Read The Tragedy of the Templars Online
Authors: Michael Haag
The Tragedy of the Templars (34 page)
There on the waterless plateau the Christian army spent the night, their misery made worse by the smoke and flames from the dry scrub on the hillside that the Muslims had set alight. Under cover of darkness Saladin's forces crept closer; any Franks who slipped away in search of water were killed; and by dawn the Christian army was surrounded on all sides. Soon after daybreak on 4 July 1187 Saladin attacked. Against him charged the Christian infantry, desperate to break through his lines to reach water, but they were killed or driven back; so goes the account in one chronicle, but in another they simply ran away and refused to fight. In yet another version the king
        gave orders for the master and the knights of the Temple to begin hostilities; some of the soldiers were drawn up in battle order for the fight and the battle standards were entrusted to the count of Tripoli and the other leaders of the army. Attacking like strong lions, the knights of the Temple killed part of the enemy and caused the rest to retreat, but our other troops failed to obey the king's orders. They did not advance to provide back-up and, as a result, the knights of the Temple were hemmed in and slaughtered.
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By all accounts the knights put up a terrific fight and repeatedly checked Saladin's cavalry attacks, but their real enemy was thirst and as their strength failed them their numbers were diminished.
The Templars and the Hospitallers gathered round the king and the True Cross, where they were surrounded by the confusion and press of battle, the
Expugnatione
describing how the Christians were âjumbled together and mingled with the Turks'. It goes on to tell how the king, seeing that all was lost, cried out that those who could escape should do so before it was too late. At this Raymond of Tripoli and Balian of Ibelin with their men charged the enemy line, hoping to break through. âThe speed of their horses in this confined space trampled down the Christians and made a kind of bridge, giving the riders a level path. In this manner they got out of that narrow place by fleeing over their own men, over the Turks, and over the cross.'
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As they bore down on Saladin's line, it opened and let them pass through, then closed again; they were the last to get away. Soon the battle was over. The True Cross fell to Muslim hands. King Guy and those around him gave way to exhaustion and were taken.
Saladin's tent was set up on the battlefield, and here the king and his surviving barons were brought before their conqueror. Seating the king next to him, Saladin handed Guy a cup of water to slake his thirst. It also was a sign, for it was the custom that to give food or drink to a captive meant that his life was spared. But when Guy passed the water to Raynald of Chatillon, Saladin told the king, âYou gave the man the drink, not I.' Then he turned angrily on Raynald, reminding him of his brigandage and his raids down the Red Sea coast to the ports for Medina and Mecca, and accused him of blasphemy. When Saladin offered Raynald the choice between conversion to Islam and death, Raynald replied that it was Saladin who should convert to Christianity to avoid the eternal damnation that awaited unbelievers â at which Saladin struck off his head.
Saladin's secretary Imad al-Din then surveyed the battlefield which he described in pornographic detail.
        The dead were scattered over the mountains and the valleys, lying immobile on their sides. Hattin shrugged off their carcasses, and the perfume of victory was thick with the stench of them. I passed by them and saw the limbs of the fallen cast naked on the field of battle, scattered in pieces over the site of the encounter, lacerated and disjointed, with heads cracked open, throats split, spines broken, necks shattered, feet in pieces, noses mutilated, extremities torn off, members dismembered, parts shredded, eyes gouged out, stomachs disembowelled, hair coloured with blood, the praecordium slashed, fingers sliced off, the thorax shattered, the ribs broken, the joints dislocated, the chests smashed, throats slit, bodies cut in half, arms pulverised, lips shrivelled, foreheads pierced, forelocks dyed scarlet, breasts covered with blood, ribs pierced, elbows disjointed, bones broken, tunics torn off, faces lifeless, wounds gaping, skin flayed, fragments chopped off, hair lopped, backs skinless, bodies dismembered, teeth knocked out, blood spilt, life's last breath exhaled, necks lolling, joints slackened, pupils liquefied, heads hanging, livers crushed, ribs staved in, heads shattered, breasts flayed, spirits flown, their very ghosts crushed; like stones among stones, a lesson to the wise.
But this grisly scene in Muslim eyes was a purification.
        This field of battle had become a sea of blood; the dust was stained red, rivers of blood ran freely, and the face of the true Faith was revealed free from those shadowly abominations. O sweet rivers of victory over such evil! O burning, punishing blows on those carcasses! O sweet heart's comforter against that confusion! O welcome prayers at the joyful news of such an event!
Singled out for special mention were âthe faces of the infernal Templars ground in the dust, skulls trampled underfoot, the bodies they were blessed with hewn to pieces and scattered'.
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Saladin reserved the final act of purification for the Templars and Hospitallers who had survived the battle. Although Gerard of Ridefort, the Templars' Grand Master, was among the prisoners taken to Damascus together with the king, the other monastic knights faced a different fate. Frankish nobles were âirresponsible, thoughtless, petty and covetous', thought al-Hawari, who wrote a military treatise for Saladin, qualities that allowed them to be manipulated to suit Saladin's purposes; but the Templars and Hospitallers were dangerous because âthey have great fervour in religion, paying no attention to the things of this world'.
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Two days after his victory, wrote Imad al-Din, who was an eyewitness to the event, Saladin
        sought out the Templars and Hospitallers who had been captured and said: âI shall purify the land of these two impure races.' He assigned fifty dinar to every man who had taken one of them prisoner, and immediately the army brought forward at least a hundred of them. He ordered that they should be beheaded, choosing to have them dead rather than in prison. With him was a whole band of scholars and Sufis and a certain number of devout men and ascetics; each begged to be allowed to kill one of them, and drew his sword and rolled back his sleeve. Saladin, his face joyful, was sitting on his dais; the unbelievers showed black despair.
With Saladin's troops lined up on either side, the knights awaited their death one by one. The slash of the blade was not always cleanly done. But there was praise from Imad al-Din for the Muslim holy man he saw âwho laughed scornfully' as he slaughtered one victim after another.
        How many promises he fulfilled, how much praise he won, the eternal rewards he secured with the blood he had shed, the pious works added to his account with a neck severed by him! How many blades did he stain with blood for a victory he longed for, how many lances did he brandish against the lion he captured, how many ills did he cure by the ills he brought upon a Templar. [. . .] I saw how he killed unbelief to give life to Islam, and destroyed polytheism to build monotheism, and drove decisions through to their conclusion to satisfy the community of the faithful, and cut down enemies in the defence of friends!
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The Fall of Jerusalem to Saladin
T
HE TOWNS AND CITIES
and castles had been emptied to defend the Holy Land against the Muslim invasion. Now, after the battle of Hattin, Outremer stood almost entirely defenceless against Saladin. Terricus, the grand preceptor of the Temple and the senior surviving knight of the order after Hattin, wrote to his brothers in the West in the latter part of July or early August 1187, telling them of the fateful battle.
        They drove us into a very rocky area where they attacked us so vigorously that they captured the Holy Cross and our king, and wiped out all our host. Two hundred and thirty of our brothers were beheaded that day, we believe, the other sixty having been killed on 1 May [at the Springs of Cresson]. It was with great difficulty that the lord count of Tripoli, lord Reynald of Sidon and lord Balian and we ourselves managed to escape from that dreadful battlefield.
Terricus then reported how the slaughter was continuing across the length and breadth of Outremer:
        Intoxicated by the blood of our Christians the whole horde of pagans immediately set out for the city of Acre. They took it by force and then laid waste to the whole land. Only Jerusalem, Ascalon, Tyre and Beirut still remain in our possession for Christendom, but we will not be able to hold them unless help comes quickly from you and from above as virtually all their inhabitants are dead. At the present moment they are actively besieging Tyre, attacking day and night, and their numbers are so great that they are like a swarm of ants covering the whole face of the earth from Tyre to Jerusalem, even as far as Gaza. Find it in yourselves to come with all haste to our aid and that of Eastern Christendom which is, at present, totally lost, so that through God and with the support of your eminent brotherhood we may save the cities that remain. Farewell.
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Acre surrendered on 10 July, Sidon followed suit on the 29th, and Beirut capitulated on 6 August. Jaffa refused to yield; in July it was taken by storm, and its entire population were killed or sent to the slave markets and harems of Aleppo. Ascalon offered some brief resistance, but Saladin had King Guy plead to its people that his liberty could be bought by their city's surrender, and on 4 September they gave in. A few days later Saladin brought Gerard of Ridefort to the walls of Gaza and made him tell the Templars inside to surrender, which, obedient to their Grand Master, they promptly did. In the south only Tyre resisted capture; in the north there was Tripoli, Tortosa and Antioch, and they could be dealt with later â but this was a serious strategic mistake; Saladin's capture of the ports would have severed Outremer from the wider Mediterranean and from overseas aid, which would eventually come in the form of the Third Crusade; but caught up in his own jihad propaganda, Saladin turned to Jerusalem.
Refugees were flooding into Jerusalem, but there were few men of fighting age or experience among them, and for every man there were said to be fifty women and children. Heraclius, the patriarch of Jerusalem, wrote to Pope Urban III in September reporting that now only the holy city and Tyre were holding out against the onslaught. Everywhere else the Muslims had captured all the towns, âkilling almost all their inhabitants', and now Saladin was expected any day to lay siege to Jerusalem, which was âtotally lacking in men to defend it'.
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Queen Sibylla did what she could, together with Heraclius and various functionaries of the military orders, to prepare the city's defence, but Jerusalem lacked a leader until Balian of Ibelin appeared. After Hattin his wife and children had sought safety within its walls, and Balian had come to Jerusalem to bring them to the coast at Tyre. As Tyre was under siege, Balian was able to make this journey only with Saladin's permission, which was granted on condition that he travel unarmed and stay in Jerusalem no more than one night. But the people of Jerusalem clamoured for Balian to stay, and finally he accepted the task of readying the city against Saladin's attack. His most immediate need was to raise morale; there were only two knights left in the city, so Balian knighted every boy over sixteen of noble birth and also thirty burgesses. To fund the defence he took over the royal treasury and even stripped the silver from the dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He sent parties out into the areas all around to collect all the food before the Muslims arrived, and he gave arms to every able-bodied man.
After allowing his men to pillage and raid all along the coast, Saladin marched his army to Jerusalem, and on 20 September he was camped outside the city. He is said to have inquired about the location of the Aqsa mosque and asked the shortest route to it, saying that was also the shortest route to heaven. The story makes no sense, however, as the Temple Mount is on the eastern side of the city and Saladin had arranged his men and his siege machines as far away as could be, opposite the western wall, which was defended by a deep ravine and ran between two formidable towers, that of David and Tancred. But the story was part of the jihad propaganda, which focused on the Temple Mount and the Night Journey and was developed by Saladin to justify the Muslim claim to Jerusalem. Likewise the siege of Jerusalem was presented by Muslim chroniclers in epic terms, with both Imad al-Din and Ibn Shaddad making the fantastical claims that the city was filled with more than sixty thousand fighting men, while Ibn al-Athir reported that the Franks had âexactly 70,000 cavalry and infantry in Jerusalem'. But another remark by Ibn al-Athir may have been true, that as the Turks approached the walls they saw âa terrifying crowd of men and heard an uproar of voices coming from the inhabitants behind the walls that led them to infer the number of people who must be assembled there',
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probably a brave and orchestrated effort by the people of Jerusalem to make themselves seem defiant and intimidating.
After several days achieving nothing against the western wall Saladin moved his forces to the north, where the land is high and the city most vulnerable. There he set his sappers to work undermining that section of the northern battlements where Godfrey of Bouillon had forced his way into Jerusalem eighty-eight years earlier. By 29 September a great breach was made in the wall, which was tenaciously defended, but it was only a matter of time before the defenders would be overwhelmed by Saladin's hordes. Balian with the support of the patriarch decided to seek terms, and on 30 September he went to Saladin's tent.