A History of the Crusades-Vol 2 (57 page)

On Friday, 26 June, Saladin reviewed his troops
at Ashtera, in the Hauran. He himself commanded the centre, his nephew Taki
ed-Din the right wing and Kukburi the left. The army marched out in battle
formation to Khisfin and on to the southern tip of the Sea of Galilee. There he
waited for five days, while his scouts collected information about the
Christian forces. On 1 July he crossed the Jordan at Sennabra, and on the
second he encamped with half his army at Kafr Sebt, in the hills five miles
west of the lake, while his other troops attacked Tiberias. The town fell into
their hands after an hour of fighting. Raymond and his stepsons were with the
King’s army; but the Countess Eschiva, after sending a messenger to tell her
husband what was happening, held out with her small garrison in the castle.

When news came that Saladin had crossed the
Jordan, King Guy held counsel with his barons at Acre. Count Raymond spoke
first. He pointed out that in tremendous summer heat the army that attacked was
at a disadvantage. Their own strategy should be purely defensive. With the
Christian army undefeated Saladin would not be able to maintain his great
forces for long in the parched country. After a while he would have to retire.
In the meantime the reinforcements from Antioch would arrive. Most of the
knights inclined to follow this advice; but both Reynald of Chatillon and the
Grand Master Gerard accused Raymond of being a coward and sold to the Saracens.
King Guy was always convinced by the last speaker and gave orders for the army
to move out towards Tiberias.

On the afternoon of 2 July the Christians
encamped at Sephoria. It was an excellent site for a camp, with ample water and
good pasturage for the horses. Were they to remain there, as they had remained
by the Pools of Goliath four years before, Saladin would never risk attacking
them. Their army was nearly as large as his own, and they had the advantage of
the terrain. But that evening the messenger from the Countess of Tripoli
arrived. Once again Guy held a council in his tent. The chivalry of the knights
was moved to think of the gallant lady holding out desperately by the lake. Her
sons with tears in their eyes begged that their mother should be rescued.
Others followed to support their plea. Then Raymond rose. He repeated the
speech that he had made at Acre but with more desperate emphasis. He showed the
folly of leaving the present strong position and making a hazardous march in
the July heat over the barren hillside. Tiberias was his city, he said, and its
defender his wife. But he would rather that Tiberias and all within it were
lost than that the kingdom was lost. His words carried conviction. The council
broke up at midnight, resolved to remain at Sephoria.

When the barons had retired to their quarters
the Grand Master of the Temple crept back to the royal tent. ‘Sire,’ he said, ‘are
you going to trust a traitor?’ It was shameful to let a city be lost that was
only six leagues away. The Templars, he declared, would sooner abandon their
Order than abandon their chance of vengeance on the infidel. Guy, who had been
sincerely persuaded by Raymond an hour before, vacillated and let Gerard
over-persuade him. He sent his heralds through the camp to announce that the
army would march at dawn for Tiberias.

1187: The Franks
encamp at Lubieh

The best road from Sephoria to Tiberias went
slightly north of east across the Galilean hills and came down to the lake a
mile north of the town. The alternative road ran to the bridge at Sennabra,
where a branch followed the shore of the lake north-ward. Saladin’s camp at
Kafr Sebt lay across the Sennabra road, by which he had come from over the
river. It is possible that traitors from the Christian camp went to tell him
that Guy was moving out from Sephoria along the northern road. He therefore led
his army for some five miles across the hills to Hattin, where the road began
to descend towards the lake. It was a village with broad pastures and abundant
water. He was joined there by most of his troops from Tiberias, where only
those needed to blockade the castle remained.

The morning of Friday, 3 July, was hot and
airless, as the Christian army left the green gardens of Sephoria to march over
the treeless hills. Raymond of Tripoli as lord of the fief had the right by
feudal custom to command the van. The King commanded the centre, and Reynald
with the Orders and Balian of Ibelin brought up the rear. There was no water
along the road. Soon men and horses alike were suffering bitterly from thirst.
Their agony slowed up the pace of the march. Moslem skirmishers continuously
attacked both the vanguard and the rearguard, pouring arrows into their midst
and riding away before any counter-attack could be made. By the afternoon the
Franks had reached the plateau immediately above Hattin. Ahead of them a rocky
hill with two summits rose about a hundred feet, and beyond it the ground fell
steeply to the village and on to the lake. It was called the Horns of Hattin.
The Templars sent to the King to say that they could go no farther that day.
Some of the barons begged him to order the army to press on and fight its way
through to the lake. But Guy, moved by the weariness of his men, decided to
halt for the night. On the news Raymond rode in from the front crying: ‘Ah,
Lord God, the war is over; we are dead men; the kingdom is finished.’ On his
advice Guy set up his camp just beyond Lubieh, toward the slope of the Homs,
where there was a well, and the whole army grouped itself around him. But the
site was ill-chosen, for the well was dry.

Saladin, waiting with all his men in the
verdant valley below, could hardly restrain his joy. His opportunity had come
at last.

The Christians passed the night in misery,
listening to the prayers and songs that came from the Moslem tents below. A few
soldiers broke out of the camp in a vain search for water, only to be killed by
the enemy. To make their sufferings worse, the Moslems set fire to the dry
scrub that covered the hill, and hot smoke poured in over the camp. Under cover
of the darkness Saladin moved up his men. When the dawn broke on Saturday, 4
July, the royal army was encircled. Not a cat, says the chronicler, could have
slipped through the net.

The Moslem attack began soon after daybreak.
The Christian infantry had only one thought, water. In a surging mass they tried
to break through down the slope towards the lake gleaming far below. They were
driven up a hillock, hemmed in by the flames and by the enemy. Many of them
were slaughtered at once, many others were taken prisoner; and the sight of
them as they lay wounded and swollen-mouthed was so painful that five of
Raymond’s knights went to the Moslem leaders to beg that they might all be
slain, to end their misery. The horsemen on the hill fought with superb and
desperate courage. Charge after charge of the Moslem cavalry was driven back
with losses; but their own numbers were dwindling. Enfeebled by thirst, their
strength began to fail them. Before it was too late, at the King’s request,
Raymond led his knights in an attempt to burst through the Moslem lines. With
all his men he bore down on the regiments commanded by Taki ed-Din. But Taki
opened his ranks to let them through, and then closed up again behind them.
They could not make their way back again to their comrades so, miserably, they
rode from the battlefield, away to Tripoli. A little later Balian of Ibelin and
Reynald of Sidon broke their way out. They were the last to escape.

1187: In Saladin
s Tent

There was no hope left now for the Christians;
but they still fought on, retiring up the hill to the Homs. The King’s red tent
was moved to the summit, and his knights gathered round him. Saladin’s young
son al-Afdal was at his father’s side witnessing his first battle. Many years
afterwards he paid tribute to the courage of the Franks. ‘When the Frankish King
had withdrawn to the hill-top,’ he said, ‘his knights made a gallant charge and
drove the Moslems back upon my father. I watched his dismay. He changed colour
and pulled at his beard, then rushed forward crying: “Give the devil the lie.”
So our men fell on the enemy who retreated up the hill. When I saw the Franks
flying I cried out with glee: “We have routed them. ” But they charged again
and drove our men back again to where my father stood. Again he urged our men
forward and again they drove the enemy up the hill. Again I cried out: “We have
routed them.” But my father turned to me and said: “Be quiet. We have not
beaten them so long as that tent stands there.” At that moment the tent was
overturned. Then my father dismounted and bowed to the ground, giving thanks to
God, with tears of joy.’

The Bishop of Acre had been killed. The Holy
Cross which he had borne into the battle was in the hands of an infidel. Few of
the knights’ horses survived. When the victors reached the hilltop, the knights
themselves, the King amongst them, were lying on the ground, too weary to fight
any more, with hardly the strength to hand their swords over in surrender.
Their leaders were taken off to the tent that was erected on the battlefield
for the Sultan.

There Saladin received King Guy and his brother
the Constable Amalric, Reynald of Chatillon and his stepson Humphrey of Toron,
the Grand Master of the Temple, the aged Marquis of Montferrat, the lords of
Jebail and Botrun, and many of the lesser barons of the realm. He greeted them
graciously. He seated the King next to him and, seeing his thirst, handed him a
goblet of rose-water, iced with the snows of Hermon. Guy drank from it and
handed it on to Reynald who was at his side. By the laws of Arab hospitality to
give food or drink to a captive meant that his life was safe; so Saladin said
quickly to the interpreter: ‘Tell the King that he gave that man drink, not I.’
He then turned on Reynald whose impious brigandage he could not forgive and
reminded him of his crimes, of his treachery, his blasphemy and his greed. When
Reynald answered truculently, Saladin himself took a sword and struck off his
head. Guy trembled, thinking that his turn would come next. But Saladin
reassured him. ‘A king does not kill a king’, he said, ‘but that man’s perfidy
and insolence went too far.’ He then gave orders that none of the lay barons
was to be harmed but that all were to be treated with courtesy and respect
during their captivity. But he would not spare the knights of the Military
Orders, save only the Grand Master of the Temple. A band of fanatical Moslem
sufis
had joined his troops. To them he gave the task of slaying his Templar and
Hospitaller prisoners. They performed it with relish. When this was done he
moved his army away from Hattin; and the bodies on the battlefield were left to
the jackals and the hyenas.

The prisoners were sent to Damascus, where the
barons were lodged in comfort and the poorer folk were sold in the slave-market.
So many were there that the price of a single prisoner fell to three dinars,
and you could buy a whole healthy family, a man, his wife, his three sons and
his two daughters, for eighty dinars the lot. One Moslem even thought it a good
bargain to exchange a prisoner for a pair of sandals.

The Christians of the East had suffered
disasters before. Their Kings and Princes had been captured before; but their
captors then had been petty lordlings, out for some petty advantage. On the
Homs of Hattin the greatest army that the kingdom had ever assembled was
annihilated. The Holy Cross was lost. And the victor was lord of the whole
Moslem world.

1187: Palestine
surrenders to Saladin

With his enemies destroyed, it only remained
for Saladin to occupy the fortresses of the Holy Land. On 5 July, knowing that
no help could come to her, the Countess of Tripoli surrendered Tiberias to him.
He treated her with the honour that she deserved and allowed her to go with all
her household to Tripoli. Then he moved the bulk of his army down to Acre. The
Seneschal Joscelin of Courtenay, who commanded the city, thought only of his
own safety. He sent a citizen called Peter Brice to meet Saladin when he
arrived before the walls on the 8th, offering its surrender if the lives and
possessions of the inhabitants were guaranteed. To many in the city this tame
capitulation seemed shameful. There was a short riot in which several houses
were burnt; but order was restored before Saladin took formal possession of
Acre on the 10th. He had hoped to persuade most of the Christian merchants to
stay there. But they feared for the future and emigrated with all their movable
possessions. The immense stores of merchandize, silks and metals, jewels and
arms, that were abandoned were distributed by the conquerors, particularly by
Saladin’s young son al-Afdal, to whom the city was given, amongst their
soldiers and comrades. The great sugar-factory was pillaged by Taki ed-Din, to
Saladin’s annoyance. While Saladin remained at Acre, detachments of his army
received the submission of the towns and castles of Galilee and Samaria. At
Nablus Balian’s garrison held out for a few days and obtained honourable terms
when it surrendered; and the castle of Toron resisted for a fortnight before
its garrison capitulated. There was little other resistance. Meanwhile Saladin’s
brother al-Adil came up from Egypt and laid siege to Jaffa. The town would not
yield to him; so he took it by storm and sent all the inhabitants, men, women
and children, into captivity. Most of them found their way to the slave-markets
and harems of Aleppo.

When Galilee was conquered Saladin moved up the
Phoenician coast. Most of the survivors from Hattin had fled with Balian to
Tyre. It was well garrisoned and the great walls that guarded it from the land
were too formidable. When his first attack failed he passed on. Sidon
surrendered without a blow on 29 July. Its lord, Reynald, fled to his
impregnable inland castle of Beaufort. Beirut attempted to defend itself but
capitulated on 6 August. Jebail surrendered a few days later, on the orders of
its lord, Hugh Ebriaco, whom Saladin released on that condition. By the end of
August there only remained to the Christians south of Tripoli itself Tyre,
Ascalon, Gaza, a few isolated castles and the Holy City of Jerusalem.