God's War: A New History of the Crusades

to turn a descent to the Sea of Galilee into a massacre or rout. The Franks do not seem to have successfully reconnoitred the enemy’s strength. If they had known how heavily the odds were stacked against them, the decision at Sephoria may have been different.

By the morning of 4 July, the Franks found themselves surrounded. Their only, slim chance of success lay in pressing on towards the fresh water of the Sea of Galilee in the hope of manoeuvring the enemy into a position where a concerted cavalry charge could be mounted. The Frankish vanguard under Raymond of Tripoli made an early attempt to break the stranglehold, but the Muslims merely opened ranks, allowing the count and his followers to escape, an act that confirmed for many Raymond’s treachery. Completely encircled, constantly harassed by scrub fires and hails of arrows, the Franks avoided total disintegration by establishing themselves on the Horns of Hattin, where the remains

9. The Hattin Campaign, July 1187

of an extinct volcano surrounded by the ruins of Iron Age and Bronze Age walls offered some protection. Here both cavalry and infantry made their last stand. As in the similar circumstances when the Antiochene army had been surrounded at the Field of Blood in 1119 and Inab in 1149, the outcome could hardly have been in doubt. Yet, even in extremis, the Christian knights refused to submit. At some point, elements of the rearguard under Reynald of Sidon and Balian of Ibelin, who had borne the brunt of attacks throughout the previous day’s march, managed to break out through the Muslim lines. During the withdrawal to the Horns, a Templar attack failed to disturb the surrounding cordon though lack of support. At the end of the battle, fighting exhaustion and despair, King Guy led at least two charges from his fortified base directed against Saladin’s personal bodyguard, his final throw to reverse the impending defeat. It was later reported that these attacks, even from so desperate a position, alarmed the sultan.⁵¹ Only when the remaining Frankish knights, having dismounted to defend the Horns on foot, were overwhelmed by thirst and fatigue as much as by their enemies, did the Muslims penetrate their final defences. Lack of water may have caused the collapse of horses as well as their riders, preventing further resistance. Guy and his knights were found slumped on the ground, unable to prolong the fight. Before these final moments, Frankish morale was destroyed by the capture of the relic of the True Cross and the death of its bearer, the bishop of Acre. This relic, discovered in the days after the capture of Jerusalem in July 1099, had regularly been carried into battle by the Jerusalem Franks as a totem of God’s support and promise of victory. Its loss, even more than the defeat itself, resonated throughout Christendom, raising the military disaster into a spiritual catastrophe.

Perhaps one of the most surprising aspects of the annihilation of the Frankish host was the numbers of survivors from the highest ranks of the nobility amid the carnage of thousands. Among the Frankish lords on their way to captivity Saladin had ushered to his tent after the battle were King Guy, his brother Aimery, Humphrey of Toron, Reynald of Chatillon, Gerard of Ridefort and old William of Montferrat, effectively most of the governing clique. By contrast, 200 captured rank and file Templars and Hospitallers were butchered amateurishly, almost ceremonially by Muslim Sufis, while infantry survivors were herded off to slave markets across the Levant. Alone of the grandest prisoners, Reynald of Chatillon was executed, possibly by Saladin himself, after an elaborate charade in which the sultan expressly denied Reynald formal hospitality in the form of a drink that was offered round the other captives. The gesture was of revenge on an infidel aggressor who had dared to take war to the holy places of Arabia. The ritualistic manner of his killing as remembered by Saladin’s secretary, who was present, suggested this departure from normal practice followed the needs of propaganda rather than anger. Saladin was the most calculating of politicians. He needed a head. Reynald’s was the obvious victim. In western eyes, his death transformed this grizzled veteran of Outremer’s wars into a martyr whose fate was promenaded to encourage recruitment for the armies that hoped to reverse the decision of Hattin.⁵² Meanwhile, before leaving the battlefield, Saladin ordered a dome to be constructed to celebrate his victory; its foundations survive to this day. Less permanent testimony to the great battle presented itself to the historian Ibn al-Athir, who crossed the battlefield in 1188. Despite the ravages of weather, wild animals and carrion birds, he ‘saw the land all covered with bones, which could be seen even from a distance, lying in heaps or scattered around.’⁵³

The completeness of Saladin’s victory was soon apparent. The army destroyed at Hattin had denuded the rest of the kingdom’s defences. Saladin’s progress was cautious but triumphal. Beginning with the surrender of Tiberias on 5 July and Acre on 10 July, he mopped up most of the ports within weeks, including Sidon (29 July) and Beirut (6 August). Tyre survived, and then only because of the arrival from the west of Conrad of Montferrat, son of the captured William and uncle to the dead Baldwin V, in mid-July. Most of the castles and cities of the interior fell, with the exception of the great fortresses of Montreal, Kerak, Belvoir, Saphet and Belfort. Northern Outremer awaited its turn. On 4 September 1187, Ascalon surrendered after a stiff fight, followed by the remaining strongholds in southern Palestine. After negotiations that had seen the sultan enhance his reputation for magnanimity by allowing the Queen Dowager Maria safe conduct from Jerusalem to Tyre, on 20 September Saladin invested the Holy City.⁵⁴ The garrison was commanded by Patriarch Heraclius, Balian of Ibelin, recently arrived from Tyre, and only two other knights. After a spirited show of resistance, and dramatic penances by the civilian population, the end came by negotiation. Saladin accepted payment for the release of most

10. Saladin Captures Jerusalem, September–October 1187

of the besieged Christians, a contrast with the events of July 1099 that he was not slow to point out. Jerusalem opened its gates on 2 October. Saladin milked the symbolism of his triumph. The cross the Franks had erected on the Dome of the Rock was cast down; the al-Aqsa mosque was restored and Nur al-Din’s pulpit from Aleppo installed; the precincts of the Haram al Sharif purified, the sultan and his family playing a conspicuous role; prominent Frankish religious buildings, such as the house of the patriarch and the church of St Anne, were converted into Islamic seminaries or schools. On 9 October, Friday prayers were resumed in the al-Aqsa. The Holy Sepulchre was spared, some said out of a pragmatic understanding of the importance of the site not the building for Christian pilgrimage, from which in the future the sultan could profit. However, the Latin clergy were expelled. Saladin had fulfilled his titles not just as victorious king, al-Malik al-Nasir, but as Restorer of the World and Faith, Salah al-Dunya wa’l-Din. It was the pinnacle of his career.

News of Hattin reached the west by rumour, letter and messenger. While Saladin was gathering in the shattered remains of the kingdom, Joscius archbishop of Tyre set off to the west, arriving first in Sicily, where King William II immediately dispatched a fleet of about fifty ships with 200 knights.⁵⁵ The disaster produced profound shock. Pope Urban III reputedly died on hearing of it. Even before the full extent of Saladin’s conquests became known, a response began to be organized. In November 1187, Richard count of Poitou, eldest surviving son of Henry II of England, became the first ruler north of the Alps to take the cross.⁵⁶ In late October, the new pope, Gregory VIII, issued a bull, Audita Tremendi, authorizing a general expedition to the east and summarizing the privileges offered to those who took the cross. Gregory described the horrors of the battle of Hattin, ‘a great cause for mourning’, lingering over the Muslim atrocities and indicated the danger facing the Holy City itself; news of the fall of Jerusalem had not yet reached Italy. While laying most of the blame for the calamity on the sins of the Franks, the pope extended the burden of responsibility to include ‘the whole Christian people’. It was a Christian’s duty to repent past sins and restore past mistakes in the service of God and the recovery ‘of that land in which for our salvation truth arose from the earth’.⁵⁷ After forty years of complacency, indifference and lip-service, Christendom’s response to Gregory’s call was overwhelming.

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The Call of the Cross

The response to the loss of Jerusalem and most of Outremer reinvented crusading. Central elements of later campaigns were introduced or confirmed: tightly organized preaching; crusade taxation, which allowed for more professional recruitment; transport by sea; and a widening strategic understanding of what was required to ensure the recovery of Jerusalem. Preachers and polemicists developed a sharper concentration on the flexible image of the