The Crusades 1095-1197

by Jonathan Phillips

  In May and June Saladin gathered armies from Egypt, Aleppo, the Jazira and Syria — a truly formidable force. The Franks assembled their full strength and based themselves, as in 1183, at Sapphorie. The treasure sent over annually by King Henry II of England as part of his penance for the murder of Thomas Becket was released to hire mercenaries, and castles and cities were stripped of their garrisons. The settlers had about 1,300 knights and 15,000 footsoldiers. Saladin’s forces numbered nearer 20,000, which gave him a useful, if not overwhelming, advantage. His thinking is revealed: ‘We should confront all the enemy forces with all the forces of Islam . . . for it is foolish to dissipate this concentration of troops without striking a tremendous blow in the holy war’ (Ibn al-Athir, tr. Gabrieli, 1969: 119). On 2 July Saladin laid siege to Tiberias and trapped Eschiva, Raymond’s wife, in the town. King Guy faced a dilemma. In 1183 he had shadowed the Muslims and seen them leave Christian lands, but this non-confrontational approach had cost him the regency. In 1187 it was Raymond of Tripoli, the man who had orchestrated his removal from power, who advocated the same policy again; namely, to shadow the enemy and wait for them to disperse. Ibn al-Athir demonstrated the shrewd thinking in this advice because he quoted Raymond as saying that Saladin ‘will be unable to keep his army together for they will not put up for long with being kept away from their houses and families’. It is, of course, unlikely that the writer heard these words, but their sentiments undoubtedly reflect the feeling in the Muslim camp (Ibn al-Athir, tr. Gabrieli, 1969: 120).

  Even though it was his own wife under threat, it seems that Raymond’s prudence had won the king’s mind but, in what must have been an extraordinarily dramatic scene, on the night of 2 July 1187, Reynald of Chatillon and Gerard of Ridefort, master of the Templars, went to the king’s tent and convinced him to change his mind. Both Reynald and Gerard were vigorous opponents of Islam, the former’s lengthy imprisonment and attack on Medina in 1183 showed that plainly. In the case of the latter, he was the leader of an organisation dedicated to the defence of the holy places against the efforts of Islam. They were also long-term supporters of Guy and opponents of Count Raymond. In Gerard’s case, that enmity had a personal twist: as a young knight Gerard had been promised the hand in marriage of an important heiress in the county of Tripoli. Unfortunately for him, when Lucia, daughter of the recently deceased lord of Botron, became eligible she caught the eye of a Pisan merchant who offered Raymond, her guardian and overlord, her weight in gold if he could marry her. The count chose to accept this proposal. Lucia weighed in at c. 63 kilogram’s and for c. 10,000 bezants she married the merchant. Gerard was humiliated and stormed off to join the Templars, ending the possibility of another broken heart and nursing an implacable hatred of Raymond. As Mayer has indicated, it was Guy and Gerard who had seized Henry II’s treasure, but they had done so without his permission (Mayer, 1982). The total of c. 30,000 silver deniers could be recalled by Henry when he chose. With the cash now spent Gerard had, therefore, to produce a victory to justify his actions. Against this background, the king was persuaded to change his mind and on the morning of 3 July, the order was given to march to Tiberias, 30 kilometres from Sapphorie and on a road without proper water supplies. This played straight into the hands of Saladin and, as Beha ad-Din saw it, ‘the enemy could not bear to give in to their impulsive zeal’ (Beha ad-Din, tr. Richards, 2001: 73).

  The Battle of Hattin

  On 3 July the armies clashed. The Franks forged onwards towards Tiberias, but the ferocity of the enemy attacks grew. Time and again the Muslims’ mounted archers fired, wheeled and turned away to safety, taking a grievous toll on the Christian infantry. In the rear the Templars came under enormous pressure and this prevented Raymond of Tripoli in the vanguard (the front of the army) from pushing on to Tiberias. At nightfall the Christians camped, exhausted by the heat and lacking water. Beha ad-Din summarised: ‘They were closely beset as in a noose, while still marching on as though being driven to a death that they could see before them, convinced of their doom and destruction and themselves aware that the following day they would be visiting their graves’ (Beha ad-Din, tr. Richards, 2001: 73).

  As the Frankish army struggled through poorly watered lands, in contrast — and to the Christians’ visible distress — the Muslims could bring up ample supplies on camel-back from Lake Tiberias. Although they were so closely surrounded that ‘not even a cat could have escaped’, on 4 July the Franks set out to try to break through to Lake Tiberias about 10 kilometres away. To compound the Christians’ misery the Muslims set fire to the grass and brush to dry the Franks’ throats and kept up a terrible drumming to raise the tension even further. The infantry were suffering terribly and could not hold their formation. Under severe provocation they finally broke ranks and scattered.

  Raymond of Tripoli and the vanguard charged the enemy and succeeded in breaking through to freedom — although, to some, it seemed that he had been permitted to escape, thereby confirming his overly close relationship with Saladin. The remaining Christians fell back to the slopes of the twin peaks of the Tell Hattin (the Horns of Hattin). Guy’s red tent was pitched at the summit and his remaining cavalry charged at Saladin’s own bodyguard in a desperate attempt to swing the battle by killing the Muslim leader. When these attacks failed, and with the surviving infantry in total disarray, the Muslims closed in. Finally, the royal tent and the Christians’ most valued relic, the True Cross, were taken and the battle was over. King Guy and Reynald of Chatillon were captured, along with many other nobles (including western crusaders) and members of the military orders.

  The largest field army yet assembled by the settlers had been destroyed and the kingdom now lay at Saladin’s mercy. First, he had to deal with his prisoners. King Guy, as a fellow ruler, was treated with great courtesy and offered iced sherbet to drink. Reynald was not so fortunate; Saladin had sworn to kill him after the attack on the Muslim pilgrim caravan and when the prince refused to convert to Islam, Saladin struck him with his scimitar, severing his arm at the shoulder, before his bodyguards finished the job. The Templars and Hospitallers were also executed. They were never going to apostasise (renounce Christianity) or pay ransoms and Saladin used the opportunity to rid himself of his most feared opponents. They were dispatched — not particularly expertly — by Sufi holy men; most of the other Frankish prisoners were sold into slavery. Saladin memorialised his victory at Hattin by constructing a mahomerie called ‘The Dome of Victory’.

  The fall of Jerusalem

  Saladin’s armies swept through the kingdom taking town after town: Tiberias, Nazareth, Acre, Caesarea and Jaffa. Some places surrendered immediately, others capitulated after a brief siege. The Frankish farms and villages emptied as their inhabitants fled to Tyre on the coast or to the north. By September all the coastal towns of the kingdom of Jerusalem except Tyre were in Muslim hands. Tyre itself had been on the verge of falling when, by chance and unaware of the disaster at Hattin, Conrad of Montferrat (brother of William Longsword) arrived from Europe and took control of the town. He led a firm resistance and the Muslims were forced to break off the siege. Much of Tripoli and southern Antioch surrendered, leaving the great frontier castles of the kingdom (such as Kerak) and the holy city itself remaining. In accordance with contemporary Muslim military practice soon set out in al-Harawi’s Book of Stratagems (the author was also one of Saladin’s leading spies), Saladin did not engage in long static sieges at this stage of the campaign (Gal, 1992). The scale of his victory meant that he could afford to leave these sites under loose supervision and finish them off at his leisure. According to one source, Jerusalem was left with only two knights to lead its defence. Patriarch Heraclius directed the resistance, but surrender was inevitable. Saladin negotiated the release of Muslim prisoners and accepted ransoms for as many of the Christians as could afford to pay. Of the remainder, the young men and women were enslaved and the elderly freed. This generosity contrasted with the massacres perpetrated by the First Crusade and did
much for Saladin’s reputation. No Latin was to remain in Jerusalem, although Eastern Christians could stay if they accepted the status of dhimmi or protected religious community. The Christian churches were stripped of their precious vessels and converted into mosques, teaching colleges or convents. Saladin was able to install the minbar (a pulpit, see p. 94) commissioned in 1169 by Nur ad-Din in the al-Aqsa mosque (formerly the Temple Church) and to complete the task begun by his former master. The Holy Sepulchre was spared, mainly to allow pilgrims to visit — subject to a payment — and Saladin repopulated Jerusalem with the descendants of former Muslim inhabitants. A few castles held on, but over time they slowly capitulated: Kerak (November 1188); Saphet (December 1188); Belvoir (January 1189); Montreal (April 1189) and Beaufort (April 1190). Only Tyre survived and that would be the crucial bridgehead for the early stages of the Third Crusade and the Christian fight-back.

  Saladin’s army was exhausted and many wanted to return home. He managed a successful campaign in Antioch in the spring and summer of 1188, but lands in northern Tripoli around the castles of Tartous, Krak des Chevaliers and Marqab resisted. The emir must have been aware of the oncoming revanche from the West; indeed, a Sicilian fleet had attacked the coast in the summer of 1188. He would need to rest his men, consolidate his conquests and prepare to face potentially his greatest challenge in the form of the Third Crusade. Saladin’s victory had given him enormous honour because he had crushed the Franks in battle and removed the unbelievers from Jerusalem, as he had claimed he would. The Franks’ resources and morale had almost been extinguished, yet the loss of the holy city would provoke western Europe to respond with the large-scale crusade the settlers had so persistently requested over previous decades.

  Conclusion

  In summary, the following issues characterised this period. First, after 1180 and the marriage of Guy and Sibylla, a serious feud broke out between two groups of the Frankish nobility. Secondly, as shown by their victories at Mont Gisard (1177) and Marj Ayyun (1182), the construction of Jacob’s Ford and the success in shadowing the Muslims in 1183, the Franks had considerable military capabilities in attack and defence. Thirdly, Saladin had an extremely difficult task to impose his authority on the Muslim world and to gain the resources necessary to defeat the Franks. Fourthly, the settlers’ efforts to secure outside help were largely unsuccessful. Western Europe did not respond in the fashion hoped for and Byzantium became hostile, a factor that was crucial in creating the conditions whereby Saladin could confront the Franks. Fifthly, the settlers made a disastrous mistake in choosing to march from Sapphorie to Tiberias. Whether they could have avoided battle again, or won a battle on more favourable terms is, of course, hypothetical; Guy’s decision on 2 July, if understandable in political terms, was, from a military perspective, fatally flawed and Saladin was fully prepared to exploit such an error.

  12

  The Third Crusade and beyond

  The Third Crusade could lay claim to being the greatest crusading expedition ever. It lacked the vast breadth and ambition of the Second Crusade, although in light of that campaign’s unsatisfactory outcome and the calamity that befell Jerusalem in 1187 a simple focus was perhaps unsurprising. No other crusade would boast the participation of the three most powerful secular rulers of the West: Emperor Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, King Richard I of England and King Philip II Augustus of France. The ultimate goal of the Third Crusade was plainly the recapture of Jerusalem and, measured against this, it was a failure. But, as we shall see, in light of the political and strategic context in which the campaign took place, its achievements were highly significant for the future of the Latin East.

  Audita tremendi: the Crusade appeal of Pope Gregory VIII

  News of the disasters at Hattin and Jerusalem soon reached the West and in October 1187 Pope Gregory VIII issued Audita tremendi, the call to recapture the holy city (see Document 19). In this, the most powerful and emotive crusade bull of all, he described recent events in the Holy Land, including Saladin’s exploitation of the political infighting among the settlers and his victory at the Battle of Hattin. Gregory lamented the loss of the True Cross and the execution of the Templars and Hospitallers. The pope claimed that God’s anger at the sins of man could be assuaged by an act of penance, namely, the recovery of Christ’s patrimony. We can see, therefore, Gregory repeating Urban II’s point that a crusade was a sufficiently arduous undertaking to be adequate penance for all properly confessed sins. Gregory also depicted the crusade as a test set by God and suggested that it was an opportunity to gain rewards either as a martyr or through a full indulgence. In this aspect of his argument Gregory followed the same approach as St Bernard in 1147 who had also portrayed the crusade in terms of a challenge. The usual practical privileges of protection of property and legal and fiscal benefits were outlined, along with strictures as to the proper dress for a penitential exercise.

  Conrad of Montferrat and the defence of Tyre

  Europe roused itself to avenge the injury to Christ’s patrimony, but it was not until the late spring of 1191 — over three and a half years after the Battle of Hattin — that the most effective crusading armies arrived in the Eastern Mediterranean. What accounted for this lengthy delay and what impact did this have on the situation in the Holy Land?

  First, it should be pointed out that a series of contingents did reach the Levant in the years after Hattin. In fact, the first of these appeared so quickly that it could not have heard about the battle, but it was the presence of this force, led by Conrad of Montferrat, that proved crucial in the survival of the Frankish East. Conrad was a powerful and wealthy north Italian noble with family connections to the Capetians, the German imperial dynasty and, through his deceased brother William Longsword, the ruling house of Jerusalem. Conrad landed at Tyre in August 1187 just as Saladin’s victorious army was sweeping through the Latin States in the aftermath of Hattin. At Tyre, however, the Muslims were turned back: the marquis organised a vigorous defence of the city and Saladin had to withdraw. Crucially, therefore, the Christians maintained a foothold on the coast which could act as a bridgehead for the crusader armies of the West. With King Guy in Muslim captivity, Conrad took control over the remains of the kingdom of Jerusalem and his gallantry in fighting off Saladin was soon celebrated by western troubadours who used his bravery as a way of urging their own leaders (chiefly meaning the Angevins and Capetians) to make peace with each other so that ‘the noble and valiant marquis should have more companions’. Conrad did begin to receive some assistance and in the course of the next three years numerous forces reached the Latin East, including those of King William II of Sicily (in 1188), a Pisan fleet (spring 1188), and an English fleet (1190), but the army that had the greatest potential to aid the Christian cause was that of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.

  The crusade of Frederick Barbarossa

  Frederick died before he could reach the Holy Land and, blinded as we tend to be by the glamour of the conflict between Richard and Saladin, it is easy to lose sight of how profound an impact this had on the outcome of the Third Crusade. Aside from the loss of much of his army, so many of the problems of leadership and authority faced by the Third Crusade might have been avoided through Frederick’s presence. As Holy Roman Emperor he held the most prestigious title of any monarch in the West; he had been in power for over thirty-six years when he took the cross; he had experience of the Levant from his part in the Second Crusade; and he had vast resources at his disposal. Perhaps even more significantly, he succeeded in one endeavour that the Second Crusade failed in: by taking the land route to the East he managed to face down a hostile Byzantine Empire and then to cross Seljuk-controlled Asia Minor while preserving at least half of his military strength. Threats and diplomacy saw him past the Greeks and he achieved a decisive victory over the Turks near Iconium (17 May 1190), but just as Frederick was about to reach the Levant disaster struck. The emperor’s determination to ford a river at Silifke in southern Cilicia was his downfall: c
ontact with the icy water probably caused him to have a heart attack and he drowned on 10 June 1190. Frederick’s body was buried at Silifke, although the bones were removed and later laid to rest in the cathedral at Tyre. The German crusade had possessed the capability to make serious inroads into the Muslim conquests and Saladin was saved from facing an opponent he had every reason to fear. On Frederick’s death the imperial army broke up; many troops returned home and others, under the leadership of the emperor’s son, Frederick of Swabia, joined the siege of Acre (see below). Undeniably, however, the sting had been drawn from this force and the Germans’ influence in the Holy Land was minimal.

  The crusade preparations of Richard the Lionheart