as more and more horses were killed: their duties were alternated, with men being moved from the exposed left flank to the baggage train for a few hours’ respite as porters before being moved back. The ‘armour’ of most infantrymen consisted of leather caps and leather jerkins padded with multiple layers of cloth, worn despite the heat. On 2 September Baha al-Din noted how some of these men had up to ten Muslim arrows sticking in their jerkins and seemed untroubled by them.4 Horses were the best targets for the Muslim archers because they had little protection and even a non-fatal arrow wound caused the animal that
had been hit to plunge about desperately in an attempt to dislodge the arrow, panicking other horses nearby and knocking down any man who got in the way. So many horses were killed that their owners were selling the carcases to the sergeants-at-arms, who were butchering them and selling the meat on to the common soldiery. When Richard heard of this, he decreed that any knight giving a carcase for the men to consume would have his mount replaced by another of equal worth from his own string of remounts.5
Saladin made his next stand 10 miles north of Jaffa, 3 miles inland from the coast, near the sea-cliff fortress of Arsuf (modern Tel Arshuf) and the ruins of the town of Arsuf. His right flank was protected by a forest impenetrable to the crusader cavalry and his left flank by broken ground. Mounted scouts under Henry II of Champagne brought this news to Richard early in the morning of 7 September 1191. He sent heralds along the column, announcing an imminent major engagement. With the marching column looking left, the two armies were in clear view of each other, except that once again the sun was in the crusaders’ eyes.
Saladin’s plan was the traditional Saracen one of making repeated feigned advances and retreats to provoke the crusaders into breaking ranks and then sending in a massed cavalry charge to exploit the disorder. At about 9 a.m. his infantry began tormenting the crusader infantry screen with a hail of arrows and spears accompanied by psychological warfare, the clashing of brass instruments, the blowing of trumpets and screams of the attackers. At intervals, this was followed up by mounted archers passing through the Saracen infantry to harass the marching column of crusaders before rapidly wheeling away out of range.
As the column continued slowly to move south, some elements found themselves in hand-to-hand combat but Richard forbade any attempt by his cavalry to ride out in response to the Saracen attacks. Discipline was imposed by a mobile ‘military police squadron’ of knights under Hugues of Burgundy because waiting for the king’s command to hit the enemy army when it had exhausted both energy and much weaponry went against the grain for knights who prided themselves on never receiving a blow without immediate retaliation. Having to watch increasing numbers of their horses falling victim to the rain of arrows made them reasonably question further delay that might leave them with too few surviving destriers to mount a heavy cavalry charge. Anything less would have been fatal.
After several hours of this, discipline was failing at the rear of the column among the infantry who had to stop, take aim and shoot each time an attack came in from the Saracen right wing that was curled around to attack them from the rear, then hasten to catch up with their comrades. Seeing this, the Hospitaller commander sent a messenger to Richard pleading for permission to go over to the attack. This was refused but, as often in combat, the ‘man on the spot’ decided to ignore orders from his commander-in-chief who was some distance away and appeared not to comprehend the local situation. When many of Saladin’s mounted archers dismounted to step up the pressure on the broken ranks of the crusaders in the rear of the column, Brother Garnier seized the moment of their vulnerability and gave the order for the Hospitaller knights to charge. Whilst rare, this sort of insubordination was usually punished in the religious orders. The Templar commander of the palace at Acre, Jacques de Ravane was not only defrocked, his horse and accoutrement confiscated, he was also placed in irons for leading an unsanctioned and unsuccessful foray against the Muslims between Nazareth and Tiberias.6 Lesser infringements of the Rule saw Hospitallers punished with la septaine or la quarantaine – seven or forty days of eating alone and being whipped in front of the other brothers twice weekly.7
Hearing the noise of the Hospitallers’ charge – the thundering hooves, whinneying of horses and screams of wounded men – Richard realised that the Muslims would surround the knights with Brother Garnier and wipe them out. This was the moment Saladin had been waiting for, but before the enemy could take advantage of the Hospitallers’ impetuosity, Richard took an instant decision. If he threw the rest of his cavalry after the Hospitallers, it could be a fatal mistake, so he despatched the Breton and Angevin knights against Saladin’s temporarily weakened right flank and himself led a third charge of the Anglo-Norman knights, wheeling around the right flank of the column and driving deep into the Saracen main force, sowing disorder and panic in its ranks that turned into a rout which not even the arrival in the field of Saladin’s own elite mounted bodyguard, distinguished by a yellow silk sash worn over the breastplate, could halt.
The Muslim army broke and fled, pursued by Richard’s cavalry, but warily and not too far into the hinterland. By nightfall, the Muslim camp was being looted and Richard’s men were inside the fortress of Arsuf, putting all they found to the sword. The chroniclers claimed that 40,000 of the enemy were killed that day, but body counts, even in modern wars, are notoriously unreliable. Nevertheless, Arsuf was indubitably a major victory that cost Saladin dearly. Nor were Richard’s losses negligible, however: Saracen scavengers visiting the battlefield after the Christians had moved on counted more than 100 dead Frankish warhorses.8 Among the crusader dead was Jacques d’Avesnes, whose horse had been killed under him and whose body was said to be surrounded by the corpses of fifteen Saracens he had killed before being hacked to death.9
Saladin withdrew after this defeat from Caesarea, Jaffa and Ashkelon, with his garrisons literally demolishing the walls and every building of the fortress-cities before they left. Seeing the desolation of these defenceless cities, Richard rode back to Acre and – in the chroniclers’ words – ‘overturned the tables of the money-changers’ to hire a reported 20,000 more Turcopole mercenaries and lead them south to re-build the abandoned cities. Saladin had withdrawn inland to demolish Ramlah and continue to Jerusalem, whose defences, damaged during the siege of 1187, urgently needed repair. Had Richard been more flexible at this stage and moved fast, he might have reached Jerusalem and taken the city in a short, sharp attack. However, he was fixated on securing Jaffa first and let the opportunity slip.
In October 1191 morale plummeted in his army as he concentrated on refortifying the walls of Jaffa and the citadel on its hill overlooking the harbour. The arrival both by sea and by land of many of the whores from Acre to cater to the men’s sexual needs must have raised a few spirits. This was noted disapprovingly by Muslim observers and Ambroise judged that the customers thereby forfeited the merit of the pilgrimage.10
Labouring is a task often imposed on soldiers, but rarely accepted with enthusiasm. While the rank-and-file could be coerced, the knights refused to participate because they considered physical labour beneath them, although on occasion the king himself was to be seen stripped to the waist and labouring among the men to inspire them to greater efforts. Scouting out the enemy on one occasion, Richard’s small group was surprised by a squadron of Saracens while they were still asleep and his life was saved by Guillaume des Préaux yelling that he was malik Rik and drawing the attackers away after him.11 It was about this time that al-‘Adil, asked by Richard to provide some musical entertainment, arrived not with a young male singer but a woman, who sang and accompanied herself on the oud – a forerunner of the European lute, the name of which is probably derived from al-oud. Ambroise records that Richard greatly enjoyed the performance, and paid no heed to the general feeling in the army that it was wrong to have personal relationships with individual Saracens – an accusation among many others levelled at him during the captivity in Germany.
Once Jaffa was secured, Richard moved inland on 15 November to Ramlah, in the neighbourhood of which skirmishes were fought on 25 November and 3 December, but no major engagement, Saladin’s main force being in Jerusalem. On 8 December, the crusader army retired into winter quarters to get its collective breath back, and Richard spent Christmas at Latrun in the shadow of the Judean hills, not moving against the enemy until 28 December. The crusaders from Europe had perhaps little idea of winter conditions in the Judean mountains, where the author has on occasion been stuck in a long queue of motor vehicles unable to move through thick sno
w on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but the poulains present – Templars, Hospitallers and others – must have warned them. They also warned Richard that in setting out to besiege the Holy City, he risked being caught in a pincer between the garrison and an Egyptian army that was encamped on the hills around the city.12
Even at lower altitude climbing up off the coastal plain, the army had to contend with Saladin’s scorched earth tactics, leaving them with neither foraging for their animals nor shelter from the weather while fighting off harassing raids in torrential rain that made the muddy ground, churned up by thousands of hooves, into a slippery obstacle course for both foot soldiers and the knights who were obliged to dismount and lead their palfreys as they struggled through the mud. Incessant downpours made the basic rations of biscuit and pork inedible; the loss of many horses from malnutrition and cold made many knights worry that the army would soon be in no condition to advance, let alone attack a city. On 3 January they reached Beit Nuba, which they bowdlerised to Bêtenoble – or ‘noble animal’ – some 12 miles from Jerusalem, where the castle built by William of Tyre in 1132 had been reduced to rubble.13
Sporadic negotiations in Arabic took place between Al-‘Adil and Humphrey of Toron, but there was never any hope that Saladin would give up any more than the narrow strip of the littoral that could be defended by the cities and fortresses already taken and refortified by the crusaders. As the author of Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi put it:
For the Templars and the Hospitallers, as well as the pullani of that land, looking more acutely at what might happen in the future, dissuaded King Richard from going on to Jerusalem at that time. For, if the city were besieged and they pressed their attack with full strength against Saladin and those who were enclosed with him, the army of the Turks which was outside [the city] … would make sudden attacks on the besiegers … [and there would be] forays from those besieged within. Even if they succeeded in their desire and gained the city of Jerusalem … the people who were most keen to complete their pilgrimage would each without delay return home, for they were already wearied beyond measure by the pressures of everything.14