Guy was king; but Raymond of Tripoli refused him his allegiance.
Continuing Saladin Takes Jerusalem From the Christians,
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Previously in Saladin Takes Jerusalem From the Christians.
Time: 1187
Place: Jerusalem
His first choice fell on Guy of Lusignan, the husband of his sister Sibylla but either the weakness of Guy or the quarrels of the barons brought everything into confusion and Baldwin, foiled in his wish to annul his marriage, devised his crown to Baldwin, the infant son of Sibylla by her first marriage, Raymond II, Count of Tripoli, being nominated regent and Joceline of Courtenay the guardian of the child. But within three years the leper King died, followed soon after by the infant Baldwin V and in the renewed strife consequent on these events Guy of Lusignan managed to establish himself, by right of his wife, King of Jerusalem. He was still quite a young man but he had earned for himself an evil name. The murderer of Patric, Earl of Salisbury, he had been banished by Henry II from his dominions in France; and the opinion of those who knew him found expression in the words of his brother Geoffrey, “Had they known me, the men who made my brother king would have made me a god.”
Guy was king; but Raymond of Tripoli refused him his allegiance. Guy besieged him in Tiberias and Raymond made a treaty with Saladin. But Saladin was now minded to seize a higher prey. He was master of Syria and Egypt: he was resolved that the Crescent should once more displace the Cross on the mosque of Omar. Pretexts for the war were almost superfluous; but he had an abundance of them in the ravages committed by barons of the Latin kingdom on the lands and the property of Moslems. Fifty thousand horsemen and a vast army on foot gathered under his standard, when he declared his intention of attacking Jerusalem; but their first assault was on the castle of Tiberias. On hearing these ominous tidings Raymond of Tripoli at once laid aside all thought of private quarrels. Hastening to Jerusalem he said that the safety of his own city was a very secondary matter and earnestly besought Guy to confine himself to a strictly defensive war, which would soon reduce the invader to the extremity of distress. The advice was wise and good; but the grand master of the Templars fastened on the very nobleness of his self-sacrifice and the disinterestedness of his counsel as proof of some sinister design which they were intended to hide.
Had it been Baldwin III to whom he was speaking, the insinuation would have been thrust aside with scorn and disgust. To the mean mind of Guy it carried with it its own evidence; and it was resolved to meet the Saracen on ground of his own choosing. The troops of Saladin were already distressed by heat and thirst when they encountered the Latin army from Jerusalem. The issue of the first day’s fighting was undecided; but the heat of a Syrian summer night was for the Christians rendered more terrible by the stifling smoke of woods set on fire by the orders of Saladin. Parched with thirst and well knowing that on the event of that day depended the preservation of the Holy Sepulcher, the crusaders at sunrise rushed with their fierce war-cries on the enemy. Before them the golden glory of morning lit up the radiant shores of the tranquil sea where the Galilean fisherman had heard from the lips of Jesus of Nazareth the word of life.
But nearer still was a memorial yet more holy, a pledge of divine favor yet more assuring. On a hillock hard by was raised the relic of the true cross and this hillock was many times a rallying point during this bloody day. There was little of generalship perhaps on either side; and where men are left to mere hard fighting, numbers must determine the issue. The hosts of Saladin far outnumbered those of the Latin chiefs; and for these retreat ended in massacre. The King and the grand master of the Templars were taken prisoners; the holy relic which had spurred them on to desperate exertion fell into the hands of the infidels.
The victory of Saladin was rich in its fruits. Tiberias was taken. Berytos, Acre, Cæsarea, Jaffa opened their gates; Tyre alone was saved by the heroism of Conrad of Montferrat, brother of the first husband of Queen Sibylla. Not caring to undertake a regular siege, Saladin marched to Ascalon and offered its defenders an honorable peace, which after some hesitation was accepted.
The rejection of Raymond’s advice had left Jerusalem practically at the mercy of Saladin. It was crowded with people but the garrison was scanty and the armies which should have defended it were gone. Their presence would not, probably, have availed to give a different issue to the siege; but it must have added fearfully to its horrors. Saladin had made up his mind that the Latin kingdom must fall and he would have fought on until either he or his enemies could fight no longer. Numbers, wealth, resources, military skill, instruments of war, all combined to give him advantages before which mere bravery must sooner or later go down; and protracted resistance meant nothing more than the infliction of useless misery.
Saladin may have been neither a saint nor a hero; but it cannot be denied that his temper was less fierce and his language more generous than that of the Christians who under Godfrey had deluged the city with blood. He had no wish, he said, so to defile a place hallowed by its associations for Moslems as well as Christians and if the city were surrendered, he pledged himself not merely to furnish the inhabitants with the money which they might need but even to provide them with new homes in Syria. But superstition and obstinacy are to all intents and purposes words of the same meaning. The offer, honorable to him who made and carrying no ignominy to those who might accept it, was rejected and Saladin made a vow that entering the city as an armed conqueror he would offer up within it a sacrifice as awful as that by which the crusaders had celebrated their loathsome triumph. Most happily for others, most nobly for himself, he failed to keep this vow to the letter.
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