The Troubadour's Song

by David Boyle

  Henry of Champagne hurried back to Tyre and with difficulty persuaded Isabella to surrender the keys of the city to him. The townspeople then took the initiative themselves. Henry was a bachelor; he was good-looking and brave and he had an air of command. Whoever married Isabella would be king, so it seemedto them a marriage made in heaven. Yielding to public opinion, on 5 May Isabella married for the third time at the age of just twenty-one — making no secret how relieved she was to trade the brutish Conrad for the dashing Henry. The couple fell passionately in love and couldn't bear to be out of each other's sight. The Muslims were less impressed. There had been only a week of mourning and Isabella was pregnant. When Saladin's secretary asked a crusader courtier during a negotiating session who would have paternity, he was told it would be the 'queen's child'. 'You see the licentiousness of these foul unbelievers,' he wrote.

  Richard was a pragmatic diplomat — endlessly good-humoured with his enemies — and was sensible enough to realize that keeping open lines of communication could also tell him a good deal about their morale. But he also admired what he saw of the Saracens, of Islam and of advanced Arab culture, with its detailed knowledge of astronomy and mathematics and its romantic literature that must have reminded him of the days of the Courts of Love. Whatever the reason, he was soon attracting further controversy by building as close a link with Saladin as he could. 'It is the custom of kings when they happen to be near one another to send each other mutual presents and gifts,' he wrote to Saladin. 'Now I have in my possession a gift worthy of the sultan's acceptance, and I ask permission to send it to him.'

  The two great leaders of the age never actually met. Saladin refused at first and, when he finally agreed, the Christian barons resisted the idea so passionately that Richard promised not to go. Relations broke down after the killing of the Acre garrison, but Richard was determined not to let anything like that happen again. The two exchanged presents throughout the conflict, much to the horror of fundamentalists on both sides. And when Richard was ill — as he continued to be — he sent a message to Saladin asking for snow from the mountains. Saladin often sent presents of peaches and pears. They negotiated generally through Saladin's brother al-Adil, who the crusaders called Safadin, and whom Richard became increasingly close to. Each tried to outdo the other byproviding the very best cuisine and entertainment that his culture had to offer.

  It was becoming increasingly clear to Richard — though not to many of his colleagues — that simply taking Jerusalem was not the solution to the Outremer problem. The crusaders would cheer, make a pilgrimage to the holy places and then go home; the city would simply fall straight back into Muslim hands. There were really only two options. First, they could ignore Jerusalem al­together, carrying on marching with the safety of the sea on their right and invade Egypt, dividing Saladin from his main supplies. But that would require resources that were seriously dwindling, and it would need some kind of unanimity in the army. Second, they could negotiate a peace that provided them with some of what they wanted, and a breathing space that would allow the tiny Christian kingdom to survive until Richard returned with an even bigger army. That meant flying in the face of all the fundamentalist assumptions — yet what was his choice, given the problems back home?

  As Jaffa's walls began to rise again — before the first advance on Jerusalem — Richard intensified his meetings with al-Adil. Both Christians and Muslims were bleeding to death and lives were being sacrificed, he told Saladin's brother. 'The time has come to stop this.' His first proposal was that al-Adil should be given Palestine to rule and could marry Joanna. Saladin accepted immedi­ately, assuming it was a joke: he had already become used to Richard's bantering style. But when al-Adil returned, Richard told him with disarming honesty that Joanna had flown into a rage when he suggested she should marry an infidel. Was there any chance, perhaps, of his becoming Christian?

  There wasn't. But on 8 November 1191 al-Adil returned the hospitality, entertaining Richard in his own tent with the finest Turkish dishes. At the height of the meal, Richard asked if he could hear some Arabic singing, and a woman with a guitar was hastily brought before them. As the soft strumming wafted over the Saracen camp in the moonlight, Richard was absolutely delighted. In Walter Scott's The Talisman, he imagines Blondel atthe scene, entertaining the Arab negotiators in return with his own style of music. It was just the kind of relaxed contact between the two religions that most horrified the Christian fanatics and would add to Richard's problems when he came to return home.

  As the news began to filter through of trouble in England, Richard intensified the negotiations again, once more to the horror of the hardliners. After the debacle outside Jerusalem, and as the army got down to the long business of rebuilding Ascalon, the Prior of Hereford arrived in Palestine, sent by Longchamp from England to warn Richard that his brother John was attempting to take over the government. Richard was now in a peculiarly difficult position. If he waited to capture Jerusalem, he would be able to dictate his own terms throughout Europe. But if he failed and reached home too late, the chances were that Philip and John would have carved up his penniless empire between them. It was hardly surprising that this was the moment he fell victim to one of his periodic nervous collapses.

  Richard spent days alone in his tent, refusing to see anyone. He was finally rescued by one of his own chaplains, who managed to talk to him about his triumphs in the past. 'You are the father, the champion and defender of Christendom,' he said. 'If you desert God's people now, they will be destroyed by the enemy.' It was obviously the right thing to have said. Within hours Richard was his usual self, announcing that he would stay until Easter 1193 and that it was time to prepare for the siege of Jerusalem. As a result, the army was soon back in Beit Nuba, from where Richard and his companions were led to a number of pieces of the True Cross that had been hidden during the Saracen advance. One of them came with a messenger from a local hermit, who turned out to be naked except for the unshaved hair which covered his body. He took them to a small hidden cross, said to be made from wood of the original, and predicted that Richard would fail to win Jerusalem this time no matter how hard he tried. He even foretold his own death in seven days. Richard kept him in camp to check out the veracity of this prediction at least. Sure enough, in a week the hairy hermit was dead.

  Saladin did not have access to this foresight. He knew that Jerusalem could not be held and ordered that all the cisterns be poisoned and the wells destroyed within a two-mile cordon round the city. He performed Friday prayers there on 3 July with tears rolling down his cheeks.

  But the hermit was right. The situation was no different from when they had been at Beit Nuba six months before, and Richard knew it. The army council talked the impasse through and del­egated the decision to a committee of twenty, including five Templars, five Hospitallers, five Syrian Christians and five crusader nobles. By the end, only the French — who had returned to the army now that Henry of Champagne was king — were determined to carry on. Richard offered to go to Jerusalem with the army, but not as their commander, refusing to lead them into a trap. Later, they agreed, the Christian forces would advance on Cairo and cut Saladin off from Egypt and the Nile valley, and force him to let Jerusalem go. But not now. In the meantime, Richard had to contend with an insulting song about him composed by the Duke of Burgundy, and spent his time composing his own in reply. A few days later, riding in the hills, he suddenly caught sight of the walls of Jerusalem itself and quickly covered his face with his shield, determined not to see the city until he could overwhelm it himself.

  So once again, the day after Saladin's prayers, the army turned round and trudged back to the coast. 'Do not be deceived by my withdrawal,' Richard wrote to al-Adil. 'The ram backs away in order to butt.' But he added, more revealingly, 'You and I can go on no longer', reminding Saladin that he had sometimes accommo­dated the requests of Christian holy orders. 'On many occasions monks who have been turned out have petitioned you for churches, and you have
never shown yourself niggardly,' he wrote. 'Now I beg you to give me the Church of the Holy Sepulchre . . . will you not, then, give me a barren spot, and the ruin of its shrine?'

  Saladin responded generously: 'Count Henry shall be as a son to me, and the Basilica of the Resurrection shall be given to you. The rest we will divide . . .'

  The outline agreement gave the coastal strip to the crusaders and allowed their pilgrims to visit Jerusalem. The only part Richard could not stomach was Saladin's demand that he demolish Ascalon, after so many months of rebuilding its walls. He was still negotiating when he got back to Acre. But he had been there only one day when the most dramatic sequence of events of the whole crusade suddenly began to unfold.

  On 29 July he heard the news that Saladin's army had surrounded the city of Jaffa. In a few hurried hours, he had dispatched Henry of Champagne south with the army. Then, with a small band of hand-picked knights and crossbowmen, he set sail in the galleys and reached Jaffa against the wind two days later. The small Christian garrison there was led by Alberi of Reims, who had ignominiously tried to escape by boat and been brought back by his comrades. He took command of the city's defence really because 'it was the only thing that remained for him to do'. In fact, the garrison had surrendered after three days, and Saladin — ever the humanitarian — had promised to let them leave with their goods. But his mutin­ous army immediately began killing and looting, and he advised the Christians to lock themselves up in the citadel until he had regained control.

  So, on the sixth day of the siege, when Richard's thirty-five galleys arrived outside the city — his own galley, Trenchmere, painted with a red hull and a red sail — it seemed clear to him that he was too late. But a priest managed to climb down the walls of the citadel and reach the beach, from where he swam out towards his ship to explain that situation. 'Are any of them still living?' shouted Richard from the deck. 'Where are they?' Then he saw the small banner still flying from the tower.

  What followed was a dramatic assault from the sea. Richard brought the ships close to the shore and, tearing off some of his leg and waist armour so he could move faster, plunged into the shallow water with a sword in one hand and a crossbow in the other, shouting, 'God sent us here to die if need be; shame on anyone who holds back now.' His men followed close behind. Perhaps it was his fearsome reputation, perhaps it was genuineforce of arms, but Richard's small force beat back the invaders. 'In every deed at arms he is without rival, first to advance, last to retreat,' wrote one emir who witnessed the scene. 'We did our best to seize him, but in vain, for no one can escape his sword. His attack is dreadful. To engage with him is fatal. His deeds are not human.'

  Saladin's negotiators arrived at Richard's camp after the battle at his request, to be subjected to his usual teasing. 'This sultan is mighty and there is none mightier than him in the land of Islam,' Richard joked. 'Why then did he run away as soon as I appeared? By God, I was not even properly armed for a fight. See, I am still wearing my sea boots.'

  On 4 August Saladin tried again against Richard's tiny band of eighty knights and 400 archers — camped outside the city because there were too few of them to defend the walls — sending the Muslim cavalry forward in the early hours of the morning. The defenders were protected by a thin line of men with lances, with crossbowmen working in pairs behind them. Half dressed, Richard's knights managed to hold them off again. Filled with admiration for his defence — despite Richard's loss of a horse at the height of the battle — Saladin watched from the hill above and sent down two fresh horses as a present for his enemy. It was Richard's supreme military achievement. 'What of the king, one man surrounded by many thousands?' wrote the English chronicler Richard de Templo. 'The fingers stiffen to write of it and the mind is amazed to think of it.'

  As the high summer wore on in stalemate, there was more sickness in the crusader ranks. Richard had been the first to fall ill, and he was followed by many of the other leading members of the expedition. He had also never really recovered from his scurvy attack during the original siege. He had suffered from diarrhoea since his arrival, and by now was almost too weak to carry on negotiations. 'My only object is to retain the position I hold amongst the Franks,' he wrote in an exhausted message to Saladin. 'If the sultan will not forgo his pretension to Ascalon, then let al-Adil procure for me the indemnity for the sums I have laid outrepairing the fortifications.' That was the hint that Saladin was waiting for and he called off further attacks. Finally, on 2 September, both sides agreed a three-year truce. Many of the crusaders set off to see Jerusalem — which was, after all, what they had promised to do. Richard did not join them. He was determined that he would enter the city only as its conqueror.

  For all his faults, and despite that basic failure, Richard had secured the survival of what was now the Kingdom of Acre. He could have taken Jerusalem, been hailed as a hero and then abandoned it to its inevitable fate. Instead he had been honest enough to be strategic. The capture of Cyprus had guaranteed the kingdom's supplies, and time had been bought to consolidate and bring in fresh troops. But that was not the way that many of his contemporaries saw it. Philip Augustus had now been home for eight months, and the French propaganda machine was busily justifying his return: Richard had plotted to kill him and — worst of all — he had made peace with the despoiler of Jerusalem. The previous summer, Philip had landed in Otranto and made the rest of the journey home by land. In Rome, Pope Celestine had freed him from his crusader oath because the remains of his sickness were all too apparent. On the journey north he found that Henry of Hohenstaufen — the new Emperor Henry VI — was still in Italy.

  Henry's march on Sicily had been a miserable failure. He lost half his force, became ill himself and finally abandoned a hopeless siege of Naples in the face of dysentery and the overwhelming heat of summer. At one stage, the Empress Constance was even captured by Italian allies of Tancred. Henry was now burning with rage at the way Richard had allied himself with the other side. So when the two European leaders met, Richard was top of their agenda. He really was a serious threat to Christian idealism and peace, they agreed. If Richard happened to come back home through Germany, Henry promised to arrest him.

  *Five years before, Isaac Comnenus had arrived in Cyprus with forged docu­ments declaring him the new governor from Constantinople. Once he had taken over the key fortresses, he claimed the island as its independent ruler.

  †("The Cypriots were not necessarily better off. Richard imposed a 50 per cent levy on the population and confirmed the traditional laws of the islands, but forced the Greeks on the island to shave off their beards.

  * Such was the passion of the besiegers that one woman, mortally wounded in the fighting, offered her body as part of the stones and rubbish being used to fill in the moat.

  * Saladin had to rely on swimmers and birds to keep in touch with the garrison; a large house for homing pigeons was kept next to his pavilion.

  *The modern Austrian flag, with its two red stripes, is said to be derived from Leopold's time outside Acre, and from the wounds he received mounting the city wall. His shirt was stained red with blood, except for a white strip around the waist, which had been protected by his belt. The red, white and red motif is a reference to Leopold's bravery.

  * The verse chronicle of the Norman minstrel Ambroise has a fascinating history. Lost for centuries in the Vatican Library, it was finally discovered and published by the medievalist Gaston Paris in 1897. The laundresses he mentions were 'as clever as monkeys when it came to getting rid of lice,' Ambroise wrote.

  * Saladin had one terrifying encounter with the Assassins. A messenger arrived and demanded to see him alone. Saladin refused to dismiss his most trusted bodyguards, and was disconcerted when the messenger spoke to them himself, asking them if they would murder Saladin if ordered in the name of the Old Man of the Mountains. 'Command us as you wish,' they said. That was, in fact, the message.

  5. Setting Sail

  Treacherous people have hurt me, />
  but let them; them I never loved.

  Their gossip and their accusations

  Made others fear I was the same as them.

  Then all my joy in life just ebbed away -

  I knew of no escape from pain and from betrayal.

  Gace Brulé, Tn the Sweetness of the New Season'

  O Jerusalem, now art thou indeed helpless. Who will protect thee when Richard is away?

  Ambroise, L'Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, eyewitness epic account of the Third Crusade by a Norman minstrel

  A legend grew up over the next few years around the Chastelain de Coucy, Blondel's friend and fellow ttrouvère. The story identified him with a man named Regnault, who fell in love and was encour­aged to join Richard on crusade by his lover's jealous husband. On the way to the Holy Land, he was wounded by a poisoned arrow, but managed to write one last song and a letter to his lover before he died. These were dispatched home to her, together with his embalmed heart and a lock of her hair, in a small box. Unfortunately, when it arrived, the box was intercepted by the husband, who had the great minstrel's heart cooked and served to his wife. In the moment of revenge as she swallowed her meal, he turned to her with relish and told her what she had just eaten. 'After such noble food,' the lady replied, 'I will never eat again.'

  The legend was written early the following century, and nobodysuggests this was what actually happened to the Chastelain, who died in 1203. But there was something about the Third Crusade — the crusade of Richard and Philip — that encouraged stories with that tone of betrayal and noble failure. There remains an atmos­phere behind the narrative, created partly by its attitude to Richard's chivalric ideals of principled adultery, but also partly by its romantic hopelessness. The new King Arthur had failed to take back Jerusalem for Christendom. The crusade had been the culmination of Richard's life so far, and it was the first time since his teenage years that he had come so close to outright failure. The experience must have shaken his beliefs, just as it shook those of his contemporaries.