God's Wolf

by Jeffrey Lee

  Others claimed the halt was Guy’s idea, perhaps forced by Saladin launching a massive attack against the Templar rearguard. Either way, the decision was not a helpful one. In the 1183 campaign, the inexperienced Guy had failed to organize food supplies. In 1187, logistics again proved his Achilles heel, but this time the shortage was even more critical – water. The night was baking hot, and water at the Meskanah campsite was in short supply. A large pool held some dregs of the winter rains and there were huge rock cisterns cut into the hills, but the thirsty army exhausted these overnight. Meanwhile the Muslims surrounded the Franks so tightly that ‘not a cat could have escaped’. The two armies were close enough to chat from their campfires across no-man’s-land.

  Rumour in the Frankish camp turned to bad omens, and a story spread among the men about an old Saracen woman whom some sergeants in the rearguard had met on her donkey earlier in the day. Believing her to be a witch, they had tried to burn her alive and then finished her off with a hatchet in the head, but it was thought that the curse she had set upon the army had not been lifted. In the baleful darkness, pierced by the constant Muslim chants of ‘God is Great’, doubts and dissension bubbled over. In the night a native Frankish knight went to the king and urged him to fight. This would finally erase the resentment between Guy’s retainers from Poitou and the Poulains. ‘Sire,’ he said, ‘now is the time for you to make the Poulains with their beards dear to the men of your country.’

  While hostility simmered between the local Franks and the king’s Poitevin entourage, some went further in undermining the Frankish cause. A band of five knights went over to the sultan. Significantly, they came from the retinue of the Count of Tripoli. The Estoire d’Eracles accuses them of converting to Islam and urging Saladin to attack the crusaders: ‘Lord, what are you waiting for? Fall upon them. They can do no more. They are as good as dead.’7

  This defection and the insight it gave into the Christians’ vulnerable state gave Saladin and his men extra confidence. The Muslims and Franks had been equally tired that night after the first day’s fighting. Saladin’s biographer, Baha al-Din, said that both sides:

  Had spent the night in arms, expecting his adversary at every moment, though too weak through tiredness to stand up and unable through fatigue to crawl, let alone run8

  Overnight the Muslims became eager to attack the Franks, though the day before they had been fearful of them. The next day would be a fight to the death.

  In the morning, both armies knew that ‘whichever was broken’ would be destroyed. When the Franks resumed their march, the Saracens redoubled their attacks, loosing arrows like swarms of locusts. The fighting was fierce, but the Franks held their formation. Guy’s men were now under attack from all sides. The sheer numbers of the Muslim army were terrifying. Morale was precarious. Perhaps some of the less-committed divisions, such as those of Raymond of Tripoli and Balian of Ibelin, were already murmuring about escape. At some stage during the day the king decided that he had listened to Raymond enough. Guy turned to Reynald de Chatillon for counsel. The old warrior gave the advice you might expect, as one of William of Tyre’s continuators records:

  When the king saw the torments that were afflicting his army, he called the master of the Temple and Prince Reynald and asked their advice. They counseled him to join battle with the Saracens.9

  Reynald advised the king to attack. Finally the mighty host would take the fight to Saladin. Reynald’s veteran hand was once again at the helm of the royal army. But this was not the inspired band of warriors that he led to victory at Mont Gisard, or even the disciplined, united corps with which the leper-king had won the day at Le Forbelet in 1182. Quarrelling commanders bedevilled this hapless army, and morale was sabotaged by suspicion, doubt and treachery.

  Under the relentless Muslim attacks, the showers of arrows obscuring the sky and the strength-sapping heat, Frankish morale began to crack. Discipline stretched to breaking point. The infantry and cavalry became separated. Without their screen of footmen, the precious warhorses were more vulnerable to Turkish arrows. Some of the foot soldiers struck out pell-mell towards the distant Sea of Galilee, desperate for water, and were cut down. Some disheartened infantrymen began to surrender, listless with dehydration. The Muslims set fire to the brush, and the breeze fanned the flames and smoke towards the Franks, roasting horses and exacerbating their thirst.

  Even now, all was not lost, but as the battle turned against the Franks, they suffered a catastrophic blow. At the worst possible moment, predictably but tragically, the crusader army snapped along factional lines. While Reynald de Chatillon stood and fought loyally beside the king, Raymond of Tripoli, the greatest magnate of the kingdom, with all his surviving knights – perhaps 200 horse – fled the field. The suicidal political divisions in the kingdom had delivered their coup de grâce. Frankish and Muslim sources alike described this moment:

  The Count of Tripoli charged down the slope at the Saracens in the valley. And when the Saracens saw them charging they parted, making way for them as was their custom As soon as the Count had passed through, the Saracens closed ranks again and attacked the King10

  The Count was a clever and shrewd leader of theirs. He saw that the signs of defeat were already upon his co-religionists and no notion of aiding his fellows stopped him thinking about himself, so he fled at the beginning of the engagement before it grew fierce…11

  To the Christians, Raymond’s desertion was cowardice or treachery, or both. According to the Chronicle of the Third Crusade, written not long after Hattin, Raymond:

  actually intended to betray his people, as he had agreed with Saladin… right at the moment of engagement, the aforesaid count of Tripoli fell back and feigned flight. It was rumoured that he did this in order to break up our formation and that he had agreed to abandon his own people, to strike fear into those whom he should have assisted, while arousing the enemy’s courage.12

  Conveniently, the troops of Guy’s other opponents, Balian of Ibelin, and the knights of Antioch, also somehow found the means to escape the battle. The chronicle of Abu Shama states clearly that it was Raymond and the ‘chiefs of his faction’ who fled the field.

  The desertion crippled the Frankish army, but they did not give up. In Abu Shama we read of how the Franks were at first downhearted, but quickly ‘they regained courage; far from surrender, they held firm in their positions and even returned to the attack. They charged and penetrated our ranks.’13

  Now missing many of their best knights, the Franks still pushed forward as far as the Horns of Hattin. Some of the infantry had already scaled the outcrop. There, behind the ruins of an ancient wall, they set up defensive lines and found some respite from the Saracen arrows. The Frankish high command also clambered up the hill and Guy ordered the royal tent to be pitched on the summit. From the hill they could see down to the Sea of Galilee, glimmering far below like a mirage. Coiling all around their position, in clouds of dust, boiled the hordes of innumerable Turkish horsemen, in a constant Brownian motion of whirling attacks and retreats. And always the dark clouds of arrows surging up and then swooping down into the Frankish ranks, like ‘flocks of starlings’. The hard-pressed defensive lines were pushed back perilously close to the True Cross. One of its attendants, the Bishop of Acre, was killed. The Saracens began to sense victory.

  In the throbbing heat of 4 July in Palestine, atop of one of the Horns of Hattin, Reynald and the most renowned knights of the kingdom gathered around their bewildered king and planned their next move – a charge against Saladin’s centre. The charge was the Franks’ most fearsome weapon. To opponents it seemed that a mounted mailed knight could ‘drive a hole through the walls of Babylon’.14 In close formation, wedged together so tightly that some horses might even be lifted off the ground, the charge, with its cutting edge of couched lances, could prove unstoppable. Reynald had advised attack from the start and knew that, if delivered against the centre, where Saladin sat surrounded by his high command and his Mamluk bodyg
uard, a successful onslaught could still turn the battle. This was the advice given to the king by a certain John, a knight who had served in the Muslim armies. But it might just as easily have been Reynald’s hand behind this throw of the dice. At Mont Gisard ten years before, Reynald had sent his charge straight at the elite troops around Saladin. Then the Muslim formation had been pierced and Saladin had only just escaped with his life. Now, from the saddle of the Horns of Hattin, with all the ferocity they could muster, the Franks delivered their massed charge into the heart of the Muslim lines.

  Saladin’s son, Al-Afdal, was on the receiving end of the terrifying attack of this armoured juggernaut. Ibn al-Athir recorded his story:

  I was alongside my father in that battle… When the king of the Franks was on the hill with that band, they made a formidable charge against the Muslims facing them, so that they drove them back to my father I looked towards him and he was overcome with grief and his complexion pale.15

  The Muslims managed to beat off the attack and pushed the crusaders back up the Horns. Critically, the Franks lacked the knights of Tripoli and the other deserters, but even so the first well-directed onslaught came remarkably close to success. Undeterred by their repulse, Reynald, the king and the surviving knights broke off from the mêlée, re-formed their ranks and aimed another charge right at the spot where Saladin sat beside his son: ‘The Franks rallied and charged again like the first time and drove the Muslims back to my father.’16 This charge, like the first, ‘almost drove the Muslims from their positions, despite their numbers’.17

  This was the Franks’ final effort. Again it came tantalizingly close to success, so close as to suggest that such an aggressive tactic might have succeeded earlier. Perhaps if these charges had been delivered on fresher horses, with more confident, more eager riders; perhaps if they had included the Templar and Hospitaller knights who had been lost at Cresson; or perhaps if they had been delivered with the full weight of the Frankish army that day – including the knights of Tripoli, of the Ibelins and of Antioch – then such a charge might have had enough momentum to crack the formations around Saladin and put his army to flight. But the 130 elite knights who fought at Cresson were slaves or headless corpses. More than 200 knights had fled with Raymond and his allies. The remaining force was not quite enough.

  For both Muslim and Christian commentators, one moment above all others had signalled the outcome of the battle – the desertion of Count Raymond. Ibn al-Athir wrote: ‘When the Count fled, their spirits collapsed and they were near to surrendering.’18 According to Michael the Syrian, ‘after the departure of the Count the Franks were like unto men who had lost all hope’. The Old French Continuation of William of Tyre agrees that, after Raymond’s troops had left the field:

  The anger of God was so great against the Christian host because of their sins that Saladin vanquished them quickly. Between the hours of terce and nones [9 a.m. and 3 p.m.] he won the entire field.19

  It is a striking fact – one that is notably glossed over in modern descriptions of the battle of Hattin – that the only units to escape the ensuing carnage were those of Raymond of Tripoli, Balian of Ibelin and the knights of Antioch. In other words, precisely the forces most opposed to Guy’s faction, to its strategy and to its most powerful member, Reynald de Chatillon. This may just be coincidence, but it is more likely to have been deliberate, malicious betrayal. Perhaps the explanation is simply that escape from the fight was much easier for those whose hearts were not truly in it. Whatever the reason for their flight, by the time the True Cross fell, all of Reynald’s leading political rivals and their knights were long gone.

  Since his youth in Burgundy, Reynald de Chatillon had launched countless charges at the enemy. In tournaments he had jousted with rival Franks. In battle, Armenians, Turks, Byzantines and Arabs had all suffered the thrusts of his lance. The second great Frankish charge at Hattin was Reynald’s last. After their attacks had been repulsed, their horses killed or exhausted, Prince Reynald and the other Frankish knights threw down their lances and dismounted. They then fought it out on foot with sword and mace, defending the twin hilltops of Hattin against the tightening noose of the Muslim army. Eventually, late in the battle, the holy ‘life-giving’ True Cross was overwhelmed. The uncharismatic King Guy inspired little or no allegiance, so the True Cross was the only symbol holding the hard-pressed crusader forces together. With its fall, morale collapsed, as Imad al-Din and Ibn al-Athir respectively observed:

  The capture of this cross was more important to them than the capture of their king… for the cross they sacrifice their lives, from it they expect salvation… The loss of this cross was a catastrophe that destroyed their courage more than their casualties or the fall of the fortress [Tiberias].20

  The seizure of it [the True Cross] was one of their greatest misfortunes, after which they were sure they were doomed to death and destruction.21

  The end came quickly after that. The mighty Frankish army – the greatest they had ever put into the field – was utterly wiped out. Muslim troops swarmed up the Horns of Hattin, encircling the dwindling knot of warriors around the king’s tent, as Frankish resistance finally ebbed. Saladin’s son described the moment of victory:

  I again shouted, ‘We have beaten them!’ but my father rounded on me and said, ‘Be quiet! We have not beaten them until that tent falls. ’ As he was speaking to me, the tent fell. The sultan dismounted, prostrated himself in thanks to God Almighty and wept for joy.22

  With the fall of the royal tent, the king and all the Frankish leaders were taken prisoner. Reynald de Chatillon was captured by a squire of the emir Ibrahim al-Mihrani and was once more in the grip of the Muslims. In 1161, as a valuable hostage, the Prince of Antioch’s chances of survival had been pretty high.

  This time it was different.

  Horns of Hattin, Galilee, 4 July 1187

  In front of his tent the victorious sultan surveyed his greatest prizes, lined up for his review. Dusty, bloodied and exhausted, parched with thirst, the mightiest knights of the Latin East stood in humiliated defeat before Saladin.

  Saladin courteously invited the Frankish leaders, King Guy and Prince Reynald, to sit. Then he passed Guy a cup of iced water.

  ‘Drink,’ he said.

  The king drank, then handed the cup to Reynald, who drank in his turn.

  Saladin said sharply, ‘You are the one giving him the drink. Not with my permission did this man drink and so gain my safe-conduct.’

  Saladin then went to inspect his army.

  Returning later in the evening, the sultan summoned just the king and Prince Reynald. The king sat outside in the vestibule of the tent, while Saladin had Reynald de Chatillon brought before him in the inner sanctum.

  ‘Prince Arnat,’ said Saladin, ‘how many times have you sworn an oath and then violated it, or signed agreements that you have ignored?’

  ‘I did nothing more than kings are accustomed to do,’ replied Reynald.

  ‘By your law,’ asked Saladin, ‘if you held me captive, as I do you, what would you do?’

  ‘So help me God,’ said Reynald, ‘I would cut off your head.’

  ‘Pig,’ responded the sultan, ‘you are my prisoner and still you answer me with such arrogance!’

  Saladin then made an offer, which Reynald had to refuse: abjure Christianity and embrace Islam. Reynald knew this would save his life, but there was no chance that the old crusader would take that way out.

  The last words of Reynald de Chatillon were a defiant refusal to renounce his faith.

  Saladin drew his sword and struck Reynald where the shoulder meets the neck, almost severing his arm. Reynald fell, his wound spurting blood.

  Saladin’s Mamluks dragged him into the vestibule and decapitated him.

  Chapter 21

  THE ULTIMATE CRUSADER

  I [Saladin] made a vow to sever the head of the prince, Lord of Kerak, this felon, this King of the Infidels, this fugitive from hell. As soon as he came before m
y eyes, I cut his throat.

  Saladin

  His loss was the greatest blow suffered by the unbelievers.

  Saladin1

  Now Reynald was an old man who was experienced in wars, and there was no limit to his strength and courage, and he was held in great fear by the Arabs

  Gregory the Priest

  The headless corpse of Reynald de Chatillon slumped in the dust in front of a terrified Guy de Lusignan. Saladin calmed the king down. ‘Do not worry,’ he said, ‘princes do not kill princes, but this man transgressed all boundaries.’ According to the Estoire d’Eracles, Saladin then sprinkled some of Reynald’s blood on his head to signify that he had fulfilled his oath of vengeance. He ordered Reynald’s body to be dragged through the dust in Damascus and his head to be displayed there, and in the other cities of Islam.

  The version of Reynald’s death outlined above blends together a number of the multiple eyewitness and second-hand accounts2 that make it one of the best-attested death scenes of the Middle Ages. As with any event, details of what happened on 4 July 1187 vary between reports: in some versions Reynald is killed immediately after the battle, not called back later; in one, he refuses to drink the sherbet passed to him by Guy, saying to the sultan, ‘If it pleases God I will never eat nor drink anything of yours’; in others, it is Saladin himself who chops off Reynald’s head. As an example, Gregory the Priest’s version goes as follows:

  Saladin paid honour to Guy, and made him to sit by his side; and he also made Reynald to be seated. Then Guy, because he was burnt up with thirst, demanded water as soon as he sat down, and Saladin commanded and they gave him water which had been cooled by snow to drink. And when he had drunk one half of it he gave the other half to Reynald and he drank. Then Saladin said, ‘It is not right for you to give him drink without my command. ’ And Guy said unto the Sultan, ‘Thirst is death; do not put him to death with two deaths Defeat is murder; therefore do not murder him twice.’ And his words pleased the Sultan, and he was prepared to spare the life of Reynald, if the nobles had not urged him to kill him. And they said unto him, ‘This man is not fit to live. For behold, he hath sworn the oath [of fealty] several times, and hath lied’… an hour later he sent and had Reynald brought to him by himself; and he drew his sword and he killed him with his own hands3