THE THIRD CRUSADE.
[Sidenote: Fictitious or romantic portraits of Richard I. of England.]
A halo of false glory surrounds the third crusade from the associations
which connect it with the lion-hearted king of England. The exploits of
Richard I. have stirred to enthusiasm the dullest of chroniclers, have
furnished themes for jubilant eulogies, and have shed over his life that
glamour which cheats even sober-minded men as they read the story of
his prototype Achilleus in the tale of Troy. They have done even more,
for, if we may believe the narrative, they excited the same vehement
admiration in his most redoubtable enemy; and the romance of youth or
even of maturer age fastens on the picture which exhibits the brother
of Saladin in the thick of mortal fight as sending to him two Arabian
chargers by way of lauding the hero for dealing wounds and death on a
multitude of his people.
[Sidenote: Real character of the actors in the third crusade.]
When we turn from the picture to the reality, we shall see in this third
crusade an enterprise in which the fiery zeal which does something
towards redeeming the savage brutalities of Godfrey and the first
crusaders is displaced by base and sordid greed, by intrigues utterly of
the earth earthy, by wanton crimes from which we might well suppose that
the sun would hide away its face; and in the leaders of this enterprise
we shall see men in whom, morally, there is scarcely a single quality to
relieve the monotonous blackness of their infamy, in whom, strategically,
a very little generalship comes to the aid of a blind brute force, and
in some of whom, personally, an animal courage or ferocity, which fears
no danger and knows no fatigue, surmounts a thousand difficulties and
charms the vast multitudes who find their highest delight in the worship
or idolatry of mere power. As a military leader Richard I. of England is
beneath contempt when compared with the first Napoleon; but he may fairly
compete with him as a criminal. Alaric the Goth and Attila the Hun never
professed to be sovereigns of a civilized people; but in no sense have
they a better title to be regarded as scourges of mankind.
[Sidenote: Decay of the crusading spirit.]
Undertakings which depend on the temper and resources of individual
men are not likely to be carried out with unswerving persistence; and
this ebb and flow of purpose and energy is especially manifest in the
history of the crusades. With any marked success comes a feeling of
self-complacency in the thought that a vow has been strictly fulfilled
or a duty thoroughly discharged; and the result is either slackness or
total indifference to matters which thus far seemed in their importance
to leave everything else in the shade. Assuredly there was little indeed
in the lives of the later Latin kings of Jerusalem to keep alive the
enthusiasm which had been roused by the preaching of the hermit Peter;
and for the time a change seems to pass over the spirit of the dream
which for nearly a hundred years had been beguiling Western Christendom.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1179.]
[Sidenote: Change in the character of the crusades.]
The impulse (it can scarcely be dignified with the name of policy) which
led Almeric (p. 100) to fix his thoughts on the conquest of Egypt, is
the nearest approach to the temper of the true statesman and general
exhibited in the history of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. It aimed
not only at preventing a combination of hostile powers to the north and
south fraught with fatal dangers for any dominion which might lie between
them, but it seemed to promise the possession of a country of immense
importance to the merchant and the trader. This advantage was clearly
seen and eagerly aimed at by the third Lateran council, which insisted
that the conquest of Damietta should be the first object of every
crusade, the maintenance of the kingdom of Jerusalem at best only the
second. In short, these expeditions had in strictness of speech ceased to
be crusades, unless an exception is to be made in the case of the sainted
Louis IX. of France. With him, as with Godfrey and the first crusaders,
the religious motive absorbed every other. In the rest the professed
object of the scheme is made an excuse for roving forays or political
conquests, or is feebly carried out as an irksome or even repulsive task,
while the harmony indispensable for success is sacrificed for quarrels
and deadly feuds which would do credit to the society of savages.
[Sidenote: Henry II. of England and the patriarch of Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1174.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1177.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1180.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1185.]
But until the Cross had been thrust aside for the Crescent on the mosque
of Omar, the task of stirring up the Western princes for another crusade
was neither easy nor successful. The crusading spirit was never strong
in Henry II. of England, and even after the quarrel with Becket had come
to an end with his death, he had a convenient excuse for staying at home
in the dangers which menaced his dominions from the north. But with the
captivity of his enemy William this pretext vanished. The Scottish king
swore to hold his kingdom as a fief of the English crown; and Henry,
unable any longer to resist the arguments or entreaties of the French
king, Louis VII., promised to combine his forces as duke of Normandy
with those of his liege lord for the succour of the Christians in the
Holy Land. The death of Louis, which cut short this design, brought
no bitter disappointment to Henry; but when, some five years later,
Heraclius (Herakleios), patriarch of Jerusalem, kneeling before him with
the count of Tripoli and the grand-master of the Hospitallers, placed in
his hands the sceptre of his kinsman Fulk of Anjou and of the kings who
had succeeded him, with the keys of the Holy City and the Holy Sepulchre,
the English monarch was careful to address them in words which conveyed
encouragement while they committed him to nothing. He would ask the
advice of his council; and his question was so put as to show clearly
what he would wish the answer to be. He desired to know whether his duty
called him to govern and guard his subjects at home or to break lances
with Saracens to prop up the tottering sway of a distant sovereign. There
was no doubt in the mind of his barons and prelates that the nearer work
had a paramount call on him; and the promise of Henry to contribute
50,000 marks for the needs of the Latin kingdom in Palestine was received
by the patriarch with a dissatisfaction which manifestly excited the
king’s anger. Not a whit abashed, Heraclius bade him deal with himself as
he had dealt with the martyr Thomas of Canterbury, and expressed himself
as not less ready to die by his hands than by those of the less cruel
Saracens. This ridiculous taunt was allowed to pass without rebuke, and
Heraclius departed unhurt after consecrating the church of the Knights
Templars in the city of London.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1187. Death of Urban III.]
[Sidenote: Pontificate of Gregory VIII.]
But the fall of Jerusalem cast a new colour over questions of policy and
duty. A few days after that event, and in all likelihood before he could
have heard of it, pope Urban III. died at Verona, oppressed with grief
not for a disaster of which he was ignorant, but for the death struggle
which seemed imminent between the papal and the imperial power. His
successor Gregory VIII., whose short pontificate was ended in less than
two months, bewailed the event as a catastrophe affecting the whole of
Christendom; but he was probably not unconscious that for the papacy it
might create a diversion which might rescue it from dire peril, if not
destruction. The few days of life which remained to him were spent in
writing letters to reawaken the spirit which had been roused successively
by the hermit Peter and the sainted Bernard. The divine wrath was to be
appeased by a fast of five years, and the consciousness of shameless
corruption and venality inspired the cardinals to promise that they
would take no more bribes for the furtherance or perversion of justice,
and that they would never mount again on horseback until the land once
trodden by the Saviour should have ceased to be polluted by the feet of
the unbeliever.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1188. Assumption of the cross by Henry II. and Philip
Augustus of France.]
[Sidenote: Saladin tax or tenth.]
Pope Gregory died on a journey undertaken for the purpose of making peace
between the republics of Genoa and Pisa, whose fleets were of the first
importance for the carrying out of the scheme which he had at heart. A
few weeks later the broad plain between Gisors and Trie witnessed the
meeting of Henry of England and Philip Augustus, the young French king,
to hear the cause of the Christians in Palestine pleaded by William,
archbishop of Tyre, the historian of the first and second crusades. The
two sovereigns assumed the cross, and their example was followed by the
count of Champagne, the count of Flanders, and a crowd of barons and
knights. It was agreed that the English cross should be white, and the
Flemish green, the French retaining the red. Henry hastened to England,
and obtained from a council held at Geddington in Northamptonshire the
imposition of a tax called the Saladin tithe. Every one who refused
to join the crusade was to pay a tenth of all his goods movable or
immovable. The sum thus raised was 70,000_l._; but it is astonishing
to learn that a sum almost as large, 60,000_l._, was extorted from the
scanty company of Jews settled in England. Whether the burden pressed
heavily upon them, we cannot tell. Worse things were in store for them
before many months should pass away.
[Sidenote: Feuds in the family of Henry II.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1183.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1188.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1189.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1186. July. Death of Henry II.]
It is possible that Henry may now have really intended to fulfil a
promise with which thus far he had only dallied. He sent messengers to
the Hungarian king Bela, and Isaac Angelus, the Eastern emperor, to
request a safe transit and free market for his followers. The demand was
granted: but Henry now had other concerns to occupy him. The wretched
quarrels which were the inevitable consequence of petty principalities
and the complicated tenures of feudalism had assumed their most hateful
form among the princes of the house of Anjou. Of the legitimate sons of
Henry II., Henry, Richard, and John, it is hard to say which led the most
disgraceful life and earned the most shameful reputation. The tyranny
of Richard in Aquitaine was monstrous even in an age notorious for its
cruelty and its treachery; but it was probably no disinterested sympathy
for his victims which brought against him the forces of his elder brother
Henry, and of his half-brother Geoffrey, the son of that Rosamond
Clifford into whose history the popular talk of that or of a later day
introduced a tale common to the folklore of many lands. The strife
was for the time appeased by their father, against whom these dutiful
children now turned their arms. The day fixed for the battle was drawing
nigh when the young prince or king Henry (he had been crowned A. D. 1169
by the bishops excommunicated by Thomas of Canterbury shortly before his
martyrdom) was cut off by a sudden attack of fever; and Richard, as the
eldest surviving son, looked on himself as heir to the crown of England.
But it soon became plain that the affections of his father were fixed
on his younger son John, one of the most despicable of cowards and most
contemptible of traitors. The discovery led Richard to renew his intimacy
with the French king, Philip Augustus, to whose sister Adelais or Alix he
had long since been betrothed. That princess had passed into the custody
of the English king, and had, it was said, borne him a child; but of this
Richard for the present took no count, as backed by Philip Augustus, he
insisted on her surrender and on receiving the fealty of the barons as
his father’s heir-apparent. On this second point the king’s answer was
ambiguous; and Richard, exclaiming indignantly that he now believed what
before he had thought impossible, knelt down at the feet of Philip, and,
demanding from him protection in his just rights, did homage to him for
all his father’s dominions in France. In the war which followed Henry
was driven from the castles of Mans, Amboise, and Tours. His body was
wasted with disease, and he was induced to meet his son and the French
king on a plain near Tours. A thunderstorm, in which the lightning twice
fell near them, unnerved him still more. He agreed to pay 20,000 marks to
Philip, to surrender Adelais, and to allow his vassals to swear fealty
to Richard, and asked only to see the list of the names of barons who
had joined the confederacy of the French king. At the head was the name
of his own son John. He read no further. A raging fever came on, during
which he heaped curses on his unnatural children; and in a week he died.
[Sidenote: Preparations of Richard I. for the crusade.]
[Sidenote: Modes of raising money.]
Richard was now king of England; but he was not the man to fix his
thoughts on the wilder schemes which had filled the mind of his father.
The power and wealth of his kingdom were things to be used for spreading
his own renown, and this renown could be won and extended nowhere so well
as in the Holy Land, and in no other way so gloriously as in cleaving the
bodies of unbelievers with his deadly broadsword. It was the ambition of
a ruffian, gilded over with a thin varnish borrowed from the chivalry
of Tancred (p. 45); and he proceeded to gratify it at the expense of
the real interests whether of the kingdom or of himself. The sum which
he needed for his enterprise far exceeded the 100,000 marks which his
father’s greed or economy had amassed in the treasury at Salisbury.
Richard sold the earldom of Northumberland for 1,000_l._ to the bishop of
Durham for the term of his life: for 3,000_l._ he received into favour
his brother Geoffrey, now archbishop of York: for 10,000_l._ he resigned
to William the Scottish king all the rights over Scotland which the
latter had conceded to Henry, together with the castles of Roxburgh and
Berwick; and then departed for Normandy on the same errand of plunder and
exaction.
[Sidenote: Persecution and massacre of Jews in England.]
[Sidenote: Fearful tragedy in York castle.]
Both the first and the second crusade had been marked at their outset
by persecutions and massacres of the Jews. The third was to furnish no
exception. The Jews of England felt probably that a storm was gathering,
and they hastened to conciliate the king with costly presents. Their
eagerness unhappily outran their discretion. Richard, knowing the feeling
of the people, had ordered that no Jews should appear before him on the
coronation day. Disregarding this command, some of them, mingling with
the crowd, entered the palace, were thrust out by the mob, and murdered.
The fire, thus kindled, spread furiously. Every Jew in the streets was
cut down: every house belonging to a Jew was plundered and burnt. Some
attempt was made to check the slaughter. Three men were hanged; but
they were charged, not with murdering Jews, but with robbing Christians
under pretence that they were Jews, or with setting houses on fire to
the danger or hurt of the property of Christians. The iniquity was not
confined to London. The same things were done in all the great cities. At
York, as at Lincoln, the wealthy Jews hurried with their goods into the
castle. At Lincoln they found safety: at York they unhappily interpreted
the departure of the governor from the castle as a sign that he was
plotting against them with the Christians of the town, and closed the
gates against him on his return. In his anger he induced the sheriff of
the county to order his armed bands to the assault: and these were joined
by the populace whose fury showed at once that they meant much more than
the mere recovery of the castle. The besieged could hear the fierce cry
of a canon regular, of the Premonstratensian order, who hounded on the
mob to ‘destroy the enemies of Christ.’ They knew that their doom was
sealed; but if they must die, they might still choose the mode of their
death. In a council summoned to debate the matter, the rabbi urged that
they should avoid frightful insults and barbarous torments for their
wives and children as well as for themselves by voluntarily rendering up
their souls to the Creator, and falling by their own hands. The deed,
he urged, was both reasonable and sanctioned by their law, as well as
made famous by the men who in the deadly struggle between Jerusalem and
Rome had slain themselves at Massada. To some his counsel seemed wise,
to others a hard saying. The rabbi cut the discussion short by bidding
all to depart in peace who could not approve his counsel. A few only
left the chamber. In a few hours the work of death was done, and the
castle was left in flames. The few, who could not summon courage to
follow the example of their brethren, offered from the walls to open
the gates and submit to baptism, if their lives should be spared. The
terms were granted and the surrender was made; and by way of keeping
faith the Christians rushing in slaughtered every living thing within
the walls. These were venial offences; but the men of York added to them
an act which was a real crime, and one of the deepest dye, in the eyes
of king Richard. They hastened to the cathedral, and seizing on all the
bonds and obligations which had been laid up in the archives burnt them
in the nave. These bonds on the death of those who held them would all
have escheated to the king; and the bishop of Ely, the chancellor, was
commissioned to search out and punish the offenders. But the ringleaders
had made their escape across the Scottish border; and justice even in the
matter of robbery was baffled.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1190. Meeting of Richard and Philip at Vezelai.]
[Sidenote: Poetry and influence of the troubadours.]
Richard, having filled his coffers so far as he could, met Philip
Augustus at Vezelai where, forty-four years before, the pleadings of St.
Bernard had seemed to stir the heart of Christendom to efforts which
must be successful. The voice which now had most power was not that of
the priest, the hermit, or the saint. It was that of the troubadour; and
if for the present his harp might be attuned to lofty measures, and his
words might convey lessons almost as austere as those of pope Urban II.,
there was at least the danger that a very moderate measure of success
might lead the minstrel to arouse emotions of a less devout sort and
tempt his hearers to less exalted delights than those of prayer and
meditation. The forces of the two kings amounted, it is said, to 100,000
men. The discipline which kept them together may be pictured from the
rules which enacted that murderers should be tied to the bodies of their
victims and hurled into the sea, that they who drew their swords in anger
should lose their hands, and that thieves should be tarred and feathered
and in that plight put on shore.
[Sidenote: March of Frederick I. Barbarossa to Constantinople.]
[Sidenote: The popes and the empire.]
While Philip and Richard were on their way to Sicily, Frederick I.,
emperor of the West, commonly known as Barbarossa or Red Beard, was on
his way to Constantinople. He had fought a long battle with the pope or
the man who called himself pope. He had himself set up an anti-pope,
as the imperialist popes were called; and with the sanction of this
anti-pope, who styled himself Pascal III., he had attacked Rome, beaten
down the gates of St. Peter’s with hatchets and axes, and seen his
troops advance filling the church with blood as they fought their way
to the high altar. In the midst of this carnage Pascal III. had placed
the crown on the head of the empress Beatrice, and had blessed again the
diadem of Frederick. He had had to contend with a mightier enemy than
the pope in the fearful pestilence which broke out within his camp; and
his flight from Rome had ensured the victory of pope Alexander III., the
somewhat hesitating friend of Thomas of Canterbury. But although the
warfare of previous years was succeeded by an apparent peace, Frederick
lost no opportunity of strengthening himself against the papacy; and in
the days of Urban III. he had gained much by securing for his son Henry
the hand of Constantia, heiress of the kingdom of Sicily. The old strife
might have been renewed; but the heart of Barbarossa was stirred by the
tidings from the Holy Land or the letters of Gregory VIII., and his
armies advanced under his standard through Hungary towards the capital of
the Eastern empire. That capital Barbarossa, like his predecessor Conrad
(p. 93), refused to enter. The Byzantine Cæsar had with scant courtesy
allowed him the privilege of buying food for his men; he had studiously
withheld from him the titles which implied a divided empire.
[Sidenote: Death of Frederick I.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1190.]
[Sidenote: Re-occupation of Antioch.]
The steadier discipline, the more decent order which marked the army of
Barbarossa seemed to promise a better result to his enterprise. They
had defeated the Turks in a general battle, and had taken the Seljukian
capital of Cogni (Iconium), (p. 82); but a great disaster, nothing
less than the loss of their leader himself, awaited them. Frederick was
drowned in a Pisidian river, as some said while he was crossing it; as
others had it, from the effects of bathing. The misery and suffering
which had fallen to the lot of the earlier crusaders now weighed heavily
upon them: and the wretched story is sufficiently told, if it be true
that not a tenth of the number which crossed the Bosporos lived to enter
Antioch. The few who made their way thus far found a city almost deserted
by the Turkish soldiers, and Antioch once more had a Christian government.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1189. Siege of Acre.]
But while the sovereigns of the West were thus preparing for another
great effort on their behalf, the Latins of Palestine were struggling
hard to win back their lost supremacy, and were aided by crowds of armed
pilgrims, whose immense numbers have to be taken into account if we wish
to realize the extent of the drain to which the population of Europe was
thus subjected. Too impatient to wait, these wanderers hurried, with
whatever motives, to the scenes where, as they supposed, honour could not
fail to be won, even if wealth and happiness should not be their portion.
The conflict now turned on the possession of Acre, the key of the whole
region lying to the west of the Jordan. It had opened its gates to
Saladin soon after the battle of Tiberias; and before Richard of England
and Philip Augustus set foot on the Holy Land it had been besieged for
nearly two years by Guy of Lusignan, titular king of Jerusalem, with an
army which the influx of pilgrims from Europe had raised, it is said, to
100,000 men. But the besiegers had little generalship, and the mischief
done to their effectiveness by vice and debauchery was completed by a
fearful pestilence which swept them away by thousands.
[Sidenote: Rise of the Teutonic order.]
In the midst of this misery a few German merchants, from the coast of the
Baltic, sought to mitigate suffering by running up the sails of their
ships as tents for the sick and dying. The happy results which followed
their work led to an organization similar to that of the orders of the
Temple and the Hospital. Like those orders, the Teutonic knights rose to
power and distinction, and in the history of the crusade of Frederick
II., we shall find their grand-master, Herman of Salza, in high favour
both with the emperor and with the pope, his implacable antagonist.
With the failure of the crusades in the East the order was transferred
to the more forbidding regions which had sent forth its founders, and
their crusade was turned against the heathen of the Lithuanian, Prussian,
Esthonian, and other tribes. They preached the gospel with the sword, and
their efforts were followed at least by military success. Their grasp on
the lands which they overran was never relaxed, and the last grand-master
became the sovereign of a state which has grown into the modern kingdom
of Prussia.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1190. Death of Sibylla, queen of Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: Conrad, titular king of Jerusalem.]
The sickness and vice which wasted the forces of the crusaders before
Acre were powerfully aided by feuds among the chiefs. Sibylla, the sister
of Baldwin IV., and wife of Guy of Lusignan, was carried off by the
plague. Her two children died with her, and her husband found himself
stripped of the privilege which had made him at least the shadow of a
king. Isabel, the sister of his wife, still lived, and having got rid of
her first husband Humphry, lord of Thoron, was now married to Conrad,
marquis of Tyre. As thus wedded to the heiress of Almeric, Conrad
claimed the sovereignty of Jerusalem, and the decision of the point was
reserved for the kings of England and France.
[Sidenote: Voyage of the English fleet to Lisbon and Messina.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1190. Sept. 23.]
These kings were now on their way to the East. Richard had journeyed
by land to Genoa, while his fleet, having crossed the bay of Biscay,
anchored at Lisbon, where his forces found a crusade ready to their
hands. The town of Santarem, forty miles above Lisbon, was blockaded by
the Saracen emir. With the aid of the English the Portuguese raised the
siege and then found themselves compelled to fight with their deliverers
in the streets of Lisbon. The crusaders thought that they carried with
them a license for universal plunder and insult; and it was not without
difficulty and much bloodshed that they were persuaded by their leaders
to reserve the application of their theory for more distant lands. The
summer was coming to an end when Richard, having joined his fleet on the
Italian coast, entered Messina almost in the guise of a conqueror, to the
terror of the Sicilians and the disgust of the French king Philip.
[Sidenote: Conduct of Richard I. in Sicily.]
Then, as through almost the whole of its chequered history, Sicily was a
prize for which contending kings and adventurers intrigued, or fought. It
was now held by Tancred, an illegitimate son of the Apulian duke Roger.
His sister Constantia, the legitimate daughter of Roger, was the wife
of Henry, son of Frederick Barbarossa, who wished to make the island a
portion of his own imperial realm (p. 125). He was foiled by Tancred,
who took the further precaution of imprisoning Joanna, the widow of
his predecessor William called the Good. Joanna was the sister of the
English Richard, who was not slow in demanding her freedom, her dower,
and the legacies which William the Good had left to his father Henry II.
His demands were accompanied by robbery and violence, and his followers
hastened to imitate his example. They came to open strife with the people
in the streets of Messina; and the battle was followed by the plundering
of the town. But the raising of the English standard on the walls was
interpreted as an insult by Philip Augustus, and Richard was constrained
to appease his wrath by placing the city in the charge of the Knights
Templars and Hospitallers.
[Sidenote: Quarrel between Richard and Philip Augustus.]
The dispute with Tancred was made up by the betrothal of his infant
daughter to Arthur, duke of Brittany, that luckless victim of the cruelty
of John whom Shakespeare has made famous. But the quarrels of these
champions of the cross are tangled like links in a twisted chain. By
way of showing his friendly feeling, Tancred placed in Richard’s hand a
letter bearing the signature of the French king and inviting Tancred to a
private alliance against Richard. The latter charged Philip Augustus with
the treachery, and was charged in turn with producing forged letters by
way of devising an escape from his engagement with his sister Adelais.
Richard had offered to marry Berengaria, daughter of Sancho, king of
Navarre, and with studied coarseness he told Philip that he could have
nothing to do with the mother of his father’s child. So was changed into
mortal hatred that alliance which in its early days had led them to eat
at the same table and rest in the same bed.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1191. March. War between Richard and the Comnenian
emperor of Cyprus.]
Thus passed away the winter in disgraceful quarrels and in lavish outlays
of money scarcely less disgraceful. In the spring the French king sailed
for Acre. Richard went to Rhodes, and while he remained there sick, he
heard that some of his people had been wrecked on the coast of Cyprus,
robbed of their goods, and imprisoned by Isaac the Comnenian prince who
called himself emperor of the island. His demand for compensation was
unheeded. The English fleet appeared before Limasol, the southernmost
town of the island: and the English troops were soon masters of the city.
Isaac entered into a treaty which bound him to serve with 500 knights in
the crusade, and in the event of good behaviour Richard promised him the
restoration of his kingdom. But fear got the better of his prudence. He
made his escape, and again met the English king in battle. The fight was
followed by his surrender, and Richard ordered him to be kept in a castle
on the coast of Palestine.
[Sidenote: Arrival of Richard and Philip at Acre.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1191. July 12.]
[Sidenote: Surrender of Acre.]
[Sidenote: Return of Philip to France.]
Here, in the town which under the name of Paphos had won for itself a
pre-eminence in vice and folly, Richard was married to Berengaria of
Navarre. Here also he received and promised to take up the cause of Guy
of Lusignan, the weightiest argument for so doing being found in the fact
that Philip Augustus had taken up that of Conrad. Thus the two kings
reached Acre only to complicate old feuds with new strifes. The siege
had lasted nearly two years. In the plain was gathered the crusading
host, still magnificent in its appointments; on the heights were
assembled the Turkish armies under the black banner of Saladin. Richard
had loitered on the road as long as it suited his fancy or his ambition
to do so; and he had overwhelmed with a torrent of reproach and abuse
the envoys from the chiefs before Acre who dared to confront him at the
Cyprian Famagosta with the reproof that his business was not to dethrone
Comnenian princes and take their kingdoms, but to do battle with the
Turk for the sacred heritage of Christendom. He reached Acre, prostrated
with intermittent fever; but indifference to the enterprise had given way
to a fiery zeal. He had himself carried out on a mattress to point the
balistæ which by discharging stones served in some measures the purposes
of modern artillery. But at first the two kings would not act together,
and this division of forces enabled the besieged to stand out. Their
reconciliation, whether real or seeming, led to a combined action which
was soon rewarded by the offer of surrender. The terms now proposed were
rejected, and Saladin cheered the besieged with the hope of succours to
be received from Egypt. The help came not, and Saladin was compelled to
assent to a harder compact. The piece of the true cross was to be given
up, the Christian prisoners set free, and some thousands of hostages were
to be detained for the payment, within forty days, of 200,000 pieces of
gold. The surrender was made. Richard took up his abode in the palace,
Philip went to the house of the Templars, and the flags of the two kings
floated from the ramparts. Philip now regarded himself as absolved from
his vow, and he announced his determination to return to France. Richard
parted from his ally with undissembled anger and contempt, and Philip,
sailing to Tyre, gave to Conrad that half of the city of Acre which had
been reserved for himself.
[Sidenote: Massacre of 5,000 Turkish hostages.]
The forty days wore on. Saladin would not or could not restore the relics
of the true cross or make up the 200,000 pieces. Richard warned him
what the consequences of neglect would be; and he kept his word. On the
fortieth day two thousand seven hundred hostages were led to the top of
a hill from which all that passed might be seen in the camp of Saladin;
and at a signal from the king these two thousand seven hundred infidels
were all cut down. The soldiers hacked open their bodies to search for
the jewels and gold which they were supposed to have swallowed, and
to obtain the gall which they kept as medicine. In such praiseworthy
deeds as these the Christians could act with admirable concert. At the
same hour hostages almost equalling in number the victims of Richard
were slaughtered on the walls of the city by the duke of Burgundy, the
representative of Philip Augustus.
[Sidenote: Victory of Richard at Azotus.]
The recovery of Acre was for these merciful and devout champions of
the cross a sufficient reason for plunging into beastly debauchery and
excess, from which it was no easy task to tear them away. At length the
army of Richard moved southwards, marching in compact array along the
coast, while the fleet, generally in sight, advanced along the shore.
On their left hung the hosts of Saladin, whose policy it was to wear
out his enemy, in a country the fortresses of which he had dismantled,
without fighting any pitched battles. In this way the crusaders and
their enemies had reached the neighbourhood of Azotus (Ashdod), when
Richard resolved to face his adversary. The right wing was under Jacob
of Avesnes; the left was held by the Duke of Burgundy; the English king
was in the centre. The disposition of the battle showed some approach to
generalship on his part; and his coolness was seen in the steadiness with
which he reserved for the decisive moment the charge of his horsemen.
Their tremendous onset broke the Turkish ranks. The victory was decisive:
but it was purchased with the death of Jacob of Avesnes, which Richard
mourned as a costly sacrifice.
[Sidenote: Abortive negotiations with Saladin.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1191. November.]
[Sidenote: Feud between the English king and the duke of Austria.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1192. April 27.]
[Sidenote: Henry of Champagne titular king of Jerusalem.]
His next move was to Jaffa, although he had wished to go on to Ascalon.
The French barons insisted on the necessity of rebuilding the walls
of Jaffa; and in spite of the sluggishness which with the crusaders
almost always followed strenuous exertion, the task was at length
completed. Richard resolved to renew the war with vigour, and announced
to Saladin that nothing less would content him than the surrender of
all the territory which had been included in the kingdom of Jerusalem
under Baldwin the leper, (p. 104). Saladin replied by an offer to yield
up all lands lying between the Jordan and the sea; but it soon became
clear that the negotiations were a mere pretext for gaining time, and
Richard determined to advance upon Jerusalem. The army reached Ramlah,
encountering some hardships from rain and tempests. Still it seemed
that they might soon win the prize to which they had looked forward as
the adequate recompense of all human toil. It was not to be so, and the
hindrance came from the military orders and from the men of Pisa. These
asserted that the reconquest of Jerusalem would be the dissolution of
the enterprise. The army would never be kept together, so soon as they
had once paid their vows before the tomb of the Redeemer. The crusaders
fell back to Ascalon, and there the winter was spent partly in restoring
the fortifications, but for the more part in incessant feuds. The duke
of Austria had learnt during the siege of Acre to look on Richard as an
enemy. The cause, it was said, was an insult done to the Austrian banner,
which Richard, on seeing it raised upon the ramparts, seized and flung
into the ditch. The hatred thus excited was embittered, we are told, by
the injunction or desire for the personal help of all in the camp for
the rebuilding of the walls of Ascalon. The duke replied that he was
neither a mason nor a carpenter; and the lion-hearted king retorted by
a kick which threw him down. This may be romance or fiction; but the
disorganization of the force is sufficiently shown by the facts that the
claim of Conrad to the throne of Jerusalem was urged by the Genoese, that
of Guy by the men of Pisa; that the French abandoned the camp because
Richard was no longer able to pay them; and that the jealousy of Conrad
could be satisfied with nothing less than an alliance with Saladin.
The end had almost come. Richard knew that his presence in England was
a matter of life and death, and he now in his offers to the Turkish
sultan abated his claim to the mere possession of the holy city and the
restoration of the true cross. To this last surrender Saladin had in the
previous negotiations made no objection. He had now become more orthodox
or more scrupulous, and he could not give even indirect encouragement
to the idolatry which would worship a piece of wood. Nor was a treaty
set on foot for the marriage of Richard’s sister Joanna to Saphadin the
sultan’s brother more successful. The English king even consented to give
up the cause of Guy and sanction the choice of Conrad of Tyre for the
Latin crown. The murder of Conrad by two of the fraternity known as the
Assassins drew on Richard a storm of indignation; but evidence for the
crime there was none. A more popular claimant appeared in Henry, count of
Champagne, whose election to the throne of Godfrey was followed by his
marriage to the widow of Conrad. The grief of Guy was consoled by the
sovereignty of Cyprus which was still in the hands of his descendants
when the Crescent in 1453 displaced the Cross on Justinian’s church in
Constantinople.
[Sidenote: March of Richard towards Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: Retreat of the army from Bethlehem.]
[Sidenote: Relief of Jaffa.]
[Sidenote: Truce between the crusaders and Saladin.]
Disunion and bad generalship had practically sealed the doom of the
crusade; but for Richard the capture of Jerusalem still had greater
charms than the punishment of his brother John. In June, accordingly,
the army once more began its march to the Holy City. The tidings of
his approach caused almost panic terror among the Turks; but when they
had reached Bethlehem the crusaders discovered that their forces were
insufficient for the investment of the city; that to a commissariat
they could scarcely make a pretence; that they ran an imminent risk of
being cut off from their base of supplies; and, lastly, that the Turks
had destroyed the wells and cisterns for miles round. It was impossible
to resist the logic of these facts; and Richard made a last desperate
effort to divert their joint forces to an invasion of Egypt and the
attack of Cairo. He was led up a hill from which he was told that he
might see Jerusalem; he held up his shield before his face as being
unworthy to behold the city which he had failed to wrest from the power
of the infidel. The army was broken up. Some went to Jaffa, more to
Acre; and Saladin, advancing with rapid marches to the former city, so
pressed it that the besieged pledged themselves to surrender if within
twenty-four hours they should not be effectually succoured. Within that
time Richard appeared upon the scene. His onset was more fierce, his
valour and exploits more astonishing than ever. The besiegers retreated
in confusion, to learn presently with greater shame that they had been
scared by a mere handful of Christian horsemen. But if the splendid
bravery of the English king struck terror into the multitude, there
were not lacking some, it is said, in which it excited a chivalrous
admiration. Richard was dismounted, we are told, in the thick of the
fight, and Saladin’s brother Saphadin, whose son Richard had at his
request knighted, sent him two horses to enable him to renew the
struggle. The crusaders were victorious: but Richard had no wish to use
the advantage thus gained except for the purpose of gaining the best
terms from the enemy. The compact ultimately made pledged them to a
truce of three years and eight months. Ascalon was to be dismantled: but
the Christians were to remain in possession of Jaffa and Tyre with the
country between them; and all pilgrims were to have the right of entering
Jerusalem untaxed.
[Sidenote: Pilgrimage to Jerusalem.]
Of this privilege the French at Acre desired to avail themselves. Richard
indignantly refused their request. They had done nothing to secure the
peace or to deserve it; and their allies only should be suffered to enter
the Sacred City. Among these pilgrims was the bishop of Salisbury, who
became the guest of Saladin and heard from his lips praises of the valour
of Richard which were not extended to his generalship. The thrust was
rather evaded than parried by the reply that the earth could not produce
two warriors who could be put into comparison with the Syrian sultan and
the English king.
[Sidenote: Results of the third crusade.]
So ended the third crusade, with its work barely more than begun, or
rather marred by the infatuated waste of splendid opportunities; yet not
with an extremity of humiliation which would convince even devotees of
the absurdity of further efforts. A large strip of coast bounded by two
important cities still remained as a base of operations in any renewed
contest, and much had been done to neutralize the effects which without
doubt Saladin had anticipated from his victory at Tiberias and his
conquest of Jerusalem.
[Sidenote: Captivity of Richard I. in Austria.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1192. Dec. 21.]
On the morning after his embarkation at Acre, Richard turned to take
a last look on the fading shores of Palestine. ‘Most holy land,’ he
exclaimed with outstretched arms, ‘I commend thee to the care of the
Almighty! May He grant me life to return and deliver thee from the yoke
of the infidels!’ His fleet, carrying his wife and sister, had preceded
him and reached Sicily in safety. He himself followed in a single ship,
and at the end of a month of baffling winds found himself at Corfu, where
he hired some trading vessels to take him to Ragusa and Zara. Sailing
on, he was thrown by a storm on the Istrian coast between Aquileia
and Venice, when the perils of his situation must have begun to force
themselves upon him. The kinsfolk of Conrad of Tyre bore no love for his
supposed murderer; the French king was in treaty with his brother John;
and Henry VI., the emperor of Germany, and son of Barbarossa, owed him a
grudge for his alliance with Tancred of Sicily (p. 128). Still Richard
thought, it seems, that a pilgrim’s disguise and an unshorn beard would
carry him through all dangers. Having reached the fortress of Goritz,
which was held by Maynard, a nephew of Conrad, he sent his companion,
Baldwin of Bethune, with the gift of a ruby ring, to ask a passport
for himself and Hugh the merchant, pilgrims going home from Jerusalem.
Maynard looked long at the ruby, and at length said, ‘This jewel can
come only from a king; that king must be Richard of England. Tell him he
may come to me in peace.’ Not trusting his promise, Richard fled during
the night. Baldwin and seven others who remained with him were seized
and kept as hostages. At Freisach six more of his companions were taken,
although Richard himself escaped with one knight and a boy who knew the
language of the country. This boy, sent to the market at Erperg, near
Vienna, showed his money too freely, was caught, put to the torture, and
revealed the name of his master. Surrounded in his house by troops of
armed men, Richard refused to yield except to their chief; and that chief
hastened to take charge of him. It was Leopold, who may have felt that
he could now taste the sweets of revenge for the insults (whatever these
may have been) which Richard had put upon him in Palestine. But Leopold
was induced to compound with his feelings by a bribe of 60,000_l._; and
Richard, as the prisoner of Henry VI., was closely guarded in a Tyrolese
castle.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1193. Exertions made for the liberation of Richard.]
The tidings of his captivity were received with sorrow by his subjects
generally, with undissembled joy by his brother John and Philip Augustus
of France. Of these two princes the former prepared to fight for the
crown, and after the first reverse accepted an armistice: the latter,
having sent to Richard to renounce his allegiance, invaded Normandy, and
met with a complete repulse at Rouen. At length the place of Richard’s
imprisonment was discovered by William Longchamp, bishop of Ely, the
English chancellor; or, as the romance would have it, by his faithful
minstrel Blondel. The pope was at once assailed with entreaties to come
forward for his rescue. Peter of Blois, archdeacon of Bath, reminded
Cælestine III. of his debt of gratitude to so faithful a son of the
Church. His mother Eleanor wrote to him in less measured terms. Where,
she asked, was the zeal of Elijah against Ahab, of John the Baptist
against Herod, of Alexander III. against the father of the emperor who
had wrought this iniquity in Christendom? ‘For trifling reasons your
cardinals are sent in all their power to the most savage lands; in this
great cause you have appointed not even a subdeacon or an acolyth. You
would not have much debased the dignity of the holy see had you set out
in person to rescue him. Restore to me my son, O man of God, if thou art
indeed a man of God and not a man of blood. If you remain lukewarm, the
Most High may require his blood at your hands.’ In later letters she
asks him if he thinks that his soul can be safe while he is thus slack
in rescuing the sheep of his fold, and tells him that he ought to be
willing to lay down his life for one in whose behalf he was unwilling to
speak or write a single word. The truth is that Cælestine was full of
zeal for Richard’s cause: he was only waiting with true papal caution for
Richard’s deliverance to express his zeal emphatically.
[Sidenote: Richard before the diet at Hagenau.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1194. Feb. 4. Release of Richard.]
[Sidenote: His return to England.]
At length, after nearly four months, Richard was brought before the
diet at Hagenau. The captive might have pleaded the incompetence of
the tribunal; he chose to answer the charges brought against him with
arguments which convinced his judges of his innocence and made the
emperor willing to treat about his ransom. This ransom was raised by
new taxes laid on his subjects, whose resources, even when taxed to the
uttermost, seemed unlikely to satisfy imperial avarice; and there was the
further danger that whatever might be the sum raised, John might outbid
them. This upright and honourable prince had offered to pay to Henry
VI. the sum of 20,000_l._ for every month during which the imprisonment
of Richard might be prolonged; but there was a limit to the patience
of the German barons, and their words convinced Henry that this limit
had been reached. Richard was released, hostages being given for that
portion of his ransom which was not paid on the spot. His deliverance set
free the tongue of pope Cælestine, who now wrote to the Austrian duke as
well as to the emperor, insisting that the ransom should be given back
and the hostages restored. The emperor paid no heed to the command, but
Leopold was brought to obedience by the discipline of excommunication and
sickness, and Richard after four years’ absence landed in his own kingdom
to impoverish his people by fresh exactions for quarrels as useless as
the enterprise which had taken him across the seas.