It did not take long for the Muslim counter-crusade to begin. As early as 1101 the Seljuk Turks effectively cut the land-bridge between Constantinople and the Holy Land, forcing the crusaders to send supplies and reinforcements by sea. The challenges of maintaining Latin possessions so far from western Europe forced the crusaders to seek new ways to meet their manpower needs. Here, the use of a new incarnation of the ‘soldier of Christ’ and employment of indigenous troops would play increasing roles in the defence of the crusader states.
After the First Crusade the bulk of the responsibility for maintaining the Christian presence in the Holy Land was borne by members of the military orders, with the first Knights Templars arriving in the Holy Land around 1118 as protectors of Christian pilgrims. Templars subscribed to the monastic vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, but were given carte blanche to kill the infidel because their enemies were the enemies of Christ, and their murder was ‘not homicide but malicide’. Within a few decades, the Knights Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights joined the Templars in the region, recruiting new members in western Europe and building important fortifications and maintaining garrisons in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. As the twelfth century unfolded, the role of the military orders in the defence of the Holy Land expanded, with the discipline and dedication of the warrior-monks marking them as the elite shock troops in any crusading army.
Furthermore, to supplement their numbers and readdress the tactical disadvantage to Seljuk horse archers, the crusaders hired Turcopoles, indigenous mercenaries who served the western knights as mounted archers and other types of light cavalry. These troops, often the product of Christian and Muslim marriages, became a standard feature of crusading warfare, serving as large native contingents in the armies of lay rulers and the military orders, while often retaining their own officers.
In 1144 the Islamic counter-crusade intensified when a Seljuk Turkish army overran the county of Edessa, provoking Pope Eugenius III to preach the Second Crusade (1146–1148). The relief effort was organized by Bernard of Clairvaux (later St Bernard) and joined by King Louis VII of France and the holy Roman emperor Conrad III of Germany. Islam’s military response to the Second Crusade would be to reapply light cavalry tactics against the invading crusaders, this time with favourable results. Ironically, this tactical lesson was taught on the site of the first crusader victory. At the battle of Dorylaeum II in 1147, Conrad lost nearly his entire expeditionary force to the Islamic ruler Nur ed-Din’s mounted Seljuk bowmen. Only Conrad and a few knights fought their way out of the ambush and returned safely to Nicaea. With this defeat, the Second Crusade fizzled out.
After the Second Crusade, the crusader states were increasingly threatened from the north and east by Nur ed-Din’s forces, while those of the Kurdish general Saladin (1138–1193), his nephew and lieutenant, threatened from the direction of Egypt. After Nur ed-Din’s death in 1174, Saladin became the greatest of the Muslim generals, reunifying Syria and Egypt under the Ayyubid Sultanate. With the crusader states now surrounded by a united Muslim power, Saladin pressed home his military advantage.
In 1187 Saladin’s army besieged Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee. The new king of Jerusalem, Guy of Lusignan, stripped the defences of Palestine in order to assemble a large army of 1,200 knights, 2,000 Turcopole light cavalry and 10,000 infantry at Sephorie for a relief expedition to Tiberias. On 3 July the army marched out from Sephorie and, after advancing about 10 miles, was surrounded by Turkish horse archers (Map 3.7(a)). The crusader column continued its march under harassment, with the van advancing within 3 miles of Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee, a destination with added importance because of the toll the summer sun was taking on the Christian forces. To make matters worse, the crusaders needed to cross a range of hills about 1,000 feet high before they could descend to the lakeshore. To meet this threat, Saladin arranged the largest force he had assembled to date, a combined-arms army of 18,000 infantry and cavalry, across the crest of this range and waited for the crusaders’ advance.
At the rear of the crusader column, members of the Knights Templars and Hospitallers became separated from the rest of the army. Fearing the loss of his elite shock cavalry, King Guy ordered the army to encamp where it stood (Map 3.7(b)). After spending an uneasy night under a barrage of Turkish arrows, Guy took up the march again on the morning of 4 July, but this time not across the pass toward Tiberias, but north toward the village of Hattin and the closest source of water.
Map 3.7 The Battle of Hattin, 1187. (a) Phase I: King Guy of Jerusalem’s army departs Sephorie and heads towards Tiberias to raise Saladin’s siege of that city (1). After about a 10-mile march, the crusaders find themselves surrounded by fast-moving Turkish horse archers who open a steady harassing fire against the Latin columns (2). A gap begins to open between the crusaders’ centre column and the elite cavalry of the Templars and Hospitallers in the rear (3). (b) Phase II: Guy decides to make camp for the night (1), to allow his rearguard to close up with the rest of the army. The crusaders spend a restless night punctuated by showers of Turkish arrows (2). Meanwhile, Saladin’s combined-arms force awaits the advance of the Christian forces (3). (c) Phase III: Rather than moving to relieve Tiberias, Guy turns his forces towards the nearby village of Hattin in hopes of finding water (1). The Turkish hit-and-run attacks continue (2) and the crusader infantry, weary and thirsty, break (3) and begin to drift towards the Horns of Hattin (4). (d) Phase IV: Once again, the Templar and Hospitaller cavalry are heavily engaged (1), forcing Guy to halt to allow them to close with his main body (2). Count Raymond of Tripoli decides not to wait and leads his cavalry in a breakout to the north (3), scattering the encircling horse archers (4). (e) Phase V: The surviving crusader infantry on the Horns are easily destroyed by Saladin’s forces (1), which then turn their attention to the beleaguered knights (2). Twice during the day Guy orders his cavalry to charge the Turks in an effort to break out (3), but to no avail. As the Latin casualties mount, Guy finally orders his men to dismount and surrender. The king is captured and an irreplaceable crusader army is destroyed.
As the crusaders advanced, Saladin’s warriors surrounded the Christians again. Thirsty and disheartened, the crusader infantry broke away from the mounted knights and clambered up a pair of hills called the Horns of Hattin (Map 3.7(c)). Meanwhile, at the rear of the column, the Templars and Hospitallers were again heavily engaged, forcing Guy to halt a second time so as not to separate his main force from the elite cavalry of the military orders. One of Guy’s commanders, Count Raymond of Tripoli, refused to sit and wait. He rallied his knights and charged the Turkish archers, bursting through and escaping into the northern hills (Map 3.7(d)).
Turkish troops easily overcame Guy’s infantry on the hills, then turned toward the king of Jerusalem and his remaining knights. Twice the crusaders attempted a mounted charge through the Turkish lines and twice their charges failed (Map 3.7(e)). After taking heavy casualties, Guy ordered his knights to dismount and surrender. The king of Jerusalem was captured, and a large crusader army, such as could not be fielded again from local resources, was destroyed, paving the way for further Islamic inroads into Christian lands. The defeat of the Christian force at the battle of Hattin precipitated the fall of Acre, Jaffa, Ascalon, Gaza, Jerusalem and some fifty crusader castles. By 1188 only the Christian cities of Tyre and Antioch held on to spur Europe to another crusade.
In the space of two years, Saladin undid what the Frankish invaders struggled almost a century to build. But the fall of the Holy City to the infidel gave new force to Pope Gregory VIII’s pleas to the western world for another crusade, the third. In response to Saladin’s success, the kings of England and France and the holy Roman emperor joined together in a call to arms to free the Holy Land again.
The Third Crusade (1189–1192) began poorly when the holy Roman emperor, Frederick I Barbarossa (r. 1152–1190), drowned in a river crossing in Anatolia in 1190 attempting to open a land route to the Holy Land. But King Richard I (r. 1189–1199) of England and King Philip II Augustus (r. 1180–1223) of France continued to the Levant by sail. The Anglo-French force of perhaps 30,000 men recovered Acre in July 1191, but quarrels between Richard and Philip caused the French king and some of his troops to return home, leaving Richard in charge of leading the remaining army to recover Jerusalem.
Second only to Edward III as England’s greatest warrior-king, Richard researched the disastrous march to Tiberias that led to the defeat at Hattin and vowed not to make the same mistakes. For his own move south to recapture Jerusalem, he hugged the coast, resupplying his army of perhaps 1,200 knights and 10,000 infantry by sea using Italian merchant ships (Map 3.8(a)). To protect his army from Saladin’s troops, the English king organized his forces into a sophisticated combined-arms formation, one that offered mutual support.
King Richard divided his infantry and cavalry into twelve groups, each with about 100 knights protected by heavy and light infantry. He then formed the twelve groups into five unequal divisions. In the vanguard, Richard placed the Templars, their Turcopole light cavalry, and foot soldiers. Next came Richard’s own subjects, Bretons, Angevins, Normans and English, followed by the French and Syrian contingents. In the rearguard rode the Knights Hospitallers and their Turcopoles and infantry support.
The crusaders’ order of movement placed the supply columns next to the shore where they could be resupplied by the Italian fleet, with the twelve groups of cavalry riding inland, protected by heavy and light infantry on the outside, forming a continuous column. The march south from Acre to Jaffa was slow and disciplined. Rest days, always near a water supply and where the fleet could bring up food and water and rescue the wounded, alternated with marches.
As soon as the crusader advance began, Muslim horse archers shadowed the column, harrying the Christians. But the hit-and-run tactics which served Islamic light cavalry so well against the Europeans in the First and Second Crusades and at Hattin did not bear fruit against Richard’s combined-arms army. When Saladin’s mounted bowmen approached within short-bow range, they suffered terrible losses to Richard’s light infantry crossbowmen located in the outer column. Firing from the ranks of shielded heavy infantry, the English crossbowmen outranged their Turkish counterparts, killing great numbers of Saladin’s men.
On the evening of 6 September, the crusaders camped in the cover of a marsh next to the beach just 10 miles north of Jaffa. Morning revealed a Muslim army in the 2 mile gap between the Forest of Arsuf and the Mediterranean Sea. Believing he could push the crusaders into the sea, Saladin launched an ambush with 20,000 troops (perhaps half of whom were cavalry) from the Forest of Arsuf across a front 2 miles wide. As Muslim mounted and unmounted archers shot arrows at the rear of the crusader column, the Islamic lancers charged (Map 3.8(b)). The Hospitallers in Richard’s rearguard lost a great many horses and eventually found themselves pushed back into their own ranks. Restraining his men, the English king tried to wait until the enemy’s horses were exhausted, but the heat and casualties among the rearguard eroded the warrior-monks’ patience. Before Richard could command an attack, the Hospitallers and French knights in his rearguard passed through their infantry and charged (Map 3.8(c)).
Map 3.8 The Battle of Arsuf, 1191. (a) Phase I: King Richard orders his army to make camp on the evening of 6 September (1). The following morning the five divisions of crusaders move out once again (2), their march paralleled by the Italian supply fleet (3). Having failed up to now in disrupting the Latin advance with traditional hit-and-run tactics, Saladin gathers a combined arms force of 20,000 and launches an ambush against the crusader column (4). (b) Phase II: The crusaders’ rearguard is struck first as archers, both horse and foot, attack the moving column (1). As the missile fire begins to disrupt the march, the Islamic lancers charge their foe (2). Richard orders the crusaders to continue moving, hoping that Saladin’s horses will tire in the fierce heat. (c) Phase III: As their ranks become compressed under enemy pressure and casualties from heat and Turkish arrows mount, the Hospitallers and French knights in the rearguard lose their patience and mount a countercharge through their infantry screen (1) as the column continues to march towards the village of Arsuf (2). (d) Phase IV: As the crusaders’ lead elements reach Arsuf, Richard orders the cavalry of his centre divisions to charge the Muslims (1). The flat terrain and close proximity of Saladin’s forces favour the Latin heavy cavalry. The Muslims begin to break under the crusader attacks and begin to be pushed back towards the forest (2). (e) Phase V: The crusaders launch yet another charge (1), led by Richard himself, which pushes the Muslims back into the forest (2). Pressed between the difficult terrain and the Latin cavalry, Saladin’s army is defeated, losing 32 emirs and 7,000 soldiers.
As the crusader vanguard reached the protection of the gardens of the city of Arsuf, Richard ordered a second charge, sending the centre divisions against the Muslims (Map 3.8(d)). The flat terrain and close proximity of the enemy created ideal battle conditions for the crusader heavy cavalry who pursued the enemy for about a mile. Crusader knights attacked three times, with Richard himself leading the third charge that swept the Muslims back into the forest (Map 3.8(e)). Pressed between the Christian column and the forest and unable to get out of the way of the charging knights, 32 emirs and 7,000 Muslims died.
The battle of Arsuf demonstrated again the power of a heavy cavalry charge against unarticulated infantry. The crusaders’ success at Arsuf, like the Normans’ at Hastings and Durazzo, was accomplished in no small part because of heavy cavalry’s close co-operation with light infantry crossbowmen and the heavy infantry who protected them. But the crusaders’ experience in the Holy Land also revealed weaknesses in the lancers’ capabilities. Heavy cavalry was vulnerable to missile attack from both mounted and unmounted enemies. How individual western European kingdoms addressed this vulnerability would lead to changes in the relationship between heavy cavalry and the other weapons systems, and ultimately to the demise of the medieval knight.
Between 1097 and 1291, soldiers from the Latin kingdoms of western Europe conquered the Holy Land, carving out territories and modelling them after feudal possessions in their homeland. But the military success of the First Crusade did not last. Succeeding crusades in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries attempted to win back territories lost between the Second and Third Crusades, but with limited success. In 1291 the last European possession in the Holy Land, the port city of Acre, fell again to the Muslims.
The impact of the crusades on the way Europeans fought was far-ranging. Contact with Byzantium and the Near East affected western European fortification and siegecraft, leading directly to the construction of castle complexes and ways to reduce them. Tactically, the invading mounted cavalry would meet their greatest challenge in the incumbent weapon system of the Near East, light cavalry. The conflict between these two cavalries would teach valuable lessons to the western Europeans about the strengths and weaknesses of their own mounted shock combat and the importance of combined arms when dealing with enemy light cavalry. But these lessons were not only learned in the Levant. On the Iberian peninsula, Christian commanders adapted to the novel tactics and technologies of the Moors in their four-and-a-half-century struggle with Islam known to history as the Reconquista, or ‘Reconquest’ of Spain.