NOTES
Note I
Richard and Leopold of Austria at Acre
The German account of the quarrel between Richard and the duke of Austria after the taking of Acre is as follows:
“Capta igitur civitate, rex Anglorum signa triumphalia sui exercitus turribus affigi praecepit, titulum victoriae ex toto sibimetipsi satis arroganter adscribens. Hacque de causa cum per civitatem transiret, vexillum ducis Leopoldi turri quam ipse cum suis obtinuerat affixum vidit, suumque non esse recognoscens, cujusdam sit percontatur. Qui Leopoldi ducis Orientalium esse accepto responso, eumque ex parte civitatem obtinuisse comperiens, maxima indignatione permotus vexillum turre dejici lutoque conculcari praecepit; insuper ducem verbis contumeliosis affectum sine causa injuriavit.” Otto of S. Blaise, Pertz, xx. 323.
The English accounts are two:
(1) “Dux Austriae, et ipse unus ex veteribus obsessoribus Accaronis, regem Anglorum secutus a pari in suae sortis possessionem, quia praelato coram se vexillo visus fuit sibi partem vindicare triumphi; et si non de precepto, de voluntate tamen regis offensi, dejectum est vexillum ducis in coenum, et in ejus contumeliam a derisoribus conculcatum.” R. Devizes, 52. (2) “Cum enim civitatem Accon irrumperent Christiani, et diversi diversa civitatis hospitia caperent, in nobilissimo civitatis palatio signum ducis [Ostrici] elevatus est. Quod intuens rex et invidens, manu militum valida vexillum dejecit, ducemque tam grato spoliavit hospitio.” Gerv. Cant., i. 514.
Rigord (118) says: “Ducis Austriae vexillum circa Accon cuidam principi [rex Ricardus] abstulit et in cloacam profundam, in opprobrium ducis et dedecus, vilissime confractum dejecit.”
Otto is the only German authority on the subject: for the brief mention of it in Ann. Colon. (Pertz, xvii. 802), which is practically in agreement with him, cannot be considered as such, and Magnus of Reichensperg’s version (ib. 519) is of no value, because it places the incident not at Acre, but at the rebuilding of Ascalon, in January 1192, after Leopold had left Palestine (Kellner, R. Löwenherz Deutsche Gefangenschaft, 47-8). It is curious that the writer who gives the fullest details about Leopold’s Crusade and about the later relations between Leopold and Richard gives no account of the affair at all, merely saying with reference to Leopold’s capture and imprisonment of the king “Una et efficiens causa fuit quod eum in obsidione Aconae quasi abjectum reputavit” (Ansbert, in Appendix to Preface to R. Howden, iii. cxl). It is also noticeable that Otto writes as if Richard had claimed possession of the whole of Acre for himself alone; there is no mention of Philip. Probably the tower to which Leopold’s banner was affixed stood in Richard’s half of the city.
Note II
The Capitulation of Acre
The terms on which Karakoush and El-Meshtoub agreed to surrender Acre are given, in various forms, by nine contemporary or almost contemporary authorities.
(1) King Richard, in a letter to the Abbot of Clairvaux, R. Howden, iii. 131.
(2) Bohadin, Rec. Hist. Orient., iii. 237; Schultens’s edition, 179.
(3) Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, ll. 5199-224, and Itin. Reg. Ric., 231, 232; these two are here practically identical and may be counted as one.
(4) Gesta Ric., 178, 179.
(5) R. Howden, iii. 120, 121.
(6) R. Diceto, ii. 94.
(7) R. Coggeshall, 32.
(8) R. Devizes (ed. Stevenson), 51, 52.
(9) Ibn Alathyr, Rec. Hist. Orient., II. 46.
All these writers mention, among the conditions promised by the Moslems, the restoration of the relic of the Cross; and all except one—R. Devizes—mention also the release of a number of Christian prisoners: the king and R. Diceto say fifteen hundred; R. Coggeshall says seven hundred, some of whom the kings were to select; Ambrose and the Itinerarium say two thousand prisoners of distinction and five hundred of lower rank; the Gesta say fifteen hundred ordinary prisoners and two hundred knights, these latter to be specially selected by the kings; R. Howden follows this latter account, but reduces the first number to a thousand; Ibn Alathyr mentions only the “selected” prisoners, whose number he gives as five hundred. The earlier of the two extant redactions of Bohadin (Recueil, iii. 237) has “five hundred prisoners of ordinary condition, and one hundred others of rank, whom the Franks might ask for by name”; but in the later redaction (represented by Schultens’s edition) the figures are fifteen hundred and one thousand. This later redaction, of which the only known MS. was written in the year after Bohadin’s death, is considered not to be his own work (Recueil, iii. 374); but its variations from the earlier recension seem entitled to some consideration, as they are so nearly contemporary and may have the force of corrections; this may be the case in the passage under consideration here.
Neither King Richard, R. Diceto, nor R. Devizes, mentions a money payment. The Estoire, Itinerarium, Gesta Ricardi, R. Howden, Bohadin, and Ibn Alathyr make the promised sum two hundred thousand “bezants” (Est.), “talentorum Saracenicorum” (Itin.), “dinars” (Bohadin and Ibn Alathyr). R. Coggeshall absurdly says seven hundred thousand bezants. The only authorities for the special payment promised to Conrad are the two Moslem ones, and as to its amount the two recensions of Bohadin again differ; the earlier says four thousand gold pieces, the later fourteen thousand, viz. ten thousand to Conrad himself and four thousand to his knights. Ibn Alathyr also says Conrad was to have fourteen thousand; and the later recension of Bohadin is followed by Abu Shama in his extract from that author (Recueil, v. 25, 26), as to both the number of prisoners and the amount of money.
The Estoire and Itinerarium say that “the chief men among the Turks in Acre” were to be held as hostages by the Franks till the conditions of the treaty were fulfilled. Richard and Bohadin say, and the Gesta, R. Howden, and R. Coggeshall imply, that the hostages were to comprise the whole garrison. The Estoire and Itinerarium assert that the conditions were offered by the Turks in Acre with Saladin’s knowledge and consent; and the Itinerarium adds that the term appointed for their fulfilment was that day month, i. e. August 12. The king says “Pactione etiam ex parte Saladini plenius firmata ... diemque ad haec omnia persolvenda nobis constituit.” R. Diceto says “Qui” (i. e. the Saracens in Acre) “communicato cum suis consilio coeperunt tractare de pace talibus pactionibus quod Saladinus Sanctam Crucem certo die restitueret,” etc. The Gesta and R. Howden make the term forty days from the surrender, i. e. August 20. Bohadin (238) represents Saladin as ignorant of the whole matter till after the surrender, and Ibn Alathyr and R. Coggeshall do the same; the latter says that Saladin “nimium ex animo consternatus, facturum quod petebatur se esse spopondit,” while the two Arab writers represent the Sultan as at first refusing to confirm the treaty and afterwards accepting its conditions, but, according to Bohadin, with a modification as to the term for payment which brings the date for the first instalment practically to the time named in the Itinerarium, viz. a month after the surrender.
Note III
The Advance from the Two Casals to Ramlah
The Frank writers give no precise date for the advance of the host in 1191 from “between the two Casals” to the neighbourhood of Ramlah. Ambrose says they reached the former position on the eve of All Saints, and stayed there “full fifteen days or more” (Est., ll. 7199-209). The Itin., 289-90, agrees with him. This should mean that they set out again on November 15 or 16. Ambrose, according to the printed text of the Estoire, says the journey to the next encampment took two days: “L’ost erra par mi la plaine, Sor les biaus chevals peus d’orge; Vint en deus jors entre Seint Jorge e Rames; la s’allerent tendre Por plus gent e vitaille atendre” (ll. 7464-8). Thus they would arrive there—i. e. between Lydda and Ramlah—on November 17 or 18. The poet further says that the weather afterwards compelled them to take shelter within the two towns, “e fumes la bien sis semaines” (ll. 7471-7; Itin., 298-9, says the same). We presently find that they made their next advance—to Beit Nuba—on January 3. Thus we arrive at November 22 as the date of entering Lydda and Ramlah, and the encampment “in the plain” appears to have lasted five or six days (November 17 or 18-22). Our best Arab authority, Bohadin, unluckily does not mention the matter. Ibn Alathyr (Rec. Hist. Or., II. i. 54) says “the Franks set out from their camp at Jaffa for Ramlah on 3 Dulkaada” = November 22; the same date is given for their “advance in the direction of Ramlah” by Abu Shama (ib., v. 48), but without any clue to his authority for the statement. Ibn Alathyr gives this same date, 3 Dulkaada, as that on which “the Franks advanced from Ramlah to Natroun” (l.c.); this is doubtless a confusion, made either by author or scribe, between “Dulkaada” and “Dulheggia,” as Richard—though, indeed, not the host—did remove to Natroun on December 22 or 23 (= 3 or 4 Dulheggia). The Frankish and the Arab authorities may be partially reconciled by taking the “six weeks” of Ambrose and the Itinerarium as covering the whole period spent not only within the towns, but also “between” them. In that case, however, the stay between the two Casals must have been more than fifteen days; it could not have been less than twenty days, indeed twenty-two seems a more reasonable reckoning, for it is hard to see how two days can possibly have been spent in marching even from Casal of the Plains (the more remote of these two Casals) to either Lydda or Ramlah, a distance of less than eight miles. One writer does expressly mention “twenty-two days” in his account of this part of the Crusade; but he does so in connexion with the sojourn, not between the Casals, but between Lydda and Ramlah. Ambrose’s lines, 7464-8, quoted above, are in the Itinerarium (298) represented as follows: “Exercitus noster fixis tentoriis inter S. Georgium et Ramulam sedit viginti et duobus diebus, ut gentem expectaret venturam et annonam.”
To me this passage in the Itinerarium suggests a possibility of reconciling practically all the dates and notes of time given by all our authorities, Arab and Frankish, relating to this matter. It is not inconceivable that the original authority—whoever he may have been—for the “twenty-two days” had through a confusion of memory substituted the duration of the stay between the two Casals for that of the stay near and in Lydda and Ramlah, and vice versa. In that case the correct dates would stand thus: Between the two Casals, twenty-two days, November 1-22; in the plain between Lydda and Ramlah, “full fifteen days,” November 23-December 8; retirement into the two cities December 8, and further advance (to Beit Nuba) on January 3, “six weeks” from the date of encampment between them. Whether these coincidences are merely accidental, and the “twenty-two days” a sheer blunder due to the Latin “translator” having misread “vint en deux jors” as “vint e deus jors,” in Ambrose’s line 7466, or whether in that line as we now have it en is a scribe’s error for e, and ll. 7464-6 should be read as a single sentence, with a parenthesis stuck into the middle of it for the sake of rime—“E l’ost erra par mi la plaine (Sor les biaus chevals peus d’orge) Vint e deus jors entre Seint Jorge e Rames”—whether the “translator” rendered erra in l. 7464 by sedit because he thought thus to make better sense of his version of l. 7466, or whether the poet meant that the host roamed about the plain in which its camp was set, and perhaps even shifted the camp about, in vain efforts to avoid the enemies and the rain (see ll. 7469-75, especially l. 7473, “Iceles pluies nos chacerent”); these are questions involving too many other questions for a discussion of them to be attempted here.
Note IV
Casal des Plains and Casal des Bains
I have ventured, in defiance of the printed text of the Estoire, to follow the writer of the Itinerarium in giving to Richard’s lurking-place on the night of January 2-3, 1192, the name of Casal of the Baths. “Casellum Balneorum” occurs in the Itinerarium twice. In p. 298 we read that while the host lay between Lydda and Ramlah “pluviae a sedibus nostris nos exturbabant, intantum ut rex Jerosolimorum et gens nostra infra S. Georgium ad hospitandum se transferrent et in Ramulam, comes vero de S. Paulo ad Casellum Balneorum.” The last eight words are not represented at all in the Estoire. In pp. 306, 307, of the Itinerarium we are told: “Tertia post Circumcisionem Domini die, cum exercitus noster ad progrediendum” [from Lydda and Ramlah to Beit Nuba] “se sollicitus expediret, deformium multitudo Turcorum qui eadem nocte praeterita juxta Casellum de Planis in insidiis delituerant inter frutecta prosiliit diluculo in viam observandam per quam noster transiturus erat exercitus.... Rex quippe Ricardus, cui prius innotuerat de praedictis Turcorum insidiis, propterea quaque eadem nocte ad Casellum Balneorum consederat in insidiis, ut videlicet insidiantibus insidiaret, mane progrediens,” etc. In the Estoire the corresponding passage runs thus: “Tier jor d’an noef, la matinee, Esteit une ovre destinee; Sarazins, les laides genz brunes, Sor le Casal des Plains as dunes Le seir devant ja se bucherent, E tote nuit illoc guaiterent Desqu’al matin que il saillirent Al chemin de l’ost.... Le rei d’Engletere aveit, Qui cel embuchement saveit, Por ço al Casal des Plains geu,” etc. (ll. 7717-24, 7729-31).
It has been suggested that the “Casellum Balneorum” of Itin., 298, may represent Amwas (= “Fountains”), otherwise called Nicopolis (see Stubbs’s note to Itin., l.c.). This identification is possible; but it seems very unlikely that a small fraction of the host should, for no apparent reason, put itself so nearly into the lion’s mouth by going to camp eight or nine miles in advance of the rest, and less than two miles from the encampment of Saladin, which at that time was at Natroun. Moreover, in a later passage common to Estoire (l. 9846) and Itinerarium (369) we find “la fontaine d’Esmals,” “ad fontem Emaus,” in a context which plainly shows that these names stand for Amwas-Nicopolis; but in p. 307 of Itinerarium the context seems to preclude an identification of Casellum Balneorum with Emaus = Amwas, and to point to some place much further north or north-west; and later commentators have found such a place, bearing a name which translates the Latin one more exactly than Amwas, in Umm-el-Hummum, near Mirabel. On the other hand, the extant text of the Estoire, as we have seen, has nothing at all answering to “Castellum Balneorum”; it makes the Turkish ambush and the king spend the night of January 2-3 at, or close to, one and the same place, the Casal of the Plains. Whence, then, did the Latin writer get his “Casal of the Baths”? He can hardly have invented it for himself. If his work be really a translation of that of Ambrose, he must either have made it from a copy which had Bains, not Plains, in l. 7731, or he must have had some other source of information which made him deliberately substitute “Baths” for “Plains” in his rendering of that line. The substitution cannot be explained as a misreading on his part, since “Casal des Plains” in l. 7720 is correctly represented in his text by “Casellum de Planis.” That he knew, from a source other than the Estoire, something about the Casal of the Baths is clear from his earlier mention of that place, in p. 298. A different theory as to the relation between the two books suggests that that source may have been personal knowledge. However this may be, his second mention of “Casellum Balneorum” certainly makes the passage in which it occurs far more intelligible than the corresponding passage in the existing text of the Estoire. Ambrose’s story, as it stands there, is scarcely credible. The Turks and the king lie in wait for one another all night, the former “on the sandhills above the Casal of the Plains,” the latter at the Casal of the Plains itself, yet neither party catches the other till, evidently to the utter surprise of the Turks, they meet before the camp at Ramlah or Lydda, to which they must, if this version of the affair be correct, have ridden at almost the same time, parallel with and in close proximity to each other for about eight miles, and almost from one and the same starting-point! Surely, by the light—whencesoever derived—of the Latin version, we can see that either Ambrose himself or the scribe of the extant MS. of his work has erroneously written Plains instead of Bains in l. 7731; a mistake which might very easily be made, owing to the occurrence of “Plains” only eleven lines above, and the absence of any mention of Casal des Bains elsewhere in the poem.
Note V
Richard’s Homage to the Emperor
Seven contemporary or nearly contemporary writers state that Richard, to purchase his freedom, did homage to Henry VI. Three of these—one English and two German—assert distinctly that the kingdom of England was included in this homage; two of the others—one German and one French—imply the same.
(1) “Ricardus rex Angliae in captione Henrici Romanorum imperatoris detentus, ut captionem illam evaderet, consilio Alienor matris suae deposuit se de regno Angliae et tradidit illud imperatori sicut universorum domino; et investivit eum inde per pilleum suum; sed imperator, sicut praelocutum fuit, statim reddidit ei, in conspectu magnatium Alemanniae et Angliae, regnum Angliae praedictum, tenendum de ipso pro quinque millia librarum sterlingorum singulis annis de tributo solvendis; et investivit eum inde imperator per duplicem crucem de auro.” R. Howden, iii. 202, 203.
(2) The Annals of Marbach (Pertz, xvii. 165) say Richard was released “tota terra sua, Anglia et aliis terris suis propriis, imperatori datis et ab eo in beneficio receptis.”
(3) “Legium ipsi [imperatori] faciens hominium, coronam regni sui ab ipso recepit,” Gesta Episc. Halberstad. (Pertz, xxiii. 110).
(4) “Terram propriam ... imperatori tradidit et a manu imperatoris sceptro investitus suscepit. Juravitque fidelitatem Romano Imperatori et Romano Imperio et privilegio exinde facto propria manu subscripsit. Tantam itaque devotionem regis intuens imperator sceptrum regium quod in manu sua tenebat regi contulit, ut hoc insigni dono in posterum uteretur.... Acta sunt haec apud Maguntium.” Ann. Salsburg. Additamenta, Pertz, xiii. 240.
(5) William the Breton represents Richard as offering to give the Emperor a hundred thousand marks, and adding: “Meque sceptrumque meum subjecta fatebor.... Rex igitur dictum re firmat, et inde recedit liber.” Philippis, lib. iv., vv. 419, 426-7.
(6) “Accepta infinita summa pecuniae et hominio ejus ... [imperator regem] absolutum permittit abire.” Reineri Ann., Pertz, xvi. 651.
(7) “[Richardus] Imperio postquam jurans se subdidit, inquit: ‘Vivat in aeternum lux mea, liber eo.’”—P. de Ebulo, ll. 1087-8.
Of all these authorities, only the first is of any real value. The German sources for this period are all mere monastic or ecclesiastical chronicles; the Annals of Marbach are among the best. The Acts of the Bishops of Halberstadt date from the thirteenth century. Reiner’s Annals are a section, ending in 1230, of a group of Chronicles of Liége; Reiner himself was born in 1155. The Additions to the Salzburg Annals are absolutely worthless; they are full of absurdities; and some of their statements about Richard are so obviously unhistorical that their German editor in his footnotes twice denounces them as “fables”—“Hoc jam fabulis plena de Richardi regis gestis” (p. 238)—“Iterum fabulae sequuntur prioribus pejores” (p. 240). Peter of Ebulo and William of Armorica can only have had their information at—to say the least—second hand, and from sources hostile to Richard; Peter was the panegyrist of Henry VI, William the historiographer of Philip Augustus; both, too, wrote in verse, and are open to the suspicion of a liberal use of poetic licence to exalt their respective heroes and diminish the glory of him who was the most illustrious rival of those two sovereigns. Had we only these six writers to deal with, we might be justified in treating the whole story as a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of an act of homage done to Henry by Richard for the kingdom of Burgundy, although, oddly enough, not one of them so much as mentions Burgundy at all. But Roger of Howden is not so easy to dispose of. He was a sober-minded and well-informed English historian, whose work in many places shows that he had access to the best official sources of contemporary information; in his case misunderstanding and misrepresentation on the subject are both alike almost inconceivable; and, moreover, his version of the matter is indirectly corroborated by another writer whose general accuracy and correct information rank as high, and whose facilities for learning the truth on this particular point were probably even greater than those of Roger himself. Ralf de Diceto (ii. 113) writes as follows: “Pactiones initae sunt plures inter imperatorem et regem, ad persolvendam non spectantes pecuniam, sed ad statum regis intervertendum; inter quas quicquid insertum est ab initio vitiosum, quicquid contra leges, contra canones, contra bonos mores indubitanter conceptum, licet ex parte regis et suorum fidelium ad hoc observandum fuerit jusjurandum adauctum, emissa licet patentia scripta, licet in mundum universitatis recepta, licet a partibus absoluta, quia tamen contra jus elicita robur firmitatis obtinere non debent in posterum, nec ullo tractu temporis convalescere.” These words seem distinctly to point to something more than homage merely for the kingdom of Arles, a homage which there could surely be no reason for Ralf or anyone else to denounce as so “vicious from the outset, so contrary to law, morality, and right” as to be utterly null and void. We must also remember that Ralf was a close friend of Archbishop Walter of Rouen, who was in correspondence with him at this very time, and who was present at the whole ceremony of Richard’s release.
Note VI
Richard, William of Longchamps, and the Great Seal
Roger of Howden in his account of the year 1194, after giving the terms of the truce made between the representatives of the two kings on July 23 in the form of a proclamation addressed “to all whom it may concern” by Drogo de Merlo the Constable of France, Anselm the Dean of S. Martin’s at Tours, and Urse the French king’s chamberlain (iii. 257-60), diverges to English affairs (260-7) and then returns to continental ones as follows:
“Deinde [Ricardus Rex] veniens in Normanniam moleste tulit quicquid factum fuerit de supradictis treugis, et imputans cancellario suo hoc per eum fuisse factum, abstulit ab eo sigillum suum, et fecit sibi novum sigillum fieri, et mandavit per singulas terras suas quod nihil ratum foret quod fuerat per vetus sigillum suum; tum quia cancellarius ille operatus fuerat inde minus discrete quam esset necesse, tum quia sigillum illud perditum erat quando Rogerus Malus Catulus, vice-cancellarius suus, submersus erat in mare ante insulam de Cipro. Et praecepit rex quod omnes qui cartas habebant venirent ad novum sigillum suum ad cartas suas renovandas.” R. Howden, iii. 267.
This story is certainly not strictly accurate; it was not till 1198 that Richard changed his seal, and if the seal was withdrawn from William of Ely in 1194, it was restored to him almost immediately, and he remained the king’s chancellor and trusted friend to the end of Richard’s life. Nevertheless, it seems clear that Richard did momentarily contemplate in 1194 a change of seal and the consequent requirement of confirmation of charters issued under the old seal. When this actually took place four years later, he himself stated his reasons for it as follows: “Quod” [sc. primum sigillum nostrum] “quia aliquando perditum erat, et dum capti essemus in Alemannia in aliena potestate constitutum, mutatum est.” (Confirmation of a charter to Ely, July 1, 1198, printed in Ramsey Cartulary, ed. Hart and Lyons, i. 115, and also in Round’s Feudal England, 542). Mr. Round dismisses Roger’s story as sheer fiction, on the ground that the second reason here given by Richard is “wholly and essentially different” from the first reason given by Roger. Even if this be so, it does not necessarily follow that the whole of Roger’s story is either a fiction, or a delusion, or misdated. Richard’s own statement of his motives is obviously a mere excuse; the self-evident fact that while he was in prison the seal was necessarily “in the power of another” might be a ground for annulling acts passed under it during that time, but could be no genuine reason for revoking likewise all other acts passed under it. One at least of his excuses, however, is far more likely to have been invented in 1194 than in 1198. The king’s temporary loss of control over the seal in 1193-4 might be a colourable pretext for getting rid of the discredited instrument at the earliest possible moment, but could in no way account for its repudiation after it had been, without necessity, suffered to remain in use for four years.