It is strange that Richard did not see how impracticable was his advice. The first half of the scheme proposed by the barons at Tyre was futile without the other half. The kingdom of Jerusalem was sold, beyond redemption, into the hand of a woman. Isabel’s hour had come; she was now, beyond all question, the “right heir” of all the land. Henry of Champagne, nephew to both Richard and Philip, constant companion and faithful follower of the one, yet 1192 loyal homager of the other, was exceptionally qualified to become a sovereign round whom all parties could rally, and a healer of their divisions; but these qualifications must prove useless if Isabel should give him a rival by choosing another consort. His election would be of no avail for himself or for the realm unless he took the queen with the crown. The barons at Tyre were urgent that he should do so; he hesitated from fear of Richard’s displeasure, but his personal inclination seconded their arguments. Finally Isabel herself brought him the keys of the city; a priest was hurriedly fetched, and there and then, on May 5, the couple were wedded. The king-elect sent representatives to Acre, Joppa, and elsewhere, to take seisin of the royal rights, and summoned his men to join him for an expedition against Darum.[893]
During Henry’s absence from the host Richard had been scorning the country round Ascalon in a series of bold excursions, made sometimes almost alone, and from which he always returned “bringing ten or a dozen, or a score, or may be thirty, Saracens’ heads, and some live Saracens besides.”[894] Another object of these expeditions probably was to reconnoitre the inner border of the plain, and endeavour to find out what were the possibilities of penetrating by some way, other than the vale of Ajalon and its ramifications, through the Shephelah and across the trench and the mountain-rampart of Judea. The most direct way up from the plain to Jerusalem was by the next valley south of Ajalon, the Wady es Surar (Valley of Sorek); but if this were to be attempted, the base for the attempt must be some place further north than Ascalon. The entrance to the third main inlet into the Shephelah, the Vale of Elah or Wady es Sunt, was guarded by a great castle set on a height called by the Arabs Tell es Safiyeh, “the Bright Hill,” and by the Franks (who in earlier days had built the castle) Blanchegarde; both names being derived from the nature of the site, a solitary chalk-hill whose gleaming 1192 sides were plainly visible from Ascalon, seventeen miles away, while the tower on its summit commanded a wide view over the surrounding plain, as well as of Ascalon itself, and also of the roads leading northward to Natroun and southward to Ibelin of the Hospital and Hebron. Once already—in December, from Ramlah—Richard had set out to explore the neighbourhood of Blanchegarde,[895] but had turned back again without reaching the place. When on April 22 he led his troops to attack it, he found it deserted; the Turkish garrison had fled at his approach. He seems to have left there in their stead the whole force that he had taken with him, and returned to Ascalon quite alone, for on the way back he nearly lost his life in an encounter with a wild boar in which he was evidently single-handed.[896] Six Apr. 28 days later—the day of Conrad’s death—Roger de Glanville, whom Richard had left in command of the newly won fortress, made a daring reconnaissance through the Vale of Elah, up the steep mountain-pass which meets it on the other side of the central valley, across the plateau, and past the very gates of Jerusalem, and returned in triumph with Apr. 29 a few stray Saracens whom he had captured. On the following day the king, riding somewhere “between Blanchegarde and Gaza,” came upon eight Saracens of whom he slew three and captured the other five. On the night of May 1 he was at Furbia, near the coast, between Ascalon and Gaza; here some Turks tried to surprise him asleep at early morn, but he was the first of his little band to awake and went forth straight from bed, stopping for nothing but his sword and shield, to meet the assailants; four were slain, seven made prisoners; “the rest fled before his face.”[897] It must have been either between these two exploits or directly after the latter of them that Count Henry’s messengers met the king “in the plains of Ramlah, spurring across the open country in pursuit of a band of Turks who were fleeing before him.”[898] His restlessness was probably increased by the disturbed state of his mind. Envoys from his own dominions were arriving one after another with contradictory letters 1192 and messages, some giving alarming accounts of the state of affairs there, some assuring him that all was well; some beseeching him to come home, some exhorting him to continue the sacred task in which he was engaged; all deepening his perplexities till he knew not which to believe or how to act.[899] One point alone stood out clear before him. Now that Ascalon was lost to the Moslems, its place as the key of Egypt, the base and storehouse which sheltered troops and supplies from the Nile valley for transmission to Jerusalem and the other fortresses still held by the Moslems in Syria, had been taken by Darum. Before Richard could bring himself to quit the country, and also before Saladin’s army reassembled, Darum must be won for Christendom.
There was no time to lose. The rains were quite over; summer was beginning; and Saladin’s host would have been at its full strength again ere now but for some troubles in the northern part of his dominions. His nephew Taki-ed-Din, the lord of Hamath and Edessa, had died in October 1191 leaving a son, El Mansour, who was inclined to rebel against Saladin’s supremacy. On May 14 or 15 the Sultan despatched his own son El Afdal to seize El Mansour’s lands; but the diplomatist of the family, Safadin, fearing that this quarrel would imperil the “Holy” War, was pleading hard for a pacific settlement.[900] Knowing all this, Richard determined not to wait for Henry. He had his stone-casters packed on shipboard and sent them down towards Darum by sea; he hired men-at-arms to increase the forces at Ascalon; some he distributed in the strong places round about to guard the roads; then he set out with only the troops of his own domains,[901] and on Sunday, May 17,[902] this little band pitched their tents before Darum, a fortress with seventeen “fine strong towers and turrets,” besides a keep of great height and strength built against a solid rock which 1192 formed one side of it, while the other sides were of squared stone and surrounded by a deep fosse. Being too few to encircle such a place, the adventurers encamped all together a little way off to wait for their machines and consider on which side they could use them to the best advantage. The Turkish garrison thought scorn of such an insignificant looking force, and rode forth and made a feint of provoking them to fight, but failing to move them, withdrew into the castle and shut the gates. That night or next day the ships arrived with the engines of war; “and,” says an eye-witness, “we saw the valiant king of England himself, and the nobles who were his companions, all sweating under the burden of the various parts of the stone-casters, which they, like packhorses, carried on their shoulders near a mile across the sand.” The pieces were soon put together and the machines at work, one manned by the Normans of the party, another by the Poitevins, a third probably by the Englishmen; this last the king took under his own special command, and he directed its discharge solely against the keep; a mangonel set up there by the Turks was speedily destroyed by it. All three machines were kept in ceaseless action day and night. Meanwhile the walls were being undermined;[903] and wherever they began to fall they were set on fire by some men of Aleppo skilled in wall-breaking, whom Richard had hired during the siege of Acre and now brought with him to Darum.[904] On the fourth day of the siege (Friday, May 22), when the castle gate had been shattered by Richard’s stone-caster and set on fire, the garrison offered to surrender on condition that their lives and those of their families should be spared.[905] Richard refused the condition and bade them defend themselves as best they could. The stone-casters worked more vigorously than ever; presently one of the undermined towers fell with a crash. The assailants rushed through the breach; some sixty Turks were slain; the rest fled into the keep, and when 1192 they saw the Christian banners waving all over the outer May 22 bailey and the Frank knights and men-at-arms beginning to scale the keep itself, they “gave themselves up to King Richard as his captives and slaves.” He kept them securely guarded in the tower for the night; next morning they were brought out, “and their hands tied behind their backs so tightly that they roared with pain.” There were three hundred men; and there were also some women and children in the place, and, moreover, forty Christian prisoners.[906]
The conquest of the seaboard was complete; the last fortress on the coast[907] was in Christian hands; and Richard and his men were the more delighted with their success because they had won it unaided, before their French comrades rejoined them. Count Henry and his followers had ridden at full speed, but they came spurring up just too late. Uncle and nephew met with joyful greetings and mutual congratulations, and Richard publicly made over his prize to Henry as a kind of first-fruits of the realm. It was Whitsun Eve; so all rested where they were on the festival day.[908] On the Monday the castle was given in charge to constables appointed by Henry,[909] and the rest of the party set out northward. Henry and his men went straight on May 25 to Ascalon; Richard and his company stopped at Furbia,[910] where it seems the king expected to receive the report of a scout whom he had sent to reconnoitre the approach to the southernmost of the cross-valleys leading from the plain to the mountains—the Wady el Hesy, “valley of the wells,” which opens from the Shephelah about twelve miles east of Furbia and meets the central trench about eight miles 1192 west of Hebron. The scout came and reported that Caysac, the emir whom Saladin had placed in charge of that district, was at the “Castle of Figtrees” with more than a thousand men, making the castle ready for defence against the Christians. Richard at once called out the host from Ascalon to follow him; they set out from Furbia on May 27 and advanced up the Wady el Hesy to a place which they called the Canebrake of Starlings; its Arabic name was May 28 Cassaba, meaning “the Reeds.”[911] On the morrow they set out at sunrise and proceeded to the Castle of Figtrees, but found in it only two Turks; the rest had fled in haste at tidings of their approach. The Christians therefore returned to Cassaba.[912] They were less fortunate in an expedition which they seem to have made next day, against another fortress in the same neighbourhood; one Moslem historian says the garrison came out and worsted them in fight; another, that they were surprised within the castle; and both assert that one of their chief captains or nobles was slain.[913]
While the host lay thus at the Canebrake of Starlings there came to the king another messenger from England, May 29-31 his vice-chancellor, John of Alençon, with such an alarming account of the state of affairs in both England and Normandy that after much anxious thought he told the other princes and barons that he really must and would go home. They hereupon held a council among themselves, and promptly answered this announcement by another: whatever he might do or say, wherever he might go, they all would proceed forthwith to Jerusalem. Someone who was present at their council carried a report of its outcome to the pilgrims of lower rank, “and they danced for joy till past midnight”; “there was no man high or low, young or old, who was not wild with delight, except the king himself; but he went to bed in a feverish state of perturbation and perplexity”;[914] for he knew that unless he went home he was like to lose his lands,[915] yet it was virtually impossible for him to withdraw from the Crusade in the face of this unanimous resolve. How the resolve should be carried into effect, was the next question. The Christians had now secured the entrances to three of the five natural openings from the plain into the hill-country. There was clearly nothing to be gained by proceeding further up the Wady el Hesy. From their present encampment they could easily reach one of the two openings which they had not yet approached, the Wady el Afranj. At the western end of this valley, on the border-line of the Shephelah and the plain—“at the foot of the hills, where the fields begin,” as William of Tyre[916] describes it—stood a fortress with a town or village clustering round it, called by the Arabs Beit Djibrin and 1192 by the Franks Ibelin of the Hospital; the latter title, derived from its owners the Knights of Saint John, being added to distinguish it from the other Ibelin, on the coast further north. Its site was probably that of the ancient Eleutheropolis, and it was a central point whence roads radiated in all directions, to Gaza, to Hebron, to Blanchegarde and Toron of the Knights (Natroun), to Bethlehem and Jerusalem. When—probably on June 1—the host left the Canebrake of Starlings, its destination was apparently understood to be Ibelin. The pilgrims seem to have proceeded along the border of the plain to a point—probably Galatia—whence a road ran eastward to Ibelin and westward to Ascalon.[917] June Here they halted and spent two or three days, “suffering a fierce persecution and strange martyrdom” from swarms of minute flies which stung them in every exposed part with such poisonous effect that “they all looked like lepers,” but buoyed up above all troubles by their confident hope of reaching Jerusalem at last. One alone sat gloomily in his tent apart, absorbed in ceaseless thought; and that one was the king.[918]
June 3
As Richard sat thus one day he saw a chaplain from his own land, William of Poitiers, walking up and down before the open door of the tent, and weeping bitterly. This man longed to remonstrate with his sovereign for proposing to desert the Holy Land in its present perilous condition; but he lacked a fitting opportunity, and was afraid to use one when it came. Richard called him in and said: “For what are you weeping? By the fealty that you owe me, tell me 1192 the truth at once.” “Sire,” answered the priest through his tears, “I will not tell you till you have promised not to be wroth with me.” Richard gave his word on oath that he would bear him no grudge. Then William spoke with the impassioned and abundant eloquence of the south. He bade the king call to mind how all his past career had been a series of exploits and successes so remarkable as to be manifestly due to the special grace and protection of Heaven; his early triumphs, when only count of Poitou, over hostile neighbours and Brabantine hordes far outnumbering his little forces; his peaceful and undisputed succession to the throne; his almost instantaneous victory over the Griffons at Messina; his rapid conquest of Cyprus; his providential encounter with the Saracen ship whose freight, had it reached Acre, might have saved that city for Islam; his timely arrival at Acre, and the prominent share which he had had in effecting its surrender; his recovery from the sickness of which so many other Crusaders had died; the deliverance of the prisoners at Darum, and the speedy capture of that fortress, whereof he had been the chosen instrument; and his own deliverance from the Turks who had nearly captured him in his sleep. “Remember how God has given thee such great honour that no king of thy age ever had so few mishaps—how often He has helped thee, and how He helps thee still. He has done such great things for thee that thou needest fear neither king nor baron. Remember all this, O king, and guard this land whereof He has made thee protector! for He placed it wholly in thy keeping when the other king turned back; and all men, great and small, to whom thy honour is dear, say that if thou, who wert wont to be a father and brother to the Christian cause, shouldst forsake it now, thou wilt have betrayed it to death.”[919]
To all this Richard listened without speaking a word, 1192 and when the priest’s discourse was ended he made no comment or reply. But he pondered over it; “and his thoughts were enlightened.” Next day (June 4) the host was led westward, and by the hour of nones found itself once more in the fields around Ascalon.[920] Everybody took this to mean that the king intended to set out for Europe at once. Instead, he told his nephew and the other nobles that “for no other concern or need, no messenger and no tidings, nor for any earthly quarrel, would he depart from them or quit the land before next Easter.” Then he called for his herald Philip, and bade him proclaim throughout Ascalon, in God’s Name, that the king had with his own lips promised to stay in the land till Easter, and that all men were to make themselves ready with whatsoever means God had given them, for they were going to Jerusalem to besiege it straightway.[921]