Little Lost Lambs, page 56
Raymond found no sleep in the hot nights, while Reginald of Kerak chafed at the waiting. They had made up their quarrel at the meeting place, for this was the rallying of the mailed host in time of need, and personal quarrels must be put aside. Humphrey of Toron was here, and the brave Balian d'Ibelin, with Amalric the Constable.
The days passed and they waited, while scouts brought in word of the Moslems. Saladin had led his last contingents across the Jordan, and was camped along the heights above Galilee, facing them, but fifteen miles away. Saladin had a great host with him, twenty-five thousand horsemen, and they were waiting also. Their pickets were within sight. Saladin could not move toward Jerusalem while the Christians watched at Saffuriya. He could not get past them, to the coast. So the two armies rested, full in their strength, alert and wary, while the days of June ended.
Then Saladin sent a division back, into the depths of the lake shore, to attack Tiberias. The outer town was stormed in a day, and Raymond's wife with her scanty garrison driven into the castle.
That night the lords of the Christian host gathered in the pavilion of the king, to decide what they must do. Gravely spoke de Riddeford, master of the Temple—
"We can not, in honor, hold back while the castle is taken, within our reach."
Reginald of Kerak added his voice to the master's. They looked then to the king.
"I have no will to press the war," he said, with hesitation.
Raymond spoke then:
"Can you not see what lies before you? O my comrades, not little is the peril in which we stand from this man Saladin."
And he explained that they would find no water in the advance against the Moslems. It would be better to let Tiberias fall, let his wife be taken, than to risk an advance. If they held their ground, the Moslems must withdraw or lose the advantage of position. Many agreed with him, while the younger knights and the reckless lord of Kerak urged an attack, reminding the council that Raymond had been guilty of treating with Saladin. In the end the council decided not to advance beyond Saffuriya.
But that night de Riddeford and Reginald of Kerak went to the king's tent, and persuaded the irresolute Guy to order an advance at dawn.
So the banners of the host moved out over the plain, and the chivalry of Beyond the Sea went into battle for a point of honor.*2
THE CHRISTIAN leaders marched at dawn, the second day of July, hoping to reach the Moslem line at noon, and break through before darkness. They knew the Moslems held the brow of the great descent toward Galilee, six hundred feet below the level of the sea. If the Moslems could be broken and thrown back, they would be hurled down the descent upon the walls of Tiberias. As for the numbers of the Moslems, the old wolf of Kerak laughed.
"The more the wood the greater will be the fire . . ."
The sun, however, held a fire of its own, and the marching columns lagged. They were twenty thousand men of all arms, and for the greater part experienced in war. They were ready for battle. But most of them marched afoot, in mail and carrying water. Under their feet the gray rock ledges burned with the intolerable heat of the sky overhead, and red dust choked their throats. Their feet climbed long slopes, and stumbled down into brush filled gullies. Although the knights rode back to urge them on, they lagged.
When the sun went down they were still far from the Moslem lines. The leaders called a halt and the men camped and drank thirstily, and slept while mounted patrols watched. But Raymond could not sleep, knowing that they had ventured too far, and yet not far enough. They could not turn back, in the face of the Moslem horsemen; they had left the springs of Saffuriya, and on the morrow they must reach the water of Galilee.
"Lord, Lord!" he cried. "Already is the battle lost, and we are dead men."
Before the first light the olifants sounded, the horses were saddled, while the spearmen and archers looked to their weapons and sought their ranks. As they pushed forward the sun blazed red in their eyes, and when the heat struck into their limbs they drank the last of their water, throwing away the empty skins.
Ahead of them drums throbbed and cymbals clashed. They saw dark masses of horsemen moving out to the flanks, under the green banners of Islam. The dry earth burned their feet, and the chaff of trampled wheat rose about them in the air that quivered with heat. Sweat dried on their skin, and the iron weighed upon their shoulders.
The wild Arab clans surged through the veil of dust, and the first arrows flashed while a roar of voices answered the drums:
"Yahla 'l Islam! Yahla 'l Islam!"
The light of the sun glowed on the gold casing of the Cross, raised above their heads.
The sun set at last and dusk crept across the glare of the sky. No wind breathed upon the dry breast of the earth, with its trodden wheat and dusty, brittle tamarisks.
On knolls and rock ridges the Crusaders sat or lay, without light or water or food. A murmur went from mass to mass of them, where hoarse voices whispered and cracked lips prayed, and the wounded moaned in vain for water. The saddles were not taken from the sweat stained horses. Broken spears lay upon the ground, and knights sat silent among peasants.
They had fought through the day, knights and archers and spearmen. They had moved forward a little. But they had not broken the line of the Moslem horsemen. So they waited in the hours of darkness by their dead, wracked by thirst and weariness, and ebbing hope. The last of their water was gone, and their leaders could do nothing more for them.
"In that place," the Moslem chronicler says, "the Angels of Death kept watch that night."
Lights flickered and tossed around the mass of Crusaders, where the cavalry patrols hemmed them in. For Saladin had extended his line to close them in. They heard the chanting voices of the Koran readers, and the eager shouts of men who had water to drink and hope for the morrow.
"Allahu akbar—allah 'l allahu!"
With the dawn the Christians took up their weapons and came on again.
"They advanced," the Moslem chronicler adds, "as if driven toward certain death."
They did not move with raised lances and firm ranks, the men on foot supporting the horsemen. Instead, they trampled through the dust clouds pushing silently toward the cool gorge of Galilee, clearly to be seen but beyond their reach. For the fever of thirst raged in them, and on that fourth day of July they fought like the specters of men, toward the hope of water and life. The struggle raged in the village of Loubiya under the rocky hillocks known as the Horns of Hattin.
In this struggle the foot became separated from the horse. The knights, deprived of support, made vain charges into the solid array of the Moslems, already tasting victory. Horses fell under the deadly arrows, or sank exhausted, and the chivalry of Jerusalem was forced to stand to defend itself, drawing more and more into a dense circle, cut off from the men-at-arms who scattered in groups on rising ground.
Only Raymond of Galilee was able to lead some scores of riders in a desperate charge that broke through the Moslem lines. He rode on a spent horse back to the coast.
By noon of this last day of the battle, the remaining lords had gathered about the king and Reginald of Kerak on the knolls of Hattin, where the gold Cross gleamed. Surrounded and ceaselessly beset by Saladin's cavalry, they held their ground, wielding sword and battle ax, until the brush around them was set on fire by the Moslems.
When the smoke thinned and drifted away they threw down their weapons, and sat down where they had stood; without strength to do more. Their bleared eyes saw the Cross lowered by a Moslem hand.
"Of all who had come hither, only the captives were left alive."
So the chivalry of Jerusalem came to its end, and the battle of Hattin ceased.
NOTHING remained of the army of the Crusaders*3. It had been the ban and the arrière ban. All the able bodied strength of their kingdom had marched out of Saffuriya, and had ceased to be, there in the red fields above Galilee. Nothing was left, except the dark bodies lying in clumps like fallen stacks of wheat, while the Moslems stripped them of stained and dusty weapons. Except the captives, in torn shirts and bloodied leather jerkins, staring voicelessly at the Moslem horsemen.
Perhaps a few scores of mounted Turcoples had found a way from the battlefield, or some wearied stragglers still hid in the gullies. Raymond reached his castle in Tripoli and died there two weeks later of exhaustion and a broken heart.
That evening the last cavalry of Taki ad-Din came in from the pursuit, and dismounted in a tumult of rejoicing, where the Turkish swordsmen were cutting the heads from the Templars who had survived the battle—some two hundred of them. It was the rule of the Temple that no member of the order might ransom himself. And the Moslems treated them without mercy, except for the master, de Riddeford. The grim warrior-monks knelt under the sword strokes without protest or prayer for mercy. The law of of Islam required that before an unbeliever was put to death, he should be offered the chance of acknowledging the faith of Muhammad, and if he accepted he should be spared. But the Templars made no reply to the contemptuous question, and the swords fell.
When the last wearer of the red cross lay on the ground, Saladin rode to his camp—where his servants were setting up the great pavilions joyfully. He stopped where the kadis were gathered about the gold casing of the Cross, shining in the torchlight. This was the emblem of the Crusaders. It had gone before them in battle from Ascalon to Hattin.
For nearly ninety years they had prevailed. Nur ad-Din had dreamed of their overthrow, but in two days Saladin had put an end to them. What conqueror Of Asia had tasted such a victory? Not Xerxes and not Mahmoud. The Kurd in Saladin exulted in the triumph of his clans; the scholar in him pondered the meaning of the triumph; and the devout spirit of the conqueror felt in this sudden, bewildering achievement an omen of greater things. Unless God had willed it, the fate of Hattin would not have befallen his enemies.
Before his tent Saladin listened to the exultation of his officers. Courteous Adil, his brother, came forward to congratulate him; impetuous Taki ad-Din chanted a song about the battle, and the Arab chieftains beat their hands in response. Indeed and indeed, Saladin was the King, the Victory Bringer.
What followed is related by the chronicler.
"Saladin held an audience in the vestibule of his tent—for it was not yet put up. The warriors came to claim his favor, presenting to him the prisoners they had made, and the chieftains they had identified.
"The tent was finally in order, and the sultan seated himself there happily. He bade them bring in the king and his brother*4, and the prince Arnat. Then he gave a sherbet of chilled rose water to the king, who was overcome by thirst. He only drank a part, and offered the goblet to the prince Arnat. The sultan said at once to the interpreter, 'Remind the king that it is not I but he who gives drink to this man.'
"For the sultan had adopted the praise-worthy and generous custom of the nomads who granted life to a prisoner if he ate or drank of that which belonged to them.
"Then he gave order to lead the three to a place prepared for their reception, and when they had eaten, he asked for them to be brought in again. Only some servants were then with him. The king he made to sit in the vestibule; he required the prince of Kerak to come in, and after reminding him again of the words he had spoken, he said, 'I am he who will serve Muhammad against thee!'
"He then inquired if the prince would embrace Islam, and on the man's refusal, he drew his sword and struck him a blow which severed the arm from the shoulder. At this the servitors sprang upon the captive, and God sent his soul to hell.
"They drew his body out, and cast it into the tent entrance. The king, seeing in what fashion his comrade had been treated, believed that he would be the second victim, and he shook in all his limbs. But the sultan had him brought in and calmed his fears.
"'Kings,' he said, 'have not the habit of slaying kings, but that man yonder has passed all limits.'"
THE citadel of Tiberias was surrendered by Raymond's wife the next day, and Saladin placed his prisoners under guard in that town. And he made ready to take full advantage of the extraordinary situation.
His army was almost intact, the men eager to be led on. Elsewhere the Christian strongholds were just beginning to hear the terrible tidings of Hattin. More than that, the great citadels were now held only by skeleton garrisons. Their feudal lords—almost without exception—had been slain or taken at Hattin. Saladin wasted not a day in deliberation. He brought his army down to the coast, thus cutting the lands of the Crusaders in twain—separating north from south.
He struck first at the strongest of the coast ports, Acre. With what siege engines he had been able to carry on camel and mule back, he prepared to attack the walls; but Acre, with only a handful of soldiers, opened its gates and the sultan was well pleased to grant it generous terms.
Then he divided his host—since no army could possibly be mustered to threaten the Moslems—and sent the divisions headlong over the country, under Al Adil, Taki ad-Din and the other amirs. He himself cleared the mid-region between Acre and Galilee, taking possession of Haifa, Saffuriya, Nazareth, and Caesarea to the south. Sidon yielded to a passing summons, and Beirut—a walled city without a fortress—surrendered after an eight day siege.
Swiftly Saladin detached garrisons to hold the captured places. The people of the towns he let go where they willed. Without their fortresses, the bulk of the Christians were helpless under the swords of his horsemen. His soldiers snatched up all provisions and weapons and precious goods, but the sultan would not delay for any seeking of spoil. Jerusalem was his goal, and thither he went on the heels of Malik Adil, who had stormed Jaffa.
By the last of July Saladin was camped in the sands before the great wall of Ascalon, which had refused to surrender. Ascalon, sheltered behind its twelve-foot curtains and square towers, was the main port of the south, as Acre had been of the center of the Holy Land. From it ran the caravan route to Egypt. The Moslems called it the Bride of Syria, and Saladin would not leave it unconquered. While he prepared to besiege it he sent for Guy of Lusignan, who had been its lord.
When the captive king appeared, the sultan offered to release him if he secured the surrender of the city. Guy was led under the wall to talk to the garrison, but could not prevail upon the defenders to open their gates. So the Moslems drew the siege lines tighter, and sent detachments to subdue the country between there and Jerusalem.
Here the Christians still lingered in the little hill towns, by their shrines and churches—all of them who had not taken refuge in Jerusalem. Down by the sea Gaza and Darum yielded to the sultan's summons. Defense was hopeless, and Ramlah gave up its keys, while the Moslem banners were carried into the church over the tomb of St. George.
Within the foothills, the strong castle of Ibelin surrendered after bargaining for the release of its beloved lord, young Balian. Almost within sight of Jerusalem, the monks yielded Bait-Laim, which the Crusaders called Bethlehem. And, isolated, without hope of aid, Ascalon asked for terms on the fourth of September.
In two months Saladin had swept through the whole of the Holy Land that had taken the Crusaders so many generations of effort and bloodshed to subdue. True, in the east several of the giants of the frontier still remained intact on their heights. But the Moslems held all the country behind them and, cut off from the sea, their fate was only a matter of time. They were summits that had escaped the sweep of the flood, and the men isolated within them could not venture out.
And Saladin's thoughts were bent on Jerusalem, where lay the Al Aksa, the third sacred place of Islam, and the gray rock from which Muhammad had ascended. Jerusalem would be the fruit of his conquest—the true reward of the almost unbelievable good fortune that had befallen him.
On the twentieth of September his army camped on the western height opposite the gate of David.
A FEW days before Balian d'Ibelin had reined his horse through the same gate. The young baron found himself the only noble within the city of all those who had gone forth to Hattin. The queen, Sybil, waited there in the palace, with the patriarch Heraclius and the abbots of lost churches, with the refugees from a dozen towns. But no knight skilled in arms until Balian came.
Anxious women thronged the narrow streets. Cattle crowded the fields by the butchery. Mules and led horses filled the chambers under the Templars' quarters, where the chargers had been. Boys, gray priests and Syrian Christians—long robed merchants, haggard pilgrims, and voiceless widows waited in the courtyard of the Sepulchre, while prayers were uttered ceaselessly. Only a scattering of armed men gathered on the tower summits, or walked moodily through the alleys.
And they all besought Balian to take command of the defense. They had not seen the red fields of Hattin. Their thoughts could not grasp the reality—that the armed host did not exist any more. In some way a miracle would aid them, and Jerusalem would not be taken from them. Balian d'Ibelin must show them how to defend the city!
He told them that he was no more than a prisoner released on his oath never to bear arms against the sultan. He showed them that he wore no sword. They pressed around him, and would not leave him, and in the end he yielded to them. A knight, raised to arms, could not stand apart while common people fought.
All this he wrote in a despairing letter to Saladin, asking in the same moment that the sultan would seek out and safeguard his wife and children. In time the answer came, that Saladin understood and would protect his family.
Meanwhile Balian did what he could. He assembled the few score men trained in arms. He knighted, without ceremony, some fifty youthful esquires and sergeants. With the money of the churches he bought pikes and crossbows and shields for the hundreds of peasants and pilgrims who were able to handle them. He knew well enough that no miracle would hold the city by aid of such men, but he had cast in his lot with them, and he did what he could. At least Jerusalem would not fall without a blow struck.
