The Third Crusade - Part I

  The fall of Jerusalem sent shock waves through Europe. Pope Urban III allegedly died of grief on hearing the news. His successor Gregory VIII issued a call to crusade just nine days later in a papal bull that blamed the catastrophe on the sins of all Christians and summoned everyone to acts of penance and contrition. One of the first nobleman to ‘take the cross’ was Richard Plantagenet, Count of Poitou, followed within months by his father King Henry II of England, King Philip II of France, and the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick ‘Barbarossa.’

Below is the first in two entries describing what happened in what later became known as "The Third Crusade"

 

Due primarily to hostilities between the Plantagenets and Capets, the German crusade got underway first, in May 1189. It was composed of an estimated 12,000 foot and 3,000 knights, most of whom travelled with the Emperor overland, although smaller contingents traveled independently by sea. Barbarossa’s army was highly disciplined and prepared to pay for provisions but encountered difficulties as soon as it crossed into Byzantine territory. However, the new Emperor, Isaac II Angelus, had signed an agreement with Saladin including a promise to obstruct the passage of crusaders headed for the Holy Land. As a result, Barbarossa’s force found no markets for provisioning and met with repeated harassment from ‘bandits’ and ‘brigands,’ probably in the pay of Constantinople. Barbarossa brushed aside the ineffective attempts to stop him, forced Isaac to provide transportation across the Dardanelles, and crossed into Muslim controlled territory on 22 April 1190.

On 18 May Barbarossa decisively defeated a Turkish army at the Battle of Iconium. The German crusaders then occupied Konya, the capital of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, where they replenished supplies and replaced significant equine casualties. The truce negotiated with the Turks allowed free passage through the rest of the sultanate. On 30 May, the army crossed back into Christian territory, entering Cilician Armenia, where it met with hospitality and support for the first time. One of the most important modern historians of the crusades, Christopher Tyreman, claims that Barbarossa’s performance upto this point was ‘one of the most remarkable feats of western arms in crusading history.’[i]

Yet it was all undone by a single accident. On 10 June 1190, Frederick Barbarossa drowned while crossing the River Saleph. It is unclear if he had a heart attack while riding through the icy water, or if he was, as one account claimed, caught in a whirlpool. Whatever happened, his death triggered the almost complete disintegration of his host. Most of the crusaders turned back. Only a small contingent under his son Frederick of Swabia reached Antioch and eventually the siege at Acre, where many of the remainder died.

Meanwhile, the death of Henry II of England on 6 July 1189, paved the way for an uneasy peace between France and England. Philip II was at best a reluctant crusader and did not yet have a well-organized and centralized bureaucracy comparable to that of the Plantagenets. Although he attempted to raise extra funding through a special tax, resistance was considerable. Philip proved unwilling or unable to enforce collection, and ultimately raised only a modest host. However, a number of his powerful barons (e.g. the Duke of Burgundy, the Counts of Flanders and Champagne and others recruited and paid for substantial contingents. In consequence, the French host probably equaled that of Barbarossa, e.g. 15,000 men.

Richard of Poitou, now King of England, on the other hand was totally dedicated to the crusade. Contemporaries claim that crusading fever swept England fueled by what is described as love of God, hope for remission of sins — and respect for the king. The latter should not be underestimated. Richard also proved remarkably inventive in raising funds to finance his great expedition. In addition to the ‘Saladin Tax’ — which he vigorously collected, he engaged in practices which are nowadays considered unsavory, such as selling offices. In the twelfth century, however, royal offices were always instruments of patronage, and payment for them in one form or another was expected not exceptional. More scandalous in the eyes of his contemporaries was the sale of properties from the royal domain because it diminished royal revenue in the long term. Yet Richard successfully increased exchequer receipts for the year 1190 by two to three times the norm.

Richard’s focus on being well-financed and his organizational talent for raising funds served his soldiers well. For a start, it enabled Richard to build a fleet to transport his army by sea, avoiding the grueling two-thousand-mile march that had depleted crusading armies in the past. Furthermore, this fleet was key to maintaining lines of supply throughout the entire crusade and enabled two decisive amphibious operations.

After wintering in Sicily, the French (also travelling by sea but in chartered vessels) sailed on 30 March 1191 for Acre, arriving without incident April 20. Richard’s fleet of 209 ships sailed ten days later and immediately ran into violent storms that scattered it. Richard diverted to Cyprus, which he captured from a self-proclaimed and unpopular despot, before proceeding to Acre, which he reached 8 June.

The arrival of the French and English forces decisively tipped the balance of forces in favor of the besiegers. While French and English fleets blockaded Acre by sea, the kings deployed large siege engines against the city. The crusaders were at last numerous enough to hold off Saladin’s forces while engaging in assaults on the city. The Saracen garrison rapidly recognized that surrender might be unavoidable and opened negotiations. The initial crusader demands for the return of all prisoners and all coastal cities were unrealistic and rejected. However, eventually, the Franks were talked down to the terms agreed upon on 12 July 1191, namely 1) the restoration of the True Cross, 2) the release of 2,700 prisoners and 3) payment of 200,000 dinars. The garrison also provided 2,700 hostages (fighting men, not women and children) to stand surety for the fulfillment of the terms.[ii]  Significantly, the deal was made with the garrison at Acre, not Saladin. When the Sultan learned of them, he was allegedly ‘distressed’ but felt honor-bound to uphold them.

At this point, Philip II concluded he had fulfilled his crusading vows and promptly sailed back to France — to the shock and scorn of the entire crusading host, including his own subjects. French command passed to the Duke of Burgundy — the same man who had been betrothed to Sibylla of Jerusalem in 1179/1180 but reneged on his promise. Meanwhile, Saladin failed to deliver, twice. Richard made the strategic decision to execute all the hostages in plain view of Saladin’s army. Although by the standards of the day, Richard had the right to do what he did, his action still shocked contemporaries and has blackened his name ever since. Historians have pointed out that Richard could ill afford to leave sufficient troops in Acre to guard nearly 3,000 prisoners. Others note that he needed to signal strength and determination to Saladin. Often overlooked, the Lyon Continuation of Tyre reports that the principle reason the Franks had agreed to the surrender terms in the first place had been because ‘they were keen for the Christians to be released from Saracen captivity.’[iii] As a result, when Saladin failed to deliver either the cross or the prisoners, the common troops were outraged and rebellious. Namely, ‘when King Richard saw the people weeping and lamenting because Saladin had deceived them, he had great pity and wanted to calm those who were in such great distress.’[iv] Read: he feared his own authority could be undermined and he might lose control of his army. Tragically, it was prisoners on both sides that paid the price. Saladin retaliated by slaughtering those prisoners who fell into his hands in the days following this massacre.

Next week, the story of the Third Crusade continues. 

 

Meanwhile, the Third Crusade is described from the perspective of the Franks in Outremer (rather than the crusaders) Envoy of Jerusalem

 

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 Altogether, Dr. Helena P. Schrader is the author of six books set in the Holy Land in the Era of the Crusades.

                         

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Note: The bulk of this entry is an excerpt from Dr. Schrader's comprehensive non-fiction study of the crusader states.

 [i]Tyreman, Christopher. The World of the Crusades: An Illustrated History. [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019] 210.

[ii] The exact number of hostages and prisoners to be released is not certain as different accounts given different numbers. This number is the figure deemed most reasonable based on conditions in Acre and the size of the respective forces.

[iii] Anonymous, The Old French Continuation of William of Tyre translated by Peter Edbury as ‘The Conquest of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade’ (Crusades Texts in Translation) [Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998] chapter 105, 107.

[iv] Old French Continuation of Tyre, chpt. 105, 108.

Ransoms - An Essential Feature of Medieval Warfare

Following the battle of Hattin, the knights and noblemen who had surrendered to Saladin’s forces were held for ransom and would later be released.  The idea is quite alien to many modern readers, so today I step back to examine the tradition and its impact on medieval warfare.

The concept of ransom dates back to classical times, but during the Early Middle Ages it fell into disuse and we hear little about ransoms. By the mid-11^th century, however, they were back in fashion, and from the mid-12^th century to the end of the 15^th they were a dominant feature of modern warfare.  Although they have since disappeared from Western warfare, the criminal custom of capturing people for ransom still persists in some parts of the world such as Latin America and Nigeria. In Western Europe, the age of ransoms was the High Middle Ages, when ransoms constituted a fundamental aspect of warfare. Without them, the very course of European history would have been different.  Without them,  captured kings like Richard I of England and John “the Good” of France might have been killed rather than held for ransom. Indeed, the custom of allowing a captive to buy his freedom altered many aspects of warfare itself.

It worth noting, however, that the tradition of ransom was strongest in France. It spread with French influence to England but was not so well established in the Holy Roman Empire or Iberia. This may have to do with the popularity of crusading in France because the Byzantines and Arabs had a well-established custom of prisoner exchanges and ransoms, which the crusaders encountered in the Holy Land. Yvonne Friedman in her scholarly study Encounter Between Enemies: Captivity and Ransom in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem [Brill, 2002, 47] noted that:

In the Muslim world the crusaders encountered, the established practice was to hold captives for ransom, and prisoner exchanges were a regular part of diplomatic dealings between opposing sides...Ransom belonged to the Muslim precept of sadaqa and was viewed as both an individual and a 'state' responsibility. In short, the world the crusaders confronted in the East had a much more developed system of dealing with captives than the places from which the crusaders originated.

In the French/English tradition, ransoms were a means of enriching oneself, and the rules of tournaments reflected this by dictating that a captured knight had to surrender his horse and armor to his captor. It was the lure of loot as much as the hope for fame and honor that produced the “tournament circuits” of the 12^th to 14^th centuries, where knights traveled from tournament to tournament like modern-day professional athletes. But the fortunes made on the tournament fields were a pale imitation of what “real” ransoms could bring.

A man taken in battle by his enemy was completely at the mercy of the victor, and the stakes were impossibly high; the victor was within his right to slaughter or (if non-Christian) enslave his opponent. The custom of ransom dramatically decreased casualties, because the prospect of financial gain greatly increased the proclivity of victorious fighting men to show mercy toward those who surrendered to them. This had the unfortunate side-effect, of course, of making the lives of wealthy men more valuable than the lives of the poor. As a result, throughout the High Middle Ages, there was a tendency for those of a class deemed good for ransom to escape death, while their less fortunate followers paid the price of defeat with their lives.

But ransoms were not fixed and so not immutably tied to rank and title. They were always negotiable, and a rich merchant’s son — assuming he had enough time to describe the size of his father’s purse to his erstwhile murderer — stood as good if not a better chance of being granted the privilege of ransom than a poor knight. Ransoms were always based on what a man (or his family) could pay quite simply because there was no point in setting a price that one could not hope to collect — unless the real intent was to ensure the captive could never again raise arms against you.  

Every castle had its gloomy, windowless places...

Had Philip II of France, for example, held Richard the Lionheart captive instead of the Holy Roman Emperor, it is probable that he would have set demands intended to keep Richard in a dungeon for the rest of his life.  Likewise, the ransom set for John “the Good” of France after he was captured at the Battle of Poitiers was dictated far more by the political advantage of denying the French a rival king to Edward III than by thoughts of monetary gain. Except where kings and important nobles were at stake, however, ransoms were generally dictated by a captive’s ability to pay.

By which, of course, I do not mean the captive himself, for he was just that — held captive. Ransoms were usually raised by a captive’s relatives — parents, wives, siblings, children. If they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) scrape together the funds needed, then the appeal would go to cousins and in-laws, anyone who might have money and care enough for the captive to contribute to the cause. Lucky men, who enjoyed the respect of those more powerful and wealthy than themselves, might also be ransomed by their feudal overlord. Examples of this were the payment of Aimery de Lusignan’s ransom by King Amalric or William Marshal’s ransom by Queen Eleanor. In the case of captive kings and barons, of course, they did not have to rely on the generosity of those that loved or respected them. They could demand contributions from their subjects, vassals, and tenants.

Usually, a man was held in captivity until the ransom was paid, and conditions varied. Some men enjoyed comfortable “house arrest,” able to interact with the household and even family of the man to whom they had surrendered. Others were kept locked in a single room, even a dungeon. In the worse cases, prisoners were kept chained to the walls of their prison until the ransom was paid.  On rare occasions, a man (of high rank generally) might be freed on parole in order to enable him to better collect the sum owed. Famous cases of this were Baldwin of Ramla, who was released by Saladin after payment of only a small portion of the enormous ransom set, and Bertrand du Guesclin, who the Black Prince paroled so he could raise his ransom. The former talked the Byzantine Emperor into paying the outstanding portion of his ransom, and the latter raised his ransom from the King of France, Louis d’Anjou and Henry of Trastamare.   

While the payment of a ransom could financially ruin a man and his family, ransoms could make the fortune of those fortunate enough to take a valuable prize.  At the Battle of Poitiers, English and Gascons almost tore the French king apart in their eagerness to lay claim to his ransom. Desmond Seward describes the situation like this in his history of the Hundred Years War ( The Hundred Years War: The English in France, 1337-1445, Macmillan, New York, 1978): 

[King John] was recognized and surrounded by a great crowd of soldiers anxious to take so fabulous a ransom. Although he surrendered to a knight of Artois, he was still in peril, for the brawling mob of Gascons and English began to fight for him. Finally, he was rescued by the Earl of Warwick and Lord Cobham, who took him to the Prince [of Wales].

Few men had a share of a king’s ransom, but as long as a man was on the winning side, it was possible to accumulate a small fortune from the ransoms of lesser men. Ransoms more than plunder was what made the Hundred Years War so lucrative for England — and impoverished France. The latter was in part due to the fact that because a ransom was a reflection of a man’s ability to pay, it was also indirectly a reflection of his “worth.” The English soon learned that it was to their advantage to let French captives name their own ransoms because pride often induced the prisoners to name ransoms suited more to their self-image than the size of their pocketbook.  Even the Black Prince used this tactic when setting the ransom for Guesclin; the latter named the huge sum of 100,000 francs, something he could not possibly have raised from his own resources, hence the resort to the King of France et. al. 

Yet common as ransoms were throughout the High Middle Ages, they remained a privilege, not a right. The Knights Templar, for example, explicitly prohibited their members from paying ransoms. A Knight Templar was expected to die for Christ and find salvation for his soul in that act of martyrdom. This may have contributed to the Saracen tendency to slaughter captured Templars and Hospitallers; they had no monetary value and so eliminating them sooner rather than later made sense.

Normally, however, it was the circumstances in which the victor found himself, not the ideology of the captive, that determined whether a ransom would be accepted or not. In the heat of battle, many soldiers were overcome by “blood lust” that utterly obliterated their greed for gold. Or, when the battle was not one between mercenaries but between true adversaries, fighting men might simply hate their opponents too much to be willing to grant mercy. There were also times when commanders made a strategic decision to kill prisoners. A famous case in point here was Henry V’s order to kill the French prisoners taken at Agincourt. Underestimating the demoralizing effect of his initial successes, Henry V felt he needed every Englishman on the frontline, ready to repel the next attack by the still numerically superior French, making him unwilling to spare men to guard the prisoners.

Even more significant, however, is that by the Wars of the Roses commanders were beginning to prefer annihilation of the enemy’s ability to fight over the profit gained from ransoms. It is a clear indicator of the increasing hatred between the rival factions for the English throne that Edward IV allegedly told his soldiers to “kill the lords and spare the commons.” Edward IV recognized that the commons might not pay monetary ransoms, but they were his subjects and he gained nothing by killing them. The rebellious lords, on the other hand, were the threat to his throne.

In the subsequent century, as warfare became increasingly tied to religion and kings became increasingly despotic, the notion that an opponent might be allowed to live in exchange for a payment of money became discredited. Ransoms became anachronistic and eventually disappeared from the customs of Western warfare altogether.   

Ransoms are important in a variety of episodes in my award-winning trilogy set in the late 12th century and in The Last Crusader Kingdom.

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Dr. Helena P. Schrader holds a PhD in History.

She is the Chief Editor of the Real Crusades History Blog.

She is an award-winning novelist and author of numerous books both fiction and non-fiction. Her three-part biography of Balian d'Ibelin won a total of 14 literary accolades. Her most recent release is a novel about the founding of the crusader Kingdom of Cyprus. You can find out more at: http://crusaderkingdoms.com

Philip II of France in the Holy Land

Seal of Philip II Capet

Philip II Capet of France has gone down in French history as Philip Augustus, another way of saying Philip the Great or Philip the Magnificent. He earned this epithet primarily for wresting territory away from King John of England and restoring the control of the French monarchy over the vast lands in Continental Europe that had been controlled for half a century by John’s father (Henry II) and brother (Richard I). Philip II was able to reduce the English-controlled territories to a small enclave near Bordeaux. Having successfully subdued the most powerful of his insubordinate vassals, he proceeded to systematically re-establish the primacy of the monarchy over all the barons of France. By the end of his reign, he had greatly increased the wealth, prestige and power of the central government in Paris, built the Louvre, and established the University of Paris. He ruled a total of 43 years, from 1180 to 1223, and was the first king to style himself “King of France” instead of “King of the Franks.”

But most of this occurred well after Philip’s brief sojourn in the Holy Land, and the focus of this post is on Philip Capet at the time of and during the Third Crusade.

Philip had been born in August 1165, or eight years after Richard of England. He had been crowned king in late 1179 while his father yet lived, and became sole king of France at the age of 15 the following year. Almost at once he started fighting with the Count of Flanders over territory, and while this was resolved by treaty in 1185, Philip had meanwhile started making demands on Henry II for the return of his sister’s dowry. (His sister Marguerite was the widow of Henry the Young King, Henry II’s eldest son, who had died in 1183)  This war with the Plantagenets was to last the next thirty years, with periodic truces.

The war between the Capets and Plantagenets was an intimate affair. Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II’s queen and mother of Henry the Young King, Richard, Geoffrey and John, had been married to Philip’s father. Philip had two half-sisters, who were Eleanor’s daughters by his father ― and they, of course, were half-sisters of the young Plantagenets also, by their mother. Philip’s sister Marguerite was married to Henry the Young King, making them brothers-in-law. Philip’s other sister Alys was betrothed to Richard. Henry the Young King and his brothers represented their father at Philip’s coronation in 1179, they attended the French court at other times as well. Philip knew the Plantagenets well, and they him.

This medieval illumination is meant to depict Philip II's Coronation. The Figure on the Right Represents Henry II, who was not present. Henry II is also shown wearing three lions/leopards, a device that was not adopted by the English royal house until Richard returned from the Holy Land.

In 1186, Philip succeeded in pulling the third Plantagenet son, Geoffrey, into his net. Geoffrey was preparing to rebel against his father (again), when he was killed in a tournament. Philip allegedly tried to throw himself into the grave from grief. Two years later, Philip lured the eldest of Henry’s surviving sons, Richard, into his camp by claiming (almost certainly untruthfully) that Henry did not intend to name Richard his heir. Richard publicly paid homage to Philip as his liege after confronting his father about his inheritance, and then fought at Philip’s side until his father was defeated, humiliated and dead. During this period of alliance, Philip and Richard were said to be so close that they shared a bed, a fact that has given rise to many accusations of homosexuality against Richard but, curiously, not against Philip. 

In any case, everything changed the minute Richard was King of England.  Richard and Philip might have been allies against Henry II, but they were enemies the moment Richard took up his father’s mantle. Richard Plantagenet had no more intention of playing humble vassal to Philip then his father had; he intended to retain control over all his territories. Philip and Richard were thus on a collision course from July 6, 1189 onward.

But on the surface, they had a common cause. They had both taken the cross and vowed to recover Jerusalem for Christendom. Richard had been the first prominent nobleman in the West to do so, and his subsequent actions attest to his sincere commitment to restoring Christian rule to the Holy City. Philip, on the other hand, is widely believed to have been pressured into crusading by his nobles and clergy; his subsequent actions seem to bear this out. Nevertheless, from 1189 to 1190 Philip was engaged in preparing for what would become known as the Third Crusade. 

On July 1, 1190, Philip met up with Richard at Vezelay in Burgundy and traveled together at the head of their respective hosts as far as Lyon, before proceeding by different routes to the next rendezvous: Messina on Sicily. Philip was by now mourning the loss of his wife Isabelle, who had died giving him twin sons, who died shortly afterward. He, therefore, arrived in Sicily a widower. Evidently to the disappointment of the spectators ― but very indicative of Philip’s nature ― he made no great show of his arrival. He arrived in a single ship (i.e. ahead of his fleet) and immediately disappeared inside the castle on the harbor.

In Sicily, King William II, a staunch supporter of the crusader cause and brother-in-law to Richard of England, had died unexpectedly in November 1189, shortly before the Kings of France and England arrived. Lacking any direct heirs, the Sicilian throne had been seized by his illegitimate first cousin Tancred, who made the tactical error of placing the Dowager Queen of Sicily (Richard the Lionheart’s sister Joanna Plantagenet) under arrest.

Richard of England, in contrast to Philip, arrived in Sicily with his entire fleet and a with a showy fanfare of trumpets, fluttering banners, banging shields and the like. On landing and learning that his sister had been impressed, he demanded not only her release but the restoration of her dower portion (or compensation) and the full payment of everything William II had pledged to the crusade itself. Tancred capitulated rapidly, and Joanna Plantagenet made an immediate conquest: in Philip of France.

This illustration allegedly shows Richard, Joanna and Philip in Sicily

Accounts suggest that Joanna, who like Philip was just 25 years old, was beautiful (she was Eleanor of Aquitaine’s daughter, after all), and, of course, she was a dowager queen by marriage and a princess by birth. As Richard was already betrothed to his sister Alys, Philip may have seriously considered strengthening the bonds by taking Joanna to wife. Richard absolutely refused to think about this because he had no intention of marrying Philip’s sister Alys Capet.

Meanwhile, however, relations between Richard and Philip, already brittle with unspoken rivalry and latent hostility, had broken into the open when fights broke out between the local inhabitants and Richard’s troops. The English claimed they were being cheated, the locals claimed the English were disorderly and disrespectful. There were too many fighting men in a strange town, harassing the girls and probably being pick-pocketed, etc. The situation is perennial and resurfaces whenever there are large armies in foreign territory. Something ignited an all-out fight, and while Richard first tried to calm tempers, he soon lost his own and came to the aid of his men. Philip of France, probably out of spite for Richard rather than sympathy for the Sicilians, took the side of the locals against his fellow crusader.  The break was so public and bitter that it took the efforts of many noblemen on both sides to get the two kings to reconcile.

The atmosphere between them deteriorated further when suddenly Eleanor of Aquitaine arrived in the company of Berengaria of Navarre.  Richard now announced that he had chosen her as his wife instead of Alys. To an astonished and furious Philip, Richard explained that he could not possibly marry Alys because his father had known her carnally. The brilliance of this argument against a marriage that had been agreed years earlier was that this allegation stemmed from none other than Philip himself. Philip had used the accusation in his web of lies to induce Richard to turn against his father. As a result, Philip could do little more than swallow his own pride (and bile no doubt). But a marriage with Joanna was now obviously off the table. The kinship ties so elaborately devised by Philip and Richard’s fathers had all broken, and what remained was open and growing hatred.

But first there was a crusade to carry out, and the Kings of England and France publicly vowed to share all spoils in the upcoming campaign in the Holy Land. Then at the first opportunity, Philip embarked his army and set sail for the Holy Land on March 30, 1191.   

Philip’s entire fleet crossed the Mediterranean without notable incident. On May 20, the King of France arrived off the city of Tyre, the last Frankish stronghold in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Tyre was controlled by a distant relative of Philip’s, Conrad de Montferrat, one of the two contenders for the throne of Jerusalem. Philip immediately threw his support behind Montferrat, bolstering his claim to the crown against those of his rival, Guy de Lusignan. He and Conrad together proceeded to the Christian siege of Acre. Here Philip brought not only new troops but new vigor to the siege, and at once erected a number of powerful siege engines.

However, he soon became ill with what the contemporary chronicles call “Arnoldia,” a debilitating illness that caused the loss of hair and nails and could be fatal. Furthermore, with the arrival of King Richard, there were two commanders in the same camp and frictions between them sparked almost at once. Allegedly, Richard refused to let his troops support at least one attack ordered by Philip.  But then Richard too fell ill with “Arnoldia.”

Various assaults and above all the action of the siege engines continued as both kings gradually regained their strength. Most significantly, the arrival of the French and English fleet had enabled the sea blockade of Acre to become completely effective and no supplies, munitions or reinforcements were slipping into the city. By early July the Saracen garrison of Acre had reached the breaking point. The commanders of the Saracen garrison, therefore, sought a truce in which to seek instructions from Saladin. They told the French and English kings that they would surrender if Saladin did not come to their aid within a set period of time, asking to be allowed to take their arms and their moveable valuables with them and enjoy a safe-conduct to wherever they wished to go. King Philip, supported by his nobles, agreed. King Richard insisted they should not be allowed their arms and valuables. Negotiations broke down.

A medieval depiction of the Surrender of Acre -- notably to Philip. Richard is beside him.

Ten days later, with still no relief from Saladin, the garrison again sought terms and this time agreed to much harsher conditions: the return of the Christian relic known as the “True Cross” that had been captured at the battle of Hattin, the release of an unspecified number of Christian prisoners taken at or after Hattin, and the payment of 200,000 Saracen gold pieces, all to be delivered one month after the signing of the agreement. Members of the garrison (the numbers vary according to source) were to be held as hostages to ensure the release of the Christians, the remaining members of the garrison were free to go ― but without their arms or valuables. The kings of France and England accepted these terms.

On July 12, the hostages were surrendered, the remaining garrison marched out ― proudly by all accounts ― and the crusaders took possession of Acre after four years of Saracen occupation. They found the churches desecrated, but otherwise most of the city intact. It was divided equally between the French and English, with Richard’s men notably (and foolishly as it turned out) throwing down the banner of the Duke of Austria because that represented a claim to the spoils and Richard wasn’t sharing with anyone but Philip of France.

But now that Acre was in the hands of the crusaders, the issue of who was the rightful King of Jerusalem came again to the fore. As noted above, Philip backed the claims of Conrad de Montferrat (a kinsman), who was married to the sole remaining legitimate heir, Isabella of Jerusalem, and was supported by the High Court of Jerusalem. Richard, however, stubbornly backed the architect of the disaster at Hattin, King Guy, who was a vassal of the Plantagenet. After much bitter fighting, a compromise was found. Guy was recognized as king for his lifetime, but Conrad was recognized as Count of Tyre (to include Sidon and Beirut, if/when these cities were ever recovered) and heir to the throne at Guy’s death. Curiously, however, Guy’s elder brother Geoffrey, who had come out from the West with the crusaders, was also awarded the title of Count of Jaffa and Ascalon, the county that traditionally belonged to the heir of the throne. To be sure Jaffa and Ascalon were at this point in still in Saracen hands, but it was an ominous hint that the Lusignans did not really accept ― and did not intend to respect ― the agreement to make Montferrat king at Guy’s death.

With that dispute at least temporarily out of the way, Philip dropped a bombshell: he announced that he was turning over his share of all the booty to Conrad de Montferrat and intended to return to France. No one, not even his own nobles, had expected or approved of this abandonment of the crusade. His official excuse was “ill-health.” (He had either never fully recovered from the Arnoldia or he had contracted dysentery subsequently.) No one accepted this as a legitimate reason to break-off a crusade. Crusaders were supposed to achieve their objective, or die in the attempt. No one, however, was able to reason with or shame Philip into changing his mind. Despite alleged curses and bitter recriminations, Philip prepared to depart. Richard, suspicious that Philip’s intentions were to attack his lands in his absence, demanded that Philip swear on holy relics that he would leave the Plantagenet territories in peace until Richard’s return.

On August 1, 1191, Philip boarded a galley loaned to him by Richard of England and sailed for Tyre. He took Conrad de Montferrat and the most valuable of the Saracen hostages from the surrender of Acre with him. The exact date of his departure from Tyre is not recorded, but he was no longer in Outremer when the deadline for the delivery of the True Cross, captives and cash payment expired in mid-August. The decision to massacre the hostages fell to Richard of England alone.

Philip was back in Paris by late 1191. He immediately began undermining Richard’s authority and drawing the last and youngest of the Plantagenet brothers, John, into his net. His vow not to attack Richard during his absence was as meaningless as the crusader vow he’d taken before leaving for the Holy Land ― and as meaningless as the marriage vows he exchanged with Ingeborg of Denmark. Philip Capet, great as his legacy was for France, lacked any sense of personal honor, integrity, and a fear of God. While his qualities served his kingdom well, he remains for me a distasteful character.

Philip II of France plays a minor role in Envoy of Jerusalem. 

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The Siege of Acre II -- Of Kings and Massacres

The siege of Acre began in 1189 more by mistake than design. By 1191, however, it had consumed tens of thousands of Christian lives and become an obsession for crusaders. As in WWI, action had become bogged down in a slogging match over a very small piece of territory, while the overall strategic objectives had largely become obscured by the focus on this one, at best tactical, target. The Franks were determined to take Acre, and the Saracens to hold it -- regardless of the cost on either side. 

The fall of Jerusalem in 1187 had, however, ignited a massive and vigorous response in the West long before the start of the siege of Acre. The call for a new crusade fell on ready and eager ears in 1187. The Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich "Barbarossa," King Henry II of England, King Philip II of France,  the Dukes of Austria and Aquitaine, the Counts of Champagne and Flanders, and literally hundreds of other noblemen, thousands of knights and tens of thousands of commoners "took the cross" and vowed to retake Jerusalem.  

Organizing a military campaign thousands of miles away, even in the age of instant communications, is not child's play and kings and emperors are not amateurs. Once committed to leading armies to the Holy Land, the Holy Roman Emperor and the kings began to meticulously prepare for the campaign, pulling together financial resources, and building or chartering fleets in the case of the English and French, or organizing land-transportation in the case of the Germans. In addition, supplies for men and horses, siege engines, munitions and medical support had to be arranged. The complexity of these operations was enormous, as the noted historian Christopher Tyerman documents in his excellent work How to Plan a Crusade: Reason and Religious War in the Middle Ages. Last but not least, when monarchs prepare to leave their kingdoms for extended periods of time, they also need to provide for a functioning administration to rule in their absence and ensure lines of communication between their mobile headquarters and their capitals. All this takes time.

As a result, the first crusading army did not set out to relieve the Holy Land until almost two years after the disaster at Hattin or only a little before the start of the siege of Acre. This was the army led by the Holy Roman Emperor. Unfortunately, a little more than a year later, Friedrich Barbarossa drowned while crossing a river in Anatolia, and his army was subsequently decimated by disease. Only a small remnant made it to Antioch and from there continued down the coast to -- whether it was rational or not -- join the siege of Acre. 

Meanwhile, in July 1190, King Philip II of France and King Richard of England (who had succeeded his father Henry II) set off from Vezelay in France. Both traveled overland as far as Marseilles and then took ships to Sicily, where they gathered their forces, planning to transport their entire army by sea to the Holy Land.  Unfortunately, they did not arrive until after the "sailing season" in the Mediterranean was over and so wintered in Sicily.  

It was the spring of 1191, therefore, before the great hosts under Philip II and Richard I set sail for the Holy Land. By now, the siege of Acre had been going on for 21 months, and all the independent crusaders as well as the remnants of the German campaign and Guy de Lusignan with his native troops were concentrated at Acre. Whether seizing Acre made strategic sense or not, the dye had been cast and the kings made for Acre to contribute their fresh reserves of troops and considerable material resources to the siege.

Philip arrived first on May 20 and immediately took command of Frankish operations at Acre. He had brought a number of deconstructed siege engines, which were quickly re-assembled and went into action. King Philip also ordered the undermining of the walls and one of these mines succeeded in bringing down a significant portion of the wall. French assaults on June 5, later in the month and July 2-3, however, failed to achieve a break-through because Saladin's army surrounding the Frankish camp attacked whenever the assaults on Acre were made, preventing the Franks from bringing sufficient force to overwhelm the defense in the breach.   

Finally, on June 8, Richard of England and his army joined the siege at Acre after being delayed in the Mediterranean by contrary winds and a diversion to capture the island of Cyprus. (See: Richard the Lionheart's Greatest Conquest) While the arrival of so many additional troops should have (and ultimately did) seal the fate of the Saracen garrison at Acre, operations were also undermined by the hostility and rivalry between the French and English kings. Thus, according to an account friendly to the French king, at some undefined point after the English king's arrival, the garrison sent envoys to offer terms of surrender to Philip of France, but Richard of England launched an attack while the Saracens were negotiating with Philip causing them to believe they had been tricked and deceived and hence withdraw. Even accounts friendly to Richard admit that he did not always support attacks ordered by the French king. Furthermore, both kings soon fell ill with a disease called "Arnoldia," and despite (or because of) their presence no single, over-all plan of action was pursued and various assaults, including one by the "squires" without knightly let alone baronial leadership, were undertaken -- all unsuccessfully.

Despite these set-backs and his illness, however, Richard brought a huge fleet that was  now completely choking off all hope of relief and resupply by sea for the Saracen garrison.  He also deployed powerful siege engines that started battering down the so-called "Cursed Tower" and long sections of the wall.  By July 7, the garrison's situation was so desperate that a messenger secretly swam through the Frankish fleet to get word to Saladin that they could not hold out much longer and plead for him to relieve them. Saladin's response was to imperiously order the garrison to hold firm, without offering any form of assistance. Unsurprisingly, five days later the garrison surrendered without Saladin's permission.

The terms of the surrender were not draconian considering the casualties the Christians had suffered in two years. The garrison was to be granted their lives and allowed to depart without their weapons, in exchange for Saladin paying 200,000 Saracen gold pieces, returning the relic that the Franks believed was a fragment of the cross on which Christ was crucified (the "True Cross"), and -- significantly -- returning 2,500 of the prisoners taken at Hattin. 

The importance of the last point of negotiation is consistently overlooked in modern accounts, but the Lyon Continuation of William of Tyre's history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem -- the chronicle most likely based on a source written by a native of that Kingdom rather than a cleric sitting thousands of miles away and decades later -- notes that the terms of the agreement called for Saladin to "release one Christian that he held in prison for every Saracen they had captured in the city." To ensure that Saladin upheld his part of the bargain, an estimated 2,500 men (accounts vary) from the garrison were held as hostages.

It is important to note that these hostages were not women or children, not innocent civilians, nor were they technically prisoners; they were hostages. According to the rules of war at this time, their lives were forfeit if the terms of the surrender agreement were not met. Saladin, possibly because he had not been consulted about the terms the garrison negotiated, or possibly because he couldn't raise the money or find the hostages or didn't have the True Cross any longer, failed to comply with the terms of the agreement. He asked for first one extension and then a second, and when he still failed to deliver the prisoners, the True Cross or the money, Richard of England ordered the hostages executed.

The decision was Richard's alone because Philip of France had already packed his bags and sailed back to France as soon as Acre fell to the crusaders. (Much could be said on this topic but it is beyond the scope of this essay.) When on August 19, 1191, Saladin reneged on the negotiated settlement a second time, the mood in the crusader camp turned ugly. The crusaders and Christian clergy had come out in great pomp to receive the True Cross and welcome home fathers, brothers, wives and daughters from captivity only to be disappointed. When Saladin failed to deliver the prisoners "there was great sorrow among the Christians; many tears were shed on that day, and all the men of the host were greatly troubled." (Lyon Continuation of William of Tyre, 125).  There was also considerable dissatisfaction with the Christian leadership (namely Richard and the Duke of Burgundy) who had, from the perspective of the troops, been duped by Saladin.

We will never know why Richard made the decision he did, but there were a number of sound military and political reasons for executing the hostages. First, Richard needed to restore morale and respect for his leadership among the diverse volunteers that made up the crusading force. (Most of the crusaders were not his vassals and could not be commanded; they had to be persuaded to follow him.) Second, he needed to start moving on the true objective (Jerusalem)--so long obscured by the siege of Acre, and he could not do that with 2,500 Saracen fighting men still in Acre inviting an attack on his rear. Third, and most important, he needed to signal to Saladin that he was not to be trifled with -- that he was a dangerous foe. 

Richard achieved all three of these objectives, but at a high price to his reputation. To this day, the massacre of hostages at Acre is almost always sited by Richard's detractors as an act of "barbarism." It was far from that, but it was an act of cold-blooded realpolitik in a brutal age.  

The Siege of Acre and the massacre of the garrison are important events described in “Envoy of Jerusalem.” Buy now in paperback or kindle!