Richard & John: Kings at War

by McLynn, Frank

  A genius at siegecraft and naval warfare, Richard was about to add to his laurels by showing that he had a total mastery of strategy and logistics. To march south to Jerusalem from Acre entailed myriad problems: Richard commanded a multinational force with poor training and discipline; it had no experience of mobile warfare, having been effectively lamed by the long siege of Acre; and it would be necessary to keep Saladin at bay during the onward march. Richard had to be cautious, since a single defeat might mean the loss of the entire Christian presence in Palestine, but he could not simply do nothing when all crusader factions clamoured for an advance on Jerusalem. Most of all, Richard as commander-in-chief had to think through every stage of the coming campaign, to establish a supply base on the coast and keep the supply lines between that base and his army open. He had to get his army down to the Holy City through difficult terrain, to keep it fed, watered and supplied, and also to transport all the impedimenta and engines necessary for the eventual siege of Jerusalem. His first business, therefore, was to decide on the itinerary. The inland route ran from Acre to Nazareth, then south past Mount Tabor, the Pools of Jacob and Ramallah. The objections to going this way were several: because of the huge baggage and supply train, the army would have to keep in the valleys, vulnerable to Saracen attacks from the hills; the route was 150 miles long, stretching the supply lines dangerously taut; and the army would be proceeding at a crawl, making the march a matter of months, and increasing the likelihood that fate or contingency would intervene adversely. A better option was to march the 80 miles down the coast to Jaffa before striking inland to Jerusalem: this way he would have the sea to protect his right flank and the supplies and siege equipment could be carried by ship for the first leg of the march; moreover, he could worry Saladin by suggesting that perhaps his destination was not Jerusalem after all, but Egypt.63

  Next Richard reviewed the forces at his disposal. Numbers are notoriously a problem in medieval historiography, but a reasonable estimate of the crusader army can be attempted from the numerous scraps of circumstantial evidence. From England and Normandy Richard had brought around 9,000 men (900 knights and 8,100 foot); from France he had the men left behind by King Philip, probably some 7,000 (700 knights and 6,300 foot); from Outremer itself about 2,000 men (maybe 200 of them knights) remained, plus around 1,000 Templars and Hospitallers, whom we can suppose to have been divided into the usual 9:1 infantry/cavalry ratio. There were also the Pisan and Genoese cohorts, the Danish/Norwegian expeditionary party, a handful of Germans (most had gone home with Leopold), and even a Hungarian contingent, plus a sprinkling of mercenaries.64 To face Richard’s 20,000-strong force Saladin had an army of perhaps 25,000 men, with both sides very evenly matched. The days of the First Crusade, when the Muslims fielded enormous armies of low quality, were long gone, and Saladin could match Richard in most departments, except perhaps his heavy cavalry.65 Crusader tactics depended heavily on the shock charge of the heaviest destriers, delivered with devastating force at a moment when the Saracens could not retreat before it and leave the knights puffing impotently like beached whales, but Saladin was alive to this threat and countered it with mobile cavalry retreating beyond normal missile range and then unleashing a shower of arrows in Parthian shot manner. To bring these horsemen to battle, Richard in turn depended on his light horsemen, the turcopoles, traditionally recruited from baptised Turks and native Palestinians of mixed parentage (usually a Christian father and a local mother).66 By the time of the Third Crusade, the Saracens had largely closed the technological gap in weaponry between the West and the Arab world, though there was still some inflexibility in Saracen ways of making war. They preferred spring campaigns, had a fondness for ambushes, and liked to have their backs against a mountain, river or hill, with the sun shining into the enemy’s eyes and the wind at their own back. They were also overly dependent on the personalities of generals and tended to become disconcerted if the leader was killed. Conversely, Saladin’s presence was worth a regiment. Both sides liked to avoid pitched battles, the Saracens for fear of losing leaders, the Franks for fear the crucial heavy cavalry charge would not work and they would be left without further tactical options.67

  Yet essentially a battle between Crusaders and Saracens was a contest between heavily armoured cavalry and mounted archers. Anna Comnena, the Byzantine princess and historian, related at the time of the First Crusade that the charge of Norman knights could knock down the walls of Jericho, and the judgement remained valid one hundred years later. With reins and shield held in the left hand, and the couched lance held rigid beneath his right arm, using the horse’s charging speed for momentum, the Frankish knight could easily smash through a cloud of Saracen horsemen, and then turn to use his secondary weapons of sword and mace. Everything was in the timing. If this was wrong, the Saracen cavalry could disperse and reform, finding the Franks suddenly vulnerable because they had lost their tight formation. In such a situation the mounted archers would swarm round the crusaders like angry bees or wasps or, as Ambroise preferred it, gadflies.68 Unless shot at very close range, Muslim arrows could not penetrate the thick chain mail worn by the knights, so the knights could often be seen charging around a battlefield like porcupines, stuck with shafts that had penetrated the armour far enough to stick in but not far enough to reach flesh. The knights’ horses were more vulnerable, so the Saracen mounted archers tended to concentrate on them. Coordination between infantry and cavalry was thus the key to Frankish success, for the foot soldiers had to protect the cavalry with a shield-wall until the precise moment for a charge arrived, so that Saracen arrows could make no impact. These tactics were effective, since Saracens liked to pincushion their enemies with arrows before moving in for the coup de grâce. But their horsemanship was so expert and their mobility so pronounced that it was very difficult to pin them down so that they would be an effective target for the heavy crusader charge. It was always a cat-and-mouse game, or rather agility and cunning ranged against brute strength and the killer instinct.69

  As a military genius, Richard felt equal to any strategic or tactical challenges and his personal courage was known to inspire his men. But only careful and meticulous planning could solve logistical problems, and the impressive thing about the Lionheart was that he proved himself just as much a master of this crucial aspect of the military arts. He made sure that all 20,000 men under his command had ten days’ rations and water before setting out. Living off the land would be difficult in such desolate terrain, where the Saracens were awaiting every opportunity to annihilate stragglers or foragers, so for a ten-day march each man carried 30 lbs of provisions, two pounds of food and one of firewood daily - the timber was necessary for lighting fires and boiling water. The normal crusader diet was hard, dry biscuit, a soup of beans and a little salted pork or bacon, supplemented by fresh fruit, vegetables and horsemeat, eaten with the fingers from wooden or clay bowls. It should be stressed that the 30 lbs was carried in addition to the infantryman’s normal complement of helmet, hauberk, sword, shield, eating utensils and extra clothes. The water ration of four gallons a day per man was carried in animal skins by porters or in barrels by horse-drawn carts. The normal expectation for an army was that water rations could be topped up from rivers and streams, but in desert landscapes Richard was taking no chances, especially as he expected the Saracens to poison all wells. There was a particular problem about the knights, for each horseman additionally needed 15 lbs of fodder and five gallons of water a day for each horse. Six thousand horses accompanied Richard’s army on the march, for most knights had three horses: either the warhorse proper, or destrier, weighing 1,800-2,400 pounds, used for the shock charge, expensive, and thus available only to the wealthiest knights, or the courser, weighing 1,300-1,500 lbs and similar to the heavy dragoon horse of the nineteenth century; the palfrey, weighing around 1,000 lbs for normal riding and travelling; and the rouncey, used by squires and knights’ servants or sometimes as a pack animal. For a twenty-day march, Richard’s army
needed 1,340 tons of food and 800,000 gallons of water.70

  For three days, from 22-25 August, Richard waited in his camp outside the Acre trenches for his forces to muster. It was a slow process, in part because Richard had decreed that no women at all, except elderly laundresses, were to accompany the army, and his men were reluctant to leave the stews and fleshpots of a city notorious for its lubricious excesses.71 Leaving his wife and sister behind in the city, he eased the army by gentle stages to the River Belus and the coastal plain, marching just two miles a day at first, so that his men could shake off the effects of a week of debauchery and dissipation and adjust to a new, austere regime, then lengthening the pace on the third day to eleven miles.72 There was nothing to fear on the right flank, which was protected by the sea and the crusader fleet, but on the left flank Saladin’s army marched in parallel, just out of range. Richard alternated flank duties, spelling his infantry with tours of duty on the dangerous left and the secure right. Between the two flanks of infantry rode the knights, in three divisions, stirrup-to-stirrup, the horses nose-to-tail. The vanguard and rearguard were provided by the Templars and Hospitallers, who rotated this duty on a daily basis. But on the very first day the Saracens took advantage of a gap in the rear left by the boorish duke of Burgundy, commander of the French contingent and in a permanent sulk about having to take orders from Richard. The Muslims broke through and attacked the wagon train and were beaten off only when Richard and his men rode back from the van and charged. One beneficial spin-off from this brisk action was that Richard’s old enemy William de Barres so distinguished himself that Richard decided to forget his long-held grudge and commended the Frenchman for his gallantry.73 He also honoured another old foe, Geoffrey de Lusignan, appointing him governor of the great harbour fortress of Ascalon which was his first military objective on the coast. He explained to Geoffrey that this was a long-term appointment, that if he conquered Jerusalem its future security would depend on crusader control of the coastal route between Egypt and Syria.74

  The first stop for the army was Haifa. Already the scale of what they were attempting had sunk in. They were marching in the scorching heat of August, with the temperature ranging from a low of 27ºC to a high of 40ºC - the heat all the more trying since they wore armour and chain mail. As the days went on, more and more men fainted in the heat. The lucky ones were loaded on ship and taken to the next bivouac; the unlucky ones were left to die where they fell. The stench and foetor from an army on the march in such conditions were unspeakable, with the odours of stale sweat mingling with those of horse dung and human excrement. The soldiers found the going very hard, since they were marching on tracks that had not been proper roads since Roman times, and the path was in many places overgrown with bushes and scrub. It was particularly irksome for the rearguard since the way was churned up by those in front, leaving only loose sand and sometimes mud to walk on. Thorn bushes and prickly scrub tore at the men’s skin and clothing. And always alongside them were the Saracens, sometimes discharging another shower of arrows towards the Franks. Baha al-Din, an eyewitness, was amazed at the fortitude and discipline of the crusaders: ‘I saw some of the Frankish foot soldiers with from one to ten arrows sticking in them, and still advancing at their usual pace without leaving the ranks . . . One cannot help admiring the wonderful patience displayed by these people, who bore the most wearying fatigue without having any share in the management of affairs or deriving any personal advantage.’75 Richard tried to ease the burden on his troops as much as possible by making early pre-dawn starts, marching only until noon, and interspersing a day’s marching with a day’s rest. But even on the rest days there was little peace. Apart from the danger from poisonous snakes, the crusaders had to deal with the reliable menace of tarantulas which infested the camp-sites and gave painful, though non-lethal, bites. The rumour spread that noise would ward off these predators, so that a crusader encampment at night sounded like bedlam, with the shouting and yelling, the beating of pots, pans, shields and helmets.76

  Tuesday 27 August found the crusader army toiling along the 12-mile route to Athlit. They headed west on the old Roman road which took them round the foot of Mount Carmel and then south, protected this time on the left flank by the steepness of the hills. Pausing at midday at Caphamum, already demolished by the Saracens, and exhausted after a morning of hacking through thick undergrowth, they pressed on after a short meal break to the so-called Castle of the Narrow Ways at Athlit, arriving in the late afternoon. Resting for three nights and two days, the crusaders were resupplied by sea. On Friday 30 August they set out on the longest stretch so far - 13 miles to Merla.77 Already men were dropping dead from the heat and, in addition, the Saracens chanced an attack. Richard led a charge to clear the way and, as so often before in such circumstances, came within an ace of being captured. Ambroise suggested that the king was nearly taken because apathy, lethargy and exhaustion were consuming the army.78 At Merla Richard encamped on the so-called River of the Crocodiles, then pressed on next day to Caesarea. This was the worst day’s march so far, the heat exceeded anything yet experienced, and many men dropped dead in their tracks from sunstroke. When they camped that night, ships arrived from Acre with further supplies and reinforcements to replace the dead, in the shape of the ‘lazy folk’ who had tried to avoid service and clung on in the brothels of Acre.79 On 1 September the army moved on another three miles to the Dead River. Again the Saracens harassed them and in one furious skirmish one of their emirs, Ayas Estoi (Ayaz the Tall) was killed.80 Buoyed by this minor success, the Franks were then depressed on arrival at the Dead River to find the watercourse almost invisible under a dense matting of reeds and rushes, which they construed as camouflage devised by the Saracens - but for what end no one bothered to explain. In the stress of the march even natural phenomena were being interpreted as sinister manifestations by the enemy.81

  On Tuesday 3 September the crusader army found the going so impenetrable that the troops diverted inland to find a road running parallel to the coast. Here the Saracens launched a heavy attack, and the Templars lost a large number of horses in the scrimmage, as did another group under the Count of St Pol; Richard, heading a rescue mission, was slightly wounded by a crossbow bolt. The attacks continued throughout the seven-mile march to the night’s bivouac at the Salt River and, to add to the difficulties, food was again discovered to be running short. With the men ravenously hungry, the price of meat from the day’s dead horses was rocketing. Morale was plummeting, so Richard announced that if his knights killed horses and gave them to the troops for food, he would make good the loss from his own stock of horses.82 It was doubtless to play for time and gain a breathing space that he opened negotiations with Saladin on the afternoon of the fourth, while the army rested. Next morning at 3 a.m. the army moved out for the 10-mile trek to the River Rochetaille while Richard went to a rendezvous with Saladin’s brother Safadin, taking Humphrey of Toron with him as interpreter to discuss peace terms. The meeting broke up quickly without agreement: Saladin himself was simply stalling and had told his brother to try to spin the negotiations out until reinforcements came up, but Richard announced peremptorily that his terms were nothing less than the return of the whole Latin kingdom thus far conquered, which gave Safadin nothing to talk about, still less an excuse to prevaricate. Meanwhile the crusaders toiled through the forest of Arsuf, anxious because of rumours that the Saracens intended to set light to the forest and consume them in a hecatomb of fire as they marched.83 Nothing happened but, when they emerged into the open, they found the enemy drawn up ready for battle. The crusaders pitched camp on the north bank of the River Rochetaille, in sight of the campfires of the enemy. The tense night of 6-7 September, with battle certain the next day, has been compared by some to the English armies before Agincourt in 1415 and Waterloo in 1815, also within sight of the enemy, and there is the additional consideration that Saladin, like Wellington in 1815, had selected his battleground some time before.84

  The plat
eau of Arsuf overlooks a natural harbour guarded by sandstone cliffs. On the morning of 7 September the army moved out cautiously, crossed the river, and followed the coast road, aiming to reach the town of Arsuf by midday. Richard laid his plans well, with his usual three columns, that with the baggage nearest the beach, the cavalry in the centre and on the left a dense infantry screen commanded by Count Henry of Champagne. In the van were the Templars, next came the Bretons, Angevins and Poitevins, followed by the fourth division in the centre comprising the English and Normans guarding Richard’s dragon standard. Behind them came the French and, bringing up the rear in the position of maximum danger, were the Hospitallers. The troops were drawn up in such a tight formation that, as Ambroise relates, it was impossible to throw an apple into the ranks without hitting a man or horse.85 Saladin brought up a vast force of 25,000 men to track them, and Richard and the duke of Burgundy rode up and down the line of march, checking for the merest flicker from the Saracens. Standing orders were that no knights should charge until Richard gave the signal, which was to be a simultaneous blast on six trumpets scattered along the column in two pairs. It was 9 a.m. when Saladin made his move. He launched a determined assault on the rearguard, deluging it with showers of arrows so that once again the foot soldiers bristled with shafts, their padded gambesons or protective tunics looking like pincushions.86 The job of the valiant infantrymen was to absorb the enemy’s arrows, always keeping them out of range of the valuable and vulnerable cavalry horses. Even so, horse losses began to mount, the heat was becoming unbearable, and the Hospitallers made the first of their many requests that day to Richard to be allowed to charge. He refused.