Jerusalem, the City of Herod and Saladin

by Walter Besant; Edward Henry Palmer

But Hugh demanded that the caliph should ratify the treaty by giving his hand, after the manner of the Christians, a proposition which was received with the greatest horror; nor was it till the sultan had urged the point with vehemence that the caliph consented, presenting his right hand covered with a handkerchief. Again the sturdy Hugh expostulated. “Sir,” said he to the caliph, who had never been addressed in such a manner before; “loyalty knows no concealments. Let everything between princes be bare and open.... Give me your uncovered hand, or I shall be constrained to think that you have some secret design, and possess less sincerity than I wish to experience from you.” The caliph yielded, smiling, and with a good grace, while his courtiers were dumb with amazement, and repeated, in the same words as Hugh, the oath to adhere to the conditions in good faith, without fraud or evil intention.

“The caliph was in the flower of youth, tall, and of handsome appearance; he had an infinite number of wives, and was named El ‘Άdhid li dín illah. When he sent away the deputies, he gave them presents whose abundance and value served at the same time to honour him who gave them, and to rejoice those who received them from so illustrious a prince.”

The terms of alliance being thus agreed upon, Amaury proceeded with his campaign. But Shírkoh was too wary to give him an opportunity of fighting, and after playing with him a little, withdrew into the desert, and the Christians occupied the city of Cairo, where they were allowed to go everywhere, even into the palace of the caliph, a mark of the highest favour. Shírkoh returned, and trusting to his superiority of numbers, forced on a battle. He had with him—of course the numbers must be taken with some reserve—twelve thousand Turks and ten thousand Arabs, the latter armed with nothing but the lance. The Christians had three hundred and sixty knights, a large body of Turcopoles, and the Egyptian army, the numbers of which are not given.

The battle was fought at a place called Babain, “the two gates,” about two leagues from Cairo, on the borders of the desert, where sand-hills encroach steadily on the cultivated soil, and form valleys between themselves, in which the Christians had to manœuvre. No ground could have been worse for them. The battle went against them. At the close of the day Hugh of Cæsarea had been taken prisoner, the Bishop of Bethlehem, Eustace Collet, Jocelyn of Samosata, and many other knights, were killed, the Christians, fighting still, were scattered about the field, and the king found himself on one of the sand-hills, master of the position for which he had fought, but with a very few of his men round him. He raised his banner to rally the Christians, and then began to consider how best to get away from the field, for the only way was through a narrow pass, threatened on either side by a hill on which the Turks were crowded in force. They formed in close array, placing on the outside those who were the best armed. But the Turks made no attack upon them, probably from ignorance of the result of the day, or from fatigue, and the Christians marched all through the night. It was four days before they all came back to the camp, and it was then found they had lost a hundred knights on the field.

Shírkoh, whose losses had been very much greater, rallying his men, marched northwards on Alexandria, which surrendered without striking a blow. By Amaury’s advice, an Egyptian fleet was sent down the river to intercept all supplies, and as Alexandria was without any stores of corn and provisions, it was not long before Shírkoh, starved out, left the city in the charge of his nephew, afterwards the great and illustrious Saladin, with a thousand horse, while he himself took up his old position near Cairo. Thereupon Amaury moved north to invest Alexandria. The Egyptian fleet held the river and commanded the port; the allied armies blocked up all the avenues of approach; the orchards and gardens round the walls, which had been the delight and pride of the Alexandrians, were ruthlessly destroyed: fresh recruits poured in from all parts of Palestine, and the besieged began to suffer from all kinds of privation. Saladin sent messengers to his uncle, urging him to bring assistance. Shírkoh, too weak to send any, thought it best to make favourable terms while he could. Sending for his prisoner Hugh of Cæsarea, he made proposals of peace. “Fortune,” he said, “has not been favourable to me since I came into this country. Would to God I could see my way out of it! You are noble, a friend of the king, and weighty in counsel; be a mediator of peace between us. Say to the king, ‘We are losing our time here; it passes without bringing any profit to us, while there is plenty for us to do at home.’ And why should the king lavish his strength upon these cowardly Egyptians, to whom he is trying to secure the riches of the country? Let him have back all the prisoners whom I hold in irons; let him raise the siege, and give me back my men who are in his hands, and I will go out of the country.”

Hugh took the message, and gave the advice that the Saracen wished. A council was held, and the terms were agreed to. The gates were thrown open, provisions taken in, and besiegers and besieged mingled on those friendly terms which were now common in the East. Saladin went to the camp of Amaury, who received him as a friend, and the Vizier Shawer entered into the city, and began the administration of justice; that is to say, he hanged all those who were unlucky enough to be in power when Shírkoh entered the city, and who had surrendered a place they had no means whatever of holding. Examples such as these, common enough in the Middle Ages, might have been expected to bring civic distinctions into disrepute. Ambition, however, was probably stronger than terror.

All being finished, the king returned to Ascalon, not entirely covered with glory, but not without credit.

On his arrival he learned that a bride was waiting for him at Tyre, Maria, niece of the Greek Emperor, who had been wooed and won for him—the young lady’s wishes were not probably much consulted in the matter—by the Archbishop of Cæsarea. He hastened to Tyre, and on the 29th of the month, nine days after his arrival at Ascalon, he was married in great state and ceremony. And now there was peace in Palestine for a brief space. The young Count of Nevers arrived in Jerusalem, with a numerous following, intending to offer his arms to the king, and dedicate his life to fighting the Mohammedans. But a sudden illness struck him down, and after languishing a long time, he died. A secret embassy was also sent to Amaury from Constantinople. The emperor had learned the feeble and enervated state of Egypt, and ignorant that Nûr-ed-dín, a greater than he, had his eyes upon the same country, sent to expose his own ambition to Amaury, and to propose terms of common action. The idea was not new to the long-sighted king, the most clear-headed of all the kings of Jerusalem. He had had plenty of opportunities, during his Egyptian campaign, of contrasting the riches of Cairo with the poverty of Jerusalem, the fertility of Egypt with the sterility of Palestine. Little as he cared about the Church, of which he was the sworn defender, it could not but occur to him to contrast Jerusalem with Mecca, and to consider that while Mecca was the Holy City, Baghdad and Cairo were the capitals of the sovereign caliphs. Why should not Cairo be to Jerusalem what Baghdad was to Mecca? Why should not he, the caliph of Christianity, sit in that gorgeous palace behind the gold-embroidered curtains, dressed in robes of purple and satin, with his guards, his life of indolence and ease, and—his seraglio? For the customs of the East had struck the imaginations of these descendants of the Crusaders. They, too, longed for the shady gardens, the fountains, the sweet scent of roses—and the houris of the world with whom the happy Turks anticipated the joys of heaven. Many of them, in their castles far away in the country, imitated, so far as they were able, the customs of their enemies; notably young Jocelyn of Edessa. Some of them became renegades, and going over to the Saracens, got riches, and therefore luxury, at the point of the sword. All of them—except perhaps the Templars and Hospitallers, who might do so in secret—openly maintained friendly relations with the Mohammedans, and partook freely of their hospitality.

And now Amaury was guilty of an act of perfidy which brought about, or rather accelerated, the final fall of the Christian kingdom. Tormented by his own ambitious designs, and the thought of that rich Empire of Egypt, which seemed to wait for the first hand strong enough to seize it—without waiting for the Greek Emperor, perhaps, however, acting in secret concert with him—he declared that Shawer had been sending secret messages to Nûr-ed-dín, and had thereby infringed the treaty of alliance. For this reason, as he alleged, he proclaimed war against Egypt, and led his army against Pelusium. One voice only was raised against the enterprise. Cruel, ambitious, avaricious, and haughty as the Templars were, they were never capable of deliberately breaking their word. The Grand Master of the Order, Bertrand de Blanquefort, spoke loudly against the expedition. He, for one, would not allow his knights to join an army which set out to carry war into a kingdom friendly to their own, bound by acts of solemn treaty, which had committed no offence, which had continued loyal and true to its engagements. The Templars remained behind at Jerusalem. The Hospitallers went with Amaury and his host, one of the finest armies that the kingdom had ever produced. They began by taking Pelusium, after a ten days’ march through the desert along a road which they knew well by this time. The resistance made by Pelusium was very short, lasting only three days, when the Christians took the place, and slaughtered, at first, every man, woman, and child who fell into their hands.

The Vizier, Shawer, was thrown, at first, into the wildest terror. In the disorganised state of his army there was absolutely nothing to prevent the Christians from marching directly upon Cairo, and gaining possession by a single assault of the whole realm of Egypt. All seemed lost, and Shawer was already preparing for flight, when it occurred to him to tempt the king, whose cupidity was notorious, by the offer of money.