The disappointment was perhaps all the more keenly felt because it followed closely not only upon the victory over the Egyptians, but also upon two incidents which had heightened the religious fervour and thus encouraged the hopes of the Christian soldiers. Several relics of the Holy Cross besides the famous one which had been lost at Hattin were preserved in various places in Palestine, and had been hidden at the time of the Saracen conquest to save them from falling into Infidel hands. A Syrian bishop who had held the see of Lydda is said to have come with a great company of men and women of his flock and presented one of these fragments to Richard shortly after the host reached Beit Nuba.[958] A little later—seemingly just before Richard heard of the coming of the Egyptian caravan—the abbot of Saint Elias, a monastery situated on the road from Jerusalem to Bethlehem,[959] came and told the king that he had a piece of the Cross hidden in a place known only to himself, which Saladin, who knew the relic had been secreted, had vainly tried to bribe him into revealing. Richard rode with him to the place and brought the sacred treasure back, to the great joy of the host.[960] 1192 If we may trust an English writer who, though he did not take part in the Crusade, had a special opportunity of obtaining information about Richard’s personal share in it, a third fragment of the Holy Rood came into the king’s hands under yet stranger circumstances, one of which may possibly have had some influence on his conduct two July 3 months later. On the last night of the army’s sojourn at Beit Nuba a monk brought him a message from a certain hermit who dwelt on the “Mount of Saint Samuel”—that is, Nebi Samwîl, the Arabic name for what the Crusaders usually called the Montjoie—bidding him, in God’s Name, come to him without delay. Richard arose, called up an escort of horsemen, and rode to the place. The hermit was believed to have the spirit of prophecy; he wore no clothes, and was covered only by his long unshorn hair and beard. Richard, after gazing for a while in wonder at this strange-looking personage, asked him what was his will. The hermit led his guest into an oratory, removed a stone from the wall, and brought out a wooden cross “of a cubit’s length” which he reverently handed to the king, telling him it was made from the sacred Tree of Calvary. He added a prediction that the king would not at this time succeed in winning the land, however hard he might strive for it; and to demonstrate the reality of his own prophetic gift, he further foretold his own death on that day week. Richard took him back to the camp to prove whether his words would come true. Seven days afterwards the prophet died.[961] Sixty years later, there was a tradition in Palestine that on one occasion when the men of the Third Crusade, on the point of marching upon the Holy City, were by the jealousies among their leaders compelled to turn back, a knight in Richard’s service “cried out to him, ‘Sire, sire, come here and I will shew you Jerusalem.’ 1192 And when he heard that, he cast his surcoat before his eyes all weeping, and said to our Lord: ‘Fair Lord God, I pray Thee that Thou suffer me not to behold Thy Holy City, since I cannot deliver it from the hands of Thine enemies.’”[962] This incident, in itself quite possible, is in Joinville’s report of the story placed in a setting of which the details are certainly not historically accurate. If it really occurred, its true place is most probably at the close of Richard’s nocturnal visit to the Mount of S. Samuel, as the sunrise on July 4 lighted up the lower slopes of the mountain-range of which that eminence was the crown, and revealed the city on its coign of vantage at the south-eastern angle of July 4 the plateau. A few hours later the whole host was back at Ramlah.[963]
The umpires at Beit Nuba had reasoned soundly from the premisses before them; and those premisses were sound likewise, except in one particular: the Franks did not—as we do from Bohadin—know what was passing behind the scenes in the Saracen headquarters. They therefore probably over-estimated the enemy’s powers of resistance. On the other hand, there was a similar miscalculation on the Moslem side; Saladin’s anxiety and alarm would scarcely have been so great had he realized how completely the unity of the Christian host was broken. Even when fully assured that the Franks had really withdrawn from the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, he was still extremely uneasy, fearing they might now take up again the project of an attempt on Cairo, and feeling by no means sanguine that they might not, with the coast of Palestine in their possession and with the supply of beasts of burden which they had recently acquired, bring it to a successful issue.[964] A new game of diplomacy now began. The first move in it was made, on the morrow, if not on the very day, of the retirement from Beit Nuba, in the name of the king-elect of Jerusalem, Henry of Champagne; but the Saracens at once recognized that the king-elect could be nothing more than a cipher so long as he was uncrowned and his 1192 uncle was in the land, and that the game was not worth playing with anyone except the king-guardian. From him overtures for peace arrived on July 6, and negotiations continued till the 19th. It is difficult to decide how far either the king or the Sultan was in earnest. Richard made so many different proposals that they cannot all have been seriously meant. He and Saladin alike seem to have been really disposed to content themselves with a division of the land; each of them hoping that the division would be merely temporary, and would serve as a breathing-space enabling his own party to recover strength for a new effort. On one point, however, both were equally determined not to give way. Saladin, while agreeing that the Franks should keep the sea-coast, made it an essential condition that Ascalon should be again dismantled. This Richard persistently refused; so on July 19 the negotiations dropped, and Saladin began to prepare again for war.[965]
His rival was doing the like. By Richard’s orders three hundred Knights of the Temple and Hospital had already gone from Casal Maen (whither he and the host had retired on July 6)[966] to Darum, dismantled that fortress, and transferred its garrison to Ascalon to reinforce the defences of “Syria’s Summit.” As soon as the three hundred returned, the whole host proceeded to Joppa; here the sick folk were left, and also some of the able-bodied for the greater security of the place; the rest set out on July 21 or 22 for Acre, which they reached on Sunday the 26th.[967] The weary pilgrims of lower rank grew more dispirited at every stage in this northward journey; Richard having given orders for the whole fleet to accompany it, whence they inferred that he intended sailing for Europe immediately. He had, however, another purpose. The Frank re-conquest of the coast of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem was still incomplete; the northernmost sea-port of the realm, Beyrout, 1192 was still in Moslem hands. An attempt on Beyrout had been one of the alternative schemes suggested by Richard before the final retirement from Beit Nuba. The place, though of less military importance than Tyre or Acre or Ascalon, was well worth the winning; it had a good harbour, and its loss would deprive the Moslems of their only remaining outlet on the sea between Laodicea and the mouth of the Nile. As soon as Acre was reached, Sunday, July 26 Richard despatched seven galleys to make a demonstration before Beyrout. On the morrow (Monday, July 27) he took leave of the Knights of the Temple and Hospital—with whom he had always acted in concert, and who probably undertook the control of the host during his absence—and prepared to follow next day with the rest of the fleet.[968] 1192 But his plans were upset by an unexpected counterstroke on the part of Saladin.
The Sultan had been rejoined at Jerusalem on July 17 by his son Ed-Daher, who ruled at Aleppo; and Safadin, recalled from Mesopotamia, was close at hand with further reinforcements when on the 22nd Saladin learned that the Christian host had left Joppa and was on its way to Beyrout. He at once went to Beit Nuba to reconnoitre, leaving orders for all his troops to follow him thither. Safadin joined July 23 him there next day. By the 25th their united forces were on the old camping-ground of the Franks between Lydda July 25 and Ramlah. On the 26th—the day of Richard’s arrival at Acre—Saladin reconnoitred Joppa; before nightfall his men were around its walls, and on Monday 27th they assaulted the town.[969] After four days of furious fighting Saladin’s engines made, on Friday the 31st, a breach through which his men swarmed into the town; it was given over to pillage and slaughter, and the garrison in the citadel promised to surrender, on terms arranged between them and the Sultan, if they were not relieved before three o’clock on the morrow.[970] They were in hourly expectation of Richard’s return; for they had, as soon as the Moslem army came in sight, despatched by sea an urgent message to recall him from Acre.[971] The message was delivered to Richard as he sat in his tent on the evening of Tuesday July 28.[972] He at once summoned the host to go back with him to Joppa; but the French “declared they would not stir a foot with him.”[973] A number of Templars, Hospitaliers, and other “good knights,” however, set off by land to the rescue, while Richard with another party, comprising the rest of his own men and some Genoese and Pisans, went 1192 on board the galleys. The land party on reaching Caesarea learned that the road between that place and Arsuf was blocked by “the son of the Assassin”; not daring to risk an encounter with forces of whose numbers they knew nothing and of whose military repute all Syria stood in awe, they made no attempt to proceed further. The ships were caught by a contrary wind off Haïfa, detained by it for three days, and so dispersed by its violence that only three of them at last came in sight of Joppa, late in the July 31 evening of Friday the 31st, and had to wait at a safe distance for the rest to overtake them, and also for the light of day.[974] One of the three carried Richard, chafing sorely at all these hindrances: “God, have mercy! Why dost Thou keep me here, when I am going in Thy service?”[975] In the afternoon of that same Friday Saladin had received from Acre a letter telling him that Richard had given up his intended expedition against Beyrout and was hastening to the relief of Joppa. The Sultan and his confidant Bohadin at once decided that the agreement with the garrison must be flung to the winds, and an effort made to get the garrison out of the citadel before Richard should arrive. Saladin spent some time in haranguing his troops and exhorting them to storm it that evening; but they were worn out with the day’s fight, and so sullenly unresponsive to his appeal that he dared not give it the form of a command; and at last he and his staff withdrew for Aug. 1 the night to their usual quarters in the rear. At daybreak they heard a trumpet-call, and learned that the king’s ships were in sight. Saladin despatched Bohadin with orders to “get into the citadel and get the Franks out of it.” With a body of troops Bohadin entered the town, went to the castle gate, and bade the garrison come out. They answered that they would do so, and began to make their preparations. The morning wore on to noon, and 1192 still the relief party showed no sign of trying to disembark: Richard in fact, while the garrison were waiting for him to land, was waiting to ascertain what had become of them, for the shore was lined and the town, to all appearance, filled with Mussulman troops, so that the whole place, as seen from the sea, looked as if it were in the enemy’s hands. On the other hand, it seems that only a small part of the fleet was as yet visible from the castle-tower. The garrison therefore, growing hopeless of rescue, yielded to Bohadin’s urgency and began to march out. Forty-nine men, besides some women and some horses, thus came forth.[976] As each man passed through the gate he paid down the ransom appointed in the capitulation, although the hour fixed for its fulfilment had not yet come; and a Frankish version of the story adds that in some cases at least, as soon as the money was paid, the payer’s head was struck off by the Turkish guards.[977] Suddenly the procession stopped. The ships were spreading out in line and becoming more distinguishable under the noon-tide sun; the Moslems could see that there were at least thirty-five; the anxious watchers on the castle-tower could probably see that there were more than fifty. The remaining men in the citadel hastily put on their armour, made a sally, and drove Bohadin and his followers out of the town. They themselves, however, were quickly driven back, and the fighting became fiercer and more confused than ever. Once more the garrison, in despair, sent the Patriarch of Jerusalem (who chanced to be in Joppa when the siege began) and a chaplain to renew their offer of submission to Saladin on the terms originally proposed.[978] Then another priest, “after commending himself to the Messiah” as Bohadin says, leaped from the top of the tower into the harbour. Falling in shallow water, with soft sand beneath it, he was unharmed, and made his way to the nearest galley, whence he was transported to that of the king.[979] “Gentle king,” said he, “the people who 1192 await you here are lost, unless God and you have compassion on them.” “How!” cried Richard, “are any of them still living? Where are they?” “Before the tower, awaiting their death.” Richard hesitated no longer. “God sent us here to suffer death, if need be; shame to him who lags behind now!”[980] The royal galley, “painted all red, with a red canopy on the deck, and a red flag,” shot forward;[981] the king, without greaves or mail-shoes, sprang out, up to his waist in the water, came first ashore, and dashed into the midst of the Turks, cutting them down right and left. His shipmates followed close behind him; the other vessels quickly came up, and each disembarked its freight of men; and in little more than an hour the shore of the harbour was cleared of Turks.[982] Bohadin, under whose eyes all this had taken place, went round to Saladin’s tent in the rear and whispered his tidings into the ear of the Sultan, who was writing (or dictating) a letter for the Patriarch and the chaplain to take back to their friends in the citadel. The envoys were present; Saladin detained them till some flying Moslems passed the door of the tent. Then he placed the envoys under arrest, and ordered his whole army to retreat to Yazour.[983]
Meanwhile Richard, as soon as the harbour was cleared, had set his men to barricade it on the land side with planks, barrels, pieces of old ships and boats, and other wood hastily piled up to form a rampart behind which they could safely defy the Saracens.[984] He himself made his way “by Aug. 1 a stair that led to the house of the Templars” into the town, where he found a crowd of Saracens so busy pillaging that they made no attempt to interfere when he caused his banners to be reared on the walls as a signal to the Christians in the tower. These latter at once sallied forth to meet him, and the Turks, thus caught at unawares between two fires, were slaughtered wholesale. Then the victors turned towards the retreating army of Saladin. The crossbowmen tried to overtake it with a volley of arrows; the king galloped 1192 after it on a horse which he had found in Joppa; but as this and two other horses, also found in the town, were the only ones he possessed, he soon gave up the pursuit, and pitched his tents on the site lately occupied by Saladin,[985] in the open ground where the Frank host had camped in the previous October, between Joppa and S. Habakkuk’s.[986] No sooner was Richard in his tent than several of Saladin’s emirs and favourite Mameluks went to visit him; seemingly not as accredited envoys from the Sultan, but to ascertain informally what was now the king’s attitude towards the question of peace. He received them willingly, and sent a special invitation to the chamberlain Abu Bekr, who had previously acted as a medium of communication between him and Safadin, to join the assembly. Abu Bekr found him talking over the recent fight in a tone half serious, half bantering. “That Sultan of yours is truly admirable! But why did he run away at my very landing? I did not come prepared to fight; I am still in my boating-sandals! Why, in God’s Name, did he retreat, when I thought he could not take Joppa in two months, and he took it in a couple of days!” Then he turned to Abu Bekr and spoke seriously: “Greet the Sultan from me, and beg him to let us have peace. My country needs me, and the state of things in this land is bad alike for you and for us.” Saladin was still close at hand, and twice in that night proposals and counter-proposals of terms passed between the two sovereigns. Ascalon was still the stumbling-block; neither of them would renounce his claim to it. To a daring suggestion of Richard’s, that Saladin should enfeoff him after the manner of the Franks with the counties of Ascalon and Joppa, to hold by military service including, if required, the personal service of the king himself—“of which,” he added, “you know the value”[987]—Saladin returned an answer in which Ascalon was not named at all. The Sultan Aug. 2 then followed his army to Yazour, and thence, early next 1192 morning, went to Ramlah.[988] Thither a messenger from Richard followed him, and pressed for a definite cession of Ascalon. Saladin’s reply was given instantly and finally: “It is impossible.”[989]
Aug. 2-4
That Sunday and the two following days were spent by Richard and his men in repairing the walls of Joppa as well as they could by piling up the stones without mortar or cement.[990] On one of these three days they were joined by Count Henry, who came from Caesarea in a galley; the rest of the troops being still detained there by “the ambushes of the Turks” on land and the lack of ships to convey them by sea.[991] It was seemingly to ascertain what chance there was of intercepting these troops, of whose departure from Acre he had only just been made aware, that Saladin on the Aug. 4 Monday (August 4) moved northward as far as the banks of the Aoudjeh (the River of Arsuf). There, however, he further learned that they were safe in Caesarea, and also that a not less important and probably easier prey lay within his reach—King Richard and his little band, in their unprotected tents in the fields outside Joppa. At nightfall he turned back, hoping to surround Richard’s camp in the darkness and surprise it at break of day.[992] The first body of Moslem troops which approached the camp, however, was discovered by a watchful Crusader who at once aroused the king. Richard slipped his mail-coat over his night-gear, sprang bare-legged on horseback, and with the few knights in his company—most of them dressed and armed in a like hasty fashion—began to array his men.[993] The Saracens, finding they could not take him by surprise, sent a party to force an entrance through the still uncompleted walls into the town, in order to deprive him of a refuge there.[994] 1192 The scared townsfolk sent word to the king that they were all lost, for “a countless host of heathen” were taking possession of the city. Richard sternly silenced the messenger, swore to cut off his head if he let anyone else hear the message, and went on with his preparations for defence. Behind a low barricade hastily made up of pieces of wood from the tents the tiny army was arrayed with the utmost skill[995] so as to leave in its ranks no opening for attack. Then the king addressed his men, bidding them have no fear of the foe; he himself, he added, would go and see what was taking place in the town.[996] His knights numbered some Aug. 5 three or four score,[997] but the horses only six.[998] On these five of the knights and a “hardy and valiant” German man-at-arms named Henry, bearing the king’s banner,[999] mounted, and with a few crossbowmen[1000] followed the king as with lance and sword he forced his way into Joppa. He probably found its Turkish invaders engaged, as he had found them before, in pillaging, and less numerous than the messenger had represented, for he very soon drove them all out. After ordering a detachment of the garrison to come down from the tower and guard the town against 1192 further attack,[1001] he rode down to the shore, brought back thence some townsfolk who had fled to the ships for refuge, and all the sailors except just enough to take care of the ships, and with these reinforcements, in addition to his gallant six, rejoined his little army in the field.[1002]
Saladin meanwhile had arrayed his host in seven divisions.[1003] While the first of these was advancing to the attack, the king issued his final orders. “Only keep your ranks unbroken—let not the foes make their way in. If we stand thus firm against their first onset, we may make light of the next, and by God’s help we shall defeat them. But if I see one of you, through fear, giving way or yielding ground or trying to flee, I swear by Almighty God I will straightway cut off his head!”[1004] So when the first division of the Turks charged them the Christian ranks stood immoveable and impenetrable. The attacking force fell back, baffled and amazed, stood for a while within two spears’ length of them without any interchange of hostilities except verbal ones, and then retired, grumbling, to its original position.[1005] Richard burst out laughing: “Did not I tell you how it would be? Now they have done their utmost; we have only to stand firm against every fresh attempt, till by God’s help victory shall be ours.”[1006] As he ceased speaking, another body of Turks came forth; they, too, fell back from the living wall, now firmer than ever, and retired to their former station. This process was repeated five or six times, while the day wore on “from prime almost to nones.”[1007] The Arab historians relate that in one of the intervals between these futile charges Richard rode alone, lance in hand, along the whole front of the Moslem army, challenging it to fight, and not a man came forth to meet him;[1008] according to one account, he ended by stopping his horse midway between the two hosts, asking the Moslems for some food, and calmly dismounting to eat what they 1192 gave him.[1009] It was not only the dread of him that held the enemies in check; Saladin’s troops were thoroughly discontented with their ruler’s conduct of this expedition to Joppa and with its failure to bring them either the success or the booty which they had expected. In vain the Sultan rode up and down among them, promising them splendid rewards for one more charge; his son Ed-Daher sprang forward alone, only to be hastily called back by his father, for not another man broke the stillness of the silent, motionless ranks.[1010] At last, it seems, they yielded a sullen obedience to Saladin’s impassioned exhortations, and made another attempt to advance. But this time a volley of arrows, with which the crossbowmen had hitherto speeded their retirement, greeted them on their approach, and under cover of this the king and his men charged. “Brandishing his lance, and laying about him as if he had done nothing yet that day,”[1011] Richard with his few mounted followers burst right through the Turkish host and came out facing the rearguard. Looking round, he saw that the earl of Leicester was unhorsed and in danger of capture; he at once rescued him and helped him to remount. A crowd of Turks rushed at a banner which from its device—a lion—they probably took for the king’s, but which seems to have been really that of Ralf of Mauléon. Ralf was surrounded, and was actually being led away by his captors when he, too, was rescued by his sovereign.[1012] At another moment a large body of Turks closed in upon Richard, all alone; but he laid about him with his sword, smiting off heads and limbs on every side, till he had slain or disabled so many of his assailants that the rest took to flight “as from the face of a furious lion.” His first sudden irruption had thrown into confusion the whole array of Saladin’s host; and when the guard which he had left in Joppa, seeing how matters were going, came out to help their comrades, the Moslem defeat became a rout.[1013] At the close of the long day’s fighting the victor returned “with arrows sticking out all over him like the bristles of a hedgehog, and with 1192 his horse in the same plight.”[1014] Saladin retired to Yazour, and on the following day to Natroun.[1015]
The victory at Joppa was Richard’s crowning exploit in Holy Land; and he himself very soon realized that it was to be his last. Both in him and his men the tremendous physical and mental strain of those five August days was followed by a sudden breakdown which was aggravated by the unhealthiness of their surroundings. The Turks when they evacuated Joppa had not only left in its streets the bodies of those who had been slain in the siege, but also slaughtered all the pigs in the town and interspersed the carcases with the human corpses, as an insult to the Christians.[1016] No sanitary measures had been possible during the stress of the succeeding days; the consequence of this state of things had therefore spread beyond the walls on every side, and the king and his men, too much exhausted to move far enough to escape from it, lay helpless and sick almost unto death.[1017] Nevertheless, Richard’s next message to the Sultan was practically a defiance. The envoy whom he had despatched on August 2 to Saladin at Ramlah had proceeded thence on a further mission to Safadin, who was then lying sick at Gibeon, near Neby Samwîl.[1018] This envoy returned to Joppa on the 7th or 8th[1019] with a message from Safadin proposing a colloquy. He was accompanied by the chamberlain Abu Bekr. Richard gave an audience to Abu Bekr outside the town and said to him: “How far am I to put myself in the Sultan’s hand before he will deign to receive me? Truly, I was very desirous of returning home; but now I have decided to stay through the winter, and want no further conferences with you.”[1020] For nearly three weeks after this, Saladin made no move of any kind; he was Aug. 20 waiting for reinforcements. On the 20th the long-desired contingent from Egypt at last arrived; and two days later 1192 the forces of the lands beyond the Euphrates were brought up by the Sultan’s once rebel great-nephew, El Mansour. Messengers still passed between the two camps; Richard, exhausted by fever, asked Saladin for fruit and snow, which the Sultan readily sent him; the friendly intercourse enabling each party to learn how matters went with the other.[1021] Meanwhile Richard’s sickness was increasing, and so were his anxieties. In vain he sent Count Henry back to Caesarea to insist that the laggards there should come and help to hold the land; they would not stir. Then he called Henry, the Templars, and the Hospitaliers around his bed, and begged that some of them would take charge of Ascalon and others of Joppa, and thus set him free to seek pure air and medical treatment at Acre, as the only chance of restoring his health. “But they all declared they would not undertake the custody of the fortresses without him; and they went out [of his tent] without another word.”[1022] A Aug.
9-26 proclamation published throughout the coast-towns, calling upon all fit men to come and serve under the king at his expense, brought a crowd of foot-soldiers, but so few horsemen that he was compelled to reject them all, both horse and foot, as useless for his purpose.[1023] As the conviction grew upon him that he must either quit the country or die in it, he felt also that in either case, if he left it in its present unsettled condition, the whole labour of the Crusade would be lost, and thus that a truce on almost any terms had become a necessity for the realm’s sake as well as for his own.[1024] He therefore asked that Abu Bekr might be sent to him once more. Through this man the king intimated his willingness, if Saladin still absolutely insisted on the restitution of Ascalon to the Moslems, to accept a money indemnity for the expense which he had incurred in fortifying the place, and to abide by the other conditions which he had formerly agreed upon with Safadin.[1025]
On the morrow—Friday, August 28—Bedr-ed-din Dolderim, the emir in command of the Moslem advanced guard, 1192 sent to ask the Sultan whether he might accede to a request which had been made to him by five Frank officers, one of them an intimate counsellor of Richard’s—probably the bishop of Salisbury, Hubert Walter[1026]—for a parley. With Saladin’s consent the parley took place; and the same night Bedr-ed-din in person reported to his sovereign that, according to these men, Richard now consented to give up Ascalon Aug. 28 unconditionally. Saladin refused to proceed further without some security that on this point the king would not go back from his word. Next day Bedr-ed-din announced that he had received, by a sure hand, Richard’s pledge on the subject. Saladin then called his council together and with them drew up the details of the partition of the land. The king was to have Joppa and its dependent territory, except Ramlah, Lydda, Ibelin, Yebna, and Mirabel; also Acre, Haïfa, Arsuf, and Caesarea, with all their dependencies except Nazareth and Safforia. These terms were drawn up in writing and carried back to Richard by an envoy who came from him on the afternoon of Saturday, August 29, and returned to Joppa with a Moslem colleague next day. Richard, when the terms were read to him, denied that he had ever withdrawn his claim to compensation; but as “the persons who had gone to Dolderim” all declared that the thing was so, he answered: “If I did say it, I will not go back from my word. Tell the Sultan I agree to these conditions; only I appeal to his generosity, and acknowledge that if he grants me anything further, it will be of his own bounty.” He then sent the envoys on to Safadin, to beg that he would obtain from Saladin the cession of Ramlah.[1027]