Richard’s elevation also brought about a profound change in the tenor of his relationship with Philip Augustus. As allies the pair had defeated Henry II. Now, with Richard as head of the Angevin dynasty, they were pitted against one another as adversaries. The potential for rancour was heightened by the peculiarities of their respective standings. Richard was just shy of his thirty-second birthday when he became king, making him six years older than Philip. But the Lionheart was newly risen to the throne, while the young Capetian was experienced, having shouldered the burdens of monarchy for almost a decade. As crown rulers the two were equals, but in reality Richard possessed the more powerful realm, even though he was officially Philip’s vassal for the Angevin lands in France such as Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine. The two also were somewhat dissimilar in their natures and attributes. Richard was a man of war and action who was, nonetheless, politically astute. Philip was more single-minded in his dedication to the Capetian crown, subtle and cautious.
From the summer of 1189 onwards both rulers faced one overbearing question: when would they set out on crusade? The problem was that neither king was willing to leave without firm assurances of truce from the other and the arrangement of a carefully coordinated, simultaneous departure. In the end it was the best part of another year before they began their journey. During that time, a considerable number of French crusaders, including James of Avesnes and Henry of Champagne, went on ahead.
The years lost to delay through rivalry and dispute certainly had a marked impact upon the course of the Third Crusade, and it would be easy to censure the Angevin and Capetian rulers for not putting aside their differences in the wider interests of Christendom and the crusade. In truth, though, Richard and Philip still made significant sacrifices and took real risks to fight the holy war. As a recently crowned king, whose position was threatened by a grasping younger brother, John, the Lionheart might sensibly have stayed in the West to consolidate his authority. Instead, Richard tried to pull off a dangerous balancing act: departing for a long absence in the East, leaving trusted supporters, including his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine and William of Longchamp, to guard the Angevin realm. The English king also relied upon a near-constant stream of exchanged correspondence to keep abreast of events in Europe. Philip could have called off his crusade in mid-March 1190 when his wife died in childbirth, along with their twins. This left arrangements for the Capetian succession in a precarious state, with the king’s three-year-old son Louis as the only extant heir, but, even so, Philip left France behind.
PREPARATIONS, FINANCES AND LOGISTICS
The Angevins and Capetians may have taken their time to start the crusade, but they at least made detailed and comprehensive campaign preparations. This meant that Richard I left Europe with the twelfth century’s most organised and best-funded crusading army. Soon after taking the cross in January 1188, Henry II and Philip Augustus imposed a special crusading tax in both England and France, with the aim of amassing the fortune needed to finance their expeditions. Known as the Saladin Tithe, this levy of ten per cent on all movable goods was enforced by the threat of excommunication. Members of the Templar and Hospitaller orders were also drafted in to aid in gathering the duty.
Among those staying in the West, this unprecedented tax proved deeply unpopular, with voluble complaints raised within secular society and the ecclesiastical hierarchy alike. But in the Angevin Empire, at least, the tithe worked. Before his death, Henry II managed to amass around 100,000 marks. Richard then intensified and broadened money-raising efforts. According to one eyewitness, in England ‘he put up for sale all he had, offices, lordships, earldoms, sheriffdoms, castles, towns, lands, everything’. The Lionheart was even supposed to have joked that he would have sold London if he could.14
The mountain of cash raised had a direct bearing upon the fortunes of the Third Crusade. In part this was because both Richard and Philip were expected to pay their soldiers’ wages for the duration of the expedition, so a ready supply of money would be critical to the maintenance of morale and martial momentum. The Lionheart also made extensive but judicious use of his fiscal resources before leaving Europe to secure the logistical underpinnings of his campaign. Thanks to the unusually fastidious attitude towards record keeping in England, some details of these preparations can be recovered. In the financial year 1189–90 (then measured from Michaelmas on 29 September) Richard spent around £14,000–the equivalent of more than half of the annual crown revenue from all England. He is also known to have ordered 60,000 horseshoes from the Forest of Dean and Hampshire, 14,000 cured pig carcasses, an abundant supply of cheeses from Essex and beans from Kent and Cambridgeshire, as well as thousands of arrows and crossbow bolts.
Philip Augustus had far less success implementing the Saladin Tithe. He lacked the absolute regnal authority enjoyed by English kings since the time of the Norman Conquest, nor could he rely upon the same developed governmental and administrative machinery at Henry’s and Richard’s disposal. Thus, although Philip’s right to exact the levy was accepted at Paris in March 1188, within a year he had to withdraw the tax and actually apologised for ever having sought its imposition. The Capetian monarch therefore began the crusade with a considerably smaller war chest, even though the Lionheart does seem to have paid off the 20,000 marks his father promised Philip at the settlement of July 1189.
Careful economic planning and preparation were all the more imperative because the Angevins and Capetians decided to travel to the Levant by ship. This form of transport was potentially quicker and more efficient. Given the costs involved, it also drastically curtailed the ability of poor, ill-equipped non-combatants to follow the crusade. These factors suited Richard’s and Philip’s plans to lead more competent, professional armies to the East and to minimise the amount of time spent away from their respective realms. However, hiring or commissioning ships was an expensive business, involving massive upfront outlay even before the campaign was properly begun. And naval transport also carried with it considerable risks–such as difficulties of navigation and coordination, and the ever present threat of shipwreck.
Attention was needed if military discipline was to be maintained during a confined, uncomfortable and perilous sea journey. With this in mind, Richard enacted a detailed set of regulations in 1190, mandating harsh penalties for disorder: a soldier who committed murder would be tied to the corpse of his victim and thrown overboard (and if the offence took place on land, he would be tied to the body and buried alive); attacking someone with a knife would cost you your hand, while for hitting someone with a fist you would be plunged into the sea three times; thieves would be shaved of their hair, and then have boiling pitch and feathers poured over their heads ‘so that [they] may be known’.15
In the course of the Third Crusade, Richard I and Philip Augustus managed, by and large, to negotiate all of the potential problems with naval transport. In doing so they established an important precedent and, from this point onwards, it became far more common for crusade armies to depend on sea travel to reach their objectives.
TO THE HOLY LAND
Richard I and Philip Augustus met to discuss final preparations for the crusade on 30 December 1189 and again on 16 March 1190. At last, on 24 June, the Lionheart took up his pilgrim scrip (satchel) and staff in a public ceremony at Tours, while the French king performed an identical ritual that same day at St Denis (following in the footsteps of his father Louis VII). On 2 July the two monarchs met at Vézelay and agreed to share any acquisitions made during the coming campaign. Then, on 4 July 1190, exactly three years after the Latin defeat at Hattin, the main Angevin and Capetian crusading armies set out together. To distinguish between the two hosts it had been decided that Philip’s men would wear red crosses, while Richard’s bore white. These two forces separated at Lyons on the understanding that they would regroup at Messina in Sicily before setting sail for the Levant.
Richard had been able to muster and equip a large host–drawing upon the resources of the
expansive Angevin realm and the riches accumulated through the Saladin Tithe. He probably departed from Vézelay with a royal contingent of around 6,000 soldiers, although by the time he left Europe he may have accumulated a total force of 17,000 men. The Lionheart made his way south to Marseilles, whence he took ship down the Italian coast to arrive at Messina on 23 September, while a portion of his army sailed on directly to the Holy Land under the command of Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury. Richard had also managed to prepare a fleet of some one hundred vessels from England, Normandy, Brittany and Aquitaine, which sailed round Iberia to rendezvous with the king in Sicily. Philip Augustus’ personal contingent appears to have been far smaller. From Lyons he marched to Genoa and there negotiated terms of carriage to Sicily and the Near East, paying a hire price of 5,850 marks on ships for 650 knights and 1,300 squires. The Capetian king reached Messina in mid-September.
With winter fast approaching and the seas becoming more treacherous, it was decided that the onward journey to the Levant would have to wait until the following spring. In any case, Richard had political concerns to resolve. William II, king of Sicily, the Lionheart’s brother-in-law through marriage to his sister Joanne, had died in November 1189, leaving Sicily in the grip of a succession dispute which, upon his arrival, Richard quickly resolved. Once peace had been restored, the crusaders spent the winter refitting their fleets and amassing further stores of weapons and equipment–Richard, for example, secured a supply of massive catapult stones. In this period the Lionheart also met with Joachim of Fiore, a Cistercian abbot who was gaining a notable reputation for prophecy. Joachim promptly announced a vision predicting Richard’s capture of Jerusalem and the imminent onset of the Last Days of Judgement, apparently affirming that ‘the Lord will give you victory over his enemies and will exalt your name above all the princes of the earth’–words that served merely to bolster the Lionheart’s egotistical confidence.16
The ongoing problem of Richard’s betrothal to Philip II’s sister Alice of France was also resolved. The Lionheart had skirted around the issue since taking the English crown, despite the French king’s repeated demands that the marriage take place. Now, with the journey to the Holy Land begun and Philip committed to the campaign, Richard revealed his hand. He had no desire or intention to wed Alice. Instead, a new marriage alliance had been arranged with Navarre–an Iberian Christian kingdom whose support would protect the southern Angevin Empire against the count of Toulouse during Richard’s absence. In February 1191 the Navarrese heiress Princess Berengaria arrived in southern Italy, chaperoned by the Lionheart’s indefatigable mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was now in her seventies.
Philip Augustus was confronted with a fait accompli. When Richard threatened to produce witnesses who would testify to the fact that Alice had been Henry II’s mistress and had borne the old king an illegitimate child, the Capetian monarch cut his losses. In return for 10,000 marks, he released the Lionheart from his betrothal. Open conflict had been averted, but Philip was humiliated and the whole sordid affair restoked his simmering hostility towards the Angevin king.
Finally, with the coming of spring, the sea lanes reopened and the crusading kings began the last stage of the journey to the Holy Land. Philip set sail on 20 March 1191 and on 10 April Richard’s fleet followed suit, with Joanne and Berengaria among its passengers. Almost four years had passed since the Battle of Hattin. In that time much had changed in the Levant.
14
THE CONQUEROR CHALLENGED
Jerusalem’s capture on 2 October 1187 was the crowning glory of Saladin’s career–the fulfilment of a passionately held personal ambition and the realisation of a publicly avowed and doggedly pursued campaign of jihad. The Latin kingdom was on the brink of extinction, its ruler in captivity, its armies decimated. It is easy to imagine that, in the wake of such a titanic victory, the Muslim world would rally to the sultan’s cause as never before, united in their admiration for his achievements, now almost abject in their acceptance of his right to lead Islam. Surely Saladin himself had earned a moment’s pause, to look back on all that he had achieved, to celebrate as the first chill of autumn brushed the Holy City? In fact, the conquest of Jerusalem brought him little or no respite, but, rather, begat new burdens and new challenges.
IN THE AFTERMATH OF VICTORY
Jerusalem’s repossession was a triumph, but it was not the end of the war against Latin Christendom. Saladin now had to balance the responsibilities of governing his expanded empire and completing the destruction of the Frankish settlements in the East, all while preparing to defend the Holy Land against the wrathful swarm of western crusaders who, he rightly guessed, would soon seek to avenge Hattin and retake Jerusalem. Even so, Saladin should have been in the ascendant in 1187. In reality, from this point on his strength gradually began to ebb. Amidst the bitter trials to come, he often seemed shockingly isolated–a once great general humbled, deserted by his armies, striving just to survive the storm of the Third Crusade.
Empires have always proved easier to build than to govern, but Saladin faced a profusion of difficulties after October 1187. Resources were of paramount importance. That autumn, Saladin’s subjects and allies were exhausted, and the sultan’s ill-managed financial resources were already drained by the costs of intense campaigning. In the following years, as the stream of wealth from new conquests turned from a torrent to a trickle, the Ayyubid treasury struggled to slake the greed of Saladin’s followers, and it proved increasingly difficult to maintain huge armies in the field.
The seizure of the Holy City had other, less obvious, consequences. Saladin had assembled an Islamic coalition under the banner of jihad. But with the central goal of that struggle achieved, the jealousies, suspicions and hostilities that had lain dormant within the Muslim world began to resurface. In time, the sense of purpose that had briefly united Islam before Hattin dissolved. The historic success at Jerusalem also prompted some to wonder where Saladin would next train his all-conquering gaze–to fear that he would prove himself a tyrannical despot, bent upon overthrowing the established order, sweeping away the Abbasid caliphate to forge a new dynasty and empire.
As a Kurdish outsider who usurped authority from the Zangids, Saladin had never enjoyed the unequivocal support of Turkish, Arab and Persian Muslims. Nor could he claim any divine right to rule. Instead, the sultan had carefully constructed his public image as a defender of Sunni orthodoxy and a dedicated mujahid. Following the advice of counsellors like al-Fadil and Imad al-Din, Saladin had also taken pains to cultivate the support of the Abbasid Caliph al-Nasir in Baghdad, because his backing brought with it the seal of legitimacy. After 1187 the sultan persevered with this policy of showing deference to al-Nasir, but with Ayyubid might now seemingly unassailable, relations became increasingly strained.17
Driving the Franks into the sea
Saladin’s overriding strategic concern in late 1187 was to sweep up the remaining Latin outposts in the Levant, sealing the Near East against any crusade launched from western Europe. But the work of eradicating the remaining vestiges of Frankish power promised to be neither swift nor easy. In the wake of the victory at Hattin, much of Palestine had been conquered, and the major ports of Acre, Jaffa and Ascalon were now in Muslim hands, but a number of Frankish strongholds in Galilee and Transjordan still held out. Elsewhere, the northern crusader states of Tripoli and Antioch were still intact, even though one of Saladin’s potential opponents, Count Raymond III of Tripoli, had died from illness that September, having escaped the battlefield at Hattin and taken refuge in northern Lebanon.
The most pressing issue was Tyre. Through summer 1187 the port city had become a focal point of Latin resistance in Palestine, and Saladin had allowed thousands of Christian refugees to congregate within its walls. Tyre might well have fallen to the sultan’s armies soon after Hattin had not command of its garrison and defences been seized by Conrad, the marquis of Montferrat. A northern Italian nobleman and brother of the late William of Montferrat (
Sibylla of Jerusalem’s first husband and father to Baldwin V), Conrad had been serving the latest Byzantine Emperor Isaac II Angelus in Constantinople. But after murdering one of Isaac’s political enemies in early summer 1187, the marquis decided to cut his losses and make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, arriving in Palestine in July 1187–coincidentally just days after Hattin.
Conrad found Tyre in a beleaguered state. The marquis’ arrival proved to be a major boon for the Franks and an unforeseen, troublesome intrusion for Saladin. Conrad was profoundly ambitious–guileful and unscrupulous as a political operator, competent and authoritative as a general–and he embraced the opportunity for advancement presented by Tyre’s predicament, quickly assuming control. Galvanising the Latin populace to action, he immediately set about bolstering the city’s already formidable fortifications. Saladin’s decision to channel his energy into the siege of Jerusalem in September 1187 afforded the marquis a valuable breathing space; one which he put to good effect, drawing in the support of the Military Orders and Pisan and Genoese fleets to prepare Tyre for attack.
By early November, when Saladin finally marched on Tyre, he found the city to be all but invulnerable. Built upon an island and approachable by land only via a narrow man-made causeway, this compact fortress settlement was protected by double battlements. A Muslim pilgrim who visited a few years earlier commended its ‘[marvellous] strength and impregnability’, noting that anyone ‘who seeks to conquer it will meet with no surrender or humility’. Tyre was also renowned for its excellent deep-water anchorage, its northern inner harbour being protected by walls and a chain.18
For more than six weeks, into the depths of winter, Saladin laid siege to Tyre by land and sea, hoping to pummel Conrad into submission. Fourteen catapults were erected by the Muslims, ‘and night and day [the sultan had them] constantly hurling stones into [the city]’. Saladin was also soon reinforced by leading members of his family: his brother and most valued ally, al-Adil; al-Afdal, the sultan’s eldest son, heir apparent to the Ayyubid Empire; and al-Zahir, one of Saladin’s younger sons, now designated as ruler of Aleppo, who received his first experience of battle at Tyre. The Ayyubid fleet, meanwhile, was summoned from Egypt to blockade the port. Yet, despite the sultan’s best efforts, little progress was made. Around 30 December the Franks scored a notable victory, initiating a surprise naval attack and capturing eleven Muslim galleys. This setback seems to have dampened Ayyubid morale. A Templar later wrote in a dispatch to Europe that Saladin himself was so distressed that ‘he cut the ears and tail off his horse and rode it through his whole army in the sight of all’. With the morale of his exhausted army faltering, the sultan decided to throw everything into one final offensive. On 1 January 1188, he unleashed a blistering frontal assault along the causeway, but even this was turned back. Beaten to a standstill, Saladin raised the siege, leaving Conrad in possession of Tyre.
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