What was at stake: The fate of Christianity or Islam.
So advised the Byzantine emperor, Leo the Wise. Leo was thinking of the knights of the Carolingian Empire, but the techniques of Charlemagne's knights had been adopted all over Europe when the crusades began. Still, perhaps because the first Crusaders were overwhelmingly French or Norman, to Byzantines and Muslims alike, all Westerners were "Franks." And Leo's advice was still sound.
War in Europe—a moist mass of peninsulas and islands, covered with forests and broken up by rivers and mountains—meant fighting at close quarters. Knights were encased in heavy mail, and foot soldiers wore as much armor as they could afford. Often the knight's huge charger, or destrier, was also armored. The destrier's saddle let the knight put all his weight and his horse's weight, too, behind a lance thrust. The lance and the sword were the Western knight's only weapons, and the charge was his only tactic.
Horsemen of the steppes, unhampered by woods or many rivers, covered wide areas in their skirmishing.They depended mostly on the bow and usually charged only after their foes had been thoroughly softened up by archery.Asian tactics left little room for infantry,except in sieges.The Frankish footmen, who had beaten the Romans, Goths, Vandals, Huns, and Arabs for centuries, had not forgotten how to fight.They were armed with spears and shields,and also with a new weapon: the recently re-invented crossbow. Anna Comnena, a Byzantine princess, described the device she saw in the hands of the first Crusaders:"It is a weapon unknown to Greeks and to the Barbarians.
This terrible weapon is not worked by drawing its cord with the right hand,and holding it with the left hand.The user rests both his feet against the bow, whilst he strains at the bow with the full force of his arms. When the cord is released, the arrow leaves the groove with a force against which nothing is proof. It not only penetrates a buckler, but also pierces the man and his armour through and through."
The Crusaders' military system was based on the close coordination of crossbow-men, infantry spearmen, and heavily armored knights. The disciplined spearmen kept the Turkish horse archers away from the knights, who led their destriers until they were ready to fight. Between every two spearmen was a crossbowman who shot down Saracens before they could get close enough to hit anything with their bows. If the frustrated Muslims tried to break through the Christian lines with a mass attack, the infantry opened its ranks and the mounted knights charged. As at Marathon, the Westerners had heavier armor and carried longer spears. Unless there was an enor-mous imbalance of numbers the Muslims always lost.
The Turks
When Mohammed's followers rode out of Arabia and into the Roman lands of North Africa, Syria, and Mesopotamia, they discovered they had allies. The conflict between the Catholics and the Monophysites (see The Nika Rebellion, pg. 16) was still going on. The Catholics were in control in Constantinople, so the Monophysites in the Near East welcomed the Muslims as liberators. Their Prophet had taught the Arabs that Christians and Jews were "people of the book" and must be tolerated, so the con-quest went smoothly.After they were established, Muslim rulers bought pagan Turks as slaves, converted them, and made them soldiers, called mamluks. In time, the mamluks overthrew their masters and became rulers.
Compared with the Arabs and Persians, the Turks were barbarians. They did not understand all the subtleties of Islam, such as why they must make special allowances for Christians and Jews. This was one reason why the Crusaders were in the Holy Land. The other was the desire of the pope to channel the energies of the nobles and knights away from fighting each other and slaughtering Christian peasants.
The Turks, like the Christian knights, loved fighting, even fighting each other. The so-called Seljuk Empire broke up into a welter of rival sultanates, sheikh-doms, and emirates. At the height of this confusion, the Franks appeared and carved out the Crusader principalities.Then a new leader, a Kurdish sultan who called himself El Malik en Nasir Salehed-Din, appeared. Saladin, as the Franks called him, conquered the petty Muslim states one after another. Then he turned his attention to the Christians.For eight years, King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, a leper who assumed royal powers at 16, outmaneuvered and frustrated the great Saladin. Then, Baldwin the Leper, one of history's most underrated generals, died.
When he knew death was near, King Bald-win appointed his brother-in-law, Guy de Lusignan, regent, but Guy proved so inept the King dismissed him and appointed Count Raymond of Tripoli instead. But when Baldwin died, his sister, Sybilla, organized a coup d'etat that made her husband king.
More than Byzantine politics
King Guy quickly proved that he couldn't control his own barons, let alone Sala-din. Count Raymond, who thought he should be Icing, and Reynald de Chatillon, were the two most uncontrollable barons. Reynald, who spent years in a Muslim prison, was a fanatic who said he was not bound by any oath sworn to an infidel. He was also a bandit and a pirate who had robbed and killed Christians as well as Muslims. When Reynald broke the truce with Saladin by attacking a Muslim caravan, the Sultan besieged his castle, but was driven away by King Baldwin and forced to sign another truce. But before that happened, Raymond had protected his own interests by signing a separate truce with Saladin.
When Guy became king, the Master of the Temple, Gerard of Ridfort, urged him to move against Raymond. Saladin, however, sent word that he would support the Count of Tripoli with his army. Then Saladin asked Raymond for permission to cross his territory to raid Acre. Raymond agreed, provided the raid lasted no more than 24 hours and no Christians were harmed.Saladin's 7,000 cavalry were returning from their visit to Acre when they encountered a band of 130 knights under the Master of the Temple at Sephoria. The knights were an embassy from Guy to Raymond. Gerard didn't hesitate; he ordered an attack. Fortune favors the brave, but not the absurd. Almost all the Christians were killed. Gerard got away.
Now that war had begun with the Muslims, Raymond made his peace with Guy and joined the army the King was raising. By stripping castles of most of their garrisons and emptying the treasury to get cash, Guy had assembled 1,200 knights, 2,000 Turcopole light cavalry, and 10,000 infantry. Saladin, though, raised a much bigger army. He besieged Tiberias, where Raymond's castle was located.Surprisingly, Raymond, renowned for devotion to his own interests, advised against attempting to relieve Tiberias. The fortress was strong, he said, and his wife, Princess Eschiva, could hold out for a long time. It was midsummer.
Saladin would find little fodder for his huge cavalry force. He'd have to give up the siege soon. And if Tiberias should fall, the loss of Princess Eschiva was not as great as the loss of the country.Raymond's counsel was good, but nobody trusted him. Both Reynald and Gerard of Ridfort opposed him. Reynald lived to fight Muslims, and Gerard wanted to live down the shame of running from the fight at Sephoria.
As a compromise, Guy brought the army up to Sephoria. The town was near Tiberias, and it had plenty of water and fodder. If Saladin attacked them there, he was bound to lose. But that night, Gerard sneaked into Guy's tent and shamed the King into trying to relieve Tiberias.
The dry well of Hattin
The plan was to drive directly at Saladin's water supply, the Sea of Galilee. With-out water, the Muslims would have to withdraw. The tactics would be the time-tested Christian pile driver. Cavalry and infantry were heavily armored. The poorest foot soldiers wore quilted or felt jackets that were amazingly arrow-resistant."I have seen soldiers with up to 21 arrows stuck in their bodies marching no less easily for that," wrote Beha ed-Din Ibn Shedad, a Muslim official and friend of Saladin.He did not, however, see them marching easily in July. The heat was scorching. Metal armor became searing hot where it was exposed to the sun.
Many men had emptied their canteens before noon. The Turkish and Arab horsemen seemed to be everywhere. They swarmed around the Christians, shooting arrows and dashing back into clouds of dust. The crossbowmen tried to reply, but they couldn't cock their crossbows while walking. The men had to stop, hold their bows with their feet, and draw their bowstrings with both hands. Every time the crossbowmen stopped, the whole army had to stop. Coordination between crossbowmen, infantry spearmen, and cavalry was the essence of Crusader tactics.
The Turcopole cavalry fought in the Turkish manner, but they were overwhelmed by the masses of Muslim light cavalry. The Christian knights charged again and again, but the more agile Muslim horses scampered away from each charge. To the heavily armored knights, the weather was a more dangerous foe than the Muslims. Some knights actually suffocated to death in their closed helmets. Then the Templars (the rear guard) sent word that their horses could go no farther. Guy saw the village of Hattin, and where there were houses, there must be water.
He ordered a halt at the village. When they arrived, though, the Crusaders found that the well was dry and the village abandoned. But the men were too exhausted to move on.Saladin surrounded the village and distributed more arrows to his troops. He brought up 70 camels loaded down with more arrows. He set up his tent on a hill where he had a good view of the battlefield. Unlike the Crusader leaders, Saladin was a strategist, not a fighter. He hated war, was inept with weapons, and was never in the forefront of his troops.
On the second day of the battle the Muslims set fire to the scrub, and the Christians, already suffering horribly from thirst, fought right through the blaze. When Guy attempted to rally the soldiers, they lost cohesion, and the Muslim attacks became more effective. They were dying of thirst, and the Sea of Galilee was only three miles away, all downhill after crossing a ridge."Let's save ourselves!" a foot soldier shouted. A disorganized mass of infantry stampeded for the ridgeline. But the spearmen and crossbowmen were unable to coordinate their efforts. And they were too tired to fight anymore. Some could no longer even stand.
They surrendered. Beha ed-Din saw one Muslim soldier tie up and lead away 30 Christian infantrymen.Raymond of Tripoli gathered his knights, charged the ring of horse archers and broke through. Guy and his remaining men tried to make a stand on a hill, but the Muslims swept over them.The battle was over. Almost all the Christian fighting men in Palestine had been killed or captured. Saladin sent most of the surviving Crusader infantry to the slave markets, but he beheaded all of the Templars and Hospitalers. He kept the other nobles for ransom. He didn't get much ransom. Prisoners he liked, such as King Guy, he released without ransom.
And if ransom as late in coming for the other knights, he had them butchered for the entertainment of his dinner guests.Immediately after the battle, Saladin had the Crusader leaders sent to his tent. He gave Guy a goblet of chilled rose water. Guy drank a portion and passed the cup to Reynald de Chatillon. Saladin became angry because he had vowed to personally behead Reynald."Remind the King," Saladin said to his interpreter, "that it is he, not I who gives drink to this man."A little later, the Sultan asked Reynald to renounce Christianity.
As he expected, the Crusader contemptuously refused. Saladin swung his sword, but, inept as always, he cut off Reynald's arm instead of his head. The Sultan's embarrassed attendants immediately beheaded the baron.
The beginning of the end
Saladin released Guy on the condition that he leave the Holy Land. Guy immediately broke his promise. He went to Tyre, hoping to renew the fight, but the garrison there refused to admit him. In Europe, however, the Holy Roman Emperor and the kings of England and France started a new crusade. The Emperor died en route, but the French and English arrived. Richard the Lionhearted almost got to Jerusalem, but he realized that a garrison there could easily be cut off by the Turldsh and Arab horse archers.
Only a full field army could resupply Crusaders in Jerusalem. Richard signed a truce with Saladin. The Crusaders were able to hang on to a greatly reduced portion of the Holy Land for another century, but the crusading cause was defunct.Given the demographics, that result was inevitable. What gives Hattin its greatest importance is its effect on the Muslims, not the Christians. It convinced them that the ancient tactics of the horse archer, demonstrated centuries before by the Scythians and the Parthians, could not be beaten.
The Arabs knew about saltpeter, which they called "the snow from China," and its use in gunpowder long before the Europeans, but they neglected to develop guns. Cannons and the clumsy muskets the Europeans made could not be used by horse archers and would be useless against them.So the lords of Dar es Islam sat back, confident of their invincibility, and grew fat siphoning riches from the trade between Europe and the Far East. And three centuries later, as we'll see in the next battle, the roof fell in.
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