The Glory of the Crusades (23 page)

304
Grousset,
The Epic of the Crusades
, 173.

305
Möhring indicates 7,000–8,000 were sold (
Saladin
, 66). France in Madden’s
Illustrated History of the Crusades
provides a figure of 15,000 (p. 77).

306
Möhring,
Saladin
, 67.

307
Stark,
God’s Battalions
, 198.

308
Gregory VIII,
Audita Tremendi
in Riley-Smith,
The Crusades
, 137.

309
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 374.

310
Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi
,
The Chronicle of the Third Crusade,
trans. H. Nicholson, (Aldershot: 2001), 48, in Tyerman,
God’s War
, 396.

311
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 398.

312
David Nicolle,
The Third Crusade 1191—Richard the Lionheart, Saladin and the Struggle for Jerusalem
(Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2005), 43.

313
There is some debate in academic circles over whether Isaac actually entered into the treaty. Riley-Smith (
The Crusades
, 139) and Madden (
The New Concise History of the Crusades
, 80) agree he did but Savva Neocleous in “The Byzantines and Saladin: Opponents of the Third Crusade?,”
Crusades
, vol. 9, The Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2010), 87–106, argues differently. Neocleous believes there was no formal alliance between Isaac and Saladin but rather an informal cooperation due to Isaac’s belief that Frederick’s real objective was Constantinople not Jerusalem. He writes, “[T]he purported Byzantine-Muslim collusion against the Third Crusade was a myth created by the Latins to make sense of Isaak’s efforts to destroy the Germans.” Regardless, the facts clearly show Isaac was an active antagonist of the Third Crusade, and his efforts clearly hindered German progress on the march.

314
Estimate of strength from France,
Victory in the East
, 136. For the army’s taking three days to pass a single point, Tyerman,
God’s War
, 418.

315
Kenneth M. Setton, ed.,
A History of the Crusades
, vol. II, eds. Robert L. Wolff and Harry W. Hazard (Philadelphia: 1962), 113, in Carroll,
The Glory of Christendom
, 123.

316
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 427.

317
317. Helen Nicholson, “The Third Crusade—A Campaign of Europe’s Elite,” in
Crusades—The Illustrated History
, ed. Madden, 84.

318
Ibn al-Athir.
Chronicles of the Crusades—Nine Crusades and Two Hundred Years of Bitter Conflict for the Holy Land Brought to Life Through the Words of Those Who Were Actually There
, ed. Elizabeth Hallam (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989), 174.

319
E.N. Johnson, “The Crusades of Frederick Barbarossa and Henry VI” in K.M. Setton, gen. ed.,
A History of the Crusades
(Madison, WI: 1969–1989), vol. 2, 87–122, in Housley,
Fighting for the Cross
, 97.

320
Pernoud,
The Crusaders,
235.

321
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 389–390.

322
Ibid., 451.

323
Ibid., 378.

324
Riley-Smith,
The Crusades
, 141.

325
Ibid., 444.

326
Pernoud,
The Crusaders
, 237.

327
Ibid.

328
Ibid., 446.

329
Baha’ al-Din Ibn Shaddad,
The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin
, trans. D.S. Richards (Aldershot: 2001), 143, in Housley,
Fighting for the Cross
, 158.

330
Thomas Gregor Wagner and Piers D. Mitchell, “The Illnesses of King Richard and King Philippe on the Third Crusade: An Understanding of Arnaldia and Leonardie,”
Crusades
, vol. 10, The Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2011), 26.

331
Helen Nicholson, “The Third Crusade—A Campaign of Europe’s Elite,” in
Crusades—The Illustrated History
, ed. Madden, 87.

332
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 453.

333
Edbury,
Conquest of Jerusalem
, 179–180, in Tyerman,
God’s War
, 456.

334
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 457.

335
Ibid., 456.

336
Ibid., 454.

337
Ibid., 455.

338
Nicolle,
The Third Crusade
, 37.

339
Ibid., 38.

340
Itinerarium
in K. Fenwick,
The Third Crusade
(London: 1958), 247–248, in Nicolle,
The Third Crusade
, 75.

341
Nicolle,
The Third Crusade
, 81.

342
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 466.

343
Ibid., 464.

344
Möhring, 87.

345
John Gillingham,
Richard the Lionheart
(New York: 1947), 226–230, 233–239, in Carroll,
The Glory of Christendom
, 140.

346
Ibn Shaddad,
Saladin
, 28–29, in Tyerman,
God’s War
, 353.

347
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 350.

348
Möhring, 91–92.

349
Paul M. Cobb, “Introduction: The World of Saladin,” in Möhring, xxiii.

350
Carroll,
The Glory of Christendom
, 148.

351
J.B. Gillingham,
Richard I
(New Haven: 1999), 323–325, in Jonathan Phillips,
The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople
(New York: Penguin Books, 2004), 10.

352
John’s legacy was so tainted that no future monarch ever used his name.

6

Fiasco of the Fourth Crusade

Our Lord commands and tells us all to go forth and liberate the Sepulchre and the cross. Let him who wishes to be in his fellowship die for his sake, if he would remain alive in paradise, and let him do all in his power to cross the sea.

Raimbaut of Vaqueiras
353

You are now engaged on the greatest and most dangerous enterprise that any people up to this day have ever undertaken; it is therefore important for us to act wisely and prudently
.

Doge Dandolo of Venice
354

The French noble was a man a principle. Like his peers, he had taken the cross in 1199 amidst much fanfare and dreamed of serving Christ in his army. Confident of his mission and desirous of the spiritual benefits promised to the participants, he left his wife and children and marched to Venice to embark the ships bound for the Holy Land. When insufficient men arrived in the city of St. Mark to pay for the contracted transport, the Crusade plans were altered to attack a Christian city once under Venetian control.

Simon de Montfort was livid. He had not left home and family to attack fellow Christians. His objections were rebuffed, though, and the attack commenced. Simon refused to participate in the siege; he stayed away from the Crusader camp and ultimately left the army. Conscious of his vow, however, he traveled to the Holy Land separately and then returned to France while the remaining Crusader army was sidetracked by the promises of a Byzantine political upstart. Simon became a powerful lord with land holdings in France and England and died prosecuting the Albigensian Crusade
355
against heretics in southern France.

Simon’s virtue preserved him from partaking in the fourth and most notorious Crusade, which today continues to be a source of scandal and significantly contributes to modernity’s negative impression of the entire movement. Voltaire summarized this flawed and naïve position when he wrote, “The only fruit of the Christians on their barbarous Crusades was to exterminate other Christians.”
356

Innocent III and Crusading

Lothar of Segni was made a cardinal at the relatively young age of twenty-nine and pope at a very young thirty-seven. When he was elected at the beginning of 1198, the cardinals knew he was exactly what the Church needed at that moment in history. Lothar’s eighteen-year reign as Pope Innocent III was the most important papacy of the medieval period and one that significantly shaped the Crusading movement. No other pope called as many Crusades as Innocent III or spent as much time focused on the goal of liberating the Holy City. Although he never personally took the cross, Innocent III can rightly be known as the Crusading Pope. A contemporary account of Innocent’s life indicates the intense focus he placed on the Crusades: “In the midst of all his work, he quite fervently longed for the relief and recovery of the Holy Land and anxiously mulled over how he could achieve this more effectively.”
357
At the very beginning of his pontificate, in a letter to the patriarch of Jerusalem announcing his election, he proclaimed his intention of calling a new Crusade to accomplish the liberation of Jerusalem.
358
The Crusade for Innocent III was the
negotium crucis
, “the business of the cross.”
359