The Forgotten Component in Negotiations: Captives

In kingdoms without borders, negotiations often had more to do with people than places. A short look at the usually forgotten component of captives in peace settlements in the era of the crusades.

War in Western Europe in the era of the crusades was largely about control of cities and castles. These were the assets that generated income on the one hand and enabled power projection on the other. While the garrisons and inhabitants of castles and cities might be killed during a siege or an assault, there are very few instances where entire populations were displaced. Negotiations for surrender were usually about accepting the sovereignty (doing homage and paying taxes) to the victor, not about avoiding slaughter. Certainly, the defeated in the intra-Christian wars of the High Middle Ages never faced the prospect of slavery because the enslavement of fellow Christians was condemned by the Church and largely disappeared by the end of the ninth century, certainly by the eleventh.

In the Middle East, in contrast, both Arab and Turkish societies were built on slavery. The economy could not function without slaves, and nor could their military because slave-soldiers were an indispensable component of their armies. Slaves made up the most reliable and elite units. These were composed of slaves, captured or purchased as children, and raised to fanatical loyalty while developing military skills to the highest standards. In short, neither the Arab nor the Turkish states of this period could function without slaves. Furthermore, the "consumption" of slaves was enormous, leading to a voracious, indeed apparently insatiable, demand for slaves. To the shame of the Italian commercial states, these played a key role in supplying the Middle Eastern slave markets with human beings captured in the pagan north. Yet, while this market was lucrative, it was not the main source of slaves to the Muslim world. Conquest was.

To be sure, the custom of enslaving the vanquished is as old as the Iliad. The custom had, however, died out in the West under the influence of Christianity. Islam, in contrast, raised the custom to a new heights because it was sanctified by Mohammed's treatment of his enemies and enshrined in the Quran (3:106) that clothed the enslavement of non-Muslim peoples in righteousness and religious justification. Indeed, there is ample evidence that many raids were instigated not to conquer or destroy the economic base of the enemy, but simply to take captives. "During the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries, such razzias depopulated Sardinia, Sicily, the coasts of Italy and southern France, and in the eastern Mediterranean, the Cyclades, the regions of Athos, Euboea and along the Greek coast."(1)

By the era of the crusades, such large-scale raiding was a thing of the past, but the practice remained at the local level. What this meant in practice is that throughout the crusades era, the Franks and their Orthodox Christian allies faced slavery every time they were taken captive whether in battle, a siege, or a raid. The highest noblemen were the only exception. They could expect to be held for ransom rather than sold into slavery, and it is their fate about which we hear the most. 

 

Yet they were the exception and the tip of the iceberg. For every nobleman held captive for ransom there were scores of knights, hundreds of turcopoles and sergeants, and thousands of peasants, women and children. The latter particularly were often the victims of small-scale raiding, a nearly perpetual phenomenon in this period. The victims of it were the rural population, a class unable to pay ransoms and so rarely given that option. 

As a result, at any one time, thousands of Christians, former subjects of the Frankish kings and princes, were held in captivity by Muslim enemies of the Franks. Some of these were Frankish settlers; more of them were native Christians. 

 

Surprisingly, they were not forgotten. 

 

On the contrary, in truce after truce, the Franks remembered their captive subjects. The return of captives -- not just noble or knightly captives -- was a component part of negotiations with the enemy. There are recorded incidents when the Franks leveraged a Muslim desire for peace to secure the release of thousands of captives.(2) In one instance -- viewed as an example of Frankish "arrogance" --  the Arab chronicler Ibn al-Athir records:

The Franks sent to review those male and female slaves of their people who had been taken from all the Christian lands, and bade them choose whether they would stay with their lords or return to their homelands. Anyone who preferred to stay was left, and anyone who wanted to go home went there.

This clearly refers to women which highlights the fact that such agreements were not confined to the release of fighting men. Furthermore, this particular agreement was extremely comprehensive as it applied to the entire city of Damascus. Again, thousands of captives must have benefited from the negotiated settlement. 

Yet such agreements were only possible if the Franks were negotiating from strength. As a result, many captives languished for years in slavery, before a change in fortune enabled the Franks to extract concessions from their opponents. The fact that some captives waited a long time for release does not diminish their importance. On the contrary, the fact that even after years, relatives, friends and comrades were determined to obtain the release of those they loved while Frankish negotiators -- always members of the Frankish elite -- recognized and respected this is to the credit of the Franks. 

Too many historians appear to overlook the importance of the return of captives when condemning Richard the Lionheart's actions at Acre. The Lyon Continuation of William of Tyre notes explicitly that when Saladin reneged on his agreement to meet the terms fo the surrender agreement for Acre, 

"there was great sorrow among the Christians; many tears were shed that day, and all the men of the host were greatly troubled. When King Richard saw the people weeping and lamenting... he had great pity on them and wanted to calm those in such great distress."(3)

People were hardly weeping because Richard and Philip didn't get the money they demanded. They may have been upset that the True Cross had not been returned, but it hardly seems to justify this degree of grief described, particularly since there was no comparable grief reported during later negotiations that also failed to yield the captured relic. The far more logical explanation of this grief was that the terms of surrender had included the return of a captive for each member of the garrison held hostage. Many of the men in Richard's army were hoping to see friends or family again. It was that loss -- the disappointment combined with fear that they might never be reunited with loved ones -- that caused so much grief. Whether Richard's response was the appropriate one or not, we should not ignore the fact that he was under intense pressure from his own men. The chronicle makes clear that they believed they been denied their loved ones because their leaders had been duped. 

The fate of captives is a major theme in: 

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1) Ye'or, Bat. The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009, 50.

2) Holt, P.M., The Crusader States and their Neighbours. Pearson Longman, 2004, 64.

3) Edbury, Peter (translator). The Conquest of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade. Ashgate (Crusades Text in Translation), 108.

 

The Lusignan Siege of Acre

In the history of the Holy Land there were many sieges of Acre. During the crusader era the most famous was the last siege in 1291 that marked the end of the crusader states and the swansong of the crusades themselves. One hundred years earlier, however, Acre had been the setting for the first military engagement of the Third Crusade -- and of a massacre that has blotted Richard the Lionheart's record (rightly or wrongly) ever since. That 12th century siege was not, however, started by the leaders of the Third Crusade. Rather they "inherited" it from the strategist that gave us the Frankish humiliation at Hattin: Guy de Lusignan.  Today I look at how Guy de Lusignan came to establish the siege of Acre and the consequences of it.

In August 1189 a Frankish army under the command of King Guy of Jerusalem laid siege to the city of Acre.  Once the economic heart of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Acre had surrendered to the Saracens just days after the Battle of Hattin, and by August 1189 it was garrisoned by Egyptian troops fiercely loyal to the Sultan Salah ad-Din.

Located deep inside Saracen held territory, the siege of Acre was maintained largely by reinforcements arriving by sea, and the siege camp was itself encircled on land by the armies of Salah ad-Din, so that the besiegers were themselves besieged. The siege was to last two full years and cost tens of thousands of Christian lives. According to the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, one of the most important contemporary accounts, the siege cost Christendom the Patriarch of Jerusalem, six archbishops, twelve bishops, forty counts, and five hundred barons. It also cost Jerusalem a queen and two princesses, all of whom died of fever in the siege camp. While there are no reliable sources for the number of commoners lost, such high casualties among the privileged elites (that could afford the best armor, accommodation and food even in times of scarcity) suggests that tens of thousands of ordinary people -- fighting men, clergy and camp followers -- were lost in the siege of Acre. They died in combat, from disease and even starvation.

Furthermore, although both sides repeatedly launched assaults against the other, all were ultimately defeated at high cost. Between these major battles, small scale skirmishing occurred on an almost daily basis, causing continuous attrition. Ultimately, however, disease, deprivation, and unsanitary conditions accounted for the lion’s share of the casualties. Even after the arrival of large crusading forces under the kings of England and France (the Third Crusade), victory was not achieved by offensive action, but rather through a naval blockade that cut the Saracen garrison off from supplies and reinforcements. The garrison at Acre surrendered and received terms rather than being crushed by Christian arms. In short, the history of the Siege of Acre is a grim tale of stalemate reminiscent of the horrible trench warfare of WWI.

And just like WWI, one wonders if it was worth the sacrifice made and if at any time the siege made military sense?

The Siege of Acre was the “brainchild” of the man who gave us the catastrophe at Hatttin: Guy de Lusignan. Furthermore, it was apparently undertaken by default more than design. After losing the Battle of Hattin, surrendering to Saladin and then swearing to depart the Holy Land and never take up arms against Islam again in order to secure his release, Guy de Lusignan went first to Tripoli and then Antioch. Here Guy spent a year doing we know not what before deciding to break his oath to Saladin (with the blessings of the Christian church, which argued he had made the oath under duress) and return to his own kingdom.

Guy's kingdom by this point in time consisted of only a single city, Tyre, which had been saved from ignominious surrender by the timely arrival of Conrad de Montferrat. So Guy left Antioch with a body of several hundred knights and several thousand foot soldiers, all volunteers prepared to support Guy regain the kingdom he had squandered at Hattin – or, more probably, volunteers dedicated to the recapture of Jerusalem, even if that meant following Guy de Lusignan. Guy went naturally to his only remaining city with the intention of making it his base of operations.

On arrival in Tyre, however, Conrad de Montferrat flatly refused to admit him to the city and furthermore refused to acknowledge him as king at all. Montferrat reasoned Lusignan had 1) forfeited his kingdom with his defeat at Hattin, and 2) renounced the right to regain it in order to obtain his release from captivity. This turn of events had not been anticipated by Guy and took him by surprise. Allegedly, Guy was at a complete loss about what to do next, and implicitly prepared to just go back to Antioch with his tail between his legs.

Guy’s older brother Geoffrey is credited with convincing him to take the offensive instead. Geoffrey was the second of the four Lusignan brothers. The eldest brother Hugh “le Brun” was Lord of the March and Lusignan, a vassal of the Plantagenets.  The third brother was Aimery, Constable of Jerusalem and like Guy a former captive of Saladin. Guy was the fourth and youngest of the Lusignan brothers of this generation.  Hugh would arrive later in the train of Richard of England with a significant crusader contingent, and Aimery was already with Guy. Geoffrey, the second of the four Lusignan brothers, appears to have been too impatient to await the ponderous collection of the entire crusader host. He rushed out to the Holy Land to join his younger brothers well before the departure of his elder brother with the men of Lusignan.

Geoffrey may have been impulsive and impatient by nature. Before coming on crusade, he was credited with leading a Lusignan attack on Eleanor of Aquitaine that resulted in the murder of the Earl of Salisbury. In this incident, Guy is sometimes blamed for wielding the fatal lance, but Geoffrey as the elder brother was the man who made the decision to attack the unarmed and unsuspecting troop with the Queen of England. In any case, in August of 1189 Geoffrey de Lusignan had only recently arrived in the Holy Land. His proposal to lay siege to Acre may, therefore, have been either merely impulsive or based on ignorance because it is hard to imagine a military reason for the selection of Acre as a target.

To be sure, taking offensive action made sense. Jerusalem was never going to be recovered by defensive actions alone. By August 1189, it was more than two years since the disaster at Hattin and fighting men committed to regaining the Holy Land for Christendom were spoiling for a fight. They were tired of being cooped up in Tyre and anxious to start fighting back. This is well illustrated by the attempt to retake Sidon just two months earlier. (See Jerusalem Fights Back)

The difference between the campaign to take Sidon and Lusignan’s siege of Acre, however, is that Sidon lay between the two Frankish strongholds of Tyre and Tripoli. Recapturing Sidon and the coast between Tyre and Sidon (and presumably between Sidon and Tripoli) would have extended Frankish control to a continuous coastal strip, greatly increasing the strategic and economic viability of remaining Frankish territory. Acre on the other hand was even farther from Tripoli and Antioch than Tyre and, as the course of events show, rapidly isolated.

Some historians have argued that Acre’s port was particularly valuable, which is certainly true, and that the riches that could be garnered from a port would have supported many “money fiefs,” which is also true. But given its isolation, its excellent defenses and the size and loyalty of the garrison holding it for Saladin, these arguments for selecting Acre as a target seem less than compelling.  Rather, the siege of Acre was a tactical blunder by a man (Guy de Lusignan) who never evidenced a shred of military acumen.

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 

The Siege of Acre is an important event described in award-winning Envoy of Jerusalem.

 

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War by Other Means: Diplomacy of the Third Crusade – Part I: Testing the Limits

The German military philosopher, Carl von Clausewitz, famously described war as “the continuation of politics by other means” and as “an act of force to compel the enemy to do our will.” Diplomacy on the other hand is the attempt to obtain political objectives without the use of force. War and diplomacy, however, are intimately related because every military leader seeks to obtain his objectives (both military and political) with the minimum casualties. A diplomatic victory that delivers an important military objective bloodlessly ― whether it’s as small as a bridge or as big as a kingdom ― is always preferred over a bloody battle or all out war.

Thus, both methods of obtaining political objectives (war and diplomacy) are as old as history itself. The crusades ― despite often being characterized as acts of mindless barbarism ― were no exception. In addition to the battles familiar to most students of the crusades, there were frequent, complex and often highly successful diplomatic maneuvers as well. 

The Third Crusade was the first (but not the last) of the crusades that ended with a truce, and as such was concluded diplomatically rather than militarily. It is therefore an interesting case-study in diplomacy at the interface between Christendom and the Dar al-Islam. It is particularly interesting because the principle actors, Richard the Lionheart and Salah ad-Din, are more famous as men of war than men of peace. In two entries I wish to examine the diplomacy of the Third Crusade. Today’s entry looks at diplomacy in the first six months of the crusade; a period in which both sides were probing the other more than seeking agreement.

The political objectives of the Third Crusade were crystal clear: the restoration of Christian rule over the Holy Land. The later was defined roughly as the land in which Christ had lived and died, most especially the site of his execution, burial and resurrection: Jerusalem. All the crusaders that embarked upon the Third Crusade understood this as their goal ― and Saladin knew it. His political objective was quite simply to defend the status quo: Muslim control over the territory coveted by the crusaders.

The Christian forces making up the Third Crusade first encountered the forces of Salah ad-Din at Acre. The choice of venue was not strategic and had not been chosen by any of the commanders. Rather, it was imposed on both parties by Guy de Lusignan’s questionable decision to lay siege to Acre two years earlier (See Siege of Acre). (One can’t help but speculate what Richard the Lionheart’s choice venue for an assault would have been if the siege of Acre had not already been in place; I suspect Jaffa or Ascalon.)

After nearly two years of stalemate, the arrival of the fleets commissioned and commanded by the powerful European kings Philip II of France and Richard I of England immediately tipped the scales at the siege of Acre in favor of the crusaders. I say the fleets and not the armies because it was ultimately the airtight blockade of the city of Acre that forced the Egyptian garrison of Acre to seek terms. 

So the first diplomatic move in the Third Crusade was made by the Saracens (the garrison of Acre) seeking very generous terms of surrender. The newly arrived crusaders, still fresh and cocky, rejected the terms. Instead, they continued their assaults and finally forced the garrison, which was now quite desperate, to surrender on less favorable terms. The terms included the return of the relic captured at the Battle of Hattin and believed to be a piece of the cross on which Christ was crucified (True Cross), a large payment in gold (200,000 gold pieces) and the liberation of a large number of Christian captives, most probably a number equal to the number of hostages. Two-thousand five hundred hostages (by some accounts more, but a number equal to the captives to be released) from the garrison were surrendered to the crusaders as surety for the fulfillment of the terms of the treaty. In short, the first round of diplomatic maneuvering went to the Christians.

Salah ad-Din, however, had either not been involved in the negotiations at all, or only at the last moment, when the desperate garrison begged him to sanction the terms they had already obtained. He was almost certainly not pleased with the terms, which may well have placed him in an awkward position. Salah ad-Din’s problem was that he: 1) may not have had the True Cross in his possession (Islam considers reverence for objects idolatry and had little reason to keep the Christian relic intact), 2) may have been short of ready cash, and 3) would have needed to buy back the captive Christians from the men who had captured them or purchased them since. In short, Salah ad-Din may have had difficulty fulfilling the terms of the agreement. Equally or possibly even more important, Salah ad-Din had every reason to drag out the fulfillment of the agreement. The campaign season in the Holy Land lasts only through the summer and ends when the rains start in November or December. It was already July when Acre surrendered. The longer Salah ad-Din dragged out the negotiations, the less time the crusaders would have to make an assault somewhere else.

Salah ad-Din as portrayed by a artist in the West

Salah ad-Din chose to play for time, missing at least two deadlines for the delivery of the True Cross, the captives and the gold. This inaction on the part of Salah ad-Din now put Richard of England in the awkward position of having to respond. The campaign season was ticking away, his troops were getting fractious, the Saracens hostages were consuming food and required guards. Most important of all: Salah ad-Din appeared to be mocking and belittling him. Aside from the fact that Salah ad-Din appeared to have made a fool of him in the eyes of many of his own followers, Richard had to wonder what Salah ad-Din would think of him if he meekly accepted the excuses and delays. The military objective, the surrender of Acre to the crusaders, had already been achieved. What was now at stake were only secondary, not to say marginal objectives: money, the symbolic True Cross, and captives, who were not Richard's own men but natives of Outremer, men that Richard at this time may have more-or-less looked down on.

Since Salah ad-Din had not fulfilled the terms of the agreement, Richard was completely within his rights to execute the hostages according to the customs of war at this time. His decision to do so, however, had little to do with what was his “right,” and more to do with what impact he thought his action would have. The execution of the hostages was of negligible military value; 2,500 men were a drop in the bucket of what Salah ad-Din could conscript or recruit. The execution of the hostages served, rather, the diplomatic objective of increasing Salah ad-Din’s respect for Richard as a negotiating partner. The diplomatic message was: this English king is not to be trifled with. Whether we like it or not, Richard got his message across.

Significantly, it was Richard that made the next diplomatic move. Shortly after the crusading army had left Acre and before the battle of Arsuf, Richard sought a meeting with Salah ad-Din. His apparent objective at this time appears to have been no more than meeting him face-to-face so he could take the measure of him. Richard, remember, had up to now fought men he knew well ― his father, his brothers, his vassals, his would-be brother-in-law Philip of France. Salah ad-Din was known to him only from hear-say and it is understandable that he wanted to meet. 

Richard I's Tomb at Fontevrault

Salah ad-Din rebuffed him. He said kings only met after an agreement has been hammered out. (The same is true today: treaties are negotiated at the working-level, and only signed ― when ready ― at summits.) Richard lost this round.

After the Battle of Arsuf, Richard made a renewed attempt to open diplomatic channels and Salah ad-Din agreed to let his brother al-Adil meet with Richard. Richard opened the negotiations with a demand that Salah ad-Din turn over all territories that had ever belonged to the Kingdom of Jerusalem (i.e. even territory lost decades earlier) and, furthermore, do homage to the restored Christian King of Jerusalem for Egypt. The fact that al-Adil mildly characterized these demands as “excessive” but indicated willingness to continue talking is highly significant. 

At the same time that Saladin was negotiating with Richard, he was also negotiating with Conrad de Montferrat. Conrad’s initial proposal was that the Sultan recognize him as Count of Tyre and in addition restore Sidon and Beirut, with their surrounding territory, to him in exchange for Montferrat recognizing the Sultan’s right to everything south of Tyre (i.e. from Acre to Ascalon and including the heartland of the former Kingdom of Jerusalem ― Nazareth, Galilee and Jerusalem.) While on the surface this offer was a hundred times better than Richard's, Salah ad-Din called Conrad’s bluff by pointing out that he could not give away what he did not control. This diplomatic exchange is significant because it exposed Conrad the Montferrat’s greed and weakness. Thereafter, the Sultan knew that his only serious opponent was Richard the Lionheart and he focused his attention on driving Richard out of the Holy Land. 

But “driving him out” did not have to be by military means and so he pursed the diplomatic contacts established by Richard. What followed were a series of meetings, the exact number and date of which we can no longer reconstruct, between Richard and/or his representatives and al-Adil as Salah ad-Din’s ambassador. At one of these, al-Adil put forward the preposterous idea that he marry Richard's sister, Joanna Plantagenet, Dowager Queen of Sicily. (See A Curious Proposal) Both sides, however, treated the proposal as a joke. By the end of November it was clear that the negotiations with Richard were going nowhere and had yielded nothing concrete. The diplomatic back-and-forth broke down and was replaced by a renewed military offensive directed at Jerusalem.

Yet the diplomatic contacts established in 1191 were not unimportant. They laid the groundwork for successful negotiations the following year. If nothing else, they enabled Richard and al-Adil to establish a degree of trust and rapport that had been singularly lacking at the start of the summer, when Richard had felt he had to execute thousands of prisoners to demonstrate his resolve. While the exchange of gifts should not be exaggerated into “friendship,” they were nevertheless an indication of a degree of “normalization” of relations that kept the door to a diplomatic solution open.

Balian d’Ibelin was directly involved in much of the diplomatic maneuvering, serving in one instance as Conrad de Montferrat’s envoy. The diplomatic game is a major plot factor in “Envoy of Jerusalem.”

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