A new king had to be found — and yet another husband for Isabella. Within a week of Conrad’s death she married spouse number three, Count Henry of Champagne. Here, at last, was a candidate welcomed by all sides because Henry was a nephew of both Richard and Philip and had already spent two years in the Levant. He was from a family with an illustrious crusading pedigree and his family had been specifically approached for help by the settlers during the 1160s. From Richard’s perspective the accession of Henry meant that the forces of Jerusalem were now at his disposal and he could go on the offensive again.
The second march on Jerusalem and the Battle of Jaffa
The crusaders captured Darum, south of Ascalon, on 22 May 1192, but a week later came more bad tidings from the West with the news that Philip and John were conspiring together. Richard had to balance his commitment to the crusade against his responsibilities as ruler of the Angevin empire. The army decided to march on Jerusalem again and pressure was put upon Richard to fulfil his duty as leader, thus with a heavy heart he agreed to stay in the Levant until the following spring. The crusaders made rapid progress and within five days they were at Beit Nuba again. A contemporary writer reported that Richard laid eyes on the holy city, probably from the hill of Montjoie, yet the king and the nobles of the Latin East knew of the folly of an attack on Jerusalem. It is true that the Muslims were terrified of his approach yet the same strategic considerations applied as in 1191: who would hold the vulnerable inland city once the crusaders had gone home? Richard tried hard to persuade the army of the wisdom of an invasion of Egypt, but the French contingent would not co-operate. It was stalemate and the Christians had no option but to withdraw to the coast. Relieved of the pressure on Jerusalem, Saladin took the initiative for the first time in many months. He launched a lightning attack on Jaffa and soon seized the town, leaving a small Frankish garrison defending the citadel. Muslim forces prevented King Henry’s army from marching overland to the city, but Richard chose to sail from Acre. When he arrived at Jaffa on 1 August the Christians were on the verge of surrender, but Richard waded ashore and led a devastating assault on the enemy. All were in awe of his ferocity. The author of the Itinerarium wrote:
With no armour on his legs he threw himself into the sea first . . . and forced his way powerfully on to dry land. The Turks obstinately opposed them on the shore. . . . The outstanding king shot them down indiscriminately with a crossbow he was carrying in his hand, and his elite companions pursued the Turks as they fled across the beach, cutting them down. At the sight of the king, they had no more spirit in them; they dare not approach him. (Chronicle of the Third Crusade, tr. Nicholson, 1998: 355)
More pragmatically, Richard had prevented the Muslims from striking a serious blow against the Christians’ recovery of the coast. Saladin tried to seize Ascalon too, but once again the king’s military prowess won the day. With just ten mounted knights he charged the enemy and scattered the emir’s forces:
The king was a giant in battle and everywhere in the field, now here, now there, wherever the attacks of the Turks raged most fiercely. On that day his sword shone like lightning and many of the Turks felt its edge. Some were cloven in two from their helmet to their teeth; others lost their heads, arms and other limbs, lopped off at a single blow. He mowed down men as reapers mow down corn with their sickles. Whoever felt one of his blows had no need of a second. He was an Achilles, an Alexander, a Roland. (Gillingham, 1989: 215)
Truce
By this point the two sides had fought each other to a standstill. Both leaders were suffering from ill-health, their resources were running dangerously low and they needed to settle political problems of their own. Richard, in particular, had to attend to domestic matters and on 2 September a three-year truce was signed. The Christians would keep the coastline from Jaffa to Tyre, but they had to hand over Ascalon. Christian pilgrims were permitted to enter Jerusalem, although Richard refused to submit to such an indignity in person and did not reach the holy city. On 9 October 1192 the king set sail from Acre, but it was plain that he planned to return. The Itinerarium claimed that he said, ‘O Holy Land I commend you to God. In his loving grace may He grant me such length of life that I may bring you help as He wills. I certainly hope some time in the future to bring you the aid that I intend’ (Chronicle of the Third Crusade, tr. Nicholson, 1998: 382). Richard never managed to crusade again, although, by a great irony, had he remained in the Holy Land for just a few months longer the balance of power would have been transformed because, worn out by decades of warfare, Saladin died on 4 March 1193.
Conclusion to the Third Crusade
How should we judge the Third Crusade? While it failed to achieve its ultimate aim of retaking Jerusalem, it did succeed in providing the Christians with a reasonably firm hold of much of the coastline and created a springboard for future crusades. Compared to the situation in the autumn of 1187, when only Conrad of Montferrat’s arrival saved Tyre, the position was much improved. Conrad’s leadership, then Guy’s determination to blockade Acre, and finally, the energy and strength of Richard had enabled the Franks to mount some sort of recovery.
Saladin had swept all before him after Hattin, but the defeats at Acre, Arsuf and Jaffa cumulatively damaged his reputation and morale in the Muslim world. From Saladin’s perspective, the crusade (which was inevitable once Jerusalem was in Muslim hands) had not recaptured Jerusalem and had gone home, which left him free, once the truce expired, to make another assault on the settlers. The emir undoubtedly impressed the westerners with his chivalric behaviour and determination, and contemporary accounts of the crusade spoke very highly of him. Such was Saladin’s reputation that he became a central figure in thirteenth-century chivalric works — a real irony: Christian knighthood using one of Islam’s finest warriors as an exemplar of chivalric behaviour. Perhaps his greatest achievement in the time of the crusade was to hold together such a broad coalition of Muslim forces in the face of a series of military setbacks and a rising tide of dissent. This bears testimony to his personal charisma and high political skills, and his death caused a serious rift in the Muslim world. It is difficult to make an overall assessment of Saladin’s career. Obviously he had succeeded in capturing Jerusalem and, in this sense, he achieved his ultimate goal. But his military record was patchy and sometimes — particularly in his flagrant disregard of Nur ad-Din’s requests for help in the early 1170s — his motives can seem self-centred. There is no doubt that he was a pious man who fought hard to win the jihad, regardless of whether this meant engaging in conflict with his fellow-Muslims on the way. Perhaps it is best to see him as a man of deep religious convictions who used the political weapons at his disposal to draw his fellow-Muslims together in his attempt to expel the Christians from the Levant. The longevity of his fame certainly bears witness to a great career.
Saladin was said to have thought Richard too reckless in battle — ‘he frequently hurls himself into danger imprudently’ — but the Muslims correctly recognised there was far more to the king than a bold warrior. Ibn al-Athir described him as shrewd and patient, and claimed that ‘because of him the Muslims were sorely tested by unprecedented disaster’. Beha ad-Din believed that ‘he possessed judgement, experience, audacity and astuteness’ and wrote of ‘the cunning of this accursed man. To gain his ends sometimes he used soft words, at other times, violent deeds. God alone was able to save us from his malice. Never have we had to face a bolder or more subtle opponent’ (Hillenbrand, 1999: 336; Gillingham, 1999: 19). Muslim writers rarely complimented their enemies in such terms, but their admiration for Richard was self-evident. The king used the full range of instruments available to him: the Angevin government machine, diplomacy and warfare. For every heroic deed at Jaffa can be matched by his caution on the march to Jerusalem, and for all his brilliant generalship at Arsuf and Ascalon it is possible to find the seeds of success being planted in his meticulous gathering of supplies in England and his ruthless acquisition of money on Sicily and Cyprus.
The German Crusade of 1197
As we saw above, Richard’s suspected involvement in the murder of Conrad of Montferrat meant that he had to travel home in disguise, but as the king moved through Austria he was recognised and captured by Duke Leopold in December 1192. He was later handed over to Emperor Henry VI of Germany (1190—97) and the people of Richard’s lands were required to pay an enormous ransom (150,000 marks) to free him (February 1194). As part of the terms of his release the king was forced to renounce his overlordship of Cyprus, which was transferred to Emperor Henry, thereby giving the Germans a foothold in the Eastern Mediterranean. Henry was interested in mounting a crusade, probably in part to fulfil the vows of Frederick Barbarossa. He had a further connection with the Mediterranean region through his marriage to Constance, heiress to the throne of Sicily, in December 1194. Henry began to gather his forces in 1196; he secured support from the papacy and also compelled the Byzantines to provide some financial backing for the expedition. A group of German crusaders sailed from the North Sea and, like their predecessors in the 1147 campaign, fought in Portugal en route to the Holy Land. The full German army assembled at Bari in southern Italy in the summer of 1197 and included 4,000 knights and 12,000 other soldiers — an impressive force. The German chancellor stopped in Cyprus and offered Aimery of Lusignan a royal crown to be held from the Empire. Aimery agreed, pleased to acquire such a strong patron, particularly given his fear of Byzantine attacks on the island. The crusaders reached the Holy Land in late autumn 1197 and in September they laid siege to, and captured, Beirut, securing another foothold on the coast and helping to re-establish Frankish control of the sea. On 10 September King Henry of Jerusalem died when his dwarfish entertainer fell out of a window and pulled the king along with him. Queen Isabella now anticipated husband number four (Humphrey of Toron, Conrad of Montferrat, Henry), and she married Aimery of Cyprus, bringing the two Frankish possessions into a much closer relationship. The Germans besieged the town of Toron, but in the early winter they received news of Emperor Henry’s death (28 September 1197). Concerned at the political impact of such an event in their homeland, they soon decided to return to the West and the crusade ended. In any case, the Muslim world was still deeply divided between Saif ad-Din (Saladin’s brother) and the emir’s sons. A truce of five years and eight months was agreed.
While the French had represented the principal external influence on the Latin East during the twelfth century, largely because of the origins of so many of the First Crusaders and subsequent settlers, the imperial overlordship of Cyprus and the foundation of a new military order (St Mary of the Germans — later known as the Teutonic Knights) laid the seeds for much greater imperial involvement in the Levant — something that would develop significantly during the thirteenth century.
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Conclusion: The impact of the Crusades
The impact of crusading in the West
The crusades to the Holy Land and the settlement of the Latin East are a central part of medieval history. Through the crusading movement the power and influence of Catholic Christendom grew and the physical, cultural and intellectual horizons of the people of the West changed. With the call to the First Crusade in 1095 all of western Europe found a common cause that crossed geographical and political boundaries and brought out one of the few characteristics shared across the region, namely the Catholic faith. The crusade also reflected contemporary hopes, fears and aspirations regarding spiritual salvation and, for some, the wish to conquer land. Four years later and the map of Christendom had changed dramatically, with Jerusalem, the heart of the Christian faith, under Catholic rule. Hitherto unthought of opportunities opened up: the papacy had created a new way of attaining salvation and had a means of exerting authority over the people of the West; many thousands of western Europeans went to settle in the Levant; large numbers of pilgrims could visit the holy sites; and the prospects for trade and the acquisition of knowledge expanded dramatically.
Along with these new opportunities came new responsibilities. There was the need to consolidate and defend these lands and there were times when crusading activity exerted a profound impact in the West. The Second and Third Crusades saw western European rulers absent from their lands for years at a time, and in the case of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, the death of one of these men. The decision to crusade must have galvanised and absorbed a country like nothing else: households and governments had to organise themselves, to arrange regencies, to raise large sums of cash — by taxes, by voluntary contributions, loans, or mortgages — transactions which affected ecclesiastical and secular society alike. The practicalities of transport and supply must have commanded peoples’ attention too. Smaller crusades, such as those seen in the 1160s and 1170s, would have mirrored the same effects on a lesser scale. Alongside these sudden surges of activity, other, more permanent, reminders of the fight for the Holy Land appeared in the East. Relics arrived from the Holy Land (see pp. 11, 118-19 above) to be venerated in churches across the Latin West. More prominent still were the substantial holdings of the military orders, and their presence as powerful landlords, bankers, and as ecclesiastical and medical institutions, became a factor in many peoples’ lives.
The development of the scope of crusading
The scope of crusading evolved rapidly over the period analysed in this book. The notion of a justified holy war against the enemies of Christianity — with spiritual rewards for the participants — touched a nerve in western society that reflected contemporary military advances in Spain, Sicily and Eastern Europe, as well as the growing authority of the papacy in providing real leadership for the Catholic Church. Obviously, the crusade to the Holy Land was the most prestigious theatre of holy war, but, as Urban II recognised (see Document 2 ii), other arenas should not be neglected. Spiritual rewards were authorised for the Iberian peninsula in 1096 and full equality with the Holy Land probably emerged by 1114, or, at the latest, 1123. Crusading was to expand into other areas as well. At the time of the First Crusade there were signs that the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, which dated from 1054, was beginning to heal. However, the cordial relationship between Pope Urban and Emperor Alexius would fall foul of the tensions between the crusade leaders and the Greeks and, particularly, the territorial ambitions of Bohemond of Taranto. The accession of the anti-Greek pope, Paschal II (1099-1118), reaffirmed this hostile trend and in 1106 he extended the scope of crusading to include an attack on the Byzantine Empire, with a papal legate preaching full spiritual rewards for all participants. While this may be seen as an important, if neglected, forerunner of the sack of Constantinople in 1204, as we will see below, political developments in the twelfth century led to a period of positive relations between the Latin East and Byzantium. The pagans of the Baltic and Eastern Europe were not the subject of a crusade until 1147, but as early as 1108 clerics had drawn attention to the parallel of fighting the enemies of Christ and avenging the death of Christians in this region (in this case, missionaries). It was the Second Crusade that brought the Baltic into parity with the Holy Land and Spain and, as we saw earlier, the campaigns of 1147-48 represented an unprecedented and broad-ranging effort to expand the borders of Christianity in three different areas. Although outside the scope of this present work, one might also note the award of spiritual privileges against opponents of Pope Innocent II (1130-43) during the papal schism of
the 1130s. Some popular movements associated with the First Crusade tried to extend the concept to encompass the Jews in the West, but secular rulers were unwilling to allow such disorder in their towns and churchmen did not want to disobey biblical injunctions against the killing of Jews. For these reasons the Jews were not formally targeted by the crusade authorities, which condemned such attacks. When outbreaks of anti-semitism occurred in 1146-47 Bernard of Clairvaux and King Conrad acted quickly to stamp them out. Taking all of these theatres of war together, crusading proved to be a flexible concept, capable of serving the needs of secular and ecclesiastical powers against the enemies of Christendom, allowing both to advance their authority as well as offering the hope of salvation and material gain for the people. As noted earlier, the distinction between the secular and the spiritual should not be overemphasised — it was perfectly possible for a pious ruler such as King Afonso Henriques of Portugal to want to extend his territory for both religious and earthly motives.
The Crusades 1095-1197 Page 22
