Downfall of the Crusader Kingdom E-Book

W B Bartlett

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 484

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Downfall of the Crusader Kingdom tells the story of the reason for Richard the Lionheart's infamous Third Crusade, culminating in the disastrous battle of Hattin in 1187. Hattin is one of the few battles in history that can truly be called decisive, and it was a catastrophe for the Crusaders. The leading men of the kingdom of Jerusalem, including the Knights Templar and the Hospitallers, were trapped in arid wasteland, without water and surrounded by hostile forces. The battle ended with thousands of them being taken prisoner. It was the culmination of a series of events that had been progressively leading the kingdom of Jerusalem down the road to oblivion. It was partly the resurgence of the Muslim Middle East and the rise of Saladin that led to the loss of Jerusalem, but there was another equally dangerous element at work – the enemy within. W.B. Bartlett tells the story of naked ambition and intrigue that led to bitter infighting and ultimately the downfall of the Christian crusaders.

Leseprobe

Cover image: Guillaume de Clermont defending Ptolemais (Acre) in 1291, 1845 (oil on canvas)by Papety, Dominique Louis (1815-49). Courtesy of Chateau de Versailles, France/Lauros/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.

First published as ‘The Road to Armageddon’ 2007

This edition first published 2010

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This ebook edition first published in 2011

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EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 6807 5

MOBI ISBN 978 0 7524 6808 2

Original typesetting by The History Press

To Garry and Julie, with happy memories of Middle Eastern adventures together.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Maps

Prologue

 1    In the Beginning

 2    Hawks and Doves

 3    Saladin

 4    Dangerous Times

 5    The Leper King

 6    Coup d’État

 7    The Tempest Looms

 8    Eve of Battle

 9    The Road to Armageddon

10    Requiem

11    Last Rites

12    The End of an Age

Notes

Select Bibliography

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all those who have made this book possible. My particular thanks to Christopher Feeney, whom I wish all the best of fortune in the future. I am grateful, too, for the advice and support of Nick Reynolds, with whom it has been a pleasure to work.

The Crusader States in 1187.

The Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187.

The Hattin Campaign, 1187.

Prologue

For nearly 100 years, Christian settlers from Western Europe ruled a kingdom on the far shores of the Mediterranean. Jerusalem was the heartbeat of this realm, the spiritual centre of the Christian world. It was always unlikely that the Westerners would hold on to this distant land forever. They had taken it when the Muslims who had held Palestine for centuries had been too busy fighting each other to notice that a greater danger was at their backs. By the time that they realised what was happening it was too late, and Jerusalem had gone.

But once the Muslims reunited they held all the trump cards in their hands. They had far greater numbers of warriors available to them and, unlike the Christian kingdom of ‘Outremer’, ‘the land beyond the sea’, which relied on reinforcements from Western Europe hundreds of miles away, short lines of supply. Should they ever stop fighting each other then the interlopers from the West were living on borrowed time.

Unity, though, was an elusive quality in the Islamic world. Bitterly divided by theological division, particularly between the Shi’a and Sunni branches of Islam, it would take something, or someone, special to cement together the factionalised Muslim lands around Palestine. The mortar that managed to do so had two vital constituents. The first of these was intense religious fervour, fuelled by the loss of one of the most spiritually significant cities in Islam, Jerusalem. The second was an extraordinary man by the name of Saladin.

It was ironic that, just as Saladin and his predecessor as ruler of Syria, Nur ed-Din, were bringing the Islamic world closer together, contrary pressures were dividing the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem. For the plain fact was that Outremer was no heaven on earth. The men who ruled in this unique kingdom were flawed, as most men are. They were driven by greed and ambition, they acted with rashness and self-interest, they were men of quick temper and doubtful judgement. And just as the Muslims had lost Palestine to a Crusader army because they were too preoccupied with their own petty squabbles, so did the settlers in Outremer fail to notice that their enemies were growing stronger because of their internecine and bitter feuding – a neat mirror image in fact.

During the latter decades of the twelfth century, Outremer was sleepwalking to disaster. Seemingly oblivious to the dangers of a resurgent Islam, the kingdom began to split apart. The nobles who governed with the king sought to outmanoeuvre one another, seeking to raise themselves up and bring their political opponents down. It was a persistent and sometimes brutal power struggle that did little credit to any of the parties involved.

All this came to a head on 4 July 1187, on two small hills above Lake Tiberias. Here, trapped, outfought and outthought, the largest army Outremer ever raised was obliterated by Saladin. It was a terrible defeat because it consigned the whole kingdom to oblivion. Nearly all available men had been called up and there was no one left to man the castles and cities of the realm. Jerusalem had mortgaged everything on one spectacular throw of the dice. And Jerusalem had lost.

But the great battle at Hattin was the culmination of a series of events, though it was not quite the end, which came when Jerusalem itself fell shortly afterwards. Hattin was part of a bigger story. The cast included some larger-than-life characters: a boy king who suffered the terrible blight of leprosy, a rogue baron who would stop at nothing to expand his influence, an adventurer from across the seas who saw himself as the future monarch and a Templar Grand Master who was driven by delusions of self-aggrandisement and vengeance for a personal slight. At times the storyline reads less like history and more like a previously undiscovered novel by Sir Walter Scott.

At the outset, a note on terminology is important. A ‘Crusader’ was, simplistically put, an armed pilgrim who took solemn vows that could only be fulfilled by visiting a holy place, often the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. In return, they gained spiritual benefits that would ease their way into the Hereafter. These privileges were granted by the Pope through a mechanism known as an ‘indulgence’. Therefore, most of the Christian participants in the great Hattin campaign were not ‘Crusaders’, there on a specific, ‘one-off’ mission to fulfil a vow; they were rather settlers in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The Muslims gave the men from the West a generic name, ‘Franj’, which is normally translated as ‘Franks’. This is what I will in the main call the Christian participants in the story that follows. Only those seeking to redeem pilgrim vows on a papally sanctioned crusade will be termed ‘Crusaders’. Occasionally, I will also refer to the settlers as ‘Latins’, another name that has sometimes been given to them by the indigenous population.

It is also important to consider briefly the status of Outremer and in particular the vexed question of whether or not it was a ‘colony’, as historians have debated over the years. Taking as a standard definition ‘a body of settlers living in a new territory but subject to control by the parent state’1 the answer is an emphatic ‘no’. For although this was a new territory, there was no control by any parent state. There was indeed no clear parent state. The settlers came from many parts of Western Europe and if any body had nominal control over the territory, it was the Papacy. But despite this influence, the Papacy never exercised any degree of control in practice, nor did kings from Western Europe, though they were important. No, this was a unique state, subject to very strong influences from the West, but in no way under the control of any other. This was therefore not a ‘colony’.

Such academic abstractions are subsidiary to the rich drama of the fall of Outremer. What follows is the story of flawed men and women, the tale of King Baldwin, the leper, Reynald of Chatillon, the rogue baron, Guy of Lusignan, would-be king and Gerard of Ridfort, Grand Master. It is also the story of Raymond of Tripoli, avowed enemy of Gerard; of Balian of Ibelin, inaccurately portrayed by Orlando Bloom in the Hollywood epic Kingdom of Heaven; of Sibylla and Isabella, Baldwin’s sisters and powerful pawns in the kingdom because of their royal status. And it is the story of Saladin.

But more even than stories of people this is the story of an ideal. For this was no ordinary kingdom. And, most of all, Jerusalem was no ordinary city. St Bernard of Clairvaux, greatest of all twelfth-century clerics, wrote of Jerusalem in awed tones:

Hail then, holy city, sanctified by the Highest as his own temple so that this generation may be saved in and through you! Hail, city of the great King, source of so many blest and indescribable marvels! Hail, mistress of nations and queen of provinces, heritage of patriarchs, mother of apostles and prophets, source of the faith and glory of Christendom!2

Jerusalem was held in reverence by Christendom and possession of the city was its greatest glory. By the same token, losing it was the most awful disgrace imaginable. Although the kingdom stumbled on in an emaciated state after Hattin, the ideal was lost. Men had lost faith in the concepts that the state had enshrined. Confidence and belief were shattered along with the Christian army, and nothing would ever be quite the same again.

What follows is an account of how Jerusalem fell, of all the twists and turns down the road to Armageddon. Within the text, there are frequent references to the Book of Revelation. Their presence is more than an attempt to adopt a clever literary device: they are included because this was a biblical age in the sense that the words of the Bible were often accorded literal meaning. Scholars scanned its pages in an effort to read hidden meanings into world events. To some of them, no doubt, the days just before and after Hattin seemed like the end of the world. And in many ways it surely was.

ONE

In the Beginning

For I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away . . .

Revelation 21: 1

On 7 June 1099, a Crusader army arrived outside the walls of Jerusalem, following a nightmare journey that had lasted for four years. The city was in the hands of a Muslim garrison, as it had been for over four centuries, but the Christians moving menacingly towards the walls had no intention of letting it stay that way. For this was the city of their God, the place where Jesus had been crucified. Jerusalem belonged to Christ, not to the Infidel.

A major problem was that the city was holy for Muslims too. From the rock over which the dome that is still one of Jerusalem’s greatest treasures had been erected, the Prophet Mohammed had ascended into heaven. The Prophet’s followers did not recognise the name ‘Jerusalem’: to them, it was never known as anything except al-Quts, ‘the Holy City’.1

The garrison’s desire to resist, no doubt built on genuine piety, was reinforced by the knowledge of what had happened to the Muslim defenders of the city of Antioch in the previous year. When the Crusaders had taken that city with the help of treachery from within, the result had been a slaughter of apocalyptic proportions. Jerusalem’s defenders could expect little mercy from the ragged army that was approaching their city.

It was an equally worrying time for the Jewish population of Jerusalem. The city was precious to them also. Within its walls, centuries before Christ had died there, Solomon had erected his great Temple, which would become the most revered of all Judaic sites. Destroyed long ago, it was still a place of sacred memory to the Jews.

The Jews lived in relative harmony with their Muslim governors, who generally respected the religious freedoms of Jews and Christians alike. The greater threat to their life and limb came from the army outside the walls. In the early stages of their pilgrimage from Western Europe to the Holy Land, many Jews had been slain, their perceived association with the death of Christ making them a target for the more fanatical elements of the Crusader army.

The Crusader host provided a strange spectacle, for in its ranks were many non-combatants, women, old men, children, priests and artisans as well as warriors. And they had suffered horrendous loss on their journey so far. Tens of thousands had died, some in battle, some of exhaustion, some of disease, some of starvation. Others had turned back long ago. So this was a moment of supreme spiritual euphoria for those who were left.

For many of the masses, people largely without the ability to read or write, meaningful possessions or hope, the Holy City had mystical significance. They only knew of Jerusalem through the mass teaching received from their priests, who extolled its virtues as a city above all others and through whom they came to believe they were like the Israelites of old reaching the Promised Land. The monk Robert, who wrote an early history of Jerusalem, called it ‘the navel of the world, a land which is fruitful above all others, like another paradise of delights’.2 Contemporary maps showed the city at the centre of the world, at the heart of their universe. It was a land of milk and honey, to some perhaps literally so, whose streets were paved with gold.

We find it hard to understand, from the standpoint of our increasingly secular society, how religious motivations can inspire ordinary people to undertake extraordinary actions. And yet even we can appreciate something of the mysterious and timeless lure of Jerusalem, if only because it continues to have a disproportionate impact on the affairs of our world even now.

One publication recently described the area around the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock as ‘the most explosive piece of real estate in the world’.3 And so it was then. For the Crusaders, Jerusalem was the vision that enticed men, women and children to endure hardships of unbelievable severity, to live out terrible lives as slaves when they were captured in their droves, to die in their thousands by the roadsides of Europe and Asia Minor.

The reality of Jerusalem, an averagely sized, averagely wealthy city, was of no account to the humble pilgrims who fought their way across mountain, plain, desert and swamp towards their goal. It was, as one commentator has remarked, much more than a physical entity, it was ‘before all else, a symbol. The Jerusalem of the Psalms, the celestial Jerusalem of the Apocalypse, lived in the heart of the faithful.’4

It was also a literal gateway to heaven. If pilgrims died in pursuit of fulfilling their Crusader vows, then they would be rewarded in the next life. In a world where death walked cheek by jowl with life, sickness with health, famine with plenty, the world yet to come seemed every bit as real as, and often much more attractive than, transient, day-to-day existence. The juxtaposition of these two concepts, the mystical magnetism of Jerusalem on the one hand and the promise of spiritual rewards on the other, formed the heady brew that gave life to the Crusading movement.

This was truly an apocalyptic era. In the year 1000, many believed the world was about to come to an end, a fear again prominent in 1033 when the millennium of Christ’s crucifixion fell. Everywhere, the shadow of death hung over man. Even today, evidence of this can be seen. The quiet and half-hidden church of Tarrant Crawford in Dorset was once adjacent to a monastic establishment. Its chief glory is its fourteenth-century wall paintings, much faded now but still clear enough to see and ‘read’ some of the images. One in particular is striking. It is of three kings out hunting who stumble across three skeletons who have come to remind them that death is coming, that one day even the great will turn to bones and dust.

It is important to understand from the outset the vastly different view of the world that Christian Europe had in the medieval period from that we have now. Without such comprehension, the immense sacrifice involved in Crusading makes no sense. Men believed that this life was just a proving ground for the next, and in that world to come a man would be judged by, and punished for, his actions on earth.

This First Crusade had been summoned by Pope Urban II at Clermont in France in 1095. It was an armed pilgrimage, sanctioned – indeed called for – by the Church, and in return for their participation those who fulfilled their Crusader vows would receive spiritual benefits that would ease their passage from this world to the next. Those vows usually involved completing a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, supposedly erected over the site of Christ’s tomb and the holy of holies for Christians.

The call struck a chord because many were fully aware of their sin and believed that they could only avoid the horrors of Hell with the help of the grace of God. Their participation in the Crusade would help them in this quest. The appeal of Crusading therefore reached out to a society as a whole, not just to warriors, and the expeditions that had made their way east (for there were a number, not just one army) therefore represented a microcosm of the Western world at that time.

Urban had not been slow to seize on the opportunity offered by the fascination exerted by Jerusalem. In August 1096 he wrote to the people of Bologna that

we have heard that some of you desire to go to Jerusalem because you know that this would greatly please us. Know then that anyone who sets out on that journey, not out of lust for worldly advantage but only for the salvation of his soul and for the liberation of the Church, is remitted in entirety all penance for his sins.5

To a deeply religious Christian society these rewards were extremely persuasive. Men and women had responded to Urban’s appeal in their droves and left the little that they had behind them in France, Flanders and parts of Germany. As they advanced, more joined them in Central and Eastern Europe but their losses along the way had been immense. Those who were left, now ranged outside Jerusalem, were the chosen people from the waves that had set out, to whom God had awarded the greatest honour, that of recapturing His city for Christendom.

The masses assembled outside the forebidding city walls believed themselves to be the latter day Children of Israel. This was in every sense an exercise in religious expression. When early efforts to break through the walls were rebuffed, the Crusaders decided that they would march barefoot around the city, calling on God to help them. This was a revisiting of biblical episodes such as the procession of Joshua around the defences of Jericho, when his army had compassed the city daily until, on the last day that they did so, they let out a great shout and the walls fell down.6

But this would be no easy conquest. The walls were substantial and those inside were fighting for their lives. The initial attempts of the Crusaders to break into the city were driven back. The days that followed were trying in the extreme. There was no water for 6 miles and when it was ferried into the camp in ox-hide containers it smelt vile. Food was short and so too was timber, needed to construct the siege engines that had to be built if the city were to be taken. So this also had to be carried in from miles away.

But the Crusaders were nothing if not persistent. The siege engines were erected and the city tightly invested. On 15 July came the breakthrough. On that day, the attack was relentless, resistance desperate. Suddenly, a knight named Lethold jumped across from a siege tower onto the walls of the city. Terrified by the sight of this avenging warrior charging towards them the defenders fled for cover. Emboldened at the sight, other Crusaders followed Lethold and charged into the heart of the city.

An anonymous contemporary chronicle, the Gesta Francorum, takes up the story:

Our pilgrims entered the city, and chased the Saracens, killing as they went, as far as the Temple of Solomon. There the enemy assembled and fought a furious battle for the whole day, so that their blood flowed all over the Temple. At last the pagans were overcome, and our men captured a good number of men and women in the Temple: they killed whomsoever they wished, and chose to keep others alive.7

This fierce battle took place around the site of the Temple, holy for various reasons to Christians, Jews and Muslims. The battle here was not just one of survival but was also inspired by powerful religious emotion. Perhaps because of this, the resultant slaughter was awful. The same chronicler tells of soldiers wading up to their ankles in blood and of how men and women captured on the roof of the Temple were all beheaded. He talks of piles of the dead, ‘as big as houses’, of the terrible stench that hung over the city and almost exults over the extent of the massacre. The Kingdom of Jerusalem had had a violent birth, ushered in by a sea of blood.

The massacre was to have great repercussions, though not all were immediately apparent. It encouraged a desire for revenge among Muslims who saw the bloodletting as an awful stain on their reputation. Despite this thirst for vengeance, the perpetrators were able to find justification for their actions: for example when Joshua took Jericho then ‘they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword’.8

Other eyewitnesses recalled the End of the World, as foretold in the Book of Revelation. So vivid did these verses seem that some even quoted them in their accounts: ‘the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horses’ bridles’.9 In other words, the slaughter in Jerusalem was not without biblical precedent.

The Crusaders’ victory in Palestine owed much to the disunity of the Muslim forces that had been arrayed against them. The Islamic world was split into two major camps, the Sunni and Shi’a. The eastern half of Islam, simplistically modern Persia, Iraq, Syria and Turkey, was primarily a Sunni sphere of influence. Egypt on the other hand was mainly in the hands of the Shi’a Fatimids. These two major divisions of Islam were constantly at odds with each other – a situation that, again, continues to play itself out in our own times.

One of the fault-lines where these two major Muslim groupings clashed was in Palestine. As a result, when the Crusaders marched through Asia Minor and down the Mediterranean coast of Syria, resistance to their advance, though on occasion fierce, was largely disjointed. Unbeknown to the West, their invasion had been launched at the perfect time, a moment of relative weakness among the Muslims. But this turned out to be a short window of opportunity because within a few years things started to change for the worse.

A perennial problem for the new kingdom which came to be called Outremer – ‘The Land beyond the Sea’ – was how to raise enough men to defend the lands that had been so dearly won. There were not enough settlers to fight off the Muslims, particularly if the latter ever managed to unite. As partial compensation for this deficiency, regular influxes of Crusaders from the West helped to boost the forces available on a short-term basis. Large numbers of new recruits made their way to Palestine to complete a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre. Forced to make their way across Asia Minor, major expeditions that set out for Outremer in 1101 were cut to pieces by the Turks in the region, now reunited and determined not to let the Crusaders pass.

From the start it was clear that Outremer was in a difficult position. If the Muslims united then it would be very hard for the kingdom to resist. The Muslims far outnumbered the Christians and had the advantage of logistics on their side: reinforcements and supplies could be moved throughout Syria or Egypt whereas any such commodities for the Kingdom of Outremer would have to make a months’-long crossing over the Mediterranean. The only saving grace for the Franks as the twelfth-century began was that Egypt and Syria served different masters. The Turkish fightback in Asia Minor in 1101 was a short-term phenomenon which did not yet presage a complete resurgence in Islamic fortunes.

In the aftermath of the triumph at Jerusalem several separate Christian principalities were created. The Kingdom of Jerusalem formed the most important part of Outremer, but principalities were established in Tripoli and Antioch too. The rulers of the latter sometimes saw the king in Jerusalem as primus inter pares (though at others they did not), but in practice operated with a good deal of autonomy.

The Kingdom of Jerusalem was like no other on earth in the sense that it was based around a city that had unique symbolic pathos for Christendom. So unusual was the situation that the first ruler of the kingdom, Godfrey of Bouillon, refused to accept the epithet of ‘king’ and instead adopted the title ‘Defender of the Holy Sepulchre’. He humbly refused to declare himself a monarch when this was God’s city. This reluctance to take on all the worldly trappings that normally went with kingship, however, did not survive his death: his successor, Baldwin I, had no such problems in calling himself a king.10

In theory the King of Jerusalem was elected by his peers, but Outremer quickly developed many of the characteristics of Western monarchy. The crown partially became a hereditary possession, though there were certain crises that hit the realm when the absence of a suitable heir made this impossible, and on these occasions the expedient of election was adopted again. In theory, the barons of the kingdom were always required to elect a king, but in practice their choice normally fell on a close relative of the last monarch if there was a suitable candidate available.

While a series of laws was adopted to set the appropriate balance between king and state, and, initially, the monarchy was the preeminent institution, as the twelfth century advanced the nobility of the kingdom grew in power and the position of the king weakened in diametrical proportion. The change was to have profound results for the kingdom and would seriously undermine its foundations. Ambitious warlords were empowered by this shift in the balance of power to interfere much more in affairs of state, with unfortunate consequences.

In the early decades of the twelfth century the Kingdom of Jerusalem was lucky with its kings (or, as it would have been perceived at the time, it was protected by God, who ensured that the kingdom had a succession of capable monarchs). There were occasions when the monarchy was threatened, for example when King Baldwin II was captured in 1123 and spent years as a prisoner of the Muslims. But the strength of the new kingdom was evidenced by the way that the state managed to survive, and even to an extent thrive, while the king was out of commission.

Historians in times past have tended to see the kingdom as an extension of feudalism in Europe but this view is subject to increasing challenge and revision. Although the early settlers in Outremer inevitably brought with them their own paradigms of the world that influenced the design of the political structure they created, they also had their own vision that built in subtle variations from the institutions and norms they had left behind them in the West.

Neither was the state static. It evolved as it found its feet, as happens to any new frontier territory. To talk of the borders of the kingdom is an oversimplification if applied to anything other than a specific moment in time. They changed and metamorphosed, enclosing an amoeba-like political entity that shifted form with bewildering frequency. Outremer moulded and reshaped itself in response to internal pressures and external challenges.11 The strength of the king and individual barons waxed and waned as a result – an important element that came into play in the events that led ultimately to the Battle of Hattin and the loss of Jerusalem.

In practice, the eastern borders of the kingdom can be thought of as three separate sectors. The northern sector, centred on the Litani valley, was notable for some of the strongest Frankish castles, imperious and imposing. The central sector ran roughly along the Golan Heights, in modern times, after the 1967 war, a depopulated buffer zone between Israel and Syria. Even then it was, in its own way, a no man’s land or, to be more accurate, every man’s land, for it was effectively a shared sphere of influence between the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Damascus. The southern sector, Oultrejourdain, was hostile terrain, dominating caravan routes between Cairo and Damascus, and often used as a toll road by avaricious Frankish lords.

Another significant element in the politics of the state was the position of the Church, which in Outremer was interesting, unusual and important. Throughout Christendom, this period of history is characterised by an ongoing battle between Church and State for supremacy. The Pope believed that all kings should be subject to him as their spiritual leader, an interpretation that most kings disagreed with. The situation was particularly complex in Outremer given its unique status to the Christian world. It was complicated still further by the status of the Crusade, which was summoned and approved by the Papacy.

When the First Crusade set out, it was unmistakably a religiously inspired, and partially controlled, enterprise in which the Pope’s legate, Adhemar of le Puy, was the pre-eminent individual with the expedition. How long this position would have survived given the strong personalities of some of the secular leaders with the Crusade is a matter of idle speculation, for the legate died at Antioch before the army reached and took Jerusalem. As a result of his death, an important advocate of Church rights was removed from the scene at an inopportune moment. At the very beginning of the kingdom’s subsequent history, the Church tried to hang on to a position of superiority over the secular powers in the kingdom. This did not last long before the latter claimed a tacit victory.

Despite the Church’s failure to assert dominance over the secular, it was nevertheless the case that the leading churchman of the kingdom, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, was an important individual. To be the head of the Church in the Holy City was a rare honour and it brought with it a good deal of prestige as well as a significant store of wealth. The Patriarch’s position was a much sought-after one.

The Pope was the ultimate ecclesiastic power in Western Christendom but the Patriarch was a crucial figure. It was he who crowned the King of Jerusalem, a symbolic act that attempted to demonstrate that no one could rule in the city without the Church’s say-so. This was no mere symbolism. The Holy Roman Empire had been founded in AD 800 when Charlemagne had been ceremonially enthroned by the Pope. The coronation rites of a king in the city of God, the sacred site of such rituals in biblical times, assumed even greater significance.

If Islam was divided, so too was Christendom. The eleventh century had been a turbulent one, with ongoing disputes between the Western Church, headed by the Pope, and other Christian groups, particularly of the Orthodox persuasion. The latter, whose foremost leader was the Patriarch of Constantinople, adopted a number of different rituals, leading to heated theological debate. In addition, although the Orthodox faith recognised the Pope in Rome as being the most senior Church figure there was not the same recognition of his predominant authority as there was in the West.

Within the Holy Land, the situation was further complicated by the existence of adherents to other branches of Christianity, such as the Maronites. Again, rituals differed. There was a complex interrelationship between these various strands of Christianity. Syrian Christians had been at odds with the Orthodox Church for centuries, and the newly arrived Latin clerics had little time for either. As Outremer became more established, there was frequent conflict between the Western ‘Latins’ and other groups of Christians as the former tried to install their preferred candidates into the key sees and bishoprics of the Holy Land, which had traditionally been held by Orthodox nominees.

To survive as an entity, Outremer had to establish itself economically. It was in a good position to do so, an entrepôt to the Middle East, which in its turn had strong links with regions much further east, such as China, from where highly valued spices came. Crucial to economic development were various Italian city-states, particularly Venice, Genoa and Pisa, which plied their trade back and forth across the Mediterranean as they had done for centuries. Unscrupulous and focused almost exclusively on commercial gain, these maritime powers showed little distinction between friend and foe: the highest bidder was their major concern. They nevertheless played a crucial role in creating a viable Christian kingdom, for without their ships Outremer could not have survived.

But Outremer was also reliant on developing links with its Muslim hinterland. The kingdom, despite some areas of fertile land, could not be self-sufficient and neither could it rely on the West to sustain it; so it was important to develop relationships with Muslim states. It is easy to imagine that Outremer was in a constant state of war: it was not. For much of the time, peace – sometimes uneasy, frequently breaking down – existed between Christian and Muslim. It was also true that there were many Muslims who lived with Christian masters, who continued to practise their faith even after Outremer had been established.

Relations with the West were, though, very important. It was not just supplies and provisions that ships carried with them. As the land routes across Asia Minor became increasingly dangerous, the use of the more expensive but much safer sea lanes assumed greater importance.

Jerusalem was the Christian world’s leading pilgrimage destination, in terms of importance if not of frequency of visitation. The medieval era was the great age of relics and pilgrimage, and Jerusalem had plenty to commend it in both respects. The Holy Sepulchre in particular was the pre-eminent site for pilgrims to visit and great spiritual rewards were on offer for those who completed the trip.

The Holy Sepulchre had been the site of Christian pilgrimage for centuries. Christ’s tomb, the remains of which were housed within its walls, had been discovered in the fourth century and detached from the quarry of which it had formed part. A small chapel had been built over it. Not far away stood Golgotha, the Place of the Skull, the site of Christ Crucified.

Close at hand was the spot where Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine, had found a fragment of the True Cross. Miracles attended the discovery. Three crosses were found and it was not clear which belonged to Christ. To find out which it was, the body of a newly deceased youth was placed over them. When the body was laid over the True Cross, the corpse came back to life as a result of the resurrecting power of Christ.12 It was from the Holy Sepulchre that another piece of this precious relic had been seized by a group of triumphant Crusaders from the Greek monks who held it. By 1140, the site of both crucifixion and burial had been brought together under a great roof. No wonder this was Christendom’s foremost place of pilgrimage.

A pilgrimage to Jerusalem was a dangerous undertaking. If the pilgrim journeyed by land, then he was at risk from bandits. If he went by sea, then he was still vulnerable, either because of pirates who patrolled the Mediterranean looking for prey or from the hostile seas that could all too easily overwhelm the fragile craft of the times. The latter was a particularly terrifying prospect for a Christian should not be drowned and his body accordingly deprived of the benefits of a Christian burial.13 Whatever route was chosen, there was also the ever-present threat of disease, far more destructive than any human enemy.

There were other hardships. The diet would be frugal and boring, the journey full of discomforts. Seasickness was a constant companion of the medieval traveller: contemporary records note that kings of England paid a fee to an individual from Dover whose job was to hold the monarch’s head while he was vomiting when crossing to France. The pilgrimage necessitated a long period away from home and any creature comforts. It was an expensive enterprise too, and if a pilgrim had dependants then these had to be provided for in the traveller’s absence.

Despite these travails, the spiritual rewards were worth it. There were other, far more worldly compensations too. The Muslims were shocked at what they saw as the promiscuity of Latin women in contrast to the much more modest behaviour of their own. Even Jerusalem had its whorehouses, with a surprisingly large number of loose women keen on plying their trade. In 1191, shortly after the momentous events we are about to consider, Saladin’s secretary Imad ad-Din, waxed lyrical about the athleticism of these ladies in language that would surely make a bishop blush:

Tinted and painted . . . desirable and accommodating – bold and ardent, with nasal voices and fleshy thighs . . . they offered their wares for enjoyment, brought their silver anklets up to touch their golden ear-rings . . . made themselves targets for men’s darts, offered themselves to the lance’s blows . . . made javelins rise towards shields.14

The historian went on with a series of increasingly appalling double entendres that left little to the imagination. But if he was shocked by the brazen sexuality of the Franks, theologians were equally worried. The Church believed that sexual misbehaviour was one of the surest roads to sin and did its best to discourage it. In fact, it was widely believed that after the Day of Judgement, when God returned to judge all mankind, Heaven would be home to those who were free of sexual drive.15

Religious motivation was the main inspiration for the pilgrim, though there might be subsidiary reasons for a pilgrimage too: criminals, aiming to escape the consequences of their actions, undoubtedly had an alternative motivation. So too did those desiring to gain money, power or land (though few men ever made their fortune by their participation and more typically ended up substantially in debt as a result of their actions). As the Crusading era advanced, chivalry and thoughts of glory also played their part to an increasing extent. But for most these were secondary motivations far behind those of a spiritual nature.

Having arrived in Outremer, a Crusader was still in danger. If he (or she) arrived by sea, typically through the port of Acre, he then had to make his way across country to Jerusalem. Even when Outremer had been established, the roads were still dangerous places to travel. The Crusaders took advantage of the strong walls of the major cities such as Jerusalem and Acre and also built castles, but the countryside remained a dangerous place where the unprotected traveller was open to the threat of robbery, rape and murder. Many of the pilgrims were without any means of defending themselves, often being poor, travelling in small groups and without weapons and/or the skills to use them effectively.

It was to meet this very real need that a crucial event took place in Jerusalem in 1118. Conscious of the risk that pilgrims took when they made their way overland to Jerusalem, a small group of knights established an Order with the aim of protecting them. Because their base was in the al-Aqsa Mosque, built on the site of Solomon’s Temple, they took the name of Templars.

Their initial impact was minimal. That all changed however when, a decade after their formation, they were taken under the wing of Bernard of Clairvaux, the foremost churchman of his day. Bernard, later canonised, is one of the great ecclesiastical figures of medieval history. Passionate in his advocacy of his religious beliefs and possessed of a sharp mind with a visionary view of the world, his impact on the Church was immense.

He was not a strong man physically and could not take an active role in a Crusade to the East. Instead, he turned his attention to the Templars. His masterstroke was to give them their own monastic rule book. A strict set of regulations was imposed on members of the Order, who were required to take vows of chastity when they joined, were to have no personal possessions and were to obey their leader, the Grand Master, without hesitation.

The Templars were part of the Church: they were ‘warrior monks’. Their rules governed their lives, both in peace and war. They could not seek ransom when captured and were only to retreat in battle when the odds were overwhelmingly against them. Their religious standing was reinforced by the fact that they were to be answerable to no earthly ruler bar the Pope. No secular king could tell them what to do or bring them to account.

Formal confirmation of Templar privileges by Pope Innocent II in 1139 strengthened their position. Innocent outlined their purpose in a Papal decree. Particularly telling is his explanation that the creation of the Order has transformed secular knights into ‘true Israelites’ fighting ‘divine battles’. Many privileges were granted them: in particular, any material gains made from defeating Muslim enemies were to be preserved for the Order and were protected from forfeiture to secular authorities. But the benefits awarded came accompanied by a heavy cost. A Templar took solemn vows when he joined the Order, from which he could not be excused. Once he took these vows, he would remain subject to the regulations of the Order and its officers until the day he died.

Bernard’s sponsorship proved to be a seminal event in the life of the Templars. Adopted by the greatest cleric of the age, the Order, and its fortunes, prospered. Knights from around Europe were attracted to join its ranks, not only allowed to fight for their faith but positively encouraged to do so. Strict training regimes were developed so that their fighting skills could be kept well honed.

Inspired by their example, other orders mushroomed in their wake, most notably the Hospitallers. Originally set up before the Crusader conquest as a hospital to provide medical and hostel facilities to pilgrims, they also took on the mantle of warrior monks with enthusiasm. Smaller groups would develop in their wake, such as the Knights of St Lazarus (a leper order) and, much later, the Teutonic Knights. But the Templars and Hospitallers would always be the most influential.

Few can have envisaged how these Orders would evolve from initially humble beginnings. The concept of these warrior monks touched a deep chord somewhere in the psyche of the times. Some were attracted to join the Order to utilise their martial prowess in the cause of their religion, others made generous grants to them to fund their activities. Although sometimes in the form of cash, these were often grants of land that would generate significant incomes for the Templars.

In a society where land was the principal source of revenue, be it through taxes from those who lived on it and worked it or from goods produced from it, this was an immense source of wealth. Across Europe, the new military orders and the Templars in particular obtained properties the income from which underwrote dazzling and spectacular fortunes.

This led to an unforeseen side effect, superficially contradictory. Although individual Templars were allowed no property of their own, the Order itself became immensely rich, owning vast amounts of lands in both Europe and Outremer. This wealth was under the control of the Grand Master who, through his officers, was able to exercise great power and influence.

In part, this wealth was needed to maintain the Order as a fighting force. A Templar knight took four horses with him on campaign. These were expensive commodities, first to buy, then to keep. Members of the Order needed to be fed and housed and would also need to be provided with armour and weapons. The cost of all this was exorbitant but, to the Orders themselves, was justified in terms of both the crucial part they played in affairs of state and also in terms of increasing their status.

The Orders effectively became the standing army of Outremer and, in a region where warriors were always in short supply, this gave them considerable influence over the government of the kingdom. Their numbers might not in modern terms appear to be great – typically the Templars and Hospitallers might each have about 300–400 knights in Outremer – but this is deceptive.

The manpower of the Orders cannot be measured in knights alone, although these were undoubtedly the shock troops of the Christian armies. The knights would be accompanied by squires and infantrymen – this was no meritocracy and to become a Templar or Hospitaller knight one had first to be a secular knight. There would also be a number of local troops recruited – Turcopoles as they were known – who would accompany them on campaign. Many of these were converts from Islam and so particularly detested by their enemies as traitors to the cause. They often served as light cavalry with Frankish armies.

The Templars also had many non-military duties to attend to. Farms had to be managed and income from a variety of sources looked after. In this latter field, the Templars in particular made significant strides. They developed an early form of banking system, where pilgrims travelling over thousands of miles could exchange their cash for letters of credit at the start of their journey that could later be redeemed in Outremer. The Treasurer of the Temple therefore carried onerous responsibility on his shoulders. So rich would the Templars become that they would attract the envy even of kings.

As the twelfth century advanced, the influence of the Orders grew. The King of Outremer was hugely dependent on their military support. Outremer was a feudal society where military service was owed to the king by his vassals but the limits of this service were well defined and restrictive. The Orders provided a crucially important ‘top-up’ to the forces available to the king: equally importantly they were not under his direct command.

Short-term increases in numbers from groups of pilgrims arriving from the West helped, but created their own problems as the participants were hard to control and often looked for trouble with the kingdom’s Muslim neighbours. Neither local feudal sources nor pilgrims from the West provided the king with the wherewithal he would need if faced by a major Muslim assault. There was therefore a vacuum which the Orders filled readily.

This was all well and good. The Orders garrisoned a chain of castles that could not have been manned by the king’s own resources, though it is important to note the presence of a number of castles housing secular lords too. Sometimes, royal castles would be given to them to man when the king was either short of manpower or felt that they would be safer in the hands of military experts. The Orders therefore formed a part of the kingdom’s defensive network that was indispensable, as well as providing a crucial part of the kingdom’s offensive capacity.

But this indispensability brought with it its own problems, since the Orders’ independence and their state of being literally above the (secular) law meant that they did not always act in the manner that the king would have desired. This did nothing to discourage the view, which quickly took root, that the Orders were arrogant and selfish. For a time, the Orders were a necessary evil, vital to the defence of Outremer. But in the process they made many enemies, a state of affairs that would have disastrous long-term results for the Templars in particular.

The emergence of the Orders both strengthened the kingdom but also helped to unsettle the balance of power in the infant state. At first, the King of Jerusalem was in a pre-eminent position, the head of the feudal tree, below which were the barons, the lower branches so to speak. However, the fragile framework of the new kingdom did not lend itself to strong centralised control. Although not covering a large area in terms of square miles, the long but narrow enclave formed of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the County of Tripoli and the Principality of Antioch was constantly under threat.

The frontier status of Outremer encouraged local barons to be strong and independent, an independence they increasingly asserted as the twelfth century advanced. In this ever more decentralised environment, the Orders were able to tilt the balance still further against the centralising authority of the king. In considering the reasons for the ultimate decline and fall of Outremer the importance of this increasingly unbalanced political equilibrium should not be underestimated.

For much of the time, a state of uneasy peace existed between Outremer and its Muslim neighbours. This was sometimes disturbed by pilgrims from the West who knew little, and cared less, for the realpolitik of the region. They would arrive in Outremer and quickly launch themselves into raids on Muslim territory, with frequently unfortunate results. The lack of a shared understanding and view between the permanent settlers in Outremer and the temporary arrivals from the West would lead to immense difficulties.

The early days of Outremer, when Antioch and Jerusalem had fallen to the armies of Christ, would appear in retrospect like a golden age. As the forces of Islam grew stronger those of Outremer became weaker. For a while, Outremer managed to hold its own. But the loss of the city of Edessa, in the north-east corner of the Christian territories, was a major blow that marked an important deterioration in Outremer’s position.

Edessa had been one of the first conquests of the Crusaders. It was an important city and frontier post and the headquarters of an independent county. In 1144 Zengi, the Emir of Mosul, launched an attack on its substantial walls. The ruler of the city, Joscelin of Courtenay, sent for aid to Raymond, Prince of Antioch, but the two men were at odds with each other and no help came.

On Christmas Eve 1144 Muslim miners tunnelled away beneath the foundations of the city walls. Large wooden props were put in place to hold up the roof of the tunnel. When the sappers were happy that the tunnel had reached far enough under the walls, they set light to the timber and ran for their lives. The flames took hold of the props, which were soon ablaze. As the timber was incinerated, the roof of the tunnel collapsed, bringing down the walls with it. A huge breach was opened in the defences of the city through which the Muslim forces streamed. Hopelessly outnumbered, the Christian defence collapsed.

A terrible massacre followed in which the entire Frankish population was either taken into captivity or slaughtered. The loss of the city exposed a gap in the defences of Outremer, but other effects were even more important. The failure of the Franks to cooperate in its defence revealed the divisions that existed within Outremer. The taking of the city also caused shockwaves in the West. If the initial conquest of Jerusalem revealed divine approbation of the Crusaders and their enterprises, then the loss of Edessa was equally suggestive of divine displeasure. For the past four decades most Crusading expeditions had been relatively small-scale. The loss of Edessa was so great a shock that it demanded a massive reaction.

The Pope, Eugene III, was not slow to take advantage of the opportunity. He offered an indulgence to all who took part in the Crusade and promised that their dependants and property should be protected while they were away and ordered that no interest should be charged on loans made to finance their expedition. He also asserted that Edessa had been lost because of the sinfulness of Christendom. To expunge their sins, the Christians of the West needed to purchase their redemption with a journey to Outremer, their blood and quite possibly their lives. It was a call that would find an urgent echo forty years later.

The First Crusade had involved none of the kings of the West, but the Second, which was launched in response to the fall of Edessa, included two rulers, Conrad, the Holy Roman Emperor and King Louis VII of France. The two men were hostile to each other and their armies journeyed separately. Both took the land route across Asia Minor, Conrad arriving first, and both armies were badly cut up by the Turks. As a result, the armies were radically reduced in size by the time that they arrived in Outremer in 1148, although the remaining forces were still sizeable.

But, difficult though the journey had been, those who had survived it were now faced with another kind of conundrum: what to do next? It had soon become obvious that there was no clear strategic objective for the expedition to aim for. Edessa was one possible goal; but it had not been chosen. After a great deal of debate and soul-searching, a target was finally selected for the army that assembled at Antioch: Damascus.

This was a strange choice indeed. Everywhere Outremer was surrounded by Muslim enemies – or, to be precise, almost everywhere, because Damascus was the home of just about the only significant Muslim ally of Outremer in the region. It was an independent and powerful city, coveted by other local Muslim powers, particularly a rapidly emerging threat in the shape of Nur ed-Din, ruler of much of Syria. To counteract this, the Emir of Damascus, Unur, had formed an alliance with Outremer. Now, unbelievably, this was about to be torn asunder.

Unur had at first been incredulous when he heard that his city was the target of this new Crusade, but he soon realised that the rumours were all too accurate and he set about organising a vigorous defence. Short of manpower to fight off the Crusaders, he had no option but to search out every available ally, including Nur ed-Din, who was naturally enough very eager to help. So it was that Nur ed-Din, who for so long had been kept at bay by the political acumen of Unur, was invited into the city.

The Crusade fell apart soon after it arrived. The army had at first established itself in the lush orchards that stood outside the city. However, the dense undergrowth here provided perfect cover for guerrillas who launched increasingly fierce counter-attacks on the Christian army. The besiegers for their part were soon forced to move to a much less salubrious camp, which, unfortunately for them, was far removed from any water supplies. The siege disintegrated after just four days.

The problems that led to this debacle presaged the years ahead for Outremer, with differing objectives between newcomers arriving from the West and those who had spent much of their lives in the kingdom. King Louis in particular had been a prime mover for the attack on Damascus. Local barons, conscious of the importance of the truce they had made with Unur, were much more reluctant to engage in the assault on the city. This reluctance became more noticeable during the very short course of the siege and it was dissension from local barons that was one of the main causes of its abandonment.

Louis, an exceptionally pious but not very worldly-wise ruler, clearly struggled to understand the nature of the rapprochement between the Frankish colonists and local Muslims like Unur. But then again such matters were of little concern to him. He was a short-term visitor to Outremer, no doubt sincerely inspired by winning a great victory for Christ but equally likely to return back to his own kingdom soon after.

The local barons and the King of Jerusalem (at the time Baldwin III), on the other hand, were in a far more difficult position. Their state was small when compared with the vast Muslim territories that surrounded it, a tiny island in the middle of a huge Islamic sea. The Franks were good fighters but the mathematical equation was essentially very easy to understand: there were simply far more Muslims than there were Franks.

The emergence of Nur ed-Din marked an important staging post along the road that led to Hattin. He not only had the vision to see that Muslim unity was the way to destroy the Kingdom of Jerusalem but he also had the requisite skills to make that ambition a reality. Time was not on his side and he would die before he could see his dream fulfilled, but he laid the foundations for the ultimate defeat of Outremer.

A devout Muslim, he perceived the Christian enclave of Outremer as an outrage against his religion. Jerusalem was sacred to Muslims, third in importance only after Mecca and Medina. Christian ownership of the city was an abomination. He therefore sought to destroy the Franks. But before he could do so he had to unite Islam. During his lifetime he consolidated much of Syria and, in later years, added Egypt to his empire. His legacy to his heir, Saladin, was a Muslim Middle East that was well on the way to unity.

The strengthening of Nur ed-Din’s position was one significant effect of the failure of the Second Crusade. Equally damaging was the fact that a great expedition, raised by the West at the cost of great effort and considerable financial resources, had achieved nothing. It would be extremely difficult to persuade other Western rulers to commit themselves to such an undertaking in the future. The credibility of Crusading had suffered a major reverse.