Swords From the Desert (50 page)

This was before the day of plate armor, long bows, and closed helms with visors. By 1220, in the later stages of the Crusades, the closed helm came into use, gradually, among the Christians. The Moslems never did take to it kindly, favoring light helmets with chain mail drops, and nasal and sometimes cheek pieces. The English longbow with the cloth-yard arrow only reached its great power a century later.

About the time of the siege of Acre the crusaders were beginning to bring in crossbows, which did a lot of execution in close siege fighting and little elsewhere. Coeur de Lion was the first king to use the crossbow-the French chivalry always looked on it as unsportsmanlike, and the Popes banned it until about 1210.

This was about the only weapon the Moslems adapted from the crusaders, and they never liked it very much because it was clumsy to handle on a horse. The same applied to the long two-handed sword that some crusaders, mostly Germans, carried in the thirteenth century and later.

It is clear that in arms and armor, the Moslems were on even terms with the crusaders. In other matters, they usually held the advantage. They had better horses, bred in the country, and greater strength in mounted men. The Christian archers were usually on foot. The Moslems had more serviceable kits for carrying water and rations; they were adept at scouting and maneuvering. Saladin had a portable siege train and a pigeon post as well as a pony express to carry messages.

Zangi, Saladin, and Baibars were much better strategists than the leaders of the crusaders, and were of course more familiar with the terrain.

One advantage that Moslems always held: flame weapons. The Arabs were as skilled as the Greeks of Constantinople in the use of the mysterious flame that the crusaders called "Greek fire" or "wild fire," and sometimes "sea fire" because it burned on the water. It was made variously out of naphtha or the ingredients of gunpow der. The crusaders never learned the secret of it, and were besides unwilling to use it, looking upon it as black magic. The church forbade its use.

The Moslems employed it in siege warfare, beginning with Acre, and also in hand grenades and "fire-maces." In time they learned to cast barrages of it, and smoke screens, before or into an attack. It gave them a decisive advantage for generations-until serviceable firearms were in use.

This fact has escaped the notice of most historians. But it is clear enough when we read the amounts of men on both sides who were present at such events as the siege of Acre.

It is also clear that the crusaders in their long conflict with the armies of Asia had only one real advantage-command of the sea at their backs. And in their morale. All the other advantages were on the side of the Moslems.

January I, 1931

A note from Harold Lamb, relative to his narrative, "Richard the Lion Heart," in this issue:

New York City

Richard of England, Coeur de Lion, must have a word said about him. Long before Scott wrote "The Talisman" the errant king of England had been a hero in legend. But of later years the debunkers have been busy, and they have not forgotten Coeur de Lion. They have plastered mud over the great warrior of legends, saying that Richard was "a had son, a had husband, a worse king." A kind of all 'round black sheep, a waster, good for nothing except carousing and treacherous fighting at the head of his boon companions, the mercenary men-at-arms. We are not concerned with Richard as a king. It is true that he was one of the bravest men and the worst monarchs ever to rule England. But then we must remember that Richard was practically an exile in his youth, and when he came to the throne he was already pledged to the Crusade. Unlike his rival, Philip-Augustus of France, he devoted himself to the Crusade instead of the government of his realm. And when he journeyed back from the East, he was seized and made captive by the European princes unlawf ully-for it was against all written and unwritten laws to seize the person of a crusader returning from the war in the East. When Richard was at last ransomed-at a further cost to England-he not unnaturally devoted himself to vengeance.

So much for Richard's motives as a king.

The real interest of his life lies in his crusade, the brief years between 1190-1r94. And here we are faced with a puzzle. Was Richard an invincible fighter-the real Lion Heart of the crusade-or a
dismal failure? Scott pictures him as a hero incarnate, and modern historians, especially of the French school, picture him as a troublemaker and an inefficient leader. *

Consider his actions: His march toward Jaffa delays and delays again; he keeps his army on the defensive, even in the open fighting atArsuf; he fortifies Jaffa and tries to rebuild Ascalon; constantly he importunes Saladin for terms of peace; twice, when the army erawlst
toward Jerusalem, he is the first to urge a retreat. No doubt about it, the debonair Coeur de Lion has become a timid general. Why?

It is not that Richard was wholly unfit as a commander. A worthless leader usually sacrifices his men to try to gain an advantage. St. Louis of France did so two generations later, without being blamed. Richard safeguarded his men and fought the veteran Moslem army led by the ever-dangerous Saladin on slightly better than even terms during his year of command in Palestine.

I think the answer is this: The moment he set out from Acre, at the head of a great army of all nationalities, Richard found himself confronted by what the French call the grande guerre-the war of large armies maneuvering over open country. The country was strange to him, and the fate of the crusade itself hung upon a decisive battle. Until then the Lionheart had only experienced the foray-and-siege warfare of Europe, where his own prowess in arms could wrest success out of a struggle in which at most three or four thousand men were engaged on each side.

And it seemed as if Richard realized at once his inability to command in such a war as this. He could not relinquish the command. For one thing, the other leaders of princely rank-even Conrad, the ablest of them -had deserted him. The rank and file of the army was determined to press on to Jerusalem, and Richard had to lead them.

So he became afraid, not of personal peril, but of disgrace and disaster. Unable to turn back, he must go on, realizing his own inabil ity to cope with the Moslem armies. The blind devotion of the common men only made his situation more intolerable. The had tidings from England, where his brother, John Lackland, and Philip-Augustus were overrunning his lands, in spite of their oaths to him, added to his mental torment.

We do not know what Richard thought about it, but what he did in his dilemma is pathetically clear. While he shielded his army in camp and town, he went out himself, with a small picked following, to engage the Moslems at every chance. Instead of sacrificing his men, he risked his own life. Tried to win a war as he had won tournaments so often. He stormed hill towers, captured the Egyptian caravan, drove the Moslem warriors before him in a dozen handto-hand encounters. Possibly he sought death in these ventures. It was a hopeless task, to gain victory by such minor feats. It was not war but it was magnificent, and Richard's final stand at Jaffa when he waded ashore in the face of a victorious army is about the finest thing of its kind in the records of history.

Grant that Richard of England was a poor king, a troublemaker, and a failure as a general in his greatest test. But remember that he hazarded his own life, not his men's, and stuck to his cause. He was one of the most courageous men who ever breathed. Saladin himself said that he would rather lose the Holy Land to Richard than to any other. And the name of Malik Ric (King Richard) has been preserved among the Moslems as the greatest of all the crusaders.

I have tried to set down Richard's actions during those years, 11911192, without prejudice for or against the English king. Those actions tell their own story of his character. And I think that Richard will keep his surname of the Lion Heart in spite of the debunkers.

February 15, 1931

A few words from Harold Lamb, in connection with his narrative, "Beausant Goes Forward," in this issue:

Piedmont, Cal.

The Battle of Gaza in 1244 is one of those little-known affairs that shaped destinies. The pages of history have little to say about it because we have almost no authentic reports as to what happened and why. Nearly all the crusaders were killed. Like the Custer fight, it has come down to us as a name and a date and a casualty list. We will probably never know just what happened there.

The Moslem chroniclers, however, have shed some light on the campaign, and we have learned some details from them. Such details are given in this article. The battle itself changed the whole course of the Crusades. It marked the final loss of Jerusalem-until Allenby walked into the city with his army in one of the last cam paigns of 1918. It marked also a new force on the Moslem side, the arrival of contingents from Central Asia, driven west by the hardfighting Mongols, who had first appeared under the horned standard of Genghis Khan.

Before Gaza the crusaders on the coast and the cultured Arab sultans, the descendants of Saladin, managed to live and let live, and probably Jerusalem would have been recovered in time by the Christians. But the incoming of the new fighters from mid-Asia, who increased in numbers as the years went by, brought the conflict to a head again, and gradually turned the scales against the crusaders.

From that time the tolerant Arabs were pushed out of power by the masses of Turks and Tartars, who gathered together in Cairo, and presently founded the Mamluk dynasty that endured until Napoleon entered Egypt.

For another thing, Gaza saw the rise to fame of that redoubtable fighter, the Panther, who was destined to do what Saladin had not been able to do. And the battle brought about the great Crusade of Saint Louis, the last general crusade to reach the East.

March 15, 1931

A note about the strongholds of the crusaders, by Harold Lamb, in connection with "The Panther," in this issue:

Piedmont, Cal.

Few of us know that the frontier line of the crusaders' castles still exists in the hills of Syria and Palestine. There is a good reason why this line of citadels remains almost unknown. Outside of a magazine article or two, the only description in print that I know of is by a French archeologist, Rey, published in 1871 in the Documents inedtes sur l'historie de France. And the country remained, until Allenby's campaign late in the World War-the one Lawrence had a hand in-under the Turk. Few visitors did more than look in along the coast. For two good reasons the crusaders' citadels along the coast are pretty much demolished: first, Baibars, Kalawun, and Khamil made a point of destroying them, so that crusaders thereafter could not use them as landing points; second, during the last seven-odd centuries, the people of the country have taken the building stone out of the crusaders' ruins for their houses.

So on the coast, only the castle at Triploi, the little cathedral at Tortosa, and the ruined citadel of Chateau Pelerin are well preserved. The Turks used the Triploi as a garrison post and prison, and Chateau Pelerin (the Arabs call it Ahlit now) was too far from any village to serve as a source of building stone. The church at Tarous-as Tortosa is called now-was turned into a mosque, with a minaret tower like a sentry box stuck up on one corner. It's a beautiful thing, deserted now.

Of course you can find ruins of other points along the coast-part of St. Louis' castle at Saida (Sidon), and then the buildings of the Hospitallers are well preserved at Acre. They were digging out a fine little chapel that had served as a Turkish stable when I was there. But the walls and most of Acre, as they stand now, date from the Napoleonic era.

But the great castles back in the hills take your breath away. There are a dozen big fellows stretching south from Antioch, down to Kerak east of the Dead Sea -a line of about 54o kilometers or, if my reckoning is right, 28o miles. And a half dozen strong towers interconnecting.

These are not the miniature medieval castles of feudal Europe. Most of them are twice the size of Coucy, the largest of the feudal castles of France. Moreover, the European structures have been built over for the most part, and restored until little of the twelfthcentury construction remains as it was. The cite of Carcassonne, in southern France, for instance, was restored by Vollet-le-Duc in the last century. By way of comparison, Carcassone (which was really a fortified town, not a castle) is said to be r, 600 yards in the circuit of its outer walls. While Kerak, across the Dead Sea, in Palestine is, I think, 2,700 yards in its outer circuit.

You see, the crusaders had to fortify whole summits of mountains. The war out there was a real war, and the fortified points had to accommodate several hundred to five thousand or more human beings, with chargers, cattle, and sheep-granaries and reservoirs. They had to plan out the water supply in a dry country.

Most of the castles have interior wells. The Arab villagers under the hill where Belfort stands still go up to the castle to get their water. The well at the Kerak is deep. I dropped a stone in it and had to listen five or six seconds for the splash. Also, because a single well would not serve the big places, they had reservoirs for rainwater. At Marghab the reservoir was some thirty yards outside the great tower, within arrowrange of the walls. It has a healthy forest growing in it now.

I don't suppose that any other war has left monuments like this line of deserted citadels in the hills of Syria and Palestine. No government had done anything to restore or repair them -for five hundred years, anyway. The French shelled brigands out of two of them recently, but the artillery did little more than scar the great stones.