God's War: A New History of the Crusades

powerful Angevin baron, which left the mouth of the Loire in mid- to late June; and a final squadron of thirty-three ships under the Poitevin William of Fors of Oleron in early to mid-July.⁶⁴ Although drawing on ships and companies from all over the Angevin lands, the bulk of the fleet, as of Richard’s army as a whole, probably came from England. It was placed under strict disciplinary regulations promulgated by Richard I at Chinon in June, when he also appointed justiciars to oversee them. Apparently he also distributed some vessels to crucesignati from his household while he retained the rest for his own use.⁶⁵ Although clearly a collaborative venture, the Angevin crusade fleet would not have been assembled in such as well-organized manner without royal subsidy and direction. The first muster point was Lisbon, at the mouth of the Tagus, where members of the first two contingents, comprising sixty-three vessels, found ready distraction from waiting. Fuelled as much by alcohol as religion, they attacked the Muslim and Jewish quarters of Lisbon, extending their rape and plunder to the Christian population before being brought under control, with some difficulty, by King Sancho I of Portugal and their own officers. The whole fleet was united at the mouth of the Tagus in late July. The next agreed rendezvous was with Richard’s army at Marseilles at the beginning of August. This clearly proved impractical, but when the fleet put in at Marseilles on 22 August it had only missed an impatient King Richard by three weeks. Undaunted, after a refit, the fleet sailed on to the final planned rendezvous at Messina, which it reached at much the same time as the king in late September. The ability to organize in advance such an operation involving a huge fleet and a significant land army working in concert over hundreds of miles and without ready communication says as much about the twelfth-century development of the experience of sea travel around the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts as it does of the ability of Richard I’s government to translate extravagant ambition into efficient action.

The contrast with Philip II’s preparations, while exaggerated by the comparative lack of surviving documentation, appears stark. Failure to collect the Saladin Tithe threw Philip and his nobles on to their own, separate and independent demesnal resources, although before the end of September 1189 the king seems to have received a windfall of 25,000 marks from Richard I in fulfilment of an outstanding debt.⁶⁶ This may explain the apparently rather modest contract negotiated with the Genoese to transport his force to the east. In February 1190, Duke Hugh of Burgundy was appointed to arrange details with Genoa. For 5,850 marks (whether of Paris weight or the much heavier sterling is unclear), the Genoese would provide a fleet for 650 knights and 1,300 squires, their horses, food for men and beasts for eight months and wine for four.⁶⁷ This may have represented only Philip’s immediate military entourage. Even though the duke of Burgundy acted as Philip’s agent, it is possible that he made separate arrangements for the transport of his followers, as did Count Philip of Flanders. While the presence with King Philip of these wealthy provincial magnates suggests that the French army was not negligible, very considerable French armies had already left for the east over the previous two years without needing to wait for the king. However large the total French force in 1190, it seems to have put a strain on Genoese resources, as Philip at Genoa in August was already trying to borrow galleys from Richard. That Philip desired to control his vassals is witnessed by his payments at Christmas 1190 in Sicily of 1,000 marks to the duke of Burgundy and 600 marks to the count of Nevers.⁶⁸ Nevertheless, most sources say Philip was outspent, outnumbered and outmanoeuvred by Richard.

Such was the size and complexity of Richard’s cross-Channel inheritance in July 1189 that he was only crowned king of England at Westminster on 3 September. Richard’s crusade preparations exposed the existence of a wider political community beyond the nobility, knights and urban elites. The combination of fundraising, recruitment and revivalist crusade preaching created wide public involvement with occasionally violent consequences. All coronations acted as rituals of political demonstration and dialogue. In Richard’s case, denying access to the coronation feast to Jews who had come to pay their loyal respects provoked a riot when Jews were discovered in the crowds pressing to witness the banquet. The violence spread to Jewish districts in the city of London, where houses were destroyed and Jews murdered. Rioting soon turned to indiscriminate looting of property regardless of the owner’s religion. The perpetrators included retainers of the nobles gathered for the coronation as well as Londoners. At one point, Ranulf Glanvill and other leading officials unsuccessfully attempted to quell the rioters. This personal involvement of government ministers on one side and a combination of nobles’ households and a cross-section of locals on the other emphasized the link between public policy and popular political action. Some believed they were following royal instructions; others talked providentially of Christian destruction of the ‘enemies of the Cross of Christ’, the very theme of crusade preaching and recruitment campaigns.⁶⁹

Such manifestations of popular response to precise public policies, even if based on partial misunderstanding, were a feature of crusading. So, too, during the recruitment for the Third Crusade in England in 1190 were attacks on the Jews, especially vulnerable with the king’s campaign for funds, his approaching departure and the immediate financial requirements of the crusaders who converged on English towns, ports and main roads in the early months of the year. In Lent 1190, bands of English crusaders, some motivated by a misguided notion of serving God and the cross, began looting Jewish property in commercial centres such as King’s Lynn and Stamford. The violence reached a ghastly climax at York in mid-March. Well-connected local crusaders led a concerted attack on the Jewish community that culminated in a mass suicide and massacre at the royal castle, now Clifford’s Tower, after which, revealingly, the bloodstained crusaders went to York Minster to destroy the Jews’ bonds of credit stored there.⁷⁰

The link between royal action and Jewish persecution was direct. In Germany, on news of the imminent crusade, many in the Jewish communities in the Rhineland evacuated to fortified strongholds until the crusading fervour had subsided. Others, in Mainz, stayed even during the ‘curia Christi’ of 27 March 1188, when Frederick Barbarossa took the cross, protected by imperial officials and later imperial edicts supported by the church hierarchy.⁷¹ In England, the official and ecclesiastical response was less certain. The message received by the crowds at Richard’s coronation seemed equivocal to say the least. Yet where royal authorities followed official policy, which was to protect Jewish property and lives, as both legally belonged to the king, atrocities were prevented. At Lincoln in March 1190 the threatened Jewish community was able to take secure refuge in the royal castle, in stark contrast to what happened a few days later in York, when the Jews also fled to the royal castle, only to be betrayed to the mob. Richard’s absence from England during Lent 1190 may have weakened official resolve to protect the Jews from cash-strapped crusaders, resentful at what they perceived to be wealthy Jews who may also have been their creditors and inflamed by a possibly sincere belief that they were pursuing their crusading vocation by attacking all enemies of the cross. Whatever else, the Jewish assaults of 1189–90 showed how the crusade could penetrate popular consciousness and group behaviour in ways outside the narrow confines of social control or church precept.

By the time of the Jewish massacres, Richard had long gone from his kingdom, crossing from Dover to Calais on 12 December 1189. The previous month, through the French ambassador, Count Routrou of Perche, he had agreed on a tight schedule with Philip of France to resolve outstanding differences and depart for the east in the spring of 1190.⁷² He was away for four years, far longer than he had hoped, planned or imagined. However, Richard, although an absent king, was not a neglectful one. Over the two years on crusade he maintained contact with affairs in France and England. He took with him large numbers of officials and bureaucrats; one, the vice-chancellor Roger Maceal, was drowned off Limassol in April 1191 still wearing the royal seal round his neck (later recovered when Roger’s body was washed ashore).⁷³ The crusade saw the royal administration at war as if the king were campaigning in France and not the far reaches of the Mediterranean. A stream of messengers kept Richard in touch with his dominions. In return he sent home newsletters announcing significant events, such as the fall of Acre and the victory over Saladin at Arsuf. Very exceptionally the journey from England to the Holy Land may have taken as little as two to three months.⁷⁴ If not in control, Richard, like his fellow crusade leaders, was well aware of events at home.

In the spring of 1190, the priority was to bring together the naval, military and diplomatic dimensions of the enterprise. Cooperation between Richard and Philip provided the cornerstone of the operation. Once close allies in prising Henry II’s grip off power, Richard and Philip became increasingly wary of each other’s motives. Richard, the older man (thirty-three; Philip was twenty-five), was the more mercurial and experienced in war. Philip, already into his second decade as king, was only in the early stages of developing what grew into matchless skills of feline diplomacy and political intrigue. A series of meetings between them ensured that arrangements were deftly orchestrated. Each monarch put their dominions in what they hoped would be order. Richard toured Aquitaine in May and June, arriving at Chinon in Anjou on 18 June, then moving on to Tours. There, on 24 June, the date agreed for the beginning of the crusade, he received the scrip and staff of a pilgrim just as, at exactly the same time, Philip