The Horns of Hattin -- An Excerpt from "Defender of Jerusalem"

On July 4, 1187, the Sultan of Cairo and Damascus, Salah ad-Din (Saladin) crushed the feudal army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem under the command of King Guy. It was a devastating defeat that led to the complete collapse of the entire kingdom. But it was the decision to leave the springs at Sephorie on the night of July 2 that had decided the battle. Despite the fact that Saladin had captured the important town of Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, the barons of Jerusalem almost unanimously advised King Guy against marching to the relief of the beleaguered citadel of Tiberias because they recognized that this would be fatal. King Guy appeared to accept their advice, but in the middle of the night he changed his mind and ordered the advance. His change of heart is attributed to a night encounter with the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Gerard de Ridefort. No one knows now what was said in the king's tent on the early hours of July 3, 1187, but what follows is a fictional hypothesis from Defender of Jerusalem:

Guy was finding it hard to sleep. An army of this size was never entirely quiet. Sentries paced, horses nickered, men moved back and forth to the latrines on the edge of the camp …. Guy was annoyed and wanted to shout at everyone to be quiet. He needed his sleep.

But even if they had all been silent, the camp bed was uncomfortable. The air was still and oppressively hot. It stank too — of smoke from the camp-fires, horse manure, the pork fat that his squires had used to oil his chainmail, garlic from someone’s dinner, and urine from some sentry too lazy to go the latrines. Guy kicked off his sheet and tried to make himself comfortable on his belly, but a mosquito was soon tormenting him. Exasperated Guy sat up, swatting furiously at it.

“Annoying, aren’t they?” A voice said out of the darkness.

“Who’s there?” Guy challenged in alarm, his heart pounding. He was the King! People were not supposed to enter his tent unannounced. He had two knights posted outside to prevent this.

“It’s just me. Rideford,” came the answer.

Guy did not see why the Templar Grand Master should have been allowed into his tent any more than anyone else. He frowned, determined to reprimand his knights at the first opportunity. Right now he had to deal with the Templar Master, who had moved closer to stand directly over his bed. “We need to talk,” Rideford announced.

“Now? In the middle of the night?” Guy challenged him petulantly.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you cannot let the decision made in Council stand. It is dishonorable, dangerous and discrediting.”

Guy was in no mood for this lecture. They’d argued for hours and no matter how vigorously Oultrejourdain and Rideford had presented their cases, the overwhelming majority of the barons had sided with Tripoli.

Rideford sank down on his heels to be at Guy’s eye level. He kept his voice very low. “Tripoli is a traitor. Everything he says is to Saladin’s advantage.”

Guy rolled his eyes and groaned slightly. “Stop it, Rideford. I know you hate him, but he has paid homage to me and he has brought his troops here. I’m tired of you nagging at me all the time just because you want your revenge on Tripoli for some girl! It discredits you not me.”

“Alright. Don’t believe me, but how can he be so certain no harm will come to his lady, if he didn’t arrange all this with Saladin in advance?”

Guy shook his head to indicate this argument convinced him no more than the rest. “No one thinks the lady herself was in great danger. Even her sons conceded that.”

Rideford shrugged. “Perhaps, but that’s not really what’s at stake here is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the Lady of Tiberius, the Countess of Tripoli, is one of your vassals and you are honor bound to assist her if she is in need, so it really doesn’t matter what will happen to her personally if you don’t — your inaction reflects poorly on you. It was your inaction four years ago, remember, which made King Baldwin take the regency away.” Rideford had hit a nerve, and he saw Guy stiffen in the darkness. He pressed his advantage.

“You’re the king, aren’t you? Why do you let your barons tell you what to do?”

“Every king has a council,” Guy retorted irritably.

“Yes, and they listen to the council — but then they make their own decisions. They don’t let their barons dictate what is to be done.”

 “I’m not letting anyone dictate to me!” Guy retorted defensively, and Rideford smiled in the darkness.

“No?” The Templar Master asked.

“No!” Guy insisted.

“But what did you want to do when you received that messenger from the Countess of Tripoli?” Guy had jumped up, full of chivalrous energy. He’d been on the brink of ordering the army to march at once, through the night, to reach Tiberius. Now he frowned, remembering that, although he said nothing. “Your instinct was to relieve Tiberius, wasn’t it?” Rideford pressed him.

Guy still didn’t answer but his scowl was deeper.

“You are the King,” Rideford repeated. “Don’t make the same mistake twice. Don’t lose everyone’s respect by inaction. Do what your instincts tell you to do. Take this army to Tiberius and crush Saladin!”

“His army is bigger than ours,” Guy complained, still uncertain.

“But we have God on our side. We have the True Cross with us. How can you doubt our victory? Do you not think Christ is intimidated by the hoards of Mohammed?”

Guy caught his breath.

“Lead this army to Tiberius, your grace, and with the Grace of God you will win a great victory! You will forever be remembered as the Savior of Jerusalem! Your name will eclipse that of Godfrey de Boullion and Henry Plantagenet. Why, if you shatter Saladin’s army, what is to stop you from taking Damascus? Or Cairo? Or both?”

“We march at dawn!”

Defender of Jerusalem describes the events leading up to Hattin, the battle itself and the immediate aftermath, including the fall of Jerusalem.

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The Road to Hattin: An Excerpt from "Defender of Jerusalem"

The shift in direction, however, meant that the Christian army left the road and started cutting across country. That made walking much more difficult for the infantry, as there were frequent gullies, rocks, and thorns. That was bad enough for men just walking forward; it was much harder for men trying to stay in formation under unrelenting attacks. As a result, the rear guard was slowed down even more, and a gap threatened to open up between the main body of Christian troops and the rear guard. It was a gap the Saracens were bound to exploit—and if they did, the rear guard would be surrounded and cut to pieces.

As that threat loomed larger with each excruciating step forward, Ibelin rode over to consult with Gerard de Ridefort. The latter proposed charging the enemy to drive them back, but Ibelin angrily rejected the plan. It was too obvious that the enemy would simply fall back before the heavy cavalry, and then attack again as soon as the charge was spent. 

“That’s a waste of energy,” Ibelin told the Templar Master bluntly.

“You’re just afraid to charge!” Ridefort retorted hotly.

“Don’t try that crap on me, Ridefort. I’m not a frightened dandy like the King you made! Charging light Turkish cavalry is idiocy—and if you do it, you do it alone.” Ibelin let his eyes sweep the Templars around the Master, hoping to find a man like Jacques de Mailly, willing to challenge their Grand Master and support him. But the men with Ridefort today only dropped their eyes and would not look at him.

“God is on our side!” Ridefort barked belligerently, making his own men sit up straighter in their saddles.

“Really? As he was with you at Cresson?” Ibelin shot back.

“Do you doubt Christ is with us?”

                       

“It is blasphemy to confuse your own will with the will of God.”

“We charge!” Ridefort spun his horse on its haunches and spurred it forward, ordering the Templar standard-bearer to fall in beside him.

Ibelin rode back to his own knights and announced grimly, “The Templars insist on charging.”

“That’s madness!” Sir Bartholomew protested, and Balian noted how haggard the old man looked. His eyes were sunken in his skull, all but lost in shadow in the depths of his helmet. He shouldn’t be here, Balian registered. He should be enjoying his old age in peace on his manor, not facing certain death. Then again, he had only daughters, and the feudal duty fell next to his eldest grandson, a boy just thirteen years old. So on second thought, the old man was probably prepared to die to save that boy and his younger brothers.

Out loud, Ibelin retorted curtly, “This whole march is madness!” and added before anyone else could protest: “We hold formation, and take advantage of the relief the Templars will temporarily give us to jog forward as far and as fast as we can.”

Then he reached down, unfastened his goatskin, and took several gulps of water before demonstratively pulling Rufus’ head around to offer the water to the chestnut palfrey. Rufus gratefully closed his lips around the spout of the goatskin, and Balian upended it so that the water flowed into his horse’s mouth until the skin was about half empty. Then he took it away, closed it, and tied it again to his saddle. Around him, his knights followed his example of sharing their water with their horses, while the infantry drank deeply. While they drank, the Templars burst through their infantry protection screaming “Vive Dieu St. Amour!”—head-on into the next Saracen attack.

The Saracens just wheeled their horses around and galloped away like the wind. Their fleeter horses, with lighter gear and riders, easily outdistanced the Templars. The latter, armed only with lances and swords, could not hope to inflict the slightest damage and soon drew up, turned, and began to trot back to Ibelin’s division, which was jogging as fast as the tired limbs and dehydrated bodies of the infantry would let them. Only Ibelin remained immobile, his horse facing backwards, his eyes squinting against the sun as he awaited the next attack. It came even before the Templars had rejoined the rest of the rear guard. Ibelin shouted a warning, and Ridefort wheeled his knights around and charged again.

This repeated itself four or five times, until the Templar horses were swaying from exhaustion, the sweat dripping from their bellies, their heads hanging in utter dejection. Only then did Ridefort recognize—but not acknowledge—that Ibelin had been right. Furiously, he ordered Ibelin to send one of his knights to the King to demand that the main army wait for the rear guard.

“No,” Ibelin answered.

“They must wait for us! If they don’t, we’ll be cut off and slaughtered! If we’re slaughtered, the army doesn’t stand a chance. A third of our forces are right here!”

“I agree, but you’re the one who brought us here, so you’re going to be the one to tell your puppet King that you were wrong! You tell him to stop before he reaches water! You tell him we can’t make Tiberias tonight! You tell him the entire Christian army is trapped in the middle of a wasteland with no water and completely surrounded by the enemy. You tell him!”

They stared at one another, and for the first time something like doubt crossed Ridefort’s eyes, but he blinked it back. “I don’t have a horse that can trot, let alone canter. You must send one of your knights.”

“Oh, I’ll lend you a horse,” Ibelin answered, “but only you! Not one of your sacrificial lambs,” he gestured toward the silent Templars around them. Balian had never been so acutely aware of how young many of these bearded men were. Behind their beards and their tonsures, behind the façade of their white robes, half of them were little more than boys! He noted with poignancy that many of them had faces the color of cooked crabs and peeling skin—clear indications that they were newly come from countries with cool, rainy summers. Why, many of them might have arrived only weeks or days ago, replacements for the men lost at Cresson. They were, he knew, suffering more in this heat than any of the men from Ibelin, Ramla, or Nablus. He could sense that they were frightened, too. They had believed in their cause, their virtue, and their invincibility. And they were starting to ask themselves what had gone wrong.

“Damn you, Ibelin!”

“What for, Ridefort? For pushing your nose in your own shit? You made this King, and you made this catastrophe. Tripoli warned you. I warned you. By God, half the barons of Jerusalem warned you. But you thought yourself cleverer than all of us together. This is your dung heap, and you are going to lie in it! I only pray to God that He will not punish the rest of us for your stupidity, arrogance, and hubris!”

“I’ll kill you, Ibelin!”

“You already have, Ridefort. You’ve killed all of us. Now, do you want my stallion or not?”

Ridefort’s eyes flashed with hatred so intense that he refused. Dragging his own poor, tired mount around, he dug his spurs into its flanks, forcing it to lumber forward in an exhausted, miserable lope.

Ibelin let his eyes sweep across the faces of the remaining, still-stunned Templars and shook his head. Then he rode back to his own men to face the next Saracen onslaught.

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