The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

In 1185 a number of English barons had put on the cross on hearing of Saladin's menacing progress; toward the end of 1187 the heir to the throne, Richard, followed their example; some months later King Henry II had a meeting with his former enemy, Philip Augustus of France, at Gisors, where they vowed to abandon their earthly quarrels and become warriors of the everlasting God. Nearly the whole nobility and a number of the lower class of people were carried away by their example. King William of Sicily fitted out his fleet, and was only prevented by death from joining it himself. From Denmark, Scandinavian pilgrims thronged to Syria both by land and water. In Germany, now as formerly, the zeal was not so great, until in March, 1188, the emperor Frederick Barbarossa, at the age of near seventy, put on the cross, and by his ever firm and powerful will collected together a mass of nearly one hundred thousand pilgrims. All the western nations rose to arms.

The news of this enormous movement reached the East, and the ferocious war-cry of Europe was answered by a voice of defiance. Saladin had organized his dominions almost according to the western system. Under an oath of allegiance and service in war he granted to each of his emirs a town of feudal tenure; its surrounding land they again divided among their followers; the Sultan thus attached those wandering hordes of horsemen to the soil and kept those restless spirits permanently together. He then invoked the religious zeal of all the Mahometans with such success that volunteers flocked to his standard from every quarter.

These masses dispersed at the beginning of every winter, but on the return of fair weather they again collected in ever-increasing numbers. Saladin well knew the mutual hatred which divided the Greek Byzantines and the Latin Franks, and kept so securely alive in the Eastern Emperor, Isaac Angelus, the fear of the insolence of the western soldiers that he concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with Saladin against those who shared his own faith.

The leaders of the Third Crusade—Richard I ("the Lion-hearted"), King of England; Frederick I, surnamed "Barbarossa," of Germany, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire; and Philip Augustus, King of France—were the most powerful monarchs of Europe. A halo of false romance and glory, however, surrounds this crusade, mainly by reason of the associations connecting it with the self-seeker Richard. In the real conduct of the crusaders appears a sordid greed glutting itself with atrocities as savage as those perpetrated under Godfrey of Bouillon a century before. In Richard the world now sees a destroying "hero," one of the scourges of mankind. The son of Henry II, Richard became King of England in 1189. His chief ambition appears to have been the spread of his own renown, and this aim he sought to achieve in Palestine. He raised moneys by the sale of titles, lands, etc., and then started for the Holy Land. Modern history presents him, as well as his colleagues and followers, divested of the glamour which for centuries hung about the Third Crusade, of which the only heroic figure on the Christian side is the likewise pitiable Barbarossa.

The whole East, from the Danube to the Indus, from the Caspian Sea to the sources of the Nile, prepared with one intent to withstand the great invasion of Europe. Amid cares and preparations which had reference to three-quarters of the globe, Saladin neglected his nearest enemy, the feeble remnant of the Christian States in Syria, which, although unimportant in themselves, were of great consequence as landing-places for the invading western nations during the approaching war. The small principalities of Antioch and Tripoli still existed, and in the midst of the Turkish forces the marquis Conrad of Montferrat still displayed the banner of the cross upon the ramparts of Tyre.

It seems as if in this instance Saladin had abandoned himself too much to the superb and easy carelessness of his nature. Hitherto he had not shrunk from the most strenuous exertions; but he was so certain of his victory that he neglected to strike the final blow. Not until the autumn of 1187 did he begin the siege of Tyre; and for the first time in his life he found a dangerous adversary in Conrad of Montferrat, a man of cool courage and keen determination, whose soul was unmoved by religious enthusiasm, and equally free from weakness or indecision; so that under his command the inhabitants of the city repulsed every attack with increasing assurance and resolution.