The Third Crusade

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Introduction
Although after the failure of the Second Crusade the interest felt by the western nations in the kingdom of Jerusalem, established by the first crusaders in 1099, had greatly diminished, still the news of the loss of the Holy City — which was taken by Saladin, Sultan of Egypt and Syria, in 1187 — fell like a thunderbolt on men’s minds. Once more the flame which had kindled the mystic war of God blazed high. “What a disgrace, what an affliction,” cried Pope Urban III, “that the jewel which the second Urban won for Christendom should be lost by the third!” He vehemently exhorted the Church and all her faithful to join the war, worked day and night, prayed, sighed and so wore himself out with grief and anger that he sickened and died in a few weeks. His successor, Gregory VIII and afterward Pope Clement III, were inspired by the same feeling and exerted themselves for the great cause with untiring energy.

In 1185 a number of English barons had put on the cross on hearing of Saladin’s menacing progress; toward the end of 1187 the heir to the throne, Richard, followed their example; some months later King Henry II had a meeting with his former enemy, Philip Augustus of France, at Gisors, where they vowed to abandon their earthly quarrels and become warriors of the everlasting God. Nearly the whole nobility and a number of the lower class of people were carried away by their example. King William of Sicily fitted out his fleet and was only prevented by death from joining it himself. From Denmark, Scandinavian pilgrims thronged to Syria both by land and water. In Germany, now as formerly, the zeal was not so great, until in March, 1188, the emperor Frederick Barbarossa, at the age of near seventy, put on the cross and by his ever firm and powerful will collected together a mass of nearly one hundred thousand pilgrims. All the western nations rose to arms.

The news of this enormous movement reached the East and the ferocious war-cry of Europe was answered by a voice of defiance. Saladin had organized his dominions almost according to the western system. Under an oath of allegiance and service in war he granted to each of his emirs a town of feudal tenure; its surrounding land they again divided among their followers; the Sultan thus attached those wandering hordes of horsemen to the soil and kept those restless spirits permanently together. He then invoked the religious zeal of all the Mahometans with such success that volunteers flocked to his standard from every quarter.

These masses dispersed at the beginning of every winter but on the return of fair weather they again collected in ever-increasing numbers. Saladin well knew the mutual hatred which divided the Greek Byzantines and the Latin Franks and kept so securely alive in the Eastern Emperor, Isaac Angelus, the fear of the insolence of the western soldiers that he concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with Saladin against those who shared his own faith.

The leaders of the Third Crusade — Richard I (“the Lion-hearted”), King of England; Frederick I, surnamed “Barbarossa,” of Germany, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire; and Philip Augustus, King of France — were the most powerful monarchs of Europe. A halo of false romance and glory, however, surrounds this crusade, mainly by reason of the associations connecting it with the self-seeker Richard. In the real conduct of the crusaders appears a sordid greed glutting itself with atrocities as savage as those perpetrated under Godfrey of Bouillon a century before. In Richard the world now sees a destroying “hero,” one of the scourges of mankind. The son of Henry II, Richard became King of England in 1189. His chief ambition appears to have been the spread of his own renown and this aim he sought to achieve in Palestine. He raised moneys by the sale of titles, lands, etc. and then started for the Holy Land. Modern history presents him, as well as his colleagues and followers, divested of the glamour which for centuries hung about the Third Crusade, of which the only heroic figure on the Christian side is the likewise pitiable Barbarossa.

This selection is by Henry Von Sybel.

Time: 1189-1194
Place: Palestine

The whole East, from the Danube to the Indus, from the Caspian Sea to the sources of the Nile, prepared with one intent to withstand the great invasion of Europe. Amid cares and preparations which had reference to three-quarters of the globe, Saladin neglected his nearest enemy, the feeble remnant of the Christian States in Syria, which, although unimportant in themselves, were of great consequence as landing-places for the invading western nations during the approaching war. The small principalities of Antioch and Tripoli still existed and in the midst of the Turkish forces the marquis Conrad of Montferrat still displayed the banner of the cross upon the ramparts of Tyre.

It seems as if in this instance Saladin had abandoned himself too much to the superb and easy carelessness of his nature. Hitherto he had not shrunk from the most strenuous exertions; but he was so certain of his victory that he neglected to strike the final blow. Not until the autumn of 1187 did he begin the siege of Tyre; and for the first time in his life he found a dangerous adversary in Conrad of Montferrat, a man of cool courage and keen determination, whose soul was unmoved by religious enthusiasm and equally free from weakness or indecision; so that under his command the inhabitants of the city repulsed every attack with increasing assurance and resolution.

Saladin hereupon determined to try starvation, which a strict blockade by sea and land was to cause in the town; but in June, 1188, the Sicilian fleet appeared, gave the superiority by sea to the Christians and brought relief to Tyre. The Sultan retreated and marched through the defenceless provinces of Antioch and Tripoli but there too he left the capitals in peace upon the arrival of the Sicilian fleet in their waters. The following summer he spent in taking the Frankish fortresses in Arabia Petræa, the possession of which was important to him in order to secure freedom of communication between Egypt and Syria.

Meanwhile the reinforcements from the West were pouring into the Christian seaport towns. In the first place, the two military and religious orders, the Templars and the Knights of St. John, had collected munitions of war of every kind from all their European possessions and increased the number of their mercenaries to fourteen thousand men. King Guy[31] also had ransomed himself from captivity and had gone to Tripoli, where by degrees the remnant of the Syrian barons and pilgrims of all nations, gathered round him. They took the right resolution to remain no longer inactive but with the gigantic preparations in Europe in prospect, to begin the attack at once.

On August 28, 1189, Guy commenced the siege of the strong maritime fortress of Ptolemais (St. Jean d’Acre). A fleet from Pisa had already joined the Sicilian one; in October there arrived twelve thousand Danes and Friesians and in November a number of Flemings, under the Count of Avesnes, French knights under the Bishop of Beauvais and Thuringians, under their landgrave, Louis. Saladin, roused from his inactivity by these events, hastened to the spot with his army and in his turn surrounded the Christian camp, which lay in a wide semicircle round Ptolemais and was defended by strong intrenchments within and without. It formed an iron ring round the besieged town, which Saladin, spite of all his efforts, could not break through. Each wing of the position rested upon the sea and was thus certain of its supplies and able to protect the landing of reinforcements, which continually arrived in constantly increasing numbers — Italians, French, English and Germans, Normans and Swedes. “If on one day we killed ten,” said the Arabs, “on the next, a hundred more arrived fresh from the West.”

The fighting was incessant by land and by sea, against the town and against the Sultan’s camp. Sometimes the Egyptian fleet drove the Christian ships far out to sea; and Saladin could then succor the garrison with provisions and fresh troops, till new Frankish squadrons again surrounded the harbor and only a few intrepid divers could steal through between the hostile ships. On land, too, now one side and now the other was in danger. One day the Sultan scaled the Christian intrenchments and advanced close to the walls of the city, before the Franks rallied sufficiently to drive him back by a desperate attack; but they soon took their revenge in a night sortie, when they attacked the Sultan in his very tent and he narrowly escaped by rapid flight. Against the town their progress was very slow, as the garrison, under an able and energetic commander, Bohaeddin, showed itself resolute and indefatigable. One week passed after another and the condition of the Franks became painfully complicated. They could go neither backward nor forward, they could make no impression on the walls; nor could they re-embark in the face of an active enemy. There was no choice but to conquer or die; so preparations were made for a long sojourn; wooden barracks and for the princes even stone houses were built and a new hostile town arose all around Ptolemais. In spite of this the winter brought innumerable hardships. In that small space more than a hundred thousand men were crowded together, with insufficient shelter and uncertain supplies of wretched food; pestilential diseases soon broke out, which swept away thousands and were intensified by the exhalations from the heaps of dead. Saladin retreated from their deadly vicinity to more airy quarters on the adjacent hills; his troops also suffered from the severe weather but were far better supplied than the Christians with water, provisions and other comforts, as the caravans from Cairo and Bagdad met in their camp and numbers of merchants displayed in glittering booths all kinds of eastern wares.

Continued.

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