Circumdate Sion et complectimini eam ... et distribuite domos ejus, ut enarratis in progenie altera.
The abandonment of the projected expedition to Ibelin was due to more causes than one. On the day of the May 22 surrender of Darum Saladin had yielded to the necessity strongly urged upon him by his emirs, of restoring peace and unity within the borders of Islam as the essential preliminary to a renewal of the “Holy” war, and had despatched Safadin with full powers to make whatever terms he might think good with his rebel great-nephew El Mansour.[922] The settlement thus made enabled the Sultan to call out all his forces again for action against the Franks; and so prompt was the response to his call that two important contingents, under the Emirs Bedr-ed-Din and Ezz-ed-Din, reached Jerusalem on the last day of May, just as the Christian host was on its march northward from Cassaba. Hearing that it was at the “parting of the roads” between Ascalon and Ibelin, he despatched Ezz-ed-Din with the newly arrived forces to intercept it, and an encounter in circumstances which would have been highly unfavourable to the Franks was only averted by the promptitude with which their leaders, on discovering Ezz-ed-Din’s approach, changed their plans and retired to Ascalon.[923] Ibelin was a place worth securing; but its capture was not essential to their present object; for the purpose of leading an army to Jerusalem the Wady el Afranj was as valueless as the Wady el Hesy. When once a new advance on Jerusalem was decided on, 1192 the matter of most urgent necessity was the restoration of the host to its fullest possible strength. Some of the French contingent were still at Acre. Thither Count Henry once more proceeded from Ascalon to call these recalcitrants back to their duty,[924] and also to collect any reinforcements that could be obtained from Tyre, Tripoli, or elsewhere.[925] Beit Nuba was appointed as the place where he and they were to rejoin the main body.[926] With the latter Richard on June 6 set out early in the morning, and in a few hours was encamped before Blanchegarde.[927]
From Blanchegarde three ways into the hill-country lay open. One was the valley of Elah (Wady es Sunt), which runs almost due east from the place where the Crusaders now were. This way was not attractive to invaders, because its continuation on the further side of the central trench was very difficult for troops. North-eastward from Blanchegarde a road ran along the border of the plain past the mouth of the valley of Sorek (Wady es Surar) to Natroun, and thence across the Shephelah to Beit Nuba. The valley of Sorek is the most direct and the easiest of all the natural ways that lead up from the plain to the mountains of Judah; but it had a great disadvantage. For an army advancing through it there was no possible base on the coast nearer than Ascalon or Joppa, both of them more than twenty miles distant from its western end. The only place within easy reach of it that could be called a coast-town was Ibelin-Yebna, and this was not a coast-town in the proper sense; it was four miles from the sea and had no harbour. Of all the roads that led to Jerusalem the best for the Crusaders was unquestionably the one which they had chosen for their first attempt—the Beit Nuba road, where they would have in their rear a safe double line of communication 1192 through Ramlah and Lydda with their original base at Joppa and thence, by land and sea, with Acre. On June 9 they advanced to Natroun,[928] and that night they intercepted a score of Turks returning from a plundering raid on Joppa; six escaped, the other fourteen were made prisoners.[929] Next day Richard with the men of his own domains moved on to Castle Arnold,[930] a place whose character is expressed in its modern Arabic name, Khurbet-el-Burj, “ruins of the Bourg,” burh or fortress; it had been built by his great-grandfather, King Fulk, on one of the highest hills in the Shephelah, about three and a half miles north-west of Beit Nuba, and commanded both the “way that goeth to Beth-horon” and the lower road along the foot of the hills, from Lydda by Beit Nuba to Jerusalem. Probably the Turks had dismantled it; Richard pitched his tents “on a high place to the right.” He was joined by the rest of the June 10 army next day, when all together proceeded to Beit Nuba and encamped there to wait for Count Henry and his recruits.[931]
On that same day Saladin, whose scouts kept him well informed of all the enemy’s movements, held a council to decide what course should be taken in view of their apparent intention to attempt the siege of Jerusalem. It was settled that the defence of the walls should be divided among the emirs, a certain portion being assigned to each of them, and that the Sultan himself with the rest of his army should take the field against the invaders.[932] The latter part of this arrangement was, however, not carried into effect: throughout the three weeks which the Franks spent at Beit Nuba they never encountered Saladin, and no general engagement took place, though there were, as Ambrose says, many “adventures and skirmishes and discomfitures,” in several of which Richard was personally engaged. One of these 1192 counterbalanced, within twenty-four hours, an evil omen for the Franks with which, according to Bohadin, their stay at Beit Nuba began—the falling of a convoy from Joppa into a Turkish ambush on June 12.[933] That night a scout sent out by Richard returned from the hill of Gibeon—called by the Franks Montjoie, because it was the place whence the earliest Crusaders had first seen the Holy City—with tidings of another ambush which, he seems to have learned, was posted near “the Fountain of Emmaus,” or Amwas, half way between Natroun and Beit Nuba, and close to the point where the roads from Natroun and Ramlah meet. Before dawn Richard was in the saddle; at daybreak he was at the Fountain; the Turks were caught at unawares, twenty were slain, one was captured and his life spared because he was Saladin’s herald; three camels, several fine Turcoman horses, and two good mules laden with silk stuffs, aloes, and spicery, were the prize of the victor. The rest of the party he chased over the hills till he overtook and slew one of them, seemingly on the “Mount of Joy” itself, for according to Ambrose—who says he had the story of the adventure from one who took part in it—he “saw Jerusalem plainly” before he turned back.[934] During his absence from the camp it had been assailed by a band of Turks, but they were driven back into the hills.[935] An attempt of the enemies to intercept another caravan three or four days later was equally unsuccessful, though the Turks killed a few Christians and took some prisoners.[936]
Meanwhile the lesser folk were growing tired of waiting for Henry, and impatiently asking whether they were or June 16-20 were not really going to Jerusalem this time. Some of the French nobles urged Richard to lead the host at once to Jerusalem and begin the siege. He refused. He pointed out the risks which such a step would involve; he reminded 1192 them how easy it would be for Saladin, who always knew all their movements, to swoop down with his army into the plain in their rear and cut off their supplies and their communication with the sea, the circuit of the walls being too extensive to admit of the division of so small a force as theirs into two bodies, one to form the siege and the other to protect the besiegers and keep the ways clear for convoys. He would not, he said, be the leader of such an undertaking, because he had no mind to incur the blame for the disaster in which he believed it would result. He knew well, he added, that both in Holy Land and in France there were some persons who wished that he might wreck his reputation in some such way, but he was not minded to satisfy their desire. Moreover, he and the French were alike strangers in the land; it was not for them to take the responsibility, but for the Military Orders and the feudataries of the realm. “Let them decide whether we are to attempt the siege, or to go and take Babylon, or Beyrout, or Damascus. So shall there be no discord amongst us.”[937] The decision was committed to twenty umpires representing every division of the host except the subjects of Richard: five Templars, five Hospitaliers, five knights of Syria, and five barons of France. The first fifteen gave their award for an expedition against “Babylon”; but the French would not agree to this; they declared they would go to Jerusalem and nowhere else. Richard did his utmost to restore unity. He held out every possible inducement to the French to accept the Cairo project: “See, my fleet lies at Acre, ready to carry all the baggage, equipments, and accoutrements, biscuits and flour; the host would go all along by the shore and I would lead from here at my own charges seven hundred knights and two thousand men-at-arms; no man of mine should be lacking. But if they [that is, the French] will not do this, I am quite ready to go to the siege of Jerusalem; only be it known that I will not be the leader of the host; I will go in the company, as leader of my own men, but of no others.” And forthwith he bade all his men assemble in the quarters of the Hospitaliers, “and arrange what 1192 help they would give to the siege when they got to Jerusalem.”[938]
Before this last order was fully carried out an unexpected and most welcome diversion occurred. Saladin was now in daily expectation of some troops from Egypt, for whose despatch he had given orders some time before with a warning that they must be specially cautious when they approached the territory occupied by the Franks. These troops waited at Belbeis for the assembling of a great caravan, in company with which they finally set out for Jerusalem. All this was known to Richard through his scouts, who were fully equal in efficiency to those of Saladin; some of them were renegade Arabs[939]; others were Syrian Christians, so well disguised and speaking the “Saracen” tongue so perfectly as to be indistinguishable from real Saracens. Three of these Syrian spies came into the camp—seemingly on Sunday June 21[940]—and bade the king mount and ride with his men, and they would lead him to the great caravan that was coming up from Egypt. Richard, in his joy, asked Hugh of Burgundy and the other Frenchmen to join the expedition, and they did so, on condition of receiving a third part of the spoil. With five hundred knights and men-at-arms the king rode by moonlight to Blanchegarde and thence to Galatia, a town in the plain, half way between Ascalon and Ibelin of the Hospital; there he was within easy reach of both the coast-road and the inland road, and could also procure from Ascalon whatever supplies he needed, whether of fresh horses or provisions.[941] Saladin, as soon as he was informed of these movements, despatched five hundred picked Turkish soldiers under the emir Aslam to meet the force from Egypt and warn it of its danger.[942] He evidently expected that the Egyptians, knowing the 1192 coast to be practically in the hands of the Franks, would come by the inner or eastern road which after crossing the Wady Ghuzzeh divided into two branches, one passing over the mountains by Hebron and Bethlehem, the other through the Shephelah across the Wady el Hesy and thence by Beit Djibrin (Ibelin) to the valleys of Elah and Sorek. This latter route, being the easier and shorter, was the one which the Egyptians would naturally take and which Aslam took to meet them. His mission was to reach them, if possible, in the desert, and guide them by the safer though more toilsome and lengthy way over the mountain-range. Riding as only Arabs (and possibly Richard on Fauvel) could ride, he and June 22 his party did meet them, late in the evening, at what the Arabs called “the Waters of Kuweilfeh” and the Franks “the Round Cistern.” This was no doubt a well-known stage on the road from Egypt and Mecca; its site is at the southern foot of the Shephelah, close to the opening from the central fosse into the desert, and it would thus be the first watering-place for their beasts of burden after passing the Wady Ghuzzeh and before entering the hill-country. Aslam was urgent that the ascent to Hebron should be made that night; but the Egyptian commander, Felek-ed-Din, fearing lest the caravan should fail to keep together in the darkness, decided to wait till morning.[943] Meanwhile a native Syrian scout had come to Richard at Galatia and told him that if he made haste he might capture the caravan at the Round Cistern. Richard, conscious that there was no real need to hurry—since he and his horsemen could easily overtake the slow movements of a caravan—determined to verify the report before acting on it. He accordingly sent out three more scouts,[944] one a real Bedouin, the others native 1192 Turcoples disguised in Bedouin attire, to make a further reconnaissance in the evening. Meanwhile he and his troops seem to have advanced to the head of the Wady el Hesy, which Aslam had crossed shortly before them.[945] Here the returning scouts met them with the news that not only the caravan, but also the army from Egypt, was encamped at the Round Cistern for the night. The king gave orders for all to mount and ride, and, as they valued their honour, not to think of gain, but devote all their energy to routing the Turkish soldiers. He took his usual post in the van; the June 23 French formed the rearguard. By daybreak they were all close to their destination, and were forming up for attack when another scout came to warn them that their approach had been discovered and the caravan was on the alert. Richard sent forward some archers, Turcoples, and crossbowmen, to harass the enemies and impede their movements till he could come up with his other troops. The caravan remained stationary; the Moslem troops took up a sheltered position close to the hills and greeted their assailants with a thick cloud of missiles “which fell on the ground like dew,”[946] but it was all in vain. “Those of our men who were reputed bravest,” confesses Bohadin, “were glad to save their lives by the fleetness of their horses. It was long since Islam had had such a disgraceful defeat.”[947] Aslam, to the neglect of whose counsel the disaster was due, had before the fight began withdrawn with his troops into the mountains. Thither the others fled, chased by the Frank cavalry, while the infantry turned to secure the caravan. Aslam, seeing the Christian forces thus divided, seized his opportunity to send down by a side path a party of horsemen who attacked the Christian foot; but the attack was beaten off, and the caravan surrendered.[948] The booty was immense; there were more than four thousand camels laden with precious stores of the most varied kind, gold and silver, silks and purple cloth, grain and flour, sugar and spices, tents, hides, 1192 arms of all sorts; the horses and mules were “altogether beyond counting”; and besides all this, the Egyptian contingent so eagerly awaited by Saladin had lost nearly two thousand men[949] and suffered a most ignominious defeat. “No tidings,” says Bohadin, “ever dealt a more grievous wound to the heart of the Sultan than those which were brought to him at the close of that day.”[950]
Saladin at once prepared for the siege which he now felt
to be imminent. He ordered his captains to take up their
appointed positions round the walls and make all ready for
their defence, and he caused the brooks and pools round
about the city to be polluted, the wells filled up, and the
cisterns destroyed, so as to leave the assailants no means of
obtaining water, for it would be impossible for them to dig
new wells in that rocky soil. When all these precautions
were taken, however, he was still very anxious; for he knew
that among the Moslems, no less than among the Christians,
there was dissension as to the conduct of the war, and
jealousy and mutual distrust between the various nationalities
of which his host was composed; for although the
Sultan’s subjects were all lumped together indiscriminately
by the Frank writers as “Turks” or “Saracens,” some of
them were in reality much less closely akin and much less
1192
alike in origin, character, and habits, than were the men of
England and France and Italy and Germany. On the night
of Wednesday July 1 he called his emirs to a solemn council.
By his desire Bohadin opened it with an impassioned exhortation
to all present to persevere in the war, and proposed
that they should all take an oath on the Sacred Stone of the
Temple to hold together till death. Saladin himself appealed
to them as “the only fighting force and sole stay of Islam,”
on whom depended the safety of all Mussulmans everywhere.
They all pledged themselves to stand by him till death.
Thurs.,
July 2
Next day, however, they held a meeting among themselves,
and some of them there expressed their disapproval of the
Sultan’s strategy in shutting up “the only fighting force and
stay of Islam” at Jerusalem; they believed it would result
in the capture of the city and the destruction of the army
by a fate such as that of the garrison of Acre, and thus bring
the Mussulman dominion in Palestine to ruin, and that the
wiser course would be to risk a pitched battle, which if they
were victorious would shatter the enemy’s power and enable
the Moslems to recover all that they had lost, while if they
were defeated, they would indeed lose Jerusalem, but the
army of Islam would remain, and might hope to regain the
city hereafter. These criticisms were reported to Saladin,
with a further warning that if he persisted in his plan of
defence, he must either himself remain in the city or leave one
of his family to take the command there, as the Kurdish
troops would not obey a Turkish emir nor the Turks a Kurdish
one. Personally he was willing to stay, but his friends would
not sanction a course which they felt might bring upon Islam
a double disaster in the loss of the city and the Sultan both
July 2
at once. He and his devoted secretary spent the whole night
in deliberating and praying over the problems suggested by
July 3
this communication; on the Friday morning Bohadin
advised his master to give up all attempts at finding a
solution of them and simply commit the direction of all his
affairs to a higher Power. The counsel was followed. That
evening the officer in command of the Moslem advanced
guard sent word that “the whole army of the enemies”
had—seemingly on the preceding day—ridden out to the
1192
top of a hill, stationed itself there a while, and then ridden
back to its camp; he had sent out scouts to ascertain what
Sat.,
July 4
was going on. At daybreak next morning this announcement
was followed by another; the scouts had come in and
reported that a great discussion, lasting all night, had taken
place among the Christian leaders, and had ended at dawn
in a decision to retreat.[951]
The victors of Kuweilfeh seem to have reached Beit Nuba on June 30; they had returned by easy stages by way of Ramlah, where they found Count Henry with the troops which he had collected at Acre.[952] At first the camp was filled with rejoicing over the spoil, which Richard took care to distribute fairly among all ranks of the host; but in a day or two the lesser folk began to clamour for an immediate advance on Jerusalem. The native umpires who a fortnight before had given their award against the siege repeated the arguments which they had then used, laying special stress on the impossibility of procuring water, now that all the artificial stores of it for two miles round the city were known to have been destroyed by the enemy, and at a season when every drop of moisture, except the little fountain of Siloam, would be dried up by the heat of the Syrian midsummer.[953] There were also other difficulties. One which Richard had urged in January—the numerical insufficiency of the host—does not seem to have been appreciably lessened by the results of Count Henry’s recruiting expedition. The worst difficulty of all was internal disunion. Hugh of Burgundy’s self-will and his jealousy of Richard were shown more openly than 1192 ever now that his share of the caravan spoils had made him independent of Richard’s bounty. He and his men had long been in the habit, wherever the host went, of camping apart from their fellow-Crusaders at night as if desirous to avoid their company; by day, when they and the men of other nations had to associate together, there were constant bickerings and altercations; and the duke crowned all this mischief by “causing a song full of all vileness to be made about the king, and this song was sung amid the host. Was the king blameworthy,” asks the Norman poet-chronicler, “when he in return made a song upon these people who were always thwarting and insulting him? and truly no good song could be sung about such outrageous folk.”[954] According to one English writer, Hugh even entered into a secret negotiation with Saladin, which the vigilance of a scout enabled Richard to unmask, to the utter confusion of the duke; but the details of the story are somewhat doubtful.[955] Clearly, however, there was no exaggeration in the report transmitted to Saladin from his advanced guard as to dissensions in the Christian camp; and there is no reason to doubt the correctness of Bohadin’s account—derived likewise from the statements of a scout who was secretly present—of the final council held on the night of Thursday-Friday, July 2-3. After much debate, three hundred arbitrators were appointed from among the nobles and knights; these three hundred delegated their powers to twelve others, and these twelve chose three umpires, from whose decision there was to be no appeal.[956] 1192 In the morning the pilgrims were, for the second time July 3 when at a distance of little more than four hours’ march from their goal, told that they must prepare for a retreat.[957]
The disappointment was perhaps all the more keenly felt because it followed closely not only upon the victory over the Egyptians, but also upon two incidents which had heightened the religious fervour and thus encouraged the hopes of the Christian soldiers. Several relics of the Holy Cross besides the famous one which had been lost at Hattin were preserved in various places in Palestine, and had been hidden at the time of the Saracen conquest to save them from falling into Infidel hands. A Syrian bishop who had held the see of Lydda is said to have come with a great company of men and women of his flock and presented one of these fragments to Richard shortly after the host reached Beit Nuba.[958] A little later—seemingly just before Richard heard of the coming of the Egyptian caravan—the abbot of Saint Elias, a monastery situated on the road from Jerusalem to Bethlehem,[959] came and told the king that he had a piece of the Cross hidden in a place known only to himself, which Saladin, who knew the relic had been secreted, had vainly tried to bribe him into revealing. Richard rode with him to the place and brought the sacred treasure back, to the great joy of the host.[960] 1192 If we may trust an English writer who, though he did not take part in the Crusade, had a special opportunity of obtaining information about Richard’s personal share in it, a third fragment of the Holy Rood came into the king’s hands under yet stranger circumstances, one of which may possibly have had some influence on his conduct two July 3 months later. On the last night of the army’s sojourn at Beit Nuba a monk brought him a message from a certain hermit who dwelt on the “Mount of Saint Samuel”—that is, Nebi Samwîl, the Arabic name for what the Crusaders usually called the Montjoie—bidding him, in God’s Name, come to him without delay. Richard arose, called up an escort of horsemen, and rode to the place. The hermit was believed to have the spirit of prophecy; he wore no clothes, and was covered only by his long unshorn hair and beard. Richard, after gazing for a while in wonder at this strange-looking personage, asked him what was his will. The hermit led his guest into an oratory, removed a stone from the wall, and brought out a wooden cross “of a cubit’s length” which he reverently handed to the king, telling him it was made from the sacred Tree of Calvary. He added a prediction that the king would not at this time succeed in winning the land, however hard he might strive for it; and to demonstrate the reality of his own prophetic gift, he further foretold his own death on that day week. Richard took him back to the camp to prove whether his words would come true. Seven days afterwards the prophet died.[961] Sixty years later, there was a tradition in Palestine that on one occasion when the men of the Third Crusade, on the point of marching upon the Holy City, were by the jealousies among their leaders compelled to turn back, a knight in Richard’s service “cried out to him, ‘Sire, sire, come here and I will shew you Jerusalem.’ 1192 And when he heard that, he cast his surcoat before his eyes all weeping, and said to our Lord: ‘Fair Lord God, I pray Thee that Thou suffer me not to behold Thy Holy City, since I cannot deliver it from the hands of Thine enemies.’”[962] This incident, in itself quite possible, is in Joinville’s report of the story placed in a setting of which the details are certainly not historically accurate. If it really occurred, its true place is most probably at the close of Richard’s nocturnal visit to the Mount of S. Samuel, as the sunrise on July 4 lighted up the lower slopes of the mountain-range of which that eminence was the crown, and revealed the city on its coign of vantage at the south-eastern angle of July 4 the plateau. A few hours later the whole host was back at Ramlah.[963]
The umpires at Beit Nuba had reasoned soundly from the premisses before them; and those premisses were sound likewise, except in one particular: the Franks did not—as we do from Bohadin—know what was passing behind the scenes in the Saracen headquarters. They therefore probably over-estimated the enemy’s powers of resistance. On the other hand, there was a similar miscalculation on the Moslem side; Saladin’s anxiety and alarm would scarcely have been so great had he realized how completely the unity of the Christian host was broken. Even when fully assured that the Franks had really withdrawn from the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, he was still extremely uneasy, fearing they might now take up again the project of an attempt on Cairo, and feeling by no means sanguine that they might not, with the coast of Palestine in their possession and with the supply of beasts of burden which they had recently acquired, bring it to a successful issue.[964] A new game of diplomacy now began. The first move in it was made, on the morrow, if not on the very day, of the retirement from Beit Nuba, in the name of the king-elect of Jerusalem, Henry of Champagne; but the Saracens at once recognized that the king-elect could be nothing more than a cipher so long as he was uncrowned and his 1192 uncle was in the land, and that the game was not worth playing with anyone except the king-guardian. From him overtures for peace arrived on July 6, and negotiations continued till the 19th. It is difficult to decide how far either the king or the Sultan was in earnest. Richard made so many different proposals that they cannot all have been seriously meant. He and Saladin alike seem to have been really disposed to content themselves with a division of the land; each of them hoping that the division would be merely temporary, and would serve as a breathing-space enabling his own party to recover strength for a new effort. On one point, however, both were equally determined not to give way. Saladin, while agreeing that the Franks should keep the sea-coast, made it an essential condition that Ascalon should be again dismantled. This Richard persistently refused; so on July 19 the negotiations dropped, and Saladin began to prepare again for war.[965]
His rival was doing the like. By Richard’s orders three hundred Knights of the Temple and Hospital had already gone from Casal Maen (whither he and the host had retired on July 6)[966] to Darum, dismantled that fortress, and transferred its garrison to Ascalon to reinforce the defences of “Syria’s Summit.” As soon as the three hundred returned, the whole host proceeded to Joppa; here the sick folk were left, and also some of the able-bodied for the greater security of the place; the rest set out on July 21 or 22 for Acre, which they reached on Sunday the 26th.[967] The weary pilgrims of lower rank grew more dispirited at every stage in this northward journey; Richard having given orders for the whole fleet to accompany it, whence they inferred that he intended sailing for Europe immediately. He had, however, another purpose. The Frank re-conquest of the coast of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem was still incomplete; the northernmost sea-port of the realm, Beyrout, 1192 was still in Moslem hands. An attempt on Beyrout had been one of the alternative schemes suggested by Richard before the final retirement from Beit Nuba. The place, though of less military importance than Tyre or Acre or Ascalon, was well worth the winning; it had a good harbour, and its loss would deprive the Moslems of their only remaining outlet on the sea between Laodicea and the mouth of the Nile. As soon as Acre was reached, Sunday, July 26 Richard despatched seven galleys to make a demonstration before Beyrout. On the morrow (Monday, July 27) he took leave of the Knights of the Temple and Hospital—with whom he had always acted in concert, and who probably undertook the control of the host during his absence—and prepared to follow next day with the rest of the fleet.[968] 1192 But his plans were upset by an unexpected counterstroke on the part of Saladin.
The Sultan had been rejoined at Jerusalem on July 17 by his son Ed-Daher, who ruled at Aleppo; and Safadin, recalled from Mesopotamia, was close at hand with further reinforcements when on the 22nd Saladin learned that the Christian host had left Joppa and was on its way to Beyrout. He at once went to Beit Nuba to reconnoitre, leaving orders for all his troops to follow him thither. Safadin joined July 23 him there next day. By the 25th their united forces were on the old camping-ground of the Franks between Lydda July 25 and Ramlah. On the 26th—the day of Richard’s arrival at Acre—Saladin reconnoitred Joppa; before nightfall his men were around its walls, and on Monday 27th they assaulted the town.[969] After four days of furious fighting Saladin’s engines made, on Friday the 31st, a breach through which his men swarmed into the town; it was given over to pillage and slaughter, and the garrison in the citadel promised to surrender, on terms arranged between them and the Sultan, if they were not relieved before three o’clock on the morrow.[970] They were in hourly expectation of Richard’s return; for they had, as soon as the Moslem army came in sight, despatched by sea an urgent message to recall him from Acre.[971] The message was delivered to Richard as he sat in his tent on the evening of Tuesday July 28.[972] He at once summoned the host to go back with him to Joppa; but the French “declared they would not stir a foot with him.”[973] A number of Templars, Hospitaliers, and other “good knights,” however, set off by land to the rescue, while Richard with another party, comprising the rest of his own men and some Genoese and Pisans, went 1192 on board the galleys. The land party on reaching Caesarea learned that the road between that place and Arsuf was blocked by “the son of the Assassin”; not daring to risk an encounter with forces of whose numbers they knew nothing and of whose military repute all Syria stood in awe, they made no attempt to proceed further. The ships were caught by a contrary wind off Haïfa, detained by it for three days, and so dispersed by its violence that only three of them at last came in sight of Joppa, late in the July 31 evening of Friday the 31st, and had to wait at a safe distance for the rest to overtake them, and also for the light of day.[974] One of the three carried Richard, chafing sorely at all these hindrances: “God, have mercy! Why dost Thou keep me here, when I am going in Thy service?”[975] In the afternoon of that same Friday Saladin had received from Acre a letter telling him that Richard had given up his intended expedition against Beyrout and was hastening to the relief of Joppa. The Sultan and his confidant Bohadin at once decided that the agreement with the garrison must be flung to the winds, and an effort made to get the garrison out of the citadel before Richard should arrive. Saladin spent some time in haranguing his troops and exhorting them to storm it that evening; but they were worn out with the day’s fight, and so sullenly unresponsive to his appeal that he dared not give it the form of a command; and at last he and his staff withdrew for Aug. 1 the night to their usual quarters in the rear. At daybreak they heard a trumpet-call, and learned that the king’s ships were in sight. Saladin despatched Bohadin with orders to “get into the citadel and get the Franks out of it.” With a body of troops Bohadin entered the town, went to the castle gate, and bade the garrison come out. They answered that they would do so, and began to make their preparations. The morning wore on to noon, and 1192 still the relief party showed no sign of trying to disembark: Richard in fact, while the garrison were waiting for him to land, was waiting to ascertain what had become of them, for the shore was lined and the town, to all appearance, filled with Mussulman troops, so that the whole place, as seen from the sea, looked as if it were in the enemy’s hands. On the other hand, it seems that only a small part of the fleet was as yet visible from the castle-tower. The garrison therefore, growing hopeless of rescue, yielded to Bohadin’s urgency and began to march out. Forty-nine men, besides some women and some horses, thus came forth.[976] As each man passed through the gate he paid down the ransom appointed in the capitulation, although the hour fixed for its fulfilment had not yet come; and a Frankish version of the story adds that in some cases at least, as soon as the money was paid, the payer’s head was struck off by the Turkish guards.[977] Suddenly the procession stopped. The ships were spreading out in line and becoming more distinguishable under the noon-tide sun; the Moslems could see that there were at least thirty-five; the anxious watchers on the castle-tower could probably see that there were more than fifty. The remaining men in the citadel hastily put on their armour, made a sally, and drove Bohadin and his followers out of the town. They themselves, however, were quickly driven back, and the fighting became fiercer and more confused than ever. Once more the garrison, in despair, sent the Patriarch of Jerusalem (who chanced to be in Joppa when the siege began) and a chaplain to renew their offer of submission to Saladin on the terms originally proposed.[978] Then another priest, “after commending himself to the Messiah” as Bohadin says, leaped from the top of the tower into the harbour. Falling in shallow water, with soft sand beneath it, he was unharmed, and made his way to the nearest galley, whence he was transported to that of the king.[979] “Gentle king,” said he, “the people who 1192 await you here are lost, unless God and you have compassion on them.” “How!” cried Richard, “are any of them still living? Where are they?” “Before the tower, awaiting their death.” Richard hesitated no longer. “God sent us here to suffer death, if need be; shame to him who lags behind now!”[980] The royal galley, “painted all red, with a red canopy on the deck, and a red flag,” shot forward;[981] the king, without greaves or mail-shoes, sprang out, up to his waist in the water, came first ashore, and dashed into the midst of the Turks, cutting them down right and left. His shipmates followed close behind him; the other vessels quickly came up, and each disembarked its freight of men; and in little more than an hour the shore of the harbour was cleared of Turks.[982] Bohadin, under whose eyes all this had taken place, went round to Saladin’s tent in the rear and whispered his tidings into the ear of the Sultan, who was writing (or dictating) a letter for the Patriarch and the chaplain to take back to their friends in the citadel. The envoys were present; Saladin detained them till some flying Moslems passed the door of the tent. Then he placed the envoys under arrest, and ordered his whole army to retreat to Yazour.[983]
Meanwhile Richard, as soon as the harbour was cleared, had set his men to barricade it on the land side with planks, barrels, pieces of old ships and boats, and other wood hastily piled up to form a rampart behind which they could safely defy the Saracens.[984] He himself made his way “by Aug. 1 a stair that led to the house of the Templars” into the town, where he found a crowd of Saracens so busy pillaging that they made no attempt to interfere when he caused his banners to be reared on the walls as a signal to the Christians in the tower. These latter at once sallied forth to meet him, and the Turks, thus caught at unawares between two fires, were slaughtered wholesale. Then the victors turned towards the retreating army of Saladin. The crossbowmen tried to overtake it with a volley of arrows; the king galloped 1192 after it on a horse which he had found in Joppa; but as this and two other horses, also found in the town, were the only ones he possessed, he soon gave up the pursuit, and pitched his tents on the site lately occupied by Saladin,[985] in the open ground where the Frank host had camped in the previous October, between Joppa and S. Habakkuk’s.[986] No sooner was Richard in his tent than several of Saladin’s emirs and favourite Mameluks went to visit him; seemingly not as accredited envoys from the Sultan, but to ascertain informally what was now the king’s attitude towards the question of peace. He received them willingly, and sent a special invitation to the chamberlain Abu Bekr, who had previously acted as a medium of communication between him and Safadin, to join the assembly. Abu Bekr found him talking over the recent fight in a tone half serious, half bantering. “That Sultan of yours is truly admirable! But why did he run away at my very landing? I did not come prepared to fight; I am still in my boating-sandals! Why, in God’s Name, did he retreat, when I thought he could not take Joppa in two months, and he took it in a couple of days!” Then he turned to Abu Bekr and spoke seriously: “Greet the Sultan from me, and beg him to let us have peace. My country needs me, and the state of things in this land is bad alike for you and for us.” Saladin was still close at hand, and twice in that night proposals and counter-proposals of terms passed between the two sovereigns. Ascalon was still the stumbling-block; neither of them would renounce his claim to it. To a daring suggestion of Richard’s, that Saladin should enfeoff him after the manner of the Franks with the counties of Ascalon and Joppa, to hold by military service including, if required, the personal service of the king himself—“of which,” he added, “you know the value”[987]—Saladin returned an answer in which Ascalon was not named at all. The Sultan Aug. 2 then followed his army to Yazour, and thence, early next 1192 morning, went to Ramlah.[988] Thither a messenger from Richard followed him, and pressed for a definite cession of Ascalon. Saladin’s reply was given instantly and finally: “It is impossible.”[989]