|
We shall come out against you, and we shall fight like people fighting for their lives.
For one of us who perishes, many of yours will fall.
We shall die free, or we shall triumph with glory.3
Saladin was convinced, or at least was eager to take a path that saved both bloodshed and honour. His conditions were severe but remarkably favourable to the Christians.
The Sultan demanded ten gold dinars for each man, the same per two women, and the same amount for every ten children. Some could pay, many were unable to do so. At last, Saladin accepted a down payment of 30,000 dinars from Balian for the seven to eighteen thousand poor people of Jerusalem.
The entry to the Holy City took place on October 2, 1187, the anniversary of the very day on which Mohammed was thought to have been transported from Mecca to Jerusalem and thence to Paradise.
Alas, the occasion of religious fervour turned into a veritable meat market, as the haggling began over the payment of ransoms for the better off. The leaders became embarassed at the sight of the thousands of families patiently queuing to pay their ransoms, and so some of the sheiks and Balian began to pay for hundreds at a time, from their own purses. Even the venial Patriarch grudgingly agreed to buy off 700. This proved merely a distraction to his main aim: he fled the city soon afterwards with cart loads of jewellery and other treasure. According to Ibn al Athir, he took with him the treasures of the Dome of the Rock, the Mosque al Aqsa, the Church of the Resurrection, plus an equal quantity of money.
Saladin was asked by his sheikhs to intervene and relieve the despicable prelate of his burden, but the Sultan declined, confining his tax to the agreed ten dinar.4 Alas, the insults of Islam were too often wasted on the sensibilities of the Christians.
Saladin then freed the remainder of the poor, and restored the captive knights of Hattin to their wives. To the widows he paid a lump sum for the loss of their husbands in battle.5
For hundreds, if not thousands of women and children who made it to the coastal towns, however, slavery ensued as ransoms were not paid or they were taken prisoner in the melee of people fleeing the ports. Whole families were bought for a few coins or some barter, and then parted from each other. Amongst other stories, Ibn al Athir tells of a Christian slave girl in Aleppo about a year later who was going with her master to a neighbouring house. All at once she embraced a woman who had appeared at the door of that house. Crying, they sat down together and began to talk. They were two sisters taken in slavery at Jaffa at the same time, and sent to the same town without knowing it.6
The warrior woman, Margaret of Beverley, had paid her own ransom but was recaptured on her escape journey and made a slave. Her jobs included gathering stones and wood, and she was beaten with switches if she was disobedient. She bore all with patience, but she bathed her chains in her tears.
Freedom came when she was ransomed by a rich man from Tyre who was giving thanks for the birth of an heir.
All but naked, she travelled through the isolated hinterland to avoid recapture, living for five days off a bread roll and on roots for another five days.
Her one comfort in the midst of her fear of capture and wild beasts was her psalter, miraculously restored by a Turk who stole it from her, but who then immediately repented of his actions.
Her troubles were far from over. She reached Antioch, only to be rearrested by the Moslems on suspicion of stealing a knife. Again, a Moslem took mercy on her most unexpectedly. Condemned to death, she was praying to Mary in her cell when her gaoler overheard her, and for some reason set her free.
At last, she returned to France via Italy and Spain and found her brother, a monk, to whom she told her remarkable story.7
Not everyone, however, was willing to flee from Jerusalem.
It is a chilling reminder of how brief the Crusading kingdom was from birth to humbling death that an old man was found within the city who had accompanied Godfrey of Bouillon. He was granted permission to end his days within the walls of that city for which he and his fellows had shed so much blood for such little purpose.8
But if the forces of Islam thought that the reconquest was to be easily completed, they were mistaken.
Saladin's behaviour was capricious in a military sense. He would take a strong point, such as Acre, and defend it, but he left others unassailed until they were too strengthened to be easily conquered. He argued points of theology with Reynald of Sidon until the castle of Belfort was reinforced. He neglected the siege of Tyre until its lord, Conrad of Monferrat, was in a good position to hold it.
And he took King Guy and Gerard of Ridfort at their word when they promised to leave the Holy Land forever in return for their freedom.
These two slippery customers owed their release to Queen Sybilla. She had been allowed to rejoin her husband Guy in his captivity at Nablus.
Maria Comnena, the other royal female, was allowed to go to Tripoli, accompanied according to Ibn al Athir by a great train of domestics, slaves and handmaids and with a quantity of gold and precious stones. He adds that Stephanie, widow of Reynald, also interceded personally with Saladin for the release of her son Humphrey of Toron. Saladin agreed, in exchange for Kerak. Stephanie went to Kerak, but the Franks refused to yield the fortress. Saladin therefore would not release Humphrey, but did give her back her possessions and her followers. 9
After Jerusalem had been fully secured, Guy was sent to Damascus, while Sybilla was permitted to go to Tripoli. From there, she wrote to Saladin in 1188 reminding him that he had promised to release Guy and Gerard in return for the surrender of Ascalon. He had been delivered the city - but the king and the Grand Master were still prisoners. In July of that year, the two were released, and immediately prepared for battle. Guy, Sybilla, Humphrey of Toron and Isabella, Balian of Ibelin and Maria together with the remaining knights and newly arrived reinforcements - the vanguard of the Third Crusade - set out on a progress of reconquest.
At first, there was division and setback. The Christian army was refused entrance to Tyre by its guardian, Conrad of Monferrat, so they endured months of inaction camped before its walls. 10
Then, in the later summer of 1189, they laid siege to the key city of Acre, the first to be taken by Saladin after the Battle of Hattin.
And so began one of the greatest sieges in recorded history, the equal in its own way of that of Illium, or the struggle at Stalingrad.
It also marks the apotheosis of Guy as a leader.
A man characterised by foolishness and wrong headedness, for once in his life he acted
|
|