That Sunday and the two following days were spent by Richard and his men in repairing the walls of Joppa as well as they could by piling up the stones without mortar or cement.[990] On one of these three days they were joined by Count Henry, who came from Caesarea in a galley; the rest of the troops being still detained there by “the ambushes of the Turks” on land and the lack of ships to convey them by sea.[991] It was seemingly to ascertain what chance there was of intercepting these troops, of whose departure from Acre he had only just been made aware, that Saladin on the Aug. 4 Monday (August 4) moved northward as far as the banks of the Aoudjeh (the River of Arsuf). There, however, he further learned that they were safe in Caesarea, and also that a not less important and probably easier prey lay within his reach—King Richard and his little band, in their unprotected tents in the fields outside Joppa. At nightfall he turned back, hoping to surround Richard’s camp in the darkness and surprise it at break of day.[992] The first body of Moslem troops which approached the camp, however, was discovered by a watchful Crusader who at once aroused the king. Richard slipped his mail-coat over his night-gear, sprang bare-legged on horseback, and with the few knights in his company—most of them dressed and armed in a like hasty fashion—began to array his men.[993] The Saracens, finding they could not take him by surprise, sent a party to force an entrance through the still uncompleted walls into the town, in order to deprive him of a refuge there.[994] 1192 The scared townsfolk sent word to the king that they were all lost, for “a countless host of heathen” were taking possession of the city. Richard sternly silenced the messenger, swore to cut off his head if he let anyone else hear the message, and went on with his preparations for defence. Behind a low barricade hastily made up of pieces of wood from the tents the tiny army was arrayed with the utmost skill[995] so as to leave in its ranks no opening for attack. Then the king addressed his men, bidding them have no fear of the foe; he himself, he added, would go and see what was taking place in the town.[996] His knights numbered some Aug. 5 three or four score,[997] but the horses only six.[998] On these five of the knights and a “hardy and valiant” German man-at-arms named Henry, bearing the king’s banner,[999] mounted, and with a few crossbowmen[1000] followed the king as with lance and sword he forced his way into Joppa. He probably found its Turkish invaders engaged, as he had found them before, in pillaging, and less numerous than the messenger had represented, for he very soon drove them all out. After ordering a detachment of the garrison to come down from the tower and guard the town against 1192 further attack,[1001] he rode down to the shore, brought back thence some townsfolk who had fled to the ships for refuge, and all the sailors except just enough to take care of the ships, and with these reinforcements, in addition to his gallant six, rejoined his little army in the field.[1002]

Saladin meanwhile had arrayed his host in seven divisions.[1003] While the first of these was advancing to the attack, the king issued his final orders. “Only keep your ranks unbroken—let not the foes make their way in. If we stand thus firm against their first onset, we may make light of the next, and by God’s help we shall defeat them. But if I see one of you, through fear, giving way or yielding ground or trying to flee, I swear by Almighty God I will straightway cut off his head!”[1004] So when the first division of the Turks charged them the Christian ranks stood immoveable and impenetrable. The attacking force fell back, baffled and amazed, stood for a while within two spears’ length of them without any interchange of hostilities except verbal ones, and then retired, grumbling, to its original position.[1005] Richard burst out laughing: “Did not I tell you how it would be? Now they have done their utmost; we have only to stand firm against every fresh attempt, till by God’s help victory shall be ours.”[1006] As he ceased speaking, another body of Turks came forth; they, too, fell back from the living wall, now firmer than ever, and retired to their former station. This process was repeated five or six times, while the day wore on “from prime almost to nones.”[1007] The Arab historians relate that in one of the intervals between these futile charges Richard rode alone, lance in hand, along the whole front of the Moslem army, challenging it to fight, and not a man came forth to meet him;[1008] according to one account, he ended by stopping his horse midway between the two hosts, asking the Moslems for some food, and calmly dismounting to eat what they 1192 gave him.[1009] It was not only the dread of him that held the enemies in check; Saladin’s troops were thoroughly discontented with their ruler’s conduct of this expedition to Joppa and with its failure to bring them either the success or the booty which they had expected. In vain the Sultan rode up and down among them, promising them splendid rewards for one more charge; his son Ed-Daher sprang forward alone, only to be hastily called back by his father, for not another man broke the stillness of the silent, motionless ranks.[1010] At last, it seems, they yielded a sullen obedience to Saladin’s impassioned exhortations, and made another attempt to advance. But this time a volley of arrows, with which the crossbowmen had hitherto speeded their retirement, greeted them on their approach, and under cover of this the king and his men charged. “Brandishing his lance, and laying about him as if he had done nothing yet that day,”[1011] Richard with his few mounted followers burst right through the Turkish host and came out facing the rearguard. Looking round, he saw that the earl of Leicester was unhorsed and in danger of capture; he at once rescued him and helped him to remount. A crowd of Turks rushed at a banner which from its device—a lion—they probably took for the king’s, but which seems to have been really that of Ralf of Mauléon. Ralf was surrounded, and was actually being led away by his captors when he, too, was rescued by his sovereign.[1012] At another moment a large body of Turks closed in upon Richard, all alone; but he laid about him with his sword, smiting off heads and limbs on every side, till he had slain or disabled so many of his assailants that the rest took to flight “as from the face of a furious lion.” His first sudden irruption had thrown into confusion the whole array of Saladin’s host; and when the guard which he had left in Joppa, seeing how matters were going, came out to help their comrades, the Moslem defeat became a rout.[1013] At the close of the long day’s fighting the victor returned “with arrows sticking out all over him like the bristles of a hedgehog, and with 1192 his horse in the same plight.”[1014] Saladin retired to Yazour, and on the following day to Natroun.[1015]

The victory at Joppa was Richard’s crowning exploit in Holy Land; and he himself very soon realized that it was to be his last. Both in him and his men the tremendous physical and mental strain of those five August days was followed by a sudden breakdown which was aggravated by the unhealthiness of their surroundings. The Turks when they evacuated Joppa had not only left in its streets the bodies of those who had been slain in the siege, but also slaughtered all the pigs in the town and interspersed the carcases with the human corpses, as an insult to the Christians.[1016] No sanitary measures had been possible during the stress of the succeeding days; the consequence of this state of things had therefore spread beyond the walls on every side, and the king and his men, too much exhausted to move far enough to escape from it, lay helpless and sick almost unto death.[1017] Nevertheless, Richard’s next message to the Sultan was practically a defiance. The envoy whom he had despatched on August 2 to Saladin at Ramlah had proceeded thence on a further mission to Safadin, who was then lying sick at Gibeon, near Neby Samwîl.[1018] This envoy returned to Joppa on the 7th or 8th[1019] with a message from Safadin proposing a colloquy. He was accompanied by the chamberlain Abu Bekr. Richard gave an audience to Abu Bekr outside the town and said to him: “How far am I to put myself in the Sultan’s hand before he will deign to receive me? Truly, I was very desirous of returning home; but now I have decided to stay through the winter, and want no further conferences with you.”[1020] For nearly three weeks after this, Saladin made no move of any kind; he was Aug. 20 waiting for reinforcements. On the 20th the long-desired contingent from Egypt at last arrived; and two days later 1192 the forces of the lands beyond the Euphrates were brought up by the Sultan’s once rebel great-nephew, El Mansour. Messengers still passed between the two camps; Richard, exhausted by fever, asked Saladin for fruit and snow, which the Sultan readily sent him; the friendly intercourse enabling each party to learn how matters went with the other.[1021] Meanwhile Richard’s sickness was increasing, and so were his anxieties. In vain he sent Count Henry back to Caesarea to insist that the laggards there should come and help to hold the land; they would not stir. Then he called Henry, the Templars, and the Hospitaliers around his bed, and begged that some of them would take charge of Ascalon and others of Joppa, and thus set him free to seek pure air and medical treatment at Acre, as the only chance of restoring his health. “But they all declared they would not undertake the custody of the fortresses without him; and they went out [of his tent] without another word.”[1022] A Aug.
9-26 proclamation published throughout the coast-towns, calling upon all fit men to come and serve under the king at his expense, brought a crowd of foot-soldiers, but so few horsemen that he was compelled to reject them all, both horse and foot, as useless for his purpose.[1023] As the conviction grew upon him that he must either quit the country or die in it, he felt also that in either case, if he left it in its present unsettled condition, the whole labour of the Crusade would be lost, and thus that a truce on almost any terms had become a necessity for the realm’s sake as well as for his own.[1024] He therefore asked that Abu Bekr might be sent to him once more. Through this man the king intimated his willingness, if Saladin still absolutely insisted on the restitution of Ascalon to the Moslems, to accept a money indemnity for the expense which he had incurred in fortifying the place, and to abide by the other conditions which he had formerly agreed upon with Safadin.[1025]

On the morrow—Friday, August 28—Bedr-ed-din Dolderim, the emir in command of the Moslem advanced guard, 1192 sent to ask the Sultan whether he might accede to a request which had been made to him by five Frank officers, one of them an intimate counsellor of Richard’s—probably the bishop of Salisbury, Hubert Walter[1026]—for a parley. With Saladin’s consent the parley took place; and the same night Bedr-ed-din in person reported to his sovereign that, according to these men, Richard now consented to give up Ascalon Aug. 28 unconditionally. Saladin refused to proceed further without some security that on this point the king would not go back from his word. Next day Bedr-ed-din announced that he had received, by a sure hand, Richard’s pledge on the subject. Saladin then called his council together and with them drew up the details of the partition of the land. The king was to have Joppa and its dependent territory, except Ramlah, Lydda, Ibelin, Yebna, and Mirabel; also Acre, Haïfa, Arsuf, and Caesarea, with all their dependencies except Nazareth and Safforia. These terms were drawn up in writing and carried back to Richard by an envoy who came from him on the afternoon of Saturday, August 29, and returned to Joppa with a Moslem colleague next day. Richard, when the terms were read to him, denied that he had ever withdrawn his claim to compensation; but as “the persons who had gone to Dolderim” all declared that the thing was so, he answered: “If I did say it, I will not go back from my word. Tell the Sultan I agree to these conditions; only I appeal to his generosity, and acknowledge that if he grants me anything further, it will be of his own bounty.” He then sent the envoys on to Safadin, to beg that he would obtain from Saladin the cession of Ramlah.[1027]

Saladin was quite as anxious for a truce as Richard could be. On the night of August 27 he had despatched several emirs on a reconnoitring expedition to ascertain the chances of success in another attempt on Joppa, or, failing this, a night attack on Ascalon. They came back to him at Ramlah with tidings that there were at Joppa scarcely 1192 three hundred mounted troops, most of whom had only mules for chargers. Yet against this small and ill-mounted force Saladin dared not pit his great army, “because,” says Bohadin, “he knew that his men were weakened and wearied and longing for their homes, and he feared that they would refuse, as they had refused once already at Joppa, to attack the foe, or would desert him altogether.”[1028] He therefore drew up his final terms on Monday, August 31. The truce was to last for three years, beginning on Wednesday, September 22. Ramlah or Lydda was to be added to the king’s share of the land, or even both places, unless he would be content with half of each; and Ascalon was to be dismantled again. All the Moslem territories were to be included in the truce, and also the princes of Antioch and Tripoli. When on September 1 the schedule was brought to Richard, he said he was too ill to read it, but he added: “I have already confirmed the agreement by giving my hand on it.” Count Henry and the other leaders were then informed of its details, and accepted them all, including the proposed partition of Lydda and Ramlah. Next day (Wednesday, September 2) they and Saladin’s envoys all met in Richard’s tent. Richard again confirmed the truce by giving his hand to the Moslems; they asked him for his oath, but he explained that it was not customary in the West for a king to swear on such occasions, and they accepted the explanation. The other Frank leaders then took the usual oath, and several of them went back with the Moslems to Saladin’s camp to witness his ratification of the treaty.[1029] 1192 Immediately afterwards Richard despatched to Saladin a special message setting forth his own purpose in making the truce. That purpose, he said, was first to revisit his home-lands and see how they did, and next, to collect there men and money wherewith he hoped to return and to wrest from the Sultan the whole “Land of Jerusalem.” Saladin answered in the spirit of true chivalry: if he were to lose the Land, he would rather it were won by Richard than by any prince whom he had ever known.[1030]

The dismantling of Ascalon was a precaution on which Richard had insisted when he found himself compelled to cede the place; if the Moslems must have it, they should at any rate be unable to make any military use of it till they had had the expense and trouble of rebuilding it again. The work of demolition was entrusted to the joint superintendence of a party of Moslems and one of Franks, who all set out for Ascalon on September 5, and who were also to bring back its Frankish garrison.[1031] As under the terms of the truce Christian pilgrims were to have free access to the Holy Sepulchre, the rest of the Franks at Joppa and many from Acre and elsewhere now began crowding to Jerusalem to fulfil their vow of pilgrimage.[1032] An English writer tells us that some of them urged the king to do likewise; “but his 1192 lofty spirit would not suffer him to accept from the grace of a heathen ruler a privilege which he had been unable to obtain as a gift of God.”[1033] On the night of Tuesday, September 9, he set out on his northward journey.[1034] Haïfa, in its quiet, sheltered corner between the foot of Carmel and the mouth of the Kishon, and with its outlook northward across the sea to Acre at the opposite end of the bay, offered probably a better resting-place for an invalid than Acre itself, to which it was near enough for medical aid to be easily available. At Haïfa the king stayed a while to recover his strength.[1035] Then he went on to Acre and completed his preparations for departure. He ransomed William des Préaux, who had been made a voluntary prisoner in his stead in September 1191, by exchanging for him ten valuable Saracen captives.[1036] He called, by public proclamation, all his creditors to come and claim whatever he owed them, that they might all be paid in full, “and even overpaid, lest there should be any complaints or disputes after he was gone about anything that they had lost through him.”[1037] He had some months before made provision for the future of Cyprus, and also for that of his earliest friend among the Franks in Holy Land, Guy of Lusignan, who had so greatly helped him to conquer that island. He had conquered it not for his own benefit, but for the benefit of the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, to which its preservation in friendly hands was a matter of great importance. He at first agreed to make it over to the Order of the Temple for twenty-five thousand marks;[1038] but this agreement came to nothing; and when Henry of Champagne was chosen King of Jerusalem in April 1192, Richard made substantial compensation to the displaced King Guy by giving him the island realm of Cyprus.[1039] The 1192 grant was perhaps put into legal form during Richard’s last days at Acre.[1040] The two queens sailed on Michaelmas day,[1041] the king on October 9.[1042]

The causes of the comparative failure of the third Crusade have been much discussed; yet after following in detail the story of that expedition one is led to marvel not at its so-called failure, but at the extent of its success. The truce restored to the Christians, for the period of its duration, the whole coast of Palestine from Haïfa to Joppa, left the southern remainder deprived of its chief stronghold, Ascalon, and secured to the pilgrims the right of free and safe access to the holy places of Jerusalem. If at its expiration Richard had been able to return—as he hoped and intended—to take up again his task in Holy Land, he would have done so with far other prospects of success than those with which he and his followers had set out from Acre in 1190. Saladin himself regarded the position of the Moslem power in Holy Land with grave misgiving. His own health was failing, and he confessed to Bohadin his fears that in case of his death the Franks would come forth from the strongholds which the truce had placed in their hands, and once more become masters of the country.[1043] It was to Richard that the measure of success gained by the Crusade was mainly due; and this fact was fully recognized by the Moslems. A writer of the next generation reports that “the fear of him was so constantly in the hearts and on the lips of the Saracens that when their children cried they said to them, ‘Be quiet! England is coming!’ and when their horses started with affright, they mocked at them saying, ‘What is the matter? Is England in front of us?’”[1044] “England,” in the sense in 1192 which they used the word—as representing England’s king—was destined never to confront them again. But seven centuries later the attainment of the goal was to be granted to “England” in another form, that of an army which, having set out from what Richard had once proposed to secure as the fittest starting-point for the purpose—Egypt—finally closed round the Holy City by ways in every one of which it was almost literally treading in the footsteps of the Lion-Heart.