The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (20 page)

There is no part of the Syrian desert more shattering to the spirit than that dark grey, featureless expanse of sand and basalt that lies between Damascus and Tiberias. Retreating across it in the height of summer, the remorseless sun and scorching desert wind full in their faces, harried incessantly by mounted Arab archers and leaving a stinking trail of dead men and horses in their wake, the Crusaders must have felt despair heavy upon them. This, they knew, was the end. Their losses had been immense, but still worse was the shame. Their once glorious army that had purported to enshrine every ideal of the Christian west had given up the entire enterprise after four days’ fighting, having regained not one inch of Muslim territory. Here was the ultimate humiliation–which neither they nor their enemies would forget.

‘The failure of the Second Crusade,’ wrote Sir Steven Runciman, ‘marked a turning point in the story of Outremer.’ The Kingdom of Jerusalem was to endure for another thirty-nine years but, to any dispassionate observer after 1148, the eventual fall of the city to the Saracens must have seemed inevitable. On the Muslim side there was already one leader of genius: Nur ed-Din, whose capture of Damascus in April 1154 made him master of Muslim Syria. And there was soon to be another: Salah ed-Din–better known as Saladin–the greatest Muslim hero of the Middle Ages. Born in 1137 into a prominent Kurdish family, at the age of thirty-one he was appointed both commander of the Syrian troops in Egypt and Vizir of the Fatimid Caliph. By 1171 he had grown sufficiently strong to abolish the moribund Shia Caliphate and reintroduce Sunni Islam; he was thenceforth Egypt’s sole ruler. Just three years later, on the death of Nur ed-Din, he had quickly moved his small but strictly disciplined army into Syria and had devoted himself to the task of uniting, under his own standard, all the Muslim lands of Egypt, Syria, northern Mesopotamia and Palestine.

Against these two giants the Kings of Jerusalem stood little chance. Baldwin III and his successor, Amalric I, might conceivably have saved the situation had they lived; but they died, at thirty-two and thirty-eight respectively. The next king, Baldwin IV, was a leper, who succumbed to the disease in 1185 when he was only twenty-four, leaving the throne to his nephew, Baldwin V, who succeeded as a child of eight and was dead before he was nine. In the circumstances, his death might have been considered a blessing in disguise, but the opportunity of finding a true leader was thrown away and the throne passed to his stepfather, Guy of Lusignan, a weak, querulous figure with a record of incapacity which fully merited the scorn in which he was held by most of his compatriots. Jerusalem was thus in a state bordering on civil war when, in May 1187, Saladin declared his long-awaited jihad and crossed the Jordan into Frankish territory. Under the miserable Guy, the Christian defeat was a foregone conclusion. On 3 July he led the largest army his kingdom had ever assembled across the mountains of Galilee towards Tiberias, where Saladin was besieging the castle. After a long day’s march in the hottest season of the year this army was obliged to pitch camp on a waterless plateau; the next day, exhausted by the heat and half-mad with thirst, beneath a little double-summited hill known as the Horns of Hattin, it was surrounded by the Muslim forces and cut to pieces.

It remained only for the Saracens to mop up the isolated Christian fortresses one by one. Tiberias fell the day after the battle; Acre, Nablus, Jaffa, Sidon and Beirut capitulated in swift succession. Wheeling south, Saladin took Ascalon by storm; Gaza surrendered without a struggle. Now he was ready for Jerusalem. The defenders of the Holy City held out heroically for twelve days; but on 2 October, with the walls already undermined by Muslim sappers, they knew that the end was near. Their leader, Balian of Ibelin–King Guy having been taken prisoner after Hattin–went personally to Saladin to discuss terms for surrender.

Saladin, neither bloodthirsty nor vindictive, agreed that every Christian in Jerusalem should be allowed to redeem himself by payment of a suitable ransom. That same day he led his army into the city, and for the first time in eighty-eight years, on the anniversary of the day on which the Prophet had been carried in his sleep from Jerusalem to paradise, his green banners fluttered over the Temple area from which he had been gathered up, and the sacred imprint of his foot was once again exposed to the adoration of the faithful. Everywhere, order was preserved. There was no murder, no bloodshed, no looting. Of the 20,000 poor who had no means of raising the ransom, 7,000 were freed on payment of a lump sum by the various Christian authorities; Saladin’s brother and chief lieutenant, al-Adil, asked for 1,000 of the remainder as a reward for his services and immediately set them free. Another 700 were given to the Patriarch, and 500 to Balian; then Saladin himself spontaneously liberated all the old, all the husbands whose wives had been ransomed and finally all the widows and children. Few Christians ultimately found their way to slavery. Saladin’s restraint was all the more remarkable in that he could not have forgotten the massacre that had followed the arrival of the first Crusaders in 1099. The Christians had not forgotten it either, and they could not have failed to be struck by the contrast.

When the news of the fall of Jerusalem reached the west, Pope Urban III died of shock; his successor Gregory VIII lost no time in calling upon Christendom to take up arms for its recovery. Plans were quickly laid. Leading this Third Crusade would be the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who had succeeded his uncle Conrad in 1152. Also taking the Cross were three other western sovereigns: Richard Coeur-de-Lion of England, Philip Augustus of France, and William the Good of Sicily. The Byzantine Emperor, Isaac II Angelus, was spared many of the appalling logistical problems with which his predecessors Alexius and Manuel had had to contend, since Barbarossa, who was taking the land route, had agreed to cross into Asia by the Hellespont rather than the Bosphorus, while the three kings had all elected to travel by sea. William’s unexpected death necessitated one or two minor changes to their arrangements, but the basic plan that all three fleets should gather at Messina for the last stage of their journey remained unaltered, and in September 1190 Richard and Philip Augustus arrived, within ten days of each other, in Sicily.

Richard was in a black and dangerous mood. He bore a deep grudge against the Sicilian King Tancred. Though William the Good had died intestate, he seems at some stage to have promised his father-in-law, Henry II of England, an important legacy that included a twelve-foot golden table, a silken tent big enough to hold 200 men, a quantity of gold plate and several additional ships, fully provisioned, for the Crusade. Now, with William and Henry both dead, Tancred was refusing to honour that promise. There was also the problem of Richard’s sister, Queen Joanna: he had heard that Tancred was keeping her under distraint and wrongfully withholding from her certain revenues which she had received as part of her marriage settlement. It may be, too, that he saw Sicily as a potential new jewel in his own crown. Tancred was after all illegitimate, while Constance, thanks to her marriage to the Emperor’s heir, spelt death to the kingdom. Perhaps he too, as the late king’s brother-in-law, might be entitled to stake his claim.

Tancred had too much on his plate already to risk hostilities in yet another quarter. Clearly he must get his unwelcome guest away from the island as soon as possible, and if that meant making concessions, then concessions there would have to be. Five days after Richard’s arrival he was joined by Joanna herself, now at complete liberty and having received generous compensation for her other losses. But the Lion-Heart was not to be bought off so easily. On 30 September he set off furiously across the Straits of Messina to occupy the inoffensive little town of Bagnara on the Calabrian coast. There, in an abbey founded by Count Roger a century before, he settled his sister under the protection of a strong garrison. Returning to Messina, he fell upon the city’s own most venerable religious foundation, the Basilian monastery of the Saviour, magnificently sited across the harbour. The monks were evicted, and Richard’s army moved into its new barracks.

The predominantly Greek population of Messina had already been scandalised by the conduct of the English soldiery, in particular by their free and easy ways with the local women. The occupation of the monastery was the last straw. On 3 October serious rioting broke out, and on the following day Richard’s army burst into the city, ravaging and plundering as it went. Within hours, the whole town was in flames. Philip Augustus, who had tried hard to mediate between Richard and Tancred, was horrified when he saw Richard’s standard floating above the walls; he immediately sent an urgent message to Tancred, advising him of the gravity of the situation and offering the support of his own army if Richard were to press his claims any further. Tancred needed no such warning; but he had the long-term future to consider, and he knew that Henry of Hohenstaufen was a greater menace than Richard would ever be. Sooner or later Henry would invade; when he did so Tancred would need allies, and for this purpose the English, for all their faults, would be far preferable to the French. Richard hated the Hohenstaufen; the French king, on the other hand, was on excellent terms with Frederick Barbarossa. If the Germans were to invade now, while the Crusaders were still in Sicily, French sympathies would be to say the least uncertain. Tancred thanked Philip and sent him some suitably lavish presents; meanwhile, he sent a trusted envoy to negotiate with Richard at Messina.

The terms he offered were more than Richard could resist: 20,000 ounces of gold for his sister and the same amount for himself. In return he promised to give Tancred full military assistance for as long as he and his army remained in the kingdom, and undertook to restore to its rightful owners all the plunder that had been taken during the recent disturbances. On 11 November the resulting treaty was signed at Messina. It was sealed by an exchange of gifts; Richard’s present to Tancred purported to be King Arthur’s famous sword Excalibur, recently unearthed at Glastonbury. Not surprisingly, relations between Richard and Philip Augustus grew even chillier than before, but the French king–unlike the English–knew how to keep his temper under control. Somehow they all got through the winter without coming to any more blows, and on 30 March Philip and his army sailed for Palestine.

A few days later a ship arrived with Richard’s mother, the seventy-year-old Eleanor of Aquitaine,
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bringing with her his betrothed, the Princess Berengaria of Navarre. The original plan had probably been that the two should marry in Sicily, but marriages were forbidden during Lent and Richard–whose tastes in any case did not lie in this direction–was in no hurry for matrimony. It was therefore resolved that Berengaria should sail with him to the Holy Land. Eleanor, who retained unpleasant memories of her last visit, had no wish to return; the young bride would be escorted by Queen Joanna, and a special ship was put at their disposal. On 10 April 1191, Richard–whose immense fleet, we are told, consisted of at least 200 vessels–set sail for Palestine.

On the third day out of Messina the English ships ran into one of those terrible spring storms for which the eastern Mediterranean is famous. Most of them managed to stick together–the King kept a lamp burning at his masthead as a guide to the rest–but several vessels were blown disastrously off course and a number were completely wrecked. For some time the ship carrying Berengaria and Joanna was feared lost, but it was eventually found with two others just outside the port of Limassol in Cyprus.

Apart from its brief periods of Arab occupation, Cyprus had always been part of the Byzantine Empire; just five years previously a certain Isaac Ducas Comnenus had arrived bearing documents appointing him governor of the island. These were subsequently found to be forgeries, but not before Isaac had gained control of all the principal strongholds. He then declared himself an independent ruler, assumed the title of emperor and–in order to strengthen his position against the legitimate Emperor in Constantinople–concluded a treaty with Saladin. In such circumstances, there could be no question of his giving assistance, or even shelter, to the Crusading fleet; the survivors of the shipwrecks had been stripped of everything they possessed and thrown into prison. On being told of the arrival of the two distinguished ladies, he invited them ashore; but Joanna–who had heard about his prisoners–did not trust him an inch. Her suspicions were confirmed when he refused the ships’ request for water and began to muster troops along the shore.

Word was sent quickly back to Richard, who sailed at once for Limassol and gave orders for an immediate attack. Isaac had done everything he could to fortify the beach, but his men were no match for the English archers and soon took to their heels. By evening the town was in Richard’s hands. That same night Isaac’s camp was surrounded. He himself managed to escape, but left everything behind: arms, horses, treasure–and, not least, his imperial standard, which Richard later presented to the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds. He had given the King a perfect
casus belli
, and Richard was not one to miss his opportunity. All Cyprus, he had now decided, should be his. There was one prior formality to be gone through: on Sunday, 11 May, in the Chapel of St George in the castle, he and Berengaria were married by the Bishop of Evreux, who went straight on to perform the bride’s coronation.
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Then he settled down to prepare for war.

The conquest of Cyprus did not take long. Richard had been joined by Guy of Lusignan, titular King of Jerusalem but now stripped of his kingdom. He entrusted Guy with part of his army, with instructions to pursue Isaac and capture him; the rest, under his own command, would circumnavigate the island–half of them sailing in each direction–capturing the coastal towns and castles and any ships they might encounter on the way. He returned to find that Guy had failed–predictably–to locate Isaac, who had taken refuge in one of the string of virtually impregnable mountain castles along the northern coast. His plan was presumably to remain there until the Crusaders had left the island; it might even have succeeded had not the fortress of Kyrenia, in which he had left his wife and little daughter, fallen to Guy’s men. After this Isaac lost heart and agreed to give himself up, stipulating only that he should not be put in irons. Richard willingly gave his promise–and had fetters specially forged in silver. By 1 June the King of England was also master of Cyprus. Two Englishmen were appointed governors to administer the island in his name, and all Cypriot men were ordered to shave off their beards as a sign of loyalty to the new regime.