Earlier that morning, I had been pleased to run into Ambroise, my tubby
trouvère
friend, as I was hauling my gear to the stables. After an exchange of pleasantries, I asked him what had driven King Richard to make that awful decision to kill all the Saracen prisoners; I was still shocked by my sovereign’s actions, and I admit my faith in him as the noblest Christian knight of all had been shaken.
‘It wasn’t a pretty affair, I know,’ said Ambroise, ‘but it was necessary. Quite apart from revenge for all the Christian blood spilled by these people during the siege, all those crossbow bolts fired from the walls into our camp, what was Richard supposed to do with them?’
‘He could have waited until the ransom was paid,’ I said, ‘and then released them. Saladin has the reputation of a gentleman, a man of his word; he would surely have paid up given enough time. Wouldn’t he?’
‘Oh, Alan, you are naïve sometimes. Yes, they say Saladin is a gentlemen, but he is also a soldier, a great general. While Richard held those captives, our King could not move from Acre. And Saladin knew that, which is why he delayed the payment for as long as he could. Richard was, in effect, pinned down here by the prisoners. He could not afford to let them go; they would merely swell the enemy ranks; he couldn’t take them with him on the road south to Jerusalem - think of the men required to guard nearly three thousand people on a long dusty march, and feeding and watering them would be an expensive problem, too. No, he couldn’t let them go, and he couldn’t take them with him. He waited for Saladin to redeem them, but when it became clear that the Saracen lord would not pay up - or part with the piece of True Cross - Richard had no choice but to do what he did.’
I shook my head. I was sure that there must have been another way.
‘There is one more point to make in this bloody affair,’ said Ambroise, ‘no less important. We have captured Acre, but that isn’t the last fortress we have to take on the road to the Holy City, not by a long chalk: there’s Caesarea, Jaffa, Ascalon ... and many more before we take Jerusalem. And all those cities are watching very closely how Richard behaves here at Acre. And what have they learnt? That Richard follows the rules of warfare: he will accept surrenders, and spare the inhabitants of cities,
as long as the bargain made for their surrender is kept.
But he will have no qualms about slaughtering anyone who stands in his way or who breaks a bargain with him. Those cities have seen what Richard will do, if necessary, and I’ll wager his actions here at Acre will make the taking of them a whole lot easier.’
I shuddered slightly, as if a goose had stepped on my grave. King Richard’s attitude seemed to me to be uncannily similar to Robin’s ruthless approach to life and death.
Later that morning, mustered with Robin’s cavalry and awaiting orders, I looked down at the brownish, clotted sand as it crunched under my boots, and wondered if all that blood really would make the battles for other cities easier for our men. It seemed unlikely to me: surely if I were defending a city and I knew I was likely to be executed by Richard if I surrendered, I would fight all the harder to defend my walls. But what did I know?
The King had ordered the army into three great divisions, each roughly containing five or six thousand men, for the march south. In the lead division were the King’s chosen men, among them Sir Richard Malbête, the knights Templar and Hospitaller, along with the Bretons, the men of Anjou and the Poitevins; in the second division were the English and Norman contingents, who guarded King Richard’s personal Dragon Banner, and the Flemings under James of Avesnes; and in the third division came the French and Italians, led by Hugh, Duke of Burgundy, the most senior French noble in the Holy Land. We were to hug the coast, with our fleet shadowing us on the march, the great ships which would haul the heavy equipment and supply us with provisions along the way. Thus, with our right flank guarded by the fleet, we only needed to worry about the left.
Before we set off, Robin called all his lieutenants and captains together to give us our orders. ‘We are heading for Jaffa, which is eighty miles from here and the closest port to Jerusalem,’ said Robin when his senior men were gathered around him in a loose circle. ‘It will not be an easy march. We must take Jaffa if we wish to take Jerusalem, and Saladin, of course, aims to stop us.’ He looked around the circle to make sure everyone was paying attention.
‘Our position is to the rear of the central division; cavalry will form up in the centre with a screen of infantry, bowmen and spearmen, on the left and right of the horsemen. We stay together, we all march together, I can’t emphasise that enough. Any stragglers are likely to be cut up by Saladin’s cavalry. So, if you want to live, don’t get left behind, is that clear? The infantry’s job is to protect the cavalry. At some point during this march we will face Saladin’s main army and in order to beat him we must keep our heavy cavalry intact. So I say again: the bowmen and the spearmen are to act as a screen against their light cavalry, and their job is to protect our heavy cavalry at all costs. Sir James de Brus has more experience of our enemy, so I think it would be helpful to hear his views. Sir James...’
The Scotsman scowled and cleared his throat. ‘According to the few reports we have, Saladin fields some twenty to thirty thousand men, mostly light cavalry, but he also has two thousand fine Nubian swordsmen from Egypt, and a few thousand superior Berber cavalry - lancers, for the most part. In numbers alone, his force over-matches ours but his main arm, the Turkish light cavalry, is weaker, man to man, than our own horsemen. They are fast, much faster than our destriers, but only lightly armoured, and they use a short bow that can be shot from the back of a horse; secondary weapons are the curved sword or scimitar, the light lance and the mace. One on one, our knights will always beat their horsemen, but that’s not how they fight. They don’t stand and slug it out against single enemies.’
Someone muttered: ‘Cowardly scoundrels,’ and Sir James stopped and glowered round the circle of hard men. ‘These men are no cowards,’ he said. ‘Their tactic,’ and he gave special weight to the word, ‘is to ride in close to the enemy, loose their arrows, kill as many as they can, and ride away again before they can be challenged. That way their enemy gets hurt but they don’t. It is not cowardice, just good, plain common sense. But they have another tactic too, when facing Christian knights, which is to harass the enemy with their arrows, and try to provoke a charge. When our knights attack, the Turks disperse in all directions, and the heavy charge suddenly finds itself with no target. It’s like a big man trying to punch a swarm of wasps. Our knights become separated from each other, the force of the charge has been dissipated and the individual knights, scattered all over the field, can then be surrounded and slain by a dozen lighter, faster cavalrymen.’
Robin took over the briefing once again: ‘So we do not charge them. Our cavalry does not charge until we can be sure of landing a heavy blow on their main force and smashing it. And when they attack us, the infantry must soak up the punishment. The archers, of course, will take our revenge at a distance; but the spearmen must stand firm and take what they have to give us.’ Here Robin gave a wintry smile. ‘It is not all bad news for the footmen,’ he went on, ‘they will be divided into two companies, each taking a turn to defend the cavalry for one day on the left flank, the flank nearest the enemy; on the second day they will march between the cavalry and the sea, on the right, and enjoy a delightful stroll with hardly any danger at all. Anyone lucky enough to be wounded gets to ride in one of our nice comfortable ships.’ The men laughed, more as a release of tension than because the jest was a particularly good one.
‘Is everybody clear?’ said Robin. ‘If so ...’
‘What if we are directly attacked? Surely we can charge then,’ asked a dim-witted cavalry veteran named Mick.
Robin sighed: ‘They will feint at you often, but your job as a horseman is simply to march, march, march southward to Jaffa; try to understand this, Mick. The enemy wants you to charge him because he is faster than you and so you cannot catch him, and it will break up our formations. Once our cohesion is broken, and the men are scattered, the enemy has us at his mercy. So what will we do, Mick?’
‘Ah, oh, I suppose we should march, march, march all the way to Jaffa,’ said Mick, slightly embarrassed. There was more laughter, in which I was glad to see Mick joined.
‘Good man,’ said Robin.
It was truly a wondrous sight: like a gigantic glittering snake, nearly a mile long, the Christian army set out from Acre, pennants flying, clarions crying, the hot sun reflecting shards of light from thousands of mail coats, shields, buckles and spear points. We left behind a strong garrison; most of the young women we had accumulated in our travels, including Richard’s new bride Queen Berengaria and his sister Queen Joanna, and two or three thousand or so sick and wounded. I wondered what had become of Nur, whether I would ever see her again - whether I wanted to - and then pushed that thought away: this was not a time for self-pity.
King Richard, splendid in his finest gilt-chased armour, a golden crown on the brow of his steel conical helmet, rode up and down the line all that first day with a company of knights, exhorting the commanders to keep their companies close together and not allow any to lag behind. He seemed to be brimming with energy, now that we were finally setting off towards our destination, and his strong voice could be heard in snatches up and down the column, over the immense tumult of nearly eighteen thousand men on the move.
We marched in the rear part of the second division, myself riding Ghost at a walk in a double column with eighty-two surviving mounted men-at-arms, led by Robin and Sir James de Brus. Like all the other troopers, I carried shield and lance, and wore an open-face helmet, knee-length hauberk and felt under-tunic beneath the mail, despite the blistering heat. We were plagued by huge clouds of flies that buzzed and crawled over our faces, drinking the sweat and as we were for ever slapping and brushing at them, we must have looked like and army of lunatics, twitching and flapping and sweating as we ambled along in the harsh morning sunshine.
To my left walked Little John’s company, a mixture of archers and spearmen. To my right, past the other line of cavalry troopers, marched Owain’s men on the seaward side. We had one hundred and sixty one archers fit for duty and eighty-five spearmen - I knew this because Robin had asked me to make an accurate tally before we left. Some of our men had died en route to Outremer, some perished in the siege, and some were sick with fever and had to be left at Acre, but ours was still a formidable force. The archers and spearmen had been divided between two companies: one commanded by Owain, and the other by Little John. If attacked, the spearmen were to form a shield wall and stand firm, and behind them the archers were to shoot down the foe. We cavalrymen were not to take any offensive action, unless absolutely necessary: as Robin had hammered home to us, our job was to march, march, march - and stay together.
Behind us came a small force of belligerent Flemings, and then the French knights of the third division. They were the rearguard, and also had charge of protecting the baggage train: forty lumbering ox-carts, several strings of pack horses, and three dozen mules. Most of the baggage was on board the galleys of the fleet, which could just be seen, keeping pace with us out on the calm blue water to our left, wet oars dipping and flashing like freshly caught mackerel in the sunlight.
By mid-morning it was already evident that the column had problems. The gap between our second division and the Frenchmen of the third seemed to grow larger with every step. And we were reluctant to slow our march because it would mean losing touch with the Norman knights in front of us. So we stuck rigidly to our pace and the space between our company and the French grew wider. At one point, King Richard came thundering past with a tail of sweating household knights, and I could hear him shouting angrily at the French commander, Hugh, Duke of Burgundy, telling him in no uncertain terms to keep up. I could not hear the Duke’s reply, but the harangue seemed to have no effect at all, as the hole in the marching column continued to grow. At noon, having covered no more than five miles, we stopped for a meal and a much-needed drink of lukewarm water from our skins. It was then that I noticed, for the first time, the enemy scouts.
Three hundred yards to my left, riding along the top of a small sandy ridge, was a line of cavalry: small, lean men on small, wiry ponies, their heads wrapped in black turbans, from which the crown of a steel helmet with a cruel looking spike emerged. I could see the shape of their short bows, protruding from a leather carrier behind the saddle. They looked an evil crew, their dark bearded faces seemingly marked with malice and a lust to spill Christian blood. Despite the heat, I shivered.
As we resumed our march, the enemy cavalry kept pace with us, hour after hour, walking their beasts, and coming no closer. Occasionally one rider would peel off from the column and gallop away to the northeast to make a report to the main body of the Saracen host, which was out of sight somewhere in the hills. By mid-afternoon, I noticed that the line of Saracen scouts had thickened considerably - instead of a single row of walking ponies, there were now a fat column of men and horses, three or four deep. And behind the enemy column I could see more horsemen coming to join them. I looked behind me: the gap between our division and the ranks of the French cavalry had opened even wider. There was now a good quarter of a mile of empty space between us.
‘Should we stop and wait for the French?’ I asked Robin. I knew what he would say before I even finished the question.
‘We have our orders,’ said Robin tersely.
I twisted in the saddle and looked behind me again. The third division was composed of a little more than a thousand mounted knights, mostly French but also with a few hundred renowned Italian noblemen from Pisa, Ravanna and Verona. They were accompanied by more than five thousand spearmen and crossbowmen, unhorsed men-at-arms, servants, muleteers, ox-cart drivers and assorted hangers-on. Despite King Richard’s clear orders, they even seemed to have brought along all their women. In the vanguard of the division, in two glittering ranks, rode five hundred French knights, splendid in bright surcoats and riding under gaily fluttering pennants. Behind them trundled the ox-carts and the mule trains, guarded on either side by the footmen: tall spearmen in leather armour and skilled Italian crossbowmen, their bows over their shoulders, singing as they marched. In the rear was another double row of knights. The formation was a good one, designed as it was for the defence of the supplies in the wagons, or it would have been but for the yawning space between the third division and the rest of the army. There seemed to be no sense of urgency, but I could see that the real problem was the ox-carts, which moved along too slowly. Even moving at a walking pace, the double row of knights at the front was constantly having to rein in and wait for the big wagons to catch them up. And every time they did this, the space in our column gaped a little wider.