God's War: A New History of the Crusades (73 page)

Having received his future bride Berengaria at Messina, Richard put the finishing touches to his great fleet, which was to carry food, treasure, siege engines and even the dismantled wooden castle of Mategriffon, as well as horses, arms and men. On one plausible set of calculations, the fleet of 219 ships could have carried 17,000 passengers and crew.
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This armada left Sicily on 10 April heading for Crete. Three days later a westerly gale started to blow, scattering the formation. At least twenty-five ships had become detached from the main squadron, including that carrying Richard’s sister Joan and fiancée Berengaria. Waiting at Rhodes between 22 April and 1 May, Richard learnt that some of the missing ships had been blown by the storm as far as the southern coast of Cyprus, where three of them had been shipwrecked and their survivors ill treated by the locals. The remainder, including the princesses’ ship, stood offshore. The independent Greek ruler of the island since 1184, Isaac Comnenus, fearing an invasion, fortified Limassol, sought a treaty with Saladin and tried to entice the princesses into his clutches, perhaps to serve as hostages against an attack by Richard, risky policies in the face of internal opposition and the crusaders’ overwhelming military superiority. Limassol had most likely been fixed as a rendezvous for the fleet from Sicily and Richard may have already contemplated subduing the island to assist the crusaders on the mainland of Palestine with a ready, secure source of supplies. The affray at Limassol and Isaac’s
belligerent behaviour provided Richard with an excuse and a reason to intervene in Cyprus. Richard himself explained three months later that, because of Isaac’s behaviour towards the shipwrecked crusaders, ‘we were spurred to revenge’.
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What may have begun as a rescue soon became a conquest. Richard arrived off the south coast on 5 May. Having forced a landing at Limassol, pressing inland he made Isaac withdraw after a brief skirmish. On 12 May, in the chapel of St George at Limassol, Richard, Europe’s most eligible (and, some hinted, most confirmed) bachelor and Berengaria of Navarre were married. By this time, Isaac had sued for peace terms. Richard also received an embassy from Acre led by Guy of Lusignan, who asked for the king’s support against attempts to replace him as king of Jerusalem by Conrad of Montferrat, who enjoyed the backing of the French. A few days later, French ambassadors joined in urging Richard’s presence at Acre. Meanwhile, the truce with Isaac had broken down and Richard embarked on a systematic investment of the whole island. His fleet sailed round the island capturing strategic ports. From Famagusta, Richard led his troops westwards. After defeating Isaac’s army once more, at Tremetousha, he captured Nicosia unopposed and then Kyrenia on the northern coast after a siege by land and sea. A few days later, Isaac surrendered. Richard had promised not to clap him in irons, so Isaac was bound by chains forged of silver, a characteristic Ricardian touch.

The conquest of Cyprus enhanced Richard’s reputation, filled his coffers with treasure, partly derived from a tax levied on every Cypriot, and provided a source of provisions for his army and for those at Acre. Initially, in his eagerness to exploit Cyprus’s resources for the crusade, Richard retained direct overlordship over the island, appointing Angevin castellans and two administrators, the fleet commanders Richard of Camville and Robert of Thornham. As their rule proved unpopular and provoked resistance, and as his own costs in Palestine rose, within a few weeks Richard decided to sell the island to the Templars for 100,000 Saracen bezants, of which he actually received 40,000. When, in April 1192, the Templars, who also found ruling Cypriots an unacceptably draining experience, surrendered the island back to Richard, he found a new buyer in the recently displaced king of Jerusalem, Guy of Lusignan, who stumped up another 60,000 gold bezants for the privilege.
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Guy, and after his death in 1194 his brother Amaury, established a ruling dynasty in Cyprus, from 1196 as kings, that would last until the late fifteenth century. The island remained in western Christian hands until conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1571, the most lasting crusader achievement in the eastern Mediterranean. While its annexation had been fortuitous, the result of storm, Richard’s temperament, Isaac’s aggression, unpopularity and incompetence, and a growing realization of how useful to the Christian cause Cyprus could be, the island subsequently provided food, military and naval bases and ultimately a refuge for crusaders and Frankish émigrés from the Holy Land. It also developed its own Frankish political structures and ruling elites, which proved more successful and lasting than those of mainland Outremer.

14. Richard I Captures Cyprus, May 1191

Isaac’s surrender on 1 June freed Richard to complete his journey to the Holy Land after the most decisive Christian military operation in the Levant since the First Crusade. That the victims were fellow Christians dampened the ardour of Richard’s panegyrists not at all. The Cypriots were demonized as treacherous and malign, the conquest another display of Richard’s courage and determination. On 5 June he sailed from Famagusta. Taking the shortest crossing to Syria, he landed at the Hospitaller castle of Margat, where he deposited the unfortunate Isaac. The next day he reached Tyre, where the garrison, on orders from Conrad of Montferrat, refused him entry, forcing him to camp overnight outside the walls. Cruising south the next day with the fleet’s rearguard of twenty-four galleys, Richard fell in with and sank a large Muslim sailing ship from Beirut carrying supplies and reinforcements for the Acre garrison. The loss of this vessel landed a heavy material and psychological blow on Saladin’s forces while further elevating Richard’s already formidable renown.
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Richard finally arrived at the Christian camp outside Acre, to lavish displays of enthusiasm, on 8 June, three and a half years after he had impulsively taken the cross at Tours. The crisis of the crusade had finally been reached.

15. Palestine with the Campaigns of 1191–2

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The Palestine War 1191–2

The campaigns fought in Palestine between June 1191 and August 1192 determined the survival and nature of a western European presence on the mainland of the Levant. The combat of two charismatic leaders allied to the drama of events persuaded writers on both sides to elevate the struggle into epic. Yet it is easy to exaggerate its international significance. The impact of the Latin conquest of Cyprus and recapture of mainland ports were peripheral to the circumstances of most of the Muslim world. In material terms, it exerted negligible influence on the lives of western Europeans. Even the viability of the Christian conquests depended more on international trading patterns outside the control of political leaders and on the factious internal politics of the Ayyubid empire once the crusaders had departed. Nonetheless, the equivocal outcome of the Palestine war, with neither side achieving their central objectives, ensured the continuance of western involvement in the region, the re-establishment of a distinctive local political, military and diplomatic force, and the incorporation of the
negotium Terrae Sanctae
, ‘the business of the Holy Land’, as normative in the religious and cultural life of western Christendom.

THE FALL OF ACRE

Richard I’s arrival at Acre on 8 June 1192 precipitated the final act of the siege of Acre. Six weeks’ heavy assault, following the renewed aggression stimulated by the arrival of Philip II in late April, forced the surrender of the garrison on 12 July. The surprise, perhaps, lay not in the crusaders’ success but, as a writer in the Holy Land a generation later had Philip II comment caustically, ‘considering how many noblemen
have been at this siege, it is extraordinary how slow they have been to take it.’
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Saladin’s failure to dislodge the Christians in 1189–90, prevent their reinforcement by sea or secure uninterrupted naval supply lines to the city rendered the ultimate outcome almost certain. With the arrival of the western monarchs, he lacked any fresh tactics beyond stepping up raids on the Christian trenches and a systematic scorched earth policy in the surrounding countryside. Even so, the defenders mounted fierce and skilled resistance until overwhelmed by force of numbers and firepower. Such was the tenacity of the besieged that the attackers almost literally had to demolish the defences of Acre stone by stone. Although a damaging blow to Saladin’s carefully constructed warrior image, the manner of Acre’s fall suggested that Jerusalem would be no pushover for the Christian invaders.
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The last weeks of the siege were dominated by the contest of the Christian siege engines, catapults, sappers and scaling ladders against the defenders’ incendiary missiles, stone-throwing machines and counter-sappers. Each Christian commander possessed his own great stone-throwers. The duke of Burgundy, the Templars, the Hospitallers and the Pisans each had one. Philip II had many, his best, called ‘Malvoisine’ or ‘Bad Neighbour’, constantly needing repair as it was a prime target of enemy bombardment. The count of Flanders ran two, which, after his death on 1 June, were taken over by Richard I, who built two more as well as a couple of mangonels and a siege tower. Philip also constructed a protected shooting platform and an elaborate scaling device, although both were destroyed by fire. The common fund, established in the Christian camp at least since the autumn of 1190, paid for its own stone-thrower, ‘God’s Petrary’.
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This display of advanced military technology was supported by manpower. Casualties seemed to be no deterrent to the attackers, a profligacy with human life which negated the garrison’s defensive advantage of the protection of the well-built walls. Saladin’s repeated assaults of the now vast crusader camp never threatened to disrupt the relentless battering against the city. Numbers clearly mattered. There may have been only a few thousand fighters within Acre, while Saladin’s army, despite regular reinforcement, cannot have matched the gathered strength of the Christians, whose army may have numbered by this time well over 25,000 men. Both Philip and Richard were freely able to recruit mercenary knights when they arrived. Realistically, only famine, disease or political implosion could have
prevented the Christian victory. As it happened, two of these did threaten the crusader juggernaut.

Within days of Richard’s arrival, both kings were struck down with what contemporaries called ‘Arnaldia’ or ‘Leonardie’, perhaps a form of scurvy or trench mouth, which caused the victims’ hair and nails to fall out.
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Richard almost died. Although both recovered, Richard more slowly than Philip, the effects of the illness remained. Philip, despite surviving another thirty-two years, never entirely lost the traces of this debilitating condition, while Richard’s health remained bad for the rest of his time in Palestine, more than once influencing his conduct of diplomacy and, perhaps, the war itself. Immediately, the sickness of the two kings shook morale. To counter any sense of drift or crisis, once the worst of his illness had passed, Richard had himself carried in a litter to within range of the city walls. There, under the protection of a specially constructed circular hut, he amused himself and inspired his troops by taking pot shots at the enemy with his crossbow.
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Potentially no less debilitating was the rivalry between the two kings. Philip’s sense of grievance at his treatment in Sicily, slighted when Richard seized Messina and insulted by Richard’s repudiation of his sister in favour of Berengaria, was exacerbated at almost every turn. Richard received the allegiance of the Pisans; their competitors, the Genoese, supported Philip. The French king’s demands for half of Cyprus under the terms of the Vézelay agreement were brushed aside. While Philip hired knights at three gold coins a month, Richard offered four. When the count of Flanders died, it was Richard not Philip who acquired his siege engines. Each king attempted to negotiate separately with Saladin over surrender terms for Acre. This partly grew out of their respective support for the opposing claimants to the Jerusalem throne. Philip had formed a close alliance with Conrad of Montferrat, while Richard promoted the interests of Guy of Lusignan, once his vassal in Poitou. Guy, with a small army, had already campaigned with Richard in Cyprus. It says much for Philip’s political weakness and Richard’s practical dominance that, in spite of the French king having the favour of a majority of the important local Outremer barons and with most of the crusade leaders being his vassals, Conrad’s succession remained blocked. Such rivalry at times endangered the military operations, as one side or the other failed to coordinate attacks, which consequently failed. The cumulative effect of this rancour fatally undermined Philip’s
commitment to the enterprise. A flavour of the bitterness of the kings’ relations was captured in a nasty little story that circulated in Outremer some years later. This had Richard telling a sick Philip that his only son, Louis, had died. He hoped Philip would die of shock and grief. In fact, Louis was not dead at all. But, the story went on, Philip was so shaken that he immediately arranged to return to the west.
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