The Glory of the Crusades (20 page)

Saladin’s army arrived on September 20, 1187. Balian, recognizing the situation was hopeless, proposed terms of surrender to Saladin. The sultan rejected them outright, demanding the unconditional surrender of the city. This was an unconventional response, for most besieged towns were given the opportunity to surrender with terms by the besieging army.

Saladin’s army began the attack. Balian’s meager militia withstood five days of near-constant bombardment by siege engines. Impatient with the stubborn resistance of the Christian defenders at the western wall, Saladin broke camp and shifted his point of attack to the eastern wall, establishing his headquarters on the Mount of Olives. This location was the site of the successful sieges of the Roman army under Titus in A.D. 70 and the First Crusaders in 1099. On September 29, only nine days into the siege, Muslim sappers opened a breach in the northeastern section of the wall.

Balian asked for an audience with Saladin in the hopes of convincing him to provide terms of surrender. Once again, the stubborn sultan denied the Christians’ terms, which infuriated Balian who replied to the rejection:

O sultan, be aware that this city holds a mass of people so great that God alone knows their number. They now hesitate to continue the fight, because they hope that you will spare their lives . . . because they love life and hate death. But if we see that death is inevitable, then, by God, we will kill our own women and children and burn all that we possess. We will not leave you a single dinar of booty . . . not a single man or woman to lead into captivity. Then we shall destroy the sacred rock, al-Aqsa mosque, and many other sites: we will kill the 5,000 Muslim prisoners we now hold. In the end, we will come outside the city, and we will fight against you as one fights for one’s life. Not one of us will die without having killed several of you!
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Balian’s threat worked. Saladin presented terms that allowed Christians to purchase their freedom. There was concern about the vast amount of poor people in the city who did not have the necessary funds to buy their freedom, including a good number of recent widows who had lost their husbands at Hattin. Saladin agreed to a lump sum payment for the poor.
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Unfortunately, not enough money was raised to redeem all the poor in the city, so a large number were captured and sold into slavery.
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Saladin entered the city on October 2, the same day (according to Islamic tradition) that Mohammed’s night journey to heaven from Jerusalem occurred. Once in the city, Saladin ordered the removal of every external Christian image and cross. Most of the churches in the city were turned into mosques, except the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,
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or were taken from Latin clergy and given over to the Orthodox.
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From the moment Godfrey de Bouillon scaled the parapet to the moment of Balian’s departure, the Holy City had remained in the hands of Christians for only eighty-eight years.

The Calling of the Third Crusade

The defeat at Hattin, the loss of the True Cross, and the capture of the Holy City by Saladin shocked and horrified the inhabitants of Christendom. Pope Urban III (r. 1185–1187) died in grief upon hearing the disastrous news from Outrémer. His successor, Gregory VIII (r. 1187) issued a summons for the Crusade nine days later in the document
Audita Tremendi
, promulgated on October 29, 1187. Gregory called all Christendom to an examination of conscience and a commitment to penance for the sins that had contributed to the victory of the enemy and the capture of Jerusalem.
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“After forty years of complacency, indifference, and lip-service, Christendom’s response to Gregory’s call was overwhelming.”
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The loss of Jerusalem awakened the warriors of Christendom in a way not seen for close to a hundred years. Even those not able to go on Crusade responded to Gregory’s call as monks took the cross; they went “from the cloister to camp, threw off their cowls, donned mail shirts, and became knights of Christ in a new sense, replacing alms with arms.”
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The desire to liberate the city of Christ, as it was in the First Crusade, was the primary driver for the success of the preaching campaign. Jerusalem was also a popular pilgrimage destination in the late eleventh century and had become more so by the end of the twelfth century. Warriors from all over Christendom took the cross in imitation of those who went before them in the First and Second Crusades. Their motivations were varied, but one reason for the large response was the role of the three major monarchs in Christendom, who made the Crusade a priority.
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Frederick Barbarossa and the Germans

As a young man in his twenties, Frederick fought in the Second Crusade in the army of his uncle, Conrad III. The failure of that campaign remained with him, and he vowed not to make the same mistakes. Frederick was the leading monarch of Christendom; appointed king of the Germans in 1152 and anointed holy Roman emperor by Pope Alexander III in 1181, he controlled all of modern-day Germany and northern Italy. He was a man of intelligence, vitality, willpower, and a full red beard, hence the moniker
Barbarossa
.

On Laetare Sunday, March 27, 1188, the old warrior answered the summons to Jerusalem issued by Pope Gregory VIII. Frederick was the last of the major monarchs of Christendom to answer the call, but he was the first to leave. Frederick’s Crusade was very much a re-enactment of the First Crusade and a re-fighting of the Second. The German king recognized the one aspect that could either sink the Crusade or help it succeed was an alliance with the Byzantines. He well remembered the Byzantine betrayal of the Second Crusade, and he knew the stories of their selfish priorities during the First. He decided to send envoys to the Byzantines and to all the rulers along the route he intended to take.

Despite Frederick’s diplomatic outreach, the Byzantines rejected his pleas and imprisoned his envoys. Frederick was so upset at the Byzantine response that he asked the pope’s approval to change the focus of his Crusade from Jerusalem to Constantinople.
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The request was rightly denied.

Emperor Isaac II (r. 1185–1195) actively sought to undermine Frederick’s Crusade because he embraced the traditional Byzantine paranoia of a Western conquest of Constantinople. Isaac entered into a secret treaty with Saladin, pledging to hamper, as much as possible, the progress of Frederick’s army.
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Despite these hostile actions, the imperial army left Mainz on May 23, 1189, taking the land route used during the First Crusade. By all accounts it was a huge army, perhaps the largest ever assembled in Christendom during the Crusading movement. One estimate puts the host at 100,000 men with 20,000 cavalry; so large that it took three days for the army to pass a single point on the march.
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Frederick decided on an overland journey because it was more convenient for the bulk of his force. The emperor demanded discipline and pious behavior on the march, and his army behaved accordingly as it marched through Christian territory on the way to the frontier with Byzantium, which it reached on July 2, 1189. Once they were inside the Byzantine border, imperial forces harassed the Germans and the promised provisions did not materialize. Isaac II clearly did not like Frederick, his treaty with the Normans, his use of the title “Roman emperor,” or his large army. Negotiations between the two men over the army’s march and provisioning broke down, resulting in Frederick’s capture of Adrianople.

On February 14, 1190 an agreement was reached wherein Isaac promised to transport the German army to Anatolia in exchange for the return of the captured city. Free passage through Byzantine territory was also granted the Germans along with access to markets at reasonable rates. Frederick agreed to avoid the capital city and indiscriminate foraging in imperial territory. The following month the German host was transported to Anatolia, and reached enemy territory there in April of 1190. The march through Anatolia was difficult; as the supply system collapsed both man and beast suffered from exhaustion and sustained Turkish attacks. The army was kept together mainly through Frederick’s sheer will and excellent leadership, which instilled hope in the hearts of the soldiers. The emperor’s leadership was on full display at the city of Iconium, where he urged his troops to capture the city by crying, “Why do we tarry, of what are we afraid? Christ reigns! Christ conquers! Christ commands!”
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The Germans won a pitched battle outside the city and were able to claim the necessary supplies for the continued march.

By May, the German army reached the relative safety of Christian Armenia, and already had “achieved what the Crusaders of 1101 and the Second Crusade could not. In two months since crossing to Asia, he had brought his vast army, depleted but intact, in the face of sustained Turkish hostility, difficult terrain, heavy casualties, and shortages of supplies, to a welcoming Christian territory.”
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Unfortunately, the success of Frederick’s army would prove fleeting when a month later on June 10, 1190, the aged emperor died while fording the Saleh River. It was a catastrophe from which the Crusade would not recover.

There are various accounts as to what actually happened to Frederick. Some believe he slipped on rocks while in the water and drowned; others think he had a heart attack. An anonymous German chronicler believed the current was too strong for the old monarch.
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Saladin’s camp welcomed news of Frederick’s demise. The sultan was recorded to have said, “God thus liberated us from the evil of such a man.”
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The emperor’s death was a huge blow to the German host. Despite suffering near sixty percent casualties on the march through Anatolia, the German army was still a disciplined and effective fighting force; it was, however, without a commanding leader.
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The loss of the emperor, who had kept the army together through his charisma, willpower, willingness to lead from the front, and concern for his troops, was too much for the other nobles to overcome, and most of the demoralized troops began the march home. Some warriors remained in Outrémer and those divided into two groups. One group, under the command of Duke Frederick of Swabia, the emperor’s son, traveled by sea to Antioch and later Tripoli. This group would later participate in the Christian siege of Acre. The other group decided to try its chances by continuing on the original overland route to Syria. It was effectively wiped out.

Although Frederick’s death was a huge setback for the Third Crusade, there were other monarchs in Christendom assembling large armies in defense of Outrémer. The time of Frederick Barbarossa had come to an end. The time of Richard the Lion-Hearted and Philip Augustus was beginning.

Richard the Lion-Hearted, King of England

The count of Poitou was the first nobleman to take the cross upon the promulgation of
Audita Tremendi
in 1187 and was eager to journey to Jerusalem. Richard (r. 1189–1199) was thirty-two years old when he assumed the throne of England upon the death of his father, Henry II. His martial qualities were unrivaled and he endeared himself to his troops by being the first in every attack and the last to withdraw. Richard’s reputation was such that Muslims in the Holy Land considered him their worst enemy; after the Crusades, Muslim mothers threatened misbehaving children by telling them “King Richard” was coming for them.
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Richard’s reign in England lasted a decade but he only lived on the island for six months, as he preferred his extensive land holdings in France. Although English actors have portrayed him in Hollywood movies, Richard spoke only French throughout his life.

Richard’s preparations for the Crusade were extensive, and with the large amounts of money raised from the “Saladin tithe”—a tenth of income and property value for those who did not take the cross—and from selling his own lands, he raised a fleet of a hundred ships, with 9,000 sailors and soldiers to transport his army to the Holy Land.
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Richard received the pilgrim staff, and allegedly carried King Arthur’s famed sword Excalibur with him on the Crusade.
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His army was ready, and the time was at hand to depart England to link up with the French.

Philip II Augustus, King of France

This twenty-five year old king was born of great Crusading stock, the son of the Second Crusader, Louis VII. Philip’s reign was marked by political struggles with the kings of England, who were also his vassals as lords of Aquitaine. In many ways he was the polar opposite of Richard the Lion-Hearted. He was not a great warrior or military strategist like Richard, and rarely took great risks. Instead, he was “a calculating, cautious, and resourceful opportunist who tended to wait on favorable events rather than risk grand gestures.”
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He was not impressive to look at—he had already lost the sight of one eye—and ten years of government of France had made him cautious and distrustful, cynical and nervous. He was not clever or well educated, but he was sharp, with a practical intelligence, and he had a capacity for hard work and taking pains, combined with self-control, a disposition towards prudence and equity. Ruthless he might be but he was usually ruthlessly fair.
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