The History of Chivalry

by G. P. R. James

It would be endless to trace all the events in Palestine which brought about the third crusade, and to investigate minutely the causes which worked out the ruin of the Christian dominion in the Holy Land. The simple facts must be enough in this place.

Although the crusade which went forth for the express purpose of delivering Edessa never even attempted that object, Joscelyn of Courtenay did not neglect to struggle for his lost territory, and gained some splendid successes over the infidels, which were all in turn reversed, by his capture and death in prison.[611] After his failure, the difficulty of keeping Edessa was so apparent, that the monarch of Jerusalem[612] determined to yield it to the Emperor Manuel Comnenus, on condition of his defending it against the Turks. Manuel, therefore, received the principality; but the weak and cowardly Greeks soon lost what the valiant Franks could not maintain; and before a year was over, Nourhaddin the Great, sultaun of Aleppo, was in full possession of Edessa and all its dependencies. Baldwin III., however, who had cast off the follies of his youth, and now displayed as great qualities as any of his race, more than compensated for the loss of that principality by the capture of Ascalon.[613]

After this great success, eight years of varied warfare followed; and at the end of that period Baldwin died, leaving behind him the character of one of the noblest of the Latin kings. His brother Almeric ascended the vacant throne, but with talents infinitely inferior, and a mind in no degree calculated to cope with the great and grasping genius of Nourhaddin, who combined, in rare union, the qualities of an ambitious and politic monarch with the character of a liberal, frugal, and unostentatious man.

Almeric was ambitious also; but his avarice was always a check on his ambition, and he suffered himself often to be bribed, where he might have conquered. At this time[614] the Fatimite califs of Egypt had fallen into a state of nonentity. The country was governed by a vizier, and the high office was struggled for by a succession of military adventurers.

Such a state of things awakened the attention of the monarchs of Jerusalem and Aleppo, and each resolved to make himself master of Egypt. An opportunity soon presented itself. Shawer, the vizier of Egypt, was expelled from his post by Dargham, a soldier of fortune. The disgraced vizier fled to the court of Nourhaddin, and prayed for assistance against the usurper. Nourhaddin willingly granted a request which yielded the means of sending his troops into Egypt; and two Curdish refugees, uncle and nephew, who had risen high in his army,[615] under the names of Assad Eddyn Chyrkouh, and Salah Eddyn or Saladin, were despatched with considerable forces to expel Dargham, and to re-establish Shawer. Dargham saw the gathering storm, and to shelter himself from its fury called the Christians from Palestine to his aid. But the movements of the Moslems were more rapid than those of Almeric; and, before the King of Jerusalem could reach Cairo, Chyrkouh had given battle to Dargham, and defeated and killed him, and Shawer was repossessed of the authority he had lost. Shawer soon found that his power was fully as much in danger from his allies as it had been from his enemies; and, to resist the Turks whom he had brought into Egypt, he was obliged to enter into a treaty with the Christians. Almeric marched immediately to Cairo, and after a multitude of manœuvres and skirmishes, forced Chyrkouh and Saladin to quit the country; displaying, through the whole of this war, more scientific generalship than was at all usual in that age. No sooner were the Turks gone, than the Latin monarch[616] broke his truce with the Egyptians, and Shawer was once more obliged to apply to Nourhaddin. Chyrkouh again advanced into the Fatimite dominions with increased forces, obliged Almeric to retreat with great loss, took possession of Cairo, beheaded Shawer, and installed himself in the office of vizier to Adhad, calif of Egypt, though he still retained the title of lieutenant for Nourhaddin of Aleppo. Not long after these successes, Chyrkouh died, and Nourhaddin, doubtful of the fidelity of the Turkish emirs, gave the vacant post to Saladin, the nephew of the late vizier; in which choice he was as much guided by the apparently reckless and pleasure-seeking despotism of the young Curdish chief, as by the military skill he had shown when forced unwillingly into action. Saladin, however, was scarcely invested with supreme power in Egypt when his real character appeared. He cast from him the follies with which he had veiled his great and daring mind; and, by means of the immense treasures placed at his command, soon bound to his interests many who had been at first disgusted by his unexpected elevation. The califs of Egypt had been always considered as schismatics by the califs of Bagdat, to whom Nourhaddin still affected homage; and Saladin was forthwith instructed to declare the Fatimite dynasty at an end, and to re-establish in Egypt the nominal dominion of the Abassides. This was easily accomplished; Adhad, the calif, either died before the revolution was completed, or was strangled in the bath; the people little cared under whose yoke they laboured. The children of the late calif were confined in the harem; and Motshadi, calif of Bagdat, was prayed for as God’s vicar on earth.

Saladin’s ambitious projects became every day more and more apparent, and Nourhaddin was not blind to the conduct of his officer. Submission quieted his suspicions for a time; and, though repeated causes for fresh jealousy arose, he was obliged to forego marching into Egypt in person, as he undoubtedly intended, till death put a stop to all his schemes. No sooner was Nourhaddin dead, than Almeric attacked his widow at Paneas,[617] and Saladin began to encroach upon other parts of his territories: but Saladin was the only gainer by the death of the great sultaun, and made himself master, by various means, of the whole of his Syrian dominions, while internal dissensions and changes in the government of Palestine gradually weakened every bulwark of the Latin throne. Almeric[618] died in returning from Paneas, and his son, Baldwin IV, surnamed the Leper, succeeded him. Had his corporeal powers been equal to the task of royalty, it is probable that Baldwin would have been a far greater monarch than his father; but, after many struggles for activity, he found that disease incapacitated him for energetic rule, and he intrusted the care of the state to Guy of Lusignan, who had married his sister Sybilla, widow of the Marquis of Montferrat, to whom she had borne one son.[619]

Guy of Lusignan soon showed himself unworthy of the charge, and Baldwin,[620] resuming the government, endeavoured to establish it in such a form that it might uphold itself after his death, which he felt to be approaching. With this view he offered the administration to the Count of Tripoli,[621] during the minority of his sister’s child; but the Count refused to accept it, except under condition that the charge of the young prince should be given to Joscelyn de Courtenay, the surviving branch of the Courtenays of Edessa, and son of the unhappy count who died in a Saracen prison. He also stipulated that the castles and fortresses of the kingdom should be garrisoned by the Hospitallers and Templars; and that in case the boy should die in his youth, the question of succession should be determined by the Pope, the Emperor of Germany, the King of France, and the King of England.[622] Not many years after this the king died, and Baldwin V. succeeded, but his death followed immediately upon his accession. Without abiding by the dispositions of the former monarch, no sooner was the young king dead, than the Grand Master of the Temple, Renauld of Chatillon, Count of Karac, and the Patriarch of Jerusalem joined to raise Sybilla to the throne, in spite of the formal protest of all the other barons and the Grand Master of the Hospital. The gates of Jerusalem were shut;[623] and it was only by sending one of their followers, disguised as a monk, that the nobles assembled with the Count of Tripoli at Naplousa could gain any tidings of what passed. Sybilla was crowned in form; and then the patriarch, pointing to the other crown which lay upon the altar, told her that it was hers to dispose of, on which she immediately placed it on the head of Guy of Lusignan.[624] After this some of the barons refused to do homage to the new king, and some absented themselves from his court; but the imminent danger in which the country was placed at length brought back a degree of concord, when concord could no longer avail.

Saladin had by this time made himself master of all Syria;[625] and had not only consolidated into one great monarchy dominions which for ages had been separated into petty states, but also, by the incessant application of a powerful and expansive mind, he had drawn forth and brought into action many latent but valuable resources which had previously been unknown or forgotten. He had taught the whole interests of his people to centre in his own person, and he now determined to direct their energies to one great and important enterprise. That enterprise was the conquest of Palestine, and with an army of fifty thousand horse, and near two hundred thousand foot, he advanced towards Jerusalem, and laid siege to Tiberias.[626] Within the walls of that fortress the Countess of Tripoli held out against the Saracens, while her husband joined Guy of Lusignan, and brought his forces to the field in defence of the Holy Land.

The conduct of the Count of Tripoli is very obscure.[627] That from time to time he had treated with the Saracens is evident, and almost every European authority, except Mills, accuses him of having, in this instance, betrayed his countrymen into the hands of the infidels. Whether with or against his advice matters little to the general result—the Christians marched down to meet Saladin at Tiberias.[628] Beyond doubt it was by the counsel of the Count of Tripoli that they pitched their tents in a spot where no water was to be found. The troops suffered dreadfully from thirst; and in the morning, when they advanced to attack Saladin in the cool of the dawn, the wary monarch retired before them, resolved not to give them battle till the heat of the risen sun had added to their fatigues. To increase the suffocating warmth of a Syrian summer’s day, he set fire to the low bushes and shrubs which surrounded the Christian camp; so that when the battle did begin, the Latin forces were quite overcome with weariness and drought. The contest raged throughout the day, the Christians fighting to reach the wells which lay behind the Saracen power,[629] but in vain; and night fell, leaving the strife still doubtful. The next morning the Latins and Turks again mixed in combat. The Count of Tripoli[630] forced his way through the Saracens, and escaped unhurt; but the scimitars of the Moslems mowed down whole ranks of the Christians, for their immense superiority of numbers allowed them to surround the height upon which the king and the chief of his army were stationed, and to wage the warfare at once against every face of the Latin host. Such a conflict could not long endure. Multitudes of the infidels fell, but their loss was nothing in proportion to their number, when compared with that which their adversaries underwent.

The Grand Master of the Hospital[631] alone clove his way from the field of battle, after having staid till victory had settled upon the Paynim banners. He reached Ascalon that night, but died on the following day of the wounds he had received. The King—Renault de Chatillon, Count of Karac, who had so often broken faith with the Moslems—and the Grand Master of the Temple, whose whole order was in abhorrence among the Mussulmans—were taken alive and carried prisoners to the tent of Saladin. That monarch remained for some time on the field, giving orders that the knights of St. John[632] and those of the Temple, who had been captured, should instantly embrace Islamism, or undergo the fate of the scimitar. A thousand acts of cruelty and aggression on their part had given cause to such deadly hatred; but at the hour of death not one knight could be brought to renounce his creed; and they died with that calm resolution which is in itself a glory. After this bloody consummation of his victory, Saladin entered the tent where Lusignan and his companions expected a similar fate: but Saladin, thirsty himself, called for iced sherbet, and having drank, handed the cup to the fallen monarch, a sure pledge that his life was secure. Lusignan in turn passed it to Renaul of Chatillon,[633] but the sultaun, starting up, exclaimed, “No hospitality for the breaker of all engagements!”[634] and before Chatillon could drink, with one blow of his scimitar, Saladin severed his head from his body.