Titans of History (17 page)

“He made everything into a joke and made his listeners laugh
uncontrollably,” reported the somewhat disapproving chronicler William of Malmesbury, who apparently felt that William's crusading misadventures should not be fodder for uproarious rhyming couplets. The excommunicated duke, who had tucked away two wives in convents, took for his mistress the aptly named Dangerosa, wife of one of his barons. His shield had her image on it: William wanted to bear her into battle as often as she had borne him into bed.

Unable to have children with his beloved Dangerosa, Duke William married his son to her daughter. The child of this marriage, Eleanor of Aquitaine, grew up in a court unique in Europe for its secularity, its abandon, its sheer
joie de vivre
, surrounded by poets and singers who idolized women as beautiful, brilliant, and able always to bend men to their will.

Coming from this permissive, secular environment, Eleanor was an exotic figure in the stiffer northern courts of England and France.

At the age of sixteen Eleanor became the queen of Louis VII of France, who was a dour and solemn religious fanatic. But she refused to be simply a consort. Louis's apparent transformation from a mild-mannered, pious young man into an energetic ruler coincided with his marriage, and contemporaries suspected Eleanor's hand lay behind the king's sudden willingness to crack down on his barons and meddle in Church appointments. When Louis went on the Second Crusade, Eleanor—always willing to endure the hardships of travel—joined him.

But Eleanor had quickly become disillusioned with her husband: “I thought I had married a king, and found I had married a monk,” she lamented. The crusade was a disaster. Louis was as inept as a warlord as he was joyless as a husband. Louis's army was almost defeated on route through Asia Minor. In Antioch, Eleanor flirted with her worldly, debonair uncle Prince Raymond of Antioch,
“the handsomest of princes,” causing one of the greatest sexual scandals of the era. It was claimed Eleanor was “unfaithful.” Louis kidnapped her and took her as a virtual prisoner to Jerusalem. But the crusader attack on Damascus failed and the unhappy couple returned to France. When their marriage finally ended in divorce, with no male heirs, Eleanor refused to retreat into a convent, as was expected. Rather, she took her future into her own hands. She knew what a prize her lands were. Having already thwarted two abduction attempts by would-be suitors, she proposed marriage to Duke Henry of Normandy by messenger. At the time of their marriage he was only nineteen, eleven years her junior. Just over a year later Henry succeeded to the English crown, as Henry II, and Eleanor became queen of England, uniting their vast territories to form the Angevin empire. It comprised Aquitaine, Anjou, Brittany, Gascony, Maine and Normandy—half of modern France—as well as England and Ireland. Later, when Henry's bullying rule became intolerable, it was Eleanor who marshaled her sons into a rebellion against their father—a rebellion that she persuaded Louis to support. Henry II imprisoned her for a decade. On Henry's death, he was succeeded by Richard I the Lionheart, who ultimately freed her.

Eleanor helped secure her sons' inheritance. She had always governed well in her beloved Aquitaine, and as regent for Richard I, her favorite son, while he was on crusade, Eleanor demonstrated her capacity as a ruler. She thwarted repeated threats to his throne, including his brother John's rebellion. When the holy Roman emperor captured Richard, Eleanor secured his freedom via complex negotiations and by raising the vast ransom demanded. She also sent several fierce letters reprimanding the pope for his failure to protect a crusader. After Richard's death, Eleanor secured the succession of the unpopular John. Traveling long distances across the Angevin lands, Eleanor successfully campaigned for the
support of the barons of England and Normandy over rival claimants to the throne. At eighty, Eleanor crossed the Pyrenees to choose a bride for Louis VIII personally from among her Castilian granddaughters to cement the Anglo-French alliance. Her judgment was unerring: Blanche of Castile, as queen of France, became a ruler as formidable as her grandmother had been.

Eleanor's life consistently tested her powers of endurance. Her independence provoked Europe's chroniclers to revile her as first an incestuous whore, then a shrew, censuring her “pagan” southern wildness and her hold over Louis VII. When rebellion broke out against Henry II, Eleanor was the focus of the blame. “The man is the head of the woman,” thundered the archbishop of Rouen, publicly threatening her with excommunication.

Eleanor was kidnapped innumerable times: at the age of twenty by pirates when she was on crusade; sixty years later by local barons on her journey to Spain. Both her husbands imprisoned her. After Eleanor sided with her uncle Raymond over a matter of crusade tactics, Louis forcibly removed her from Antioch.

A woman of indomitable spirit, Eleanor triumphed over every one of her enemies. She refuted allegations of barrenness by bearing Henry eight children, mostly boys. Henry's attempt to force Eleanor through imprisonment to renounce her Aquitaine lands in his favor failed. Fortunately she did not live to see the downfall of her youngest son, King John.

c.
1138–1193

He was a man wise in counsel, valiant in war and generous beyond measure
.

William of Tyre,
A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea
(1170)

The Kurdish-born sultan Saladin became the ideal of the warrior-king, he was an efficient commander and a tolerant ruler devoid of fanaticism. Ruling an empire stretching from Libya to Iraq, Saladin drew together disparate elements of the Arab and Turkish world in the struggle between Islam and Christendom for control of the Holy Land. A merciless warlord in his rise to power, and never quite the liberal gentleman of Victorian romance, he nevertheless embraced the code of chivalry and was respected by his enemies. By the standards of medieval empire-builders, he was indeed an attractive character.

Yusuf ibn Ayyub, who later adopted the name Salah-al-Din, the Goodness of the Faith, was born to a Kurdish family in Tikrit, now in northern Iraq (and much later the birthplace of the tyrant Saddam Hussein), son of the local governor and nephew of a lieutenant of Nur ad-Din, ruler of Syria. At twenty-six, Saladin set off with his mace-wielding and very fat uncle Shirkuh to defeat the crusaders in a war to win control of Fatmid Egypt. They succeeded but Shirkuh died of a heart attack. In 1171, Saladin seized Egypt on his master's behalf after massacring 5000 Sudanese guards. Three years later Nur ad-Din died, and Saladin took control of Syria as well.

Ruling from Damascus, Saladin built an empire based on a combination of political cunning, ruthless order, military prowess and Islamic justice. After a lifetime killing his fellow Muslims in his quest for a personal empire, he now devoted himself to the jihad to liberate Jerusalem from the crusaders of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem. By 1177 Saladin had built up an army capable of opposing the Christian occupiers of the Holy Land—as holy to Muslims as to Christians. Yet at the Battle of Montgisard his army of 26,000 was surprised and routed by a far smaller crusader force under the “Leper King” of Jerusalem, Baldwin IV.

This was the last major reverse in Saladin's struggle against the Christian interlopers. Though a truce was called in 1178, the following year Saladin resumed his jihad against the crusaders, besieging and capturing the castle the crusaders were building at Jacob's Ford, which presented a strategic threat to Damascus. Saladin razed the castle to the ground.

During the 1180s Saladin was dragged into increasingly serious skirmishes with the crusaders, in particular Prince Raynald of Chatillon. Unrestrained by weak kings in Jerusalem, Raynald intensified the conflict when the crusaders could ill-afford the risk, harassing Muslim pilgrims on
haj
, showing a total disregard for the sanctity of the Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina. All this only served to fire Saladin's determination to win his holy war.

By 1187 he had raised sufficient forces to invade the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which had been weakened by the long illness of Baldwin IV, the infighting of its barons and the weak ineptitude of the new King Guy. The crusaders were annihilated at the Battle of Hattin, only a few thousand escaping the field. Saladin took King Guy of Jerusalem and Prince Raynald as prisoners. He gave King Guy iced water later—but personally beheaded Raynald. In October Jerusalem itself fell, ending eighty-eight years of crusader occupation.

The fall of Jerusalem opened a new chapter in the history of the crusades: Saladin's rivalry with Richard I of England, known as Richard the Lionheart. Richard arrived in the Holy Land in June 1191, and the following month Acre fell to the crusaders. In September Richard defeated Saladin at Arsuf but not decisively. With both sides' resources depleted, the Lionheart could not take Jerusalem so they agreed a truce in autumn 1192. Richard won a partition of Palestine: the crusaders got a rump along the coast centered on Acre but he had lost the great game because Saladin kept Jerusalem and his empire of Egypt, Syria and Iraq. Saladin demonstrated his tolerance by agreeing to allow unarmed Christian pilgrims into Jerusalem. Richard left the Holy Land shortly afterward. Though the two never met again, and Saladin died the following year, the relationship between the two men passed into legend. Richard seems to have been genuinely struck by Saladin's skill, tolerance and magnanimity as a ruler and battlefield commander.

There is no denying that Saladin could be merciless toward prisoners of war. Like Richard, he thought little of massacring them if the conditions of war demanded it. After Hattin, he slaughtered all the Knights Templar in cold blood. Such were the standards of medieval religious warfare. But chroniclers on both sides sang the praises of Saladin the lawgiver, just ruler and great prince. He could inspire men to take to the battlefield despite daunting odds, and he was usually courteous and chivalrous toward his Christian enemies.

After Saladin's death, the Muslim chronicler Baha al-Din called him “one of the most courageous of men; brave, gallant, firm, intrepid in any circumstance.” Saladin, sultan of Egypt and Syria, left an Ayyubid empire to his brother Safadin and the family dominated until 1250. The preeminent Kurd in history, he became a symbol of Arab pride in the 20th century, with revolutionary Egypt, Iraq and Palestinian groups adopting his eagle symbol.

1157–1199 & 1167–1216

Richard was a bad son, a bad husband and a bad king, but a gallant and splendid soldier
.

Steven Runciman

Richard I was one of the most capable and glamorous of English kings; his youngest brother John was one of the most inept and unattractive. They were the sons of King Henry II and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, who together ruled England and half of France—the Angevin empire. Henry was to spend much of his reign repelling attacks by the ambitious Philip II of France, who was determined to extend his own borders.

Henry had four legitimate sons. The first—also Henry—was known as Young King after Henry II had him crowned while he himself was still alive, and who died in his twenties. The second was Richard, who ultimately succeeded to the throne as Richard I; Geoffrey became duke of Brittany and earl of Richmond; John was the fourth. The rivalry between the old king and his greedy, jealous and violent sons was so vicious that they were known as the Devil's Brood. However, the overbearing and dominating Henry II, a swashbuckling royal titan, often favored John, perhaps because he was the weakest and least able—and therefore the lesser threat to his own power.

More legends have accrued around Richard I than any other English king. His chivalrous rivalry with Saladin during the Third
Crusade was the subject of famous ballads and tales across Europe, as was his long, Odysseus-like journey home. Richard was the archetypal Angevin king. Like the rest of his family, he had a furious temper and could be irresponsible and impulsive. And, being an Angevin with huge European interests, he simply regarded England as another fiefdom to defend and a resource to fund his conquests.

Brash, tall, with red-golden hair, he adopted scarlet as his color, and wielded a sword he called Excalibur. Highly intelligent, energetic and flexible, he was capable of gruesome cruelty and ruthlessness. He massacred thousands of Muslim prisoners in cold blood outside Acre and, on another occasion, arranged the heads of executed Muslims around his tent—yet he also once stripped naked and whipped himself in church for his sins. He was not interested in women except as political pawns, though he did father at least one bastard (it is unlikely he was gay as claimed by some scholars). War was his ruling passion and outstanding talent.

Richard was invested with land and power from the age of eleven, when he was raised to duke of Aquitaine. He became duke of Poitou four years later and immediately allied with his brothers and his mother in a failed rebellion against their father Henry II in 1173–4. A harsh lord, Richard himself provoked rebellion among his subjects in Gascony in 1183, and a few years later was rebelling again against his father, this time in alliance with Louis, the king of France and his mother's former husband.

In 1188, Henry finally lost patience and declared he no longer saw Richard as his heir, which propelled the future Lionheart once more to come out in open rebellion. Initially, John fought alongside Henry, but, in what was to become a familiar pattern, he switched sides when it was clear Richard was set to triumph. King Henry died shortly afterward, heartbroken at the betrayal by his sons: in 1189 Richard succeeded as king of England and
ruler of the Angevin empire. But his focus was on Jerusalem, which Saladin had conquered in 1187. After mortgaging as much of his kingdom as he could and taxing England with the so-called Saladin tithe, Richard sailed for the Holy Land via Sicily in 1190. “I'd have sold London if there had been a buyer,” he said.