The Greatest Knight

by Thomas Asbridge

  Another knight who made his fortune in the East was Guy of Lusignan, one of the two brothers who had ambushed Earl Patrick of Salisbury and William Marshal in Poitou in 1168. At some point in the 1170s, Guy had travelled to Palestine, perhaps in part to atone for Patrick’s death, but like Reynald he achieved sudden advancement through marriage in 1180, wedding Sibylla of Jerusalem, the sister of King Baldwin IV. In light of Baldwin the Leper King’s desperate ill health, Guy now had his eyes on the crown of Jerusalem itself – a staggering transformation of fortunes, given that just fifteen years earlier he had been an Aquitanean outlaw on the run from Henry II. With such precedent, it would be surprising if William did not entertain at least some thoughts of a Levantine future.

  William’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem

  Marshal does not appear to have travelled to the Holy Land with a knightly retinue of his own. The small entourage he had assembled by 1179 seems to have been disbanded by the time of his exile in December 1182, and it is quite possible that he was accompanied by only one or two servants, including his squire – a low-ranking warrior named Eustace Bertrimont, who would remain a member of William’s household for many years to come. No detailed record of Marshal’s journey eastwards has survived, but it is almost certain that he would have sailed to Palestine, for while the First Crusaders had marched overland to reach the Near East, the vast majority of pilgrims and crusaders now travelled by ship. William may have embarked from a Channel port or, perhaps more likely, from a southern-French centre of pilgrim traffic like Marseille. His crusader status – signalled by the cross sewn on to his clothing – afforded him a degree of protection and freedom to travel unhindered in Christian lands.

  Given that the Young King was buried in Rouen in mid-July, and that William first travelled to England, the earliest likely date for his departure for the Levant was September 1183 and, in all probability, he set out before the Mediterranean sea-lanes closed for winter in early November. In one sense, Marshal was travelling ‘out of season’, or at least against the prevailing stream of traffic. In the years after Jerusalem’s recapture, tens of thousands of Western Europeans had seized the opportunity to visit the Holy Places, some travelling, like William, as crusaders, others simply as pilgrims. Typically, these men and women would sail to the East in early spring and then return in the autumn. With fair winds, the voyage across the Mediterranean could take as little as twenty days, but a journey of four to six weeks was not uncommon. Most arrived in Palestine at the thriving port of Acre, a bustling, cosmopolitan hub of trade and commerce; one that even welcomed Muslim merchants and travellers in spite of the ongoing holy war.

  William’s first priority was to complete his pilgrimage to Jerusalem and fulfil his promise to Young Henry. That brought him inland, through the Judean hills, to the Holy City itself – a great, walled metropolis and the epicentre of the Christian faith. Marshal’s ultimate destination was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, believed to have been built on the site of Jesus Christ’s death and his resurrection. For William, like all medieval Latin Christians, this was the most sacred space on Earth. It was here that the First Crusaders had come on 15 July 1099 – fresh from massacring Jerusalem’s Muslim population – to give thanks to their God for victory. Exactly fifty years later to the day, a grand reconstruction programme, initiated by King Fulk (Henry II’s grandfather) and his half-Armenian wife Queen Melisende, had been completed. It was this magnificent structure, with a spectacular domed rotunda enclosing the supposed site of Christ’s tomb, that Marshal entered, finally discharging his duty to the Young King.

  During his time in the East, William became friendly with members of the two celebrated Military Orders – the Templars and the Hospitallers. These religious movements combined the ideals of knighthood and monasticism, and their adherents were regarded as the ultimate holy warriors, forming the elite core of the kingdom of Jerusalem’s armies. Given his own background and the martial renown he had garnered in Western Europe, the association with these revered knightly orders was natural. According to the History, the Templars and Hospitallers ‘loved the Marshal very dearly because of his many fine qualities’ and he must have been equally impressed by their legendary discipline and skill-at-arms. In Jerusalem itself he would have visited the Templar compound (now part of what is the Aqsa Mosque) on the Haram as-Sharif or Temple Mount, where he would also have seen the Dome of the Rock transformed into the Latin ‘Templum Domini’, topped by a huge cross rather than a crescent. It is very likely that William also visited the massive hospital in Jerusalem, where up to 2,000 poor or sick Christians could be treated.

  Marshal may also have seen the most treasured relic in Palestine – the True Cross – a golden crucifix believed to contain a piece of the very cross upon which Christ had died. This sacred object had been miraculously ‘discovered’ after Jerusalem’s conquest in 1099 and came to be regarded as the vital totem of Latin military might, being carried into battle at the heart of the kingdom’s forces. Many believed that, with the True Cross in their midst, victory was assured.

  A knight in the East

  William Marshal spent two years in the Holy Land, but virtually nothing certain is known of his actions in this period. The History recorded that William performed ‘many feats of bravery and valour’ during his stay, achieving as much as ‘if he had lived there for seven years’, adding that these ‘fine deeds’ were ‘still known about today’ and widely discussed. But Marshal’s biographer then declared that he could not describe these marvellous exploits because: ‘I was not there and did not witness them, nor can I find anyone who can tell me half of them.’ This leaves much of this phase of his life as a frustrating blank.

  As a result, most historians have been content simply to pass over William’s time in the East in a few sentences, concluding at best that ‘a crusade was the supreme adventure’ and that William ‘undoubtedly performed [great deeds] against the forces of the redoubtable Saladin’. In fact, considerably more can be deduced. Through the use of an array of other contemporary sources, it is possible to construct a detailed account of the kingdom of Jerusalem’s history in these precise years between the autumn of 1183 and early 1186. This picture is revealing because it demonstrates that Marshal arrived in a Latin realm that was on the brink of disaster, and that the looming shadow of this catastrophe was obvious to all. More importantly, and perhaps surprisingly, in spite of the simmering tension with the Muslim world, William happened to reach Palestine in a period of relative calm just before the destructive storm of 1187 broke.

  The kingdom of Jerusalem was in an embattled state in 1183. That June, Saladin had finally managed to overcome Muslim rivals in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. This gave the sultan control of an arc of territory running south to Damascus, and then on to Egypt and the great city of Cairo, effectively surrounding the kingdom of Jerusalem. However, his ambitious plan to unite the Muslim world remained incomplete, as he had yet to subdue the Iraqi city of Mosul, and Saladin was determined to assemble a grand coalition of Islamic forces before attempting a mass invasion of Latin Palestine. This meant that, although the sultan did prosecute two exploratory attacks on Christian territory in the autumn of 1183 and the summer of 1184, his real focus lay elsewhere.

  It is just possible that William Marshal saw almost immediate action in September 1183, after Saladin marched his forces into Galilee in the northern reaches of the kingdom of Jerusalem. A large Latin army was assembled in response to this incursion and pilgrims waiting in Acre to sail back to Europe were even pressed into service. It may be that William joined this draft as a new arrival in the second half of September, but it is perhaps doubtful that he reached the Levant so quickly. Baldwin the Leper King’s illness meant that the Latin forces were commanded by none other than Guy of Lusignan. Given that this was Guy’s first experience of leading a large field army he did an admirable, if unspectacular job, advancing in close formation to threaten Saladin’s forces, yet staunchly refusing to be drawn into
a hasty confrontation. Barring some limited skirmishing, there was no determined combat and, faced with a stalemate, Saladin withdrew. Thus, even if Marshal did participate in this campaign, he would hardly have been party to a titanic confrontation.

  Saladin moved on that autumn to besiege Reynald of Châtillon’s massive desert castle at Kerak, on the route linking Damascus with Arabia and Egypt, and the sultan returned to attack the fortress for a second time in the summer of 1184. On both occasions, Latin armies marched to break the siege, and it must be likely that William joined one or both of these expeditions, but neither resulted in fighting, as the Muslim sultan retreated as soon as the Christians approached. In this period, Saladin moved with extreme caution, testing his enemy and building his own forces. There were no other notable campaigns in Palestine during Marshal’s time in the East. By the spring of 1185, Saladin was more interested in battering distant Mosul into submission and, to forestall a war on two fronts, agreed a twelve-month truce with the kingdom of Jerusalem. The resultant lull in fighting dismayed newly arrived crusaders, including a party of frustrated European knights, who appeared in early 1186 only to be strictly forbidden from launching an attack on Muslim territory for fear of inciting a massive reprisal.

  The only other military offensive in these years was a small-scale, illegal raid, conducted by Guy of Lusignan in October 1184 against Bedouin nomads living near the fortress settlement of Darum (on the kingdom of Jerusalem’s southern border with the Sinai). These Bedouin often provided the Latins with valuable intelligence about Saladin’s movements, and were therefore afforded official protection by the Jerusalemite crown, so Guy’s unsanctioned plundering expedition infuriated King Baldwin IV. Given their past history in Poitou, it would be easy to imagine that William Marshal still harboured considerable ill-feeling towards the Lusignan ‘murderer’ of 1168. In fact, one of the few additional details recorded in the History about Marshal’s time in the Holy Land was that he was on good terms with Guy of Lusignan, so it may be that William was party to this rather disreputable raid.

  Clearly, William had precious little opportunity to perform the ‘many feats of bravery and valour’ alluded to in the History. In military terms at least, Marshal was probably left somewhat disillusioned by the experience of his crusade; certainly he can have had few tales of glorious daring to relate on his return to Europe and this may well explain his biographer’s cursory treatment of these years.

  At the world’s end

  In spite of the lack of decisive military confrontation, William can have been in no doubt that the kingdom of Jerusalem was plunging inexorably towards disaster. While Baldwin the Leper King clung on to life – his twenty-three-year-old body ravaged by crippling deformity and blindness – Marshal would have witnessed the destructive squabbling over the succession, and the office of regent, to which Guy of Lusignan was party. When Baldwin IV died in April 1185 and was succeeded on 16 May by his seven-year-old nephew and namesake, Baldwin V (Sibylla’s son by her first marriage), the crisis only deepened. The realm descended ever further into political chaos and the Latins became paralysed by factionalism.

  It was against this backdrop of spiralling Christian disunity and mounting Muslim strength that a last desperate appeal for aid from Europe was mounted. In the early summer of 1184 a high-level delegation was sent to the West, led by the head of the Latin Church in Palestine, Patriarch Heraclius, and the masters of the Templars and the Hospitallers. Given William Marshal’s proximity to both King Henry II and the Military Orders, it is possible that he offered some advice or mediation as the embassy was preparing to depart. Patriarch Heraclius’ party travelled first to the pope in Rome, then made an early winter crossing of the Alpine passes to reach King Philip of France in Paris. The mission arrived in England in early 1185 and was greeted with honour by the Old King. On 10 February, Heraclius consecrated a new Temple Church in London – its circular architecture designed to evoke a sense of physical union with the rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre. Then, on 18 March, Henry II convened a weeklong council, just one mile to the north at Clerkenwell, to debate the Angevin response to Heraclius’ pleas for assistance. The patriarch had brought the keys to the Holy Sepulchre and the Tower of David, Jerusalem’s citadel, as well as the Latin kingdom’s royal banner, to offer in ritual submission, but in the end Henry II proved unwilling to mount a new crusade for fear of abandoning his own realm to the predations of the Capetian French.

  By this time, it was apparent to those living in the kingdom of Jerusalem that a catastrophe was looming. Shortly before his death in around 1185, Archbishop William of Tyre wrote that it now seemed inevitable that the ‘palm of victory, which had so often been earned’ by the Christians, would soon pass to their Muslim foes, and he expressed his deeply held fear that Jerusalem could not be saved. If William Marshal had considered forging a new life in the Levant in 1183, he likely discarded those plans in the face of this mounting evidence of imminent collapse.

  Yet for all the frustration and dread that must have coloured his visit to the East, Marshal’s pilgrimage had a lasting spiritual impact. The surviving sources for William’s life afford few glimpses into his interior world, so it is difficult to gauge the depth of his faith. He lived through an age in which Christian devotion was virtually universal in Europe. Few would have paused for even a second to consider whether they believed in God, because his existence was considered an undoubted reality, affirmed for all to see through miraculous intervention on Earth. This is not to suggest that the Christianity of medieval Europe was blindly ignorant and unthinking, merely that for most, religious adherence was a natural, almost innate, feature of daily life. Profound questions were being asked about the ways in which Latin Christian faith might be defined or best expressed, and the efficacy of the Church – and the papacy in particular – was open to challenge because of obvious abuses and materialism.

  Many knights like William Marshal were plagued by doubts about the inherent sinfulness of their worldly profession, because Christian doctrine condemned most forms of bloodshed and violence. William appears, in large part, to have rejected such misgivings. He seems to have believed at a fundamental level that, so long as his conduct as a warrior conformed to the broad precepts of chivalry, his knightly career presented no particular barrier to religious purity. Marshal showed little interest in deep issues of theology, and entertained no aspirations to sanctity. Instead, he appears to have been moved by a conventional concern to live what he considered a decent Christian life, one that might earn him a place in Heaven after his death. He had come to Jerusalem to fulfil a promise to the Young King Henry, having just witnessed his tortured death. Not surprisingly, William gave some thought to his own mortality before he left the Holy Land. Most pilgrims and crusaders who visited the Holy City returned to Europe with some token of their journey – many First Crusaders had returned carrying palm fronds in imitation of Christ. William bought two large lengths of precious silken cloth in Jerusalem to serve as his funerary shroud. These were carefully wrapped, packed away and borne back to the West in secret, awaiting the eventuality of his death. Marshal also made a binding commitment at this point to end his days within the Templar Order, though this too was done in secrecy. For now, not a word of either of these provisions was spoken, even to his closest confidants. These were his private, heartfelt preparations for his own day of judgement.

  After an absence of some two years, William Marshal returned to Western Europe at some point between the autumn of 1185 and the spring of 1186. A little over a year later, the cataclysm that had been threatening finally struck. The boy King Baldwin V died in 1186 and was succeeded by Guy of Lusignan, through his marriage to Sibylla of Jerusalem. By 1187, Saladin had forged an alliance with Mosul and was ready to mount a full-scale assault on Palestine. That summer the sultan invaded Galilee once again, at the head of some 40,000 troops, and this time Guy marched to confront him in open battle. On 4 July, Saladin scored a crushing victory that left thousands of La
tin Christians dead and the remainder in captivity. King Guy was taken prisoner and the relic of the True Cross was seized by the sultan’s horde. Reynald of Châtillon was executed by Saladin’s own hand, and some 200 knights of the Military Orders were also put to death. Later that year, Jerusalem itself was recovered for Islam and the sultan ordered the huge cross atop the Dome of the Rock to be ripped down and smashed. When the tidings of these catastrophes reached the pope, he promptly died of shock and grief. In the weeks and months that followed, the devastating news raced across Europe, triggering a new call to arms for the campaign known as the Third Crusade – one that the Angevins could not ignore.

  Part III