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BIOGRAPHYCAL UNIVERSAL LIBRARY |
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RICHARD THE LION HEART
BOOK II
RICHARD’S CRUSADE
CHAPTER II.
THE OUTWARD VOYAGE,
A march of eight days brought the Crusaders to Lyons on July 10 or 13 (1190). Here they
were to cross the Rhone and then proceed down its left bank to the coast. The
two kings with their personal followers crossed at once and encamped on the
further side of the river (seemingly on a height whence their tents were
visible from the hither side) to wait till the stragglers and late comers should
overtake the main body of pilgrims, who lodged as they could in and around the
city. When the muster seemed to be complete, the kings gave the
signal for departure by causing their tents to be struck. The main
body of the host on the other bank thronged to the narrow wooden bridge; when a
small number had crossed one of the arches broke down. Only two persons were
drowned, but the multitude left behind were sorely puzzled how to get across
the crested waters of the Rhone in flood. According to one account they in
three days achieved the passage as best they could, in little boats, with great
difficulty. Another version, however, tells us that it was only Philip who had
actually set out before the bridge gave way, and Richard, having merely
escorted him out of the camp, was still at hand when the catastrophe occurred;
whereupon he, whose constancy never failed in action, quickly caused a bridge
to be made of boats lashed together, and waited three days while by this means
the whole host made its passage in safety. Then, while the French king’s
subjects followed their sovereign to Genoa or went by whatever route they
chose to meet him at Messina, the English king at the head of his own
contingent set out for Marseille, where he arrived on the last day of July.
“From
Marseille to Acre” says a contemporary writer, “is a sail of only fifteen days.
But,” he adds, “then you go through the Great Sea, so that after the mountains
round about Marseille cease to be visible you will, if you keep the direct course,
see no land either to right or left till you see the land of Syria.” Some of
the Crusaders who accompanied Richard—among them Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury
and Ranulf de Glanville—faced the mysterious terrors
of the Great Sea and took this route to Tyre, which
they reached on September 16. The two kings had chosen Messina as the final
starting-point of their voyage at a time when they deemed themselves sure of
finding there every possible facility for refitting and revictualling their
ships, and substantial help of every kind for their enterprise; King William of
Sicily being married to a sister of Richard, and having long ago promised every
assistance in his power to the Crusade. In March, however, they had learned
that William had died in the preceding November. The original scheme
nevertheless had obvious advantages both for Richard, who knew that William had
made some testamentary dispositions for his benefit, and for Philip, who
“dreaded the sea.” As the difficulties and dangers of the real overland route
from northern France to Apulia and Sicily through the Alpine passes and Italy
were apparently still considered even more formidable than those of the
Mediterranean sea, Philip had arranged to be conveyed by the practised mariners of Genoa from their city to Messina, not
exactly as an English chronicler says “by land,” but by the shortest and
easiest coasting route. Richard on the contrary was minded to go by water as
much as he could, and had ordered his fleet to meet him at the nearest Mediterranean
port—Marseille. When a week had passed and no fleet appeared, he
grew weary of waiting; so he hired “two large busses and twenty well armed galleys,” in which he set sail with his
household troops on August 7. He was grieved and confounded at the delay of his
navy, and seems to have coasted along very slowly in the hope of its overtaking
him, for it was not till the 13th that he reached Genoa, where he went ashore
to visit Philip, who was lying there sick. Next day, at Portofino, he received
a message from Philip asking for the loan of five galleys; Richard offered
three, but this Philip declined.
On the 23rd Richard relieved the tediousness
of the slow coasting voyage by landing
with a small escort at Baratto and hiring horses on
which the party rode to Piombino; there they rejoined
their ships. “Then the king went on board the galley of Fulco Rustac (or Rustancri)
instead of the one in which he had been sailing (the Pumbone),
and they proceeded to Porto Ercole, which was
reckoned to be half way between Marseille and Messina. But that day the sail of
the galley in which the king was got torn; so he went back to the Pumbone. On the same day, August 25, he landed at Ostia,
where he was met by the cardinal bishop and some other persons sent by the Pope
to receive him and invite him to visit Rome; this he declined to do,
preferring, it seems, to spend a day in what a modern traveller might call seeing the sights of the neighbourhood. He
spent nearly a fortnight in the same way at Naples, making excursions round
about (August 28-September 8); thence he went on horseback to Salerno, and
stayed there till on September 13 he heard that his fleet had arrived at
Messina, and at once set out to rejoin it. The report was Sept, premature; but
the fleet did in fact reach Messina next day.
The story of its voyage illustrates the
spirit of adventure in which the men of the more remote western lands set out
upon their Crusade. The justiciars of the navy appointed in the spring had
apparently taken each the command of a little squadron, and these squadrons had
sailed in April, according to the king’s order, from various ports of England,
Normandy, Britanny, and Poitou. Ten ships of the
English division set out from Dartmouth; some of them touched at Silvia in
Portugal, others at Lisbon, and all stopped to help the Christian Portuguese in
their war against the Moors. Other ships of Richard’s—perhaps from more distant
ports —came into Lisbon harbour at the close of the
war; the whole fleet sailed thence on July 26, passed the Straits of Gibraltar
on August 1, and sailing along the coasts of Spain and Provence reached
Marseille on August 22. Finding that the king was gone, they stayed a week for
necessary refitting, set out again on the 30th, and came to Messina on Holy Cross
day. According to English accounts Philip of France arrived there
two days later; his own biographer, however, says he came in August. As he had
no ships of his own, the greater part of his host had either gone
before him to Messina or proceeded towards Syria by other routes; and to the
disappointment of the townsfolk and the pilgrims assembled at Messina, who all
hoped to see a king arrive with great pomp and majesty, only the ship which
bore Philip himself came into the harbour, and landing
at the steps of the royal palace he slipped out of sight as quickly and quietly
as possible.
The disappointed spectators of Philip’s
landing were to be more than compensated ere long by the arrival of another
royal guest. By September 21 Richard, travelling leisurely along the coast from
Salerno, had reached Mileto in Calabria. Here a
characteristic adventure nearly brought to an untimely end both his enterprise
and his life. He was riding forth next day, accompanied only by one knight, and
as they passed through a little township the king turned aside towards a house
where he heard the voice of a falcon, and he went into the house and took the
bird; and when he would not let it go, a number of villagers came running up
and attacked him with stones and sticks. One of them drew his knife upon the
king, and the king beat the man with the flat of his sword till the sword
broke. The other assailants he overcame with stones, and narrowly escaping from
their hands made his way to the Priory of La Bagnara.
There, finding himself close to what an English chronicler describes as “the
great river which is called the Far of Messina,” he took boat and crossed it
immediately, and lay that night in a tent hard by the great stone tower which
stands by the entrance to the Far on the Sicilian side—that is, the pharos,
lighthouse, or beacon-tower which gave the strait its medieval name. He
probably crossed in a vessel of his own fleet, the whole of which seems to have
been assembled at the northern end of the strait in readiness to meet him. Next
day (September 23) he sailed at its head into the harbour of Messina. The galleys filled the Strait; they were crowded with hardy
looking warriors, and decked with pennons and banners. So came the king to the
shore amid such blowing of horns and trumpets that all the city was
alarmed at the sound. Philip and the governors and people of Messina went down
to the beach and stood there marvelling at that which
they saw and heard of the king of England and of his power. Richard leaped ashore,
and went immediately to speak with Philip. Meanwhile those of his barons who
had reached Messina before him brought the fine destriers which had come over
in the transport ships; and he and his people all mounted on horseback, and
rode to their lodging, which—the royal palace being, by permission of the new
sovereign of Sicily, occupied by Philip—was being prepared for them in the
house of one of the Sicilian king’s officers, in the suburb outside the city
wall, among the vineyards.
The next of kin to the late king of Sicily
and the person whom he had designated as his successor was his father’s sister
Constance; but she was far away in Germany—being married to the Emperor’s
son—and a cousin, Tancred, had without much difficulty become master of the kingdom,
or at least of its insular half. Tancred had, as has been seen, provided
lodgings for his two royal guests at Messina; he himself was at Palermo, and so
was the widowed Queen Joan, Richard’s sister. Richard knew that a very liberal
dowry in land had been settled upon Joan by King William at their marriage, and
also that William had made a will containing a bequest to his father-in-law,
Henry II, of a golden table twelve feet long and a foot and a half wide, three
golden tripods for sitting at the table, a silken tent large enough for two
hundred knights to eat in it together, a hundred first-rate galleys with all
necessary gear and food for 1190 the crews, sixty thousand seams of wheat, the
same number of barley and of wine, and twenty-four cups and twenty-four dishes
of either silver or gold. This bequest was evidently intended by William, who
seems to have been long in ill-health and expecting an early death, as his
contribution to the Crusade. Richard, as Henry’s heir, now claimed it from
Tancred, and he also demanded that Joan should be sent to him immediately with
her dowry and a golden chair for
her use according to the custom of the queens of that land. Tancred sent Joan
off at once by sea with just her bedroom furniture and a million terrini for her expenses. She reached
Messina on Michaelmas Eve, and was conducted Sept. by
her brother to a lodging prepared for her in the Hospital; but he speedily took
steps for removing her to a safer place; for trouble, possibly with Philip,
certainly with the townsfolk of Messina and with their king, was now evidently
close at hand.
The English king’s subjects who had reached
Messina before him on the fleet had been refused admittance into the city; they
were obliged to encamp on the shore, and suffered much annoyance and
persecution from a section of the townsfolk whom one of them describes as “a
parcel of Griffons and low fellows of Saracen extraction.” These people not
only insulted the Crusaders in the vilest ways, but even killed some of them and
outraged the corpses. All Ultramontanes, or men from beyond the Alps, were
hated by the two races with which Sicily was mainly peopled—the Griffons or
Greek-speaking folk, and the Italian-speaking whom the western writers call
Lombards. In the minds of the last-named especially the memory of the Norman
conquest of Sicily and Apulia still rankled; “they always had a grudge against
us” says the Norman poet-historian of Richard’s Crusade, “because their fathers
had told them that our ancestors had conquered them; so they could not love
us.” It seems not unlikely that Tancred had gained the support of both Griffons
and Lombards by posing as the champion of a sort of national government in
opposition to the representatives of the foreign royal line, and that they
looked with suspicion upon the crusading host as possibly designed to be the
instrument of a new Norman conquest; more especially when they discovered, as
they very soon did, that although it had nominally two crowned leaders, its
real and sole commander-in-chief was the Anglo-Norman king. On the morrow of
his arrival Richard set up outside the camp a gallows for thieves and robbers.
“His judges delegate spared neither sex nor age; and there was one punishment
for a stranger and for one born in the land.” The French king took no notice of
any ill-doing on the part of his own men, nor of any evil done to them; but
Richard cared not whose subject the criminal might be; “considering every man
as his own,” he left no wrong unpunished; “wherefore the Griffons called him
the Lion and Philip the Lamb.”
Both Griffons and Lombards did their utmost
to make the position of the tailed
Englishmen”—as they called Richard and all his followers
indiscriminately—absolutely intolerable. They tried to starve them by refusing
to let them buy food in the city; they fell upon and slew any whom they caught
in small parties and unarmed; they even began to raise the town walls, as if
challenging the strangers to besiege them. By the time of Joan’s arrival
matters had come to such a pass that two days later (September 30) Richard with
a small armed force recrossed the strait into Calabria, turned the Griffons out
of a fortress called La Bagnara, Oct. 1 and next day
established his sister in it with a guard of his own men. He next seized a very
strong fort or tower, which went by the name of the Griffons’ Minster,” on an island
in the Far, midway between La Bagnara and Messina, put its garrison to death, and made it a storehouse for the provisions
which had been brought by his fleet from England and his other dominions.
Scarcely was this done when on October 3 a dispute between a pilgrim and a
townswoman about the price of some bread which the woman brought into the camp
for sale led to an outbreak of hostilities. Richard, hearing the noise, sprang
on horseback and strove to recall his men, riding in and out among them and
striking with his staff all whom he could reach, to check the attack which they
were threatening on the city gate. His efforts and those of the “elders” of the
city at length quieted the tumult. Both parties, however, felt that the matter
was not ended. Before nightfall Richard went by boat to the palace and held a
consultation with Philip. Next morning the archbishops of Messina, Monreale, and Reggio, with the “justices of Sicily”—that
is, the governors whom Tancred had put in charge of Messina, Margarit and Jordan du Pin—and some others of Tancred’s
chief counsellors came to Richard’s lodging, bringing with them the French king
and some of his nobles, and also some of the chief’ nobles of Richard’s
dominions, to discuss terms of peace. Three times the colloquy was interrupted
by tidings, first that the English were being attacked, next that they were
getting worsted, and finally that they were being killed “ both within and
without the city.” The Sicilian members of the conference hurried away,
ostensibly for the purpose of checking their own people, “but they lied,” says
Richard’s Norman chronicler. Richard hastened forth to control his
troops, learned that the quarters of one of his Aquitanian followers, Hugh the
Brown of Lusignan, had been attacked by a party of the townsfolk, and that
another party was lying in wait for himself, the city wall bristling with armed
men, and another strong body of citizens posted on the hills at the back of the
town. He hurried back for his armour and instantly
gave orders to assault the city all round by land and by sea. He himself began
by driving out the assailants from the camp. With scarce twenty men at his
back, he made for the quarters of Hugh the Brown; the Lombards turned and fled
from him like sheep from a wolf, says one who saw the scene, and he drove them
as oxen are driven under the yoke all the way to the postern gate which is
towards Palermo, the west gate of the city. Meanwhile the whole English host
was in motion. The fleet could do nothing, because Philip, who had returned to
the palace under a promise from the governor that he should not be molested,
intercepted the galleys as they approached and forbade them to proceed. The
land attack met with a fierce resistance; part of the host endeavoured to storm the walls and the gates; Richard himself led a small party up a hill
so high and steep that no one would have thought they could by any means climb
it, drove down in headlong flight the Sicilians who occupied its summit, and
rejoined his main force in time to be one of the first to enter the city. “A
good ten thousand went in after him,” says one of the number.
The suddenness and rapidity with which the
city was captured, and the contemporary French form of its name, “Messines”,
or in the Norman dialect “Meschines,” appear to have
suggested to some Norman or Angevin rimester in the
host a jingle which from the camp has found its way into history :
“Our king and his men have taken Messines
More quickly than priest can say his matines.”
The whole fight had lasted less than five
hours. The town was plundered, and there would have been more people slain, but
that the king took pity and restrained his men. The Sicilian galleys in the harbour were set on fire and destroyed. Philip and his
followers meanwhile had sat at their ease within the palace and the city, doing
nothing to help their fellow Crusaders, and totally unmolested by the
Sicilians, among whom they seemed quite at home. But when Philip learned that
the victorious host had set up their royal leader’s banners on the walls, he
angrily declared that this act was an insult to himself as Richard’s feudal
superior, and demanded that the banners should be taken down and replaced by
his own. Richard at first ignored the demand; but some of the prelates and
nobles brought about a compromise; the banners of both kings were placed on
the towers together, and the custody of the fortifications was given to the
Templars and Hospitaliers till it should be seen how
matters would go between Richard and Tancred. The compromise was a fair one on
Richard’s part; as his poetchronicler says, “ Sirs, I ask your
judgement—which of the two had the best right to set his banners over the city,
the one who would take no part in its assault, or the one who dared the enterprize?” “But”, he remarks no less truly,
“the king of France's envy on that subject was like to be lifelong; that was
the origin of the war whereby Normandy was ruined”. According to one account,
Philip next, on the strength of the agreement made at Vezela,
demanded his share of the spoils of the city, and grew so insolent and
quarrelsome that Richard prepared to load up his ships and depart on his pilgrimage
alone with his own people rather than be tied any longer to so disagreeable a
comrade. Hereupon, however, Philip made overtures for reconciliation, and Oct
8 they renewed their alliance, swearing and making their respective
barons swear to keep good faith with each other Oct. 6 throughout the
expedition. Two days earlier, on October 6, the governors of Messina had given
hostages to Richard, pledging themselves to keep peace towards him and his men
and to let him have free possession of the city unless Tancred speedily
satisfied all his demands.
Those demands, for the whole of Joan’s dowry
and William’s legacy to Henry, were now again transmitted to Palermo, by envoys
who represented both the Crusader kings, for one of them was no less a
personage than the duke of Burgundy. In the Anglo-Norman camp it seems to have
been reported that the French envoys returned loaded with gifts because they
had carried a private message from Philip to Tancred encouraging him to resist
Richard's demands and promising that in any strife which might ensue the French
would remain neutral. However this may have been, the envoys of the English
king brought back a very unsatisfactory reply to their master. “I gave to your
sister Joan”, said Tancred, “a million terrins for
quitclaim of her dower before she went away from me. Concerning your other
demands I shall do whatever I ought to do according to the custom of this
realm.” During the absence of the envoys a very suspicious event took place at
Messina. One night the two governors of the city, Jordan du Pin and Margarit, stole away with their respective households,
taking with them all the gold and silver they possessed. Richard at once seized
their houses, their galleys, and whatever other property they had left behind
them. His own treasure was already stored in the Griffons’ Minster, which he
further strengthened by digging a deep and wide ditch across the island on
which the fort stood. When his envoys returned from Palermo they found him busy
with another piece of work which gave him pleasure, the erection, on the top of
a hill overlooking the city, of a strong wooden fortress to which he gave the
name of Mategriffon, “Check” or “Kill-Greek.” All
these precautions did in fact check the Griffons effectually; but when Richard on
hearing Tancred’s reply straightway retorted that he would enter upon no
pleadings at law and would get what he wanted in his own way, the Lombards
again began to give trouble. They refused to sell even necessary food to the
host, “and but for God and the navy, many would have led a poor life”; the
ships, however, had ample stores. Philip was accused of being secretly in
league with the Lombards. The city and the camp were guarded day and night.
Mediators went to and fro between the palace and Mategriffon, but could not bring the two kings back to
friendship.
At last Tancred intervened. “He was,” says
Ambrose the poet-Crusader, “very wise; he had heard tell of many happenings; he
was a good scholar; he knew his business.” Through all these months
he had played a waiting game till he could feel sure which of the two kings
would be most useful to him as an ally. At first he had inclined to Philip, and
“would have given him untold gold” for the marriage of one of his daughters to
either the French king himself or to his infant son Louis; but Philip declined
this proposal because he did not wish to quarrel with Tancred’s rival,
Constance’s husband, who was now king of the Germans and Emperor elect, and
whose friendship he doubtless foresaw might be useful to him in future
struggles with Richard. By the end of October, however, Tancred not only knew
that the townsfolk of Messina had gone too far; he also perceived that he had
himself gone too far in his haughtiness towards the English Lion. He therefore despatched two messengers to Richard with an offer of
alliance. He proposed to give twenty thousand ounces of gold to Joan instead of
her dowerlands, and to Richard, in place of King
William’s legacy, the same amount as the dowry of one of his (Tancred’s)
daughters on condition of her marriage with Richard’s nephew, Arthur of Britanny. Richard saw at once that this offer must be
accepted. The necessity of coming to a settlement of some kind with Tancred,
and the outrageous conduct of Tancred’s subjects, had already detained him in
Sicily much longer than he had originally contemplated. Now it was quite clear
that he would be obliged to remain there for several more months, as the season
of the year had begun when the “inclemency of winds and waves and weather” made
navigation so difficult and dangerous that no fleet could attempt a voyage to
Palestine till the return of spring. The same cause must of course detain
Philip also; and to reject Tancred’s offer would have been to throw Tancred and
Philip into each other’s arms. Nor was the offer itself a bad one. Whatever might
be the intrinsic value of Joan’s dowerlands and of
William’s legacy, there was obviously very little chance of ever gaining either
the one or the other; while forty thousand ounces of gold would be a very
convenient addition to the treasury of the Crusade. A treaty on these terms was
therefore drawn up and executed forthwith. Richard promised that all questions
about his sister's dowry and his own claims should be henceforth at rest; that
he and his men would faithfully keep peace by sea and by land with Tancred and
all his subjects, and if the Sicilian realm should be invaded or attacked while
they were in it, they would help the king against his assailants; that
Arthur—“our dear nephew, and our heir if we should die without issue”—should be
contracted to Tancred’s daughter; and that the bride should have a dower of
lands within her husband’s duchy “befitting a lady so illustrious and the
daughter of so magnificent a king.” If Arthur succeeded to the Crown, his wife
was to have the customary dower of a queen of England. If, on the other hand,
from any cause dependent on Richard or Arthur, the marriage should not take
place “in due time” (that is, when the children should be old enough; Arthur
was in his fourth year), the dowry given by the bride’s father was to be
returned. Tancred on his part promised that he and his subjects would keep
peace with Richard and his men, and he paid over the covenanted sum without
delay. Richard was in a pacific mood; although none of the gold which he had
just received could fairly come under his agreement with Philip as to the
division of conquests, he at once made Philip a peace-offering of part of it.
He next insisted on his men restoring to the townsfolk the plunder which they
had taken from them, and Archbishop Walter of Rouen enforced this order by
threatening to excommunicate those who failed to obey it. Finally, a set of
ordinances for the regulation of intercourse and trade between the pilgrims and
the townsfolk was issued in the joint names of all the three kings. Thenceforth
town and camp were on friendly terms, and so were—for a while—the two pilgrim
kings. There was, however, some grumbling in the host, especially among the
knights who had reached Messina before Richard, at their long detention there
and the expense which it entailed on them, and at being forced to give back the
plunder with which they had recouped themselves. “Richard was not avaricious or
stingy; he silenced the grumblers by a distribution of costly gifts, of which
all ranks, down to the lowest foot-soldiers, received such a share that every
man was fully satisfied. Early in the next year he made a present to the French king of several of
the ships which had come from England, and to his own troops, of all ranks, a
further distribution of “more treasures than any of his predecessors had ever
given away in a whole year.”
Before Christmas Richard’s growing sense of
the weightiness of his enterprise showed itself in another step in his
preparations. One day he called together in the chapel of the house where he
was lodging all the bishops in his host, came before them as a penitent, with
three scourges in his hands, fell at their feet and openly confessed to them a
vice in which he had lived and which he now solemnly abjured; he received his
penance at their hands, “and thenceforth returned to his iniquity no more. At
Christmas he entertained Philip and the French nobles at a great feast in Mategriffon. The festivities were disturbed by a quarrel
between the Genoese and Pisan sailors and some of the men belonging to
Richard’s galleys, and not till some lives were lost did the two kings in
person succeed in quelling the strife. An incident on Candlemas Day (1191)
throws a curious side-light on one phase of Richard’s character of 1191 which
there is little trace elsewhere, and also on his relations “with the other
crusading chiefs during this dreary time of waiting. He and some English and
French knights, on their way back from a ride, met a countryman with a load of
reeds or bulrushes and bought some for a game such as boys played, tilting with
the rushes for spears. The king challenged William des Barres, with whom he had
had at least two encounters in real warfare, and who (according to one account)
on the second of these occasions, being made prisoner, had committed a breach
of the rules of chivalry which Richard was not a man to condone easily: he had
regained his liberty by breaking his parole. When William’s first thrust broke
the head of Richard’s bulrush, Richard was seized with one of those fits of
unaccountable, irrational fury before which all persons accustomed to associate
with the Angevin counts quailed as before a direct manifestation of the powers
of darkness whence the house of Anjou was said to have sprung. He set his horse
furiously at his opponent; the shock of the encounter failed to unseat William,
but caused Richard’s own saddle to slip; he leapt from it, mounted another
horse, and renewed the attack, but with no better success; nor did his angry
threats disturb the coolness of the Frenchman. The Earl of Leicester, trying
to intervene, was roughly bidden by his sovereign, “Leave me to deal with him
alone!” and finally, after a long struggle and much bandying of words, the king
burst out to William, “Get thee hence, and take heed that I see thee no more,
for henceforth I will be an enemy to thee and thine for ever.”
William, now thoroughly alarmed, went and besought counsel and help of his own
sovereign. Philip in person interceded for his unlucky vassal; some of the
highest nobles of France actually went down on their knees to Richard for the
same purpose; but Richard would hear none of them; and on the third day William
des Barres had to leave Messina “because the king of France would not keep him
against the will of the king of England.”
The time was now approaching when the seas
would again be navigable, and Philip presently asked Richard to get ready to
accompany him on what was called “the March passage” to Holy Land. Richard is
said by a French chronicler to have answered that he could not go before
August. It seems that either August here must be a mistake for April, or
Richard cannot have been serious in answering thus, unless indeed ho
entertained some vague project of going back for a short visit to his island
realm before proceeding further eastward. Such a project is not impossible; for
the reports which had been coming to him through the winter about the state of
affairs in England were at once so disquieting and so contradictory that he may
well have longed to see for himself how matters really stood and settle by his
personal authority the quarrels which had arisen between his justiciars and his
brother. In the end he committed the solution of these very puzzling difficulties
to Archbishop Walter of Rouen. He had, however, another reason for delaying at
least for a few weeks his own departure for Acre. Early in the year King Sancho
of Navarre had placed his daughter Berengaria in Queen Eleanor’s charge to take
her to Richard to become his wife. Before the end of February the
two ladies reached Naples, and Richard sent some galleys to meet them there;
but “on account of the multitude of men who accompanied them” Tancred’s people
refused them leave to go to Messina—which indeed must have been already
overwhelmed with foreign visitors—and they had to spend a month in his continental
dominions. Their coming was a clear intimation that Richard was now fully
determined to shake off the bonds of his engagement to Aloysia.
Philip peremptorily bade him, as his vassal, choose between two alternatives:
either to go with his overlord across the sea, in which case he should be at
liberty to marry Berengaria, or, if he would not go, to keep his promise of
marriage with Aloysia. Richard bluntly refused both.
Meanwhile Tancred had invited him to a meeting at Catania. A splendid welcome
was given him there on March 3, and for three days he was Tancred’s guest in
the palace. Tancred offered him “gifts many and great” in gold and silver,
cloth of silk, and horses, but Richard, “needing none of such things,” would
accept only one small ring as a token of friendship; in return for this he
presented Tancred with a sword which he seems to have asserted to be the famous
Excalibur bf King Arthur. Finally Tancred offered a substantial gift which
Richard did not decline : a contribution of four large ships “which they call ussers” and fifteen galleys to the crusading fleet. The
Sicilian king escorted his guest on the way back as far as Taormina, where
Philip was to meet them on March 8. There Tancred is said to have put into
Richard’s hands a letter which he declared had been brought to him by the duke
of Burgundy from the French king, containing an assertion that Richard had no
intention of keeping faith with Tancred, and a promise that if Tancred were
disposed to attack Richard, the French troops and their sovereign would give
their help in effecting Richard’s destruction. Richard on this left Taormina
before Philip reached it and returned to Messina by another way so as to avoid
meeting him. When he did meet him again, he at first studiously avoided him or
ignored his presence; when asked the reason, he showed the letter. Philip
accused him of having invented the whole affair as an excuse for “casting off”
the daughter of France whom he had promised to wed. Thus driven to extremity,
Richard said plainly that a marriage between him and Aloysia was impossible, and gave a reason which, as he produced several witnesses who
declared themselves ready to swear to its truth, fully justified his refusal.
The result was that Philip formally released him from his engagement and
declared him free to marry whomsoever he would. On the basis of this and
certain other conditions which were to take effect only at a later time, a
“firm peace” was once again made between the king of France and his “friend and
faithful liegeman, the illustrious king of England”.
The treaty was made before March 25; shortly
afterwards Philip and his “company” sailed, in the galleys which Richard had
given him, for Acre. Before starting he again besought Richard to pardon
William des Barres, and Richard after some demur promised to keep the peace
towards William so long as they were both engaged in the cause of the Cross. He
convoyed Philip through the Far, and then himself went to Reggio, having just
heard that Eleanor and Berengaria had arrived there. He took them on board and
brought his mother back with him to Messina, after, it seems, placing
Berengaria at La Bagnara with Joan; the men of the
queen’s suite seem to have been left at Reggio, and possibly even Eleanor and
her ladies may not have landed at Messina at all, for she stayed with her son
only four days and then departed for England. He had nothing more to wait for.
With all speed the fleet was made ready, and on April 10, the Wednesday before
Easter, it put to sea.
The ships which Richard had found awaiting
him in the harbour of Messina when he arrived there
are said to have numbered one hundred and fourteen. Stragglers that had come in
later, Tancred's gift, and other vessels bought or hired by Richard had now
raised the total to about two hundred. Of these, some forty or fifty were
galleys or battleships, built after the pattern of the old Roman liburnae or the “long keels” of Richard’s Norse
forefathers, long, slender, with armed prows, and propelled by two tiers of
oarsmen. The rest were transport vessels; those of the largest size, of which
there seem to have been now twenty-four, were called “busses” by the
northerners and “dromonds” in the Mediterranean and the Levant. Of these
vessels, fourteen which had formed part of the original English fleet had each
of them three spare rudders, thirteen anchors, thirty oars, two sails, triple
ropes of every kind, and a double set of everything else that a ship could
need, except the mast and the boat; the lading of each consisted of forty
war-horses, forty knights with all their arms and accoutrements, forty
foot-soldiers, and fifteen sailors, with food enough for all these men and
horses for a whole year. The other ships of burden, called “huissiers,”
“ushers,” “enekes” or “smacks” were round-shaped
vessels, seemingly dependent on sails alone; their carrying capacity was half
that of the busses. The king had taken the precaution to distribute his
treasure among all the transport ships, “so that if part were lost, another
part should be saved.”
If the fleet’s arrival had been a great sight
for the people April of Messina, its departure must have been a much more
imposing spectacle. Three dromonds, one of which carried Queen Joan and the
Damsel of Navarre, went in advance of all the rest. Thirteen ships formed the
second line or squadron; in the third were fourteen, in the fourth twenty, in
the fifth thirty, in the sixth forty, in the seventh sixty; the last consisted
of the galleys, on one of which was the king himself. Throughout the fleet the
order of its going was so carefully arranged that a trumpet’s sound could be
heard from squadron to squadron, and a man’s voice from ship to ship. When all
had passed, with a fair wind, through the Far into the open sea, the galleys sped
forward to overtake the slower vessels and took their place as the advanced
guard of the whole fleet, Richard’s own ship leading. “The king had
arranged, as far as possible, that the ships should never be separated unless
indeed a storm should disperse them. So the galleys moderated their speed and endeavoured to keep pace with the transports, for the
protection of the multitude and the comfort of the weak.” Suddenly the wind
dropped, and the whole fleet had to April anchor for the night. Next morning, Maunday Thursday,
“He
Who took the wind from us,” as one of the pilgrims says, “gave it us back
again”; but the breeze was so faint that they made very little progress, and at
night they were again becalmed. On the following morning (Good Friday, April
12) they were met by “a contrary wind on the left,” and all that day
they had to struggle with a heavy gale and storm. As good pilgrims they endured
their sufferings “right willingly, as a fitting discipline for the holy day.”
On their leader wind and weather had no effect; he was “just as healthy and
hearty, brave and strong, on sea as on land”; throughout this first experience
of Mediterranean storms and all those that followed, he remained perfectly
calm, and ceased not to comfort the others and encourage them to endure with
confidence, hoping for better things. Every evening he had a large candle in
the lantern lighted on his galley, to show the way to the other ships; they all
followed the light, and if one got out of the course he waited for it to get
back. Thus as a hen chickens out to feed he led his mighty fleet, sailing day
and 1191 night till late on the Wednesday in Easter Week (April 17) they
anchored off Crete. Next morning, it seems, Richard counted up the ships, and
found to his great wrath that despite all his precautions no less than
twenty-five were missing. He then directed his course to Rhodes, reached its
capital city on the following Monday (April 22), and stayed there three days,
partly because he was unwell, partly in the hope of hearing some tidings of the
missing vessels, and also to make inquiries about Cyprus and its “tyrant.”
This “tyrant” was Isaac Comnenos,
who, sent to Cyprus as governor for the Byzantine Emperor in 1185, had made
himself master of the island and ruled it as an independent sovereign for six
years. His tyranny, or usurpation, was not one of the least of the hindrances
to the deliverance of Holy Land; the Franks in that land had in former times
depended largely on the fertile and wealthy Greek island for its supplies, but
now they could get nothing thence, for Isaac was in close alliance with
Saladin, and never ceased doing as much ill to Christians as he could. Whether
Richard’s detour to Rhodes had any special motive or was April caused merely by
circumstances and stress of weather we do not know; but it seems quite clear
that he went out of his direct way from Rhodes to Acre in consequence of
information received at Rhodes as to what was going on in Cyprus. Probably,
too, he thought Cyprus a likely place in which to obtain news of his strayed
ships; and so it proved to be. Among the ships dispersed in the great storm of
Good Friday were the three dromonds which carried the ladies and their escort.
These three and some others had drifted southward, and while Richard was
sailing by the north coast of Crete to Rhodes, they were passing through the
open sea between Crete and Libya. On April 24, two or three days after
Richard’s arrival at Rhodes, they were trying to put into the harbour of Limisso, or as the
Crusade writers call it Limasol, the ancient Amathus, on the south coast of Cyprus, when a storm arose
and dashed two of April 24. 1191, them to pieces against the rocks; a third
ship put back into the open sea in time to save itself and its precious freight—it was the ship
which carried not only a considerable part of the king’s treasure (under the
charge of Stephen of Turnham, now restored to the king’s favour and acting as his marshal and treasurer), but also Joan and Berengaria. The
“Griffons” of Cyprus took the men who struggled ashore from the wrecks to a
fort hard by, promising them food and shelter,' but stripped them of their arms
on the plea that this was necessary till the pleasure of the “Emperor” (Isaac)
concerning them should be known; and they also seized the clothes and other
necessaries which the knights on the remaining ships sent to their distressed
comrades. These latter, finding themselves prisoners and May 2 almost starved,
at the end of a week made a determined effort to escape. With three bows which
they had either secreted or found in the fort they did such execution that the
whole party was able to make its way to the harbour,
where their friends in the ships, seeing what was going on, had meanwhile
landed and were fighting hard with the Griffons; finally the Griffons were
worsted, and the queen’s ship was brought into the harbour. That
evening Isaac came to Limasol; the pilgrims appealed
to him, and he May 3 promised them redress for their wrongs. Next day he sent
the queen and her future sister-in-law a courteous invitation to land; this
being prudently declined, he followed it up May 4 on the morrow with hospitable
gifts of bread, meat, and the May 5 famous wine of Cyprus. On the Sunday he
again tried to persuade the ladies to come ashore; after anxious consultation
they, fearing that longer resistance might lead to their being taken captives
by force—for Isaac meanwhile was assembling his troops on the shore—promised to
commit themselves to his protection on the morrow. But on that same Sunday
Richard’s fleet came in sight. It had left Rhodes on May 1;
the galleys, headed as usual by Richard’s own ship, had been driven by the wind
into the dangerous 1191 gulf of Satalia (or Atalia) on the coast of Pamphylia, and narrowly escaped
destruction, but were extricated and brought in safety to Cyprus, seemingly by
the fine seamanship of their royal leader. On the morning of Monday May 6 they
reached the entrance to the harbour of Limasol. As soon as Richard learned what had been taking
place there he sent a messenger ashore with a civilly worded remonstrance to
Isaac and a request that he would make amends for his people's ill-treatment of
Crusaders. Isaac was on the shore with all the troops that he had been able to
collect from every part of his island “empire”. He cut the messenger short
with an insulting word—“proupt, sir!’’; the messenger
went straight back and repeated it to the king. Richard’s retort was equally
brief; it was a command to his own men—“To arms!’’
Between the fleet and the shore five armed
galleys lay in the harbour. On the shore Isaac’s
troops were drawn up behind a barricade composed of every bit of wood that the
town could supply, doors and window-frames or shutters, barrels and casks,
shields and bucklers, pieces of old ships and boats, planks, steps, benches,
boxes, all piled up along the water’s edge. At the back of the troops was the
fortified town, overtopped by a lofty castle or citadel built on the rock. The
Crusaders could land only by means of their boats. Knights and crossbowmen
hurriedly obeyed the king’s order, and all weary and worn with long tossing on
the sea and laden with their heavy armour and
cumbrous weapons, crowded into the tiny cockle-shells to join battle as
foot-soldiers with an army of which part at least was well provided with good
horses and mules, and which, moreover, was on its own soil; “but,’’ as one of
the pilgrims says, “we knew the most about war.’’ Richard’s crossbowmen opened the fight by shooting at the enemy’s galleys;
“there were some who did not miss their aim,” says the same eyewitness; the
Greek sailors in a panic leaped into the water, and while they were struggling
there their ships were captured and taken outside the harbour to be guarded by the English fleet. Meanwhile the king, when he saw his
comrades struggling to land from the boats under a storm of arrows, “leaped
from his boat into the sea and made for the Greeks, and assailed them.” His men
followed his example and drove the Greeks back, some into the town, more into
the fields. Isaac took to flight; Richard, running after him, caught a horse
“with a sack attached to its saddle, and stirrups of cord,” sprang on its back,
and shouted “Emperor! come and joust!” But Isaac “had no mind to joust,” and
continued his flight. The town of Limasol now submitted to Richard, and he brought his sister and his bride ashore. That
same night the horses were May 7 landed and exercised; and next morning Richard
with a small force set out in search of the enemy. A party of them was soon
found in an olive garden, dislodged, and chased till the main body suddenly
came into view. Then Richard, having with him at the moment only fifty knights,
called a halt. Meanwhile the shouts of the Greeks whom he had been chasing
reached the ears of Isaac, half a league in advance, where he had stopped to
dine and sleep, for he had no idea that the Franks possessed any horses. He and
his escort climbed a hill “ to see what their folk would do.” All they did was
to keep turning about and shooting and shouting back at the little band of
Franks, who stood motionless. One Hugh de la Mare, who though he bore arms was
a clerk, said to the king, “Come away, sire, their numbers are too
overwhelming.” “Get you to your own writing-business, sir clerk, and leave
matters of chivalry to us,” retorted Richard. He knew that reinforcements were
not far behind him; even before they came up, the suddenness and vehemence of
his onset threw the Greeks into confusion; and the victory was soon complete.
Isaac fled to the mountains; his standard-bearer was struck down and the
standard taken by Richard's own hand. After chasing the enemy for a couple of
leagues the king called off his troops from the pursuit and leisurely returned,
the men-at-arms stopping on the way back to collect countless spoils left by
the Emperor in the place where he had camped. On reaching the town the king
caused a proclamation to be made that “all people of the land who did not
desire war might come and go in safety; but such as did seek war should have no
peace or truce from him”.
On the way from Rhodes to Cyprus Richard had
spoken a ship westward bound from Acre and heard of Philip's arrival there.
Some vessel sailing from Rhodes or Cyprus to Acre seems to have carried thither
news of Richard’s whereabouts. On May 11 three galleys were seen approaching Limasol. Richard characteristically set off in a little boat to ascertain for himself
what they were, and found that May they carried King Guy of Jerusalem and some
of his chief nobles, who had come in search of the king of
England to secure his alliance and support against a scheme which had been set
on foot at Acre under Philip’s auspices for deposing Guy and making Conrad of
Montferrat, the lord of Tyre, king in his stead.
Richard welcomed them cordially and royally. His marriage and the coronation of
his queen took place next day (May 12). A few more days were spent in festivities
and in waiting for some belated ships to come into port. Among those
irretrievably lost in the great storm there seem to have been several galleys,
but some at least of these were now replaced by the Cypriote ones which had
been captured. When at last the tale of vessels was complete, Richard prepared
to resume his pursuit of Isaac.
Isaac, however, who had retired inland to the
capital of Cyprus, Nicosia, anticipated him by sending proposals for a parley.
It took place “in a garden of fig trees between the shore and the Limasol road.” The
king went in regal state, attired in a tunic of rose-coloured samite and a mantle “bedight with small half-moons of solid silver set in rows,
interspersed with shining orbs like suns”; his head was covered with a scarlet
cap; he was girt with a well-proved sword “with a golden hilt, a silken belt,
and a finely chased scabbard edged with silver”; his spurs were golden (or
gilt), and he was mounted on a Spanish horse of great beauty as well as of a
size befitting a rider of such lofty stature; “ his saddle was red, studded
with little golden and bright-coloured stars, and
having on its hinder part two golden lion-cubs rampant, and as if snarling at
each other.” Isaac swore fealty to Richard, promising to accompany him to Holy
Land and serve under him there with five hundred knights; meanwhile Richard was
to hold the castles and imperial domains of Cyprus in pledge and to receive an
indemnity of three thousand five hundred marks. On these terms they exchanged
the kiss of peace. That night, however, Isaac mounted his fleetest horse, a
wonderful animal called Fauvel, and fled to Famagosta (the ancient Ammochontos,
on the east coast). His flight was discovered immediately, but Fauvel seems to have had a reputation which was already
known to Richard, for the king forbade all direct pursuit as useless. Instead,
he took stronger measures; he put to sea at the head of his galleys and round to Famagosta while his land-forces were, at his request,
led by Guy along the coast-road to meet him there. When they reached the place,
however, they found it deserted. Richard sent some ships round to the other
coast towns to guard against Isaac's escape by sea; he himself stayed three
days at Famagosta, and there gave an audience to some
envoys from Philip, charged with a pressing request that he would proceed to
Acre without further delay. Their urgency was so vehement and so insulting that
“the king grew angry, and raised his eyebrows, and there were words spoken
which it is not meet to write.” “Not for half the wealth of Russia” would he
leave Cyprus till he had conquered it and made sure that the supplies of food
of which it was the storehouse should be available for the Crusade. So he
marched upon Nicosia, whither Isaac had again retired. This time Richard,
fearing an attack from behind, took the command of the rearguard. Isaac was
lying in wait with his household troops; after an unsuccessful attempt to check
the advance of the Frankish vanguard, he “ like a Turcople ” harassed the flanks of the host till he came near enough to Richard to shoot
at him two arrows. Richard dashed forward and would have taken summary
vengeance, but the Cypriote Emperor was mounted on Fauvel,
and the matchless steed carried him away, at a pace which defied pursuit, to
the strong castle of Candaria or Kantara. His troops
retired in confusion. Next morning the citizens of Nicosia made their
submission to Richard, and he “had their beards shaved off in token of the
transfer of their allegiance to a new lord.” He then divided his army into
three parts, probably intending himself to take the command of one of them; but
he fell sick and was obliged to remain at Nicosia and leave the direction of
the campaign to the king of Jerusalem. Guy, who seems to have known the country,
besieged and took the castle of Cherina, on the north
coast, and found within its walls the emperor’s only child, a young girl. Her
father was so dismayed at her capture that he ordered the immediate surrender
of the next fortress, “Didemus,” to which Guy laid
siege. Richard, as soon as he recovered, went to attack a third stronghold, “Bufevent.” Scarcely had he reached it when Isaac offered
complete surrender of his castles, lands, “everything,” begging only to be
spared the indignity of “ irons or bonds.” Isaac followed close on his
messenger and threw himself at the king’s feet. Richard raised him up
graciously, seated him at his side, and relieved his anxiety about his daughter
by bringing her to meet him. As for the fetters, Isaac's request evidently ran
counter to the king's inclination or to his fears of a possible escape; but,
“lest folk should make an outcry”, he granted it after a fashion : he put the
fallen tyrant in chains of silver.
Thus in fifteen days—the last fortnight of
May— Richard, with Guy’s help, had won the mastery of Cyprus for the service of
God. For the same purpose he took possession of a mass of treasures of all
kinds which he found in the castles. Moreover, the people of the land, to whom
Isaac had been a tyrant in every sense of the word, gave to their
new ruler the half of all they possessed for the restoration of the laws and
institutes which they had had under the Emperors of Constantinople and which
Richard confirmed to them by charter. He further secured his conquest by turning
out all the Greek garrisons, replacing them with Franks, and
appointing two Englishmen, Richard de Camville and
Robert of Turnham, governors or keepers of the island, who were charged to send
regular supplies of the victuals—barley, wheat, sheep, bullocks—which Cyprus
produced in abundance, to the Franks in Syria, where, adds the poet-pilgrim,
they were of great use. Meanwhile he had sent Isaac, under the charge of Guy,
straight across the sea to the nearest point on the Syrian coast, the fortress
of Markab in Tripoli. The Damsel of Cyprus, who seems to have been almost a
child, was placed under the care of the two queens and remained with them
throughout the Crusade. On June 5, the Wednesday in Whitsun week, the fleet
sailed for Palestine. The various losses which it 1191 had sustained in the
Mediterranean Sea were compensated by the acquisition of the Cypriote navy; the
total of ships was now a hundred and sixty-three, of which thirteen were
three-masted busses and fifty were triremes.
One more adventure at sea awaited the king
before he reached the Holy Land. “Full of health, and light as a feather,” he
led the way “as fast as a stag could run” in a direct line across the water
till Markab was sighted. Thence the fleet sailed down the coast past Tortosa, Tripoli, and Beyrout.
Suddenly, between Beyrout and Sidon, Richard and his
companions in the leading galley saw ahead of them a ship of such size “that we
read of no larger one ever existing save the ark of Noah.” On a nearer view they perceived that it had
three tall masts; one side of it was covered with green felt or tarpaulin, the
other with yellow; and its whole appearance, to western eyes, was unnatural and
uncanny. Richard’s men hailed it and demanded whence it came and where it
belonged. “We are Genoese, for Tyre,” was the answer.
But one of Richard’s oarsmen said : “Hang me, sire, if that ship be not
Turkish!”. At his suggestion another galley was ordered to go close up to the
ship without hailing her; this was done, and her crew immediately opened fire
on the galley with arbalests and Damascus bows. Richard’s galley came swiftly
up; his men tried to board the ship, but in vain. The king swore he would hang
them all if they let the Turks escape. Again and again they renewed the attack;
at last they fairly stormed the ship, but were driven back again into their own
vessels. Then Richard bade them make a breach in the enemy ship’s side or keel;
in this they succeeded, and she sank. Some thirty-five of her officers and
engineers were saved and kept as prisoners by Richard’s orders; the rest of the
men on board her were either slain or drowned. When the victors
reached their destination they learned that the ship had been specially built
by order of Saladin’s brother Safadin and despatched from Beyrout to carry
reinforcements and supplies to the besieged Saracens in Acre, but had been
unable to enter the harbour and was, when the Franks
overtook her, cruising about, waiting for an opportunity to return thither;
she carried, besides her crew, at least six hundred and fifty picked soldiers;
a man, doubtless one of the prisoners, who had seen her loaded at Beyrout, said eight hundred, and further asserted that she
contained a hundred camel-loads of arms of all kinds, victuals and other stores
“beyond reckoning,” bottles filled with Greek fire, and two hundred “ugly grey
serpents” which, according to one account, he had himself helped to stow in
her, and which were destined to be let loose against the Christian host;
probably these were some kind of serpent-like contrivances for throwing the
fire. In the Saracen camp the story of the catastrophe was somewhat differently
told by a Moslem who represented himself as its sole survivor, rescued and sent
by the Christians to inform his people of the disaster which had befallen their
cause. He seems to have stated that the dromond had been sunk by its own
captain to save it from capture. Saladin’s biographer, however, frankly admits
that the issue of Richard’s first encounter with Turks was a severe blow to the
defenders of Acre. To Richard and his followers it must have seemed a good
omen; and it was immediately followed by another. At the opening of the fight
they had had the wind in their faces; suddenly it dropped and then shifted to
the north and carried them before nightfall to Tyre.
Here Richard landed, intending to spend the night in the city, but its keepers
refused to admit him, asserting that their lord, Conrad of Montferrat, and the
king of France had forbidden them to do so. Next day the wind still favoured him and his fleet, and bore them past Scandalion and Casal Imbert
straight to the haven where they would be.
BOOK IIRICHARD’S CRUSADECHAPTER IIITHE FALL OF ACRE1190.
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