The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 06 / (From Barbarossa to Dante)

by Unknown

SALADIN TAKES JERUSALEM FROM THE CHRISTIANS

A.D. 1187

SIR GEORGE W. COX

Eight days after their conquest of the Holy City, in 1099, the first crusaders proceeded to establish the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, with Godfrey of Bouillon as its first king. On the death of Godfrey, in 1100, his brother Baldwin succeeded him, and in 1118 he was succeeded by Baldwin II, Count of Edessa. The fourth king was Fulc, Count of Anjou and son-in-law of Baldwin II (1131-1144), and after him reigned his son, Baldwin III (1144-1162). This King came to the throne at the age of thirteen. Early in his reign the Christian stronghold of Edessa, in Mesopotamia, was captured by the Turks, and its loss, which seemed to threaten the destruction of the kingdom of Jerusalem itself, was the occasion of an appeal to Europe which called out the Second Crusade. The great preacher of this crusade was St. Bernard of Clairvaux, a man who, in earnestness and eloquence, closely resembled Pope Urban and Peter the Hermit. Bernard's influence won to his cause not only the common people, but also nobles and kings, and the Second Crusade was led by Louis VII, King of France, and Conrad III, Emperor of Germany.

The time of the Second Crusade was 1147-1149. Louis and Conrad each commanded a great army, but they made the mistake of working separately. Conrad reached Constantinople first, and partly in consequence of the faithless conduct of Manuel, the Byzantine emperor—who, like his predecessor Alexius, in the time of the First Crusade, threw obstacles in the way of the western hosts—the whole German army was cut to pieces in Asia Minor, only the Emperor himself, with a few followers, escaping. Louis, soon arriving with his army, received the same treatment from Manuel, and after taking a few towns he saw his forces likewise destroyed by the Turks. Louis himself escaped and returned to France.

So ended in utter failure and shame the Second Crusade. The event seemed to give the lie to the glowing promises of St. Bernard, who was charged by anguished women with sending their fathers, husbands, and sons forth on a fruitless errand to disgrace and death. The Latin kingdom of Jerusalem profited nothing from this ignominious enterprise. The power of that kingdom was already waning, and, but for the knights of the military orders now in Jerusalem, the city must have yielded to the Turcoman hordes that continually menaced it. Baldwin III died in 1162, at the age of thirty-three, loved and lamented by his people and respected by his foes. He died childless, and his brother Almeric was elected to succeed him. What experience and what fate awaited the kingdom after this will be seen in the remarkable narration which follows.

Almost at the beginning of Almeric's reign the affairs of the Latin kingdom became complicated with those of Egypt; and the Christians are seen fighting by the side of one Mahometan race, tribe, or faction against another. The divisions of Islam may have turned less on points of theology, but they were scarcely less bitter than those of Christendom; and Noureddin, the sultan of Aleppo, eagerly embraced the opportunity which gave him a hold on the Fatimite Caliph of Egypt, when Shawer, the grand wazir of that Caliph, came into his presence as a fugitive. A soldier named Dargham had risen up and deposed him, and the deposition of the wazir was the deposition of the real ruler, for the Fatimite caliphs themselves were now merely the puppets which the Merovingian kings had been in the days of Charles Martel and Pépin.

Among the generals of Noureddin were Shiracouh and his nephew Saladin (Salah-ud-deen) of the shepherd tribe of the Kurds. These Noureddin despatched into Egypt to effect the restoration of Shawer. His enemy Dargham had sought by lavish offers to buy the aid of the Latins; but the terms were still unsettled when he was worsted in a battle by Shiracouh and slain. Shawer again sat in his old seat; but with success came the fear that his supporters might prove not less dangerous than his enemies. He refused to fulfil his compact with Noureddin and ordered his generals to quit the country. Shiracouh replied by the capture of Pelusium, and Shawer, more successful than Dargham in obtaining aid from Jerusalem, besieged Shiracouh in his newly conquered city with the help of the army of Almeric. The Latin King after a fruitless blockade of some months found himself called away to meet dangers nearer home; and the besieged general, not knowing the cause, accepted an offer of capitulation binding him to leave Egypt after the surrender of his prisoners. But the Latin armies were transferred from Egypt only to undergo a desperate defeat at the hands of Noureddin in the territory of Antioch, and thus to leave Antioch itself at the mercy of the enemy.

Noureddin may have hesitated to attack Antioch, from the fear that such an enterprise might bring upon him the arms of the Greek Emperor. He was more anxious to extinguish the Fatimite power in Egypt; in other words, to become lord of countries hemming in the Latin kingdom to the south as well as to the north; and it was precisely this danger which King Almeric knew that he had most reason to fear. To put the best color on his design, Noureddin obtained from Mostadhi, the caliph of Bagdad, the sanction which converted his enterprise into a war as holy as that which the Norman conqueror waged against Harold of England. The story of the war attests the valor of both sides, under the alternations of disaster and success. The Latin King had already entered Cairo, when a large part of the force of Shiracouh was overwhelmed by a terrific sandstorm. But the retreat of Shiracouh across the Nile failed to reassure the Egyptians. Almeric received two hundred thousand gold pieces for the continuance of his help, with the promise that two hundred thousand more should be paid to him on the complete destruction of their enemies; and the treaty was ratified in the presence of the powerless sovereign, whose consent was never asked for the alliances or treaties of the minister who was his master. The remaining events of the campaign were a battle, in which a part of the army of Almeric was defeated by Shiracouh and his nephew Saladin; the surrender of Alexandria on the summons of Shiracouh; and the blockade of that city by Almeric, who at length obtained from the Turk the pledge that after an exchange of prisoners he would lead his forces away from Egypt, on the condition that the road to Syria should be left open to him.

The banners of Almeric and the Fatimite Caliph waved together on the walls of Alexandria; but on either side the peace or truce was a mere makeshift for the purpose of gaining time. Neither the Latin King nor the Sultan of Aleppo had given up the thought of the conquest of Egypt; and Almeric found a ready cause of quarrel in the plea that since his own return to Palestine the Egyptians had entered into communication with their enemy and his. The King of Jerusalem had lately married the niece of the Greek Emperor, and the latter promised to aid the expedition with his fleet. The help of the Knights Hospitalers was easily obtained, while (some said, on this account) that of the Knights Templars was refused. At length with a large and powerful army Almeric left Jerusalem, pretending that his destination was the Syrian town of Hems; but after a while his march was suddenly turned. In ten days he reached Pelusium; and the storm and capture of that city were followed by a wanton carnage which served to increase, if anything could increase, the reputation of the Christians for merciless cruelty. The prayers of the wazir Shawer for help were now directed as earnestly to the Turkish Sultan as they had once been to the Latin King of Jerusalem; but his envoys were also sent to Almeric offering him a million pieces of gold, of which a tenth part was produced on the spot.

Almeric took the bribe; and when his army looked for nothing less than the immediate sack of Cairo, they were told that they must remain idle while the rest of the money was being collected. The wazir took care that the gathering should not be ended before the soldiers of Noureddin had reached the frontier, and Almeric found too late that he was caught in the trap which his own greed had laid for him. He could himself do nothing but retreat, and his retreat was as disastrous as it was ignominious. The Greek fleet had shown itself off the mouths of the Nile, and had sailed away again. The Greek Emperor could not be punished; but a scapegoat for the failure of the enterprise was found in the grand master of the Hospitalers, who was deprived of his dignity by his knights.

The triumph of Shiracouh brought with it the fall of the wazir Shawer, who was seized and put to death, while the man whose aid he had invoked was chosen to fill his place. But Shiracouh himself lived only two months; and then by way of choosing one whose love of pleasure and lack of influence seemed to promise a career of useful insignificance, the Fatimite Caliph made the young Saladin his minister. The Caliph was mistaken. Saladin brought back his Kurds, and so used the treasures which his office placed at his command that the new yoke became stronger than the old one.

To the Latins the exaltation of Saladin signified the formation of a really formidable power on their southern frontier. Their alarm prompted embassies to the court of the Eastern Emperor and the princes of Western Christendom. But the time was not yet come for a third crusade; and only from Manuel was any help obtained. His fleet aided the Latins in a fruitless siege of Damietta; and a terrible earthquake which laid Aleppo in ruins and shattered the walls of Antioch saved them from attack by the army of Noureddin which was approaching from the north. Still, in spite of conspiracies or revolutions of the old nobility, the power of Saladin was growing, and at length he dealt with the mock sovereignty of the Fatimites as Pépin dealt with that of the Merovingians. The last Fatimite Sultan, then prostrate in his last illness, never knew that the public prayer had been offered in the name of the Caliph of Bagdad; but Saladin had the glory of ending a schism which had lasted two hundred years, and from Mostadhi, the vicar of the Prophet, he received the gift of a linen robe and two swords.

But the healing of one schism led only to the opening of another. Saladin was the servant of the Sultan of Aleppo, and he had been recognized and confirmed in office by Mostadhi strictly on the score of this lieutenancy. But the new wazir of Egypt had no mind to obey any longer the summons of his old master, and to his threat of chastisement Saladin in his council of emirs retorted by a threat of war. His vehemence was cooled when his own father declared before the assembly that, were he so commissioned by Noureddin, he would strike his son's head off from his shoulders. In private, he let Saladin know that his mistake lay not in thinking of resistance, but in speaking of it; and a letter sent by his advice sufficed for the present to smooth matters over. But the time of quietness could not last long. The designs of Saladin became continually more manifest, and Noureddin was on his way to Egypt when he was struck down by illness and died at Damascus.

The widow of Noureddin held the fortress of Paneas; and her husband's death encouraged Almeric to undertake the siege. A bribe to abandon it was at first refused. A fortnight later it was accepted; but Almeric returned to Jerusalem only to die. His life had lasted only five years longer than that of his predecessor Baldwin; but it had been long enough to win for him a reputation for consummate avarice and meanness. His son and successor, Baldwin IV, was a leper, and his disease made such rapid strides as to make it necessary to delegate his authority to another. His first choice fell on Guy of Lusignan, the husband of his sister Sibylla, but either the weakness of Guy or the quarrels of the barons brought everything into confusion, and Baldwin, foiled in his wish to annul his marriage, devised his crown to Baldwin, the infant son of Sibylla by her first marriage, Raymond II, Count of Tripoli, being nominated regent and Joceline of Courtenay the guardian of the child. But within three years the leper King died, followed soon after by the infant Baldwin V, and in the renewed strife consequent on these events Guy of Lusignan managed to establish himself, by right of his wife, King of Jerusalem. He was still quite a young man, but he had earned for himself an evil name. The murderer of Patric, Earl of Salisbury, he had been banished by Henry II from his dominions in France; and the opinion of those who knew him found expression in the words of his brother Geoffrey, "Had they known me, the men who made my brother king would have made me a god."

Guy was king; but Raymond of Tripoli refused him his allegiance. Guy besieged him in Tiberias, and Raymond made a treaty with Saladin. But Saladin was now minded to seize a higher prey. He was master of Syria and Egypt: he was resolved that the Crescent should once more displace the Cross on the mosque of Omar. Pretexts for the war were almost superfluous; but he had an abundance of them in the ravages committed by barons of the Latin kingdom on the lands and the property of Moslems. Fifty thousand horsemen and a vast army on foot gathered under his standard, when he declared his intention of attacking Jerusalem; but their first assault was on the castle of Tiberias. On hearing these ominous tidings Raymond of Tripoli at once laid aside all thought of private quarrels. Hastening to Jerusalem he said that the safety of his own city was a very secondary matter, and earnestly besought Guy to confine himself to a strictly defensive war, which would soon reduce the invader to the extremity of distress. The advice was wise and good; but the grand master of the Templars fastened on the very nobleness of his self-sacrifice and the disinterestedness of his counsel as proof of some sinister design which they were intended to hide.

Had it been Baldwin III to whom he was speaking, the insinuation would have been thrust aside with scorn and disgust. To the mean mind of Guy it carried with it its own evidence; and it was resolved to meet the Saracen on ground of his own choosing. The troops of Saladin were already distressed by heat and thirst when they encountered the Latin army from Jerusalem. The issue of the first day's fighting was undecided; but the heat of a Syrian summer night was for the Christians rendered more terrible by the stifling smoke of woods set on fire by the orders of Saladin. Parched with thirst, and well knowing that on the event of that day depended the preservation of the Holy Sepulchre, the crusaders at sunrise rushed with their fierce war-cries on the enemy. Before them the golden glory of morning lit up the radiant shores of the tranquil sea where the Galilean fisherman had heard from the lips of Jesus of Nazareth the word of life.

But nearer still was a memorial yet more holy, a pledge of divine favor yet more assuring. On a hillock hard by was raised the relic of the true cross, and this hillock was many times a rallying point during this bloody day. There was little of generalship perhaps on either side; and where men are left to mere hard fighting, numbers must determine the issue. The hosts of Saladin far outnumbered those of the Latin chiefs; and for these retreat ended in massacre. The King and the grand master of the Templars were taken prisoners; the holy relic which had spurred them on to desperate exertion fell into the hands of the infidels.

The victory of Saladin was rich in its fruits. Tiberias was taken. Berytos, Acre, Cæsarea, Jaffa opened their gates; Tyre alone was saved by the heroism of Conrad of Montferrat, brother of the first husband of Queen Sibylla. Not caring to undertake a regular siege, Saladin marched to Ascalon, and offered its defenders an honorable peace, which after some hesitation was accepted.

The rejection of Raymond's advice had left Jerusalem practically at the mercy of Saladin. It was crowded with people, but the garrison was scanty, and the armies which should have defended it were gone. Their presence would not, probably, have availed to give a different issue to the siege; but it must have added fearfully to its horrors. Saladin had made up his mind that the Latin kingdom must fall, and he would have fought on until either he or his enemies could fight no longer. Numbers, wealth, resources, military skill, instruments of war, all combined to give him advantages before which mere bravery must sooner or later go down; and protracted resistance meant nothing more than the infliction of useless misery.

Saladin may have been neither a saint nor a hero; but it cannot be denied that his temper was less fierce and his language more generous than that of the Christians who under Godfrey had deluged the city with blood. He had no wish, he said, so to defile a place hallowed by its associations for Moslems as well as Christians, and if the city were surrendered, he pledged himself not merely to furnish the inhabitants with the money which they might need, but even to provide them with new homes in Syria. But superstition and obstinacy are to all intents and purposes words of the same meaning. The offer, honorable to him who made and carrying no ignominy to those who might accept it, was rejected, and Saladin made a vow that entering the city as an armed conqueror he would offer up within it a sacrifice as awful as that by which the crusaders had celebrated their loathsome triumph. Most happily for others, most nobly for himself, he failed to keep this vow to the letter.

Fourteen days sufficed to bring the siege to an end. The Christians had done what they could to destroy the military engines of their enemies; the golden ornaments of the churches had been melted down and turned into money; but no solid advantage was gained by all their efforts. The conviction of the Christian that death brought salvation to the champions of the cross, the assurance of the Moslem that to those who fell fighting for the creed of Islam the gates of paradise were at once opened, only added to the desperation of the combatants and to the fearfulness of the carnage. At length the besieged discovered that the walls near the gate of St. Stephen had been undermined, and at once they abandoned all hope of safety except from miraculous intervention. Clergy and laity crowded into the churches, their fears quickened by the knowledge that the Greeks within the city were treating with the enemy.

The remembrance of Saladin's offer now came back with more persuasive power; but to the envoys whom they sent the stern answer was returned that he was under a vow to deal with the Christians as Godfrey and his fellows had dealt with the Saracens. Yet, conscious or unconscious of the inconsistency of his words with the oath which he professed to have sworn, he promised them his mercy if they would at once surrender the city. The besieged resolved to trust the word of the conqueror, as they could not resist his power. The agreement was made that the nobles and fighting men should be taken to Tyre, which still held out under Conrad; that the Latin inhabitants should be redeemed at the rate of ten crowns of gold for each man, five for each woman, one for each child; and that failing this ransom, they should remain slaves. On the sick and the helpless he waged no war; and although the Knights of the Hospital were among the most determined of his enemies, he would allow their brethren to remain for a year in their attendance on the sufferers who could not be moved away.

In the exasperation of a religious warfare now extended over nearly a century these terms were very merciful. It may be said that this mercy was the right of a people who submitted to the invader, and that in the days of Godfrey and Peter the Hermit the defenders had resisted to the last. It is enough to answer that the capitulation of the Latins was a superfluous ceremony and that Saladin knew it to be so, while, if the same submission had been offered to the first crusaders, it would have been sternly and fiercely refused.

Four days were allowed to the people to prepare for their departure. On the fifth they passed through the camp of the enemy, the women carrying or leading their children, the men bearing such of their household goods as they were able to move. On the approach of the Queen and her ladies in the garb and with the gestures of suppliants Saladin himself came forward, and with genuine courtesy addressed to them words of encouragement and consolation. Cheered by his generous language, they told him that for their lands, their houses, and their goods they cared nothing. Their prayer was that he would restore to them their fathers, their husbands, and their brothers. Saladin granted their request, added his alms for those who had been left orphans or destitute by the war, and remitted a portion of the ransom appointed for the poor. In this way the number of those who remained unredeemed was reduced to eleven or twelve thousand; and Saracenic slavery, although degrading, was seldom as cruel as the slavery which had but as yesterday been extinguished by the most fearful of recent wars.

The entry of Saladin into Jerusalem was accompanied by the usual signs of triumph. Amid the waving of banners and the clash of martial music he advanced to the Mosque of Omar, on the summit of which the Christian cross still flashed in the clear air. A wail of agony burst from the Christians who were present as this emblem was hurled down to the earth and dragged through the mire. For two days it underwent this indignity, while the mosque was purified from its defilements by streams of rosewater, and dedicated afresh to the worship of the one God adored by Islam. The crosses, the relics, the sacred vessels of the Christian sanctuaries, which had been carefully stowed away in four chests, had fallen into the hands of the conquerors, and it was the wish of Saladin to send them to the Caliph of the Prophet as the proudest trophies of his victory. Even this wish he generously consented to forego. The chests were left in the keeping of the patriarch, and the price put upon them, fifty-two thousand golden bezants, was paid by Richard of England.

Conrad still held out in Tyre, nor was he induced to surrender even when Saladin himself assailed its walls. The siege was raised; and the next personage to appear before its gates was Guy of Lusignan, who, having regained his freedom, insisted on being admitted as lord of the city. The grand master of the Templars seconded his demand. The reply was short and decisive. The people would own no other master than the gallant knight who had so nobly defended them. But the escape of Tyre had no effect on the general issue of the war. Town after town submitted to Saladin; and the long series of his triumphs closed when he entered the gates of Antioch.

Eighty-eight years had passed away since the crusaders of Godfrey and Tancred had stood triumphant on the walls of the Holy City; and during all those years the Latin kingdom had seldom rested from wars and forays, from feuds and dissensions of every kind. From the first it displayed no characteristics which could give it any stability; from the first it exhibited signs which foreboded its certain downfall.

It sanctified treachery, for it rested on the principle that no faith was to be kept with the unbeliever; and the sowing of wind by the constant breach of solemn compact made them reap the whirlwind. A right of pasturage round Paneas had been granted to the Mahometans by Baldwin III. When the ground was covered with their sheep the Christian troops burst in, murdered the shepherds, and drove away their flocks—not with the sanction, we may hope, of the most high-minded of the Latin kings of Jerusalem.

It recognized no title to property except in those who professed the faith of Christ, and the power to commit injustice with practical impunity tended still further to demoralize the people.

It gave full play to the passions of men in random wars and petty forays, while it did nothing to keep up or to promote either military science or the discipline without which that science becomes useless.

It was marked by an almost total lack of statesmanship. In a country so circumstanced a wise ruler would strain every nerve to conciliate the conquered people, to strengthen himself by alliances which should be firmly maintained and by treaties which should be scrupulously kept, to weaken such states as he might fail to win over to his friendship by anticipating combinations which might bring with them fatal dangers for his power. That the history of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem presents a mournful and even ludicrous contrast to this picture it must surely be unnecessary to say. In the case of Egypt alone did the Latin kings show some sense of the course which prudence called upon them to take; and even here this course was followed with miserable indecision, and at last disgracefully abandoned through mere lust of gold.

It had to deal with an immorality not of its own creating, but which in mere regard to its own safety it should have striven to keep well in check. No such efforts were made, and the words of William of Tyre—even if taken with a qualification—when he speaks of the Latin women, point to a state of things which must involve grave and imminent peril.

It was the misfortune of this kingdom that it was called into being by troops of adventurers banded together—it cannot be said confederated—for a religious rather than a political purpose; in other words, for personal rather than for public ends. It started therefore without any principle of cohesion. The warriors who engaged in the enterprise might abandon it when they thought that they had fulfilled the conditions of their vow, and although the continuance of their efforts was indispensably needed for the military and political success of the undertaking.

The private and personal character of these enterprises led to the perpetuation and multiplication of private and personal interests, and thus to the endless divisions and feuds between the barons of the kingdom, which were a constant scandal and menace and which led frequently to deliberate treachery. It encouraged, or permitted, or was compelled to tolerate the growth of societies which arrogated to themselves an independent jurisdiction, and thus rendered impossible a central authority of sufficient coercive power. The origin of the military orders may have been in the highest degree edifying. The Knights Templars might begin as the humble guardians of the holy places: the Knights Hospitalers may have been the poor brothers of St. John bound to the service of the sick and helpless among the pilgrims of the cross. But in the land where they might at any time encounter a merciless or at the least a detested enemy, they were justified in bearing arms; the necessity of bearing arms involved the need of discipline; and the discipline of an enthusiastic fraternity cut off from the world and centred upon itself cannot fail to become formidable.

The natural strength of these orders was increased by immunities and privileges granted partly by the Latin kings of Jerusalem, but in greater part by the popes. The Hospitalers, as bestowing their goods to feed the poor and to entertain pilgrims, were freed from the obligation of paying tithe, or of giving heed to interdicts even if these were laid upon the whole country, while it was expressly asserted that no patriarch or prelate should dare to pass any sentence of excommunication against them. In other words, a society was called into existence directly antagonistic to the clergy, and an irreconcilable conflict of claims was the inevitable consequence. Nor can we be surprised to find the clergy complaining that the knights, not content with the immunities secured to themselves, gave shelter to persons who, not belonging to their order but lying under sentence of excommunication, sought to place themselves under their protection.

But if the Knights of the Hospital had thus their feuds with the clergy, they had feuds still more bitter with the rival order of the Templars. With different interests and different aims, the one sought to promote enterprises against which the other protested, or stickled about points of precedence when common decency called for harmonious action, or withheld its aid when that aid was indispensable for the very safety of the State. Thus we have the triple discord of the King and his barons struggling against the claims of the clergy, and the military orders in conflict with the barons and the clergy alike. Of a state so circumstanced the words are emphatically true that a house divided against itself shall not stand.