being given a licence to build a castle in Yorkshire in 1199, and dying in 1209 or 1210. I believe there are several of his descendants still around today.
There is no evidence, of course, for the presence of two Christian warriors among the courageous Jewish martyrs of York — or, rather, one Christian and Robin Hood — but it is the novelist’s prerogative to place his fictional heroes at the centre of any historical catastrophe and have them emerge more or less unscathed.
The real events of the Third Crusade occurred pretty much as I have described them in this book — I took John Gillingham’s magisterial Richard I (Yale University Press) as the source for most of my information. In the summer of 1190, the main part of Richard’s army met up with the French at Vezelay. They then marched down to Marseilles, sailed to Sicily and over-wintered in Messina, where the crusaders — led by King Richard, and responding to a good deal of provocation from the locals — sacked the town and looted it thoroughly. Relations between kings Richard and Philip slowly began to deteriorate during that long winter of inactivity, and when King Philip departed for the Holy Land on 30th March, just a day before King Richard’s bride Berengaria arrived in Messina, the two monarchs thoroughly distrusted each other. Richard’s huge army followed the French ten days later but while Philip was at Acre by 20th April, Richard’s fleet was scattered by a great storm near Crete and the ships of his royal women ended up, badly damaged, anchored off Cyprus, where they were denied fresh water and food by the upstart Emperor Isaac Comnenos.
Richard attacked Limassol much as described and drove the Emperor off the beach, smashing through a hastily assembled makeshift barricade with only a few hundred men behind him — the King’s small contingent of Welsh archers playing a significant role in the victory. The success of the surprise attack in the olive groves that same night by the ill-mounted Christian knights sealed the Emperor’s fate. And he was indeed bound in silver — rather than iron — chains when he finally surrendered to King Richard on 31st May 1191.
After a siege that had lasted nearly two years, Acre fell to the crusaders on 12th July 1191, a month after Richard’s triumphant arrival. And while the weary Christian besiegers welcomed Richard’s appearance, and the massive reinforcements he brought with him, the King of England’s notions of diplomacy often left much to be desired. He alienated the German contingent by kicking their Duke’s banner off the ramparts and he further strained relations between himself and King Philip by supporting a rival candidate for the role of King of Jerusalem. When the French and Germans quit the Holy Land, Richard was left weaker — but, importantly, in sole command of the remaining Christian forces.
Richard really did order the cold-blooded execution of 2,700 Muslim prisoners of war — an atrocity that was chronicled by the Norman trouvere Ambroise in his History of the Holy War (translated from the Latin by Marianne Ailes; published by The Boydell Press) — before leaving Acre and marching south down the Mediterranean coast towards Jaffa (near modern-day Tel Aviv) to threaten Jerusalem. In order to stop his march south, Saladin was forced to confront Richard about fifteen miles north of Jaffa near a small village called Arsuf.
The Battle of Arsuf, on September 7th 1191, was hailed as a victory for King Richard and his armoured knights — but it was not a decisive one. Saladin received a mauling that day and withdrew his forces but, in the next weeks and months, he was reinforced by troops from all over the Near East until his army was soon once again at its former strength. But the battle did have a deep impact on the fate of the Third Crusade: as a result of his defeat, Saladin vowed never again to permit his light Turkish cavalry to face the might of the heavy Christian knights in a pitched battle. And this proved to be a war-winning strategy: instead of challenging the knights head- on, and losing again, the great Muslim leader opted for a policy of constant harassment, avoiding a major clash of arms. He let time and distance from home do his work for him. Over the next year, Richard’s forces were whittled away in skirmishes and minor sieges, and by death from disease, until it was clear both to the King and to his wily opponent (whom he never actually met) that, while the crusaders just might, with a huge effort, manage to capture Jerusalem, they would be too weak to hold it for long in a hostile environment. They would soon be forced to relinquish the Holy City to the Muslims and all the blood spilt in capturing it would be for nothing. A year after the Battle of Arsuf, after many months of negotiations, a three year-truce was finally agreed. Under the agreement, the crusaders were allowed to keep a crucial toehold on the coast of Outremer and Christians were permitted to visit the holy places in Jerusalem and pray there unmolested. Richard, having at least something to show for the Crusade’s massive expenditure of treasure and lives, was now free to leave the Holy Land, which he did on October 9th 1192.
What happened to King Richard on the fateful journey home, and the further adventures of Robin, Little John, Alan and their friends, will be told in the next book in the series, to be published in the summer of 2011.
Angus Donald
Kent, January 2010
