Jerusalem needed an adult commander-in-chief. In Nablus, Raymond of Tripoli and the barons gathered to prevent Guy’s return, but in Jerusalem the throne belonged to Sibylla, now queen regnant – and she was married to the despised Guy. Sibylla persuaded Patriarch Heraclius to crown her, promising to divorce Guy and nominate another king. But during the coronation, she summoned Guy to be crowned as king beside her. She had outwitted everyone, but the new king and queen were unable to restrain Reynald of Kerak and the Master of the Templars, who were both spoiling for a fight with Saladin. Despite the truce, Reynald ambushed a haj caravan from Damascus, capturing Saladin’s own sister, mocking Muhammad and torturing his prisoners. Saladin appealed for compensation to King Guy, but Reynald refused to pay it.
In May, Saladin’s son raided Galilee. The Templars and the Hospitallers recklessly attacked him, but they were slaughtered at the springs of Cresson, the Master of the Templars and three knights being the only ones to escape. This disaster brought temporary unity.
KING GUY: TAKING THE BAIT
On 27 June 1187, Saladin, at the head of an army of 30,000, marched on Tiberias, hoping to lure the Franks out and strike ‘a tremendous blow in the jihad’.
King Guy mustered 12,000 knights and 15,000 infantry at Sephoria in Galilee, but, at a council in the red tent of the kings of Jerusalem, he agonized over the unpalatable alternatives facing him. Raymond of Tripoli urged restraint even though his wife was besieged in Tiberias. Reynald and the Master of the Templars responded by calling Raymond a traitor and demanded battle. Finally Guy took the bait. He led the army across the baking-hot Galilean hills for a day until, harassed by Saladin’s troops, overwhelmed by scorching heat and paralysed by thirst, he pitched camp on the volcanic plateau of the twin-peaked Horns of Hattin. They then went looking for water – but the well there was dry. ‘Ah Lord God,’ said Raymond, ‘the war is over; we are dead men; the kingdom is finished.’
When the Crusaders awoke on the morning of Saturday 4 July, they could hear prayers in the Muslim camp below. They were already thirsty in the summer heat. The Muslims lit the scrubland. Soon it was burning all around them.13
SALADIN
1187–1189
SALADIN: THE BATTLE
Saladin did not sleep, but spent the night organizing his forces and supplies, positioning his two wings. He had surrounded the Franks. The Sultan of Egypt and Syria was determined not to waste this opportunity. His multinational army, with its contingents of Kurds, Arabs, Turks, Armenians and Sudanese, was an awesome sight, relished by Saladin’s excitable secretary, Imad al-Din:
A swelling ocean of whinnying chargers, swords and cuirasses, iron-tipped lances like stars, crescent swords, Yemenite blades, yellow banners, standards red as anemones and coats of mail glittering like pools, swords polished white as streams of water, feathered bows blue as birds, helmets gleaming over slim curvetting chargers.
At dawn, Saladin, commanding the centre on horseback, accompanied by his young son Afdal, and protected as always by his bodyguard of devoted Turkish mamluks (slave-soldiers), started his attack, showering the Franks with arrows and directing the charges of his cavaliers and horse-archers to keep the heavily armoured Franks at bay. For Guy, everything depended on maintaining the shield of infantry around his mounted knights; for Saladin, everything depended on separating them.
As the Bishop of Acre raised the True Cross before the king, Guy’s army repelled the first charges, but soon the thirsty Frankish soldiers fled to higher ground, leaving the knights exposed. Guy’s knights launched their charges. As Raymond of Tripoli and Balian of Ibelin galloped towards the sultan’s forces, Saladin simply ordered his nephew Taki al-Din, commanding the right wing, to open his ranks: the Crusaders galloped through. But the Muslim ranks closed again, tightening the net. Their archers, mostly Armenians, picked off the Frankish horses with ‘clouds of arrows like locusts’, stranding the knights, and ‘their lions became hedgehogs’. On that ‘burningly hot day’, unhorsed and exposed, swollen-mouthed with thirst, tormented by the infernal brushwood, unsure of their leadership, Guy’s soldiers perished, fled or surrendered as his order of battle disintegrated.
He retreated to one of the Horns and there pitched his red tent. His knights surrounded him for a last stand. ‘When the Frankish king had withdrawn to the hilltop,’ recalled Saladin’s son Afdal, ‘his knights made a valiant charge and drove the Muslims back upon my father.’ For a moment, it seemed as if Frankish courage would threaten Saladin himself. Afdal saw his father’s dismay: ‘He changed colour and pulled at his beard then rushed forward crying, “Give the devil the lie!”’ at which the Muslims charged again, breaking the Crusaders, ‘who retreated up the hill. When I saw the Franks fleeing, I cried out with glee, “We’ve routed them!”’ But ‘tortured by thirst’, they ‘charged again and drove our men back to where my father stood’. Saladin rallied his men, who broke Guy’s charge. ‘We’ve routed them,’ cried Afdal again.
‘Be quiet,’ snapped Saladin, pointing at the red tent. ‘We haven’t beaten them so long as that tent stands there!’ At that moment, Afdal saw the tent overturned. The Bishop of Acre was killed, the True Cross was captured. Around the royal tent, Guy and his knights were so exhausted that they lay in their armour helpless on the ground. ‘Then my father dismounted,’ said Afdal, ‘and bowed to the ground, giving thanks to God with tears of joy.’
Saladin held court in the lobby of his resplendent tent, which was still being pitched as his amirs delivered their prisoners. Once the tent was up, he received the King of Jerusalem and Reynald of Kerak. Guy was so desiccated that Saladin offered him a glass of sherbet iced with the snows of Mount Hermon. The king slaked his thirst then handed it to Reynald at which Saladin said: ‘You’re the one who gave him the drink. I give him no drink.’ Reynald was not offered the protection of Arab hospitality.
Saladin rode out to congratulate his men and inspect the battlefield, with the ‘limbs of the fallen, naked on the field, scattered in pieces, lacerated and disjointed, dismembered, eyes gouged out, stomachs dis-embowelled, bodies cut in half,’ the carnage of medieval battle. On his return, the sultan recalled Guy and Reynald. The king was left in the vestibule; Reynald taken inside: ‘God has given me victory over you,’ said Saladin. ‘How often have you broken your oaths?’
‘This is how princes have always behaved,’ replied the defiant Reynald.
Saladin offered him Islam. Reynald refused disdainfully, at which the sultan sprang up, drew a scimitar and sliced off his arm at the shoulder. The guards finished him off. The headless Reynald was dragged feet first past Guy and thrown out at the tent door.
The King of Jerusalem was led inside. ‘It’s not customary for kings to kill kings,’ said Saladin, ‘but this man crossed the limits so he suffered what he suffered.’
In the morning, Saladin bought all the 200 Templars and Hospitaller knights from his men, for fifty dinars each. The Christian warriors were offered conversion to Islam, but few accepted. Saladin called for volunteers from the Sufi mystics and Islamic scholars, to whom he gave the order to kill all the knights. Most begged for the privilege, though some appointed substitutes out of fear that they would be mocked for bungling the job. As Saladin watched from his dais, this messy and amateurish butchery now destroyed what remained of the might of Jerusalem. The bodies were left where they fell. Even a year later, the battlefield remained ‘covered with their bones’.