The History of the Assassins, Derived from Oriental Sources

by Freiherr von Joseph Hammer-Purgstall

The king, violently enraged at this atrocity, by which the honour of the Christian name, and his own dignity, suffered so severe a blow, assembled the princes of his realm, in order to consult with them, concerning the measures proper to be adopted. Their unanimous decision was, that religion, and the royal authority, had equally suffered an affront, and could not permit this murder to pass unpunished. Seiher, of Mamedun, and Gottschalk, of Turholdt, were despatched by the council, in the name of the king and the realm, to demand satisfaction from Odo de St. Amand, for so flagitious a deed. Odo, haughty and wicked, fearing neither God nor man, replied, bursting with arrogance and rage,[208] that he had already imposed a penance on Brother Dumesnil, and should send him to the holy father, by whom it was forbidden to lay violent hands on him; and more in the same strain, suggested by his passion. But the king, meeting the grand-master and several Templars afterwards, at Sidon, held a council, and had the murderer, as guilty of high treason, dragged from their hospital, and thrown, fettered, into a dungeon at Tyre.[209] The death of the king, which followed soon after, saved him from well-merited punishment.

The grand-master, however, met with his, by being taken prisoner by Salaheddin, in the battle of Sidon,[210] the loss of which was attributed to his fault, and dying, the same year, unpitied in his dungeon. The king, indeed, seemed absolved in the eyes of the Assassins; but the hope of converting them to Christianity was gone; and their daggers were now again unsheathed against the princes of the Crusaders, as they had already long been against the chiefs of the Moslimin. Forty-two years had elapsed, since they stabbed Raymond, the young Count of Tripoli,[211] as he was kneeling at prayer, and stained the altar with his blood. This long truce of the dagger, with the Christian chieftains, was at once raised by the atrocious murder of Conrad, Lord of Tyre and Marquess of Montferrat. Richard, King of England, is accused, both in European and Asiatic histories, of having been the accomplice, or instigator of this action, by means of the daggers of the Assassins.

It is with a reluctant pen that we indicate the circumstances and motives of this crime, which attaches to the splendid reputation of one of the first heroes of the Crusaders, a stain, which neither his military glory, nor forged documents, can obliterate from the sight of an impartial writer. The pretended letter of the Old Man of the Mountain, composed by Richard’s partisans, to acquit him of the guilt of this murder, stands rather as a proof against him, since it has been proved to be a manifest invention and forgery.[212] This letter commences with an oath in the name of the law, and ends by being dated according to the era of the Seleucidæ, both entirely strange and unknown to the Ismailites; for, at this time, they publicly trampled on the law, and had substituted, for the chronology of the Hegira (which besides is the only one used in the countries of Islamism), that from the accession of Hassan II.; making it the epoch of the abrogation of the law. The writer’s making the Old Man of the Mountain date from Massiat, proves, in fact, nothing, either for or against Richard; but it rather heightens the probability of the opinion we have advanced, that the Crusaders were not aware of the existence of the distant grand-master at Alamut, but considered the grand-prior of Massiat, as the Old Man of the Mountain to a certainty. According to the purport of this apocryphal work of partiality for the hero, this so much celebrated murder was only an instance of the order’s revenge; the marquess having pillaged, and put to death, a brother, who was shipwrecked at Tyre; and instead of giving the order’s envoy the required satisfaction, threatening to throw him into the sea. From that time, the death of the marquess was determined on; and executed, at Tyre, by two brothers, in the presence of the whole people.

All that is true in this Latin production of Nicolas of Treveth, which was either written by himself, and accepted as credible by Richard’s party, consists in the circumstances of the murder. The marquess was attacked by two Assassins, disguised as monks,[213] who had approached him unobserved, in the market-place of Tyre. Not only do western, but also oriental historians, name Richard Cœur de Lion, King of England, as the instigator of the murderers. Alberic des Troisfontaines expressly affirms it,[214] but with those who doubt, the contradiction of Nicolas of Treveth might be equiponderant to his charges, if the scale did not turn against Richard, with the heavy weight of the impartial testimony of oriental historians. The writer of the history of Jerusalem and Hebron, a classical work for the history of the Crusades, says, under the title of the murder of the marquess, clearly and distinctly: “The marquess had gone, on the 13th of the month Rebi-ul-ewel, to visit the bishop of Tyre; on coming out, he was attacked by two murderers, who stabbed him with their daggers. Being seized, and put to the torture, they confessed that they were employed by the king of England. They were put to death with torments.”[215]

The same work contains still farther traits of Richard’s craft and perfidy, which stain his character but too deeply, and justify but too much the suspicion of his being accessory to this murder. Thus, his imprisonment by Leopold of Austria, a near relation of the marquess of Tyre, seems to have been but a measure of reprisal, for the death of his kinsman.

While the English, to remove from their monarch the suspicion of this assassination, and to liberate him the sooner from his captivity, forged the above-mentioned letter[216] of the Old Man of the Mountain, to Leopold of Austria; they, at the same time, and with the same view, concocted a second, which is mentioned by William of Newbury, as having been sent by the grand-master to Philip Augustus, King of France. This letter, like the first, bears the marks of a counterfeit on its front.[217] The grand-master of the Assassins is made to call himself “simplicitas nostra;” which we cannot allow our simplicity to err so far as to believe. In this palpably apocryphal writing, the Old Man of the Mountain assures the king of France, that it had never entered into his thoughts to send to France, at the desire of Richard, Assassins with regicidal designs.

This letter, the falsehood of which is still more manifest than that of the former one, proves, instead of acquitting Richard, that the murder of the marquess of Montferrat had drawn upon him the suspicion of a similar attempt against the king of France. Rigord,[218] the historian of Philip Augustus, relates, that while the king was in Pontoise, in the year 1192, being apprised by letters from Palestine, that Richard meditated his assassination, he established, for his security, a body-guard, armed with iron maces; and William Quiart,[219] who, a century after, wrote a rhyming history, openly ascribes the whole murderous system of the Assassins to the king of England, who had young men educated in the principles of blind obedience to his cruel commands, in order to sacrifice the king of France; upon which, the latter instituted his guard of sergens à masses. Even if these precautions were groundless and exaggerated, they, nevertheless, were occasioned by the known deeds and character of Richard. The murder of Conrad of Montferrat, thus gave rise to the English king’s captivity in Austria; and, likewise, to the institution of the first royal body-guard in France.

It may, perhaps, appear a thankless and vain labour, to wish to justify the order of the Assassins, who are charged with a thousand manifest murders, from the guilt of the thousand and first; but the duty of impartiality imposes this task on the historian who remains faithful to truth, although it may neither acquit, nor condemn. Whether the order, in the person of Philip Augustus, attempted the life of one prince more or less—whether the grand-master directed the poniards of the murderers, who slew the marquess of Montferrat, moved by private revenge, or by the desire of Richard, is of little consequence; participation in murder does not lessen the guilt of the crime.

We shall not, therefore, stop to inquire whether the Arab Assassin, found in the camp of Frederic Barbarossa, at the siege of Milan, in the year 1158,[220] and against whom the emperor received timely warning, came from Spain or Syria; whether he was in the pay of the pope, or the grand-master of the Ismailites; or, whether Frederic was destined to fall a victim to the Old Man of the Mountain, or to him of the seven hills. He was, on account of his campaigns in Palestine and Italy,—his enterprises against the infidels and the papal chair, equally dreaded by the supreme pontiffs, both of Bagdad and Rome; and the khalif on the Tigris, would have had no less cause to rejoice at his death, than the khalif on the Tiber.

He, however, who profits by the commission of an atrocity, is not always to be accused of being its author. Barbarossa’s grandson, Frederic II., was accused by Pope Innocent IV., in the synod of Lyons,[221] of having employed Assassins to murder the duke of Bavaria, and was excommunicated; while Frederic, in a letter to the king of Bohemia, charges the duke of Austria with having entertained similar designs against himself.[222] These accusations, however, do not prove the guilt of the accused, but only the crime of the Assassins.