resplendent mantle of the Three Lions, was twenty yards beyond our lines. He was alone among two dozen Muslims, with hundreds more only yards beyond them.
Several of our men, fearing for their King, began to move towards him. But I raised my sword arm to stop them.
The King was perfectly at ease and in control. Without a hint of apprehension, he slowly walked towards the men in the massed ranks of the Muslim army, who stood motionless as he approached them. When he had covered half the distance, he raised his sword, as if in a salute.
We heard the chants in response.
‘
Then, as calmly as he had walked towards them, the King turned and walked back towards us. As he did so, the Muslim army melted away in a hushed silence.
There was also silence in our ranks as the King walked past. No one who witnessed what happened that August day in 1192 outside the walls of Jaffa would ever forget it.
26. Campaign’s End
Within hours of the end of the Battle of Jaffa, a message from the Muslim leadership arrived, not from Saphadin, but from his elder brother, the Sultan Saladin himself. He wanted to open negotiations.
I wondered whether the reaction of his army outside the walls of Jaffa had persuaded the Sultan that the King was unbeatable in battle, or at least that his army thought so. In any case, he wanted to parlay, but he laid down one overriding condition: he must control Ascalon, to give him access to the sea. This was a concession the King steadfastly refused to accept. It was a stalemate even before negotiations had begun.
Conditions in Jaffa were difficult. There were bodies to be cleared, sanitation had been disrupted, and it was vital to restore fresh water and food. When the land army arrived from the north, it only made matters worse by adding more mouths to feed. The King was exhausted, despite his protestations otherwise. He became ill with a severe fever and took to his bed. We were concerned for him; he lost weight by the day, and became grey and gaunt.
In the meantime, Saladin’s position strengthened. I sent scouts to monitor his army. On 8 August, a large contingent of Kurdish light cavalry, Saladin’s own people, arrived from Mosul on the Tigris. Two weeks later, more Mamluks came from Egypt. And just two days later the Sultan’s nephew, al-Mansur, brought several hundred Yemeni desert cavalrymen and their dromedaries from the south.
The Muslims were tightening their grip around us.
I called a gathering of the Grand Quintet. We all agreed that if a compromise could be reached with Saladin, requiring the King to relinquish Ascalon, then we should persuade the Lionheart to do so. The Sultan had spies everywhere; if he found out that the King was ill, he would be sorely tempted to attack Jaffa. If he did so, we might be able to hold the citadel for a while, but not the walls of the city. This would mean putting most of the citizenry and half the army at peril and entombing the rest inside the citadel’s confined spaces.
William Marshal and I were designated to talk to the King, and Benoit of Geneva was asked to request that Saphadin meet with us in Jaffa.
Not the kind of man to cope well with the indolence of a sick bed, when we met with the King he had received news that had only added to his woes and made his temper worse. The revenge he had hoped to exact for the treachery of Hugh of Burgundy in refusing to participate further in the crusade had been thwarted by the man’s death from illness in Acre.
William Marshal tried some words to soothe his anger.
‘God will punish him, Richard, be thankful for that.’
‘That gives me no satisfaction at all. God’s vengeance is all very well, but what about mine!’
His outburst brought on a spasm of coughing that took some time to abate, leaving the King exhausted. We made our points regarding our current situation, and he listened carefully. At the end, he said little, merely asked that we summon his stewards to help him get washed and dressed.
As we left, he called after us.
‘I will see Saphadin here, alone. What I know I have to agree to, I don’t want anyone to hear pass my lips.’
Flanked by Christian knights in all their finery along every step of his way, Saphadin, dressed immaculately in his Arab coat and turban, walked into Jaffa alone on Tuesday 1 September 1192. Horns and trumpets sounded and drums beat. It was a momentous day for Christendom and for Islam. The King had tried manfully to make himself look fit and well and had ordered that those parts of the city that the Emir would see should look as clean and orderly as possible. What transpired between them was never revealed by either man. They talked for over two hours. As they did so, despite the fact that the heat of summer still held us in its fierce grip, the guard of honour remained in place and the entire population and the rest of the military stood in silence to await the outcome.
At last, the large oak door to the King’s apartment opened and the Emir Saphadin walked out of Jaffa, just as he had walked in, dignified and expressionless. The silence continued until, a moment or two later, the Lionheart appeared.
Without his usual agility, he clambered on to a nearby wall to speak to the crowd.
‘We have peace!’
A huge cheer echoed around Jaffa’s walls. It carried across to the ships at anchor and followed Saphadin as he and his entourage rode away into the hinterland.
The Third Great Crusade was over.
The following day, a Muslim emissary appeared with the terms of the peace beautifully transcribed on vellum in Arabic and Latin. It was a complicated compromise, but one that saved face for both sides.
• Ascalon will be ceded to Muslim control, but its fortifications will be destroyed and not rebuilt until at least Easter 1196.
• The Christians will retain Jaffa and the coastal plain to the north as far as Acre and east as far as Ramla and Nazareth without let or hindrance.
• The principalities of Antioch and Tripoli will remain secure and unmolested.
• All fighting will cease forthwith and both sides will be allowed to travel and trade freely.
• Jerusalem will remain under Muslim control, but Christians and people of all faiths will be free to travel to the city, trade in the area and worship at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
It took some weeks for all the formalities to be agreed. Every Christian lord and Muslim emir had to signify their concurrence with their signature and seal. The Lionheart paid all his debts and used large parts of his dwindling treasury to pay the ransom on several hostages being held by the Muslims. Many Christian lords took the opportunity to visit the Holy City and pray at the Holy Sepulchre.
But the Lionheart’s priorities lay to the north. He needed to retrieve his wife and sister from Acre, get his army home and confront the machinations at work in Europe, wrought by a wily brother and a conniving King of France.
A still stricken King had to be transported to Acre on a cart. When we reached the city, a distraught Berengere and Joan set about nursing him back to health. Blondel became a constant companion, singing the chansons the King loved so much and playing chess with him.
Slowly, his condition improved and he began the task of getting his army home. The mission was fraught with difficulties – some ubiquitous, some peculiar. The permanent obstacles were the Mediterranean winds, usually blowing against those going west, and the autumn weather in the Atlantic, which was already upon us and all but impossible to negotiate. To avoid those obstacles, the King ordered his captains to make landfall where they could, as far along the Mediterranean coast as possible. They were to abandon their vessels and return home on
