Of course, Richard’s treatment of his prisoners also impacted upon his image within western Christendom, in some ways with a far more lasting and powerful effect. Calculated or otherwise, his actions could be presented as having contravened the terms agreed when Acre surrendered. Should Richard be seen to have broken his promise, he might be open to censure, the transgressor of popular notions regarding chivalry and honour. Fear of such criticism can be detected in the measured and carefully managed manner in which the king and his supporters sought to present the executions.

The dominant issue was justification. In Richard’s own letter to the abbot of Clairvaux, dated 1 October 1191, he stressed Saladin’s prevarication, explaining that because of this, ‘the time limit expired, and, as the pact which he had agreed with us was entirely made void, we quite properly had the Saracens that we had in our custody–about 2,600 of them–put to death’. Some Latin chroniclers likewise sought to shift blame on to the sultan–affirming that Saladin began killing his own Christian captives two days before Richard’s mass execution–and also explained that the Lionheart acted only after holding a council, and with the agreement of Hugh of Burgundy (who was now leading the French). Despite a few traces of censure in the West–the German chronicler ‘Ansbert’, for example, denounced the barbarity of Richard’s act–the English king seems to have escaped widespread condemnation.

Meanwhile, assessments by modern historians have fluctuated over time. Writing in the 1930s, when the general view of the Lionheart as a rash and intemperate monarch still held sway, René Grousset characterised the massacre as barbarous and stupid, concluding that Richard was moved to act by raw anger. More recently, John Gillingham’s forceful and hugely influential scholarship has done much to rejuvenate the king’s reputation. In Gillingham’s reconstruction of events at Acre, the Lionheart comes across as a calculating and clear-headed commander; one who recognised that the resources to feed and guard thousands of Muslim prisoners could not be spared, and thus made a reasoned decision, driven by military expediency.⁶⁴

In truth, King Richard’s motives and mindset in August 1191 cannot be recovered with certainty. A logical explanation for his actions exists, but this in itself does not eliminate the possibility that he was moved by ire and impatience.

16

LIONHEART

King Richard I of England was now free to lead the Third Crusade on to victory: Acre’s walls had been rebuilt and its Muslim garrison ruthlessly dispatched; Richard had secured the support of many leading crusaders, including his nephew Henry II, count of Champagne; even Hugh of Burgundy and Conrad of Montferrat had shown at least nominal acceptance of the Lionheart’s right to command, although Conrad remained ensconced in Tyre.⁶⁵ Now the expedition’s next goal had to be determined. Little or nothing could be achieved by staying at Acre, but to leave the city by land would expose the crusade to the full ferocity of Saladin’s troops. In the Middle Ages an army was at its most vulnerable while on the move in enemy territory. Richard’s only alternative to a land advance was the sea, but he seems quickly to have rejected the idea of a strategy based purely on naval power. Large as his fleet now was, the transportation of the entire military machinery of the crusade would be a formidable challenge; even more significantly, should he fail to capture a suitable port to the south, the whole offensive would collapse. The Lionheart eventually settled on a combined approach–a fighting march that would hug the Mediterranean coastline south, closely shadowed and supported by the Latin navy. This ruled out an inland advance on Jerusalem, but in any case the obvious route to the Holy City ran south along the coast road to Jaffa and then east into the Judean hills–a path similar to that taken by the First Crusaders almost a century earlier.

However, Richard’s strategic intentions in summer 1190 are unclear. The Third Crusade had been launched to recover Jerusalem, but it is far from certain that this was the king’s first objective that August. He may well have been planning to use the port of Jaffa as a springboard for a direct advance on the Holy City. But a more oblique approach also presented itself; one that targeted the coastal city of Ascalon to the south, disrupting Saladin’s lines of communication with Egypt. Given the sultan’s reliance upon Egypt’s wealth and resources, this latter policy promised to cripple the Muslim military machine, opening the door to the eventual reconquest of Jerusalem, or, perhaps, to the seizure of the Nile Delta itself.

Of course, the lack of clarity surrounding Richard’s plans was, in part, a direct result of the king’s own deliberate evasiveness. It made perfect sense for him to conceal his strategy from Saladin, because this forced the sultan to dilute his resources by preparing for the defence of two cities rather than just one. Muslim sources certainly indicate that, to an extent, this ruse worked. By late August Saladin had heard rumours that the crusaders would march on Ascalon, but knew that once they reached Jaffa they could just as easily strike inland. Soberly informed by one of his generals that both Ascalon and Jerusalem would require garrisons of 20,000 men, the sultan eventually concluded that one of the two would have to be sacrificed.

In fact, it is quite possible that Richard had not yet settled upon a definitive goal. The bulk of his army might have had their eyes firmly fixed upon the Holy City, but he perhaps looked to retain a flexibility of approach, hoping to reach the intermediary objective of Jaffa and then decide. This might have seemed a sensible strategy at the time, but in truth the king was merely storing up problems for the future.

THE FINEST HOUR

Richard’s immediate intention was to march the armies of the Third Crusade–totalling between 10,000 and 15,000 men–down the coast of Palestine, at least as far as the port of Jaffa. But it was not territorial conquest, nor even the pursuit of battle, that dominated the Lionheart’s tactical outlook upon leaving the relative safety of Acre. Instead, survival was his guiding principle–the preservation of human manpower and military resources, to ensure that the crusading war machine reached Jaffa intact. This in itself presented enormous challenges. Richard knew that, while on the move, his army would be horribly vulnerable, subject to vicious, near-constant skirmishing attacks from enemy soldiers now baying with vengeful wrath for Frankish blood. He could also expect that Saladin would seek to lure the crusaders into open battle on ground of his choosing.

With all this in mind, it might at first glance be imagined that speed was the answer; that Richard’s best chance lay in prosecuting the eighty-one-mile march to Jaffa as quickly as possible in the hope of evading the enemy. After all, the ground could be covered in four to five days and the king was short of time. In fact, Richard resolved to advance from Acre at an incredibly measured, almost ponderous pace. Latin military logic of the day dictated that control was the key to a successful fighting march: troops needed rigidly to maintain a tightly packed formation, relying upon strength of numbers and the protection afforded by their armour to weather the storm of enemy charges and incessant missile attacks. Richard set out to take this theory to extreme limits.