Tale of Two Cities: Acre and Tyre Following the Disaster at Hattin

After the Battle of Hattin on July 4, 1187, the armies of Saladin swept into the Kingdom of Jerusalem. With the field army crushed, its survivors in chains, the forces of Saladin faced no mobile opposition and could move across the countryside at will. Frankish settlers and native Christians in rural communities and unfortified villages were completely at the mercy of the invaders. Yet, dozens of fortified cities and castles remained, and it was to these strongholds that the bulk of the population fled as the news of the catastrophe at Hattin reached them. For Saladin, the defeat of the Kingdom could not be complete until he had captured these Frankish bastions.

Crusader tactics had long dictated the withdrawal to fortified places during invasions, and huge sums of gold had been invested in making some of the most sophisticated and imposing castles in the history of military warfare. Castles like Kerak and Krak de Chevaliers were able to defy Saladin for years (in the former case) or completely (in the latter case) even with small garrisons. But these were military strongpoints build to defend the heartland and population of the kingdom. The population itself was concentrated in a dozen cities: the inland cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Nablus, Nazareth, and Tiberias, and the economically more important coastal cities of Jaffa, Caesarea, Haifa, Acre, Tyre, Sidon and Beirut.  The largest cities in the kingdom by population were Acre and Tyre, each with an estimated population of 30,000, and Jerusalem with a resident population of probably not more than 20,000 that was almost always swollen by pilgrims to 30,000 or more.

Krak de Chevaliers -- One of the Finest Crusader Castles

For almost a century, the Franks had held (and indeed expanded) their territory by maintaining these well-fortified cities supported by strategic castles. But the strategy depended upon having a field army to come to the relief of a city or castle under siege. The destruction of the Frankish field army at Hattin, made every city and castle in the kingdom vulnerable, particularly since the garrisons had been reduced to a minimum to swell the size of the field army. Furthermore, the rules of medieval warfare were simple and brutal: a city that surrendered without resistance could expect lenient terms including the right to retain one’s life and moveable property, but a city that resisted could expect only sack, slaughter and slavery.

In July 1187, the inland cities of the crusader kingdoms had no hope at all. They were utterly cut off from any hope of relief and, except for Jerusalem, fell without a fight. That Jerusalem resisted had to do with its unique significance to Christianity. It did not resist in the hope of survival but for the sake of martyrdom. (The siege and fall of Jerusalem are the subject of a separate entry.) The coastal cities, in contrast, had a theoretical chance of relief by sea, if they could hold out long enough for word to reach the powerful Christian kingdoms of Western Europe.

But not all coastal cities were equally defensible, and the absence of fighting men and commanders had a devastating impact on both fighting capabilities and morale. Jaffa resisted an army led by Saladin’s brother al-Adil, but fell rapidly and its citizens were slaughtered or enslaved. After this example, it is hardly surprising that Caesarea, Haifa, Sidon and Beirut surrendered within in little more than a month after Hattin. But the fate of the two largest cities of the kingdom stands out: Acre and Tyre.

Acre was the economic capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. It had a strong natural harbor and had been extremely well fortified. It took two years for the crusading armies to capture it.  Yet in 1187 it capitulated to Saladin in just two days.  Indeed, it did not put up a fight at all. Tyre, in contrast, defied Saladin not once but twice, in July 1187 and again in December 1187. It was soon the only city of the former Kingdom of Jerusalem to remain in Frankish hands, and — more important — it became the bridgehead through which reinforcements and supplies flooded to support a counter-offensive against Saladin.  It is fair to say, that if Tyre had fallen, the Third Crusade might not have been possible at all, certainly the outcome would have been even more in doubt. It is also fair to suggest that had Acre not surrendered, the Third Crusade would have had a better starting point and better chances of success.

Acre Today

So what accounted for the different responses?

Both cities were well fortified and had excellent harbors capable of receiving reinforcements and supplies. Furthermore, the economic structure of the two cities would have been very similar. Both would have been dominated by merchants engaged in the lucrative trade that passed through these cities on the interface between East and West. Particularly notable would have been the various Italian “communes” made up of merchants from Pisa, Genoa and Venice. The cities were also centers of export industries such as sugar, olive oil, pottery, soap and perfumes, and (in Tyre) glass-making. They were home to an exceptional number of religious houses and communities, including (in Acre) major commanderies of both the Templars and Hospitallers. These elites were supported by a large and diverse population of tradesmen, shopkeepers, and service providers from tavern keepers to livery stables. 

Ethnically, both cities were diverse. Both housed remnants of the pre-crusader population composed of Muslims and Jews as well as Greek, Armenian and Syrian Christians. Both also had a large (for medieval cities) population of both Italian and “Frankish” immigrants. The proportions between these elements are now impossible to determine, but studies suggest there were more Muslims the farther north one went toward Tripoli, so Tyre may have had a marginally larger population of Muslims. In neither city, however, did the Muslims make up a significant portion, much less a majority, of the population.

Acre's Harbor Front Today

Two factors appear to have made the difference. The survivors of Hattin led by the barons of Tripoli, Sidon and Ibelin made for Tyre. Tripoli and Sidon both had their power bases north of Tyre, and Tripoli continued to his own county. Why Ibelin chose Tyre is unknown. The consequence was that, in contrast to all other cities in the kingdom, Tyre did have a substantial number (maybe as much as 3,000) fighting men with which to defend and man its walls. Acre did not.

Yet, even without fighting men, the population of Acre was so outraged when they learned the city had been surrendered without a fight that they rioted and started burning their own homes. Acre did not lack fighting spirit.  Tyre, on the other, despite having an ample number of fighting men was reportedly on the brink of surrender. In both cases the fate of the city was determined not by the population at large but by the commanders. Acre was surrendered by the ever ineffective and perpetually inept titular Count of Edessa. Tyre was defended by Conrad de Montferrat.

The County of Edessa had been lost to Zengi in 1144, and five years later Count Jocelyn II also fell into Zengi’s hands, never to be released. Jocelyn III Count of Edessa was his son, the brother of Agnes de Courtenay, and so uncle of both the leper king, Baldwin IV, and Sibylla I. His only claim to fame was that he helped Sibylla usurp the throne in 1186—and had a reputation for rapacious greed. Because he was in a position to surrender Acre (in exchange for being able to remove all his movable wealth from the city), it is widely assumed that he somehow escaped the field of Hattin along with Tripoli, Sidon and Ibelin. However, I have never seen a shred of evidence that he was ever at the battle! Although he had accumulated income from his nephew and niece, he does not appear to have been a particularly martial personality. By 1187 was also probably well into his fifties, if not older.  I believe that Edessa remained at Acre when the rest of the army marched out, and that it was his concern for his personal welfare that dictated the surrender of the economic jewel of the Kingdom, Acre.

Tyre on the other hand was saved by the timely arrival of an outsider. Although the survivors of Hattin had initially concentrated in Tyre, the Count of Tripoli continued with his step-sons to his county and stronghold of Tripoli, leaving Sidon and Ibelin in Tyre. Ibelin, however, was either obsessed with saving his family (which was trapped in Jerusalem), or was intent on defending Jerusalem itself. Whatever his reasons, he left Tyre to go to Jerusalem, where he organized a dramatically successful defense with women, priests and children. Sidon was left in Tyre, but his own barony lay to the north and reportedly he opened negotiations for the surrender of Tyre with Saladin. Whether these were genuine or a ruse to buy time is the subject of debate to this day. Again, whatever his motives, the people of Tyre appear to have believed he was contemplating surrender.

But at this critical juncture Conrad de Montferrat sailed into Tyre harbor, took over the command of the defense, and flatly refused to surrender the city. Even his detractors (and he had and still has many!) credit him with restoring the fighting spirit of the men gathered there and ensuring that at least one city remained in Frankish hands.

The defense of Tyre is described in Envoy of Jerusalem.  Buy now in paperback or kindle!

The Time-Honored Tradition of Ransom

Following the battle of Hattin, the knights and noblemen who had surrendered to Saladin’s forces were held for ransom and would later be released.  The idea is quite alien to many modern readers, so I thought I’d step back and examine it briefly.

The concept of ransom dates back to classical times, but during the Early Middle Ages it fell into disuse and we hear little about ransoms. By the mid-11^th century, however, they were back in fashion, and from the mid-12^th century to the end of the 15^th they were a dominant feature of warfare.  Although they have since disappeared from Western warfare, the criminal custom of capturing people for ransom still persists in some parts of the world such as Latin America and Nigeria. In Western Europe, the age of ransoms was the High Middle Ages, when ransoms constituted a fundamental component of warfare. Without them, the very course of European history would have been different — not just because kings like Richard I of England and John “the Good” of France might have been killed rather than held for ransom, but because the custom of allowing a captive to buy his freedom altered many aspects of warfare itself.

It worth noting, however, that the tradition of ransom was strongest in France. It spread with French influence to England and the Holy Land, but was not so well established in the Holy Roman Empire or Iberia. Interestingly, the Saracens either had an independent tradition of ransom (and if someone knows about this please leave a comment!) or rapidly adopted the “Frankish” custom because it was so highly lucrative. The Arabs were, after all, very good businessmen and traders, and ransoms were first and foremost a financial transaction.

In the French/English tradition, ransoms were a means of enriching oneself, and the rules of tournaments reflected this by dictating that a captured knight had to surrender his horse and armor to his captor. It was the lure of loot as much as the hope for fame and honor that produced the “tournament circuits” of the 12^th to 14^th centuries, where knights traveled from tournament to tournament like modern-day professional athletes. But the fortunes made on the tournament fields were a pale imitation of what “real” ransoms could bring.

A man taken in battle by his enemy was completely at the mercy of the victor, and the stakes were impossibly high; the victor was within his right to slaughter or (if non-Christian) enslave his opponent. The custom of ransom dramatically decreased casualties, because the prospect of financial gain greatly increased the proclivity of victorious fighting men to show mercy toward those who surrendered to them. This had the unfortunate side-effect, of course, of making the lives of wealthy men more valuable than the lives of the poor. As a result, throughout the High Middle Ages there was a tendency for those of a class deemed good for ransom to escape death, while their less fortunate followers paid the price of defeat with their lives.

But ransoms were not fixed and so not immutably tied to rank and title. They were always negotiable, and a rich merchant’s son — assuming he had enough time to describe the size of his father’s purse to his erstwhile murderer — stood as good if not a better chance of being granted the privilege of ransom than a poor knight. Ransoms were always based on what a man (or his family) could pay quite simply because there was no point in setting a price that one could not hope to collect — unless the real intent was to ensure the captive could never again raise arms against you.  

Every castle had its gloomy, windowless places...

Had Philip II of France, for example, held Richard the Lionheart captive instead of the Holy Roman Emperor, it is probable that he would have set demands intended to keep Richard in a dungeon for the rest of his life.  Likewise, the ransom set for John “the Good” of France after he was captured at the Battle of Poitiers was dictated far more by the political advantage of denying the French a rival king to Edward III than by thoughts of monetary gain. Except where kings and important nobles were at stake, however, ransoms were generally dictated by a captive’s ability to pay.

By which, of course, I do not mean the captive himself, for he was just that — held captive. Ransoms were usually raised by a captive’s relatives — parents, wives, siblings, children. If they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) scrape together the funds needed, then the appeal would go to cousins and in-laws, anyone who might have money and care enough for the captive to contribute to the cause. Lucky men, who enjoyed the respect of those more powerful and wealthy than themselves, might also be ransomed by their feudal overlord. Examples of this were the payment of Aimery de Lusignan’s ransom by King Amalric, or William Marshal’s ransom by Queen Eleanor. In the case of captive kings and barons, of course, they did not have to rely on the generosity of those that loved or respected them. They could demand contributions from their subjects, vassals and tenants. 

Usually a man was held in captivity until the ransom was paid, and conditions varied. Some men enjoyed comfortable “house arrest,” able to interact with the household and even family of the man to whom they had surrendered. Others were kept locked in a single room, even a dungeon. In the worse cases, prisoners were kept chained the walls of their prison until the ransom was paid.  On rare occasions, a man (of high rank generally) might be freed on parole in order to enable him to better collect the sum owed. Famous cases of this were Baldwin of Ramla, who was released by Saladin after payment of only a small portion of the enormous ransom set, and Bertrand du Guesclin, who the Black Prince paroled so he could raise his ransom. The former talked the Byzantine Emperor into paying the outstanding portion of his ransom, and the latter raised his ransom from the King of France, Louis d’Anjou and Henry of Trastamare.  

While the payment of a ransom could financially ruin a man and his family, ransoms could make the fortune of those fortunate enough to take a valuable prize.  At the Battle of Poitiers, English and Gascons almost tore the French king apart in their eagerness to lay claim to his ransom. Desmond Seward describes the situation like this in his history of the Hundred Years War ( The Hundred Years War: The English in France, 1337-1445, Macmillan, New York, 1978):

[King John] was recognized and surrounded by a great crowd of soldiers anxious to take so fabulous a ransom. Although he surrendered to a knight of Artois, he was still in peril, for the brawling mob of Gascons and English began to fight for him. Finally he was rescued by the Earl of Warwick and Lord Cobham, who took him to the Prince [of Wales].

Few men had a share of a king’s ransom, but as long as a man was on the winning side, it was possible to accumulate a small fortune from the ransoms of lesser men. Ransoms more than plunder was what made the Hundred Years War so lucrative for England — and impoverished France. The latter was in part due to the fact that because a ransom was a reflection of a man’s ability to pay, it was also indirectly a reflection of his “worth.” The English soon learned that it was to their advantage to let French captives name their own ransoms because pride often induced the prisoners to name ransoms suited more to their self-image than the size of their pocketbook.  Even the Black Prince used this tactic when setting the ransom for Guesclin; the latter named the huge sum of 100,000 francs, something he could not possibly have raised from his own resources, hence the resort to the King of France et. al. 

Yet common as ransoms were throughout the High Middle Ages, they remained a privilege not a right. The Knights Templar, for example, explicitly prohibited their members from paying ransoms. A Knight Templar was expected to die for Christ and find salvation for his soul in that act of martyrdom. This may have contributed to the Saracen tendency to slaughter captured Templars and Hospitallers; they had no monetary value and so eliminating them sooner rather than latter made sense.

Normally, however, it was the circumstances in which the victor found himself, not the ideology of the captive, that determined whether a ransom would be accepted or not. In the heat of battle, many soldiers were overcome by “blood lust” that utterly obliterated their greed for gold. Or, when the battle was not one between mercenaries but between true adversaries, fighting men might simply hate their opponents too much to be willing to grant mercy. There were also times when commanders made a strategic decision to kill prisoners. A famous case in point here was Henry V’s order to kill the French prisoners taken at Agincourt. Underestimating the demoralizing effect of his initial successes, Henry V felt he needed every Englishman on the frontline, ready to repel the next attack by the still numerically superior French, and was unwilling to spare men to guard the prisoners.

Even more significant, however, is that by the Wars of the Roses commanders were beginning to prefer annihilation of the enemy’s ability to fight over the profit gained from ransoms. It is a clear indicator of the increasing hatred between the rival factions for the English throne that Edward IV allegedly told his soldiers to “kill the lords and spare the commons.” Edward IV recognized that the commons might not pay monetary ransoms, but they were his subjects and he gained nothing by killing them. The rebellious lords, on the other hand, were the threat to his throne.  

In the subsequent century, as warfare became increasingly tied to religion and kings became increasingly despotic, the notion that an opponent might be allowed to live in exchange for a payment of money became discredited. Ransoms became anachronistic and eventually disappeared from the customs of Western warfare altogether.   

 Buy now!                                       Buy now!                                   Buy now (paperback)
                                                                                                                or Kindle!

The Battle of Hattin: Disaster on the Horns of Hattin

Medieval Depiction of the Battle of Hattin, July 4, 1187

The devastating defeat of the combined Christian army at the Battle of Hattin on July 4, 1187, was one of the most significant disasters in medieval military history.  Christian casualties at the battle were so enormous, that the defense of the rest of the Kingdom of Jerusalem became impossible, and so the defeat at Hattin led directly to the loss of the entire kingdom including Jerusalem itself. The loss of the Holy City, led to the Third Crusade, and so to the death of the Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich I “Barbarossa”, and extended absence from his domains of Richard I “the Lionheart.” Both circumstances had a profound impact on the balance of power in Western Europe. Meanwhile the role of the critical of Pisan and Genoese fleets in supplying the only city left in Christian hands, Tyre, and in supporting Richard I’s land army resulted in trading privileges that led to the establishment of powerful trading centers in the Levant. These in turn fostered the exchange of goods and ideas that led historian Claude Reignier Condor to write at the end of the 19^th Century that: “…the result of the Crusades was the Renaissance.” (The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem 1099 to 1291 AD, The Committee of Palestine Exploration Fund, 1897, p. 163.)

The importance of Hattin to contemporaries was not just the magnitude of the defeat, but the unexpectedness of it.  In retrospect, the victory seems inevitable. Muslim states had always surrounded the crusader kingdom (as they hem in Israel today) and the Muslim rulers had always been able to call on much larger military forces than their Christian opponents.  In the early years of Latin presence in the Holy Land, the divisions among the Muslim leaders, most especially the rivalry and hatred between Shiite Caliphate of Cairo and the Sunni Caliphate of Baghdad, had played into Christian hands.  However, once Saladin had managed to unite Syria and Egypt under a single, charismatic leader the balance of power clearly tipped to the Muslims.

However, Christian armies under Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and Richard I of England defeated Saladin on the battlefield more than once.  Saladin was a powerful, charismatic and clever commander, who knew how to deploy his forces effectively and use terrain to his advantage — but he was not invincible. Indeed, he was dealt a defeat every bit as devastating as Hattin in November 1177 at the Battle of Montgisard. His invading army was annihilated, and he himself had to flee on the back of a pack-camel. In July 1182, the Christian army under Baldwin IV stopped another full-scale invasion by Saladin, forcing him to withdraw across the Jordan with comparatively few Christian losses. In June the following year, 1183, the Christian army confronted yet another invasion on an even larger force and again forced Saladin to withdraw — this time without even engaging in an all-out battle.

Despite these apparent successes, it was clear to the King of Jerusalem that Saladin was getting stronger with each new invasion attempt.  Saladin had increased his own power base from Cairo and Damascus to Aleppo, Homs and Mosul, while the Christians had no new infusions of blood, territory or income. In consequence, in 1184 Baldwin IV sent a frantic plea to the West, begging for a new crusade and offering the Western leader — whoever he might be — the keys to the kingdom. The lack of response reflected Western complacency about the threat to Jerusalem and implicit confidence in the ability of Baldwin and his barons to continue to defeat Saladin’s attempts to push the Christian kingdom into the sea.

It was because of Baldwin’s earlier successes against Saladin, that the news of Hattin and the loss of Jerusalem shocked the West, allegedly causing the immediate death of Pope Urban III. How was it possible that a young and vigorous king, Guy I, could lead the same army to defeat that a youth suffering from leprosy (and only commanding his armies from a liter) had led to victory again and again?  

Rarely in human history has a defeat been so wholly attributable to poor generalship on the losing side as at Hattin. To be sure, Saladin set a trap for the Christian armies. The bait was the citizens and garrison of Tiberius under the command of the Countess of Tripoli, who were besieged in the citadel after the fall of the city on July 2.  The Christian army was mustered at Sephorie, only some 15 miles to the west. The pleas for help from the Countess and Tiberius naturally evoked a response from the Christian army, most notably her four grown sons.  But the Count of Tripoli himself warned that it was a trap and opposed the decision to go to the aid of his wife and Tiberius. Tripoli’s reasoning convinced the majority of his peers and the council of war composed of the leading barons agreed to stay where they were and force Saladin to come to them. However, the Grand Master of the Temple went separately and secretly to King Guy after the council dispersed and convinced him to order the advance for the following day. In short, although warned, King Guy took the bait.

To relieve Tiberius, the Christian army had to cross territory that was at this time of year devoid of fodder for the horses and where water sources were widely dispersed. With Saladin’s forces already occupying the springs at Cafarsset, on the southern route from Sephorie to Tiberias, the Christian had no choice but to follow the northern track, which led via the springs of Turan. Intense heat and harassment by the enemy slowed the Christian march to a crawl, and by noon on July 3, the Christian army had advanced only six miles to the springs of Turan.  With nine miles more to go, it was clear the army could not reach Tiberius before nightfall and prudence alone should have dictated a halt at Turan, where men and horse could rest and drink. Instead, King Guy against all reason ordered the advance to continue. Immediately, Saladin sent his troops to occupy Turan, thereby not-only blocking the Christian retreat but harassing the Christian rear-guard and further slowing the rate of advance.

A depiction of the Christian army advancing toward Hattin carrying the “True Cross”

from the film “The Kingdom of Heaven”

When darkness fell on July 3, the Christian army was still six miles short of its objective and forced to camp in an open field completely surrounded by enemy forces.  The Christians had been marching and fighting for hours without water in the intense heat of a Palestinian summer. Men and horses were exhausted and further demoralized by the sound of Saracen drums surrounding them and the countless campfires advertising the enemy’s strength. 

By morning, those fires were brush-fires intentionally set ablaze to windward of the Christian army in a maneuver that dried their already parched throats further while half-blinding them with smoke. Out of the smoke came volleys of arrows, and again “some of the Christian lords” urged King Guy to charge Saladin’s position at once, in an attempt to win the battle by killing the Sultan.  King Guy instead chose to try to march the entire army toward the springs of Hattin, still some three miles away and cut off by one wing of Saladin’s army.

While the Frankish cavalry tried to drive off the Saracens in a series of charges and counter-charges, the infantry stumbled forward until, half-blinded by smoke, constantly attacked by the enemy and near dying of thirst, their morale broke.  As casualties mounted, some of the infantry retreated up the slopes of the “horns” of Hattin, two steep hills that flanked the plane on which the army had camped and now marched and refused to fight any more. 

Meanwhile, the Count of Tripoli with his knights and Lord Reginald of Sidon finally broke-through the surrounding enemy, charging east toward the Lake of Tiberius.  The Christian infantry that had not fled up the slopes tried to follow in the wake of the cavalry, but the Saracens under the command of one of Saladin’s nephews stepped aside to let the armored knights through and then closed ranks again, cutting off the Christian infantry that was cut down or taken captive.

By now it was late afternoon, and with the infantry either already slaughtered or refusing to come down from the hilltop, King Guy ordered his knights to retreat up the slope as well. At this stage, many of the knights were fighting on foot because their horses became vulnerable once the infantry cover was withdraw.  It was probably at point in the battle that the relic, believed to be a piece of the cross on which Christ was crucified, was lost. The Bishop of Acre, who had been carrying it, was killed. The loss of this most precious relic — believed to have brought victory in dozens of earlier battles -- was devastating to Christian morale.

The final stages of the Battle of Hattin as depicted in the film “The Kingdom of Heaven”

But still King Guy did not surrender.  What few knights were still mounted made one (or two) last desperate charge(s) to try to kill Saladin, who was mounted and clearly identifiable among his troops.  One of these charges was probably lead by Balian d’Ibelin. While the charge came close enough to Saladin for him to have to shout encouragement to his men, like Tripoli before him, once Ibelin was through the enemy, he had no chance of fighting his way back up-hill through the ever thickening ranks of the enemy closing in on their prey. Within minutes, King Guy’s last position was over-run and he along with most of his barons were taken prisoner.

Of the roughly 20,000 Christian soldiers who had set out from Sephorie, only an estimated 3,000 infantry managed somehow to escape into the surrounding countryside and eventually take refuge in the castles and walled towns then still in Frankish hands. Of the 1,200 knights and barons that mustered for the battle, only four barons, Tripoli, Sidon, Edessa and Ibelin, escaped capture along with maybe 100 - 200 knights. The remainder including the King of Jerusalem, the Masters of the Temple and Hospital, the Constable Aimery de Lusignan, the Lords of Oultrajourdain, Toron, Gibelet, and others — effectively the entire nobility of the Kingdom of Jerusalem -- were taken captive. While the majority of these lords and knights were held for ransom, the 230 Templars and Hospitallers that survived the battle were executed at Saladin’s orders.

Medieval painting of prisoners being led away (here by a Christian king)

Hattin is a major episode in the second book of my Balian d'Ibelin trilogy, "Defender of Jerusalem." The ebook is on sale for just $4.99 through July 4, 2016.  Buy Now!