In Distant Lands

by Lars Brownworth

  His sister Sibyl was unmarried, so Baldwin began to look around for a suitable match, finally settling on a slightly reckless adventurer named Guy of Lusignan. Guy's past was somewhat checkered – he had been kicked out of France for attacking the representatives of his feudal overlord, ‘Richard the Lionheart’ – but he was capable, wealthy, and, most importantly, available. Guy was rushed to Jerusalem where he was married into the royal family and named permanent regent.

  The marriage should have stabilized the political situation, but Guy was no match for the poisonous atmosphere of the court. He was unable to unite the squabbling barons under his leadership, and within a year Baldwin was forced to wearily take up the reigns of state once again.

  By now physically and emotionally exhausted, Baldwin's reputation was the only thing holding the kingdom together and its enemies at bay. Fortunately for the crusader states, it was still formidable. Later that year when Saladin besieged a castle in what is today Jordan, the blind and lame Baldwin ordered himself carried into the battle on a litter, and the cautious sultan chose to retreat. The scene repeated itself the following year when Saladin returned to the same fortress. Once again the Egyptian army melted away at the sight of the Leper King.

  That was his last triumph. A few months later, in the spring of 1185, the courageous Baldwin IV died,96 and with him went any sense of unity in the kingdom. The various court factions began openly fighting, and relations between the sides were so poisoned that one group even appealed to Saladin for help.

  The Horns of Hattin

  The sultan was only too happy to step in. While the crusader states were divided and weak, he was carefully preparing the ground for his great invasion. He had been beating the drum of jihad for some time, founding religious schools, erecting new mosques, and strictly enforcing Sharia law, but now his devotion to religious war became almost a mania. “He spoke of nothing else,” wrote a companion who knew him well, “and had little sympathy for anyone who spoke of anything else or encouraged any other activity.”97

  Saladin’s obsession was fueled by the firm belief that God had specifically chosen him to purge Palestine – and then perhaps the world – of anyone who was not Muslim. “When God gives me victory over Palestine,” he had mused to a friend, “…I shall set sail for their far-off lands and pursue the Franks there, to free the earth of anyone who does not believe in God, or die in the attempt.”98 Only when the whole earth submitted to Islam would the jihad end.

  The only real question was when it would start. Saladin had signed an inconvenient peace treaty with Jerusalem, and Guy of Lusignan, Baldwin's former regent who had emerged as the victor of the civil wars, was eager to maintain the peace. Guy understood perfectly well that the thin piece of paper with Saladin's seal on it was the only thing shielding him from a massive invasion, and desperately tried to avoid any pretext to break it. The same, however, could not be said for Reynald of Châtillon.

  His miserable record at Antioch, and the long incarceration that followed, had failed to impress any enduring lessons on the troublesome prince. If anything, he had emerged more stubborn than before. Perhaps nothing illustrates the depths to which leadership in Outremer had fallen than the fact that his appalling list of failures was interpreted as valuable experience by Reynald's peers.

  In the chaos that had followed the Leper King's death, Reynald had installed himself back in Antioch and declared himself independent of Jerusalem. Guy's own grip on power was too tenuous to do anything about this, and his pleas for discretion fell on deaf ears. Reynald had been a powerless vassal before, and he had no intention of repeating the experience.

  One of Reynald's favorite activities was raiding, and since Antioch was conveniently located near a major trading route from Syria to Egypt, there were plenty of opportunities to indulge himself. At first he was content to harass Syrian shepherds by commandeering their flocks, but in 1187, he graduated to ambushing one of Saladin’s large camel caravans.

  King Guy was horrified, and immediately ordered Reynald to reimburse Saladin, but the damage was already done. Needling raids were one thing, but the trade route was also a major line of communication between the two parts of Saladin's kingdom – and could conveniently be interpreted as an attack on the sultanate. The fact that Reynald naturally refused to reimburse anyone was beside the point. Saladin had his justification for war.

  The threat of annihilation finally united the squabbling Christians. The entire fighting strength of the crusader states – perhaps twenty thousand men including twelve hundred knights – heeded King Guy's call. Bolstered by the True Cross, Jerusalem's holiest relic, they marched to Nazareth, making camp along a well-fortified ridge, and waited for Saladin's arrival.

  The sultan had no intention of fighting on ground of the crusader's choosing, and in an attempt to lure them away from their camp attacked a nearby fortress at Tiberias. The Count of Tiberias urged King Guy not to take the bait, a particularly poignant bit of advice on his part since the citadel was sure to fall and the count had left his wife in charge of its defenses. Reynald of Châtillon, supported by the Templars, angrily accused the count of cowardice and urged Guy to attack at once. The king wavered, but in the end chivalry won out. No Christian king worth his salt could simply abandon a woman to her fate.

  Sure enough, the gallant gesture quickly backfired. The fifteen miles of land between Nazareth and Tiberias is a waterless plain, and it was the height of summer. The baking sun was merciless, and the harassing attacks by mounted archers were endless. After a day's grueling march, the army paused on the side of an extinct volcano called the Horns of Hattin.

  The night brought neither relief from the excruciating heat nor sleep for the exhausted Christians. Saladin's army materialized around them in the darkness, lighting brushfires to blow smoke in their faces and shouting out taunts and threats of the beheadings that would surely follow.

  When the sun rose on July 4, 1187, the smoke and haze cleared enough for the demoralized and parched crusaders to realize the scale of the disaster awaiting them. Saladin's army outnumbered them at least two to one, and had them completely surrounded. A hail of arrows signaled the first onslaught, as the immense Muslim army converged on the Christians. The crusaders fought with desperate courage, surging forward and nearly reaching Saladin himself, but the ending was never in doubt. In the chaos of battle a few knights managed to slip away. Everyone else was captured or killed.

  King Guy, Reynald of Châtillon, and the other surviving nobles were brought to Saladin's tent where they were treated to a display of his famous courtesy. The king was given a glass of ice water as a token of hospitality, and treated as an honored guest. The moment was spoiled, however, when Saladin recognized Reynald of Châtillon. After a terse exchange he ordered the sixty-year old to rise, and personally hacked off his head.99 Recovering himself, Saladin explained to the shocked Guy that Reynald had only gotten what he deserved. The king and the other nobility would be allowed to purchase their freedom.

  This clemency didn't extend to the other captives. The foot soldiers and those minor nobility who couldn't afford to ransom themselves were sold on the slave markets. The hated military orders – Templars and Hospitallers – weren't even given that small consideration. They were bound and dragged into the sultan's tent, where he ordered them all beheaded. Their last moments were horrific, and, as was surely intended, must have been enough to shake their faith. Each of them had taken a monastic vow to protect defenseless pilgrims, and now they were defenseless themselves, punched, kicked, and forced to their knees by a crowd of shouting Islamic clerics and sufis, each begging the sultan to be allowed to strike the first blow. Their faith had failed; the crescent had triumphed over the cross.

  For Saladin, the victory was dramatic vindication of his call to jihad, and dispatching the despised military orders was a supreme triumph. He withdrew to a raised platform to watch the grisly scene play out. His personal secretary perfectly captured the moment: “Saladin, his fac
e joyful, sat on the dais; the unbelievers showed black despair.”100

  The point was further carried home a few weeks later when Saladin rode in triumph through the streets of Damascus. The sultan knew the value of symbols and exploited his great victory brilliantly. The captured crusader king was led through the streets, while Saladin, mounted on a magnificent charger, carried Christendom's most sacred relic – the True Cross – mounted upside down on a lance.

  The sheer scale of Saladin's victory was breathtaking. In a single battle he had wiped out virtually every fighting man in the crusader states. On the morning of July 4, 1187 Outremer had been a major political player in the Levant. By nightfall it had lost its ability even to defend itself. All of its towns and cities were guarded by skeleton garrisons, scattered thinly in small forts and citadels as the Islamic sword dangled overhead. Within days of the battle they were voluntarily surrendering.

  Jerusalem stubbornly held out for three months, but that was due more to Saladin's deliberate approach than any hope of resistance. When the Muslim army arrived on September 20, the city was defended by only fourteen knights. The Patriarch attempted to negotiate a surrender but was horrified to learn that Saladin planned a general massacre of every Christian in the city. Only the heated reply by the garrison that they would kill the Muslim inhabitants of the city first, changed his mind. Negotiations went forward, and on October 2, 1187, Jerusalem capitulated.101

  As in other cities Saladin conquered, those who could purchase their freedom were allowed to do so. The rest were sold into slavery. The churches of the city were either converted to mosques or desecrated, and all crosses were removed. The only exception was the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which was allowed to continue to operate under the care of four elderly Syrian priests.

  Within two years Saladin had all but accomplished his great dream of destroying the Christian presence in the Levant. Only the cities of Tripoli, Antioch, and Tyre remained independent. Outremer was all but gone.

  Chapter 14: The Third Crusade

  “By the hands of wicked Christians Jerusalem was turned over to the wicked.”

  – anonymous Christian crusader102

  The news of Jerusalem's fall hit Europe like a thunderbolt. Pope Urban III was dead within days of being informed – out of shock it was rumored – and theological scholars in Paris and Oxford were being consulted on whether this was a sign of the start of the apocalypse.103 The surprising thing was that any of this came as a surprise at all. For years there had been signs that the kingdom was in desperate trouble, but these had been dismissed as over-heated rhetoric or fear mongering. Warnings of impending disaster were no match for the seemingly endless human capacity to believe the convenient fable that everything would work out in the end.

  Now, however, the full extent of Christendom's blindness was revealed. The Holy City, which had been reclaimed by the faith of the original crusaders at such a terrible cost, was lost, thrown away by the avarice and hypocrisy of the current generation. The various monarchs of Western Europe had been giving piously empty speeches about the need for a new crusade for years, and the fact that none had made even rudimentary plans was now embarrassingly obvious.

  This was mostly due to the fact that, as usual, they were busy attacking each other. The English king, Henry II, was trying to suppress a civil war started by his sons, who in turn were receiving active help from the French king, Philip II Augustus. The other major ruler, the German emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, was campaigning in northern Italy against the wishes of the pope, while simultaneously attempting to put down revolts within the borders of the empire. They were all simply too busy to do anything more than pay lip service to the idea of a crusade.

  The loss of Jerusalem – along with Christianity's holiest relic – changed everything. The profound sense of shock stung even the most calculating monarch into awareness of his duty to the faith. It took Urban III's successor, Gregory VIII, only nine days to issue both a formal call to crusade and a seven-year truce throughout Europe. Henry's sons made peace with their father, and within a few months the French had as well. Both Henry and Philip took the cross and swore to leave for Jerusalem by Easter 1189.

  Frederick Barbarossa

  As welcome as the news of their participation in the crusade was, however, it was quickly overshadowed by Frederick Barbarossa's dramatic entrance. The German emperor was by now the most powerful figure in Europe, and had broken popes and would-be kings with terrifying frequency. Although nearing seventy in 1188, he was still physically imposing with a barrel chest and thick limbs. The famous beard was now more white than red, but he retained his powerful voice and fierce temper.104

  The crusading call struck the old emperor acutely. As a veteran of the failed Second Crusade, he had seen first hand the threats facing Outremer, and had been promising to help the situation in the East for the better part of two decades. His obvious failure to do so weighed heavily on his mind. At a special Diet in Mainz in 1188, the emperor announced his intention of marching to the Holy Land.

  Unlike the other crowned heads of Europe, Barbarossa knew exactly what was involved in such a monumental endeavor. His army was easily the best prepared, supplied, and trained of any force that had left Europe on a crusade so far. It was also one of the largest. According to contemporary accounts he had nearly one hundred thousand men – nearly as many as all of the armies that took part in the First Crusade combined.

  This magnificent force, the outward expression of the emperor's piety, could not be squandered. Barbarossa's experience with the Second Crusade – when the German army had been annihilated trying to cross Asia Minor – had impressed upon him the importance of securing safe passage through Anatolia. Before setting foot outside of the empire, therefore, he took the precaution of dispatching envoys to every major ruler along the land route to Palestine. With a shrewd mixture of promises and threats, Barbarossa even managed to intimidate the Turks of Anatolia into promising safe passage for his army.

  His last order of business before departing – as befitted a chivalric ruler – was to write a letter to Saladin, informing him of his plans. He assured the sultan that old age had not diminished his ability to make war and ordered him to vacate the Holy Land within a year or face the consequences.

  If the letter was strictly a formality, Saladin's response was equally so. He urged the emperor to come, languidly pointing out that no sea separated the Muslims from their reinforcements. With honor on both sides satisfied, the German monarch, accompanied by his son and most of the upper nobility, left the city of Regensburg on May 11, 1189.

  The festive mood of the army soured considerably when it reached Byzantine territory. Barbarossa had made arrangements for special imperial markets to be opened to supply his troops, but when the army arrived, these markets failed to appear. Even worse, the local Byzantine troops openly harassed the crusaders, blocking their path and attempting to ambush stragglers. Barbarossa fired off an angry letter to Constantinople, ordering the emperor to fulfill his promises of aid or risk attack.

  The source of the trouble wasn't hard to find. The Byzantines had always been suspicious of large armies moving across their borders – even ones that claimed to be allies – and had particular reasons to be wary of the Germans. Before setting out, Barbarossa had made an alliance with the Normans of Sicily, a notorious enemy of Byzantium. Even more alarming, however, was the title that Barbarossa claimed.

  The Byzantine Empire may have been in a state of advanced decay – the old emperor Manuel Comnenus had died nine years before and a weakling named Isaac Angelus had come to the throne – but it was fiercely protective of its prestige. Isaac sat on the same throne that Constantine the Great had, and rightly regarded himself as the true Roman emperor. He – and only he – controlled the same political state that had been built by Augustus twelve centuries before. From his point of view, there was only one God in heaven and only one Empire on earth – the God-ordained Roman state of which he was the head.<
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  Frederick Barbarossa, however, insisted on calling himself ‘Roman emperor’. This was an old conceit. The German monarch ruled over the 'Western Roman Empire',105 a dubious creation of the pope and Charlemagne four hundred years before, and therefore felt perfectly entitled to call himself an emperor. But to the Byzantines, this assumption of the title 'Roman' was more than a petty irritation. There could only be one true Roman Empire. If Frederick Barbarossa was a Roman emperor, then Isaac Angelus was not.

  This thorny issue had been resolved in the past by both sides diplomatically ignoring titles when addressing each other, but Frederick was in no mood for diplomacy. When Isaac sent ambassadors to negotiate, he responded by informing Constantinople that no further communication would be possible unless he was addressed as 'brother emperor'. Isaac predictably refused – throwing the German ambassadors in prison – and the exasperated Frederick promptly sacked the city of Philippopolis, the third largest city in the empire.

  The show of force had its intended effect. Despite his initial bluster, Isaac was a weak man, and in no position to resist the German army. He immediately freed the prisoners, showering them with gold and apologies, and offered to transport the German army across the Bosporus at his own expense.

  This craven behavior went a long way toward confirming the abysmal Byzantine reputation in the West, as did Isaac's subsequent actions. At the same moment his ships were transporting the crusaders to Anatolia, his ambassadors were speeding towards Saladin, informing the sultan of the imminent threat.