Authors: Douglas Boyd
Lionheart (28 page)
N
OTES
1.
For the balance of Professor Pryor’s paper on these ships, see
www.cogandgalleyships.com/blog/497372-ships-of-the-crusade-era-part-11/
2.
William of Tyre,
Chronicon
, ed. R.B.C. Huygens (Turnhout: Brepols, 1986), p. 927.
3.
Fulcher of Chartres,
A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, 1095–1127
, ed. and trans. F.R. Ryan (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee, 1969), Vol 2, p. 239.
4.
Benedict of Peterborough,
Gesta Henrici
, Vol 2, p. 126.
5.
Ibid, p. 133.
6.
Gerald of Wales,
De Principis Instructione
, p. 282.
7.
Roger of Howden,
Chronica
, Vol 3, p. 99.
8.
A mark was at that time worth two-thirds of a pound sterling, or 66 pence.
9.
E.R. Labande, ‘Les filles d’Aliénor d’Aquitaine – Etude Comparative’,
Cahiers de Civilisation Mediévale
, XXIX (1986), p. 109.
10.
Pierre of Longtoft,
The Chronicle of Pierre de Longtoft
, ed. T. Wright, Rolls Series 47 (London: Longmans, 1886–88), Vol 2, p. 49.
11.
Personal communication from Professor Pryor, who points out that there are four contemporary, but mutually contradictory, accounts of the voyage from Messina. Even in the same account, a given ship may be referred to as an
esnecca
and a
nef
, plural
nes
or otherwise, just for the sake of rhyme.
12.
Gertwagen, ‘Harbours and Facilities’, p. 97.
13.
Joinville and Villehardouin,
Chronicles of the Crusades
, ed. M.R.B. Shaw (London: Penguin Classics, 1963), p. 196.
14.
Gertwagen, ‘Harbours and Facilities’, p. 98, quoting Cristoforo Buondelmonte, and p. 104.
15.
Alexander Neckham,
Alexandri Neckham De Naturis Rerum Libri Duo with the Poem of the Same Author, De Laudibus Sapientiae
, ed. T. Wright, Rolls Series 34 (London: Longmans, 1863), facsimile edition (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2010), p. 183.
16.
Benedict of Peterborough,
Gesta Henrici
, Vol 2, p. 162.
17.
Gertwagen, ‘Harbours and Facilities’, pp. 97–8.
18.
Hyland,
The Medieval Warhorse
, p. 146.
19.
Benedict of Peterborough,
Gesta Henrici
, Vol 2, p. 163.
20.
Ibid, Vol 2, p. 164.
21.
Personal communication from Professor Pryor.
22.
Benedict of Peterborough,
Gesta Henrici
, Vol 2, p. 165–6.
23.
J. Bradbury,
Philip Augustus
(London: Longmans, 1998), p. 89.
24.
Roger of Howden,
Chronica
, Vol 3, p. 111.
15
O
n 5 May 1191 the Plantagenet fleet sailed away from Famagusta after Richard had restored the former laws of the island under the less tyrannical rule of Byzantium before Isaac Comnenus’
coup d’état
. He arrived at Tyre in a flotilla of twenty-five of the fastest ships, with the slower transports following and several of them lost en route. On the orders of Conrad, the garrison of the city denied entrance to the new arrivals, obliging them to camp outside the walls, which cannot have put Richard in a good mood.
Setting sail down the coast for Acre, the lookouts aboard his flagship
Trenchemer
espied a very large ship flying the French flag. Since Philip had no such vessel in his fleet, the faster galleys approached to board her – at which the crew took up arms, revealing themselves as Saracen reinforcements for the garrison at Acre who initiated combat using arrows and Greek fire. After a short and bloody fight the Saracen ship was rammed or otherwise damaged so severely that it sank, to Richard’s great satisfaction. There were allegedly 1,500 men aboard, all of whom drowned with the exception of the few taken hostage.
1
The crusader flotilla arrived at the siege of Acre two days later, on 8 June 1191 – a week after Joanna, Berengaria and Isaac’s daughter, who had been escorted there by another flotilla.
2
With the German contingent having largely aborted the crusade after their emperor Frederik Barbarossa drowned in Turkey and the Sicilians having departed after the death of William II, plus all the other departures, the brunt of the recent fighting had fallen on Philip’s men. So, despite the disputes between the two kings on Sicily, Philip had good reason initially to be glad to see the Plantagenet reinforcements. The great rejoicing in the crusader camp produced a corresponding gloom in the garrison, watching from the city walls as all these well-armed, relatively healthy and well-equipped European knights and foot soldiers disembarked on the open beach to the south of the city, instead of the 1,500 reinforcements they had been expecting to sail into the harbour.
3
Philip had succeeded in damaging the city walls with his largest catapult called Malvoisin, or Bad Neighbour. But it and the siege engines of the Templars and Hospitallers had not created any breach large enough for an attack to break through into the city. In the camp many men were ill from the midsummer heat, which made a mail
cotte
uncomfortable even when covered by a surcoat and turned a helmet into an oven around the head. Among the victims of the lack of hygiene and bad food was Philip Augustus himself, suffering from what they called
arnaldia
. Later known as
la suette
in France, this was possibly a viral contagious fever with copious and debilitating sweating and skin rashes, and which caused the nails and hair to fall out, lips to peel painfully and whole strips of skin to fall away from the body. During several medieval and later epidemics in England it was called ‘the sweating syknes’ and last appeared in northern France in 1906.
Scenting a new source of profit in all the hungry bellies Richard brought with him, both the Pisan and Genoese merchants wished to swear allegiance to him. Knowing the bonds between Philip and the Genoese, he sent them away empty-handed, allowing the Pisans to do homage, which placed them under his protection. His siege engines, shipped dismantled from Europe and swiftly erected near the walls, proved more effective in breaching those walls than had Philip’s, which were burned down by Greek fire at the Accursed Tower whilst left unmanned.
4
A worse blow to Philip’s pride was Richard’s poaching of his locally recruited mercenaries by offering them 4 gold
bezants
a month, as against the 3
bezants
Philip had been paying them.
Morale was already at a low ebb: on occasions groups of besiegers cheered a telling sortie against crusaders from another country or who spoke another language.
5
One of the sorties from the city reached as far as the ‘red light area’ of the crusader camp. But hostilities were not continuous: in the way of medieval warfare, the kings and nobles took time off for sport. On one occasion when Philip Augustus’ white falcon flew into the city, he sent a messenger offering a reward of 1,000
bezants
for its return, but the bird was apparently considered more valuable as meat by whoever caught it. As just one proof that business was still business, the debt contracted by Jean de Chastenay on Sicily was repaid by his son Gautier the month that he died, and the pawned valuables were returned to him by the lender.
6
During quieter periods, courtesy visits were exchanged between the knights of both sides. In the Saracen camp Richard was known as
malik al-Inkitar
– meaning ‘the king of England’,
Inkitar
being an Arabic transliteration of ‘Angleterre’, which the Muslims had heard used by speakers of
lingua franca
in the East. Despatching a Moroccan prisoner under a flag of truce, Richard asked for an interview with Saladin, to get the measure of his adversary. He perhaps also wanted to impress him with his red hair and tall stature, compared with Saladin’s swarthy skin, short stature and slight build. The historian Baha al-Din, who was a member of Saladin’s court at the time, commented that Richard’s intention was to reconnoitre the weaknesses of the Saracen positions. Instead, Saladin sent his brother al-‘Adil, known to the crusaders as Saphadin, to a meeting with the message: ‘Kings meet only after an accord, for it is unthinkable for them to wage war once they know each other and have broken bread together.’
7
It was soon Richard’s turn to succumb to
la suette
, so that for a while both kings were ill. Richard also suffered a return of the malaria that had troubled him for years. Both diseases were then common in Europe, let alone in the unsanitary hell of a midsummer siege camp in the Middle East. It is also extremely probable that all the crusaders had brought with them one or more species of parasitic intestinal worms. Recent state-of-the-art analysis of the soil excavated from two crusader-period latrines at Acre has also revealed evidence of rampant amoebic dysentery.
8
Cholera might break out at any moment and rats feeding on the refuse and corpses brought the risk of plague. To the illnesses caused by lack of sanitation and contamination of drinking water must be added severe, and sometimes fatal, fevers from ticks and sand flies biting men who slept on the ground, whether under cover or not. And wounds, however slight, were liable to go septic, leading to gangrene and death.
Night and day, the crusaders catapulted into the city missiles of stone and iron and fire, as well as living and dead prisoners and putrid carcases of animals designed to spread disease among the defenders, who in turn operated counter-batteries of catapults, often returning the same missiles, and raining down on the besiegers a hail of arrows, stones and fire. At night the thudding of catapults and rams, the yells of exultation and screams of the wounded made sleep impossible for those who were not exhausted. The elegant pavilions of the nobles gave some respite from the clouds of flies breeding in the open latrines, and the sand flies and mosquitoes that bit every inch of exposed flesh, but many men slept in the open, even on the ground, despite the risk of scrub typhus. Nor was rank any protection; those who died included many of the nobles.
Whether through sickness or to spite Philip Augustus, Richard refused to take part in the attack on the city after Saladin’s nephew Taqi tried to break through to its relief on 3 July, when the wall was breached. The unsupported French attack was driven back by the defenders’ use of Greek fire. Philip then had a relapse of
la suette
, but nevertheless insisted on being carried on an armoured litter to within crossbow range of the walls, so that he could take pot shots at defenders incautious enough to show themselves, as Richard was also later to do.