On the evening of 28 April Conrad travelled to the French crusader Philip bishop of Beauvais’ residence in Tyre to have supper. The pair seem to have struck up a friendship in the course of the crusade and Conrad was in a relaxed, celebratory mood. Riding home through the city later that night, attended by two guards, the marquis passed the Exchange building and entered a narrow street.

[There] two men were sitting on either side of the road. As [Conrad] came between them they rose up to meet him. One of them came and showed him a letter, and the marquis held out his hand to take it. The man drew a knife and plunged it into his body. The other man who was on the other side jumped onto the horse’s rear and stabbed him in the side, and he fell dead.

Conrad’s two assailants were subsequently revealed to have been members of the order of Assassins sent by Sinan, the Old Man of the Mountain. One of the pair was decapitated immediately; the other captured, interrogated and then dragged through the streets until he died. But though their link to the Assassins was established, the original instigator of the attack remained less certain. Hugh of Burgundy and the French in Tyre spread the rumour that King Richard had contracted the killing, while in some parts of the Muslim world it was rumoured that Saladin was involved. Given recent developments, however, neither ruler actually stood to gain much from Conrad’s death. The truth of the matter is impossible to determine–Sinan may even have acted independently to eliminate the marquis, having deemed him to be a dangerous long-term threat to the balance of power in the Levant.⁹³

The political situation among the Latins was in disarray. Hugh of Burgundy tried to seize control of Tyre, but he seems to have been thwarted by Conrad’s widow Isabella, the heiress to the kingdom of Jerusalem. With yet another outbreak of infighting threatening, a new settlement was pushed through quickly. Count Henry of Champagne was chosen as a compromise candidate–because as nephew to both King Richard and Philip Augustus he represented Angevin and Capetian interests–and within a week he was married to Isabella and elected as titular monarch of Frankish Palestine.

The exact extent of the Lionheart’s involvement in the engineering of this rapid solution is unclear. By and large, however, the new order suited his interests and those of the Third Crusade. Henry of Champagne’s appointment finally united all the Latin armies in Palestine–from the native Franks of Outremer, to Hugh of Burgundy’s French troops and Richard’s Angevin forces. Given Henry’s and Richard’s recent history of alliance, there was also a good chance that the pair would be able to cooperate effectively.

Through May 1192 the Lionheart set about bolstering his foothold in southern Palestine, conquering the Muslim-held fortress of Darum, while the work of refortifying Ascalon neared completion and Count Henry and Duke Hugh mustered armies to the north. With Christian morale reinvigorated, the stage seemed set for the launch of a decisive campaign–although, given Richard’s recent expansion down the coast towards Egypt, the target of any venture still might be subject to debate.

On 29 May, however, another Angevin messenger arrived from Europe with a dispatch confirming the Lionheart’s worst fears. Ever since his rival Philip Augustus of France had left the crusade in midsummer 1191, Richard had been deeply concerned that the Capetians might threaten Angevin territory in his absence. He now learned that King Philip had made contact with Prince John, and that together the pair were busy plotting. The envoy warned that unless something was done ‘[to restrain] this abominable treachery, there was a danger that very soon England would be taken from King Richard’s authority’. The Lionheart was said to have been ‘disturbed to hear this news, and afterwards…sat for a long time in silence, turning things over in his mind and weighing up what should be done’. In April he had resolved to remain in the Holy Land, but this latest grave report from the West reopened the issue. According to his supporter Ambroise, Richard was ‘melancholy, downcast and saddened…his thinking confused’.⁹⁴ Christendom’s great warrior had reached the critical moment of decision–would he fight on as a crusader, or heed the call of his Angevin realm and return home as a king?

18

RESOLUTION

With the approach of summer in 1192, Saladin began to reassemble his armies, girding Islam for a renewed Christian offensive. Over the preceding year the sultan had faced a series of ruinous setbacks. He had watched in impotent humiliation as Acre fell on 12 July 1191, and then suffered the shock of King Richard’s cold-blooded execution of the city’s Muslim garrison on 20 August. All efforts to halt the Lionheart’s march south to Jaffa had failed and, on 7 September at Arsuf, Saladin’s armies had been driven from the field of battle. Forced to reconsider his strategy, the sultan moved on to the defensive, demolishing the fortresses of southern Palestine, shadowing the crusaders’ grinding inland advance, yet ultimately retreating within the confines of Jerusalem itself around 12 December, there to await attack.

Since the glory of his victories at Hattin and the Holy City in 1187, Saladin had remained resolute in his commitment to jihad–if anything, his dedication had deepened. But even so, he had gradually lost the initiative to the Franks. Debilitated by recurrent illness, hamstrung by the faltering morale and physical exhaustion of his troops, and distracted by the wider demands of his Ayyubid Empire, the sultan had been slowly driven to the edge of defeat. Then, on 12 January 1192, the crusaders retreated from Beit Nuba, offering Islam a new lease of hope and gifting Saladin the chance to regroup and recover.

AYYUBID STRATEGY IN EARLY 1192

Having survived the Christian advance on Jerusalem, Saladin took stock of his position in the first months of 1192. The Ayyubid realm was in a worrying state of disrepair. After years of neglecting the management of his treasury, the sultan’s financial resources were profoundly overstretched, and without a ready supply of money he was struggling to pay for the manpower and materials necessary for war. Egypt’s continued prosperity offered a lifeline, but Richard’s reoccupation of Ascalon posed a considerable threat to communications between Syria and the Nile region.

These economic woes were linked to a second concern: the dwindling availability and waning loyalty of his armies. Through the near-constant campaigning of the preceding four years, Saladin had made enormous demands of the troops drawn from his own domains in Egypt, Syria and the Jazira. Likewise, he had asked much of his allies in Mesopotamia and Diyar Bakr. It was a testament to Saladin’s remarkable charisma as a leader, to the effectiveness of the political and religious propaganda he disseminated, and to the devotional appeal of jihad that even potential rivals such as the Zangid Izz al-Din of Mosul and Imad al-Din Zangi of Sinjar had continued to honour their commitments to the holy war by answering the Ayyubid sultan’s calls to arms. But these demands could not be met indefinitely. If the conflict in Palestine continued unabated, it would be only a matter of time before the bonds of loyalty and common purpose uniting the Muslim world began to fracture. This was why Saladin took the risk of disbanding his army in December 1192.