Little Lost Lambs, page 62
“ The praise to God. Today you are the only army of Islam. Only you are capable of confronting adversaries such as we have before us. If you withdraw—may it not please God—the enemy will roll up the country as you would roll up a leaf of parchment. On you alone depends the safety of the Moslems, everywhere. I have spoken.”
“El Meshtub then took the word.
" ‘By God, I swear that while I live, I will not cease to aid thee!’
“Others answered likewise, and this cheered the spirit of the Sultan. He had the customary supper served and after that every one retired.
“Thursday ended in great preparation and bustle. In the evening we attended again upon our prince, and watched with him a part of the night, but he was not at all communicative. We made the last prayer, which was also the signal for all of us to retire. I was going out with the others when he recalled me. So I sat down again at his side, and he asked me if I had heard the latest news. I answered no.
“ ‘Today I have had a communication,’ he said, ‘from Aboul Heidja. The amirs and Mamluks held a gathering in his quarters, and blamed us for wishing to shut ourselves up in the city. They said that every one would undergo the fate of Acre, while all the outer country would fall to our enemies. They think it would be better to risk a ranged battle; then, if God gave us victory, we would be the masters; if defeated, we would lose Jerusalem but the army would be saved.
“ ‘The letter also contained this clause: “ If you wish us to remain in the city, stay with us or else leave a member of your family—for the Kurds would never obey the Turks, and otherwise the Turks would no longer obey the Kurds.”’
“Knowing by this that they did not intend to remain in the city, the Sultan had a grieving at his heart. He had for Jerusalem an attachment that can hardly be conceived, and this message caused him pain. I spent that night with him. It was the eve of Friday in the dry season, and no person other than God made a third with us.
“We decided to place in the city his great-nephew, son of Ferrukh Shah and Lord of Baalbek. At first he thought of shutting himself up in the Holy City. We watched and prayed together.
“At daybreak he was still awake, and I begged him to take an hour’s rest. I went out to my quarters but had no sooner arrived than I heard the muezzin call to prayer, and for awhile I made the necessary rinsings in water, since the day was beginning to break. As I sometimes made the morning prayer with the Sultan I went back to him and found him finishing his ablutions.
“ ‘I have not slept a single moment,’ he said to me.
“ ‘I know that.’
“ ‘How could you know it?’
“ ‘Because I have not slept myself—there was not time.’
“After making the prayer together, I said to him, ‘An idea has come to me. May I submit it to you?’
“He replied, ‘Speak!’
“ ‘O my Lord, thou art overwhelmed with cares. Today is Friday, in which all prayer is three-fold effective, and here we are, in a most suitable spot. Let the Sultan make the ablutions, with bowings and prostrations, and confide the keys of his problem to the hand of God.’
“For the Sultan believed sincerely in all the tenets of the Faith, and submitted himself without misgiving to the divine wisdom. I left him then, but afterward, when the hour arrived, I made the prayer beside him in the mosque of Al Aksa, and I saw him make two bowings and prostrate himself, murmuring in a low voice. I saw the tears drip upon his grizzled beard and fall to the prayer rug.
“In the evening of the same day I resumed my usual attendance upon him, and at that time a dispatch arrived from Djordic who commanded the advance guard (confronting the Franks). We read these words:
“All the army of the enemy has just drawn up, mounted, on the crest of the hill and then retired to its camp. We have just sent spies to find out what is happening.
“Saturday morning another dispatch came in, reading as follows:
“Our spy has just come back and tells us that a dispute divides the enemy, some wishing to push on to the Holy City and others intending to return to their own territory. The French insist on marching upon Jerusalem. ‘We have left our own land,’ they said, ‘to regain the Holy City, and we will not return without taking it.’ To that the king of England replied, ‘From this point on, all the springs have been destroyed, so there is no water left near the city. Where, then, can we water our horses?’
“Some one pointed out that they could have water at Tekou’a, a stream which runs about a parasang from Jerusalem.
“ ‘How,’ said the king, 'could we water our beasts there?’
“ ‘We will divide the army,’ they replied, ‘into two bodies, one of which will mount and ride off to the watering place while the other remains near the city to carry on the siege, and every one will go once a day to Tekou’a.’
“ ‘When one part of the army goes to drink with its animals, the garrison of the day will sally out and attack the others who remain,’ the king answered, ‘and that will end it.’*10
“They decided finally to choose among the best known men three hundred persons who would in turn pass on their powers to a dozen individuals who would then choose three to decide the question. And they spent the night waiting for the decision of the three.
“On the next morning we received another message. The Franks had broken camp and were on their way back to Ramlah.”
Saladin had triumphed and Richard had failed, without giving battle. And the reason for this was that the Lion Heart, the mightiest man of them all in single combat, became helpless when he took command of an army.
VII
THE PLIANT steel of Saladin’s patience had broken the iron courage of the Crusaders. As iron snaps asunder, the army broke up into fragments once it had turned its back upon the hills of Jerusalem. Angered past reconciliation, the French went off to the north; the pilgrims and masterless men trailed down to Jaffa, while the Italian soldiery hastened to their citadels of trade along the coast, and only the Templars and Hospitallers remained to guard the new wall of Ascalon.
Richard went at once to Acre, as a man hurries from a long ordeal. His thoughts he kept to himself. Beyond doubt, he was impatient to embark for England where he was sorely needed and had only lingered this long because the Crusaders had insisted on marching to Jerusalem. So long as they turned their faces toward the Holy City the pride of the Lion Heart would not let him forsake them.
Now, with failure accepted, his hands were free. As a boy casts aside a once cherished toy for a new plaything, he started toward the sea. Not before he had done two mad things. In solemn conference he approved a plan to march against Cairo, after his departure—even promising the aid of some three thousand English and Normans, although even the minstrel Ambrose realized such a move was hopeless. And, impatiently, he sent envoys to find Al Adil and bid the Sultan’s brother make terms for the Crusaders.
Still, he clung to the hope of fair terms, saying that he would not relinquish half ruined Ascalon. On his way to embark— after joining the queen at Acre—he ordered his own followers to make ready to take ship for Beirut to win this fertile northern port for the Crusaders. He paid no heed to the gibes of the French or to the song they sang in the taverns. For they made up a song about a coward and a king that stung the pride of the red haired warrior.
So matters were, when Saladin seized his opportunity. He roused his amirs, shook from them the inertia of the year’s defensive caution, and launched his horsemen straight down from Jerusalem to Jaffa.
They came like a sword thrust out of the night, twenty thousand mounted men with siege engines on camel and mule back, and an exulting mass of Arabs clinging to their flanks. They drove the surprised Crusaders from the field and suburbs and started to pound with rocks and iron javelins at the gate of the wall toward Jerusalem.
Some five thousand Christian men-at-arms were penned within the wall and in the tumult they manned their defenses sturdily, while a ship sped to Richard at Acre with tidings of the attack. The first rush of the Moslems was beaten back, and the sharp check cooled the spirits of the Turkomans who had no sympathy with sieges. It needed all Saladin’s arguing to drive them to the assault, and for three days the Sultan’s mangonels gnawed at the gate until it was broken down and a breach of two lance lengths opened in the wall beside it.
Then the Moslems scented victory, and flung themselves at the gap under a storm of arrows, their long scimitars swinging and crashing into the close ranks of the Crusaders. Climbing over bodies and broken stones the exultant Mamluks forced the breach and drove the Christians through the streets, up the slope to the little citadel on a rocky height above the sand of the shore.
After them swarmed the Turkoman clans and the Arabs, nearly maddened by the rich plunder around them in dwellings and shops. Beating in the door of a monastery, the Moslems fell to hacking the bodies of the monks, killing them slowly to enjoy their torture. A church was ransacked and burned, and smoke poured up from the alleys where the looters snatched and screamed.
They were beyond all control of their officers. Finding wine casks in the houses, they beat in the heads of the casks and let the wine run underfoot; they forced captive women and children to drive the herds of swine together in one place and then left the bodies of the Christians strewn among the carcasses of the abominated swine.
SOME of the fugitives climbed into boats drawn up on the gray sand of the shore, while others struggled to launch the boats. Alberic of Rheims, the commander of Jaffa, tried to escape in one of these vessels, but his knights pulled him back and led him up to a tower of the citadel. Few survived here—some two thousand it seems—and their situation was the more hazardous because the wall of the citadel had not been entirely rebuilt before the Moslem attack. Alberic of Rheims saw no hope for them.
“ We can do nothing here except give up our lives,” he said.
The patriarch, a gigantic man who had escaped the contagion of fear, had sterner stuff in him. He rallied the people, reminding them that a ship had been sent to Acre for aid three days ago. If the assistance did not come, they could beg Saladin for terms.
Saladin tried to restore order among his looters, and to launch a fresh attack on the gray stone wall of the citadel.
“The soldiers would not obey him,” Baha ad-Din explains, “although he did not cease urging them until a late hour of the night. Then, perceiving that they were harassed by heat and fighting and smoke to the point of stupor, he mounted his horse and returned to his tent which was pitched near the baggage trains. There the officers who were on duty rejoined him, and I went to get some sleep in my tent. But it was impossible to sleep—I was so troubled by misgiving.
“At daybreak we heard trumpets sound among the Franks, and we thought that aid had come for them. The Sultan sent for me, and said:
“ ‘Reenforcements must have come for them by sea. But enough Moslem troops are on the shore to keep any one from debarking. Here is what must be done. Go and find the Malik el Dahir,*11 and tell him to place himself outside the southern gate. You will enter the citadel with some men of your choice, and induce the Franks to pass out. You will take possession of all valuables and arms you find there.’
“I went off at once, taking Shams ad-Din with me, and I found the Malik el Dahir on the hill near the sea with the advanced guard. He slept, in his coat of loose mail and mail hood, ready for combat. When I woke him, he got up at once half asleep and mounted his horse, while I accompanied him to the place where he was to await the Sultan’s orders. There he made me explain what I planned to do.
“With my men I then entered the town of Jaffa, and on reaching the citadel we called to the Franks to come out. They replied that they would do so and began making preparations.
“Just as they started out Aziz ad-Din remarked that they must not be allowed out until we had removed the Moslem soldiers from the town, or they would be pillaged. Djordic then tried to drive back our men by great blows of his baton; but as they were no longer under the control of their officers or in ranks he found it impossible to make them go out. He kept on struggling with the mob against my remonstrance until it was full daylight.
“Seeing how the time had passed, I said to him, ‘Reenforcements are drawing nearer to the Franks and the only thing for us to do is to hasten the evacuation of the citadel. That is what the Sultan insisted upon.’
“Then he consented to do what I asked. We went to the gate of the citadel nearest the spot where the Malik el Dahir waited. Here we managed to pass out forty-nine Franks with their horses and women, and sent them away.*12 But then those who remained in the citadel took it into their heads to resist us.
“By now the relieving fleet had drawn near and every one could count the ships, and the garrison prepared to resume fighting—we saw them putting on mail and seizing their shields.
“Seeing matters take this turn, I descended from my knoll near the gate and went to warn Aziz ad-Din, who was posted below with some troops. A moment later I was out of the town and with the Malik, who sent me to the Sultan to inform him of what was happening. He ordered a trumpeter to blow the call to arms. The drums rolled the recall, and our soldiers hastened in from all parts of the country to join in the conflict. They closed in on the town and the citadel. The Franks of the garrison finding that no aid was coming from the ships believed death inevitable.”
KING RICHARD was in command of the galleys that drifted beyond the swell of the Jaffa beach. The galley bearing word of the Moslem attack had reached the harbor of Acre in the evening, while he was in his tent making the last preparations for embarking with his followers for Beirut and then for Europe. The messengers had come before him without ceremony, crying that Jaffa was taken and a remnant of the Christians besieged in the citadel, and that all would be lost unless aid reached them at once.
“ As God lives,” Richard had answered, “ I will go there!”
And go he did, in spite of obstacles—for some of the army was already at Beirut, and the French refused point blank to march again under his standard. The Templars and Hospitallers agreed to go to Jaffa, by land—only to be held up on the way by a Moslem ambush. Richard boarded his galleys with the Earl of Leicester, and those stalwarts, his constant companions, Andrew of Chavigny and the Priux knights. With some hundreds of men-at-arms and volunteers from among the Genoese and Pisan bowmen, he put to sea, only to be held back for two days by contrary winds off the Carmel headland. They reached the Jaffa beach in the night and waited to see what story the dawn would tell.
When the mists cleared and the sun blazed above the distant hills they saw nothing to cheer them. The beach was filled with Arabs and Turks, who were obviously settled there. Above the line of the sand, smoke eddied from the low wall of the city, half a mile from them. In the palm groves near the wall stood Moslem pavilions. Only Moslem banners could be made out. No sign of any kind was visible on the fortress, on its low bluff over the sand.
The galleys moved in closer. Richard, standing with his knights under the red awning of the stem, scanned the line of the shore, and turned to his companions.
“ Sir Knights,” he said briefly, “ what shall we do—go away, or land?”
To try to force their way ashore in the face of Saladin’s army seemed to them out of the question, and they said so. They believed that all the people of the castle had been killed.
At this moment the survivors of the citadel were actually calling to them, but the sound of the voices was drowned by the pulse of the swell and the taunting cries of the Arabs, “Allah akbar—Allah l'allahu.” So Baha ad-Din says.
Then a black figure dropped from the wall of the citadel to the sand of the beach below. It fell but got up again and ran through the Moslems to the edge of the swell. Plunging into the water it swam toward the nearest galley, which moved in and picked it up. The swimmer proved to be a priest of the garrison and he was taken at once to the long red galley over which the king’s banner floated.
Panting and dripping, the messenger flung himself on his knees before the king.
“ Beau Sire, the people who await you here are lost if you do not aid them.”
“ What!” Richard demanded. “ Are any living yonder? Where are they?”
“ Some of them live, shut in the towers.”
Richard looked at his companions. “Messires —damned be he who hangs back!”
He ordered his vessel to row in, while the half naked seamen on the benches looked each at the other askance. The long oars rose and dipped, the red galley with the dragon head prow slipped into the line of the swell and the others followed after. On the sideboards the English men-at-arms buckled tight their belts, thrusting their arms through the loops of the shields and freed the swords in their sheaths.
The red galley was the first to grate upon the sand. It lurched and rolled in the swell, while the Moslems yelled their hatred and the swarthy Italian shipmen crossed themselves and snatched up bows and axes. Richard gave no more orders, and tarried not to bring any reason into the madness of this landfall. He jumped over the side, waist deep in the water. He still wore his ship slippers with no other armor than a mail shirt and a steel cap. On his shoulder he gripped a crossbow and his long sword hung at his side.
Wading through the swell, he began to shoot bolts at the Moslems, with Peter of Priux and another knight beside him. When they came out of the water they drew their swords, lashing about them under the arrows that the shipmen plied from the prow. Recognizing the king, the Moslems in front of him gave back hastily, while the English hastened forward to form a shield ring about him. Other galleys were running up on the beach, the crews casting beams and benches ashore. Men caught these up and carried them forward, lugging the small skiffs and débris of the beach into a barricade of sorts.
