Ambulantes et flentes properabunt.... In Sion interrogabunt viam, huc facies eorum.
While Richard was building, Saladin was pulling down. Having razed Ascalon, he on September 23 rejoined his main force at Jafna, thence returned with it next day to Ramlah, and set his men to raze the citadel of this latter place and the great fortified church of S. George at the neighbouring town of Lydda. On the 25th he left his army at Ramlah under Safadin to complete this work and watch the enemy, while he went to see with his own eyes the state of the defences of Jerusalem and take measures for securing their efficiency. On the 30th he returned to Ramlah.[797] To Richard this abandonment of all attempt to hold the country seemed like the conduct of “a man bereft of all counsel, and of all hope of succour”;[798] but Richard himself was not without secret misgivings as to the ultimate success of the Crusade. On the same day on which he wrote—probably to one of his ministers, for communication to his subjects in general[799]—the letter declaring his hope that Jerusalem would be won by the middle of January, he wrote also a letter to the abbot of Clairvaux which reveals more clearly the actual condition of affairs and the king’s real expectations as to their future course. He thought there was good hope that the whole “heritage of the Lord” would be speedily 1191 recovered; indeed, part of it was recovered already. But in the recovering of that part he had, as he truly said, borne the burden and heat of the day and exhausted not only his money but also his health and strength, so that he felt he could not stay in Syria beyond Easter; and the other western leaders, having spent all they had, would return to their homes unless fresh supplies of men, money, and other necessaries were sent out from Europe to enable them to remain. He therefore besought the abbot to stir up princes and peoples by his preaching, and induce them to make provision for the safety and defence, after Easter, of the Lord’s heritage, “which,” he said, “by God’s grace we shall have fully won by that time.”[800]
A nearer future than Easter had a share in Richard’s secret anxieties. All these weeks ships had been plying to and fro between Joppa and Acre, too many of them bringing from the northern city visitors who were not merely useless but undesirable, and carrying back thither lukewarm Crusaders who preferred its pleasures and indulgences to the hard work of the Holy War; whereby the host was considerably diminished in numbers.[801] The extent of the leakage seems to have been made fully apparent to the princes when at the end of September they removed their troops from the gardens to a new encampment somewhat further out, near the Casal of S. Habakkuk.[802] King Guy was commissioned to go to Acre and bring the truants back;[803] and while awaiting their return Richard, probably to keep the enemy inactive, sent on October 3 a messenger to Safadin to propose a renewal of the suspended negotiations. A few days earlier, Saladin had received from Conrad of Montferrat overtures for an alliance; Conrad offered to make peace with the Moslems, break openly with the Franks, and recover Acre for the former, if they would give him Sidon and Beyrout. Saladin was quite willing to agree to these terms—“for,” says Bohadin, “the marquis was a 1191 most terrible adversary to us”—but not to grant Conrad’s demand that the Sultan should pledge himself by oath to the cession of the two sea-ports, till Conrad should first have proved his sincerity by attacking his fellow-Christians at Acre and releasing his Moslem prisoners at Tyre.[804]
On October 4 Saladin, finding that at Ramlah he could not get enough fodder for his horses and camels, owing to his foragers being too much exposed to attacks from the enemy, removed his army some eight or nine miles south-eastward into the hills, close to a place whose character is expressed in one form of its name, Natroun, “post of observation.”[805] The Franks called the place Toron of the Knights; “toron” meaning height or mount, and the knights being those of the Temple, who had built on its summit a tower of great strength overlooking two of the roads to Jerusalem. This tower Saladin at once began to pull down; like the other strongholds which he had demolished, it was useless to him for present purposes, and could be of value only to his enemies, should the site fall Oct. 8 into their hands. Four days later Safadin, whom he had left at Ramlah in command of the advanced guard, sent him word that Richard, having discovered Conrad’s dealings with the Sultan, had sailed for Acre in order to put a stop to them by making friends with the marquis.[806] There was, however, another reason for the king’s visit to Acre. The loiterers there were so slow to move at the bidding of Guy that it was clearly necessary to bring a stronger influence to bear upon them. Richard’s exhortations took such effect Oct. 13 that within a fortnight[807] he was back at Joppa accompanied 1191 not only by the two queens, whom he established there with their attendants, but also by so “much people” that the host seemed to have become more numerous than ever.[808] It took another fortnight to clear out of Acre and convey by sea to the new base the remaining stragglers and the stores needed for a fresh advance.[809] During this enforced delay the host was once at least very near losing its commander-in-chief. Richard, having ridden out with a very small escort partly to exercise his hawks,[810] partly to look out for an opportunity of surprising the Turks, was himself surprised by some of them when he had stopped to rest and fallen asleep. Awaking just in time, he sprang to horse and drove them off, but they led him into an ambush, and he was only saved from capture by the devotion of William des Préaux, who concentrated the attention of the enemies on himself by shouting, “Saracens, I am Melec”—that is, the king—and was seized and hurried away accordingly, while the real king escaped. The whole host was aghast when the adventure became known, and some of Richard’s friends upbraided him for his rashness and implored him, for the sake of the cause to which his safety was so important, never again to expose himself thus without sufficient escort; but it was all in vain. “In every conflict he delighted in being the first to attack and the last to return.”[811]
Meanwhile Richard had, immediately on his return to Joppa, renewed his friendly intercourse with Safadin by sending him a beautiful horse as a present. A few days later an envoy from Safadin came, by the king’s desire, to meet him at Yazour, some four miles, from Joppa on the road to Ramlah, to receive his proposals for a treaty. Of these proposals the Moslem envoy carried back two sets, one for direct transmission to the Sultan, the other intended primarily for Safadin’s personal consideration. To Saladin 1191 the king wrote that, with Franks and Moslems alike perishing and the country ruined, the war had gone far enough; the only matters in dispute were the Holy City, the Cross, and the limits of the two realms, Christian and Mussulman. Their claim to Jerusalem, as the most sacred seat of their Faith, the Christians could not renounce so long as there was one man of them left alive. Of the country they claimed restitution up to the western bank of the Jordan. As for the Cross, “seeing that to the Moslems it is but a piece of wood,” Saladin might well give it back to those who accounted it a sacred treasure; and thus should there be for both parties peace and rest from their labours. Saladin at once decisively refused all three conditions.[812] To Safadin the king had proposed another scheme: that Safadin should take Queen Joan of Sicily to wife, and reign over the land jointly with her, she holding Jerusalem as her royal seat, Richard endowing her with Acre, Joppa, and Ascalon (which he accounted his own conquests), the Sultan c. Oct. 18 giving the Holy Cross to the Christians, and all the places which he held in the Sahel or Maritime Plain to his brother and declaring him king of the land. With these terms Safadin appeared well pleased, and Saladin, when they were laid before him, answered immediately and emphatically, “Yes! yes! yes!”—“being,” says Bohadin who was present and who knew him well enough to read his thoughts, “persuaded that the king would never really sanction such a thing, and proposed it only in trickery and play.” His persuasion was justified; when on October 23 an envoy from the Sultan and his brother again came to the Christian camp, he was sent back with a message that when the king had told his sister of the marriage proposed for her, she had become “furious with indignation and wrath,” and sworn by all she held sacred that she would never submit to it; whereupon her brother had promised to bring, if he could, Safadin to accept Christianity. All this was of course mere diplomacy to wile away the time till the host was ready for a further advance; and on the 27th Saladin received Oct. 28 tidings that the enemy was preparing to leave Joppa. Next 1191 day the Sultan returned to Ramlah. On the 29th he sent some troops to surprise the Christian camp, but they were driven off and put to flight.[813] On the 30th Richard, “wandering about in the plain towards Ramlah,” espied a reconnoitring party of Saracens, attacked them without hesitation, slew several of them and scattered the rest.[814] On the 31st, having completed his arrangements for the security of Joppa, he led the host on the first stage of its advance towards Jerusalem.
The stage was a very short one—only two miles, to Yazour, or as the Franks called it, the Casal of the Plains. This place and Casal Maen, which seems to have been the Frankish name for Beit Dejan, about two miles further to the south-east, had been Frankish strongholds, recently dismantled by the Saracens; it was important that they should be restored in order to secure the command of the road leading from Joppa into the hills. Richard undertook the restoration of Casal Maen, and the Templars that of Casal des Plains; the host lay encamped between the two places for Nov. 1-15 a fortnight while the work was in progress. The Turks did their utmost to hinder it by sending out skirmishing parties. One of these, having been put to flight, was pursued by Richard so far that before he turned back he actually saw Nov. 6 Ramlah and the Sultan’s army there.[815] Another day a foraging party protected by a small escort of Templars was suddenly surrounded by a numerous body of Turks at “Bombrac,” properly Ibn Ibrak or Beni Berak, about two miles from Casal Maen. On learning their peril Richard, who was busy superintending the works at Casal Maen, sent some knights to the rescue and quickly followed in person. When he reached the spot the position of the little band looked so hopeless and the enemy’s numbers so overwhelming that his companions besought him to retire, “for,” said they, “if mischief should befall you, there would be an end of Christendom!”[816] “I sent those men here; if they die 1191 without me, may I never again be called king,” was his reply. Setting spurs to his horse and giving him the rein, he burst “like lightning” into the enemy’s ranks, and laid about him so furiously that they all either fled “like beasts,” or were slain or made prisoners.[817] Such is the Frankish version of this encounter; Bohadin, however, describes it as a success for the Saracens,[818] and makes no mention of Richard’s presence.
That evening Richard sent a messenger to Safadin, complaining of these attacks as breaches of their friendly relations, Nov. 3 and again asking him for a personal interview.[819] Three days before, Reginald of Sidon had come to Saladin from Tyre with a renewal of Conrad’s proposal of an alliance against the Crusaders. As before, Saladin gave equal encouragement to both parties. On the 8th Safadin and Richard met in a large tent set up for the purpose[820] “between the Casal of the Temple and that of Josaphat”;[821] each brought with him “all such gifts as princes are wont to give to one another,” and the special delicacies in food and drink most esteemed among his own people, for the delectation of the other.[822] Safadin crowned the entertainment by introducing a singing girl, and Richard professed himself greatly pleased with the Saracen mode of singing.[823] The rest of the day was spent in talk, and they parted with a mutual promise of fast friendship and a renewed request from Richard that Safadin would procure for him an interview with the Sultan. Saladin refused to meet him, giving the same reason as on a previous occasion.[824] Meanwhile Reginald was in the Sultan’s camp, splendidly lodged in a tent filled with every oriental luxury, treated with marked courtesy, and sometimes accompanying Safadin when that prince rode out to reconnoitre the Christian host. Saladin himself inclined to accept the offers of Conrad. “If we make peace with the western Franks,” he said privately to Bohadin, “it will never be a secure one; if I were to die, it would be very difficult to 1191 get our army together again, and before this could be done all the forces of our foes would have united. It were wiser to fight on till we have either expelled them from our coasts or died in the attempt.” Richard, however, anxious to prevent an alliance between Saladin and Conrad which would undoubtedly have been fraught with grave peril to the Christian cause, twice renewed his proposals in a modified form, each time lowering his demands and offering fresh concessions; so when on November 11[825] Saladin laid the propositions of the marquis and those of the king before a council of his emirs, they declared in favour of the latter. Saladin yielded to their opinion. But Richard had reserved for himself a way of escape. “The whole Christian community,” he said, “is blaming me for proposing to wed my sister to a Mussulman without leave from the Pope. I will therefore send an envoy to him, and in six months I shall have his answer. If he consents, well; if not, I will give you my brother’s daughter, in which case the Pope’s sanction will not be needed.” To this Saladin replied: “If the alliance is to be made, let it be made on the original terms; I will not go back from my word; but if that marriage fail, we want no other.”[826] Thus the matter remained in abeyance for several months. On the day (November 15) on which he sent this last rejoinder Saladin again retired from Ramlah to the neighbourhood of Natroun[827]; and shortly afterwards 1191 the Christian host advanced from its encampment between the two restored Casals into the plain between Ramlah and Lydda. Here they pitched their tents and waited for reinforcements and supplies.[828]
The rank and file were naturally puzzled and scandalized by Richard’s diplomatic dealings with the Infidels, which seemed to them unlawful, and of which they neither understood the purpose nor knew the real character. The Frank chroniclers excuse him as a simple-minded Christian duped by the cunning of the Saracens. He cleared himself in the eyes of his accusers in a fashion of his own. “Right and left the enemies came swarming about the camp; and the king met them and gave practical proof of his loyalty to God and Christendom, for several times he shewed in the host the many Turks’ heads that he had cut off.”[829]
Besides the enemy, the Crusaders had now another obstacle to contend with—the climate. The “former rains,” or heavy showers which open the agricultural year in Palestine, would begin about the time when the host left Joppa, at the end of October, and continue through November; these would be followed by a season of constantly increasing rainfall lasting throughout the next three months. This great rain “pursued the soldiers of the Cross,” as one of them says, till it drove them to take what shelter they could find within the ruins of Ramlah and Lydda.[830] Here they remained “in great discomfort and difficulties”[831] till the end of December or beginning of January. Saladin held them in check by remaining in his camp near Natroun till December 12; then he withdrew to Jerusalem and disbanded his army[832] for the rest of the winter, trusting for the defence of Judea to the guerilla troops who still remained among the hills, to the weather, and above all, to the physical character of the country. The Christian host was now on the edge of the Shephelah, or Lowlands of Judea, so called in distinction 1191 from the “Hills” proper, the loftier central range, or ridge, which forms the backbone of the land, and on whose eastern side lie Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The low, soft chalk-hills of the Shephelah are not a range; they lie in groups and clusters interspersed with level spaces and valleys opening into the plain on the west, and falling on the east into the long, deep trench which runs between the “Lowlands” and the “Highlands” like—as a modern writer says—“a great fosse planted along the ramparts of Judea.” At the mouth of the northernmost of these cross-valleys—Joshua’s Valley of Ajalon—Lydda and Ramlah were frontier towns of the Shephelah and the maritime plain. Along this vale or over the low hills on each side of it, and through the narrow defiles which at its other end penetrate the central range, ran the most direct lines of communication between the Holy City and the coast. One of these was the old “way that goeth to Beth-horon” from Gibeon on the plateau above Jerusalem. This road led to Joppa through Lydda; so did another which crossed the fosse some three miles south of the first. The two were linked together by a cross-road which ran on south-westward to the ancient Nicopolis—called Amwas by the Arabs and Emmaus by the Franks—and then divided into two branches, one going southward by Natroun, the other to Joppa through Ramlah. This latter way seems to have been in general use since the eighth century, when the first Moslem conquerors overthrew Lydda and founded Ramlah to supersede it.[833] The First Crusaders had marched by the road from Ramlah to Emmaus and thence to Beth-horon, Gibeon, and Jerusalem, without opposition. Richard resolved to try how far he could follow in their steps; but he knew he could not expect such good fortune as theirs, for the Shephelah was still full of what one Frank writer calls “the outside Turkish army,”[834] that is, the troops whom Saladin had left to keep guard and to prowl about among the hills, in contradistinction to the 1191 “inner” force which was with him at Jerusalem. In this district of tumbled hill and dale, moorland, glen, and torrent-bed, of chalky slopes and limestone boulders covered with thick scrub and brushwood that sheltered caves and hiding-places innumerable, these light-armed Saracen horsemen were at home, and had every advantage for the guerilla warfare in which they excelled; and the ease and rapidity with which they could move about through the intricacies of the hills enabled them to swoop down suddenly from the most unexpected quarters, with fatal effect, upon foraging or reconnoitring parties and convoys.[835] One chronicler says that when the bulk of the host sought shelter in Lydda and Ramlah, the count of Saint-Pol betook himself to “the Casal of the Baths”; which seems to represent a place now called Umm-el-Hummum, about twelve miles north-east of Lydda.[836] If this statement be correct, the count’s object may perhaps have been to act as an advanced guard on that side of the host and keep watch against a possible gathering of the Saracens in force on the lower slopes of the hills of Samaria—especially at Mirabel, or as the Saracens called it Mejdel Yaba, which was close to Umm-el-Hummum and one of the few castles which Saladin had not caused to be evacuated—and their descent thence on the Christians at Lydda. It is at any rate probable that Richard’s purpose was to render some such service as this in another direction, towards the south and south-east of Ramlah, when on December 22 or 23 he removed his own headquarters to the “Post of Observation,” Natroun, which Saladin had quitted ten days before.[837] On that day, however, a convoy from Joppa was intercepted by the enemy; and similar mishaps occurred several times in the ensuing week.[838] To this unsatisfactory Dec. state of affairs the leaders, having now fully ascertained 1191 that Saladin and his main army had really “taken to the Mountains” properly so called—the mountain-wall which shelters Jerusalem from the world—“and left the champaign to us,” boldly decided to put an end by advancing to the foot of the said mountains, where they told their followers they would find a resting-place and be able to get food for themselves.[839]
The advance was ordered for January 3. Some of the Saracen guerilla bands which were constantly scouring the country between Joppa and the hills had apparently discovered that a movement was in contemplation, but were uncertain as to its object; they spent the night of the Jan. 3 2nd lying hid near Casal des Plains and at daybreak dashed forward in the direction which the host was about to take; probably they hoped to lie hidden while it passed, and fall at unawares on the rearguard or the slow-moving baggage-train. Richard, however, knew of their lying in wait, and had himself, with Geoffrey de Lusignan, been lying in wait for them all the preceding night at the Casal of the Baths; a locality where, seeing that it was quite as far (in a different direction) from Lydda as their own lurking-place and double that distance from his known headquarters at Natroun, they were not likely to suspect his presence. While they were hurrying up from the west, he was spurring to meet them from the north, the very opposite quarter to that where they doubtless supposed him to be; and scarcely had they pounced upon and slain two men-at-arms who went forth alone in advance of the host, when the unexpected apparition of a banner which they well knew to be the king’s, and a figure whose bearing and headlong onset were equally unmistakeable,[840] threw them into utter confusion. Most of them fled in the very direction whence Richard had come, towards Mirabel; probably hoping to escape pursuit among the hills. Richard, who was mounted on Fauvel, dashed after them and unhorsed two before any of his own followers 1192 could rejoin him; some twenty others were slain or brought back prisoners to the Christian camp.[841]
A march of ten miles brought the host to Beit Nuba, on a level space of high ground close to the northern end of the natural fosse which lies between the Shephelah and the mountain range. The hearts of the pilgrims “were glad with the hope that they were going to the Sepulchre”; but “their bodies were ill at ease,” for the Syrian winter was now at its worst, and in their present exposed encampment there was no shelter from its ravages. Stormy wind and tempest, torrential rain and hail, beat down or tore up the tents; armour rusted, clothes rotted, biscuits and bacon were so soaked that they became putrid; horses died, men sickened; and in less than a week “the wise Templars, the brave Hospitaliers, and the men of the land” came to the conclusion that under the existing circumstances an attempt to besiege Jerusalem could lead to nothing but disaster. They told Richard that if the city were invested its besiegers would be between two fires, Saladin breaking forth upon them from within and the “outside” Turkish army cutting them off from communication with the coast and depriving them of supplies.[842] The men who spoke thus knew well that it was vain to dream of existing by foraging on the barren, rocky tableland which forms the summit of the Judean mountain-range, and that the host, if it got there at all, would probably starve long before the defenders of the city, which Saladin was sure to have victualled for a siege, and which it would hardly be possible to blockade so completely as to cut it off from all means of obtaining further provisions. Nor was this all. Supposing—these counsellors urged—that the city were taken, its capture would be useless unless it could be at once filled with troops capable of holding it permanently; and this would be no easy matter, for the western pilgrims, who formed the bulk of the host, would return to their home-lands as soon as their pilgrimage was accomplished, and thus when they were gone 1192 all that had been won would be lost again.[843] Hereupon the western leaders called a council of war at Natroun;[844] they may have retired there on purpose to be well away from the rest of the army while discussing the matter. However this may be, they asked “the wise folk who were born in the land” what course they would recommend under existing circumstances. The Templars and Hospitaliers Jan. 6-13 at once answered that what they would advise was not to proceed towards Jerusalem at present, but to re-fortify and occupy Ascalon, so as to obtain some control over the transit of provisions from the great Saracen storehouse, Cairo, to the Holy City.[845] An Arab historian gives, very likely from the report of some spy who overheard the proceedings of the council, a curious account of the way in which the final decision was reached. Richard, he says, asked to see a plan of Jerusalem, that he might judge for himself of the force of the arguments put forward by the Knights. They drew a plan for him; and when he thoroughly understood the character of the site and surroundings of the city, he pronounced them such as to make the city, in his opinion, virtually impregnable “so long”—thus the Arab reports the words of the western king—“as Saladin lives and the Moslems are united.”[846] Before the middle of January the host was back at Ramlah.[847]
Whether Richard’s verdict on the prospects of the Crusade was really quite so pessimistic as Ibn Alathyr represents may be doubted. The scheme now proposed by the Military Orders and accepted by the king was simply a reversion to the original plan of campaign with which they had all set out from Acre, and from which Saladin’s seeming panic after Arsuf had tempted them to diverge; and there can be little doubt that the divergence was unwise. The Frank pilgrim-chroniclers, sharing and voicing the disappointment of the rank and file, declare indeed that the retirement from Beit Nuba was a blunder, and that if their leaders had but known the evil plight—due, like their own, to the weather—of Saladin and his men at Jerusalem, the city might, “without doubt,” have been taken easily.[848] But those who spoke thus could have no real knowledge as to the state of affairs in Jerusalem, and their version of it finds no countenance in the pages of Bohadin, who was there, and who may fairly be trusted on the subject, since he makes no mystery about the Sultan’s perils and alarms on other occasions. The picture drawn by the very same Frankish chroniclers of the condition in which the host, “doleful and down-hearted,” marched back to Ramlah shows that it was quite unfit to attempt an invasion of the hill-country. Men and beasts were alike worn out with weakness and fever, caused by the wet and cold, and many of the “lesser folk,” sick and helpless, would have been left behind but for King Richard, who caused them to be sought out and brought away in safety.[849] Among the French Crusaders discontent took the form of wholesale desertion. Some went to Joppa; of these, some stayed there, and others sailed back to Acre, “where living was not dear,” sarcastically observes the Norman poet; some joined the marquis at Tyre, whither he had long been trying to entice them; the duke of Burgundy himself went off in dudgeon with his followers to Casal of the Plains. Extremely angry, but nothing daunted, Richard and the faithful remnant of the host set out on January 19 by a road which, crossing the plain from Ramlah, brought them back 1192 at Ibelin[850] to the main road along the coast. The ten miles’ march through mud and mire to Ibelin was a sufficiently Jan. 20 hard day’s work; but “that day was nothing compared to the next,” when nearly double that distance had to be covered, on a road where men and horses were constantly sinking into swamps, and beneath a ceaseless downpour of rain, hail and snow; and when at length they arrived before Ascalon, they could only make their way into the place by clambering over heaps of broken wall, and find a partial shelter among the ruins within.[851]
Ascalon stood amid what the poet-pilgrim Ambrose emphatically calls “a very good country”; but the stormy season, and the uncertainty as to how many armed enemies might be still lurking around, made this practically useless for foraging purposes; and the harbour was a dangerous one, the sea being often so rough that no ship could ride in it. This was the case for a week after the arrival of the Crusaders, who were thus limited to what little food they had brought with them—much of the stores with which they started from Ramlah having been lost in the swamps on the way—till by a change in the weather the transports coming from Joppa to meet them were enabled to land their supplies. Scarcely was this done, however, when the storms rose again, and barges and galleys and “all our beautiful smacks” were dashed to pieces and some of the sailors drowned. Richard caused all the wood that drifted ashore to be collected and employed for the construction of some galleys, which he destined for his own use; “but,” adds 1192 Ambrose, “it was not to be.” Towards Candlemas he sent a message to the French, exhorting them to restore the unity of the host by coming to rejoin their brethren and take counsel with them as to what should be done next. They answered that they would come, and would continue with him till Easter (April 5), on condition that if they then wished to depart, he would give them safe-conduct by land to Acre or Tyre. To this he agreed; whereupon they came, and—the worst of the winter’s rages having now subsided—the reunited host by common consent set to work to rebuild Ascalon. The task was no light one; it was said that the fortifications had originally included no less than fifty-three great towers, all now almost levelled with the ground. Most of the nobles were by this time too short of money to be able to hire workmen; so knights, men-at-arms, squires, clerks, and laymen of all ranks set themselves to make a clearance of the ruins, with such a will that soon they were astonished at their own success. As the rebuilding, however, required more skilled labour than theirs, Richard took the direction of it upon himself, and not only caused the greater part of it to be performed at his expense, but also made good whatever was lacking of labour and of the money to pay for it in the parts assigned to the charge of others.[852] The English chronicler of the Crusade says the king wrought at the building with his own hands,[853] and we can well believe the story. Saladin was about this time doing the same thing at Jerusalem.[854]
Another small point of resemblance between the two sovereigns was a preference for doing their own scouting. One morning Richard, with a handful of picked knights, rode out from Ascalon to reconnoitre Darum. This castle, built by the late King Amalric on the site of an earlier fortification, had been the extreme south-western outpost of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem; it lay three or four 1192 miles south of the point where the coast-road crosses a watercourse which the historians of the Crusade called the Torrent or River of Egypt, because above that point it was in fact, in Amalric’s and Richard’s days and long afterwards, the boundary between Syria and Egypt.[855] Now that both these countries were under Moslem rule, Darum was the first halting-place in Syria for the caravans which brought supplies from “Babylon”—that is, Cairo—to Jerusalem. It chanced that when Richard drew near the place, a thousand Christian prisoners whom the Sultan was sending to Cairo under the charge of some of his household guards had just arrived there. At the sight of the king’s banner the escort, doubtless thinking the whole host from Ascalon was upon them, left the prisoners and sought shelter for themselves in the castle; but before they could reach it some were slain and twenty captured by Richard and his men. Thus, says Ambrose, “God delivered His people who were appointed to death, by sending King Richard to take the place of Saint Leonard, the liberator of captives.”[856]
Some of the Christians, Frank and Syrian, thus rescued made, no doubt, a welcome addition to the diminished numbers of the host. Richard had several times already sent letters or messages to the marquis, calling on him to come and rejoin the Crusade and render the military service due to the Crown of Jerusalem for the fiefs which he held of it. Conrad at first took no notice of these appeals; to another and more urgent summons he finally answered that he would not set foot in the camp till he had had a personal interview elsewhere with the king of England.[857] Richard seemingly felt it necessary to overlook his insolence and consent to a meeting at Casal Imbert, half way between Acre and Tyre. But meanwhile a new trouble arose. 1192 Philip of France had gone home in August 1191 without leaving his lieutenant in Palestine, the duke of Burgundy, any money for the pay of the French soldiers, counting for that purpose on the share due to him of the bezants which the two kings then expected to receive in a few weeks from Saladin. When this expectation had become hopeless, Hugh asked Richard for a loan, and Richard, to avoid losing the French troops altogether, lent him five thousand marks.[858] This sum was exhausted long before February 1192; the French troops clamoured for their dues; Hugh asked Richard for another loan. This Richard refused. High words passed, and the duke, with the greater part of the Frenchmen, straightway departed to Acre.[859] There they found the Pisans and Genoese at strife. Pending the recovery of Jerusalem, Acre served as temporary capital of the kingdom, and there accordingly King Guy seems to have remained since his return thither in September. His authority was upheld by the Pisans, who from the outset of the Crusade had attached themselves to Richard; the Genoese, having done homage to Philip Augustus, favoured the marquis, and were intriguing to put him in possession of the city. A skirmish between these two parties seems to have been going on when the French arrived; they took to their arms, whereupon the Pisans set themselves to bar their way; the duke’s horse was killed under him; then the Pisans rushed back into the city and shut the gates against him and his men. At this juncture Conrad, in response to the invitation of the Genoese, arrived by sea with his forces. The Pisans “took to the mangonels and stone-casters” and thus kept him off for three days while they sent to call Richard to the rescue. Their messenger found the king at Caesarea, on his way to the projected meeting with Conrad. A hasty ride brought him to Acre at dead of night, and “when the marquis knew that the king had come, nothing could hold him there, but he went with all speed back to Tyre,” whither Burgundy and the French were gone already.[860]
On the morrow Richard called together the people of Feb. 20 the city and made peace among them.[861] Soon afterwards the meeting with Conrad at Casal Imbert took place, but without any practical result.[862] Next, Richard demanded repayment of the loan which he had made to the duke of Burgundy six months before. Hugh acquitted himself of the debt by assigning to the king the most valuable of Philip’s Saracen prisoners, who were still in Conrad’s custody at Tyre; but he made no sign of rejoining the Crusade. Such a state of affairs threatened ruin to the whole enterprise, and after long and anxious deliberation in his own mind Richard took private counsel with the “elders and wise men of the land” as to what had best be done. They gave their judgement that the marquis had forfeited his rights under the settlement of July 1191, and should be deprived of the revenues then assigned to him in the kingdom.[863]
It was doubtless to keep some sort of watch upon Conrad that Richard remained at Acre till the end of March.[864] During the latter part of his stay there he was again engaged in negotiations with Saladin. When a messenger arrived at Jerusalem with a request that Safadin might be sent to confer with the king, nothing was known there of the Crusaders’ advance to Ascalon; Richard was believed by the Sultan to have placed his troops in winter quarters at Joppa and gone back thence straight to Acre.[865] Saladin Feb.-Mar. bade his brother go by way of the Jordan valley and Mount Tabor, collect the troops of those parts in readiness for a renewal of hostilities, and then—as usual—go and hear Richard’s proposals, and if they were not acceptable, drag out negotiations till the whole Saracen army had had time 1192 to re-assemble. A note was given him containing the utmost concessions that Saladin was willing to make. They were these: an equal division of the land; the Cross to be given back; the Christians to have priests in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and pilgrims to have access to it, provided they went unarmed. “He was,” says Bohadin, “driven to offer these terms, by the general weariness of long-continued warfare, by a load of debt, and by the long absence of his followers from their homes; for there were many who never left him, and who dared not ask for leave.”[866]