God's Battalions (25 page)

Meanwhile, Richard the Lionhearted and Philip Augustus of France were gathering their forces, raising huge sums to meet the costs of crusading, and getting ready to set out. But they had no intentions of following the overland route through Byzantium. They planned to sail to the Holy Land, taking full advantage of Saladin’s failure to capture all of the Christian ports.

But long before Richard and Philip Augustus embarked, the Christian cause was greatly strengthened by the arrival of “a series of crusading fleets [from] the ports of northwestern Europe. They bore Danes, Frisians, North Germans, Flemings, English, Bretons, and men of Northern France.”
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It is impossible to know how many new crusaders were involved, but “there is no doubt that by New Year 1190 hundreds of Christian ships of all types were either beached or anchored around [Acre].”
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These newcomers joined King Guy of Jerusalem in laying siege to the city. Saladin met this threat by bringing up his army, and, by surrounding the area, he placed the Christian siege under siege.

A stalemate ensued because Saladin could not persuade his troops to attack the crusader ranks. In the restricted ground on which the city of Acre stood, the Muslims could not use their hit-and-run tactics and scatter to safety if charged by heavy cavalry. Nor were they willing to attack the ranks of solid infantry, for “the crossbows of the crusaders outranged their bows, and the solid line of spears formed an almost impossible obstacle.”
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With the Christians being resupplied by sea, a standoff began. In an effort to perfect his siege, Saladin placed a fleet of fifty galleys in the harbor at Acre to prevent resupplies from coming in. This seems not to have been adequate, and so in June 1190 he sent the remainder of his new Egyptian navy to fight its way into the harbor at Acre.
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It is not clear that the Christians resisted this move since it was greatly to their benefit. For one thing, this allowed the Christian fleets uncontested passage up and down the coast. More important, powerful crusader fleets soon blockaded the Acre harbor, trapping Saladin’s entire navy.

In March 1191, Philip Augustus and his French flotilla arrived at Tyre and from there went south and joined the siege of Acre. Meanwhile, Richard stopped in Cyprus, where his treasure ship had gone aground during a storm. This island was under the control of a Byzantine rebel, Isaac Comnenus, who had seized the English treasure and held the crew and troops aboard, although he released the civilian passengers, including Richard’s new fiancée, Berengaria of Navarre. Initially, Isaac also agreed to return both treasure and troops. Then, thinking he was secure in his great fortress at Famagusta, he broke his word and issued orders for Richard to leave the island. Enraged, Richard and his English forces quickly overran the island, much to the pleasure of the local population; apparently Isaac was a tyrant, given to raping virgins and torturing rich citizens. He surrendered without a fight when Richard promised not to put him into irons; Richard “kept” his word by locking him up in silver chains. After his release in 1194, Isaac returned to Constantinople, where he was poisoned in 1195.

The conquest of Cyprus gave the crusaders an extremely important naval base from which they could support and supply the kingdoms so long as they held any port cities. From Cyprus, Richard sailed his army to join the siege at Acre, arriving in June. Soon after the English landed, the crusaders were further reinforced by a fleet from Genoa. These new forces quickly swept aside the encircling outer Muslim lines and advanced to the gates of the city. The Muslim garrison surrendered—without Saladin’s permission. Saladin’s entire navy surrendered as well; many crews simply jumped overboard and swam ashore.

With Acre secure, it was time to begin the recovery of the kingdoms, but without the king of France. At this moment Philip Augustus withdrew and went home. He had long been very ill with dysentery, but the main reason he left was to settle urgent political disputes that had arisen back in France. However, Philip did leave behind several thousand troops, and the funds to pay them.

Now the Third Crusade came down to a match between Richard the Lionhearted and Saladin.

RICHARD AND SALADIN

Richard was a complex character: “As a soldier he was little short of mad, incredibly reckless and foolhardy, but as a commander he was intelligent, cautious, and calculating. He would risk his own life with complete nonchalance, but nothing could persuade him to endanger his troops more than was absolutely necessary.”
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Troops adore such a commander.

In August 1191, Richard organized his crusader army and began to march south from Acre along the coast in the direction of Jerusalem. His force consisted of about four thousand knights, fourteen thousand infantry, and two thousand Turcopoles—light infantry, most of them hired locally. The infantry included a substantial number of crossbow teams. Because of the summer heat, the crusaders marched only during the mornings, and Richard was careful to situate his camps where there was adequate water; he was not about to be forced to fight at a disadvantage simply because of thirst. The fleet followed the army down the coast, resupplying them so they were independent of local sources. The fleet also took aboard those wounded by Saladin’s hit-and-run mounted archers, who lurked wherever there was cover.

Unfortunately for the Muslims, their constant harassment failed to goad the crusaders into breaking their solid formation—the heavy cavalry on the ocean side shielded by an impregnable column of infantry and crossbow teams. So, reluctantly, and at the urging of his emirs who still basked in the glow of Hattin, Saladin decided to risk a pitched battle. He chose a spot where his army’s northern flank was protected by the forest of Arsuf (or Arsur), with wooded hills to the south. On September 7, 1191, the Muslims attacked, using their standard tactic of rush in and then retreat, hoping to get the crusaders to break ranks and pursue them. But with Richard riding up and down the formation, the crusaders stood firm
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while their “crossbowmen took a heavy toll.”
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At this point, the Muslims launched a more determined attack. Once they were committed, the crusader heavy cavalry passed through the ranks of the infantry and launched a massive charge against Saladin’s forces. They not only inflicted heavy losses but did not scatter in pursuit of the enemy—as Christian heavy cavalry had so often done in the past. Instead, Richard was able to keep the knights under control and lead them back to form up again. When the Muslims attacked again, they were slammed by another cavalry charge. And then another. Having suffered huge losses—including more than thirty emirs—Saladin’s forces fled the field.

“But more important…Saladin’s troops became convinced that they could not win in the open field, and lost all interest in attempting pitched battles. The battle of Arsuf was the last [Muslim] attempt to destroy king Richard’s host.”
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In fact Saladin’s army became increasingly reluctant to face crusaders under any circumstances. A year after their defeat at Arsuf, a substantial army sent by Saladin to recapture Jaffa confronted Richard and a tiny force of fifty knights (only six of them mounted) and several hundred crossbowmen. Although they very greatly outnumbered Richard’s force, the Muslims did not prevail—partly from unwillingness to press their attack.
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Even so, they suffered terrible losses. This was the last significant engagement of the Third Crusade; both sides were more than ready for diplomacy.

It often is suggested that because Richard failed to reconquer Jerusalem, Saladin prevailed in denying the West that most important measure of the success of the Third Crusade. In truth, Richard made no attempt to retake the Holy City, and Saladin held it only by default. Richard knew that Jerusalem was of immense symbolic importance in Europe but recognized that it was a military liability—that to protect Jerusalem from Muslim attacks would require a large garrison and a safe corridor to the sea. But once his army went home, the kingdom of Jerusalem would lack the resources needed to meet either requirement. Better that the kingdom have secure borders that maximized the effectiveness of its armed forces than that Jerusalem itself be returned briefly to Christian control. Instead, Richard included a clause in the Treaty of Ramla he signed with Saladin in 1192 that allowed unarmed Christian pilgrims access to the city.

Saladin may have signed that agreement in good faith, but he died a year later, at age fifty-five. Only six years after Saladin’s death, Richard died from a crossbow wound suffered while putting down a revolt in part of his French territory. He was forty-one.

Unfortunately, few back in Europe saw the inevitability and the wisdom in Richard’s unwillingness to retake Jerusalem. Thus, a year before Richard died, Pope Innocent III had begun to call for a new Crusade.

THE FOURTH CRUSADE

Because the Fourth Crusade culminated in the crusaders’ sacking Constantinople, it has long served as a primary “proof” that the Crusades were a shameful episode in the greedy history of the West. Only six years after the world had learned of the Nazi death camps and the extent of the Holocaust, the distinguished Cambridge historian Steven Runciman could write: “There was never a greater crime against humanity than the Fourth Crusade.”
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Runciman certainly knew that many other cities of this era not only had been sacked but had had their populations massacred to the last resident, compared with probably fewer than two thousand deaths
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during the crusader sack of Constantinople, a city of about 150,000.
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So why this uniquely extreme condemnation? Ah, but the others were just dreary medieval cities; this was
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“great city…filled with works of art that had survived from ancient Greece and with the masterpieces of its own exquisite craftsmen.”
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Indeed, admiration for the sophisticated city is a standard theme in the outrage against the Fourth Crusade. As Speros Vryonis put it, “The Latin soldiery subjected the greatest city in Europe to an indescribable sack…Constantinople had become a veritable museum of ancient and Byzantine art.”
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Or, in the words of Will Durant, the crusaders “now—in Easter week—subjected the rich city to such spoliation as Rome had never suffered from Vandals or Goths.”
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There even is a whole school of scholars who, in addition to lamenting the damage to the city, claim that the Fourth Crusade was from the start nothing but a diabolical Venetian plot to eliminate Byzantine commercial competition.
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These bitter condemnations of the Fourth Crusade led Pope John Paul II, in 2001, to apologize to the Greek Orthodox Church: “It is tragic that the assailants, who set out to secure free access for Christians in the Holy Land, turned against their brothers in the faith. That they were Latin Christians fills Catholics with deep regret.”
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Nothing here about the prior sacks of the city by Byzantines themselves during political coups: in 1081 Alexius Comnenus “allowed his foreign mercenaries to plunder the capital for three days.”
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Nor is there a word to acknowledge the centuries of Orthodox brutalities against Latin Christians: in 1182 the emperor incited mobs to attack all Western residents of Constantinople, during which “[t]housands, including women, children, and the aged, were massacred”
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—many more deaths than are thought to have occurred during the city’s sack by the crusaders.
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Not a word about the instances of Byzantine treachery that occurred during each of the first three Crusades and that cost tens of thousands of crusaders their lives. Surely it is not surprising that these many acts of betrayal built up substantial animosity toward Byzantium. Then, in 1204, those who had journeyed east as members of the Fourth Crusade also were deceived by a Byzantine emperor who, after the crusaders helped restore him to the throne, broke his glittering promises and launched fire ships against the crusader fleet. Meanwhile, the Latin residents of Constantinople fled the city in fear of their lives—recalling the massacre of 1182—and took refuge in the crusader camp. This left the crusaders “without food or money,”
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stranded on a hostile shore. That’s when they attacked Constantinople.

Now for the details.

Pope Innocent’s initial call for the new Crusade was ignored. The Germans were on the outs with Rome, while the French and English were at war again. But just as the lethargic response to the Second Crusade was overcome by the efforts of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, the Fourth Crusade was in response to the exertions of Fulk of Neuilly—a French cleric who accepted the pope’s request to preach a new Crusade. The climax came during a tournament held by Count Thibaut of Champagne in 1199. In the midst of the usual dangers and injuries involved in jousting matches, concerns over the Muslim occupation of Jerusalem arose, and Count Thibaut ended up leading a group of his friends and relatives in taking the cross.
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From there, enthusiasm for a new Crusade spread and the planning began.

Once again it was agreed that the crusaders would go east by sea, but with a brilliant change in destination. Why fight peripheral battles in the Holy Land when Egypt was the aggressive power? So the original plan was to sail an irresistible army to the mouth of the Nile and put the enemy out of business for good. It made a great deal of sense.

Of course, those organizing the new Crusade had no navy. So they sent a delegation to Venice, then the primary naval power in the Mediterranean. The Venetians agreed to transport forty-five hundred knights with their horses, nine thousand squires, and twenty thousand infantry, plus food for nine months and an escort of fifty fighting galleys for the price of ninety-one thousand marks.
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To meet this enormous obligation the Venetians had to suspend nearly all of their foreign trade and devote a year to the rapid construction of boats.