Neither King Richard, R. Diceto, nor R. Devizes, mentions a money payment. The Estoire, Itinerarium, Gesta Ricardi, R. Howden, Bohadin, and Ibn Alathyr make the promised sum two hundred thousand “bezants” (Est.), “talentorum Saracenicorum” (Itin.), “dinars” (Bohadin and Ibn Alathyr). R. Coggeshall absurdly says seven hundred thousand bezants. The only authorities for the special payment promised to Conrad are the two Moslem ones, and as to its amount the two recensions of Bohadin again differ; the earlier says four thousand gold pieces, the later fourteen thousand, viz. ten thousand to Conrad himself and four thousand to his knights. Ibn Alathyr also says Conrad was to have fourteen thousand; and the later recension of Bohadin is followed by Abu Shama in his extract from that author (Recueil, v. 25, 26), as to both the number of prisoners and the amount of money.
The Estoire and Itinerarium say that “the chief men among the Turks in Acre” were to be held as hostages by the Franks till the conditions of the treaty were fulfilled. Richard and Bohadin say, and the Gesta, R. Howden, and R. Coggeshall imply, that the hostages were to comprise the whole garrison. The Estoire and Itinerarium assert that the conditions were offered by the Turks in Acre with Saladin’s knowledge and consent; and the Itinerarium adds that the term appointed for their fulfilment was that day month, i. e. August 12. The king says “Pactione etiam ex parte Saladini plenius firmata ... diemque ad haec omnia persolvenda nobis constituit.” R. Diceto says “Qui” (i. e. the Saracens in Acre) “communicato cum suis consilio coeperunt tractare de pace talibus pactionibus quod Saladinus Sanctam Crucem certo die restitueret,” etc. The Gesta and R. Howden make the term forty days from the surrender, i. e. August 20. Bohadin (238) represents Saladin as ignorant of the whole matter till after the surrender, and Ibn Alathyr and R. Coggeshall do the same; the latter says that Saladin “nimium ex animo consternatus, facturum quod petebatur se esse spopondit,” while the two Arab writers represent the Sultan as at first refusing to confirm the treaty and afterwards accepting its conditions, but, according to Bohadin, with a modification as to the term for payment which brings the date for the first instalment practically to the time named in the Itinerarium, viz. a month after the surrender.
Note III
The Advance from the Two Casals to Ramlah
The Frank writers give no precise date for the advance of the host in 1191 from “between the two Casals” to the neighbourhood of Ramlah. Ambrose says they reached the former position on the eve of All Saints, and stayed there “full fifteen days or more” (Est., ll. 7199-209). The Itin., 289-90, agrees with him. This should mean that they set out again on November 15 or 16. Ambrose, according to the printed text of the Estoire, says the journey to the next encampment took two days: “L’ost erra par mi la plaine, Sor les biaus chevals peus d’orge; Vint en deus jors entre Seint Jorge e Rames; la s’allerent tendre Por plus gent e vitaille atendre” (ll. 7464-8). Thus they would arrive there—i. e. between Lydda and Ramlah—on November 17 or 18. The poet further says that the weather afterwards compelled them to take shelter within the two towns, “e fumes la bien sis semaines” (ll. 7471-7; Itin., 298-9, says the same). We presently find that they made their next advance—to Beit Nuba—on January 3. Thus we arrive at November 22 as the date of entering Lydda and Ramlah, and the encampment “in the plain” appears to have lasted five or six days (November 17 or 18-22). Our best Arab authority, Bohadin, unluckily does not mention the matter. Ibn Alathyr (Rec. Hist. Or., II. i. 54) says “the Franks set out from their camp at Jaffa for Ramlah on 3 Dulkaada” = November 22; the same date is given for their “advance in the direction of Ramlah” by Abu Shama (ib., v. 48), but without any clue to his authority for the statement. Ibn Alathyr gives this same date, 3 Dulkaada, as that on which “the Franks advanced from Ramlah to Natroun” (l.c.); this is doubtless a confusion, made either by author or scribe, between “Dulkaada” and “Dulheggia,” as Richard—though, indeed, not the host—did remove to Natroun on December 22 or 23 (= 3 or 4 Dulheggia). The Frankish and the Arab authorities may be partially reconciled by taking the “six weeks” of Ambrose and the Itinerarium as covering the whole period spent not only within the towns, but also “between” them. In that case, however, the stay between the two Casals must have been more than fifteen days; it could not have been less than twenty days, indeed twenty-two seems a more reasonable reckoning, for it is hard to see how two days can possibly have been spent in marching even from Casal of the Plains (the more remote of these two Casals) to either Lydda or Ramlah, a distance of less than eight miles. One writer does expressly mention “twenty-two days” in his account of this part of the Crusade; but he does so in connexion with the sojourn, not between the Casals, but between Lydda and Ramlah. Ambrose’s lines, 7464-8, quoted above, are in the Itinerarium (298) represented as follows: “Exercitus noster fixis tentoriis inter S. Georgium et Ramulam sedit viginti et duobus diebus, ut gentem expectaret venturam et annonam.”
To me this passage in the Itinerarium suggests a possibility of reconciling practically all the dates and notes of time given by all our authorities, Arab and Frankish, relating to this matter. It is not inconceivable that the original authority—whoever he may have been—for the “twenty-two days” had through a confusion of memory substituted the duration of the stay between the two Casals for that of the stay near and in Lydda and Ramlah, and vice versa. In that case the correct dates would stand thus: Between the two Casals, twenty-two days, November 1-22; in the plain between Lydda and Ramlah, “full fifteen days,” November 23-December 8; retirement into the two cities December 8, and further advance (to Beit Nuba) on January 3, “six weeks” from the date of encampment between them. Whether these coincidences are merely accidental, and the “twenty-two days” a sheer blunder due to the Latin “translator” having misread “vint en deux jors” as “vint e deus jors,” in Ambrose’s line 7466, or whether in that line as we now have it en is a scribe’s error for e, and ll. 7464-6 should be read as a single sentence, with a parenthesis stuck into the middle of it for the sake of rime—“E l’ost erra par mi la plaine (Sor les biaus chevals peus d’orge) Vint e deus jors entre Seint Jorge e Rames”—whether the “translator” rendered erra in l. 7464 by sedit because he thought thus to make better sense of his version of l. 7466, or whether the poet meant that the host roamed about the plain in which its camp was set, and perhaps even shifted the camp about, in vain efforts to avoid the enemies and the rain (see ll. 7469-75, especially l. 7473, “Iceles pluies nos chacerent”); these are questions involving too many other questions for a discussion of them to be attempted here.
Note IV
Casal des Plains and Casal des Bains
I have ventured, in defiance of the printed text of the Estoire, to follow the writer of the Itinerarium in giving to Richard’s lurking-place on the night of January 2-3, 1192, the name of Casal of the Baths. “Casellum Balneorum” occurs in the Itinerarium twice. In p. 298 we read that while the host lay between Lydda and Ramlah “pluviae a sedibus nostris nos exturbabant, intantum ut rex Jerosolimorum et gens nostra infra S. Georgium ad hospitandum se transferrent et in Ramulam, comes vero de S. Paulo ad Casellum Balneorum.” The last eight words are not represented at all in the Estoire. In pp. 306, 307, of the Itinerarium we are told: “Tertia post Circumcisionem Domini die, cum exercitus noster ad progrediendum” [from Lydda and Ramlah to Beit Nuba] “se sollicitus expediret, deformium multitudo Turcorum qui eadem nocte praeterita juxta Casellum de Planis in insidiis delituerant inter frutecta prosiliit diluculo in viam observandam per quam noster transiturus erat exercitus.... Rex quippe Ricardus, cui prius innotuerat de praedictis Turcorum insidiis, propterea quaque eadem nocte ad Casellum Balneorum consederat in insidiis, ut videlicet insidiantibus insidiaret, mane progrediens,” etc. In the Estoire the corresponding passage runs thus: “Tier jor d’an noef, la matinee, Esteit une ovre destinee; Sarazins, les laides genz brunes, Sor le Casal des Plains as dunes Le seir devant ja se bucherent, E tote nuit illoc guaiterent Desqu’al matin que il saillirent Al chemin de l’ost.... Le rei d’Engletere aveit, Qui cel embuchement saveit, Por ço al Casal des Plains geu,” etc. (ll. 7717-24, 7729-31).
It has been suggested that the “Casellum Balneorum” of Itin., 298, may represent Amwas (= “Fountains”), otherwise called Nicopolis (see Stubbs’s note to Itin., l.c.). This identification is possible; but it seems very unlikely that a small fraction of the host should, for no apparent reason, put itself so nearly into the lion’s mouth by going to camp eight or nine miles in advance of the rest, and less than two miles from the encampment of Saladin, which at that time was at Natroun. Moreover, in a later passage common to Estoire (l. 9846) and Itinerarium (369) we find “la fontaine d’Esmals,” “ad fontem Emaus,” in a context which plainly shows that these names stand for Amwas-Nicopolis; but in p. 307 of Itinerarium the context seems to preclude an identification of Casellum Balneorum with Emaus = Amwas, and to point to some place much further north or north-west; and later commentators have found such a place, bearing a name which translates the Latin one more exactly than Amwas, in Umm-el-Hummum, near Mirabel. On the other hand, the extant text of the Estoire, as we have seen, has nothing at all answering to “Castellum Balneorum”; it makes the Turkish ambush and the king spend the night of January 2-3 at, or close to, one and the same place, the Casal of the Plains. Whence, then, did the Latin writer get his “Casal of the Baths”? He can hardly have invented it for himself. If his work be really a translation of that of Ambrose, he must either have made it from a copy which had Bains, not Plains, in l. 7731, or he must have had some other source of information which made him deliberately substitute “Baths” for “Plains” in his rendering of that line. The substitution cannot be explained as a misreading on his part, since “Casal des Plains” in l. 7720 is correctly represented in his text by “Casellum de Planis.” That he knew, from a source other than the Estoire, something about the Casal of the Baths is clear from his earlier mention of that place, in p. 298. A different theory as to the relation between the two books suggests that that source may have been personal knowledge. However this may be, his second mention of “Casellum Balneorum” certainly makes the passage in which it occurs far more intelligible than the corresponding passage in the existing text of the Estoire. Ambrose’s story, as it stands there, is scarcely credible. The Turks and the king lie in wait for one another all night, the former “on the sandhills above the Casal of the Plains,” the latter at the Casal of the Plains itself, yet neither party catches the other till, evidently to the utter surprise of the Turks, they meet before the camp at Ramlah or Lydda, to which they must, if this version of the affair be correct, have ridden at almost the same time, parallel with and in close proximity to each other for about eight miles, and almost from one and the same starting-point! Surely, by the light—whencesoever derived—of the Latin version, we can see that either Ambrose himself or the scribe of the extant MS. of his work has erroneously written Plains instead of Bains in l. 7731; a mistake which might very easily be made, owing to the occurrence of “Plains” only eleven lines above, and the absence of any mention of Casal des Bains elsewhere in the poem.