CHAPTER IX
RICHARD met Berengaria of Navarre through his friendship with her brother. Sancho the Strong, as the brother was called, was the son of Sancho the Wise, King of that picturesque little country on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees. He was about Richard’s age, and they possessed many interests in common, a love of conflict and battle, of everything pertaining to the use of arms, of horses and dogs, of music and minstrelsy. Richard was being reared in Aquitaine and he was often in Gascony, which lies across the mountain range from Navarre. It was natural for these two fine young animals to get together as much as possible, to splinter lances, to exchange buffets, to ride and hunt and, in the evenings, to drink and troll a ballad together.
It was while attending a tournament in Pampeluna that Richard first saw Berengaria. He was a guest at the royal palace and took an immediate interest in the young princess, who could not conceal the very great interest she took in him. The information available about Berengaria is quite meager, but it seems that she was small and dark. She had dusky hair which she parted in the middle so that it lay smoothly on her head, and her eyes were full of intelligence as well as gentleness. She read poetry and was more likely to be found alone in one of the palace gardens than gossiping with the young ladies of the court. The impression left of her is of a slender figure flitting about quickly and unobtrusively. She was diffident and even perhaps a trifle fey; the very opposite of the earthy and magnificent Richard, although they shared one interest in common, a love of music.
He saw little of her at the royal table, but sometimes he would see her briefly during the day, standing on a stair far above him and looking down, or strolling in the gardens with a book, and seeming lonesome and perhaps a little pathetic. She must always have worn a rapt look when the stringed instruments were brought in after supper and Richard took his turn with a vigorous ballad of his own composition, rolling it out in his fine baritone voice.
No reports have come down of this particular tournament, but only one assumption is possible about it: that Richard was the winner and it became his privilege, therefore, to select the Queen of Love; and further, that it was to Berengaria he raised the chaplet of gold on the tip of his lance, and that she involuntarily clapped her hands once with delight before taking the crown and placing it on the smooth dark strands of her hair. No other result is thinkable in view of what came about later.
It is almost certain that he saw her once only. He did not correspond with her, not being a scholar, and being committed, moreover, to marry Princess Alice of France. But clearly he had taken away the impression that, as it was his duty to marry the daughter of some royal family, he would find this reserved and oddly pretty little creature less objectionable than any other. Berengaria had fallen deeply in love with her brother’s friend. She was so much in love with him that, as the years rolled by and Richard remained unmarried while his reputation as a wielder of sword and battle-ax became greater all the time, she refused to consider a match with anyone else. How she managed to stand out against the pressure which is continuously exerted to rush princesses into matrimony is a mystery. Perhaps Sancho the Wise was an affectionate as well as a wise father.
When Richard became King of England he was in a position to choose his own wife. He would not marry Alice, having no desire to make his father’s mistress Queen of England, even if he had to go to war with Philip because of his refusal. His mind kept turning back to the girl he had seen so many years before, that little sister of his great good friend Sancho. She had not married; he had been sufficiently interested to know that. Berengaria! A lovely name, well suited to a queen. Seeing that now he must take a wife and beget a son to succeed him, he knew that he would prefer her to anyone else. The outcome was that his mother, with an imposing train of knights and ladies in waiting and servants by the score, set out for Navarre. She was not only to ask the hand of the Navarrese princess in marriage but was to bring her back without delay. Richard liked to get things done in a hurry.
Berengaria was agreeable, of course. This was what she had waited for, longed for, prayed for, all these years. Sancho the Wise was equally amenable, as he might very well be, for Richard was the greatest catch in the world, the new ruler of the powerful Angevin empire, the most famous of knights, and a friend of the heir of Navarre. It was in every respect a most desirable alliance.
No princess was ever made ready for marriage in quicker time. The seamstresses of the kingdom were called upon, and all over Navarre needles began to fly. The oriental influence which was showing itself in feminine dress as a result of the Crusades was, of course, reflected in the clothes made for Berengaria, but not as much as if she had been French or Italian or English. Navarre was a quiet little kingdom and lay far from the great roads which bound civilization together. However, her dresses were properly long and flowing in line, elaborately embroidered with pearls and thread of gold, and made of the marvelous materials which reached even Navarre behind the Pyrenees, the heavy golden samite and rich baudekin. She had cloaks which were held together with cords at the neck, and all manner of headdresses and veils which showed the unmistakable influence of the East. All her shoes were of the softest leather, fitting the feet closely, and without heels.
And no princess was ever wedded under more unusual circumstances. Eleanor would have been glad to see the marriage solemnized and be finished herself with all this fatiguing travel. The English fleet had left Marseilles, however, when they reached that port, and there was no alternative but to continue overland. They climbed the steep trails of Maurienne into Italy and finally came to Naples, where further embarrassment met them. Richard felt he must be declared free of his undertaking to marry Princess Alice before he could wed Berengaria. It would not be seemly for them to meet, in fact, until this trouble out of the past had been settled. Certainly he was not playing the part of an impetuous lover, and a shadow began to grow in the eyes of the bride who had come all the way from her native land.
Eleanor’s gentle daughter Joanna met them at Naples. She had married the Norman King of Sicily and was now a widow and dispossessed by Tancred, the successor to the throne. The three ladies went to Brindisi, where they spent the balance of the winter and part of the next spring. It was fortunate that Joanna took an instant liking to Berengaria. They became, in fact, the closest of friends and continued so through all the stormy times ahead of them. Berengaria was in great need of friendship and comforting. She had not yet laid eyes on her lover and prospective husband, and she was growing more and more disturbed as the warm days passed and she had nothing to do but sit by the shore and wait and hope. As Piers Langtoft says in his rhyming chronicle,
The maiden Berengare,
She was sore afright,
That neither far and near,
Her king rode in sight.
She had every reason to feel concerned. At Messina, Richard and Philip were holding bitter disputes about the matter of the déclassée Alice and finding it impossible to agree. If the French King remained obdurate and refused to free Richard from his obligation, what would happen to her, the bride the English King had summoned with one imperious gesture? Would she have to return home and spend the rest of her days in a nunnery, hiding her shame and her face from the world?
As Richard and Philip did not seem to be making any headway, the old Queen decided she would not wait to see the culmination of the romance. Perhaps she was finding the Italian ports too reminiscent of the days so long before when she herself had ridden to the Crusades, with her own corps of guards, and had been known as the Golden-booted Dame. Perhaps she felt that the course of events in England needed watching at closer range. At any rate, she said to her daughter, “Take this damsel for me to the King, your brother, and tell him to espouse her speedily!” Eleanor also had become fond of her charge. Without waiting further, however, the Queen started on her long ride homeward.
Having failed to reach an understanding with Philip, the English King decided he must proceed with his plans in disregard of his difficult colleague. Philip set sail for the East in high dudgeon, and Richard at last allowed himself the privilege of greeting his bride. Where or when the meeting occurred, history does not deign to tell. It is unfortunate that the doggerel chronicles of the period were so concerned with the bickering between Richard and Tancred over the return of Joanna’s dowry that nothing else seemed to matter. They speak with meticulous care of the golden table twelve feet long, the silk tent, the twenty-four golden cups and twenty-four golden plates, the sixty thousand mules’ burden of corn and barley and wine, which Richard insisted must be returned, and how he contented himself finally with forty thousand ounces of gold. But never a word do they tell of the scene when the little princess from Navarre found herself at last in the presence of the tanned giant for whom she had waited so long.
Richard’s attitude to his wedding, and to Berengaria, was one of complete detachment. Strangely enough, he was not of a romantic disposition, not the impetuous knight-errant to fight his way through fire and water and a storm of steel to win his bride. He was completely bound up in the great task ahead and in the responsibilities weighing on him. The plan he had evolved for a new order to be called the Knights of the Blue Thong, because they would wear bands of blue leather on their left legs, concerned him more than love passages with Berengaria. He was always the great captain, never the great lover. Berengaria would be his Queen but not the passion of his life.
He even saw reason for postponing the marriage until after Lent, a curious excuse for one as little religious as he showed himself on many occasions. Off he went in his great ship Trenc-la-Mer, leading his fleet of more than two hundred vessels with an immense lantern on the poop deck which was lighted up at night to show the way. Berengaria, puzzled and more worried than ever, followed in one of the others.
Richard must have been pleased with the lady of his choice, however, for he made up his mind when he reached Cyprus that this state of affairs could not continue any longer. Accordingly on Sunday, May 12, which was the feast day of no fewer than three saints, Nereus, Achilles, and Pancras, and a beautiful day to boot, King Richard arrayed himself in a rose-colored tunic of satin and over that a mantle of striped silver tissue covered with half-moons, and placing on his head a scarlet bonnet embroidered in gold (looking so handsome, without a doubt, that poor little Berengaria’s heart turned over when she saw him), he led her before Bishop Bernard of Bayonne, and the wedding vows were sworn and a choir sang over them. What the bride wore was not considered important enough to set down.
The wedding feast lasted for three days, and it may be assumed that the new Queen was happy at last. Her bliss was short-lived, however. Duty beckoned the bridegroom. The French army had joined the Christian forces which had been besieging Acre for more than two years with the intention of making it a naval base for all crusading operations. While they besieged that strong walled city, Saladin came up with an even larger army and encamped around them, so that it was no longer possible to tell who was the besieged and who the besieger. In fact, it became clear that, unless the English arrived soon, the French would be in a very bad way. Richard cut short his honeymoon and was off again in Trenc-la-Mer, walking the deck and crying to his captain to clap on more sail, so great was his impatience to be having a hand in the excitement around Acre. His bride of three days and his sister followed in the same vessel which had brought them to Messina.
When the English fleet arrived in the Bay of Acre and Philip found that his brother king had taken matters into his own hands about the marriage, he decided to put the best face on it. He even met the boat which brought the bride ashore and carried her to land in his arms.
2
The fleet had reached Acre just as night was falling. It was still possible to see the Holy Headland, as Mount Carmel was called, on the south side of the bay, lifting its rugged heights above the water and filling the mind with thoughts of Elijah and the Chariot of Fire. Directly east was a faint suggestion against the darkening sky of the distant hills of Galilee. To the left was the beleaguered city, a mass of high white walls on a long promontory stretching out into the sea. For a few minutes it was possible to notice red and yellow roofs and the peaks of mosques over the tops of the walls, even a trace of green gardens. The night closed in then and nothing was left but the fires of the crusading forces which encircled the city.
Richard was given a frenzied welcome. Military bands blared, trumpets rang out, voices were raised in the songs of the Crusades, particularly the first marching song (the air of which is still used to the words of The Bear Went over the Mountain), and thousands thronged down to the shore to get a glimpse of the great warrior. This was incense in the nostrils of the English King. He rode through the torchlighted camp to meet his fellow monarchs on his tall and spirited Cyprian horse Fanuelle, which pranced and pawed and tossed its mane as though aware that greatness sat in the jeweled saddle on its back.
As Richard talked with Philip of France, Leopold of Austria, Conrad of Montferrat, and other crusading leaders, the noise suddenly died down. The time for the nightly ritual of the camp had arrived. Richard had heard of this custom, designed to keep up the morale of the troops, but he had not seen it, and he watched intently when a herald stepped into the open space in front of the huge red pavilion of the French King.
A trumpet sounded and, after a moment of silence, the herald cried in a loud voice:
“Help, help, for the Holy Sepuleher!”
Richard could see by the light of the lantern suspended over the pavilion entrance that the soldiers of all nations had raised their arms above their heads while they repeated the words in unison:
“Help, help, for the Holy Sepulcher!”
The sound came from all parts of the semicircle which the crusading commanders had drawn around the city. Three times it was repeated, then each man of the many thousands crossed himself and said a prayer. Sharp orders to retire for the night sent them back to their tents. Nothing more impressive could have been conceived as a welcome than this outward expression of the crusading spirit.
The picture next day was not so impressive. Acre had been surrounded by vineyards and small fruit farms, an orderly belt of green. Now, after nearly three years of siege (for the Germans under Barbarossa had arrived there early and most of them had remained after the death of the red-beard by drowning), the terrain resembled a place visited by earthquake or swept by fire. The litter, the filth, the desolation that three years of careless soldiering can create are beyond description.
Richard did not mind the ugliness of the picture. There was beauty for him in the roughly constructed “bad neighbors” which Philip’s engineers had created to tower over the walls of Acre. These had been countered by others inside the walls, so that to modern eyes there would have been the look of an oil camp about the place. Richard walked up and down, studying the approaches, instinctively selecting the best spots to strike. He considered the disposition of the forces with a critical frown. It was clear that Philip of France had little knowledge of military matters. If the Saracens had struck! He glanced off to the east where, between the hills and the sea, clustered a dense thicket of tents under the black flag of Saladin. He could feel the power of these silent watchers.
The Saracens, however, had missed their opportunity. With the addition of the English army, the Crusaders were now at their maximum strength. The garrison of Acre would not hold out long.
Richard’s first active step was to inspect the advance force of five hundred men he had sent ahead under the command of Archbishop Baldwin. He found them camped between the Flemish troops and the Florentines, the lions flying above them and carrying the name of Thomas à Becket. The King took no umbrage at this evidence of the worship of all Englishmen for the Martyr of Canterbury. He had known that every sailor in his fleet had prayed each night to St. Thomas.
But Baldwin was no longer in command. He had been an unhappy man when he reached the camp before Acre. Believing that he had come in his old age to fight with an army of inspired soldiers, of militant saints, he had been disillusioned and disheartened by what went on around him, the drinking and profanity, the revelry in the tents of the women—those persistent trulls who had come to Palestine on the crusading ships and their dark-skinned eastern sisters who had managed to reach this splendid market—the cruelties, the brutal killing of spies, the flogging and mutilating of offenders against discipline. The gentle soul of the archbishop had sickened at his realization of war in practice. He strove fiercely to put an end to such things but failed. Finally, his health breaking, he had said a prayer to the God on whose service he had come, ending with a cry of anguish: “O Lord, I have remained long enough with this army!” He had passed away soon after, and if ever a man died of a broken heart it was Baldwin of Canterbury.
The advance force was now in command of an able Englishman named Hubert Walter. Richard was delighted with the vigorous discipline he had imposed. Walter had been educated in the house of his uncle, Ranulf de Glanville, and in spite of this connection, which would have blackened anyone less valuable in Richard’s eyes, he had been nominated to the bishopric of Salisbury. He had been consecrated before sailing, but there was no suggestion of the clerical about the aggressive man in an English jack, a coat of canvas laced over breastplates of iron, who met the King now. He gave his sovereign a thorough report on the military situation and told of the arrangements he had made for the disposition of the army. Here, thought Richard, was a man after his own heart, by God’s feet! He complimented Walter, said he expected great things of him and would make the rewards equal the achievements. He was as good as his word, for later he made Walter archbishop and put all power in the kingdom in his hands.
The English King had not failed to notice the tension in the welcome extended by Philip of France. There was, of course, the matter of Alice between them and the unforgivable quip of the Griffins of Sicily (a term Richard had coined) who had said that the English King was a lion and the French King a lamb! Finally the rousing welcome given Richard had been to Philip like salt in a raw wound. He was not alone in this. The proud Duke of Austria, the ambitious Conrad of Montferrat, the clapper-tongued Duke of Burgundy had been equally annoyed. They sat apart this first day in a sulky group.
The leaders might remain aloof, but the rank and file had been encouraged and heartened. For this one day, at least, they ceased calling the English The Tailed men, an illusion to the mutilation of the mule before the murder of Thomas à Becket, which was considered on the continent the most biting of insults. Even the Knights of St. John, wearing their black cloaks over coats of mail with five white crosses in memory of the five wounds of Christ, shared in the enthusiasm; and the Templars in long white mantles with red crosses on the shoulders and their banners of black and white, which were meant to show that they could be cruel to enemies of the Church even though dedicated to goodness.
Almost immediately after this splendid first day Richard took sick. It was one of the fevers which killed off at least as many of the Crusaders as the swords of the Saracens, and it did not warrant the claims made in some chronicles that he was no better than a hollow shell from his excesses as a young man. Some went so far as to say that he was dying of a quartan ague which racked him with paroxysms every fourth day, but, if this had been true, he would have been unable to endure the rigorous campaigning which lay ahead or to perform the prodigious feats with which he became the proclaimed hero of the world. He was so ill, however, that he could not assume any share of the command, even though he had his servants carry him to the front line on a mattress, where he was able to direct the fire of the mangonels. Things did not go well while he was incapacitated, for Philip of France was lacking in the qualities of military leadership. That monarch’s detestation of Richard, moreover, was making it impossible for him to maintain any degree of co-operative effort. There was always fresh food, it seemed, on which his hatred could feed. He was getting short of money while Richard was well supplied (Longchamp had seen to that) and inclined to throw gold around him with a total disregard of future needs. Whereas Philip had been paying three aurei as a gift for bravery, Richard began to pay four, and the French King’s face became saffron with mortification when his own men complained of his miserliness, particularly when he found that some of them were deserting to the English ranks.
If Richard had not recovered quickly, the crusading armies would have remained for the balance of the summer around the white-walled city. But he did get well, and immediately there was a stir in the trenches, and the mangonels began to hurl great stones against the walls with a deafening regularity, and the arrows arched into the beleaguered town from the “bad neighbors” so thickly that the garrison, which had been getting shorter of supplies all the time, decided no help could now be expected from the turbaned army sulking impotently along the foothills. Receiving Saladin’s consent, they hauled down their flags.
Richard unfortunately took no pains to placate his fellow monarchs. When he found that the Duke of Austria had planted his flag on the walls of Acre beside that of England, he indignantly ordered it torn down, thus making a mortal enemy of the proud Leopold. It must be said that he made it hard for his allies to work with him, and they have that much justification for what happened later.
While he toiled in the suffocating heat of early summer to get the army ready for the march on Jerusalem, his fellow commanders sat about together in the comfort of loose linen gown and sandals on the flat top of a city palace, sipping the chilled wine which was made possible by the efforts of that most courteous of foes, Saladin—–who sent runners every day to the mountains to bring back snow and ice for his august opponents—and eating the pears and grapes from Damascus which came from the same source. From where they sat they could see the flag of England, floating above everything, and the tents of the infidels, which had shrunk in numbers since the capture of the city; and this made them doubly aware that most of the credit for the victory was being given to the English King. As one chronicle puts it, “they bit their gloves.” If the conversation of these arrogant and incompetent men could have been preserved, it would have become very clear that their main purpose now was not to drive the paynim out of Jerusalem but to be sure that Richard’s glory suffered an eclipse.
The success they had in this was small. In the end they further enhanced his glory and raised his historical stature far above his deserts.
Philip, it developed, had lost all stomach for crusading. He could see for himself nothing but a secondary role, and it was not in his nature to accept that. He had no intention of exhausting his treasury and suffering incredible hardships in order to forward the efforts of the overbearing English King. Accordingly he took most conveniently sick, and dispatches began to reach him of difficulties at home demanding his presence there.
One day a deputation of French nobles arrived at Richard’s pavilion. It was stiflingly hot under the canvas, and the King, laboring over an Arab map (Christian maps were always bad while the Arabs had excellent ones), was in his shirt and drawers. It was not the way to receive emissaries from a brother king; but, after all, it was the same garb in which he had been crowned. The deputation did not take any offense, being so sick at heart that they did not notice. At first none of them could speak a word, and when Richard observed the tears in all their eyes he realized what had brought them.
He rose to his feet and threw the map aside angrily. “It will be an eternal disgrace!” he said. “But let him go! I shall fight on alone!”
It became evident later that Philip was ill enough to lend him some excuse. He departed as soon as he had recovered sufficiently, leaving ten thousand of his troops to continue under the command of the Duke of Burgundy. The latter was not a fortunate choice, for he had fallen into the habit of singing lampoons on Richard throughout the city and the camp, and Richard had been retaliating in kind. The Duke had been instructed to see that any drive against Jerusalem would fail. Such, at least, is the charge made against the French monarch, and the subsequent behavior of Burgundy made it clear that at best he had no heart left for the Crusade.
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!
3
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.
4
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.
Mention has already been made of Conrad of Montferrat. This proud and difficult member of the crusading band had married Isabella, the second daughter of the last King of Jerusalem. Sibylla, the eigne daughter, had married Guy of Lusignan, and the latter had acted as king in her right. But Sibylla died and Conrad promptly claimed the title because his wife survived. The pretensions of the two husbands split the camp of the Crusaders into factions. Richard supported Guy of Lusignan. The majority favored Conrad, however, and so the English King had been compelled to give in. He had promised Guy the throne of Cyprus as consolation.
As the Saracens held the Holy City, the title of King of Jerusalem was an empty one, but Conrad had a real overlordship in Tyre. It so happened that some subjects of the Old Man of the Mountain were killed in Tyre and, when the mad ruler sent messengers to Conrad to demand compensation, the latter treated them with disdain and paid no heed to their complaints. This was all the pretext needed. Two dusky emissaries of death were delegated to leave the mountaintops and accomplish the murder of the so-called King of Jerusalem.
Conrad must have known the danger in which he had placed himself, but he does not seem to have taken the matter seriously. Even when his servants found one morning a curious kind of cake beside his couch, which was a signal the Assassins used to tell where they intended to strike, he refused to become concerned. He was careless enough, in fact, to appear with only a few guards on the streets of Sidon. One of the murderers sprang through the line of guards and stabbed the King mortally. The Assassin and his companion were tortured, but they kept ecstatic expressions on their faces until the very moment of death: they had accomplished their purpose and would soon be tasting the delights of paradise.
In the East there was general understanding of the reasons for the killing of the German Conrad. The poorest beggar on the street could have explained the nature of the offense which had stirred the Old Man to action. Conrad had disliked Richard, but he commended his widow to the protection of the English King before he died, which should have absolved the latter from any suspicion of complicity.
It remained for the truant in France to blacken the name of the former comrade he now hated more than anyone in the world. Since abandoning his part in the Crusade, Philip had found himself the target of criticism. He felt the silent scorn which even his own subjects had conceived, and the resentment this caused in him was heightened by the reports coming from the East of the amazing exploits of the man who had stayed. When the French King heard of the killing of Conrad, he saw the chance he wanted. He gave it out that the assassination had been planned by Richard, basing the accusation on evidence of the flimsiest, which, moreover, had been invented. To lend weight to the story, according to one contemporary writer, “he no longer went abroad without being escorted by armed men; and, for his greater security, he instituted bodyguards from among those who were the most devoted to him, and armed them with great iron or copper maces.” The idea of Philip’s being in danger in Paris from the agents of the Old Man of the Mountain is a peculiarly absurd one, but there were many in France who believed the slander, or pretended to, and still more in Germany.
That strange madman who ruled in the Lebanons would never have received any mention in English history if it had not entered the spiteful mind of the Man Who Came Back to fasten the crime on the brother-in-arms he had deserted. By the lie he set into circulation, Philip created a situation which was to extend Richard’s absence from England for two years after his departure from Palestine.
5
When Richard turned back from Bethany the Third Crusade was over. The fighting continued for some time after, and the English King gained even greater laurels by his bravery and resource at the relief of Jaffa, but there was no longer any thought that the purpose of the invasion could be accomplished. Richard sent Hubert Walter to negotiate a truce with Saladin, and the Eastern potentate took a fancy to the brisk young Englishman. They talked of Richard and of his magnificence as a warrior, and Saladin said that the English King had one fault only, a tendency to rashness. Later a peace was made between East and West for a term of three years, three months, three weeks, three days, three hours, three minutes, and three seconds; and by it Acre and Jaffa were left in the possession of the Christians, while the right of Christians to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem in safety was assured. All the fighting and bloodshed of four years, the terrible losses on both sides, had accomplished no more than that. It was a poor substitute for the purpose which had inspired the nations of Europe to join in this, the most spectacular of all the crusading efforts.
Saladin then met the European captains at Damascus, where they dined together in complete amity. He died in a short time, and his last act was a characteristic display of humility. “Go,” he said to those about him, “carry my shroud through the streets and cry with a loud voice, ‘Behold all that Saladin, who conquered the East, bears away of his conquests.’ ”
Richard, thoroughly disheartened, sailed from Palestine in October. It was impossible for him to go by way of France, for the feud with Philip was growing more bitter all the time. He decided, therefore, that he would return by the Adriatic and across Germany, a most unwise decision in view of the hostility of the German rulers. Perhaps it was the need for haste which dictated the route. He had received reports, of course, of John’s activities at home and realized no time should be lost.
Under these circumstances he concluded that Queen Berengaria would be safer if she returned separately. This, at least, was the reason given when the royal pair left Palestine on different ships. There were other reasons, of course. It was no secret that the marriage had not been a success. Berengaria had seen little of her warrior husband and, though this might have been due to Richard’s preoccupation with the business of fighting, there is every evidence that a coolness had developed. The fault was with Richard. Berengaria had been a good wife, self-sacrificing, obedient and loving, and both puzzled and hurt at the aloofness of her lord.
Berengaria returned, therefore, with her devoted friend and sister-in-law, Queen Joanna, arriving safely at Messina and deciding to proceed overland the rest of the way. When they reached Rome they were horrified to find that the jeweled baldric of Richard was being offered openly for sale in that city. Their alarmed inquiries elicited no information. None knew how it came to be there, nor had any reports been received of the movements of the English King. There could be no mistake about the baldric; they had both seen him wear it many times, a handsome thing of blue velvet with the royal insignia and the letter R embroidered on it in gold thread. They became convinced that his ship had gone down in crossing the Mediterranean and the baldric had been among the possessions saved.
If they had known the truth, they would have found it hard to believe. Richard had landed on the coast of Istria and, disguising himself as a pilgrim, had ridden north into the territory of his most bitter and active enemies, the new German Emperor, Henry VI, and Leopold of Austria. He had penetrated as far north as the small village of Eedburg just outside Vienna when the rumors of his presence, which had been spreading throughout Germany, brought the hue and cry down on him. The King was sitting before the fire in the kitchen of an inn when the mayor of Vienna, after placing guards around the building, strode in and said: “Hail, King of England! Thy face betrays thee for who thou art!”
Richard was taken to Vienna and held there in the closest confinement until the Emperor claimed him. For a long time after that he vanished from sight. It was known that he was being kept in imprisonment by the perfidious German rulers, but no acknowledgment could be obtained of this nor any hint as to where the hero of the Crusade was incarcerated.
The sensation created by this was world-wide. The valor of Richard had made him an international hero, and no general belief had been placed in Philip’s charge of his complicity in the assassination of Conrad. In England the indignation was so deep that the country would gladly have gone to war for his release. The Council sat day and night considering ways to effect his freedom. Queen Eleanor, who was in England keeping a watchful eye on the ambitions of her youngest son, was like a lioness robbed of her favorite cub. She addressed letters to the Pope in which she passionately demanded that the papacy compel the Emperor to release his prisoner and to which she signed herself, Eleanor, by the wrath of God, Queen of England. In other letters at this period she subscribed her name, Eleanor, humbly, Queen.
In the meantime the Emperor had sent word to Philip of France about his plans for the royal captive which, says one of the chronicles, “was to the eye of that king more pleasing than gold or topaz.” The Man Who Came Back promptly advised that Richard should not be released, declaring that the world would not know peace if he were. Later Philip tried to buy the person of the English monarch and boasted that “if he once had Richard in his hands, that king would never again see the sun shine on his own possessions.” Failing in this, he offered an enormous sum if the Emperor would refuse to release the prisoner. He hastily sent envoys to the King of Denmark, with promises to back him if he would assert his ancient claim to the throne of England because of his relationship to Canute. This scheme was too farfetched even for the proposed beneficiary, and nothing came of it. At the same time—although this did not become known until later—he was making proposals to John which fell on more fertile ground. Philip promised the English prince that he would ease his subjects of their oaths not to make war on Richard and would then attack Normandy. For his part John was to declare himself King in place of his brother and was to assume also another obligation of Richard’s, the hand in marriage of Princess Alice. It happened that John had a wife already, having espoused Avisa, the beautiful daughter of the Earl of Gloucester, at the time of Richard’s coronation. Both parties to the conspiracy took it for granted that this unfortunate lady could be disposed of without any difficulty.
The negotiations between the precious pair had to be carried on by special messengers, for John was in England at the time. The French King wanted the English prince to visit Paris in order to get the matter settled, but Queen Eleanor, who suspected what was in the wind, saw to it that her youngest son (who had always been afraid of her) was not permitted to cross the Channel.
Later it was learned that John not only agreed to act with Philip against his brother but also expressed his willingness to do homage for the throne of England and to give away a large part of Normandy. He seems to have been prepared on all points to play Roger the Counter to Richard’s Bohemund, and steal his brother’s crown as Roger had done in Sicily when the great Bohemund went on the First Crusade.
Philip assembled an army and struck at Normandy. Meeting with little resistance, he swept up the Seine, and his troops spread out, capturing town after town and castle after castle. Gisors, Ivry, Neufchâtel fell to the French arms.
Word of all this was carried to Richard in his cell. He did not seem much disturbed. “My brother John,” he said with a sigh to the jailer who had been the bearer of the news, “was not made to conquer kingdoms.” The captive King was quite right. It developed that John’s mission in life was to lose them.
Philip soon thereafter was taught a lesson which his fumbling father had learned early, that Normandy was a hard nut to crack. After his early successes he met with stout resistance on the part of the Norman people headed by the English Earl of Leicester, who had taken command on his way back from the Crusades. Leicester was a good soldier and he quickly organized the strength of the duchy. Philip found himself faced by a wall of steel he could not break, and finally he agreed to a truce, as his father had so often done.
The mystery of Richard’s whereabouts had remained unsolved up to this point. The story generally accepted is that he owed the happy chance of his discovery to an old troubadour friend from Aquitaine, one Blondel de Nesle. There is no reason to believe the story—in fact, every reason to set it aside as apocryphal—but it is a highly imaginative yarn and so must be told.
Blondel, so the story goes, was depressed over what had happened to the hero of the Crusade and set out to find him. Once he and Richard had collaborated in the writing of a ballad, each of them doing one verse. Wandering through Germany in the guise of a common minstrel, Blondel sang this song under the windows of every castle he passed. He was rewarded finally for his courage and resourcefulness. After singing the first verse, which was the one he had written, he heard a voice from within take up the air and sing the second verse, which had been the King’s contribution. He had found the cage which held the Lion of England.
So great has been the desire to believe this story of the discovery of the chained King that serious efforts have been made to find the tenson which Blondel sang; without success, it is hardly necessary to state. Richard, however, proved his ability as a poet and troubadour by composing a lament on the length of time he had been held in confinement. “Two winters am I bound” was the refrain running through it and, when this appeal for the aid of friends reached England, the demand for his release became nationwide.
The Emperor finally threw aside pretense and openly avowed his jailership. He summoned Richard before the Diet of the empire which met at Hagenau and there charged him with a long list of crimes, renewing the absurd story of the murder of Conrad and actually having the effrontery to claim that the English King had betrayed the cause by making a truce with the Saracen. Richard defended himself with vigor and eloquence, throwing the blame on the pusillanimous leaders who had deserted him within sight of the Holy City. He spoke so convincingly, in fact, that the electors of the empire, who were antagonistic to Henry VI, welcomed the chance to accept Richard’s version. Henry concluded after the sessions were over that the best he could get now was a large ransom. He agreed to accept the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand marks.
Hubert Walter, who had been placed in command of the army after Richard’s departure from Palestine, had succeeded in getting the men back to England. He now crossed to Germany and was allowed to confer with his imprisoned master. Richard put in his hands the formidable task of raising the money for the ransom. That his deputy might have the needed authority, he appointed Walter chief justiciar and expressed his desire that he be elected to the vacant post of archbishop.
Philip of France tried desperately to prevent the release of Richard. He decided to double the ransom figure if the Emperor would refuse to let his captive loose. When this failed because of the clamorous opposition of the German princes, Philip made another proposition. He would pay twenty thousand marks for each month that the departure of Richard was delayed.
Back in England, Hubert Walter proceeded to carry out his instructions with great ability and resource. He had been elected Archbishop of Canterbury on the King’s urgent demand. With control of both Church and State in his hands, he set to work to raise the huge sum of money needed. It was a hard task, for England had not yet recovered from the drain of the Crusade. Walter even found it necessary to make a radical experiment, placing a tax on the land. The amount assessed was twenty shillings on each knight’s fee, and the landowners groaned at what seemed a ruinous exaction. In addition, demands were made on the Church, even on the monastic institutions, which had always been exempt from taxation. The heads of the Church responded by contributing a quarter of all their rents, and the local clergy agreed to give a tenth of their tithes. A few of the richest monasteries voluntarily melted down their plate and thus raised a sum of thirty thousand marks. Three times the new primate had to go back with additional levies before the first payment of one hundred thousand marks was available.
Eleanor could not wait in England to greet her beloved son. Although she was now seventy-two years old, she accompanied Walter of Rouen, who had been deputed to deliver the money in Germany. Berengaria also would have walked on foot through the mud of Flanders and the snows of the Black Forest in order to see her long-lost husband. But the little-wanted Queen was not invited to go and remained at the home she had found for herself somewhere in Anjou, waiting anxiously for word of his release.
It was a good thing that Eleanor accompanied the English party. When the money had been handed over at a ceremony in the city of Mentz and the sixty-five hostages demanded as security for the payment of the balance had been taken into German custody, an intuitive sense of peril warned the Queen that there must be no delay in getting the ransomed King out of the country. She kept her eyes fixed on the Emperor, realizing that he was acting against his own wishes. He was a man of delicate appearance, with nicely chiseled features and beautifully formed white hands, and seemed on the surface of a gentle humor and the highest honor. The long years had made Eleanor a good judge of men, however, and she was certain this monarch in his scarlet cloak and ermine-trimmed cap had reservations to which he was not giving expression. She was quite right. Henry was inwardly against letting his captive go. The indecision of his mind was shown every time he lifted his eyes and in the way his hands tugged at his well-waxed beard.
It was learned later that he had received further propositions from Philip and would have repudiated the agreement if there had been a loophole. There was none, however, none that the prince electors would recognize. Richard accordingly was released and started immediately for Antwerp, where a ship was waiting to take him to England. The Queen Mother would permit of no delay. It was well that she allowed her sense of distrust to dictate their movements. Soon after they left, the Emperor changed his mind and sent orders that Richard was to be apprehended and brought back. When the imperial officers reached Antwerp, however, the English had already embarked and were on their way down the Scheldt.
The French King fell into the deepest rage of a lifetime spent in umbrage when he learned what had happened. Now he would have Richard to deal with and, from long experience, he knew it was going to be neither easy nor pleasant. John in England, certain that the treacherous diplomacy of the French King would succeed, was in a perilous position. Philip sent him a brief message of warning:
Take care. The devil is loose.