Ambulantes et flentes properabunt.... In Sion interrogabunt viam, huc facies eorum.
1191
While Richard was building, Saladin was pulling down. Having razed Ascalon, he on September 23 rejoined his main force at Jafna, thence returned with it next day to Ramlah, and set his men to raze the citadel of this latter place and the great fortified church of S. George at the neighbouring town of Lydda. On the 25th he left his army at Ramlah under Safadin to complete this work and watch the enemy, while he went to see with his own eyes the state of the defences of Jerusalem and take measures for securing their efficiency. On the 30th he returned to Ramlah.[797] To Richard this abandonment of all attempt to hold the country seemed like the conduct of “a man bereft of all counsel, and of all hope of succour”;[798] but Richard himself was not without secret misgivings as to the ultimate success of the Crusade. On the same day on which he wrote—probably to one of his ministers, for communication to his subjects in general[799]—the letter declaring his hope that Jerusalem would be won by the middle of January, he wrote also a letter to the abbot of Clairvaux which reveals more clearly the actual condition of affairs and the king’s real expectations as to their future course. He thought there was good hope that the whole “heritage of the Lord” would be speedily 1191 recovered; indeed, part of it was recovered already. But in the recovering of that part he had, as he truly said, borne the burden and heat of the day and exhausted not only his money but also his health and strength, so that he felt he could not stay in Syria beyond Easter; and the other western leaders, having spent all they had, would return to their homes unless fresh supplies of men, money, and other necessaries were sent out from Europe to enable them to remain. He therefore besought the abbot to stir up princes and peoples by his preaching, and induce them to make provision for the safety and defence, after Easter, of the Lord’s heritage, “which,” he said, “by God’s grace we shall have fully won by that time.”[800]
A nearer future than Easter had a share in Richard’s secret anxieties. All these weeks ships had been plying to and fro between Joppa and Acre, too many of them bringing from the northern city visitors who were not merely useless but undesirable, and carrying back thither lukewarm Crusaders who preferred its pleasures and indulgences to the hard work of the Holy War; whereby the host was considerably diminished in numbers.[801] The extent of the leakage seems to have been made fully apparent to the princes when at the end of September they removed their troops from the gardens to a new encampment somewhat further out, near the Casal of S. Habakkuk.[802] King Guy was commissioned to go to Acre and bring the truants back;[803] and while awaiting their return Richard, probably to keep the enemy inactive, sent on October 3 a messenger to Safadin to propose a renewal of the suspended negotiations. A few days earlier, Saladin had received from Conrad of Montferrat overtures for an alliance; Conrad offered to make peace with the Moslems, break openly with the Franks, and recover Acre for the former, if they would give him Sidon and Beyrout. Saladin was quite willing to agree to these terms—“for,” says Bohadin, “the marquis was a 1191 most terrible adversary to us”—but not to grant Conrad’s demand that the Sultan should pledge himself by oath to the cession of the two sea-ports, till Conrad should first have proved his sincerity by attacking his fellow-Christians at Acre and releasing his Moslem prisoners at Tyre.[804]
On October 4 Saladin, finding that at Ramlah he could not get enough fodder for his horses and camels, owing to his foragers being too much exposed to attacks from the enemy, removed his army some eight or nine miles south-eastward into the hills, close to a place whose character is expressed in one form of its name, Natroun, “post of observation.”[805] The Franks called the place Toron of the Knights; “toron” meaning height or mount, and the knights being those of the Temple, who had built on its summit a tower of great strength overlooking two of the roads to Jerusalem. This tower Saladin at once began to pull down; like the other strongholds which he had demolished, it was useless to him for present purposes, and could be of value only to his enemies, should the site fall Oct. 8 into their hands. Four days later Safadin, whom he had left at Ramlah in command of the advanced guard, sent him word that Richard, having discovered Conrad’s dealings with the Sultan, had sailed for Acre in order to put a stop to them by making friends with the marquis.[806] There was, however, another reason for the king’s visit to Acre. The loiterers there were so slow to move at the bidding of Guy that it was clearly necessary to bring a stronger influence to bear upon them. Richard’s exhortations took such effect Oct. 13 that within a fortnight[807] he was back at Joppa accompanied 1191 not only by the two queens, whom he established there with their attendants, but also by so “much people” that the host seemed to have become more numerous than ever.[808] It took another fortnight to clear out of Acre and convey by sea to the new base the remaining stragglers and the stores needed for a fresh advance.[809] During this enforced delay the host was once at least very near losing its commander-in-chief. Richard, having ridden out with a very small escort partly to exercise his hawks,[810] partly to look out for an opportunity of surprising the Turks, was himself surprised by some of them when he had stopped to rest and fallen asleep. Awaking just in time, he sprang to horse and drove them off, but they led him into an ambush, and he was only saved from capture by the devotion of William des Préaux, who concentrated the attention of the enemies on himself by shouting, “Saracens, I am Melec”—that is, the king—and was seized and hurried away accordingly, while the real king escaped. The whole host was aghast when the adventure became known, and some of Richard’s friends upbraided him for his rashness and implored him, for the sake of the cause to which his safety was so important, never again to expose himself thus without sufficient escort; but it was all in vain. “In every conflict he delighted in being the first to attack and the last to return.”[811]
Meanwhile Richard had, immediately on his return to Joppa, renewed his friendly intercourse with Safadin by sending him a beautiful horse as a present. A few days later an envoy from Safadin came, by the king’s desire, to meet him at Yazour, some four miles, from Joppa on the road to Ramlah, to receive his proposals for a treaty. Of these proposals the Moslem envoy carried back two sets, one for direct transmission to the Sultan, the other intended primarily for Safadin’s personal consideration. To Saladin 1191 the king wrote that, with Franks and Moslems alike perishing and the country ruined, the war had gone far enough; the only matters in dispute were the Holy City, the Cross, and the limits of the two realms, Christian and Mussulman. Their claim to Jerusalem, as the most sacred seat of their Faith, the Christians could not renounce so long as there was one man of them left alive. Of the country they claimed restitution up to the western bank of the Jordan. As for the Cross, “seeing that to the Moslems it is but a piece of wood,” Saladin might well give it back to those who accounted it a sacred treasure; and thus should there be for both parties peace and rest from their labours. Saladin at once decisively refused all three conditions.[812] To Safadin the king had proposed another scheme: that Safadin should take Queen Joan of Sicily to wife, and reign over the land jointly with her, she holding Jerusalem as her royal seat, Richard endowing her with Acre, Joppa, and Ascalon (which he accounted his own conquests), the Sultan c. Oct. 18 giving the Holy Cross to the Christians, and all the places which he held in the Sahel or Maritime Plain to his brother and declaring him king of the land. With these terms Safadin appeared well pleased, and Saladin, when they were laid before him, answered immediately and emphatically, “Yes! yes! yes!”—“being,” says Bohadin who was present and who knew him well enough to read his thoughts, “persuaded that the king would never really sanction such a thing, and proposed it only in trickery and play.” His persuasion was justified; when on October 23 an envoy from the Sultan and his brother again came to the Christian camp, he was sent back with a message that when the king had told his sister of the marriage proposed for her, she had become “furious with indignation and wrath,” and sworn by all she held sacred that she would never submit to it; whereupon her brother had promised to bring, if he could, Safadin to accept Christianity. All this was of course mere diplomacy to wile away the time till the host was ready for a further advance; and on the 27th Saladin received Oct. 28 tidings that the enemy was preparing to leave Joppa. Next 1191 day the Sultan returned to Ramlah. On the 29th he sent some troops to surprise the Christian camp, but they were driven off and put to flight.[813] On the 30th Richard, “wandering about in the plain towards Ramlah,” espied a reconnoitring party of Saracens, attacked them without hesitation, slew several of them and scattered the rest.[814] On the 31st, having completed his arrangements for the security of Joppa, he led the host on the first stage of its advance towards Jerusalem.
Oct. 31
The stage was a very short one—only two miles, to Yazour, or as the Franks called it, the Casal of the Plains. This place and Casal Maen, which seems to have been the Frankish name for Beit Dejan, about two miles further to the south-east, had been Frankish strongholds, recently dismantled by the Saracens; it was important that they should be restored in order to secure the command of the road leading from Joppa into the hills. Richard undertook the restoration of Casal Maen, and the Templars that of Casal des Plains; the host lay encamped between the two places for Nov. 1-15 a fortnight while the work was in progress. The Turks did their utmost to hinder it by sending out skirmishing parties. One of these, having been put to flight, was pursued by Richard so far that before he turned back he actually saw Nov. 6 Ramlah and the Sultan’s army there.[815] Another day a foraging party protected by a small escort of Templars was suddenly surrounded by a numerous body of Turks at “Bombrac,” properly Ibn Ibrak or Beni Berak, about two miles from Casal Maen. On learning their peril Richard, who was busy superintending the works at Casal Maen, sent some knights to the rescue and quickly followed in person. When he reached the spot the position of the little band looked so hopeless and the enemy’s numbers so overwhelming that his companions besought him to retire, “for,” said they, “if mischief should befall you, there would be an end of Christendom!”[816] “I sent those men here; if they die 1191 without me, may I never again be called king,” was his reply. Setting spurs to his horse and giving him the rein, he burst “like lightning” into the enemy’s ranks, and laid about him so furiously that they all either fled “like beasts,” or were slain or made prisoners.[817] Such is the Frankish version of this encounter; Bohadin, however, describes it as a success for the Saracens,[818] and makes no mention of Richard’s presence.
That evening Richard sent a messenger to Safadin, complaining of these attacks as breaches of their friendly relations, Nov. 3 and again asking him for a personal interview.[819] Three days before, Reginald of Sidon had come to Saladin from Tyre with a renewal of Conrad’s proposal of an alliance against the Crusaders. As before, Saladin gave equal encouragement to both parties. On the 8th Safadin and Richard met in a large tent set up for the purpose[820] “between the Casal of the Temple and that of Josaphat”;[821] each brought with him “all such gifts as princes are wont to give to one another,” and the special delicacies in food and drink most esteemed among his own people, for the delectation of the other.[822] Safadin crowned the entertainment by introducing a singing girl, and Richard professed himself greatly pleased with the Saracen mode of singing.[823] The rest of the day was spent in talk, and they parted with a mutual promise of fast friendship and a renewed request from Richard that Safadin would procure for him an interview with the Sultan. Saladin refused to meet him, giving the same reason as on a previous occasion.[824] Meanwhile Reginald was in the Sultan’s camp, splendidly lodged in a tent filled with every oriental luxury, treated with marked courtesy, and sometimes accompanying Safadin when that prince rode out to reconnoitre the Christian host. Saladin himself inclined to accept the offers of Conrad. “If we make peace with the western Franks,” he said privately to Bohadin, “it will never be a secure one; if I were to die, it would be very difficult to 1191 get our army together again, and before this could be done all the forces of our foes would have united. It were wiser to fight on till we have either expelled them from our coasts or died in the attempt.” Richard, however, anxious to prevent an alliance between Saladin and Conrad which would undoubtedly have been fraught with grave peril to the Christian cause, twice renewed his proposals in a modified form, each time lowering his demands and offering fresh concessions; so when on November 11[825] Saladin laid the propositions of the marquis and those of the king before a council of his emirs, they declared in favour of the latter. Saladin yielded to their opinion. But Richard had reserved for himself a way of escape. “The whole Christian community,” he said, “is blaming me for proposing to wed my sister to a Mussulman without leave from the Pope. I will therefore send an envoy to him, and in six months I shall have his answer. If he consents, well; if not, I will give you my brother’s daughter, in which case the Pope’s sanction will not be needed.” To this Saladin replied: “If the alliance is to be made, let it be made on the original terms; I will not go back from my word; but if that marriage fail, we want no other.”[826] Thus the matter remained in abeyance for several months. On the day (November 15) on which he sent this last rejoinder Saladin again retired from Ramlah to the neighbourhood of Natroun[827]; and shortly afterwards 1191 the Christian host advanced from its encampment between the two restored Casals into the plain between Ramlah and Lydda. Here they pitched their tents and waited for reinforcements and supplies.[828]
Nov. 15-22