The Conquering Family (32 page)

The darkest mark on Richard’s reputation resulted from the capture of Acre. Nearly three thousand prisoners had been taken, and it was arranged that they were to be exchanged for the Holy Cross and an equal number of the Christian prisoners who were being held in captivity throughout the East. Whether or not Saladin intended to carry out his part or whether, like more recent exponents of oriental diplomacy, he thought he could wait his opponents out and gain some advantage from it, the Christian prisoners were not produced, nor was the cross forthcoming. Richard waited a long time and then, in a sudden and characteristic blaze of fury, he gave orders for one of the blackest deeds recorded in history. All the prisoners were to be killed without further delay.

This dreadful affair, one of the most barbarous executions the world has seen, was carried out on a large field under the walls of Acre. The captives were assembled
en masse
, thinking, no doubt, that this was their day of liberation. The King’s orders had been that all were to be beheaded. This method proved too slow, however, and so the soldiers charged in and struck the cringing Easterners down with lance and sword and mace. It was many hours before the last turbaned figure fell and the last piteous cry for mercy had been stilled. The soldiers, weary and, no doubt, ashamed of the part they had played in this orgy of slaughter, returned to their encampments, and the blood-soaked field was left to the great mounds of the dead and to the birds of prey which came on slowly flapping wings from north and east and south.

The killing of the prisoners of Acre caused such fury throughout the desert country that most of the Christian captives were wiped out in retaliation. The feeling in Europe, when news of it was received, was one of regret for the fate of the Christian prisoners rather than revulsion over the execution of the Saracens. The Crusaders had gone to Palestine to kill unbelievers, and it did not matter, seemingly, how they went about it.

Richard took the episode in his stride. It had been to him a military necessity, a way of letting the Saracens know that the invading armies
were not to be trifled with any longer. He did not appear at the field of slaughter, being too busy with his final preparations for the march. It may be assumed that the shrieks of the dying prisoners did not cause him any loss of sleep.

Berengaria and Joanna had been lodged in regal comfort in one of the great marble palaces of the city. The interrupted honeymoon may have been partially resumed, but it is certain that Richard saw little of his bride. He left her in Acre when the march started, riding in the van himself with his banners flapping proudly in the blazing sunlight. He had issued orders, most wisely, that the only women to accompany the army were the washerwomen!

Melech-Ric was born on the march of the Crusaders down the coast roads of Palestine. Here the unconquerable hero emerged, the warrior who could not be daunted by odds, the leader who carried victory in his saddlebags and glory on the elevated tip of his spear.

The march was a daring one, as the terrain was not friendly to troop movements. First, it was necessary to cross the Holy Headland. Once the great sanctuary of the Jewish people because it was impassable in places and heavily wooded and, moreover, pitted with caves which made concealment easy, it provided the Saracens with everything they needed to harass the advancing Christians. They would emerge from the caverns with their shrill invocations to Allah and send flights of arrows into the toiling ranks and then disappear. They ambushed the Crusaders from the thick cover of oak and pine. They rolled rocks down on them and blocked the roads which, at best, were winding goat trails.

In the face of all this, Richard’s army had to moil up the steep slopes and along yawning precipices and down through the flint-bottomed wadis, dragging their heavy equipment with them, their mangonels and supplies. Hardest of all to move was the Great Standard of the Crusade, which was like the mast of a ship, made of solid ceiled work bound with iron and so heavy that it had to be drawn on wheels.

The roads beyond Mount Carmel, if such a term could be applied to the winding paths the Crusaders followed, were steep and rough and stony. The underbrush was thick. The Arabs, accustomed to fighting under such conditions, hung on the flanks and rear and not only captured and flayed alive every straggler, but kept the ranks in turmoil with charges and threats to charge.

The heat was unbelievable. Encased in iron and steel, which weighed them down and increased their sufferings, the brave men who had dropped the handles of the plow or had left the bench of the hatmaker to
embrace the cross staggered along and suffered miserably and died by the side of the road under the knives of the unbelievers. The heat drove many of them mad, and they foamed at the mouth and shouted wildly as they fell out of line.

At night they endured almost as much from the cold. As soon as the sun dropped, the heat would evaporate and the sandy encampments would seem as frigid as the space between the worlds. But still each evening the heralds would raise their cry, and the men who were to die on the morrow, or the day after that, or certainly in a very short time, would lift up their arms, and their eyes would fill with tears of faith as they intoned in answer, “Help, help, for the Holy Sepulcher!”

This march, carried out in the intense heat of the summer months, seemed likely to end in disaster when the staggering ranks reached Arsouf early in September. Here Saladin, who had been waiting for the right moment, decided to give battle. He swooped down on the left flank and the rear of the Crusaders, driving back in utter confusion the French contingent under Burgundy and the Knights of St. John. Defeat looked certain until the new battle cry, which the followers of Richard had evolved from the Aquitainian “St. George for the puissant Duke!” was heard from the van. The English King wheeled and came thundering down on the Saracens. Richard himself led the charge, shouting, “St. George for England!”

Richard fought like a man possessed. Wherever he went, no matter what the odds or how unfavorable the situation, the Arabs broke before the fury of his onslaught. He fought for hours, driving the enemy back here, crushing them there, wheeling and charging and changing ranks to charge again, his eyes never losing sight of the battle as a whole and his keen tactical sense telling him where the next blow was to be struck. Perhaps never before had such fighting been seen.

The Arabs retreated finally and left the Crusaders in possession of the field. At Arsouf a new legend had been born, the story of the terrible knight with the reddish-gold hair and the gleaming eyes, the Melech-Ric who would be used for centuries thereafter to discipline children and admonish Arab horses.

Having thus brushed the army of Saladin from his path, Richard finished his march down the coast to Jaffa. Here the crusading forces halted, what was left of them, and spent some weeks repairing the fortifications of the city which the Sarcens had destroyed. Jaffa was to serve as the base of operations in the drive to Jerusalem, and it had to be in strong and secure condition. It was not until New Year’s Day, therefore, that the advance on the Holy City began. The obstacles encountered were greater than ever, and the advance slowed to a stop at Ramie, a few days’ march inland from the coast. The Duke of Burgundy and the Grand Masters of the Templars and Hospitalers were a unit in believing that to
penetrate farther would be to court disaster. Their advice was to go south to Ascalon and leave a garrison there to cover their southern flank. Richard was averse to this, but he finally gave in, and the army swung down the coast. They found Ascalon dismantled, and so once again the slow task of repair began. Richard realized that every day counted now, and he wielded a pick himself in his anxiety to get the work done. He demanded, moreover, that every man in the army, from king to foot soldier, should do the same.

Leopold of Austria responded sulkily, “I am not the son of a carpenter or a mason.” One historian asserts that the English King responded with a blow. Whether he was as injudicious as that or not, the fact remains that Leopold left camp next day with all his men and returned forthwith to Austria. He became Richard’s most bitter enemy, as subsequent events will show.

It was becoming clear that Jerusalem could not be captured. The defenses of the city were very strong, and Saladin had brought up new forces. Richard did not give up hope, however. He ordered another advance, and his somewhat reluctant battalions resumed the march. They penetrated as far as Bethany this time. Here, however, the final blow fell. Burgundy, announcing that he considered the quest hopeless, ordered the remnants of the French force to turn and follow him to the coast. The hand of Philip, reaching back from the West, had stopped his rival at the only moment when success conceivably could have been won.

There was nothing for the rest of the army to do but retreat also. Sadly and reluctantly, Richard gave the order.

Contrary to his usual custom, which was to ride in the van, the English King dropped back to a place with the rear guard. Fanuelle had been killed and he was mounted on an Arab charger sent to him by Saladin. He rode with lowered head, his eyes brooding when not actually filled with tears. He had failed in the only thing in life which counted. For no purpose at all, it seemed, he had impoverished the people over whom he ruled and disposed of his own possessions. Once only on the first day of the retreat did he rouse himself sufficiently to speak. One of his youngest knights came galloping back to him with a suggestion he thought might bring some relief to the downhearted leader.

“My lord King,” said the knight, pointing with the tip of his lance at a high elevation of land around which the army was winding. “If you will ride up there, my lord, you will be able to catch a glimpse of Jerusalem in the distance.”

Richard did not answer immediately. His head had turned instinctively in the direction of the rocky hill. It was several moments before he could control his voice sufficiently to speak.

“Those not worthy to win the Holy City,” he said, “are not worthy to behold it!”

This glimpse of Richard is one that history should preserve, for it shows the lionhearted King at his best. Here is proof of the intensity of his desire to drive the infidels out of the Holy City and to rescue the cross. There had been something deeper than personal pride and military ambition to urge him on. There were depths to his character, clearly, which make it easier to feel sympathy for him in the violent role he was playing. Two events group themselves in the mind: Richard in his burnished armor on which the fierce sun glinted, riding slowly down the flinty trail and refusing to turn back for a sight of the walls and towers of Jerusalem against the sky line because he had failed; and his passionately ambitious father, dying amid the ruins of his shattered glory and crying, “Shame, shame on a conquered king!”

Father and son shared one trait: they could be great in defeat.

There was at this time an extraordinary personage in the East known as the Old Man of the Mountain. He was the ruler of a small racial group called by the outside world Assassins (from which the modern use of the word derives), a corruption of the real name which was Hashashim, the eaters of hemp leaves. Their country was a mere eyrie in the mountains of Lebanon, an almost inaccessible spot, from which the Old Man waged his peculiar kind of war on the rest of mankind without any danger of reprisals.

The subjects of this paranoiac king may have been the forerunners of the dervishes. They were, at any rate, a fanatical race who practiced fantastic rites and indulged in furious dances. Certainly they were original practitioners of kamikazi. Their ruler would send them out to kill anyone in the world he might name, and they would proceed about the task with such single-mindedness, such painstaking attention to detail, that they would accomplish their purpose in the end, if it took months or years. Their method of assassination invariably led to the death of the agent as well as the designated victim, but the mad Assassins were happy to die because they thought they were assured of a place in paradise. They were prepared for murder by being taken into a green garden filled with every form of luxury and many beautiful women. They were told this was paradise, to which their souls would wing after they had died in the service of their master. It sounds very fanciful, but it was the explanation generally believed at the time. This much is certain, that the young Assassins went out to find their victims, and to their own inevitable deaths, with a fervor which betokened a belief in a happy future life.

It was told also of the Old Man of the Mountain that his favorite method of entertaining guests was to lead them out to a garden surrounded
on all sides by high cliffs on which a number of guards were stationed. A motion of his hand would cause one of the sentries to hurl himself, without a trace of hesitation and with a shout which had a note of gladness in it, into the air and die on the rocks at the foot of the declivities.

Why this daemonic old man thus waged war on the world has never been explained satisfactorily. However, he existed and it is also a matter of record that his subjects did come down from their eyrie in the Lebanon Mountains to kill people of note at his dictate.