The Knights of England, France, and Scotland

by Henry William Herbert

Nor was it long before the author of this new system was discovered. In every affair a chieftain was observed, no less remarkable for his powerful make, far exceeding the stature and slight, though sinewy, frame of his oriental followers, than for his skill in disposing his irregular horsemen, so as to act with the greatest possible advantage against his formidable, but cumbrous opponents. His arms and equipment, moreover, distinguished him yet more clearly than his huge person from his paynim coadjutors. His brows indeed were turbaned, but beneath the embroidered shawl and glittering tiara he wore the massive cerveilliere and barred vizor of the European headpiece; instead of the fluttering caftan and light hauberk, his whole form was sheathed in solid mail; the steed which he bestrode showed more bone and muscle than the swift but slender coursers of the desert, and was armed on chest and croup with plates of tempered steel. Nor, though he avoided to risk his light-armed troops against their invulnerable opponents, did he himself shrink from the encounter; on the contrary, ever leading the attack and covering the retreat, it seemed his especial delight to mingle hand to hand with the best lances of the temple. Many a knight had fallen beneath the sweep of his tremendous blade, and these not of the unknown and unregarded multitude; for it was ever from among the noblest and the best that he singled out his antagonists—his victims—for of all who had gone against him, not one had been known to return. So great was the annoyance wrought to the armies of the cross by the policy, as well as by the valor of the moslem chief, that every method had been contrived for overpowering him by numbers, or deceiving him by stratagem; still the sagacity and foresight of the infidel had penetrated their deep devices, with a certainty as unerring as that with which his huge battle-axe had cloven their proudest crests.

To such a pitch had the terror of his prowess extended, that not content with the reality, in itself sufficiently gloomy, the soldiers had begun to invest him with the attributes of a superhuman avenger. It was observed, that save the gold and crimson scarf which bound his iron temples, he was black from head to heel-stirrup, and spur, and crest, the trappings of his charger, and the animal itself, all dark as the raven’s wing—that, more than once since he had fought in the van of the mussulmans, strange shouts had been heard ringing above the lelies of the paynim, and repeating the hallowed war-cry of the Christian in tones of hellish derision—once, too, when he had utterly destroyed a little band of templars, a maimed and wounded wretch, who had escaped from the carnage of his brethren, skulking beneath his lifeless horse, averred that, while careering at his utmost speed, the charger of the mysterious warrior had swerved in mad consternation from the consecrated banner, which had been hurled to the earth, and that the sullen head of the rider had involuntarily bowed to the saddle-bow as he dashed onward in his course of blood and ruin; and in truth there was enough of the marvellous—in the activity by which he avoided all collision with a superior force, and in the victories which he bore off day by day from the men who, till he had come upon the stage, had only fought to conquer—to palliate, if not to justify, some vague and shadowy terrors, in an age when the truth of supernatural interference, whether of saints or demons, was believed as implicitly as the holy writ. Men, who a few weeks before would have gone forth to battle against a threefold array of enemies rejoicing as if to a banquet, now fought faintly, and began to look for safety in a timely retreat, rather than in the deeds of their own right hands, as soon as they beheld the sable form of that adversary, whom all regarded as something more than a mere human foe; while many believed, that if not a natural incarnation of the evil principle, he was, at least, a mortal endowed with power to work the mischief designed for his performance, by the inveterate malignity of the arch-fiend himself. And it was a fact, very characteristic of the period at which these events occurred, that the most accomplished warriors of the time bestowed as much attention on the framing of periapt, and spell, and all the arms of spiritual war, as on their mere earthly weapons, the spear, the buckler, and the steed.

The middle watch of night was long passed, and the sky was overcast with heavy clouds—what little air was stirring came in blasts as close and scorching as though they issued from the mouth of an oven. The camp of the crusaders was silent, and sleeping, all but the vigilant guards, ever on the alert to catch the faintest sound, which might portend a sally from the walls of the city, or a surprise of the indefatigable Saladin from without.

In the pavilion of Lusignan, the nominal leader of the expedition, all the chiefs of the crusade had met in deep consultation. But the debate was ended; one by one they had retired to their respective quarters, and the Latin monarch was left alone, to muse on the brighter prospects which were opening to his ambition in the approach of Philip Augustus and the lion-hearted Richard, at the head of such an array of gallant spirits as might justify his most extravagant wishes. Suddenly his musings were interrupted by sounds, remote at first, but gradually thickening upon his ear. The faint blast of a distant trumpet, and the challenge of sentries, was succeeded by the hurried tramp of approaching footsteps; voices were heard in eager and exulting conversation, and lights were seen marshalling the new-comers to the royal tent. A few moments, and a knot of his most distinguished knights stood before him, and, with fettered hands, and his black armor soiled with dust and blood, the mysterious warrior of the desert, a captive in the presence of his conquerors.

The narration of the victory was brief. A foraging-party had ridden forth on the preceding morning, never to return!—for, instructed by his scouts, the infidel had beset their march, had assaulted them at nightfall, and destroyed them to a man. But his good fortune had at last deserted him. A heavy body of knights, with their archers and sergeants, returning from a distant excursion, had come suddenly upon his rear when he was prosecuting his easy triumph. The moslems, finding themselves abruptly compelled to act on the defensive, were seized by one of those panics to which all night-attacks are so liable—were thrown into confusion, routed, and cut to pieces. Their commander, on the first appearance of the Christians, had charged with his wonted fury, before he perceived that he was deserted by all, and surrounded past the hope of escape. Heretofore he had fought for victory, now he fought for revenge and for death; and never had he enacted such prodigies of valor as now when that valor was about to be extinguished for ever! Quarter was offered to him, and the tender answered by redoubled blows of his weighty axe. Before he could be taken, he had surrounded himself with a rampart of dead; and when at length numbers prevailed, and he was a prisoner, so deep was the respect of the victors toward so gallant a foe, that all former prejudices vanished: and when he had opposed the first attempt to remove his vizor, he was conveyed, unquestioned and in all honor, to the tent of the Latin king.

The time had arrived when further concealment was impracticable. The captive stood before the commander of the crusading force; and the rules of war, no less than the usages of that chivalrous courtesy practised alike by the warriors of the West and their oriental foemen, required that he should remove the vizor which still concealed his features. Still, however, he stood motionless, with his arms folded across his breast, resembling rather the empty panoply which adorns some hero’s monument than a being instinct with life, and agitated by all the passions to which the mortal heart is liable. Words were addressed to him in the lingua-Franca, or mixed language, which had obtained during those frequent intervals of truce which characterized the nature of the holy wars—breaking into the bloody gloom of strife as an occasional ray of sunshine illuminates the day of storm and darkness—but no effect was produced by their sound on the proud or perhaps uncomprehending prisoner.

For a moment, their former terrors, which had vanished on the fall of their dreaded opponent, appeared to have regained their ascendency over the superstitious hearts of the unenlightened warriors: many there were who confidently expected that the removal of the iron mask would disclose the swart and thunder-stricken brow, the fiery glance, and the infernal aspect, of the prince of darkness! No resistance was offered when the chamberlain of Guy de Lusignan stepped forward, and with all courtesy unlaced the fastenings of the casque and gorget. The clasps gave way, and scarcely could a deeper consternation or a more manifest astonishment have fallen upon the beholders had the king of terrors himself glared forth in awful revelation from that iron panoply. It was no dark-complexioned Saracen—

“In shadowed livery of the burnished sun,”

with whiskered lip and aquiline features, who struck such a chill by his appearance on every heart. The pale skin, the full blue eye, the fair curls that clustered round the lofty brow, bespoke an unmixed descent from the tribes of some northern land of mountain and forest; and that eye, that brow, those lineaments, were all familiar to the shuddering circle as the reflexion of their own in the polished mirror.

One name burst at once from every lip in accents of the deepest scorn. It was the name of one whose titles had stood highest upon their lists of fame; whose deeds had been celebrated by many a wandering minstrel even among the remote hills of Caledonia or the morasses of green Erin; the valor of whose heart and the strength of whose arm had been related far and near by many a pilgrim; whose untimely fall had been mourned by many a maid beside the banks of his native Rhine!—“Arnold of Falkenhorst!” The frame of the culprit was convulsed till the meshes of his linked mail clattered from the nervous motion of the limbs which they enclosed; a crimson flush passed across his countenance, but not a word escaped from his lips, and he gazed straight before him with a fixed, unmeaning stare—how sadly changed from the glance of fire which would so short a time ago have quelled with its indignant lightning the slightest opposition to his indomitable pride!