Richard & John: Kings at War (26 page)

The archbishop of Rouen called the warring parties to a conference at Winchester, held on 28 July. He managed, at least temporarily, to make peace between John and Longchamp. John agreed to surrender the castles of Nottingham and Tickhill, with the proviso that he would get them back if Richard died on crusade; Gerard de Camville was to be restored as sheriff provided he stood trial in the king’s court; constables loyal to Richard would be appointed to all the main castles; and it was stipulated that if Richard refused to ratify the agreement, the castles of Nottingham and Tickhill would revert to John.
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The archbishop of Rouen had halted John in his tracks, but hardly was the ink dry on this accord than Longchamp faced a challenge from yet another of the Devil’s Brood. Geoffrey Plantagenet had finally been consecrated as archbishop of York in the most long-running will-he-won’t-he ecclesiastical saga in England’s history. Like John, he was bound by oath not to enter England for three years.
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Nothing daunted, on 14 September he came ashore at Dover and sought refuge in the priory of St Martin. Having been humiliated by John once on this issue, Longchamp was in no mood to let Geoffrey get away with his oath-breaking. He failed in his first attempt, which was to bribe the countess of Flanders to stop him embarking in the first place. On 18 September Geoffrey was arrested and lodged in Dover Castle. The circumstances of the arrest raised a great éclat, and lost nothing in the telling: Geoffrey was said to have been dragged out from sanctuary by his arms and legs with his head bouncing along the stone pavings. But news of the arrest caused a sensation in priestly circles.
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This seemed to be the Becket story all over again. Longchamp was denounced as a tyrant, pilloried as a simian paedophile, excoriated as a swindler and embezzler. John saw the chance to turn the uproar against Longchamp to his own advantage, and his effective propaganda machine, driven by men like Hugh Nunant, bishop of Coventry, went into overdrive. He raised an army, made Windsor his headquarters, then marched on London.
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The bishop of Coventry’s scurrilous propaganda is worth dwelling on, showing the vicious contempt and hatred in which Longchamp was held by John’s party. The main accusation was as follows: ‘He (Longchamp) and his revellers had so exhausted the whole kingdom that they did not leave a man his belt, a woman her necklace, a nobleman his ring, or anything of value even to a Jew. He had likewise so emptied the king’s treasury that in all the coffers and bags therein nothing but the keys could be found, after the lapse of these two years.’ The circumstances of Longchamp’s flight from London after being deposed are somewhat obscure but the bishop of Coventry presents a ludicrous picture of him roaming the beach at Dover, looking for a boat to take him to France.

Pretending to be a woman - a sex he always hated - he changed his priest’s robe into a harlot’s dress. The shame of it! The man became a woman, the bishop a buffoon. Dressed in a green gown of enormous length, he hurriedly limped - for the poor little fellow was lame - from the castle heights to the sea-shore, and then sat down to rest on a rock. There he attracted the attention of a half-naked fisherman who was wet and cold from the sea and thought that the bishop was the sort of woman who might warm him up. He put his left arm around Longchamp’s neck while his right hand roamed lower down. Suddenly pulling up the gown he plunged unblushingly in - only to be confronted with the irrefutable evidence that the woman was a man. The fisherman then called his mates over to have a look at this truly remarkable creature.
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Before this, finding his support melting away, Longchamp took refuge in the Tower on 7 October. Next day, at a great meeting in St Paul’s attended by John’s partisans, John and the archbishop of Rouen declared Longchamp deposed as justiciar. John now thought his moment of supreme power had come but, to his consternation, William of Coutances suddenly revealed Richard’s secret contingency instructions, allowing him to take supreme power if events warranted it. The archbishop duly became the new justiciar, and John was fobbed off with the title of summus rector, which gave him the trappings of Regent without the power, which William retained. John and all present then swore an oath of loyalty to Richard. The citizens of London gave John a consolation prize by agreeing to recognise him as king if Richard died without a direct heir; the star of Arthur of Britanny plummeted alongside Longchamp’s. The ex-justiciar left the kingdom for France on 29 October, disguised as a woman his enemies said, as we have seen, and sent vociferous denunciations of John and the archbishop of Rouen to both Richard and the Pope.
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Celestine III responded by reaffirming his predecessor’s appointment: Longchamp remained the papal legate.
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John meanwhile, like Longchamp before him, began making quasi-royal progresses around the country with armed men. He made no attempt to rebuke his followers when they said he would soon be king, for it was certain Richard would never return.
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John was tempted to raise the banner of open revolt or to open secret anti-Richard negotiations with Philip of France.

This temptation was temporarily aborted when Eleanor of Aquitaine landed in England on 11 February 1192. She and William of Coutances together were able to restrain John for the present, with the result that 1192 was a relatively quiet year in England.
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But John never stopped intriguing. Having used the archbishop of Rouen against Longchamp, he tried the same thing in reverse and accepted a bribe from Longchamp to allow him to return. Longchamp landed at Dover in March 1192, took refuge with his sister, wife of the constable of Dover Castle, and demanded a proper trial on the alleged charges for which he had been deprived of the justiciarship. The new justiciar William of Coutances and his assistants raised the ante and rebribed John to abandon the chancellor. After playing hard to get for some days, John came to London and swaggered into the justiciars’ council. He made his position quite plain. ‘The chancellor (Longchamp) will not fear for anything or beg favours from anyone if he has me as a friend. He offers me £100 within a week if I steer clear of the quarrel between you and him. You see, it is money I want. I think I have said enough for wise men to understand.’ He then stalked from the meeting. The justiciar and his men were powerless unless they wanted the embarrassment of a public trial of the chancellor; John got his bribe. Longchamp was forced to flee a second time. With the money thus pocketed, John was able to suborn further castellans and constables. By the end of the year John had consolidated his position by gaining possession of the royal castles of Windsor and Wallingford.
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At Marseilles, meanwhile, Richard had leisure to ponder the implications of the great enterprise he was engaged on, and for which he had neglected the governance of England. Saladin’s great victory at Hattin in 1187 should really have doomed the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem to extinction. Jerusalem itself had fallen, Acre, Beirut and Sidon had capitulated without a fight, and Saladin took Caesarea, Arsuf and Jaffa in quick succession. Even though Guy of Lusignan could not persuade Ascalon to surrender and thus fulfil the terms set by Saladin for his release, the city threw in the sponge anyway, as did the castle of Gaza. Soon all ports south of Tripoli except Tyre were in Arab hands, and only the fortresses of Margat and Krak des Chevaliers seemed proof against Islamic siege engines. But Saladin, albeit not entirely irrationally, made three cardinal errors. He freed Guy de Lusignan on the mistaken impression that he was a discredited force in Outremer, a paper tiger. He did not proceed to the siege of Tripoli and concluded an eight-month truce with Bohemond of Antioch. Above all, he sacrificed the obvious strategic target of Tyre to the glory of winning back Jerusalem for the prophet. Saladin had reasons for all three decisions. He was convinced that no Christian would ever again rally to the banner of the man who had lost at Hattin and, besides, he had bound Guy by oath never to fight him again. He proceeded to Jerusalem in the belief that this was the best way to rally the faithful for the final
jihad
. In fact his success there inflamed caliph al-Nasir in Baghdad against him - he resented the huge increase in the power of his ‘vassal’ - and very bad relations with his nominal overlord were the result.
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Chafing at what he considered the arrogant and peremptory missives sent him from Baghdad, Saladin exploded: ‘As for the claims of the Caliph that I’ve conquered Jerusalem with his army and under his banner - where were his banners and his army at the time? By God! I conquered Jerusalem with my own troops and under my own banner.’
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On the issue of the controversial truce with Antioch, Saladin was not really a free agent. His power depended on a constant juggling act: appeasing the caliph, satisfying the ambitions of his own rank and file and, most of all, conciliating the interests of powerful factions that might otherwise turn on him. His most important ally was Imad al-Din Zangi, the son-in-law of Nur al-Din, a prominent, turbulent warlord who had to be placated. Zangi had pressed hard for the eight-month truce with Antioch simply because he feared Saladin would otherwise become too powerful in his own sphere of influence.
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Yet if reasons can be found that mitigate Saladin’s ‘errors’, his decision to concentrate on Jerusalem rather than Tyre certainly does look like an egregious mistake. By the time he was ready to deal with this key port, a new Christian hero had arisen. Conrad of Montferrat, an adventurer who had made himself prince of the city, organised a masterly defence of Tyre, which led Saladin to postpone his assault. When he turned to deal with the problem after the fall of Jerusalem, he found it a nut too hard to crack. The city was virtually an island, surrounded on three sides by rip-tide waters and hidden rocks, connected to the mainland by a short and narrow causeway. Twenty-five-foot thick walls and twelve strong towers guarded the island city, and the causeway, facing the eastern land entrance was a crenellation of massive, high towers, set back to back. The only way to take the city was by a skilful amphibious assault or by the protracted business of starving it out. Tyre had taxed Alexander the Great’s ingenuity, to the point where Napoleon himself later commented: ‘He can have no idea of war who blames this prince (Alexander) for having spent seven months in the siege of Tyre. Had it been myself, I would have remained there seven years if necessary.’
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The siege of Tyre marked a turning point in Saladin’s fortunes. His hitherto victorious army was in bad shape. Used to easy victories, walkover sieges and living on plunder, his soldiers were brought up short by the prospect of really hard fighting, to say nothing of having to spend their own money on food and fodder. Christian morale was meantime rising daily, as it became clear that no combined operations had been thought out by the Arabs. Seeing the cavalier way Saladin employed his navy for a blockade of the harbour, Conrad of Montferrat prepared a masterstroke and launched seventeen galleys and ten small ships against the blockaders. At dawn his sailors fell on the Muslim ships and found the crews asleep; the attack was a perfectly executed surprise. The remaining Arab ships were ordered back to Beirut, but Conrad’s men intercepted them too.
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This reverse confirmed all the pessimistic assessments of the defeatist faction on Saladin’s war council. The rank and file soldiery were demoralised and Saladin lacked the funds to bribe them to stick to their task. A half-hearted cavalry assault on 31 December, the day after the naval defeat, was more in the nature of a face-saver than a serious attack, and when it failed Saladin’s emirs were glad to have the excuse to disengage and raise the siege. It was Saladin’s first serious military reverse since Hattin and he must accept the blame for the fiasco. He did not blockade effectively, had no plans to starve the garrison out, did not prevent reinforcements reaching the defenders and could not energise his own men. It is a moral certainty that if he had taken Tyre at the end of 1187, the Third Crusade would have been halted in its tracks.
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It was becoming clear that Saladin could not trust his allies, his commanders or even his own relations. Meanwhile both the Almohad rulers of North Africa and the caliph of Baghdad had made it clear that they doubted his sincerity - had he not spent many years fighting against his co-religionists in pursuit of an expansionist vision of his own? He had shown no interest in a
jihad
- an attitude increasingly in evidence among the private soldiers, who wanted money and loot, not the triumph of the Crescent.
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The reverse at Tyre shook Saladin and the first six months of 1188 saw him unwontedly cautious, at first contemplating the siege of the Hospitaller castle at Kaukab and the Templar stronghold at Safad before moving off to Damascus in April. The question he had to answer by mid-1188 was whether he was strong enough to conquer the whole coast - a question the loose structure of his army, with men liable to drift away and a leader with no divine right to rule, seemed certain to answer in the negative. Having therefore opted to pick off some weak targets he easily captured Jabala, Latakia, Sahyun, Sarmaniya, Bursey, Darbsak and Baghras. The obvious next objective was Antioch, the capture of which would block the principal land route for Frankish reinforcements, but the eight-month truce, battle-weariness among his troops and the jealousy of rival chiefs like Zangi all dictated caution. Returning to Damascus in September, Saladin contented himself with diplomatic overtures to Byzantium, aimed at building a common front against the threatened crusade from the West. Byzantium feared the advent of Frederick Barbarossa and his German host as much as the Muslims did, so an informal treaty of alliance was concluded. Saladin was said to have sent emperor Isaac Angelus a large silver jar of poisoned wine and quantities of poisoned flour and more wine for use against Barbarossa’s army.
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By the end of 1188 Saladin could look back on a virtually empty year, clinging to empty promises like that of Reginald of Sidon, who pledged to hand over the castle of Beaufort provided Saladin spirited his family safely out of Tyre. Only the surrender of Safad, Kerak and Kaukab Castles lightened the gloom.
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