Lionheart (33 page)

Principal cities and battles of the Third Crusade, with dates of the march from Acre to Arsuf and Jaffa

On the last day of the month of August the army was nearing the ruins of Herod the Great’s magnificent seaside palace, port and city of Caesarea Maritima, a small part of which near the port had been re-fortified by King Baldwin I in the First Crusade after slaughtering all the native inhabitants. This walled complex, less than a quarter the size of Herod’s city, was currently occupied by the enemy. It was usual practice in medieval warfare to fill in or poison any wells that might be used by the enemy and Saladin had also chosen to encamp his army on the banks of a nearby river in the hope of denying to the Christian host its much-needed water. With his troops and their animals thus suffering severely from thirst, Richard divided the army into cohorts and despatched the first wave under Jacques d’Avesnes to attack the blocking party at a ford. The charge was successful, but in the carnage hundreds of men on both sides were killed.
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Commanding the second wave, Richard then charged the centre of the enemy force and broke through to the river in a welter of blood and violence, so that his entire army was able to cross and replenish water supplies before moving on.
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However, the stress of the march was telling, especially on the infantry, so many of whom had to double as beasts of burden as more and more horses were killed: their duties were alternated, with men being moved from the exposed left flank to the baggage train for a few hours’ respite as porters before being moved back. The ‘armour’ of most infantrymen consisted of leather caps and leather jerkins padded with multiple layers of cloth, worn despite the heat. On 2 September Baha al-Din noted how some of these men had up to ten Muslim arrows sticking in their jerkins and seemed untroubled by them.
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Horses were the best targets for the Muslim archers because they had little protection and even a non-fatal arrow wound caused the animal that had been hit to plunge about desperately in an attempt to dislodge the arrow, panicking other horses nearby and knocking down any man who got in the way. So many horses were killed that their owners were selling the carcases to the sergeants-at-arms, who were butchering them and selling the meat on to the common soldiery. When Richard heard of this, he decreed that any knight
giving
a carcase for the men to consume would have his mount replaced by another of equal worth from his own string of remounts.
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Saladin made his next stand 10 miles north of Jaffa, 3 miles inland from the coast, near the sea-cliff fortress of Arsuf (modern Tel Arshuf) and the ruins of the town of Arsuf. His right flank was protected by a forest impenetrable to the crusader cavalry and his left flank by broken ground. Mounted scouts under Henry II of Champagne brought this news to Richard early in the morning of 7 September 1191. He sent heralds along the column, announcing an imminent major engagement. With the marching column looking left, the two armies were in clear view of each other, except that once again the sun was in the crusaders’ eyes.

Saladin’s plan was the traditional Saracen one of making repeated feigned advances and retreats to provoke the crusaders into breaking ranks and then sending in a massed cavalry charge to exploit the disorder. At about 9 a.m. his infantry began tormenting the crusader infantry screen with a hail of arrows and spears accompanied by psychological warfare, the clashing of brass instruments, the blowing of trumpets and screams of the attackers. At intervals, this was followed up by mounted archers passing through the Saracen infantry to harass the marching column of crusaders before rapidly wheeling away out of range.

As the column continued slowly to move south, some elements found themselves in hand-to-hand combat but Richard forbade any attempt by his cavalry to ride out in response to the Saracen attacks. Discipline was imposed by a mobile ‘military police squadron’ of knights under Hugues of Burgundy because waiting for the king’s command to hit the enemy army when it had exhausted both energy and much weaponry went against the grain for knights who prided themselves on never receiving a blow without immediate retaliation. Having to watch increasing numbers of their horses falling victim to the rain of arrows made them reasonably question further delay that might leave them with too few surviving
destriers
to mount a heavy cavalry charge. Anything less would have been fatal.

After several hours of this, discipline was failing at the rear of the column among the infantry who had to stop, take aim and shoot each time an attack came in from the Saracen right wing that was curled around to attack them from the rear, then hasten to catch up with their comrades. Seeing this, the Hospitaller commander sent a messenger to Richard pleading for permission to go over to the attack. This was refused but, as often in combat, the ‘man on the spot’ decided to ignore orders from his commander-in-chief who was some distance away and appeared not to comprehend the local situation. When many of Saladin’s mounted archers dismounted to step up the pressure on the broken ranks of the crusaders in the rear of the column, Brother Garnier seized the moment of their vulnerability and gave the order for the Hospitaller knights to charge. Whilst rare, this sort of insubordination was usually punished in the religious orders. The Templar commander of the palace at Acre, Jacques de Ravane was not only defrocked, his horse and accoutrement confiscated, he was also placed in irons for leading an unsanctioned and unsuccessful foray against the Muslims between Nazareth and Tiberias.
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Lesser infringements of the Rule saw Hospitallers punished with
la septaine
or
la quarantaine
– seven or forty days of eating alone and being whipped in front of the other brothers twice weekly.
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Hearing the noise of the Hospitallers’ charge – the thundering hooves, whinneying of horses and screams of wounded men – Richard realised that the Muslims would surround the knights with Brother Garnier and wipe them out. This was the moment Saladin had been waiting for, but before the enemy could take advantage of the Hospitallers’ impetuosity, Richard took an instant decision. If he threw the rest of his cavalry after the Hospitallers, it could be a fatal mistake, so he despatched the Breton and Angevin knights against Saladin’s temporarily weakened right flank and himself led a third charge of the Anglo-Norman knights, wheeling around the right flank of the column and driving deep into the Saracen main force, sowing disorder and panic in its ranks that turned into a rout which not even the arrival in the field of Saladin’s own elite mounted bodyguard, distinguished by a yellow silk sash worn over the breastplate, could halt.

The Muslim army broke and fled, pursued by Richard’s cavalry, but warily and not too far into the hinterland. By nightfall, the Muslim camp was being looted and Richard’s men were inside the fortress of Arsuf, putting all they found to the sword. The chroniclers claimed that 40,000 of the enemy were killed that day, but body counts, even in modern wars, are notoriously unreliable. Nevertheless, Arsuf was indubitably a major victory that cost Saladin dearly. Nor were Richard’s losses negligible, however: Saracen scavengers visiting the battlefield after the Christians had moved on counted more than 100 dead Frankish warhorses.
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Among the crusader dead was Jacques d’Avesnes, whose horse had been killed under him and whose body was said to be surrounded by the corpses of fifteen Saracens he had killed before being hacked to death.
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Saladin withdrew after this defeat from Caesarea, Jaffa and Ashkelon, with his garrisons literally demolishing the walls and every building of the fortress-cities before they left. Seeing the desolation of these defenceless cities, Richard rode back to Acre and – in the chroniclers’ words – ‘overturned the tables of the money-changers’ to hire a reported 20,000 more Turcopole mercenaries and lead them south to re-build the abandoned cities. Saladin had withdrawn inland to demolish Ramlah and continue to Jerusalem, whose defences, damaged during the siege of 1187, urgently needed repair. Had Richard been more flexible at this stage and moved fast, he might have reached Jerusalem and taken the city in a short, sharp attack. However, he was fixated on securing Jaffa first and let the opportunity slip.

In October 1191 morale plummeted in his army as he concentrated on refortifying the walls of Jaffa and the citadel on its hill overlooking the harbour. The arrival both by sea and by land of many of the whores from Acre to cater to the men’s sexual needs must have raised a few spirits. This was noted disapprovingly by Muslim observers and Ambroise judged that the customers thereby forfeited the merit of the pilgrimage.
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Labouring is a task often imposed on soldiers, but rarely accepted with enthusiasm. While the rank-and-file could be coerced, the knights refused to participate because they considered physical labour beneath them, although on occasion the king himself was to be seen stripped to the waist and labouring among the men to inspire them to greater efforts. Scouting out the enemy on one occasion, Richard’s small group was surprised by a squadron of Saracens while they were still asleep and his life was saved by Guillaume des Préaux yelling that he was
malik Rik
and drawing the attackers away after him.
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It was about this time that al-‘Adil, asked by Richard to provide some musical entertainment, arrived not with a young male singer but a woman, who sang and accompanied herself on the
oud
– a forerunner of the European lute, the name of which is probably derived from
al-oud
. Ambroise records that Richard greatly enjoyed the performance, and paid no heed to the general feeling in the army that it was wrong to have personal relationships with individual Saracens – an accusation among many others levelled at him during the captivity in Germany.

Once Jaffa was secured, Richard moved inland on 15 November to Ramlah, in the neighbourhood of which skirmishes were fought on 25 November and 3 December, but no major engagement, Saladin’s main force being in Jerusalem. On 8 December, the crusader army retired into winter quarters to get its collective breath back, and Richard spent Christmas at Latrun in the shadow of the Judean hills, not moving against the enemy until 28 December. The crusaders from Europe had perhaps little idea of winter conditions in the Judean mountains, where the author has on occasion been stuck in a long queue of motor vehicles unable to move through thick snow on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but the
poulains
present – Templars, Hospitallers and others – must have warned them. They also warned Richard that in setting out to besiege the Holy City, he risked being caught in a pincer between the garrison and an Egyptian army that was encamped on the hills around the city.
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Even at lower altitude climbing up off the coastal plain, the army had to contend with Saladin’s scorched earth tactics, leaving them with neither foraging for their animals nor shelter from the weather while fighting off harassing raids in torrential rain that made the muddy ground, churned up by thousands of hooves, into a slippery obstacle course for both foot soldiers and the knights who were obliged to dismount and lead their palfreys as they struggled through the mud. Incessant downpours made the basic rations of biscuit and pork inedible; the loss of many horses from malnutrition and cold made many knights worry that the army would soon be in no condition to advance, let alone attack a city. On 3 January they reached Beit Nuba, which they bowdlerised to Bêtenoble – or ‘noble animal’ – some 12 miles from Jerusalem, where the castle built by William of Tyre in 1132 had been reduced to rubble.
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Sporadic negotiations in Arabic took place between Al-‘Adil and Humphrey of Toron, but there was never any hope that Saladin would give up any more than the narrow strip of the littoral that could be defended by the cities and fortresses already taken and refortified by the crusaders. As the author of
Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi
put it:

For the Templars and the Hospitallers, as well as the
pullani
of that land, looking more acutely at what might happen in the future, dissuaded King Richard from going on to Jerusalem at that time. For, if the city were besieged and they pressed their attack with full strength against Saladin and those who were enclosed with him, the army of the Turks which was outside [the city] … would make sudden attacks on the besiegers … [and there would be] forays from those besieged within. Even if they succeeded in their desire and gained the city of Jerusalem … the people who were most keen to complete their pilgrimage would each without delay return home, for they were already wearied beyond measure by the pressures of everything.
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