THE OUTWARD VOYAGE
1190
Initia Regis Ricardi, qui nondum elapso triennio regni sui
probitatis suae radios longe lateque dispersit; nam Messanas
civitatem Siciliae uno die viriliter subjecit, et terram Cypri
in quindecim diebus potenter subjugavit.—_Chron. Edw. II_, auct.
monacho Malmesburiensi, ii. 191.
A march of eight days brought the Crusaders to Lyons on July 10
or 13.[473] Here they were to cross the Rhône and then proceed
down its left bank to the coast. The two kings with their personal
followers crossed at once and encamped on the further side of the
river (seemingly on a height whence their tents were visible from
the hither side) to wait till the stragglers and late comers should
overtake the main body of pilgrims, who lodged as they could in
and around the city.[474] When the muster seemed to be complete,
the kings gave the signal for departure by causing their tents to
be struck.[475] The main body of the host on the other bank[476]
thronged to the narrow wooden bridge; when a small number had crossed
one of the arches broke down.[477] Only two persons were drowned, but
the multitude left behind were sorely puzzled how to get across the
“crested waters” of the Rhône in flood.[478] According to one account
they in three days achieved the passage “as best they could, in
little boats, with great difficulty.”[479] Another version, however,
tells us that it was only Philip who had actually set out before the
bridge gave way,[480] and Richard, having merely escorted him out of
the camp, was still at hand when the catastrophe occurred; whereupon
he, “whose constancy never failed in action,” quickly caused a bridge
to be made of boats lashed together, and waited three days while by
this means the whole host made its passage in safety.[481] Then,
while the French king’s subjects followed their sovereign to Genoa
or went by whatever route they chose to meet him at Messina,[482]
the English king at the head of his own contingent set out[483] for
Marseille, [Sidenote: _July 31_] where he arrived on the last day of
July.[484]
“From Marseille to Acre,” says a contemporary writer, “is a sail of
only fifteen days. But,” he adds, “then you go through the Great
Sea, so that after the mountains round about Marseille cease to be
visible you will, if you keep the direct course, see no land either
to right or left till you see the land of Syria.”[485] Some of the
Crusaders who accompanied Richard—among them Archbishop Baldwin of
Canterbury and Ranulf de Glanville—faced the mysterious terrors of
the “Great Sea” and took this route[486] to Tyre, which they reached
on September 16.[487] The two kings had chosen Messina as the final
starting-point of their voyage at a time when they deemed themselves
sure of finding there every possible facility for refitting and
revictualling their ships, and substantial help of every kind for
their enterprise; King William of Sicily being married to a sister
of Richard, and having long ago promised every assistance in his
power to the Crusade.[488] In March, however, they had learned that
William had died in the preceding November.[489] The original scheme
nevertheless had obvious advantages both for Richard, who knew that
William had made some testamentary dispositions for his benefit,
and for Philip, who “dreaded the sea.”[490] As the difficulties and
dangers of the real overland route from northern France to Apulia
and Sicily through the Alpine passes and Italy were apparently still
considered even more formidable than those of the Mediterranean sea,
Philip had arranged to be conveyed by the practised mariners of Genoa
from their city to Messina, not exactly as an English chronicler says
“by land,” but by the shortest and easiest coasting route. Richard
on the contrary was minded to go by water as much as he could, and
had ordered his fleet to meet him at the nearest Mediterranean
port—Marseille.[491] When a week had passed and no fleet appeared,
he grew weary of waiting; so he hired “two large busses and twenty
well armed galleys,” in which he set sail with his household troops
on August 7.[492] He was “grieved and confounded at the delay of his
navy,”[493] and seems to have coasted along very slowly in the hope
of its overtaking him, for it was not [Sidenote: _Aug. 13_] till
the 13th that he reached Genoa, where he went ashore to [Sidenote:
_Aug. 14_] visit Philip, who was lying there sick. Next day, at
Portofino, he received a message from Philip asking for the loan
of five galleys; Richard offered three, but this Philip declined.
[Sidenote: _Aug. 23_] On the 23rd Richard relieved the tediousness of
the slow coasting voyage by landing with a small escort at Baratto
and hiring horses on which the party rode to Piombino; [Sidenote:
_Aug. 24_] there they rejoined their ships. “Then the king went on
board the galley of Fulco Rustac” (or “Rustancri”) instead of the
one in which he had been sailing (the “Pumbone”), and they proceeded
to Porto Ercole, which was reckoned to be half way between Marseille
and Messina. “But that day the sail of the galley in which the king
was got torn; so he went back to the Pumbone.” On the same day,
August 25, he landed at Ostia,[494] where he was met by the cardinal
bishop and some other persons sent by the Pope to receive him and
invite him to visit Rome; this he declined to do,[495] preferring, it
seems, to spend a day in what a modern traveller might call seeing
the sights of the neighbourhood. [Sidenote: _Aug. 28 to Sept. 8_] He
spent nearly a fortnight in the same way at Naples, making excursions
round about (August 28-September 8); thence he went on horseback to
Salerno,[496] and stayed there till on September 13 he heard that his
fleet had arrived at Messina, and at once set out to rejoin it.[497]
The report was [Sidenote: _Sept. 14_] premature; but the fleet did in
fact reach Messina next day. The story of its voyage illustrates the
spirit of adventure in which the men of the more remote western lands
set out upon their Crusade. The “justiciars of the navy” appointed
in the spring had apparently taken each the command of a little
squadron, and these squadrons had sailed in April, according to the
king’s order, from various ports of England, Normandy, Britanny, and
Poitou. Ten ships of the English division set out from Dartmouth;
some of them touched at Silvia in Portugal, others at Lisbon, and all
stopped to help the Christian Portuguese in their war against the
Moors. Other ships of Richard’s—perhaps from more distant ports—came
into Lisbon harbour at the close of the war; the whole fleet sailed
thence on July 26, passed the Straits of Gibraltar on August 1, and
sailing along the coasts of Spain and Provence reached Marseille on
August 22. Finding that the king was gone, they stayed a week for
necessary refitting, set out again on the 30th, and came to Messina
on Holy Cross day.[498] According to English accounts Philip of
France [Sidenote: _Sept. 14_] arrived there two days later;[499]
his own biographer, however, says he came in August.[500] As he had
no ships of his own, the greater part of his host had either gone
before him to Messina or proceeded towards Syria by other routes; and
to the disappointment of the townsfolk and the pilgrims assembled
at Messina, who all hoped to see a king arrive with great pomp and
majesty, only the ship which bore Philip himself came into the
harbour, and landing at the steps of the royal palace[501] he slipped
out of sight as quickly and quietly as possible.[502]
The disappointed spectators of Philip’s landing were to be more
than compensated ere long by the arrival of another royal guest.
By September 21 Richard, travelling leisurely along the coast from
Salerno, had reached Mileto in Calabria. Here a characteristic
adventure nearly brought to an untimely end both his enterprise and
his life. He was riding forth next day, accompanied only by one
knight, “and as they passed through a little township the king turned
aside towards a house where he heard the voice of a falcon, and he
went into the house and took the bird; and when he would not let
it go, a number of villagers came running up and attacked him with
stones and sticks. One of them drew his knife upon the king, and the
king beat the man with the flat of his sword till the sword broke.
The other assailants he overcame with stones, and narrowly escaping
from their hands made his way to the Priory of La Bagnara.” There,
finding himself close to what an English chronicler describes as
“the great river which is called the Far of Messina,” he took boat
and crossed it immediately, and “lay that night in a tent hard by
the great stone tower which stands by the entrance to the Far on
the Sicilian side”—that is, the pharos, lighthouse, or beacon-tower
which gave the strait its medieval name.[503] He probably crossed
in a vessel of his own fleet, the whole of which seems to have been
assembled at the northern end of the strait in readiness to meet
him. [Sidenote: _Sept. 23_] Next day (September 23) he sailed at its
head into the harbour of Messina. “The galleys filled the Strait;
they were crowded with hardy looking warriors, and decked with
pennons and banners. So came the king to the shore,”[504] amid such
blowing of horns and trumpets that “all the city was alarmed at the
sound.” Philip and the governors and people of Messina went down to
the beach and stood there “marvelling at that which they saw and
heard of the king of England and of his power.”[505] Richard “leaped
ashore,” and went immediately to speak with Philip.[506] Meanwhile
those of his barons who had reached Messina before him brought “the
fine destriers which had come over in the transport ships; and he and
his people all mounted on horseback,”[507] and rode to their lodging,
which—the royal palace being, by permission of the new sovereign of
Sicily, occupied by Philip—was being prepared for them in the house
of one of the Sicilian king’s officers, “in the suburb outside the
city wall, among the vineyards.”[508]
The next of kin to the late king of Sicily and the person whom he had
designated as his successor was his father’s sister Constance; but
she was far away in Germany—being married to the Emperor’s son—and
a cousin, Tancred, had without much difficulty become master of
the kingdom, or at least of its insular half. Tancred had, as has
been seen, provided lodgings for his two royal guests at Messina;
he himself was at Palermo, and so was the widowed Queen Joan,
Richard’s sister. Richard knew that a very liberal dowry in land
had been settled upon Joan by King William at their marriage,[509]
and also that William had made a will containing a bequest to his
father-in-law, Henry II, of “a golden table twelve feet long and a
foot and a half wide, three golden tripods for sitting at the table,
a silken tent large enough for two hundred knights to eat in it
together, a hundred first-rate galleys with all necessary gear and
food for the crews, sixty thousand seams of wheat, the same number
of barley and of wine, and twenty-four cups and twenty-four dishes”
of either silver or gold.[510] This bequest was evidently intended
by William, who seems to have been long in ill-health and expecting
an early death, as his contribution to the Crusade. Richard, as
Henry’s heir, now claimed it from Tancred, and he also demanded that
Joan should be sent to him immediately with her dowry and a golden
chair[511] for her use “according to the custom of the queens of
that land.”[512] Tancred sent Joan off at once by sea “with just her
bedroom furniture” and a million _terrini_ for her expenses.[513]
[Sidenote: _Sept. 28_] She reached Messina on Michaelmas Eve, and
was conducted by her brother to a lodging prepared for her in the
Hospital;[514] but he speedily took steps for removing her to a
safer place; for trouble, possibly with Philip, certainly with the
townsfolk of Messina and with their king, was now evidently close at
hand.
The English king’s subjects who had reached Messina before him on the
fleet had been refused admittance into the city; they were obliged to
encamp on the shore, and suffered much annoyance and persecution from
a section of the townsfolk whom one of them describes as “a parcel
of Griffons and low fellows of Saracen extraction.” These people not
only insulted the Crusaders in the vilest ways, but even killed some
of them and outraged the corpses.[515] All “Ultramontanes,” or men
from beyond the Alps, were hated by the two races with which Sicily
was mainly peopled—the “Griffons” or Greek-speaking folk, and the
Italian-speaking whom the western writers call Lombards. In the minds
of the last-named especially the memory of the Norman conquest of
Sicily and Apulia still rankled; “they always had a grudge against
us,” says the Norman poet-historian of Richard’s Crusade, “because
their fathers had told them that our ancestors had conquered them;
so they could not love us.”[516] It seems not unlikely that Tancred
had gained the support of both Griffons and Lombards by posing as
the champion of a sort of national government in opposition to the
representatives of the foreign royal line, and that they looked
with suspicion upon the crusading host as possibly designed to be
the instrument of a new Norman conquest; more especially when they
discovered, as they very soon did, that although it had nominally
two crowned leaders, its real and sole commander-in-chief was the
Anglo-Norman king. On the morrow of his arrival Richard set up
outside the camp a gallows for thieves and robbers. “His judges
delegate spared neither sex nor age; and there was one punishment for
a stranger and for one born in the land.” The French king took no
notice of any ill-doing on the part of his own men, nor of any evil
done to them; but Richard cared not whose subject the criminal might
be; “considering every man as his own,” he left no wrong unpunished;
“wherefore the Griffons called him the Lion and Philip the Lamb.”[517]
Both Griffons and Lombards did their utmost to make the position of
the “tailed Englishmen”—as they called Richard and all his followers
indiscriminately—absolutely intolerable. They tried to starve them by
refusing to let them buy food in the city; they fell upon and slew
any whom they caught in small parties and unarmed; they even began
to raise the town walls, as if challenging the strangers to besiege
them.[518] By the time of Joan’s arrival matters had come to such a
pass that two days later (September 30) Richard with a small armed
force re-crossed the strait into Calabria, turned the Griffons out
of a fortress called La Bagnara, [Sidenote: _Oct. 1_] and next day
established his sister in it with a guard of his own men.[519] He
next seized a very strong fort or tower, which went by the name of
“the Griffons’ Minster,” on an island in the Far, midway between
La Bagnara and Messina,[520] put its garrison to death, and made
it a storehouse for the provisions which had been brought by his
fleet from England and his other dominions.[521] Scarcely was this
done when on October 3 a dispute between a pilgrim and a townswoman
about the price of some bread which the woman brought into the camp
for sale led to an outbreak of hostilities. Richard, hearing the
noise, sprang on horseback and strove to recall his men, riding in
and out among them and striking with his staff all whom he could
reach, to check the attack which they were threatening on the city
gate. His efforts and those of the “elders” of the city at length
quieted the tumult.[522] Both parties, however, felt that the matter
was not ended. Before nightfall Richard went by boat to the palace
[Sidenote: _Oct. 4_] and held a consultation with Philip.[523] Next
morning the archbishops of Messina, Monreale, and Reggio, with the
“justices of Sicily”—that is, the governors whom Tancred had put in
charge of Messina, Margarit and Jordan du Pin[524]—and some others of
Tancred’s chief counsellors came to Richard’s lodging, bringing with
them the French king and some of his nobles, and also some of the
chief nobles of Richard’s dominions, to discuss terms of peace.[525]
Three times the colloquy was interrupted by tidings, first that the
English were being attacked, next that they were getting worsted,
and finally that they were being killed “both within and without
the city.” The Sicilian members of the conference hurried away,
ostensibly for the purpose of checking their own people, “but they
lied,” says Richard’s Norman chronicler.[526] Richard hastened
forth to control his troops, learned that the quarters of one of his
Aquitanian followers, Hugh the Brown of Lusignan, had been attacked
by a party of the townsfolk, and that another party was lying in wait
for himself, the city wall bristling with armed men, and another
strong body of citizens posted on the hills at the back of the
town.[527] He hurried back for his armour and instantly gave orders
to “assault the city all round by land and by sea.”[528] He himself
began by driving out the assailants from the camp. With scarce twenty
men at his back, he made for the quarters of Hugh the Brown; the
Lombards turned and fled from him “like sheep from a wolf,” says one
who saw the scene, and he drove them “as oxen are driven under the
yoke” all the way to “the postern gate which is towards Palermo,” the
west gate of the city.[529] Meanwhile the whole English host was in
motion. The fleet could do nothing, because Philip, who had returned
to the palace under a promise from the governor that he should not
be molested, intercepted the galleys as they approached and forbade
them to proceed.[530] The land attack met with a fierce resistance;
part of the host endeavoured to storm the walls and the gates;
Richard himself led a small party up a hill “so high and steep that
no one would have thought they could by any means climb it,” drove
down in headlong flight the Sicilians who occupied its summit,[531]
and rejoined his main force in time to be one of the first to enter
the city. “A good ten thousand went in after him,” says one of the
number.[532]
The suddenness and rapidity with which the city was captured, and the
contemporary French form of its name, “Messines,” or in the Norman
dialect “Meschines,” appear to have suggested to some Norman or
Angevin rimester in the host a jingle which from the camp has found
its way into history:
“Our king and his men have taken Messines
More quickly than priest can say his matines.”[533]
The whole fight had lasted less than five hours.[534] The town was
plundered, “and there would have been more people slain, but that
the king took pity” and restrained his men. The Sicilian galleys
in the harbour were set on fire and destroyed.[535] Philip and his
followers meanwhile had sat at their ease within the palace and the
city, doing nothing to help their fellow-Crusaders, and totally
unmolested by the Sicilians, among whom they seemed quite at home.
But when Philip learned that the victorious host had set up their
royal leader’s banners on the walls, he angrily declared that this
act was an insult to himself as Richard’s feudal superior, and
demanded that the banners should be taken down and replaced by his
own. Richard at first ignored the demand; but some of the prelates
and nobles brought about a compromise; the banners of both kings were
placed on the towers together, and the custody of the fortifications
was given to the Templars and Hospitaliers till it should be seen how
matters would go between Richard and Tancred.[536] The compromise
was a fair one on Richard’s part; as his poet-chronicler says,
“Sirs, I ask your judgement—which of the two had the best right to
set his banners over the city, the one who would take no part in its
assault, or the one who dared the enterprize?”[537] “But,” he remarks
no less truly, “the king of France’s envy on that subject was like
to be lifelong; that was the origin of the war whereby Normandy was
ruined.”[538] According to one account, Philip next, on the strength
of the agreement made at Vézelay, demanded his share of the spoils of
the city, and grew so insolent and quarrelsome that Richard prepared
to load up his ships and depart on his pilgrimage alone with his own
people rather than be tied any longer to so disagreeable a comrade.
Hereupon, however, Philip made overtures for reconciliation, and
[Sidenote: _Oct. 8_] they renewed their alliance,[539] swearing and
making their respective barons swear to keep good faith with each
other [Sidenote: _Oct. 6_] throughout the expedition.[540] Two days
earlier, on October 6, the governors of Messina had given hostages
to Richard, pledging themselves to keep peace towards him and his
men and to let him have free possession of the city unless Tancred
speedily satisfied all his demands.[541]
Those demands, for the whole of Joan’s dowry and William’s legacy
to Henry, were now again transmitted to Palermo, by envoys who
represented both the Crusader kings, for one of them was no less
a personage than the duke of Burgundy.[542] In the Anglo-Norman
camp it seems to have been reported that the French envoys returned
loaded with gifts because they had carried a private message from
Philip to Tancred encouraging him to resist Richard’s demands and
promising that in any strife which might ensue the French would
remain neutral.[543] However this may have been, the envoys of the
English king brought back a very unsatisfactory reply to their
master. “I gave to your sister Joan,” said Tancred, “a million
terrins for quit-claim of her dower before she went away from me.
Concerning your other demands I shall do whatever I ought to do
according to the custom of this realm.”[544] During the absence of
the envoys a very suspicious event took place at Messina. One night
the two governors of the city, Jordan du Pin and Margarit, stole away
with their respective households, taking with them all the gold and
silver they possessed. Richard at once seized their houses, their
galleys, and whatever other property they had left behind them. His
own treasure was already stored in the “Griffons’ Minster,” which
he further strengthened by digging a deep and wide ditch across the
island on which the fort stood.[545] When his envoys returned from
Palermo they found him busy with another piece of work “which gave
him pleasure,”[546] the erection, on the top of a hill overlooking
the city, of a strong wooden fortress to which he gave the name of
Mategriffon, “Check” or “Kill-Greek.”[547] All these precautions did
in fact check the Griffons effectually; but when Richard on hearing
Tancred’s reply straightway retorted that he would enter upon no
pleadings at law and would get what he wanted in his own way,[548]
the Lombards again began to give trouble. They refused to sell even
necessary food to the host, “and but for God and the navy, many would
have led a poor life”; the ships, however, had ample stores. Philip
was accused of being secretly in league with the Lombards. The city
and the camp were guarded day and night. Mediators went to and fro
between the palace and Mategriffon, but could not bring the two kings
back to friendship.[549]
At last Tancred intervened. “He was,” says Ambrose the poet-Crusader,
“very wise; he had heard tell of many happenings; he was a good
scholar; he knew his business.”[550] Through all these months he had
played a waiting game till he could feel sure which of the two kings
would be most useful to him as an ally. At first he had inclined to
Philip, and “would have given him untold gold” for the marriage
of one of his daughters to either the French king himself or to
his infant son Louis; but Philip declined this proposal because he
did not wish to quarrel with Tancred’s rival, Constance’s husband,
who was now king of the Germans and Emperor elect,[551] and whose
friendship he doubtless foresaw might be useful to him in future
struggles with Richard. By the end of October, however, Tancred not
only knew that the townsfolk of Messina had gone too far; he also
perceived that he had himself gone too far in his haughtiness towards
the English Lion. He therefore despatched two messengers to Richard
with an offer of alliance. He proposed to give twenty thousand ounces
of gold to Joan instead of her dower-lands, and to Richard, in place
of King William’s legacy, the same amount as the dowry of one of his
(Tancred’s) daughters on condition of her marriage with Richard’s
nephew, Arthur of Britanny.[552] Richard saw at once that this offer
must be accepted. The necessity of coming to a settlement of some
kind with Tancred, and the outrageous conduct of Tancred’s subjects,
had already detained him in Sicily much longer than he had originally
contemplated. Now it was quite clear that he would be obliged to
remain there for several more months, as the season of the year had
begun when the “inclemency of winds and waves and weather”[553] made
navigation so difficult and dangerous that no fleet could attempt a
voyage to Palestine till the return of spring. The same cause must
of course detain Philip also; and to reject Tancred’s offer would
have been to throw Tancred and Philip into each other’s arms. Nor was
the offer itself a bad one. Whatever might be the intrinsic value
of Joan’s dower-lands and of William’s legacy, there was obviously
very little chance of ever gaining either the one or the other; while
forty thousand ounces of gold would be a very convenient addition to
the treasury of the Crusade. A treaty on these terms was therefore
drawn up and executed forthwith. Richard promised that all questions
about his sister’s dowry and his own claims should be henceforth at
rest; that he and his men would faithfully keep peace by sea and by
land with Tancred and all his subjects, and if the Sicilian realm
should be invaded or attacked while they were in it, they would help
the king against his assailants; that Arthur—“our dear nephew, and
our heir if we should die without issue”—should be contracted to
Tancred’s daughter; and that the bride should have a dower of lands
within her husband’s duchy “befitting a lady so illustrious and the
daughter of so magnificent a king.” If Arthur succeeded to the Crown,
his wife was to have the customary dower of a queen of England. If,
on the other hand, from any cause dependent on Richard or Arthur,
the marriage should not take place “in due time” (that is, when the
children should be old enough; Arthur was in his fourth year), the
dowry given by the bride’s father was to be returned.[554] Tancred
on his part promised that he and his subjects would keep peace
with Richard and his men,[555] and he paid over the covenanted sum
without delay.[556] Richard was in a pacific mood; although none
of the gold which he had just received could fairly come under his
agreement with Philip as to the division of conquests, he at once
made Philip a peace-offering of part of it.[557] He next insisted on
his men restoring to the townsfolk the plunder which they had taken
from them, and Archbishop Walter of Rouen enforced this order by
threatening to excommunicate those who failed to obey it. Finally, a
set of ordinances for the regulation of intercourse and trade between
the pilgrims and the townsfolk was issued in the joint names of all
the three kings.[558] Thenceforth town and camp were on friendly
terms, and so were—for a while—the two pilgrim kings. There was,
however, some grumbling in the host, especially among the knights
who had reached Messina before Richard, at their long detention
there and the expense which it entailed on them, and at being forced
to give back the plunder with which they had recouped themselves.
Richard “was not avaricious or stingy”; he silenced the grumblers
by a distribution of costly gifts, of which all ranks, down to the
lowest foot-soldiers, received such a share that every [Sidenote:
_Feb. 1191_] man was fully satisfied.[559] Early in the next year he
made a present to the French king of several of the ships which had
come from England, and to his own troops, of all ranks, a further
distribution of “more treasures than any of his predecessors had ever
given away in a whole year.”[560]
[Sidenote: 1190]
Before Christmas Richard’s growing sense of the weightiness of his
enterprise showed itself in another step in his preparations. One day
he called together in the chapel of the house where he was lodging
all the bishops in his host, came before them as a penitent, with
three scourges in his hands, fell at their feet and openly confessed
to them a vice in which he had lived and which he now solemnly
abjured; he received his penance at their hands, “and thenceforth
returned to his iniquity no more.”[561] At Christmas he entertained
Philip and the French nobles at a great feast in Mategriffon.[562]
The festivities were disturbed by a quarrel between the Genoese and
Pisan sailors and some of the men belonging to Richard’s galleys, and
not till some lives were lost did the two kings in person succeed in
quelling [Sidenote: 1191 _Feb. 2_] the strife.[563] An incident on
Candlemas Day (1191) throws a curious side-light on one phase of
Richard’s character of which there is little trace elsewhere, and
also on his relations with the other crusading chiefs during this
dreary time of waiting. He and some English and French knights, on
their way back from a ride, met a countryman with a load of reeds or
bulrushes and bought some for a game such as boys played, tilting
with the rushes for spears. The king challenged William des Barres,
with whom he had had at least two encounters in real warfare, and who
(according to one account) on the second of these occasions,[564]
being made prisoner, had committed a breach of the rules of chivalry
which Richard was not a man to condone easily: he had regained his
liberty by breaking his parole. When William’s first thrust broke the
head of Richard’s bulrush, Richard was seized with one of those fits
of unaccountable, irrational fury before which all persons accustomed
to associate with the Angevin counts quailed as before a direct
manifestation of the powers of darkness whence the house of Anjou was
said to have sprung. He set his horse furiously at his opponent; the
shock of the encounter failed to unseat William, but caused Richard’s
own saddle to slip; he leapt from it, mounted another horse, and
renewed the attack, but with no better success; nor did his angry
threats disturb the coolness of the Frenchman. The Earl of Leicester,
trying to intervene, was roughly bidden by his sovereign, “Leave me
to deal with him alone!” and finally, after a long struggle and much
bandying of words, the king burst out to William, “Get thee hence,
and take heed that I see thee no more, for henceforth I will be an
enemy to thee and thine for ever.” William, now thoroughly alarmed,
went and besought counsel and help of his own sovereign. Philip in
person interceded for his unlucky vassal; some of the highest nobles
of France actually went down on their knees to Richard for the same
purpose; but Richard would hear none of them; and on the third day
William des Barres had to leave Messina “because the king of France
would not keep him against the will of the king of England.”[565]
The time was now approaching when the seas would again be navigable,
and Philip presently asked Richard to get ready to accompany him on
what was called “the March passage” to Holy Land. Richard is said
by a French chronicler to have answered that he could not go before
August.[566] It seems that either August here must be a mistake for
April, or Richard cannot have been serious in answering thus, unless
indeed he entertained some vague project of going back for a short
visit to his island realm before proceeding further eastward. Such
a project is not impossible; for the reports which had been coming
to him through the winter about the state of affairs in England
were at once so disquieting and so contradictory that he may well
have longed to see for himself how matters really stood and settle
by his personal authority the quarrels which had arisen between his
justiciars and his brother. In the end he committed the solution
of these very puzzling difficulties to Archbishop Walter of Rouen.
He had, however, another reason for delaying at least for a few
weeks his own departure for Acre. Early in the year King Sancho
of Navarre had placed his daughter Berengaria in Queen Eleanor’s
charge to take her to Richard to become his wife.[567] Before the
end of February the two ladies reached Naples, and Richard sent
some galleys to meet them there; but “on account of the multitude
of men who accompanied them” Tancred’s people refused them leave to
go to Messina—which indeed must have been already overwhelmed with
foreign visitors—and they had to spend a month in his continental
dominions.[568] Their coming was a clear intimation that Richard was
now fully determined to shake off the bonds of his engagement to
Aloysia. Philip peremptorily bade him, as his vassal, choose between
two alternatives: either to go with his overlord across the sea, in
which case he should be at liberty to marry Berengaria, or, if he
would not go, to keep his promise of marriage with Aloysia. Richard
bluntly refused both.[569] Meanwhile Tancred had invited him[570] to
a [Sidenote: _March 3_] meeting at Catania. A splendid welcome was
given him there on March 3, and for three days he was Tancred’s guest
in the palace. Tancred offered him “gifts many and great” in gold and
silver, cloth of silk, and horses, but Richard, “needing none of such
things,” would accept only one small ring as a token of friendship;
in return for this he presented Tancred with a sword which he seems
to have asserted to be the famous Excalibur of King Arthur. Finally
Tancred offered a substantial gift which Richard did not decline: a
contribution of four large ships “which they call ussers” and fifteen
galleys to the crusading fleet.[571] The Sicilian king escorted his
guest on the way back as far as Taormina, where Philip was to meet
them on March 8. There Tancred is said to have put into Richard’s
hands a letter which he declared had been brought to him by the
duke of Burgundy from the French king, containing an assertion that
Richard had no intention of keeping faith with Tancred, and a promise
that if Tancred were disposed to attack Richard, the French troops
and their sovereign would give their help in effecting Richard’s
destruction. Richard on this left Taormina before Philip reached it
and returned to Messina by another way so as to avoid meeting him.
When he did meet him again, he at first studiously avoided him or
ignored his presence; when asked the reason, he showed the letter.
Philip accused him of having invented the whole affair as an excuse
for “casting off” the daughter of France whom he had promised to
wed. Thus driven to extremity, Richard said plainly that a marriage
between him and Aloysia was impossible, and gave a reason which, as
he produced several witnesses who declared themselves ready to swear
to its truth, fully justified his refusal.[572] The result was that
Philip formally released him from his engagement and declared him
free to marry whomsoever he would. On the basis of this and certain
other conditions which were to take effect only at a later time, a
“firm peace” was once again made between the king of France and his
“friend and faithful liegeman, the illustrious king of England.”
The treaty was made before March 25;[573] shortly afterwards Philip
and his “company” sailed, in the galleys which Richard had given
him, for Acre.[574] Before starting he again besought Richard to
pardon William des Barres, and Richard after some demur promised to
keep the peace towards William so long as they were both engaged in
the cause of the Cross.[575] He convoyed Philip through the Far,
and then himself went to Reggio, having just heard that Eleanor and
Berengaria had arrived there. He took them on board and brought his
mother back with him to Messina, after, it seems, placing Berengaria
at La Bagnara with Joan; the men of the queen’s suite seem to have
been left at Reggio, and possibly even Eleanor and her ladies may not
have landed at Messina at all, for she stayed with her son only four
days and then departed for England.[576] He had nothing more to wait
for. With all speed the fleet was made ready, and on April 10, the
Wednesday before Easter, it put to sea.[577]
The ships which Richard had found awaiting him in the harbour of
Messina when he arrived there are said to have numbered one hundred
and fourteen.[578] Stragglers that had come in later, Tancred’s
gift, and other vessels bought or hired by Richard had now raised
the total to about two hundred.[579] Of these, some forty or fifty
were galleys or battleships, built after the pattern of the old
Roman _liburnae_ or the “long keels” of Richard’s Norse forefathers,
long, slender, with armed prows, and propelled by two tiers of
oarsmen.[580] The rest were transport vessels; those of the largest
size, of which there seem to have been now twenty-four, were called
“busses” by the northerners and “dromonds” in the Mediterranean and
the Levant. Of these vessels, fourteen which had formed part of the
original English fleet had each of them three spare rudders, thirteen
anchors, thirty oars, two sails, triple ropes of every kind, and a
double set of everything else that a ship could need, except the mast
and the boat; the lading of each consisted of forty war-horses, forty
knights with all their arms and accoutrements, forty foot-soldiers,
and fifteen sailors, with food enough for all these men and horses
for a whole year. The other ships of burden, called “huissiers,”
“ushers,” “enekes” or “smacks” (_esneccae_) were round-shaped
vessels, seemingly dependent on sails alone; their carrying capacity
was half that of the busses. The king had taken the precaution to
distribute his treasure among all the transport ships, “so that if
part were lost, another part should be saved.”[581]
[Sidenote: _April 10_]
If the fleet’s arrival had been a great sight for the people of
Messina, its departure must have been a much more imposing spectacle.
Three dromonds, one of which carried Queen Joan and the Damsel of
Navarre, went in advance of all the rest. Thirteen ships formed
the second line or squadron; in the third were fourteen, in the
fourth twenty, in the fifth thirty, in the sixth forty, in the
seventh sixty; the last consisted of the galleys, on one of which
was the king himself. Throughout the fleet the order of its going
was so carefully arranged that a trumpet’s sound could be heard from
squadron to squadron, and a man’s voice from ship to ship.[582] When
all had passed, with a fair wind, through the Far into the open sea,
the galleys sped forward to overtake the slower vessels[583] and took
their place as the advanced guard of the whole fleet, Richard’s own
ship leading.[584] “The king had arranged, as far as possible, that
the ships should never be separated unless indeed a storm should
disperse them. So the galleys moderated their speed and endeavoured
to keep pace with the transports, for the protection of the multitude
and the comfort of the weak.”[585] Suddenly the wind dropped, and
the whole fleet had to anchor for the night. Next morning, Maunday
Thursday, [Sidenote: _April 11_] “He Who took the wind from us,” as
one of the pilgrims says, “gave it us back again”; but the breeze was
so faint that they made very little progress, and at night they were
again becalmed. On the following morning (Good Friday, April 12) they
were met by “a contrary wind on the left,”[586] and all that day they
had to struggle with a heavy gale and storm. As good pilgrims they
endured their sufferings “right willingly, as a fitting discipline
for the holy day.”[587] On their leader wind and weather had no
effect; he was “just as healthy and hearty, brave and strong, on sea
as on land”;[588] throughout this first experience of Mediterranean
storms and all those that followed, he “remained perfectly calm, and
ceased not to comfort the others and encourage them to endure with
confidence, hoping for better things.”[589] Every evening he had “a
large candle in the lantern” lighted on his galley, to show the way
to the other ships; they all followed the light, and if one got out
of the course he waited for it to get back. “Thus as a hen leads her
chickens out to feed he led his mighty fleet,” sailing day and night
till late on the Wednesday in Easter Week (April 17) they anchored
off Crete.[590] Next morning, it seems, Richard counted up the ships,
and found to his “great wrath” that despite all his precautions no
less than twenty-five were missing.[591] He then directed his course
to Rhodes, reached its capital city on the following Monday (April
22), and stayed there three days, partly because he was unwell,
partly in the hope of hearing some tidings of the missing vessels,
and also to make inquiries about Cyprus and its “tyrant.”[592]
This “tyrant” was Isaac Comnenos, who, sent to Cyprus as governor
for the Byzantine Emperor in 1185, had made himself master of the
island and ruled it as an independent sovereign for six years. His
“tyranny,” or usurpation, was not one of the least of the hindrances
to the deliverance of Holy Land; the Franks in that land had in
former times depended largely on the fertile and wealthy Greek island
for its supplies, but now they could get nothing thence, for Isaac
was in close alliance with Saladin, and “never ceased doing as much
ill to Christians as he could.”[593] Whether [Sidenote: _April_]
Richard’s detour to Rhodes had any special motive or was caused
merely by circumstances and stress of weather we do not know; but
it seems quite clear that he went out of his direct way from Rhodes
to Acre in consequence of information received at Rhodes as to what
was going on in Cyprus. Probably, too, he thought Cyprus a likely
place in which to obtain news of his strayed ships; and so it proved
to be. Among the ships dispersed in the great storm of Good Friday
were the three dromonds which carried the ladies and their escort.
These three and some others had drifted southward, and while Richard
was sailing by the north coast of Crete to Rhodes, they were passing
through the open sea between Crete and Libya. On April 24, two or
three days after Richard’s arrival at Rhodes, they were trying to
put into the harbour of Limisso, or as the Crusade writers call it
Limasol, the ancient Amathus, on the south [Sidenote: _April 24_]
coast of Cyprus, when a storm arose and dashed two of them to pieces
against the rocks;[594] a third ship put back into the open sea in
time to save itself[595] and its precious freight—it was the ship
which carried not only a considerable part of the king’s treasure
(under the charge of Stephen of Turnham, now restored to the king’s
favour and acting as his marshal and treasurer), but also Joan and
Berengaria. The “Griffons” of Cyprus took the men who struggled
ashore from the wrecks to a fort hard by, promising them food and
shelter, but stripped them of their arms on the plea that this was
necessary till the pleasure of the “Emperor” (Isaac) concerning
them should be known; and they also seized the clothes and other
necessaries which the knights on the remaining ships sent to their
distressed comrades. These latter, finding themselves prisoners and
[Sidenote: _May 2_] almost starved, at the end of a week made a
determined effort to escape. With three bows which they had either
secreted or found in the fort they did such execution that the whole
party was able to make its way to the harbour, where their friends
in the ships, seeing what was going on, had meanwhile landed and
were fighting hard with the Griffons; finally the Griffons were
worsted, and the queen’s ship was brought into the harbour.[596]
That evening Isaac came to Limasol; the pilgrims appealed to him,
and he [Sidenote: _May 3_] promised them redress for their wrongs.
Next day he sent the queen and her future sister-in-law a courteous
invitation to land; this being prudently declined, he followed it up
[Sidenote: _May 4_] on the morrow with hospitable gifts of bread,
meat, and the [Sidenote: _May 5_] famous wine of Cyprus. On the
Sunday he again tried to persuade the ladies to come ashore; after
anxious consultation they, fearing that longer resistance might
lead to their being taken captives by force—for Isaac meanwhile was
assembling his troops on the shore—promised to commit themselves to
his protection on the morrow. But on that same Sunday Richard’s fleet
came in sight.[597] It had left Rhodes on May 1; the galleys, headed
as usual by Richard’s own ship, had been driven by the wind into
the dangerous gulf of Satalia (or Atalia) on the coast of Pamphylia,
and narrowly escaped destruction, but were extricated and brought in
safety to Cyprus, seemingly by the fine seamanship [Sidenote: _May
6_] of their royal leader.[598] On the morning of Monday they reached
the entrance to the harbour of Limasol. As soon as Richard learned
what had been taking place there he sent a messenger ashore with a
civilly worded remonstrance to Isaac and a request that he would make
amends for his people’s ill-treatment of Crusaders. Isaac was on
the shore with all the troops that he had been able to collect from
every part of his island “empire.” He cut the messenger short with an
insulting word—“Tproupt, sir!”; the messenger went straight back and
repeated it to the king. Richard’s retort was equally brief; it was a
command to his own men—“To arms!”[599]
Between the fleet and the shore five armed galleys lay in the
harbour. On the shore Isaac’s troops were drawn up behind a barricade
composed of every bit of wood that the town could supply, doors and
window-frames or shutters, barrels and casks, shields and bucklers,
pieces of old ships and boats, planks, steps, benches, boxes, all
piled up along the water’s edge.[600] At the back of the troops was
the fortified town, overtopped by a lofty castle or citadel built
on the rock.[601] The Crusaders could land only by means of their
boats. Knights and crossbowmen hurriedly obeyed the king’s order,
and all weary and worn with long tossing on the sea and laden with
their heavy armour and cumbrous weapons, crowded into the tiny
cockle-shells[602] to join battle as foot-soldiers with an army of
which part at least was well provided with good horses and mules, and
which, moreover, was on its own soil; “but,” as one of the pilgrims
says, “we knew the most about war.” Richard’s crossbowmen opened the
fight by shooting at the enemy’s galleys; “there were some who did
not miss their aim,” says the same eye-witness; the Greek sailors
in a panic leaped into the water, and while they were struggling
there their ships were captured and taken outside the harbour to be
guarded by the English fleet. Meanwhile the king, when he saw his
comrades struggling to land from the boats under a storm of arrows,
“leaped from his boat into the sea and made for the Greeks, and
assailed them.” His men followed his example and drove the Greeks
back, some into the town, more into the fields. Isaac took to flight;
Richard, running after him, caught a horse “with a sack attached to
its saddle, and stirrups of cord,” sprang on its back, and shouted
“Emperor! come and joust!” But Isaac “had no mind to joust,” and
continued his flight.[603] The town of Limasol now submitted to
Richard, and he brought his sister and his bride ashore.[604] That
same night the horses were [Sidenote: _May 7_] landed and exercised;
and next morning Richard with a small force set out in search of the
enemy. A party of them was soon found in an olive garden, dislodged,
and chased till the main body suddenly came into view. Then Richard,
having with him at the moment only fifty knights, called a halt.
Meanwhile the shouts of the Greeks whom he had been chasing reached
the ears of Isaac, half a league in advance, where he had stopped
to dine and sleep, for he had no idea that the Franks possessed any
horses. He and his escort climbed a hill “to see what their folk
would do.” All they did was to keep turning about and shooting and
shouting back at the little band of Franks, who stood motionless.
One Hugh de la Mare, who though he bore arms was a clerk, said to
the king, “Come away, sire, their numbers are too overwhelming.”
“Get you to your own writing-business, sir clerk, and leave matters
of chivalry to us,” retorted Richard. He knew that reinforcements
were not far behind him; even before they came up, the suddenness
and vehemence of his onset threw the Greeks into confusion; and
the victory was soon complete. Isaac fled to the mountains; his
standard-bearer was struck down and the standard taken by Richard’s
own hand. After chasing the enemy for a couple of leagues the king
called off his troops from the pursuit and leisurely returned, the
men-at-arms stopping on the way back to collect countless spoils left
by the Emperor in the place where he had camped. On reaching the town
the king caused a proclamation to be made that “all people of the
land who did not desire war might come and go in safety; but such as
did seek war should have no peace or truce from him.”[605]
On the way from Rhodes to Cyprus Richard had spoken a ship westward
bound from Acre and heard of Philip’s arrival there.[606] Some vessel
sailing from Rhodes or Cyprus to Acre seems to have carried thither
news of Richard’s whereabouts. On May 11 three galleys were seen
approaching Limasol. Richard characteristically[607] set off in a
little [Sidenote: _May 11_] boat to ascertain for himself what they
were,[608] and found that they carried King Guy of Jerusalem and some
of his chief nobles, who had come in search of the king of England to
secure his alliance and support against a scheme which had been set
on foot at Acre under Philip’s auspices for deposing Guy and making
Conrad of Montferrat, the lord of Tyre, king in his stead. Richard
welcomed them cordially and royally. His marriage and the coronation
of his queen took place next day (May 12). A few more days were spent
in festivities and in waiting for some belated ships to come into
port.[609] Among those irretrievably lost in the great storm there
seem to have been several galleys, but some at least of these were
now replaced by the Cypriote ones which had been captured.[610] When
at last the tale of vessels was complete, Richard prepared to resume
his pursuit of Isaac. Isaac, however, who had retired inland to the
capital of Cyprus, Nicosia, anticipated him by sending proposals for
a parley. It took place “in a garden of fig trees between the shore
and the Limasol road.”[611] The king went in regal state, attired
in a tunic of rose-coloured samite and a mantle “bedight with small
half-moons of solid silver set in rows, interspersed with shining
orbs like suns”; his head was covered with a scarlet cap; he was
girt with a well-proved sword “with a golden hilt, a silken belt,
and a finely chased scabbard edged with silver”; his spurs were
golden (or gilt), and he was mounted on a Spanish horse of great
beauty as well as of a size befitting a rider of such lofty stature;
“his saddle was red, studded with little golden and bright-coloured
stars, and having on its hinder part two golden lion-cubs rampant,
and as if snarling at each other.”[612] Isaac swore fealty to
Richard, promising to accompany him to Holy Land and serve under him
there with five hundred knights; meanwhile Richard was to hold the
castles and imperial domains of Cyprus in pledge and to receive an
indemnity of three thousand five hundred marks. On these terms they
exchanged the kiss of peace.[613] That night, however, Isaac mounted
his fleetest horse, a wonderful animal called Fauvel, and fled to
Famagosta (the ancient Ammochontos, on the east coast). His flight
was discovered immediately, but Fauvel seems to have had a reputation
which was already known to Richard, for the king forbade all direct
pursuit as useless. Instead, he took stronger measures; he put to
sea at the head of his galleys and [Sidenote: _May 15-30_] sailed
round to Famagosta while his land-forces were, at his request, led
by Guy along the coast-road to meet him there. When they reached the
place, however, they found it deserted. Richard sent some ships round
to the other coast-towns to guard against Isaac’s escape by sea; he
himself stayed three days at Famagosta, and there gave an audience
to some envoys from Philip, charged with a pressing request that he
would proceed to Acre without further delay. Their urgency was so
vehement and so insulting that “the king grew angry, and raised his
eyebrows, and there were words spoken which it is not meet to write.”
“Not for half the wealth of Russia” would he leave Cyprus till he had
conquered it and made sure that the supplies of food of which it was
the storehouse should be available for the Crusade. So he marched
upon Nicosia, whither Isaac had again retired. This time Richard,
fearing an [Sidenote: c. _May 18_] attack from behind, took the
command of the rearguard. Isaac was lying in wait with his household
troops; after an unsuccessful attempt to check the advance of the
Frankish vanguard, he “like a Turcople” harassed the flanks of the
host till he came near enough to Richard to shoot at him two arrows.
Richard dashed forward and would have taken summary vengeance, but
the Cypriote Emperor was mounted on Fauvel, and the matchless steed
carried him away, at a pace which defied pursuit, to the strong
castle of Candaria or Kantara. His troops retired in confusion. Next
morning the citizens of Nicosia made their submission to Richard,
and he “had their beards shaved off in token of the transfer of
their allegiance to a new lord.” He then divided his army into
three parts, probably intending himself to take the command of one
of them; but he fell sick and was obliged to remain at Nicosia and
leave the direction of the campaign to the king of Jerusalem. Guy,
who seems to have known the country, besieged and took the castle
of Cherina,[614] on the north coast, and found within its walls
the emperor’s only child, a young girl. Her father was so dismayed
at her capture that he ordered the immediate surrender of the next
fortress, “Didemus,”[615] to which Guy laid siege. Richard, as soon
as he recovered, went to attack a third stronghold, “Bufevent.”[616]
Scarcely had he reached it when Isaac offered complete surrender
of his castles, lands, “everything,” begging only to be spared
the indignity of “irons or bonds.” Isaac followed close on his
messenger and threw himself at the king’s feet. Richard raised him up
graciously, seated him at his side, and relieved his anxiety about
his daughter by bringing her to meet him. As for the fetters, Isaac’s
request evidently ran counter to the king’s inclination or to his
fears of a possible escape; but, “lest folk should make an outcry,”
he granted it after a fashion: he put the fallen tyrant in chains of
silver.[617]
[Sidenote: _May 18-June 1_]
Thus in fifteen days—the last fortnight of May[618]—Richard, with
Guy’s help, had “won the mastery of Cyprus for the service of God.”
For the same purpose he took possession of a mass of treasures of
all kinds which he found in the castles.[619] Moreover, the people
of the land, to whom Isaac had been a “tyrant” in every sense of the
word,[620] gave to their new ruler “the half of all they possessed”
“for the restoration of the laws and institutes which they had had
under the Emperors of Constantinople” and which Richard confirmed
to them by charter.[621] He further secured his conquest by turning
out all the Greek garrisons,[622] replacing them with Franks, and
appointing two Englishmen, Richard de Camville and Robert of Turnham,
governors or “keepers” of the island,[623] who were charged to send
regular supplies of the victuals—barley, wheat, sheep, bullocks—which
Cyprus produced in abundance, to the Franks in Syria, “where,” adds
the poet-pilgrim, “they were of great use.”[624] Meanwhile he had
sent Isaac, under the charge of Guy,[625] straight across the sea
to the nearest point on the Syrian coast, the fortress of Markab in
Tripoli. The Damsel of Cyprus, who seems to have been almost a child,
was placed under the care of the two queens and remained with them
throughout the Crusade.[626] On June 5, the Wednesday in Whitsun
week, the fleet sailed for Palestine.[627] The various losses
which it had sustained in the Mediterranean Sea were compensated by
the acquisition of the Cypriote navy; the total of ships was now a
hundred and sixty-three, of which thirteen were three-masted busses
and fifty were triremes.[628]
One more adventure at sea awaited the king before he reached the
Holy Land. “Full of health, and light as a feather,” he led the way
“as fast as a stag could run” in a direct line across the water
till Markab was sighted. Thence the fleet sailed down the coast
past Tortosa, Tripoli, and [Sidenote: _June_ 6 or 7] Beyrout.[629]
Suddenly, between Beyrout and Sidon, Richard and his companions in
the leading galley saw ahead of them a ship of such size “that we
read of no larger one ever existing save the ark of Noah.”[630]
On a nearer view they perceived that it had three tall masts; one
side of it was covered with green felt or tarpaulin, the other with
yellow;[631] and its whole appearance, to western eyes, was unnatural
and uncanny.[632] Richard’s men hailed it and demanded whence it
came and where it belonged. “We are Genoese, for Tyre,” was the
answer. But one of Richard’s oarsmen said: “Hang me, sire, if that
ship be not Turkish!” At his suggestion another galley was ordered
to go close up to the ship without hailing her; this was done, and
her crew immediately opened fire on the galley with arbalests and
Damascus bows. Richard’s galley came swiftly up; his men tried to
board the ship, but in vain. The king swore he would hang them all if
they let the Turks escape. Again and again they renewed the attack;
at last they fairly stormed the ship, but were driven back again
into their own vessels. Then Richard bade them make a breach in the
enemy ship’s side or keel; in this they succeeded, and she sank.
Some thirty-five of her officers and engineers were saved and kept
as prisoners by Richard’s orders; the rest of the men on board her
were either slain or drowned.[633] When the victors reached their
destination they learned that the ship had been specially built
by order of Saladin’s brother Safadin and despatched from Beyrout
to carry reinforcements and supplies to the besieged Saracens in
Acre, but had been unable to enter the harbour and was, when the
Franks overtook her, cruising about, waiting for an opportunity to
return thither;[634] she carried, besides her crew, at least six
hundred and fifty picked soldiers;[635] a man, doubtless one of the
prisoners, who had seen her loaded at Beyrout, said eight hundred,
and further asserted that she contained a hundred camel-loads of arms
of all kinds, victuals and other stores “beyond reckoning,” bottles
filled with Greek fire, and two hundred “ugly grey serpents” which,
according to one account, he had himself helped to stow in her, and
which were destined to be let loose against the Christian host;[636]
probably these were some kind of serpent-like contrivances for
throwing the fire. In the Saracen camp the story of the catastrophe
was somewhat differently told by a Moslem who represented himself
as its sole survivor, rescued and sent by the Christians to inform
his people of the disaster which had befallen their cause. He seems
to have stated that the dromond had been sunk by its own captain to
save it from capture. Saladin’s biographer, however, frankly admits
that the issue of Richard’s first encounter with Turks was a severe
blow to the defenders of Acre.[637] To Richard and his followers it
must have seemed a good omen; and it was immediately followed by
another. At the opening of the fight they had had the wind in their
faces;[638] suddenly it dropped[639] and then shifted to the north
and carried them before nightfall to Tyre.[640] Here Richard landed,
intending to spend the night in the city, but its keepers refused to
admit him, asserting that their lord, Conrad of Montferrat, and the
king of France had forbidden them to do so.[641] Next day the wind
still favoured him and his fleet, and bore them past Scandalion and
Casal Imbert straight to the haven where they would be.[642]