THE FALL OF ACRE
1191.
What brave chief shall head the forces
Where the Red Cross Legions gather?
From Mount Taurus to the Gulf of Aden, from the river Tigris to
the Mediterranean sea, and from the Arabian to the Libyan desert,
Saladin was now master of everything except some fragments of
territory in the north-west of Syria and one sea-port in Galilee.
The first of these exceptions consisted of a small portion of the
Latin principality of Antioch, including its capital city; south of
this, a few fortified coast-towns—Markab, Tortosa, Tripoli; and east
of these latter, the little settlement of Ismaïlite warriors who in
their stronghold under the shelter of Mount Lebanon defied Franks
and Turks alike, and acknowledged no ruler save their own chieftain,
called by western chroniclers “the Old Man of the Mountain.” The one
unconquered city in the Holy Land itself was Tyre.
The goal of the Crusade was, of course, Jerusalem. Ninety years
before, when Islam was split up into a number of separate and rival
states, all weakened and well-nigh exhausted by constant strife
with each other, the First Crusaders had attained that goal by a
victorious land march all the way from Antioch; but now all was
changed, and it would have been sheer madness for their successors to
dream of following in their steps. Now that the resources of Aleppo,
Damascus, Bagdad, and Cairo were all at the command of one ruler, the
acquisition of a base on the sea-coast in such a position that troops
and supplies could be poured through it from the West direct into the
Holy Land in safety and on a large scale (or what in the twelfth
century was accounted such) was an almost indispensable preliminary
to any practical attempt at the re-conquest of Jerusalem. Tyre, with
its peninsular citadel facing the valley which leads round the foot
of Lebanon into Coele-Syria, was somewhat too isolated as well as
too far north for this purpose. But some twenty-five miles south of
Tyre there was a fortified sea-port whose character and importance
were summed up by an Arab writer, a few years before it fell into
Saladin’s power, in one significant sentence: “Acre is the column
on which the Frankish towns of Syria rest.”[643] Acre stood on the
site of the ancient Ptolemaïs, at the northern extremity of the wide
semicircular bay whose southern extremity is the point of Carmel,
and which forms the only real break in the long straight coast-line
of the Holy Land. Its harbour was the best—indeed, the only good
one except Tyre and, perhaps, Ascalon—in the whole length of that
coast-line. Under the Franks it was the chief landing-place for both
pilgrims and traders from Europe; for it was the converging-point of
all the main lines of communication between the West and Jerusalem,
Mecca, Egypt, and Damascus. For the trade of Damascus it was
practically the only available sea-port, being the only one to and
from which access on the land side was not blocked by Mount Lebanon.
“There,” says the Arab visitor quoted above, “put in the tall ships
which float like mountains over the sea; it is the meeting-place
of crafts and caravans, the place whither Mussulman and Christian
merchants congregate from all quarters.”[644] To the natural
advantages of the site were added fortifications which ranked among
the mightiest of the many mighty productions of military architecture
reared by the Frank settlers in Syria. The mouth of the harbour was
guarded by a chain; a great tower rose on a tongue of land which ran
out into the sea and sheltered the harbour to westward; the city
lay partly on this peninsula and partly on the mainland, and was
protected on the land side, to north and east, by strong walls and
towers, and beyond these by a wide and deep fosse.[645] Saladin had
taken the place in July 1187; he was fully alive to its importance,
and it was strongly garrisoned and well provisioned when at the end
of August 1189 King Guy of Jerusalem, having made his way down from
Antioch, collecting forces as he went from among the natives of the
land and the newly enlisted Crusaders who during the last year had
been arriving in small parties at the few northern sea-ports still
in Christian hands, set to [Sidenote: 1189 _Aug._] work to begin the
re-conquest of his kingdom by laying siege to Acre with about ten
thousand men.[646]
It was a great venture of faith; and the faith was justified. Acre at
once became the rallying-point for all the remaining forces of the
realm and for the Crusaders who came pouring in from Europe during
the next few months. Saladin on his part had immediately despatched
a large army to occupy the hills which bordered the plain, some
eight to ten miles wide, at the back of the town. The besiegers, in
their entrenched camp outside the walls and fosse, found themselves
practically besieged in their turn; and this double siege lasted,
with many vicissitudes and very little real [Sidenote: 1191] progress
on either side, till the spring of 1191. By the middle of April, when
Philip Augustus arrived, the Christian host was sufficiently numerous
to maintain a complete blockade of the city by land and entire
control over the harbour, and thus to prevent the entrance of men
and provisions, either by land or by sea. They had, however, little
prospect of winning the place except by starvation; for they could
not venture on attempting to capture it by a general assault, because
their own encampment was in constant danger from a great host of
fresh troops which Saladin had brought up to occupy the surrounding
country as soon as the winter was over. Thus on the evening of
Saturday, June 8,[647] “the valiant king, the Lion-heart,[648]
saw before him Acre with its towers, and the flower of the world’s
people seated round about it, and beyond them the hill-peaks and the
mountains and the valleys and the plains, covered with the tents of
Saladin and Safadin and their troops, pressing hard on our Christian
host.”[649]
Not the least of the disadvantages under which that host laboured
was the lack of a commander-in-chief. Neither the character nor the
circumstances of Guy were such as could enable him to retain that
position after the influx from Europe had begun; and the supreme
command of the siege therefore passed from one to another of the
more influential leaders of the western contingents by a succession
of temporary arrangements, intended only as makeshifts till the
three sovereigns who were expected to take the joint leadership of
the whole expedition should arrive. The greatest of these three,
however, the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, never arrived at all,
having been accidentally drowned on the way in June 1190. After the
main body of the French Crusaders reached Acre in July 1190, the
chief command devolved upon their leader, Count Henry of Champagne,
whose mother was half-sister to both Philip Augustus and Richard,
and who was thus in some sense a representative of both the kings.
Philip on his arrival devoted himself to setting up his military
engines, of which he had brought a goodly store, in whatever places
he deemed most advantageous, and according to one English chronicler,
building a stone house for himself; but he declined to take any
further action without his brother-sovereign.[650] Richard had no
sooner passed from the clamorous welcome given him by the whole host
as he landed, and the exchange of courteous greetings with Philip,
than he plunged at once into practical matters.[651] Having learned
that Philip was paying his followers three gold bezants apiece every
month, [Sidenote: _June 8_] he—seemingly that very night—issued a
proclamation throughout the host offering four bezants a month to
any knight, of any country, who would take service under him.[652]
The consequence was that nearly all those who were free to dispose of
themselves and their services “took him for their leader and their
lord.”[653] Among the first to come forward for this purpose were the
Genoese and the Pisans. He declined, however, the homage and fealty
of the Genoese, because it was already pledged to Philip. The Pisans
became his liegemen, and “he confirmed to them by his charter the
customs which they were wont to have in the land of Jerusalem.”[654]
It is highly significant that Richard could already, and seemingly
without calling forth a protest or even a remark from anyone, make
an assumption of authority in a realm of which he was neither ruler
nor overlord. Scarcely less significant was the action of Henry of
Champagne. Henry—so at least says an English chronicler—having come
to the end of his own resources, had asked his uncle of France for a
subsidy; Philip offered him a loan of a hundred marks, if he would
pledge his county for their repayment. Henry then applied to his
uncle of England, who at once gave him four thousand pounds and a
supply of food for his men and his horses. Thenceforth [Sidenote:
_June_] the troops of Champagne and their count served under
Richard’s standard, and their own sovereign remained in command
only of the strictly “French” followers who had come to Acre in his
train.[655]
The wind which had brought Richard’s galleys swiftly to Acre on
June 8 changed again before the slower vessels of his fleet could
follow him, and until they arrived he had no engines of war.[656]
But “Mategriffon” had been packed on one of the galleys; on the 10th
it was set up, and by daybreak on the 11th his archers were looking
down into Acre from the tall wooden tower, and “Kill-Greek” was ready
to become “Kill-Turk.” Philip renewed his attacks on the “Accursed
Tower,” the chief defence of the city on its [Sidenote: _June 11-14_]
eastern side; and all along the line of the walls stone-casters and
miners set vigorously to work. Richard meanwhile “went about among
the groups, instructing some, criticizing others, encouraging others;
he seemed to be everywhere and at every man’s side, so that to him
might fairly be ascribed whatsoever each man was doing.”[657] Within
a day or two, however, he was prostrated by a strange illness, a
kind of malarial fever which among other effects caused alopecia
or loss of hair.[658] Much against his wishes, a general assault
was nevertheless made under Philip’s orders on June 14. It failed,
and so did another three or four days later.[659] Presently Philip
was attacked by the same malady which had struck down Richard.[660]
In Richard’s case it seems to have been complicated by his chronic
trouble, ague;[661] and thus Philip was the first to recover. Richard
occupied part of his time of enforced inactivity in an exchange of
courtesies with Saladin. Each party was anxious for information
as to the strength, or weakness, of the other; and the courtesies
of chivalry, which were quite as familiar to the Moslem as to the
Christian prince, were utilized by both for this purpose. Saladin
appears to have opened communications by sending a gift of fruit to
the two royal invalids. Richard was eager for a personal interview
[Sidenote: _June 19-July 21_] with his courteous adversary; this
Saladin refused, on the ground that “kings should not have speech
with each other till terms of peace between them have been arranged”;
he consented, however, to a meeting between his brother Safadin and
the king, but when the time for it came Richard was still too ill
to leave his tent. Richard next despatched to the Saracen camp a
negro slave as a gift to the Sultan.[662] On the king’s part these
proceedings were unwise, not in themselves, but because they were
liable to be misconstrued by his fellow-Crusaders and to bring upon
him the suspicions of the other princes in the host, and especially
of Philip Augustus, with whom he was already at variance about a
much more serious matter which practically depended upon their joint
decision. This was nothing less than the disposal of the Crown of
Jerusalem.
King Amalric, who died in 1174, had by his first wife a son, Baldwin,
and a daughter, Sibyl; and by his second wife an infant daughter,
Isabel. The first marriage had been dissolved on the ground of
consanguinity; in strict law, therefore, Baldwin and Sibyl were
illegitimate; Baldwin, however, became king without opposition,
because he was the only male survivor of the royal house. But he was
not yet fourteen, and he was a leper. In 1176, therefore, an attempt
was made to provide for the succession by marrying his elder sister
to a member of a distinguished family of Italian Crusaders, William
of Montferrat. Within a year Sibyl was a widow; but she was also the
mother of a son, and in 1183 this child was solemnly crowned and
anointed king in his uncle’s lifetime. This precaution staved off the
impending crisis for nearly three years, though the imminent prospect
of a long royal minority in the existing political and military
circumstances of Palestine was felt to be so alarming that the very
Patriarch who had crowned the child became, only a few months later,
eager to undo his own work and tried, but without success, to bring
from Europe to the dying king and the distracted realm an adoptive
male heir of full age in the person of one of the descendants of the
first marriage of the Angevin Count Fulk V, whose second marriage had
brought the crown of Jerusalem into the house of Anjou. Baldwin IV
died before Heraclius returned from Europe, in the winter of 1184-5;
in September 1186 little Baldwin V died also. Sibyl then claimed
the crown in her own right, as the natural heiress at once of her
child, her brother, and her father; the Templars, the Patriarch,
and some of the nobles rallied round her at Jerusalem; the people
acclaimed her as queen, and she was crowned in the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre together with her second husband, Guy of Lusignan. Sibyl’s
half-sister, Isabel, was now fifteen years old, and had been married
three years. A party among the nobles had ever since King Amalric’s
death been biding their time to bring Isabel forward as his only
legitimate representative and heir. They tried to do so now; they
failed, however, because her young husband, Humphry of Toron, and
his step-father and guardian, Reginald of Châtillon, both adhered to
Sibyl. But when the sickness which raged in the Christian camp before
Acre in 1190 carried off first the two little daughters of Sibyl and
Guy and then Sibyl herself, Isabel and her partisans found their
opportunity. On the pretext that Isabel had been wedded to Humphry
without her consent, the Patriarch declared her [Sidenote: _Nov. 24_
1190] marriage void. Immediately afterwards she married the man who
had long been Guy’s most implacable rival, Conrad of Montferrat, a
younger brother of Sibyl’s first husband.
In four words the Norman poet-historian of the third Crusade has at
once pronounced a rare and splendid panegyric on Guy of Lusignan as
a man, and given us the clue to Guy’s failure as a statesman. “No
king was endowed with better qualities save for one characteristic
which he had: that he knew no evil. That,” adds the poet with a
charming touch of perhaps unconscious irony, “is what men call
simpleness.”[663] “Simpleness,” whether as a virtue or a failing,
can certainly never have been laid to the credit or the charge
of Conrad of Montferrat. He had in 1187 landed with a handful of
followers at Tyre when it was literally on the eve of surrendering
to Saladin, and had taken upon himself the command and defence of
the place with such vigour that Saladin was compelled to raise the
siege. An Arab historian called him “the mightiest devil of all the
Franks”;[664] an English writer called him “a son of the piercing
and crooked serpent.”[665] His valour and capability, together with
the possession of Tyre, soon made him a personage of much greater
importance than the titular king. In birth Conrad was much more than
Guy’s equal; the marquisate of Montferrat, to which he succeeded in
1188, ranked among the chief principalities of the kingdom of Italy,
and his mother was granddaughter to one emperor, sister to another,
and aunt to a third; while Guy was merely the youngest of the five
brothers of that Geoffrey of Lusignan who had been a ringleader in
almost every Aquitanian revolt from 1167 onward, and who had finally,
some months after Conrad’s arrival at Tyre, gone to expiate in
Palestine the last and worst of his offences against Duke Richard.
To avert civil strife, both parties agreed to submit the whole
question of the Crown to the arbitration of the two western kings.
Guy now laid before them a complaint that Conrad had “forcibly and
unjustly taken from him” (probably during his absence in Cyprus) “the
rights and revenues of the kingdom.” His brother Geoffrey appealed
the marquis of disloyalty, perjury, and treason against the king of
Jerusalem and the whole Christian host. Conrad for the moment avoided
answering the appeal by slipping away to Tyre;[666] its prosecution
was postponed, and with it the trial of the rival claims to the
Crown; pending a decision, the royal dues and revenues of the market
and port of Acre were sequestrated and entrusted to the Templars and
Hospitaliers.[667]
The two arbitrators inclined opposite ways. Guy’s “simpleness” had
led him aright when it pointed him, notwithstanding the previous
hostile relations between his family and their overlord in Aquitaine,
to Richard as his natural protector against the Italian claimant
to his Crown. On the other hand, Conrad’s family connexions and
his talents had secured for him the support of most of the other
princes in the crusading host; the ceremony of marriage between him
and Isabel had been performed by a French bishop, a near kinsman of
King Philip.[668] Thus supported, he had, as we have seen, already
ventured to set Richard at defiance by preventing him from entering
Tyre; and he was now speedily[669] recalled to the camp by Philip,
who at once openly “took him into familiarity and counsel.” According
to one account it was at Conrad’s instigation that Philip laid claim
to half the island of Cyprus and of the spoils which Richard had
acquired there; the pretext for the claim being the agreement made
at Messina. Richard answered that the said agreement related only to
whatever he and Philip might acquire in the Holy Land; he offered,
however, to satisfy Philip’s demand if Philip would in exchange grant
him half the county of Flanders and of everything that had escheated
to the French Crown by the recent death of the Flemish count. On this
Philip dropped his claim and consented to a new arrangement whereby
both kings explicitly promised to share equally whatever they should
acquire in Palestine. This convention was confirmed by oaths and
charters, and its fulfilment was safeguarded by a provision that all
conquests and acquisitions made by either party should be placed
under the charge of the two great Military Orders for safe custody
and division.[670]
Meanwhile Richard’s fleet had arrived, bringing the rest of his
followers[671] and his engines of war. These seem to have been
mostly stone-casters and other missile engines worked at long range.
Philip’s machines were chiefly engines of assault and battery, which
had to be advanced close up to the walls, and were thus more exposed
to damage and destruction by fire from the enemy. The most effectual
work of all was that of the miners who had long been making their
way under the walls and especially under the “Accursed Tower.”[672]
The defences of Acre were now crumbling fast, and the fall of a
long piece of wall close to that tower, on July 3,[673] coinciding
with the failure of an attack made by Saladin and his brother on
the Christian trenches,[674] was [Sidenote: _July 4_] followed next
morning by an offer from the garrison to surrender the place and all
its contents if their own lives and liberty were spared.[675] The
two kings, knowing that the garrison comprised—as a Moslem writer
says—“the best emirs of the Sultan’s host and the bravest champions
of Islam,”[676] refused the condition.[677] That night another attack
on the Christians’ outer trench was successfully beaten off.[678]
Then Richard, sick though he was, determined to try the effect of an
assault on the city under his own personal direction. He caused a
kind of moveable hurdle-shed, called by the French writers _cercloie_
or _circleie_, to be brought up to the edge of the fosse; under cover
of this shelter his crossbowmen could shoot at the tower; he himself,
wrapped in a rich silken quilt, was carried forth and placed among
them, “and many a bolt was shot by that skilful hand,” the Turks
shooting back all the time.[679] All day long his stone-casters
worked incessantly; so did his miners; at night the mine was fired,
and their efforts were rewarded by the fall of some turrets and a
great breach in the curtain wall.[680] Hereupon Richard sent a crier
through the host to proclaim a reward for any man who would pull out
a stone from a certain piece of wall close to the great tower. The
offer met with a quick response from his own troops and the Pisans,
and before the rest of the host had finished [Sidenote: _July 6_]
breakfast next morning they had nearly made an entrance into the
city,[681] when the besieged again signified their desire to treat
for peace.[682] Again the two emirs in command, Karakoush and
Seiffeddin-el-Meshtoub,[683] came to speak with the kings, and again
their offers were refused, seemingly on the understanding that the
matter was to be referred to Saladin.[684]
Saladin’s headquarters were at Tell-Ayadiyeh, at the foot of the
hills, some seven or eight miles east of Acre, on the direct road to
Damascus. Twice within the last two days the besieged had warned the
Sultan that unless he relieved them at once, they must surrender,
with his consent or without it.[685] The two kings, knowing that
his forces were unequal to coping with the united Christian host,
were at the same time negotiating with him in the hope that the city
might meanwhile fall into their hands; and he could only endeavour
to stave off its surrender by spinning out the negotiations till the
reinforcements which he was expecting should arrive.[686] No sooner,
however, had these begun to come up than on July 8-10 he took the
significant step of cutting down the vineyards and orchards around
Acre and levelling most of the towns and smaller fortresses in the
neighbourhood;[687] and on the 11th the besieged intimated their
readiness to make peace “at the will of the Christian [Sidenote:
_July 12_] kings.” Next morning (12th), in a great assembly at the
Templars’ quarters, the kings “by the counsel of the whole host” made
an agreement with the two emirs.[688] Acre was to be surrendered
immediately, and its garrison were to be kept by the Franks as
hostages for the fulfilment of three conditions to which the emirs
pledged themselves in Saladin’s name: the restoration of the Holy
Cross, the release of sixteen hundred Christians who were prisoners
in the Sultan’s hands, and the payment of two hundred thousand
bezants (or, according to another account, dinars) to the kings and
fourteen (or forty) thousand to Conrad “because the treaty had
been made by his mediation.”[689] The emirs returned to the city; a
herald proclaimed throughout the host that all molestation, injury,
or insult to the Turks must cease at once; the gates were opened, the
garrison, unarmed, were brought out[690] and placed under guard in
the Christian camp,[691] and the kings sent representatives to take
formal possession of Acre for them by planting their banners on its
[Sidenote: _July 13_] walls and towers.[692] Next day (July 13) they
made an equal division of the city and all its contents, and also of
the prisoners (or hostages), and then, seemingly, cast lots for the
two halves. The royal palace fell to Richard’s share, the Templars’
house to Philip’s; but neither king appears to have taken up his
abode in the city for several days. The prisoners were sent back into
lodgings assigned to them within the walls, and the greater part of
the host also found quarters there.[693]
These prisoners—the late garrison of Acre—were, by the terms of
capitulation, to be detained till the relic of the Cross, the
stipulated number of Christian captives, and the indemnity, should
all be delivered up by Saladin; then they were to depart free
with their personal property and their wives and children.[694]
The fulfilment of the conditions on which their release depended
was obviously beyond the control of the officers who had made the
agreement. Those officers were understood by the Christians to be
acting with Saladin’s authorization, but it appears that this was
not the fact; according to Saladin’s friend and biographer Bohadin,
they communicated the terms to the Sultan and then acted upon them
without waiting for his reply, and he was about to send back a flat
refusal of his sanction to them when he saw the Frank banners on the
walls.[695] After waiting two days in the hope of some movement which
might give him a chance of successfully attacking the [Sidenote:
_July 14_] Christian camp, he on the 14th removed his headquarters
from Ayadiyeh to Shefr’ Amm, a village in the plain, ten miles
south-east of Acre.[696] Thence he sent a messenger to inquire what
were the terms on which the surrender had been made, and the date
fixed for their fulfilment. On the same day three envoys came from
Acre to speak with him about the Christian prisoners to be released
and the money to be paid; he gave them an honourable reception, and
sent them on to Damascus, that they might inspect the prisoners
there.[697] Thus he, implicitly if not explicitly, committed himself
to the conditions which had been accepted in his name.
Friendly embassies continued to pass between the two camps;[698]
but within the Christian camp there were dissensions. First the
Crusaders who had been at the siege before the kings arrived—some
of them ever since its beginning—claimed a share of the spoil, and
threatened to desert if it were not given to them. The kings put
them off with a promise. Then Richard proposed that he, the king
of France, and all the men of their respective armies should bind
themselves by oath not to leave the Holy Land for three years unless
the whole of it should before the end of that time be surrendered
by Saladin. Philip, however, refused to take such an oath.[699]
Next day (July 21) Richard with his wife and his sister took up his
abode in the palace.[700] It may have been either on his entry into
the city on this occasion or on an earlier visit of inspection that
in passing through the streets he noticed on one of the towers a
banner which he did not recognize, and asked to whom it belonged.
It was that of Duke Leopold of Austria, by whom the tower had been
taken. The king ordered the banner to be pulled down and trodden in
the mire, and further vented his wrath in insulting words addressed
to Leopold himself.[701] He seems to have acted under the impulsion
of one of those fits of unreasonable fury which were part of his
Angevin heritage and by which every member of the Angevin house
was liable to be occasionally goaded into blunders as well as into
crimes. Blunder and wrong were united in this case, and were to be
dearly paid for at a later time; for the moment, Leopold was only
one of a number of crusading princes and nobles who chafed under
Richard’s control. In spite of all the arrangements for an equal
division of authority between the kings it was inevitable that the
supreme command should fall to Richard, not only because he had the
greatest number of troops, but also because Philip made no attempt
to assert himself openly with regard to anything except the division
of the spoils.[702] This last was in fact the only matter connected
with the Crusade which had any real interest for Philip. His one
aim was to get back to his own realm, that he might, first, secure
for himself the heritage of the lately deceased count of Flanders,
and next, make whatever profit could possibly be made out of the
absence of the duke of Normandy and Aquitaine. His difficulty was
to abandon the expedition without disgracing himself in the eyes of
all Christendom. Four of [Sidenote: _July 22_] his barons went to
the palace on the day after Richard took up his abode there, with a
message of which they seem to have been so ashamed that they could
not utter it for tears till Richard helped them by anticipating
its tenour—the king of France wanted his counsel and assent for
returning home. Philip, according to these envoys, said that unless
he speedily left Syria he would die. “If he leaves undone the work
for which he came hither,” answered Richard, “he will bring shame
and everlasting contempt upon himself and upon France; so he will
not go by my counsel. But if he must needs either go or die, let
him do what best pleases him and [Sidenote: _July 23_] his folk.”
Next day Philip repeated his demand for half [Sidenote: _July 26_]
of Cyprus; which Richard again refused. Three days later Conrad of
Montferrat, on Philip’s advice, came and threw himself at Richard’s
feet and “asked his pardon” (seemingly for the insult to which the
king had been subjected at Tyre); [Sidenote: _July 27_] Richard
granted it.[703] On the following day the plea of Conrad against Guy
was tried in the presence of both the western kings. Conrad claimed
the kingdom in right of his so-called wife, Isabel; Guy, as having
been made king, and done nothing to forfeit his crown. Both put
themselves on the judgement of the two western sovereigns and the
prelates and nobles of the host. Judgement was given on the morrow
(July 28) in the palace of Richard. Guy was to be king for life;
if he died before Conrad and Isabel they were to succeed him,[704]
and according to one account the crown was to remain with their
heirs;[705] according to another account, if Guy, Conrad, and Isabel
should all die while Richard was in Holy Land, Richard—evidently
as being head of the house of which the Angevin kings of Jerusalem
were a younger branch—was to dispose of the realm at his will.[706]
Meanwhile, the royal revenues were to be divided equally between
Conrad and Guy.[707] Geoffrey de Lusignan and Conrad were both
confirmed in the fiefs which they actually held.[708] On the morrow
Philip made over all that he had acquired in Acre to Conrad, and
again asked Richard’s leave to go home.[709] Richard is said to have
been so dismayed that he offered Philip a half share of everything
he had gathered together for the Crusade—gold, silver, provisions,
arms, horses, ships—if he would abandon his project; but it was in
vain.[710] All that the English king could do was to insist on the
French one taking a solemn oath not to invade the Angevin lands
or work any mischief against their owner while the latter was on
pilgrimage, nor without forty days’ notice after his return. The
oath was sworn, and the duke of Burgundy, the count of Champagne,
and some other French nobles stood surety for its fulfilment.[711]
Each of the kings then detached from his troops a hundred knights
and five hundred men-at-arms and sent them to Bohemond of Antioch
for the defence of his city and principality; Richard furnished his
share of this contingent with money enough to pay its expenses up to
the following Easter, and added a gift of five “large ships” laden
with horses, arms and food. Finally, the French king’s share of the
prisoners was separated from Richard’s[712] and placed, together with
the French troops who were to remain in Syria, under the command of
the duke of Burgundy.[713] On July 31 or August 1 Philip and Conrad
went, in two galleys lent to them by Richard, to Tyre.[714] There
Philip procured three Genoese galleys, and with these, on August 3,
he sailed for Europe.[715]
However much the lesser chieftains and their followers might resent
the supremacy of Richard—and if we may believe a German report, the
Germans and some of the Italians did resent it so fiercely that
they would have set upon him openly with their weapons had not
the Templars intervened[716]—it was now evident that he must be
henceforth commander-in-chief of the whole Crusade. He at once,
after holding a council with the other princes, had all [Sidenote:
_Aug. 1-3_] his ships loaded up with provisions for man and beast and
with his military engines, and issued an order that all the Crusaders
should make ready to follow him, with their arms and horses, to
Ascalon. He also “made all the archers of the host come before him
and gave them good wages.”[717] It was of course impossible to
leave Acre till the treaty with Saladin was carried into effect;
and this was becoming a matter of considerable anxiety. From July
14 to August 2 frequent communications had passed between Saladin
and the kings.[718] An English writer of the time says that Saladin
offered them the whole kingdom of Jerusalem except one fortress (Krak
of Moab, or Montreal) if they would lend him two thousand knights
and five thousand men-at-arms for a twelvemonth to help him against
the Mussulman enemies in his rear, the sons of Nureddin the lord of
Mosul.[719] Such a proposal, if made at all, could hardly be taken
or expected to be taken seriously, and can only have been a device
for spinning out negotiations and gaining time. A modification of one
detail of the treaty was, however, granted to the Sultan. The period
originally allowed him for the delivery of the Cross, the Christian
captives, and the money seems to have been one month from the day
of the surrender of Acre;[720] but this was soon perceived to be
impracticable. On July 24 the Frank envoys who had gone to inspect
their imprisoned fellow-Christians at Damascus returned with four
whom they had picked out for release;[721] and on the same evening
a list of the Saracen prisoners in Acre was brought to the Sultan.
On August 2 envoys from Acre came to him to ascertain whether the
Cross was still in his camp or had been sent away to Bagdad. When
satisfied on this point by ocular demonstration, they told him that
the kings accepted his proposal to deliver all that was specified in
the treaty by three monthly instalments. The first instalment was to
comprise more than two-thirds of the total; it was to consist of
the Cross, the whole stipulated number of Christian captives, and
half the money payment. The term for its delivery was to be August
11[722]—an ingeniously equitable arrangement for both parties,
since, the duration of the Mohammedan calendar month differing from
that of the western peoples, the period from the surrender of Acre
would be a month and a day[723] according to the reckoning of the
Moslems whose part in the treaty must be the most difficult and
lengthy of accomplishment, and one day less than a month according
to the reckoning of the Franks, who had most to gain by a speedy
fulfilment of the conditions.[724] Richard presently grew uneasy as
to the possibility of fulfilling the Franks’ side of the compact on
the appointed day; for Philip, after formally giving the charge of
his share of the prisoners to the duke of Burgundy,[725] had carried
them, or at least the most important and valuable of them, away with
him to Tyre and left them there in the custody of Conrad.[726] On
August 5 Richard despatched envoys to Tyre to request that Conrad
would at once return to Acre and bring these prisoners with him.
Conrad flatly refused. Richard’s [Sidenote: _Aug. 6_] first impulse,
when his envoys came back next day, was to go and bring the marquis
to submission by force. But Conrad was a dangerous person to quarrel
with, owing to his position as heir to the Crown, and still more
because, as master of Tyre, he could stop the coming of provisions
for the host; he was in fact already doing this again, as he had
done in the earlier days of the siege. Hugh of Burgundy therefore
undertook the task of inducing Conrad to give up the prisoners to
him as the representative of their proper owner, Philip.[727] He set
out for Tyre on August 8, but did not get back with the prisoners
till the 12th.[728] According to the letter of the treaty, however—at
least, according to the Franks’ understanding of it—the presence of
all the Saracen prisoners on the 11th was not really necessary; for
their release was to be conditional on, and should therefore have
been preceded by, Saladin’s fulfilment of his part of the bargain.
On the 11th therefore Richard called upon Saladin to do what he had
promised for that day. Saladin replied that he would do so only on
one of two conditions: either that the Franks should at once release
the captive garrison of Acre, in which case he would give other
hostages for the completion of his payments; or that the Franks
should give him hostages to keep till the garrison were set free.
The Franks rejected both these propositions, offering instead, in
return for what was now due from the Sultan, to give a solemn oath
that the prisoners should be restored to him; but this he, having no
confidence in their good faith, would not accept.[729] The discussion
seems to have ended for the time in a postponement of the “first
term” (as Bohadin calls it) till August 20.[730]
On the 14th Richard led his own troops out of the city and pitched
his tents near the enemy’s lines. A western [Sidenote: _Aug.
15_] writer tells us that next day Saladin begged for a further
prolongation of the term, which Richard sternly refused; Saladin
then asked for a colloquy with Richard on the [Sidenote: _Aug. 16_]
morrow, but failed to keep the tryst, and excused his failure by
declaring, “I did not come, because I could not fulfill the agreement
which my people had made with him.”[731] The next two days seem to
have been occupied in skirmishes in which the king took his full
share.[732] [Sidenote: _Aug. 20_] Saladin’s advanced guard had now
been withdrawn from Ayadiyeh to another height, Keisan, some two
miles further south. On the morning of the 20th—the day finally
fixed for the expiration of the “first term”—Richard sent his tents
to the pits at the foot of the hill which the Saracens had quitted.
Noon passed without a word or sign from Saladin. After mid-day the
watchers on Keisan saw Richard come out on horseback with what to
them looked like “the whole Frankish host” into the middle of the
plain between Keisan and Ayadiyeh. They at once sent word to the
Sultan, and were anxiously awaiting instructions and reinforcements
from him when they saw the Moslem prisoners, bound with cords, led
forth into the midst of the host and instantly slaughtered with
swords and spears. Saladin’s reinforcements came too late to do
anything except unite with the troops at Keisan in a futile, though
gallant, effort to avenge the massacre by an attack so fierce and
persistent that it was not beaten off till nightfall.[733]
The victims of this wholesale execution comprised the entire
Moslem garrison of Acre except a few persons of distinction who
were specially reserved for ransom. Richard himself stated the
number of the slain to be about two thousand six hundred.[734]
Bohadin, whose computation is doubtless that of the Moslem troops
who visited the place of slaughter next morning, says “more than
three thousand.”[735] This writer, whose narrative we have been
following, and who was Saladin’s confidential secretary and constant
companion, says that in this matter “the English king, seeing all
the delays interposed by the Sultan to the execution of the treaty,
acted perfidiously with regard to his Mussulman prisoners.” This
charge of perfidy is based upon a clause which occurs only in the
same writer’s account of the terms of the capitulation of Acre;
according to him, the garrison were thereby promised that in any
case their lives should be spared; if the Sultan failed to do his
part of the agreement, their fate was to be slavery.[736] The Frank
writers know nothing of this stipulation. Two of them distinctly
assert that the promise of life to the garrison was made conditional
on Saladin’s fulfilment of the bargain.[737] Another says they were
to go out free and unharmed if the agreement were carried out within
the term, but if not, they were to be at the mercy of the kings
for their limbs and lives.[738] The others simply speak of them as
hostages. If the Frankish version of this matter be the correct one,
then the persistent “delays interposed by the Sultan to the execution
of the treaty” had unquestionably, on the principles universally
recognised by both Franks and Saracens, rendered the lives of
these hostages legally forfeit at mid-day on August 20. Bohadin’s
admission about the “delays” is practically an acknowledgement
that they would have been so but for the special promise which he
alleges to have been made to these men. Even if that promise were
given, indeed, a feudal lawyer might have made out a case for
Richard and his colleagues in the war-council, on the plea that the
moment the garrison became legally slaves, they became, as such,
the absolute property of their masters, to be kept alive or slain
at their masters’ will; and a Mussulman lawyer might have had even
more difficulty than a Christian one in finding an answer to such
a plea. It is, however, quite possible that the treaty—drawn up as
it was, in haste, in two different languages, between parties who
could only hold communication through interpreters[739]—may have
been honestly understood by the Moslems in one sense and by the
Christians in another. As for Richard’s personal responsibility in
the matter, Bohadin certainly exaggerates it. The other princes of
the Crusade clearly concurred in the determination of the hostages’
fate.[740] The cruelty of such wholesale slaughter shocked neither
their moral sense nor that of their contemporaries; the chroniclers
of the time all record the massacre without a word or a hint of
reprobation; one at least who was himself in the host openly rejoices
over it as a just vengeance for the Crusaders slain during the siege
by the crossbows of the garrison.[741] With the leaders every other
consideration would probably be outweighed by a military one. Until
these prisoners were disposed of in some safe way, the Crusade must
be at a standstill. They could not be left in Acre or anywhere else
without a guard far more numerous than it was possible to spare from
the main enterprise. Saladin’s conduct had extinguished the hope
of disposing of them by exchange. The only sure way was to follow
an example set by him, though on a much smaller scale, four years
before, when he put to death all the Templars and Hospitaliers who
had been captured in the battle of Hattin.[742] So the deed was done;
and that same night a herald proclaimed throughout the host that on
the morrow all must be ready to set out for Ascalon.[743]