By Sword and Fire

by Sean McGlynn

  These are the likeliest reasons for the executions at Hattin: revenge on the crusaders’ most effective fighting men, who were harsh, brutal and unrelenting in their war against the Muslims; and a lesson not only to the military orders, but also a warning to anyone thinking of joining them, with the intent of hindering recruitment. In this, Saladin was following precedent: Templars who were seized after storming a breach at Ascalon in 1153 were decapitated; their heads were sent as trophies to Cairo, while their bodies were left behind so that the garrison could decorate the walls with them as a ghastly gesture of defiance. In his account of Hattin, the author of The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin does not mention the offer of conversion to the Templars and Hospitallers; instead he baldly states that Saladin made a deliberate choice to have them executed: ‘As for the officers of the Hospitallers and the Templars, the Sultan chose to put them to death and killed them without exception.’22 Saladin was aware that manpower shortages were an overriding concern for the crusaders; with some sixty Templars having been killed at the encounter at Sephorie two months before Hattin, and another 230 now, Saladin had dealt a severe blow to the strength of the military orders while encouraging his own men with the crushing of their fiercest opponents. A Latin chronicler’s explanation for the massacre is the most likely one: Saladin ‘decided to have them utterly exterminated because he knew they surpassed all others in battle’.23 Unlike Grand Masters, to Saladin the knights were worth more dead than alive.

  After Hattin, the crusader kingdom all but imploded. By the year’s end only the coastal towns of Tripoli, Antioch and Tyre and a few castles held out. The body blow came in early October with the loss of Jersualem, the ripest fruit of Hattin, Saladin’s greatest victory. The Sultan was triumphant while Latin Christendom stood in dismay at the loss of their Holy City. It was the rallying cry for the Third Crusade.

  The great set piece of the Third Crusade was the siege of Acre, 1189–91. The city, the chief port for the kingdom of Jersualem, was initially besieged by King Guy of Lusignan, despite his promise to Saladin that he would not take up arms against him on his release. Throughout the long investiture, Saladin remained camped nearby with his army, unable to shift the crusaders or to breach their siege lines. The stalemate was broken by the arrival of reinforcements under King Philip II of France and Richard the Lionheart, leaders of the Third Crusade, in April and June 1191. Saladin’s repeated attacks with his field forces were successfully rebuffed and the defenders of Acre were left isolated. Prolonged artillery barrages and mining operations brought the siege to an end in mid-July. Fearing an imminent storming of the city and being put to the sword, the garrison came to terms and surrendered on the understanding that they would be spared. Two thousand six hundred were beheaded.

  In a chapter on battles, the dramatic details of this epic siege must be passed over; but as a chapter on massacres of prisoners, and hence non-combatants, Acre requires discussion. For the fate of the Muslim prisoners was not determined at the moment when the city fell, but over a month after the siege had finished. Also, what happened at Acre is the most notorious episode of the Third Crusade and is considered one of the blackest episodes of the whole crusading era. Yet it must be seen in part in the light of what happened at the Battle of Hattin, four years earlier.

  On 20 August, nearly six weeks after the city’s fall, Richard marched out his Muslim prisoners some distance beyond the city walls to a plain. Baha al-Din, Saladin’s panegyrist who wrote an immensely detailed account of the siege, described what happened next. Richard

  dealt treacherously towards the Muslim prisoners. He had made terms with them and had received the surrender of the city on condition that they would be guaranteed their lives come what may and that, if the Sultan delivered what was agreed, he would free them together with their possessions, children and womenfolk, but that, if the Sultan refused to do so, he would reduce them to slavery and captivity. The accursed man deceived them and revealed what was hidden in his heart…. He and all his Frankish forces … came to the wells beneath tell al-Ayyadiyya … and then moved into the middle of the plain…. The enemy then brought out the Muslim prisoners for whom God had decreed martyrdom, about 3,000 bound in ropes. Then as one man they charged them and with stabbings and blows with the sword they slew them in cold blood, while the Muslim advance guard watched, not knowing what to do because they were at some distance from them.24

  The scale of the massacre is one to compare with Verden. For Muslims, it was a day of infamy that resonated in their history. When Acre fell to the Muslims in 1291, they meted out the same treatment to the crusading garrison, a chronicler justifying the ensuing massacre as revenge for the Christians’ actions exactly one hundred years earlier:

  Almighty God permitted the Muslims to conquer Acre on the same day and at the same hour as that on which the Franks had taken it: they … promised to spare the lives of the Muslims and then treacherously killed them…. The Sultan gave his word to the Franks and then had them slaughtered as the Franks had done to the Muslims. Thus Almighty God was revenged on their descendants.25

  The terms of Acre’s surrender in 1191 were that all inhabitants of the city were to be spared in exchange for 1,500 prisoners, a huge ransom of 200,000 dinars and the return of the Holy Cross; finer details were to be hammered out in negotiations with Saladin. (The chronicler Roger of Howden claims that many of the Muslims were freed after having been baptized into the Christian faith; but conversions were stopped by Kings Philip and Richard as many of those freed returned to Saladin’s army.) Saladin, beset with financial pressures of his own after years of campaigning, struggled to meet swiftly the conditions stipulated; however, he offered a first instalment of all the prisoners, the Holy Cross and half of the money to be delivered on 11 August. When the agreed day arrived, Saladin started to prevaricate, insisting on new terms: all Muslim prisoners should be released and Richard should accept hostages until payment was made in full; failing that, Richard should offer hostages to Saladin until the rest of the money was forthcoming. This was rejected and Saladin then repudiated the initial agreement. As John Gillingam, the leading authority on Richard I, says: ‘Neither side trusted the other and so both were looking for guarantees which the other would not give.’26 Discussions and skirmishes – and even exchanges of gifts – continued until the day of execution.

  Saladin deliberately placed Richard in a difficult position, exploiting the situation to hamper the progression of the crusade. Chroniclers wrote at the time: ‘King Richard knew for sure and realized without doubt that in truth Saladin was only putting him off’; and Saladin ‘sent the king frequent gifts and messengers, gaining time with deceitful and crafty words…. He aimed at keeping the king hanging on for a long time through his myriad subtleties and ambiguities.’27 Richard’s forces were poised to march south; the longer they were at Acre the more time Saladin had to prepare for the expedition, and the more resources the crusaders would be forced to work their way through. These resources would have been depleted even faster by the need to feed all the prisoners. Saladin had devastated the region around Acre, so food supplies were already constricted. Having won a momentous victory at Acre, the morale of the crusaders was high; but empty stomachs would quickly sour the triumphant mood, especially if food were to be shared with their Muslim enemies. The continuator of William of Tyre’s chronicle actually explains Richard’s actions at Acre as a morale-boosting gesture: when Saladin failed to materialize with the Holy Cross on the day set for exchange, the crusaders were so upset and distressed Richard took pity and calmed them by ordering the execution of the prisoners.

  Then there was the very real problem of guarding such a large number of prisoners. Richard needed most of his soldiers for the campaign; he could not afford to leave sufficient men behind merely to ensure effective guard duty. The Templars no doubt told Richard the tales of large bodies of prisoners overwhelming their guards during the Second Crusade; this was also the concern of the English in Wexford, a
nd one of Hervey of Montmorency’s arguments for killing the Irish prisoners there. An Arab chronicler gave this as one of the explanations for the executions: ‘The King of England had decided to march on Ascalon and take it, and he did not want to leave behind him in the city a large number of enemy soldiers.’28

  These considerations were substantial enough for Richard to forego the enormous ransom, the value of which was decreasing by the day with the financial cost of feeding and guarding the prisoners, and the heavy strategic cost of lost momentum. He had the possible option of releasing the prisoners on payment of half the ransom – still a significant amount; but as Gillingham notes, this would have meant loss of face, as he would have been seen to have been outmanoeuvred by Saladin. Richard had weighed everything up: his decision was not made rashly, vindictively or in the heat of a temper as some historians claim in the rush to condemn him. Richard had actually convened a meeting to discuss what should be done: as the contemporary writer Ambroise tells us, the matter was ‘examined at a council where the great men gathered and decided that they would kill most of the Saracens and keep the others, those of high birth, in order to redeem some of their own hostages’; they ‘decided not to waste time waiting any longer for anything, but that the hostages should be beheaded’.29 Coldly calculating the current stalemate, and having failed to obtain political and financial gain from the situation (through prisoner exchanges and ransom), Richard took his final decision based on military priorities – the need to move on – and used the occasion to capitalize further militarily with a message of terror for Muslim resistance.

  The executions – as was the way of the spectacle of violence in the medieval world – were carried out ‘near enough to the Saracens that they could see them well’.30 The demonstration was designed to terrify the enemy and undermine his will to resist the crusading King. It had considerable effect. Latin and Arab chroniclers attest to how Saladin, fearing another Acre, vacated and destroyed Ascalon, the next city on the crusaders’ campaign list: he knew it would be difficult for any garrison there to hold steadfast knowing what had happened to their comrades when they defended Acre. Town after town capitulated to Richard without a fight: if Saladin had not saved Acre, he would be unlikely to save them. Jacques de Vitry, bishop of Acre from 1216 to 1228, calmly recognized the obvious practicality of such a slaughter: ‘the king of England did more to injure and weaken the enemy by slaying many thousands of them’.31 Richard had made a vicious virtue out of harsh necessity.

  Rationalization of such brutality explains much. But one should not ignore the basic human instinct for revenge, especially at a time of war. The desire for vengeance can be an irrational emotion, but occasions like Hattin and Acre could be used to disguise it under a cloak of logic. Of course, more often than not acts of vengeance were performed to be seen exactly as that; failure to exact revenge would be regarded as a sign of weakness. When Richard wrote to the abbot of Clairvaux declaring his victory, his tone was matter-of-fact and businesslike. Of the prisoners and Saladin’s acceptance of terms, he said: ‘But the time-limit expired, and, as the pact which he had agreed was entirely made void, we quite properly had the Saracens that we had in custody – about 2,600 of them – put to death’.32 Any analysis of strategy and deeper explanations were left to the chroniclers; both Arab and Latin ones raise the matter of revenge. The author of The Itinerary of the Pilgrims and the Deeds of King Richard says that the crusaders were only too willing to carry out the executions: ‘Men-at-arms leapt forward readily and fulfilled his [Richard’s] orders without delay. They did this with glad mind and with the assent of divine grace, to take revenge for the deaths of the Christians whom the Turks had killed with shots from their bows and crossbows.’33

  Baha al-Din also acknowledges this possibility: ‘It was said they killed them in revenge for their men who had been killed.’ (This may be a specific reference to six noble crusaders captured and killed during the siege.) The siege had lasted nearly two years and cost the crusaders huge casualties. Many leading figures of western Christendom had perished here, and it is likely that it was not just the men-at-arms and ordinary sergeants who wanted the Muslims to pay a heavy price for the lives lost. Nor should we forget that the massacre at Hattin would have loomed very large in the crusaders’ deliberations. (Baha al-Din may also have been referring to this episode.) The crusaders would have wanted retribution for this atrocity and calls would have come loudest from the Templars: Richard worked extremely closely with the Templars while on crusade, developing intimate ties with them. And at Acre they had lost another Grand Master in combat with the Muslims.

  Taken together, Hattin and Acre show how the cycle of violent vengeance was easy to perpetuate. Indeed, for a time after Acre, Saladin routinely put prisoners to death, even permitting some to be cut into pieces to satiate his soldiers’ desire for revenge. That each massacre did little to harm the chivalric reputations of Richard and Saladin reveals the priorities of contemporary writers. Much was overlooked in the wake of military success: after Hattin, Saladin went on to take Jerusalem; after Acre, Richard regained hugely important areas of territory that contributed enormously to allowing the Latin kingdom in the Holy Land to exist for another century. Even in defeat, there would have been few dissenting voices. It was the way of war and accepted as such. The friendship of Richard and Saladin grew even stronger after Acre.

  Agincourt, 1415

  Agincourt vies with Hastings as the most famous battle of the Middle Ages in the English-speaking world. Despite its having comparably minimal historical impact beyond the battle itself, it is even more celebrated in the annals of English history. No doubt this elevated position is due to its being a remarkable victory: a hopelessly outnumbered band of plucky Englishmen under a brave and chivalrous king utterly destroying an overwhelming force of France’s best soldiers in a supreme feat of martial prowess, marking the superiority of the English fighting man. It is no wonder that Shakespeare’s Henry V was made into a stirring film designed to stiffen the resolve of a war-weary England facing the might of Hitler’s Nazi hordes.

  The reality, of course, was somewhat different. The English were not so outnumbered as has been thought until very recently; and Henry’s chivalrous reputation has survived relatively intact, despite the horrific slaughter of some of his prisoners taken that day. The massacre associated with this battle has been one of the most closely studied atrocities of the Middle Ages; no doubt the celebrated fame of the victory has meant that this less-than-glorious conclusion to the battle cannot easily be overlooked. There is a general consensus amongst historians (especially anglophones) that the massacre, though regrettable, was understandable given the context of events that day. However, very few accounts of this incident have pieced together all the factors that fully explain why Henry took his fateful decision on St Crispin’s Day 1415.

  The path to Agincourt lay in the long history of Anglo-French conflict, reignited by Edward III’s mid-fourteenth-century claim to the French throne which initiated the Hundred Years War. Under Henry, the war was renewed with vigour. Henry’s vacillating demands for the French Crown were but one casus belli; another was his demand for satisfaction under the terms of the 1360 Treaty of Brétigny. More opportunistically, he was taking advantage of internal French divisions which weakened his enemy while attempting to bolster his own domestic position. There was still much disgruntlement in England that Henry’s father, Henry IV, had usurped the throne from Richard II in 1399, a stigma that inevitably fell on the son. In the time-honoured tradition that has survived from Ancient Egypt to today, Henry hoped that waging a victorious war abroad would divert attention from domestic discontent. If any further justification for this cynical move were needed, it came on the day Henry embarked for France from Southampton, when a coup attempt was revealed, resulting in the decapitation of the conspirators. In the process, Henry aspired to establish securely not only his regime but also his reputation as the leading warrior prince of Christendom. In all this
, Henry succeeded spectacularly. History loves a winner, and is therefore often willing to treat indulgently – or ignore altogether – the means employed towards victory. One English historian actually describes Henry’s butchery of hundreds of his prisoners as a ‘peccadillo’.

  The quest for personal glory is often cited as the primary motivational factor of the medieval knight. Certainly, at Agincourt, it contributed significantly to the French defeat. The king (as discussed in chapter two) was the foremost knight of all, and thus was expected to win the greatest glory, a process that would serve to enhance his reputation and hence authority. In this respect, Henry immediately had an insurmountable advantage over his French counterpart, Charles VI of France, better known as Charles the Foolish (who must have been a real disappointment to his father, Charles the Wise). Unflattering as this sobriquet was, his other, more accurate one, was Charles the Mad. Charles suffered his first major attack of dementia as a young man in his early twenties: in 1392 he ran amok, slaughtering some of his hunting companions. From that time, he increasingly experienced episodes of distressing insanity. The result was civil war in France and an alluring opportunity for Henry to demonstrate his mastery on the continent to a seemingly leaderless enemy.