Little Lost Lambs, page 59
Naturally, the French contingents protested, and the other barons urged him to abide until the end of the war. The politic king did consent to leave at Acre the bulk of his soldiers under command of the Duke of Burgundy. He would not stay; and so great was his desire to make haste that he begged two swift galleys from Richard.
No protest came from Richard, although even that single minded warrior scented danger in the wind. Before the high lords he made Philip-Augustus swear that he would keep the faith he had pledged to him and would do no injury to the vassals or the lands of England, while Richard was absent.
The King of France took the oath readily, and broke it as readily before the year was out.
“Instead of blessings,” says Ambrose, “maledictions followed him upon his departure.”
Be that as it may, Richard Plantagenet was happy. Well and hale once more, with no one to hinder him and all Palestine open to him. Alone Conrad dared question his acts; and Conrad, following a policy of his own, saw fit to retire into his citadel of Tyre, taking with him the Moslem hostages who had fallen to the share of the French king; nor would he emerge at the Lion Heart’s summons.
For better or worse Richard became leader of the Crusade. His unbounded energy brought new spirit into the war, and the first result of it was the massacre.
ACRE had surrendered upon hard terms. To save their lives Saladin’s generals in the city had agreed to the surrender of the place with all it held, to the payment of a ransom of 200,000 pieces of gold, to the release by Saladin of 1,600 Christian captives—one hundred knights selected by name among them—and to the return of the holy cross.
Saladin had been troubled when he learned the conditions. The fulfilment of course rested with him, since some 3,000 of the garrison with the two commanders were held as hostages by the Crusaders. He had asked what time would be allowed him to make the payment, and had been informed that he would have three months—one-third of the conditions to be met at the end of each month.
Now the first month had elapsed, and the Crusaders were eagerly awaiting the sight of the true cross, taken at the battle of Hattin. Whenever Moslem parties appeared near Acre, men ran out crying—
“The cross is coming!”
But it did not come. Instead Saladin sent a message, explaining that he was ready to meet the first payment if the Christians would give hostages on their part to guarantee that they would release the prisoners at the end. Richard, in refusing this, demanded that Saladin make the payment without any conditions.*3 Days passed, and no response came from the hills. We do not know what Saladin thought, or what he was preparing to do. Doubtless he distrusted the Crusaders, and probably he was waiting for the arrival of some of the captives.
But there is no doubt as to what Richard did. Calling a council of the princes in Acre, he discussed the situation, and came to a decision. Twenty-six hundred Moslems of the garrison were led out into the plain to a kind of enclosure of blankets hung upon cords. Their hands were bound and they were put to death by the sword, or hanged—within sight of the Moslem patrols watching from the hills. Of all the hostages only the higher officers were spared.
In a frenzy of anger all the Moslem cavalry within summons rode down at the Crusaders, and before the execution ended swords were clashing all over the plain. Eventually the Moslems withdrew, to carry the tidings to Saladin.
Beyond doubt, he had not expected this. The massacre depressed him deeply, and not for many a long day did he show mercy to any Crusaders taken captive. He did not, however, retaliate by a slaughter of the Christians already in his hands.
Richard’s callous act roused intense feeling among the Moslems. By the letter of the agreement he had the right to act as he did. It must be remembered also that the Crusaders were still afflicted by their losses at Acre—that the majority of them, arriving on the coast during the tension of the siege, still looked upon their enemies as infidels to be slaughtered wherever met. Granting this, the fact remains that Richard stained his name and honor by this needless cruelty, and that Saladin did not retaliate except in the open war that followed.
The slaughter had its afternote of comedy. The two Moslem commanders of Acre were held for individual ransom—Meshtub, chieftain of the Kurds, being kept for 8,000 pieces of gold, while Karakush was thought by the Crusaders to be worth 30,000. It occurred to Meshtub to ask the figure set for the ransom of his brother-in-arms, and his captors told him.
“I am worth as much as he,” Meshtub protested. “By God, Karakush will not bring thirty thousand pieces if I bring only eight.”
The knights laughed, and raised the old Kurd’s ransom to 30,000 pieces.
MEANWHILE Richard was preparing to march on Jerusalem. By common consent the Crusaders placed themselves under his orders, although he had only been on the coast for two months. As King of England he was of higher birth than the remaining lords, and the command lay with him by right; but Richard Plantagenet would have taken the lead of any army in which he served.
It is no easy matter to perceive the real Richard, called the Lion Heart. We have only glimpses of him, matching songs with the troubadours of Poitiers, standing silent beside his father’s body, without a word of blame or promise of good will to the English barons who had fought against him.
He plunges into the Crusade as if longing to bury all this futile past in a selfless venture; he desires Berengaria of Navarre for wife, and yet sails from Messina on the very eve of her expected arrival. And after their marriage he avoids her—places her with Joanna his sister rescued from Sicily and the fair Byzantine girl, daughter of the Comnene, held by him as hostage.
Seemingly he takes delight in the young Byzantine princess—perhaps makes her his mistress. Berengaria follows him without protest, silent in her pride. The three women—shadows behind the resplendent figure of the Crusader king—are housed with all splendor in the palace at Acre. They appear at banquets, and Richard takes pleasure in gifting them with luminous silks and rare Eastern jewels.
He is no whit dismayed by the losses at Acre or the desertion of Philip. The thing in hand engrosses him, and he exults in the preparations for the march, buying new soldiery from the French, inspecting the ships. He can order the slaying of the Moslem hostages, and still send requests to Saladin for food for his falcons. He is childishly disappointed that the Sultan will not meet him face to face in courteous talk before the coming battle. Passing from hunting field to the banquet table, jesting with men of all ranks, spurring on the laggards, beating down all opposition—such is the outward bearing of the man, on the eve of the struggle.
At times he is moody, and over-tensed nerves give way before little things. He has a Norman’s canniness, and never did Crusader cast such stakes upon the board as Richard. To come thus far, he has drained England, and left all his kingdom at hazard. He means no doubt to win such fortune and glory in the Holy Land that he may return and mend matters in the West. But he finds great powers opposing him at every step, and he is impatient.
So for a moment the two adversaries gather their strength for the coming struggle—the champion of the West preparing to go forth to meet the lord of the nearer East. In every quality they are opposed: Saladin has the clear vision of age, Richard the heedlessness of youth; Saladin is patient, Richard impetuous; Saladin, unable to take part in person in the fighting, relies upon generalship; Richard depends upon his own prowess in battle. The Sultan, a fatalist, will take long chances—he has men fit only for striking, not for defense; the king must feel the ground before each new step, but he has men equally effective in attack or defense.
Either of them would give his life to hold, or to take, Jerusalem.
Richard made the first move—a wise one. Instead of seeking Saladin or marching inland, he started down the coast with the fleet following beside him, toward Jaffa, the port of Jerusalem. A distance of some sixty-five miles as the crow flies, rather more than a hundred along the trails. He set out on August 25th, of that year 1191 during the worst of the heat when the streams were dry.
Saladin kept in touch with his movements by spies and by mounted patrols. He ordered the walls of the three towns between Acre and Jaffa dismantled, and the fortifications of that seaport destroyed. And he marched south beside the Crusaders, out of sight within the hills.
Ill
AT FIRST the Christian army did not move smoothly. In fact, it did not move at all. Acre sheltered a great multitude, speaking different languages and following different leaders. For weeks the multitude had rested in the shade of the poplars and the palm groves.
“ In the town,” Ambrose explains, “ were good wines and girls, many of whom were very fair. They gave themselves up to the wine and the women until the valiant men were ashamed of the others.”
Richard had to pitch his tents by the sand dunes of the river and send back his marshals to rout out the malingerers. They emerged peevishly, overburdened with baggage. And onsets of Moslem cavalry added to the confusion. For two days the Crusaders camped in the shadow of Mount Carmel—from the summit of which Saladin had been inspecting them—while the useless gear was discarded and the men formed into companies.
All women except hardy workers were sent back, and each man was given ten days supplies of biscuit, cereal, wine and meat to carry in a pack. This done, the great standard, an effigy of a dragon mounted upon an iron bound pole in a heavy cart, trundled forward within its guard of Norman swordsmen. With the Templars leading, the army crawled around the point of Carmel in close array.
Ambrose marched with them, delighted at the sight, and he sang of the armed host:
“ You would see there great chivalry.
The fairest younglings,
The chosen men, most proud.
That ever were beheld.
So many men, all confident.
So many fine armorings,
And old sergeants, hardy and proud,
So many swords fair-seeming,
So many banners gleaming . . .
You would see there a host afoot,
Greatly to be feared.”
Burdened by the heavy packs the army trudged through the dry brush and thickets of the shore, surprised to see so many animals scurrying away before it. Scorpions and snakes worried the newcomers, and every day before setting out the sun emerged from the ridge on the left hand, making a glaring furnace of the sky, reflecting on the sand and even touching the tranquil green sea with fire. The army clambered past the limestone ledges of the Narrow Way, fearing that the Moslems would beset it.
But the sand and the brush lay empty before it, as far as the ruins of Capernaup. The army advanced only a few miles each day, halting at an early hour to camp. When the men had eaten supper, and the sun had sunk beneath red clouds into a purple sea, the air became cool and they could sit at ease. Then one would arise, and call out the familiar words——
“ Holy Sepulchre, aid us!”
Others would take up the cry after him, repeating it as far as the outer lines where the silent Templars kept watch in mounted patrols. Ambrose said it refreshed them all—as did the sight of the stalwart Richard by day, mounted on his bay Cyprian horse Fauvel.
The army trudged on, down the silent coast where no sheep grazed, and no wind stirred the dust, and even the thickets were gray and salt and bitter. At the empty town of Caesaria the fleet appeared, moving slowly under listless airs over the tideless water. It brought supplies and the last laggards from Acre.
“ The army,” a chronicle relates, “ pitched its tents by a river called the River of Crocodiles, because the crocodiles devoured two soldiers who bathed in it. Caesaria is great in size, and the buildings wonderful in workmanship. Our Saviour with His disciples often visited it and worked miracles there. But the Turks had broken down part of the towers and walls.”
Here the army turned a little inland—for the line of the menacing hills had receded, and the leaders decided to follow the wells and cultivated land a few miles from the shore.
“ And here,” Baha ad-Din relates, “ Saladin made a survey of the country ahead of the Crusaders and talked for a long time apart with his brother, Al Adil.”
On leaving Caesaria the Moslem cavalry appeared, skirmishing with the rear guard and harassing the Crusaders with arrows. But Richard or his advisers had hit upon a formation that fairly baffled the eager foeman.
THE CRUSADERS marched in three columns. The one nearest the hills —and the Moslems—was formed entirely of infantry, in close order. Those in the outer files exposed to the Moslem arrows carried bows and crossbows and wore shirts of felt and mail. They worked their bows without halting, and their armor shielded them from the hostile arrows. Within these files, their comrades carried spears and swords in readiness to stand and beat off a charge.
The second column, within the infantry screen, was made up of the knights and horsemen, the real strength of the army—protected in this fashion from the arrows that would otherwise have taken toll of the valuable mounts.
Nearest the sea and remote from the Moslems marched the third column with the carts and baggage and the sick. These men could take their ease, and a division of them changed places every few hours with the infantry of the first column, who could then rest in their turn.
The fighting of the first day ended at noon when both sides wilted under the trying heat. The Crusaders kept on, across a barren stretch of sand dunes and came to a narrow ravine, a portion of which the Moslems had thoughtfully camouflaged with a screen of branches to trap the horsemen of the advance. But the Templars were not deceived, and after testing the water and finding it good, they camped there. The river they christened the Dead River.
“ On the next day,” the chronicle continues, “ the army went on slowly through a desolate country. The Templars had charge of the rear that day and they lost so many horses through the attacks of the Turks, they were almost reduced to despair. The king also was wounded in the side by a javelin while he was driving the Turks. Alas, how many horses fell pierced with javelins! This terrible tempest kept up all day, until at twilight the Turks returned to their tents.
“ Our people stopped near what was called the Salt River. A great throng gathered on account of the horses which had died from their wounds, for the people were so eager to purchase the horseflesh that they even came to blows. The king, hearing this, proclaimed by herald that he would give a live horse to whoever had lost his horse and who distributed the flesh of it to the best men in his command, who had most need of it.
“ On the third day our army marched in battle array from the Salt River; for there was a rumor that the Turks were lying in ambush in a forest, and that they meant to set the brush on fire. But our men, advancing in order, passed the place unmolested where the ambuscade was said to be. On quitting the wood they came to a large plain and there they pitched their tents. Spies, however, brought back word that the Turks lay ahead of them in countless numbers.”
Saladin had inspected this plain with Al Adil, and had chosen it for the hazard of battle. In the last two days his horsemen had tried to coax the Crusaders’ cavalry out of the protecting mass of infantry, and had failed.
“ We had to admire,” Baha ad-Din says, “ the patience shown by these people, who endured the worst fatigues without having military skill or any advantage on their side.”
The Moslems, being all mounted, outnumbered the Crusaders’ horsemen at least five to one. Their purpose was to induce the men of the cross to break their array—to abandon the hedgehog-like formation and to scatter over the countryside, in which case the charges of the Turkish cavalry might overwhelm them. Richard, understanding this peril, had ordered his men not to move out of ranks under any provocation unless the signal was given to charge—the simultaneous blast of trumpets down the line.
So on that day of battle the Christians moved forward in their dense column, like an armored giant drawing himself painfully over the ground, heedless of the sting of missiles.
The Templars took the advance again, followed by the Bretons and the knights of Anjou; King Guy led the men of Poitou at their heels, and the Normans and English pressed after with the standard. Bearing the burden of the attack, the black robed Hospitallers held the rear. At nine o’clock, when the Crusaders were already drenched with sweat, the two sides were engaged—swarms of Bedawins and the negro horsemen of Egypt assailing the rear.
King Richard and the Duke of Burgundy with their retinues rode up and down the line, to steady the men.
“ THE ENEMY,” relates the chronicler de Vinsauf, “ thundered at their backs as if with mallets, so that, having no room to use their bows, they fought hand to hand, and the blows of the Turks, echoing from their metal armor, resounded as if they had struck upon an anvil. They were now tormented with the heat, and no rest was allowed them. The battle fell heavily on the extreme line of the Hospitallers—the more so as they were unable to resist.
“ They moved forward with patience under their wounds, and the Turks cried out that they were iron, and would yield to no blow. Then about twenty thousand Turks rushed upon our men. Almost overcome by their savage fury Garnier de Napes, one of the Hospitallers, suddenly exclaimed with a loud voice——
“ O St. George, wilt thou leave us to be driven thus?’
“ Upon this the master of the Hospitallers went to the king and said to him, ‘My Lord the King, we are pressed by the enemy, and in danger of eternal infamy; we are losing our horses, one after the other, and why should we bear with them?’
“ 'Good Master, the king replied, ‘it is you who must sustain their attack. No one can be everywhere at once.’
“ On the master returning, there was not a count or prince who did not blush for shame, and they said one to the other, ‘Why do we not charge them at full gallop?’
