FROM ACRE TO JOPPA
1191
Lignum Crucis, Signum Ducis,
Sequitur exercitus,
Quod non cessit, sed praecessit
In vi Sancti Spiritus.
_Berter of Orleans._
Two main roads led southward from Acre. One crossed the river Kishon
at a point which on the map is about half way between Nazareth and
the sea, passed over the middle of Mount Carmel, and then along
the eastern side of the plain which lies between the coast and the
mountain-range of Samaria and Judea. Cross-paths through the defiles
of this range led from the road to the Holy Places of southern
Palestine—Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron—and connected it with the
great lines of communication running through these places southward
to Egypt and Mecca and northward up the Jordan valley to Damascus;
paths across the plain connected it with the other great main road,
which followed the coast-line all the way to the mouth of the Nile.
The inland route was the more direct way to Jerusalem; but for the
Crusaders the coast route was the safer, indeed the only safe one.
The re-conquest of the land must begin with the re-conquest of the
seaboard towns. Acre might serve as principal base for the whole
expedition; but this was not enough; before the Crusaders could
venture into the interior of the land they must make sure of being
able to communicate with Cyprus and with Europe through other ports
besides Acre, and with Acre itself by sea as well as by land. They
must also endeavour to block at least one of the enemy’s lines
of communication with Egypt; and of these the most frequented and
important was the coast route, to which the entrance from Egypt, both
by land and sea, was commanded by the great fortress of Ascalon. Thus
the plan of campaign implied in the order issued on the night of
August 20 was to regain, first and foremost, the whole seaboard of
the Holy Land.
The fortifications of Acre had been carefully repaired under
Richard’s personal superintendence;[744] and the other preparations
for departure were so far advanced that one day sufficed to complete
them. The two queens and the damsel of Cyprus were left in the
palace, with the king’s treasure, under suitable guard. Bertram de
Verdon and Stephen de Longchamp were appointed constables of the
city.[745] Every man in the host was bidden to take with him food
for ten days; the ships were already loaded up with the rest of the
stores, and their skippers were instructed [Sidenote: _Aug. 21_] to
sail close along the shore, ready to put in at intervals and supply
the host with whatever it might need. “Thus they were to go,” says
one of the pilgrims, “in two bodies, one by sea and one by land; for
Syria could be reconquered from the Turks in no other manner.”[746]
The total number of the Frank forces is reckoned by the same
authority at three hundred thousand.[747] On Thursday August 22 they
began to cross the “river of Acre” (the Belus, or Nahr el Namein,
which falls into the sea just below the city) and pitch their tents
between it and the sea.[748] A large proportion of them, however,
had become already so demoralised by their stay in the city, now
once more filled with all the luxuries and temptations of Eastern
life, that they were [Sidenote: _Friday Aug. 23_] very reluctant to
leave it; and it was not till the next day that Richard succeeded in
getting the greater part of the host together in its new encampment,
and himself followed it thither, having taken his position in
the rear to guard against possible attack from the Moslems.[749]
The detachment at Keisan was, however, too small to venture upon
anything more than a harmless demonstration at a safe distance;[750]
[Sidenote: _Sat. Aug. 24_] and it was altogether withdrawn next
day, when Saladin, being now assured of the route which the Franks
intended to take, disposed his army on the hills above Shefr’ Amm,
ready to attack them on their march along the shore.[751] They seem
not to have started till Sunday, August 25.[752] Richard led the
vanguard; his English and Norman followers had charge of the great
Standard which was surmounted by his royal banner and was to serve
as guide and rallying-point for the whole host. The Frenchmen under
the duke of Burgundy formed the rearguard. They soon found themselves
in difficulties. The roads of Palestine had been originally good
Roman ones; but by the closing years of the twelfth century even the
highroads had become in many places little more than trackways. The
transport corps, struggling through an awkward passage, fell into
confusion; at the critical moment the Saracens swooped down, cut
them off from the rearguard, and drove them towards the sea. One
John FitzLuke spurred forward and told Richard what had occurred;
“and the king with his meinie galloped back at a great pace; he fell
upon the Turks like a thunderbolt—I know not how many he slew”;[753]
“and they fled before him like the Philistines of old from the
face of the Maccabee.”[754] The Franks re-formed in order, and
proceeded [Sidenote: _Aug. 25_] without further interruption till
they found a convenient camping-ground, seemingly near the mouth of
the Kishon, whence a short day’s march brought them to Cayphas, the
modern Haïfa. Here they encamped for two days between the castle,
which they found deserted, and the sea. This first brief stage of
their journey from Acre—it is only about ten miles—had taught them
at least one practical lesson: that on a march along the burning
sand of the Syrian coast in August superfluous baggage was to be
avoided. They therefore discarded everything that was not strictly
necessary. The fight on the way had also another good result; it had
healed Richard’s feud with William des Barres. William had fought
with such valour that the king’s admiration had overcome his anger,
and the gallant Frenchman was received back into favour by the
Lion-Heart.[755]
On Tuesday August 27 the Crusaders set out again, and wound their
way unmolested round the point of Carmel to Capharnaum, a distance
of about eight miles; finding this place also deserted, they stopped
there to dine; and thence another march of four miles brought them
to a spot where in later days the Templars were to rear a famous
fortress known as Athlit, or Pilgrims’ Castle, but which the earlier
pilgrims called the Casal (village) of the Straits—why, it is
hard to guess, for the distance from the shore to the foot of the
Carmel range increases all the way from Capharnaum southward, so
that even from the north the approach to Athlit is much less of a
“strait” than the pass which the host had just come through round the
promontory.[756] The site indeed afforded an ample and convenient
camping-ground, and also a place where the ships could put in. This
they had been ordered to do, so the host waited there two [Sidenote:
_Aug. 27_] days to receive from them a fresh store of provisions.[757]
[Sidenote: _Aug. 24_]
Meanwhile Saladin had on the night of the 24th removed his
headquarters from Shefr’ Amm to Kaimoun (the ancient Jokneam of
Carmel), where the inland road from Acre to [Sidenote: _Aug. 25_]
the south crosses the Kishon. Next day he rode over Carmel on a
reconnoitring expedition to Mallâha, “the Salt-pit,” called by the
Franks Merle. Returning on the 26th to Kaimoun, he there reviewed
his army, and on the [Sidenote: _Aug. 28_] morrow led it across the
mountains to “the head of the river which runs by Caesarea.”[758]
Caesarea lies, fifteen miles south of the Casal of the Straits,
midway between the mouths of two rivers which are five miles
apart. The northern one was called by the Crusaders “the River of
Crocodiles”;[759] between its two principal springs passes [Sidenote:
_Aug. 28-30_] the main road leading south from Kaimoun. In the next
three days Saladin shifted his camp three times among the hills
above these springs.[760] From these hills, or from the last spur of
Carmel, a little further south, he would see his first opportunity
of checking or hindering his enemy’s advance. The slopes of the
Carmel range were too steep to be practicable for his cavalry; it
was doubtless for this reason that Cayphas and Capharnaum had been
evacuated, and also that the fortifications of Caesarea had been
dismantled.[761] When the Crusaders should reach Caesarea, however,
they would be on the verge of Sharon, “the Level,” on whose eastern
border the comparatively low mountains of Samaria rise by a gradual
ascent, in terrace-like ridges, broken by many easy passes leading
into the valleys and level spaces among the hills; while the distance
between mountains and sea, which round the promontory of Carmel is
only two hundred yards, is at the lower end of the Carmel range
six miles. On August 28 Richard advanced from Casal of the Straits
to Merle and spent the night on the ground where Saladin had been
three nights before. [Sidenote: _Aug. 29_] Next day the whole host
followed, and with the king at its head and the Knights of the Temple
and Hospital forming the rearguard proceeded towards Caesarea. By
Richard’s orders all the sick had been transferred to the ships; but
even for the able-bodied the day’s march—some fifteen miles—was a
long, slow, and painful one over the burning sand in the heat of an
August day in Syria; not a few died by the way; and the outskirts
of the host were attacked by some skirmishing parties of Turks, who
were, however, driven off by Richard. The weary pilgrims camped that
[Sidenote: _Aug. 30_] night on the bank of the River of Crocodiles,
and next day entered the ruins of Caesarea, which were evacuated at
their approach. Here on that evening or the next the ships came into
port, bringing further supplies and also some of the “lazy folk” from
Acre, who in response to an urgent summons sent to them by Richard
had thus at length come to rejoin their comrades in arms.[762]
[Sidenote: _Sept. 1_]
With these reinforcements the march was resumed on Sunday, September
1. On the preceding day Saladin had taken up a position on the hills
whence he could, as soon as the Franks issued from Caesarea, make
it impossible for them to avoid an encounter. They had scarcely set
out when they were well-nigh surrounded by his light cavalry, and
a shower of arrows fell upon them from all directions.[763] But his
attack proved less effective than he had hoped, owing to the order
of march which the Crusaders had now adopted. The princes, knights,
and mounted men-at-arms advanced between two columns of infantry, of
which one, marching on their left—the side nearest to the hills and
the enemy—“protected them,” says an eye-witness, “as with a wall.”
These foot-soldiers in their thick felt jerkins and mailcoats recked
little of the Turkish arrows, while the heavier missiles which they
hurled at their assailants in return wrought execution on both horses
and riders. On the other side of the cavalry, along the sea-shore,
marched another body of foot-soldiers who carried the baggage, and,
being safe from attack, were always comparatively fresh, and ready to
change places with their comrades on the exposed side when the latter
were worn out with fatigue or wounds. Of the cavalry thus enclosed,
the van consisted of the knights of the kingdom of Jerusalem under
King Guy; the rearguard was composed of the mounted troops of Galilee
and others, including no doubt the Military Orders; in the centre
were the king of England, the duke of Burgundy, and their followers,
with the Standard in their midst. Thus, slowly and cautiously, the
host moved along; on this first day it advanced only about two or
three miles, to the “river of Caesarea.”[764] This seems to be what
is now called the Nahr el Mefjir; the Crusaders called it the Dead
River, perhaps because the Turks—such at least is the pilgrims’
account of the matter—had done their utmost to choke it up and
conceal its existence, so as to make it a trap for the strangers to
fall into; but the trap may have been the work of nature, for the
stream appears to be the same to which Bohadin gives the name of Nahr
el Casseb, river of reeds or rushes. The host reached this stream
at [Sidenote: _Sept. 1_] mid-day, crossed it in safety, and pitched
their tents on its southern bank: whereupon the Turks retired,
“for,” says Bohadin, “whenever they were in camp, there was no hope
of doing anything with them.” That afternoon Saladin shifted his
headquarters to a place a little higher up on [Sidenote: _Sept. 1-3_]
the same river;[765] and for two nights both parties remained in
their respective encampments, close to each other, but quiescent.
Thus far the pilgrims had been journeying along the edge of a
plain consisting chiefly of moors, marshes, and sand. Before them
lay a tract of more wooded country, and also, it seems, a part of
the coast-road so neglected and overgrown with brushwood as to be
impassable for their heavy cavalry. It appears that in consequence
they made their way up the left bank of the Dead River till they
struck the inland road.[766] Here they were much nearer to the
hills and to the enemy. But Saladin had no mind to risk a general
engagement till he had collected all his forces on a battle-ground of
his own choosing; and on that same [Sidenote: _Sept. 3_] day he again
removed his camp further south, into the midst of a great forest
where he hoped to intercept the Christians on their way to the city
which must be their next objective, Arsuf. His cavalry continued to
hang about the Christian host[767] and harassed it incessantly on
its march; yet the pilgrims plodded on, keeping in the same order
as before, never breaking it except when the enemy’s attacks became
so intolerable that the infantry had to open its ranks to let the
cavalry pass through for a charge. On one of these occasions Richard
was wounded in the left side by a Turkish javelin, but so slightly
that the wound only inflamed his eagerness for the fight, and all day
he was constantly driving off the assailants.[768] At nightfall they
retired, and the host encamped near the “Salt River”—now the Nahr
Iskanderuneh—which runs down to the plain from Shechem and falls
into the sea seven or eight miles south of Caesarea. Here, again,
they stayed two nights (September 3-5). The horses had suffered more
severely than the men from the Turkish missiles; the badly wounded
ones were now killed and sold by their owners to the men of lower
rank for food; owing to the rush for them and the high prices charged
there was much strife over this matter, till Richard checked it by
proclaiming that he would give a live horse to any man who would make
a present of a dead one to his poorer comrades in arms.[769]
From the Salt River a tract of wild wooded country called the Forest
of Arsuf stretched southward for twelve miles or more. Saladin had
taken up his position on a hill almost in the middle of it; here
his foot-soldiers had rejoined him on the morning of September 4;
and here, on the same day, he received a message from the Christian
princes asking for a parley about terms of peace between him and
the native Franks of the kingdom, “such as might enable those from
over-sea to return to their homes.” They were [Sidenote: _Sept.
5_] evidently becoming awake to the extreme difficulty of their
enterprise; and the Sultan’s apparent reluctance to engage in a
pitched battle may have raised hopes of a peaceful settlement with
him. He, on his part, was glad of anything to delay their further
advance till the Turcoman reinforcements which he was expecting
had arrived; so a meeting took place between Richard and Safadin,
with Humphry of Toron as interpreter, early on Thursday, September
5. Richard spoke first; at the mention of peace Safadin asked,
“What conditions am I to propose to the Sultan in your name?” “One
condition only,” answered Richard, “that you restore the whole land
to us, and go back to your own country.” This brought the conference
to an abrupt end; Safadin returned to his brother,[770] and the
Christians set forward on their march through the Forest. They seem
to have traversed it in a south-westerly direction which brought
them back to the coast-road. A report had reached them that the
enemy intended to set fire to the Forest “and make of it such a blaze
that they would all be roasted”; but nothing of the kind took place;
“no host ever had a better day’s march; they met with no hindrance
at all”; they passed the “Hill of Arsuf”—seemingly the hill which
Saladin was occupying—and came safely out on the plain, where they
found a good camping-ground beside what they called “the River of the
Cleft Rock” (Rochetaillie).[771] They soon learned why they had been
thus left unmolested through the day’s march; Saladin was disposing
his whole force—estimated by a scout at three hundred thousand men,
while the Christians were only about a third of that number[772]—to
give them battle as soon as they should emerge from the cover of the
Forest into the open fields and cultivated land around Arsuf. It
was therefore in very carefully planned array that they set forth
again on Saturday, September 7.[773] The host was divided into five
battalions; the vanguard consisted of the Templars; next came the
Bretons and Angevins; then the Poitevins, who were placed under the
command of King Guy; after these the Normans and English with the
Standard; in the rear the troops of the Hospital. Every battalion
was subdivided into two squadrons, one of horse, one of foot, which
advanced parallel to each other; the duke of Burgundy and some picked
followers rode up and down and round about the host to regulate and
direct its movements according to what they saw of those of the
Turks; and Count Henry of Champagne acted as special “side-guard” on
the flank nearest to the hills, where he rode continually alongside
of the foot-soldiers.[774]
Saladin, meanwhile, had rapidly disposed his forces so as to occupy
the hills parallel with the Crusaders’ line of march from the River
of the Cleft Rock to Arsuf. By the coast-road the distance between
these two places is little more than four miles. Setting out probably
at dawn, the Christian vanguard reached the outskirts of Arsuf before
nine o’clock, and some of the footmen began to pitch the tents among
the fields and gardens.[775] Then the Saracen archers swarmed down
upon the flank of the advancing host, pouring on it an overwhelming
shower of arrows.[776] It was, however, in the rear that Saladin
hoped to deliver his most effectual blow. Here his line curved round
from the hills towards the mouth of the river, so that, as a Frank
writer says, the Christian rearguard, “packed together so closely
that you could not have thrown an apple at it without hitting either
a man or a horse,” filled the whole space between the sea-shore and
the enemies.[777] Thus surrounded, the crossbowmen and archers in the
rearguard struggled on for hours, constantly compelled to turn round
and sometimes to march backwards, returning as best they could the
continuous fire of missiles in their rear. At length it ceased, only
to be succeeded by an attack at close quarters from another body of
Turks with maces and swords, who fell upon the foot-soldiers of the
Hospital in overwhelming force. Once already the Knights had sent a
message to Richard, begging for leave to disperse their assailants
by a charge, but it had been refused. Now the Grand Master himself
spurred forward and urged the same request. “Be patient, good Master;
one cannot be everywhere,” was the reply. Richard was determined not
to risk a charge till he saw the fitting moment for a general one
all along the line. It had been pre-arranged that when the charge
was to take place, two trumpets should be sounded in the van, two
in the centre, and two in the rear, so as to be heard above and
distinguished from the din of the innumerable Turkish brass drums
and other noisy instruments, and to let the three divisions of the
host know their relative positions. At last the leaders decided that
the moment had come, and the signal was about to be given, when the
Marshal of the Hospital and a Norman knight, Baldwin le Caron,[778]
burst through the ranks without waiting for it, and shouting “Saint
George!” dashed into the midst of the enemy. The other knights at
once turned their horses and followed the rash example. For a moment
the whole rearguard was in confusion, and a great disaster seemed
imminent; but Richard’s promptitude retrieved the day.[779] The
trumpets were sounded so instantaneously that the Turks seem never
to have discovered what had really precipitated the charge.[780]
While Richard himself, “quicker than quarrel from crossbow,” spurred
at the head of his picked followers to what had now become the
van instead of the rear, and drove off its assailants—the Turkish
right wing—with great slaughter,[781] the rest of the Frank cavalry
charged the Turkish centre and left wing and put them both to
headlong flight, also with heavy loss of life. Saladin’s secretary
and friend, Bohadin, escaping from the rout of the centre, tried
to rejoin first the left wing and then the right, but found each
division in worse plight than the one he had quitted; and when he
reached the reserve he found there only seventeen men remaining to
guard the Standard, all the rest having been called up by the Sultan
to support their comrades, and shared their fate. Saladin tried hard
to rally the fugitives, and when the Franks, having also rallied to
their Standard, re-formed their ranks and sought to continue their
march, they were impeded by repeated attacks which they had to turn
and repel. At last another charge, led by William des Barres and
Richard on the famous Fauvel, which he had brought with him from
Cyprus, drove the assailants and carried the pursuers right up into
the hills. There the dangers of the unknown and difficult ground were
too great for the Franks to venture on an engagement; they therefore
withdrew from the pursuit, and proceeded along the lower ground till
the whole host was encamped outside Arsuf,[782] Saladin making no
further attempt to molest them. He had succeeded in collecting all
that was left of his army; but his losses were very heavy, and they
included several emirs, while among the Christian slain was only one
man of distinction, James of Avesnes.[783] Richard’s assertion that
the battle of Arsuf had cost Saladin more lives of noble Saracens
than he had lost in any one day for the last forty years[784] may
not be literally exact; but Bohadin does not attempt to minimize
[Sidenote: _Sept. 7_] the disaster or to disguise its effect on the
survivors and on Saladin himself. “God alone knows what intense grief
filled his heart. All our men were wounded, if not in their bodies,
in their hearts.”[785]
That night Saladin pushed on as far as the Nahr el Aoudjeh, crossed
it, and encamped on its southern bank.[786] This river is called by
the Frank writers “the River of Arsuf,” but might have more fittingly
taken its name from Joppa, for its mouth is seven miles south of the
former place and only three miles north of the latter. It is formed
by the union of three streams, one of which rises at the foot of the
hills of Samaria, another in the valley which divides Mount Ephraim
from the Judean range, and the third flows through the northernmost
of the passes leading from the plain into the hill-country of Judah.
The inland road through the plain crosses these three streams some
three miles above their meeting-point, and a road branching off from
the crossing-place runs alongside of the southernmost stream up the
pass, and thence over the plateau to Jerusalem. Saladin appears
to have thought that the Franks might march across the plain and
attempt an advance [Sidenote: _Sun., Sept. 8_] upon the Holy City by
this route; next day he re-crossed the river and took up a position
nearer to Arsuf, ready to intercept them.[787] They, however, had
no such intention. They spent that Sunday at Arsuf, keeping the
feast of our Lady’s Nativity, and burying their dead hero, James of
Avesnes. On Monday the 9th they resumed their southward march,[788]
pursued it steadily despite the provocations of the Saracen bowmen,
and encamped that night on both sides of the river near its mouth.
Hereupon Saladin, perceiving that their immediate objective was Joppa
and that he could not prevent them from reaching it, let [Sidenote:
_Tues., Sept. 10_] them proceed thither unmolested and encamp
next day outside its ruined walls (for, like Arsuf and the more
northerly coast-towns, it had been evacuated and dismantled some time
before),[789] while he with all his forces hurried to take up his
position at Ramlah,[790] whence he could easily watch all the three
possible routes of the Christians’ next advance. Two of these routes
led—one through Ramlah itself—to Jerusalem; the third led coastwise
to Egypt. Either of the two former Saladin might hope either to block
or defend; but with the third it was otherwise. The plain south of
the Nahr el Aoudjeh is much wider than further north: Joppa is ten
miles from the foot of the hills; between Joppa and Ascalon the width
of the plain varies from ten to eighteen miles. The character of
the country, too, is different; instead of sand-dunes, marshland,
moorland, and forest, the way lies through cornfields, palm-groves,
villages and towns. It was thus not a place where the Saracen mode
of warfare could be made effective against that of the Franks in a
pitched battle; yet if the Franks decided to continue their march
down the coast, nothing but defeat in a pitched battle could prevent
them from laying siege to Ascalon.
Ascalon was a post of far greater importance than any other on the
whole coast south of Acre. It was the key to Egypt, the only sea-port
of any consequence between Joppa and Alexandria, the only fortified
city, now that Caesarea was destroyed, on the whole length of the
coast between Acre and the Egyptian frontier. To the Arabs Ascalon
was “Syria’s Summit,” “Syria’s Bride.” Strong as were her walls,
Saladin knew that the garrison within them was wholly inadequate
for their defence, and that an attempt to reinforce it might lead
to trouble with his army, owing to the unwillingness of men who had
seen the fate of their brethren at Acre to incur the risk of a like
destiny by shutting themselves up in another great fortress;[791]
and he knew, too, that if the Franks did besiege the place, his
troops would be unable to harass them from the hills as they had done
at Acre, the hills opposite Ascalon being more than fifteen miles
distant. He saw, in short, only one means of preventing Ascalon from
falling into the hands of the Franks and becoming thenceforth as
formidable a danger as it had been hitherto a valuable protection
to his communications with Egypt. Giving out that he intended to
concentrate all his forces on the preservation of Jerusalem, and
commissioning his brother Safadin to keep watch on the movements of
the enemy, he on Wednesday, September 11, left the main body of his
troops at Ramlah under Safadin, and himself set out for Ascalon. He
spent [Sidenote: _Thurs., Sept. 12_] a sleepless night outside its
walls, and declared next morning to Bohadin that he would rather lose
all his sons—one of whom, El Afdal, was present—than pull out one
stone of the place, but there was no alternative. Under his personal
superintendence the town was cleared of its inhabitants, and the
troops which he had brought with him, with every other available man,
were set to destroy its fortifications. Ten days of incessant work,
picking, digging, and burning, reduced “the Summit of Syria” to a
heap of ruins.[792]
These operations were just beginning when Safadin, who [Sidenote:
_Sept. 12-13_] had transferred his headquarters to Jafna (called
by the Arabs Yebnah and by the Franks Ibelin), on the coast-road,
about thirteen miles south of Joppa, received from the Frank leaders
some new overtures for a treaty.[793] Their object probably was to
ascertain, if possible, something as to the plans and movements
of their adversaries; and Safadin did his utmost to spin out the
negotiations, his brother having charged him to detain the enemy
at Joppa by every means he could devise till the Sultan’s work
at Ascalon, which he was most anxious to keep secret from them,
should be done.[794] The Franks were in no great haste to move;
the rich orchards and vineyards and olive-yards round Joppa formed
a delightful camping-ground; moreover, they must in any case wait
till their fleet came into the harbour. Soon after its arrival some
of the poor folk who had been turned out of Ascalon wandered into
Joppa [Sidenote: c. _Sept. 20-22_?] and astonished the Crusaders by
telling them what Saladin was doing. The tale seemed so incredible
that Richard despatched Geoffrey de Lusignan and some others by sea
to reconnoitre Ascalon and find out the truth. When these scouts
confirmed the report of the refugees, a council was held to decide
what should be done. Richard’s military instinct told him that the
plan with which they had set out from Acre—the securing of the whole
coast before they risked any attempt on the interior—was the only
sound one. “The Turks are razing Ascalon; they dare not fight us.
Let us go and recover it. All the world ought to hasten thither!” he
pleaded. But the duke of Burgundy and the French party urged that the
shortest route to the goal of their pilgrimage was the route which
started not from Ascalon but from the place where they now were, and
that Joppa should be rebuilt and made the base for an advance upon
Jerusalem. Richard, feeling that anything was better than dissension
within the host, yielded to their urgency. A tax was levied for the
expense of the restoration of Joppa;[795] and on October 1 Richard
wrote home: “Know ye that by God’s grace we hope to recover the Holy
City within twenty days after Christmas, and then we will return to
our own land.”[796]