The History of Chivalry

by G. P. R. James

The fleet of the Saracens supplied the town,[661] and the fleet of the Christians brought aid to the camp, so that the conflict seemed to be interminable, from the equal zeal and force of the contending parties.

In the mean while, the war between Henry and Philip continued; and, from a personal dispute between Richard Cœur de Lion and the French monarch, had so changed its character, that Richard, accompanied by his brother John, went over to the faction of the enemy, and did homage to the crown of France.[662] Henry, abandoned by his children and the greater part of his nobles, found himself forced to sign an ignominious peace; and after one of the violent fits of passion to which he so often yielded himself, was taken ill, and concluded a long life of vice and crime before the altar of the Lord,[663] which he had once caused to be stained with blood.[664]

Richard and Philip were already in alliance; and no sooner had the new monarch of England ascended the throne, than the preparations for the crusade were resumed with activity. Ample treaties were entered into between the French and English kings; and as the clergy, though willing enough to preach the crusade, were in general unwilling to aid it by the payment of Saladin’s tenth, Richard had recourse to the most arbitrary[665] extortions, to furnish the sums necessary for his enterprise. Philip Augustus, the Count of Flanders, and Richard Cœur de Lion met at Nonancourt, on the confines of Normandy, and engaged mutually to live in peace and defend each other, as true allies, till a period of forty days after their return from Palestine.[666] Richard also published a code of laws or regulations for the government of his troops during the expedition. By these it was enacted, that whoever slew a brother crusader should be tied to the corpse and buried alive; or, if the murder were perpetrated at sea, should be plunged with the dead body into the waves. A man who drew his knife upon another, or struck him so as to produce blood, was destined to have his hand cut off. Other chastisements were instituted for simple blows, abusive language, and blasphemy;[667] and if any one were discovered in committing a robbery, he was sentenced to have his head shaved and to be tarred and feathered. This is, I believe, the first mention in history of that curious naval punishment.

Each of the crusading monarchs now made large donations to abbeys, churches, and religious communities,[668] and performed various acts of grace to bring down the blessing of Heaven upon their enterprise. They took every measure that could be devised for the security and good of their respective realms during their absence, and then proceeded towards Lyons, where, finding that the followers of their camp were becoming somewhat more numerous than was desirable, and remembering the vices and irregularities of the former crusades, they instituted several new laws; among which it was strictly enjoined that no woman should be permitted to accompany either army, except washerwomen, and such as had accomplished fifty years. Here, also, the two kings separated,[669] and Philip, traversing the Alps, soon arrived at Genoa,[670] where he hired vessels to carry him to Messina, the general rendezvous, which place he reached with no other impediment than a severe storm.

Richard, in the mean time, hurried on to Marseilles, where he waited a few days for the fleet which was to have joined him from England; but his impatient spirit could never brook delay, and after a pause of little more than a week, he hired all the vessels he could find, and proceeded to Genoa. Leaving that city he touched at several places on the coast of Italy, and near the mouth of the Tiber was encountered by Octavian, Bishop of Ostia, who demanded various sums, stated to be due to the church of Rome from the English monarch, as fees, on the election of the Bishop of Ely, and the deposition of the Bishop of Bourdeaux. Richard replied by boldly reproaching the prelate with the simoniacal avarice of his church, and sent him indignantly from his presence. In the Gulf of Salernum, the English king was met by his fleet, and soon anchored before Messina, causing all the horns of his armament to blow as he entered the port. The noise was so great, that the inhabitants crowded to the walls, where they beheld the thousand banners of England covering the sea with all the gay and splendid colours of chivalrous blazonry.[671] Richard was fond of such display, and, perhaps, so slight a thing as this first woke that jealousy in the bosom of Philip Augustus which afterward proved ruinous to the crusade. Nevertheless that monarch came down to meet Richard, with Tancred, the usurping King of Sicily, who had every thing to fear from the anger of the hasty sovereign of England. After dispossessing Constantia, the heiress of the crown, Tancred had imprisoned Joan, sister of Richard, the widow of the last king William the Good. He had freed her, it is true, on the news of Richard’s arrival; but the first act of the English monarch[672] was to demand the restitution of his sister’s dowery, and the legacies which had been bequeathed by William of Sicily to Henry II. of England. These together amounted to forty thousand ounces of gold,[673] and for some time Richard’s application was met by nothing but quibbling and evasion.

The best intelligence had hitherto reigned between the French and English, but not so with Richard’s knights and the people of Sicily. The Anglo-Normans were dissolute and reckless, and the Sicilians soon proceeded from squabbling and opposition, to seek bloody revenge. It is probable that both parties were in fault. Every thing at Messina was charged at a most exorbitant price,[674] and the Normans were very apt to take what they could not buy. The Sicilians cheated them, and they plundered the Sicilians, till at length some of the Norman soldiers were killed.[675] Hugh Lebrun, a favourite of Richard, was wounded; and Richard himself, finding the peasantry supported by Tancred in the attack on his soldiers, lost command of his temper, fell upon the people who had come forth from Messina, stormed the walls of the city; and in an inconceivably short time, the banner of the King of England was flying over the capital of Sicily.[676]

Philip Augustus, who had interfered on many occasions to quiet the differences between the Normans and the Sicilians, could not bear to see the English standard on the towers of Messina, and a coolness rose up between the two monarchs from that moment. All angry discussion, however, was removed by the conduct of Richard, which was calm and moderate, far beyond his usual habits. He offered to give up the guard of the city to either the Knights of the Temple or of St. John, till his claims on Tancred had been fairly met. This tranquillized the matter for a time; but Eleonor, Richard’s mother, now arrived in Sicily,[677] bearing with her the beautiful Berengaria, of Navarre. The King of England had been affianced to Alice of France, the sister of Philip; but criminal intercourse, it was supposed, had existed between the French princess and Henry II., and Richard had long meditated breaking off formally an alliance he never intended to fulfil. The sight of Berengaria decided him.[678] Some letters were shown to him by Tancred, King of Sicily, in which Philip Augustus promised aid to the Sicilians in case of their warring with the English. Richard, with the papers in his hand, cast himself on horseback, and galloped to the tent of the French monarch. Philip declared the letters were forged, and that Richard’s anger was a mere pretence to break off a marriage which suited not his taste. War between the two sovereigns seemed inevitable, and how it was averted does not very clearly appear. Probably the higher barons interposed; but at all events the concessions were on the side of Philip, who, by a formal treaty, renounced all pretensions to Richard’s hand, on the part of his sister;[679] confirmed him in all the feoffs he held from the crown of France; and, leaving him and Berengaria to conclude their marriage, he set sail with his fleet for Acre.

The appearance of the French before that place caused great rejoicing among the Christians, for notwithstanding every effort on the part of the assailants the city still held out; and, girt in themselves by the army of Saladin, the scarcity[680] was little less in their camp than in the town. Before the coming of their allies, the crusaders under the walls of Acre had done all that human ingenuity could invent to force the garrison to yield. They had turned the course of the river which supplied the city with fresh water; they had been incessant in their attacks and, during nearly two years, had never relaxed one moment in their endeavours.[681] It was apparent, therefore, that nothing but assault by a large force could carry the fortress, and this the arrival of Philip gave the possibility of attempting. That monarch, however, either from some engagement to that effect, or from the scantiness of the succour he brought, which, according to Boha Eddin, consisted only of six large ships,[682] determined to wait the arrival of Richard Cœur de Lion, contenting himself with battering the walls in the mean while.

The coming of the King of France had spread as much alarm among the Saracens as joy among the Christians; but his inactivity calmed their apprehensions; and the escape of a magnificent white falcon which Philip had brought from Europe, was considered by the infidels as an evil omen for the French monarch. The bird flew into the besieged city, and was thence sent to Saladin, who would not be prevailed upon to part with it, though Philip offered a thousand pieces of gold for his favourite falcon.[683]

Richard remained some time in Sicily, enjoying the idleness and luxury of a delicious climate, and a fertile and beautiful land; but the preaching of a wild enthusiast, called Joachim, together with various celestial phenomena, which the superstition of the age attributed to Divine wrath, awoke the monarch from his dream of pleasure, and after having submitted to an humiliating penance,[684] he set sail for Acre. A tempest soon dispersed his fleet, and three of the vessels were lost upon the rocky shores of Cyprus. The monarch of that island, one of the Comneni of Constantinople, had rendered himself independent of Greece, and had taken the title of Emperor. In the madness of insatiable greediness, he pillaged the crews and passengers of the English vessels stranded on his coast, and refused a refuge to the bride and sister of Richard himself, when driven by the storm into the port of Limisso. At Rhodes[685] the lion-hearted king heard of the disasters of his fleet, and the inhospitality of the Emperor of Cyprus, and no sooner had he gathered together his ships, than he sailed for Limisso, and demanded reparation and apology.