God's Battalions (24 page)

As Robert Irwin pointed out, “In Britain, there ha[s] been a long tradition of disparaging the Crusaders as barbaric and bigoted warmongers and of praising the Saracens as paladins of chivalry. Indeed, it is widely believed that chivalry originated in the Muslim East. The most perfect example of Muslim chivalry was, of course, the twelfth-century Ayyubid Sultan Saladin.”
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This view of the chivalrous Saladin is rampant among historians. In his esteemed study
The Kingdom of the Crusaders,
Dana Carleton Munro put it this way: “When we contrast with this [the crusader conquest of Jerusalem] the conduct of Saladin when he captured Jerusalem from the Christians in 1187, we have a striking illustration of the difference between the two civilizations and realize what the Christians might learn from contact with the Saracens in the Holy Land.”
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(Notice the present tense.) In similar fashion, the distinguished Samuel Hugh Moffett noted that Saladin “was unusually merciful for his time. He allowed the Crusaders, who had entered it [Jerusalem] in a bloodbath, to leave the city in peace.”
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It was in this same spirit that, in 1898, Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm visited Damascus and placed a bronze laurel wreath on Saladin’s tomb. The wreath was inscribed to “the Hero Sultan Saladin…From one great emperor to another.”
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Admiration for Saladin is not a recent invention. Since the Enlightenment, Saladin has “bizarrely” been portrayed “as a rational and civilized figure in juxtaposition to credulous barbaric crusaders.”
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Even Edward Gibbon, writing in 1788, noted, “Of some writers it is a favourite and invidious theme to compare the humanity of Saladin with the massacre of the first crusade…but we should not forget that the Christians offered to capitulate, and that the Mahometans of Jerusalem sustained the last extremities of an assault and storm.”
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There we have it, one of the primary rules of warfare at that time: cities were spared if they did not force their opponents to take them by storm; they were massacred as an object lesson to other cities if they had to be stormed, since this usually inflicted heavy casualties on the attackers. This rule did not require cities to surrender quickly: long sieges were acceptable, but only until the attackers had completed all of the preparations needed to storm the walls. Of course, cities often did not surrender at this point because they believed the attack could be defeated.

Not only have Saladin’s modern fans ignored this rule of war; they have carefully ignored the fact, acknowledged by Muslim writers, that Jerusalem was an exception to Saladin’s usual butchery of his enemies. Saladin had looked forward to massacring the Christians in Jerusalem, but he offered about half of them a safe conduct in exchange for their surrender of Jerusalem without further resistance. In most other instances Saladin was quite unchivalrous. Following the Battle of Hattin, for example, he personally participated in butchering some of the captured Knights Templars and Hospitallers and then sat back and enjoyed watching the execution of the rest of them. As told by Saladin’s secretary, Imad ed-Din: “He [Saladin] ordered that they should be beheaded, choosing to have them dead rather than in prison. With him was a whole band of scholars and Sufis and a certain number of devout men and ascetics; each begged to be allowed to kill one of them, and drew his sword and rolled back his sleeve. Saladin, his face joyful, was sitting on his dais; the unbelievers showed black despair.”
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It seems fitting that during one of his amazing World War I adventures leading irregular Arab forces against the Turks, T. E. Lawrence “liberated” the kaiser’s bronze wreath from Saladin’s tomb, and it now resides in the Imperial War Museum in London.

A WASTED VICTORY

Saladin blundered when he failed to move quickly to fully occupy the kingdoms in the wake of the catastrophic crusader losses at Hattin. He seems to have assumed there was no need to hurry. After all, the Christian cities were desperately short of armed defenders: they had been stripped to form their now-defeated army. But the cities were strongly fortified, and Saladin’s mostly cavalry forces “had no taste for attacking fortifications.”
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In addition, loaded down with booty, much of Saladin’s army had drifted away. Consequently, Saladin not only moved rather slowly but found it in his interest “to buy” the surrender of cities “by allowing the inhabitants to go free.”
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But where could they go? Of course, the Muslim residents of the surrendered cities had no need to go anywhere, and many of the Greek Christians were allowed to stay as well; Saladin was on the verge of signing a treaty with Emperor Isaac. But the European Christians had no choice but to flock to their last unconquered cities: Antioch, Tyre, and Tripoli.

The arrival of so many refugees strained the food supplies of these enclaves, especially at Tyre, where the majority of noble refugees gathered, but they also added substantial numbers of defenders—some survivors from Hattin, many fighting men who had formed the small garrisons left behind in the castles and cities when the rest marched to Hattin, and large numbers of able-bodied males who could be armed. Moreover, since the Christian enclaves were centered on port cities, they could be supplied and reinforced by sea. And they were.

Perhaps no single event had as much impact on saving the crusader kingdoms as did the arrival at Tyre of a ship carrying Conrad of Montferrat. Conrad had been in Constantinople on his way to join his father, William V, the Marquess of Montferrat, who had gone to the Holy Land in 1183 and taken command of the major castle of Saint Elias, just north of the Dead Sea. When Conrad learned of Saladin’s latest invasion, he immediately set sail for Acre with a small band of knights. As his ship entered the harbor, the bells that always announced the arrival of a ship did not ring, so Conrad became suspicious and did not anchor. When a harbor official came out in a boat to see who they were, Conrad learned that the city had fallen to Saladin, and he promptly sailed north to Tyre.
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Conrad arrived in Tyre to discover that its leaders were considering surrender. But they took heart at the arrival of Conrad and his companions and placed him in command to prepare the city for a defiant defense. Eventually, Saladin arrived and began a siege of the city. But the walls were stout and the defenders were obviously well armed and determined, and the Muslims could not prevent traffic in and out of Tyre’s harbor. So Saladin soon took his army elsewhere in search of easier pickings. But in November, finally having fully realized the importance of this Christian seaport, Saladin returned to Tyre, this time with two new plans for conquest. First of all, he brought with him Conrad’s father, who, although quite elderly, had fought at Hattin and been taken captive. Marching the old man out into full view from the walls of Tyre, Saladin had a crier inform Conrad that his father would be killed unless he surrendered the city. According to Arab sources, Conrad was “a devil”
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who shouted back that his father had lived long enough. Beaming with pride at his son’s steadfastness, William V was marched away and eventually released.
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Saladin’s second plan to take Tyre was far more dangerous to the city. For the past decade, Saladin had been building an Egyptian navy.
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It had recently proved its worth in skirmishes with several small fleets trading with the kingdoms. Now he sent ten of his galleys to blockade Tyre’s harbor, setting up an effective siege. Conrad met this threat by sending Tyre’s galleys to launch a dawn attack on Saladin’s blockaders. Finding the Muslim crews asleep and without lookouts, the attackers met with total success: five Egyptian galleys were captured, and the other five went aground when, with Christian galleys in close pursuit, their crews jumped overboard.
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While this naval debacle was under way, Saladin massed his troops and attacked the city, assuming that at that moment Conrad’s attention would be on the harbor. But when Saladin’s troops approached, Conrad led his knights charging out of the gates and surprised and routed Saladin’s entire army. Setting fire to his siege engines to keep them out of Christian hands, Saladin marched away.

Tyre was safe. Soon thereafter a large Norman fleet from Sicily arrived to resupply and greatly reinforce Tripoli and Antioch. It would be another century before the Muslims could again push the crusaders to the water’s edge.

Conrad’s stunning victories over Saladin made him famous all over Europe and would eventually result in his selection as king of Jerusalem. Meanwhile, he dispatched emissaries to Europe to urge another Crusade. The delegation was headed by Joscius, the new archbishop of Tyre. (Joscius had replaced the historian William of Tyre.) In January 1189 the archbishop gained an audience with King Henry II of England and King Philip II of France, who were meeting to discuss their territorial disputes. “So eloquent was his appeal for aid for the Holy Land that both kings, the count of Flanders, and many other lords took the cross, and agreed to begin preparations for a new crusade.”
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Meanwhile, the new pope, Clement III, managed to convince Germany’s Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, to take the cross once more. (Frederick had accompanied his uncle Conrad III on the Second Crusade.)

THE THIRD CRUSADE

The new Crusade began in disjointed fashion. The English and the French had first to settle several bitter disputes. Then Henry II died and his son Richard (already known as the Lionhearted) was crowned king of England. Richard had also taken the cross, so the English commitment to the Crusade remained. But because the English crown still had huge holdings in France (the entire Atlantic coast was theirs), he and Philip II had much to negotiate before they could head east. Meanwhile, Frederick Barbarossa began marching to the Holy Land.

FREDERICK’S CAMPAIGN

On May 11, 1189—twenty-three months after the Battle of Hattin—the emperor Frederick led his army out of Regensburg (Ratisbon) into Hungary and then through Serbia and on toward Constantinople. As always, it is very difficult to say how many troops Frederick had enlisted, but all sources agree that it was a large number. Many historians have settled on one hundred thousand,
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but that seems rather high. More likely is the estimate that Frederick had assembled three thousand knights,
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and it was usual for there to be about five or six times as many infantry as knights, which would have amounted to around twenty thousand first-line fighting men. Of course, there must have been the usual contingents of camp followers and commoners, so there might have been one hundred thousand people on the march. Whatever the actual number, it was sufficient so that news of the Germans marching toward him caused Saladin considerable worry, and he exerted himself in trying to raise an army able to meet them. In addition, Saladin had a Byzantine card to play.

After several years of negotiations and the exchange of piles of expensive gifts, in 1189 the Byzantine emperor Isaac entered into a mutual defense treaty with Saladin, committing the Byzantine army against all Western forces attempting to reach the Holy Land. Consequently, when in advance of his march to the Holy Land Emperor Frederick sent the bishop of Münster and other distinguished Germans to the Byzantine court to arrange passage, Isaac imprisoned them and gave their horses and equipment to Saladin’s representatives.
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Then, contrary to the usual failure of the Byzantines to live up to their agreements when it might prove costly to do so, when Frederick’s army crossed into Byzantine territory, Isaac caused irregular forces to harass him along the way and then dispatched his main army to stop the Germans at Philippopolis. But Frederick’s crusaders simply swept the Byzantines aside, inflicting immense casualties. Then, in order to force the release of the bishop and his retinue, Frederick devastated a substantial area in Thrace as he moved toward Constantinople.

At this point, Isaac wrote an astonishing letter to Saladin claiming to have rendered Frederick’s forces harmless: “[T]hey have lost a great number of soldiers, and it was with great difficulty that they escaped my brave troops. They were so exhausted that they cannot reach your dominions; and even if they should succeed in reaching them, they could be of no assistance to their fellows, nor could they inflict any injury on your excellency.”
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Nevertheless, Isaac wished Saladin to send him troops. None came.

Meanwhile, Frederick’s powerful forces marched onward, seized Adrianople, and “even planned a siege of Constantinople.”
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So, in February 1190, Emperor Isaac surrendered and signed the Treaty of Adrianople, which ceded Frederick free passage and supplies, and gave him distinguished hostages to ensure that the treaty was fulfilled.

During this time, several Greek Orthodox bishops “who favored Saladin out of hatred for [Latin Christians]”
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kept him abreast of what really was going on—of Frederick’s easy passage through Byzantium and of his successful storming of the Muslim-held fortress city of Iconium (Konya) with only slight losses. Moving on toward Antioch with no substantial forces in his way, Frederick fell from his horse while fording the Saleph River and drowned. Frederick’s death ended the German Crusade. He had been adored and trusted by all his subordinates, and although he was replaced by his son Frederick, the Duke of Swabia, the army was devastated by the emperor’s death. Over the next several days huge numbers simply turned around and went home. Ten days later, when young Frederick reached Antioch, his army may have shrunk to five thousand effectives, and when he reached the coastal area of the kingdom of Jerusalem he had only about three hundred knights.
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Saladin breathed a great sigh of relief.
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A NAVAL CRUSADE