The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land by Thomas Asbridge

Author:Thomas Asbridge [Asbridge, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781849837705
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2012-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

THE STORM OF WAR

With the advent of ‘the soft season of spring’, open warfare returned, and the first battle to be fought was for dominion of the sea. In late March 1190, shortly after Easter, news reached Acre that fifty Latin ships were approaching from Tyre. In the course of the winter, Conrad had agreed a partial reconciliation with Guy, becoming the ‘king’s faithful man’ in return for rights to Tyre, Beirut and Sidon. The fleet he now led south sought to re-establish Christian control over the Mediterranean seaboard to reconnect the crusaders’ lifeline to the outside world. This was a struggle that Saladin could ill afford to lose, as perhaps his best hope of overall victory at Acre lay in isolating the Frankish besiegers. He resolved to resist the oncoming ships at all costs, prompting one of the twelfth century’s most spectacular naval engagements.

The battle for the sea

When the Latin fleet appeared, driven down the coast by a north wind, around fifty of Saladin’s ships sailed out of Acre’s harbour in pairs to meet it, flying green and gold banners. The Franks possessed two main types of vessel: ‘long, slender and low’ galleys, fixed with battering rams and powered by two banks of oars (one below and one on deck); and ‘galliots’, shorter, more manoeuvrable warships with a single bank of oars. As the fleet approached, shield walls were erected on decks and the Christian ships formed into a V-shaped wedge, with the galleys at its point. With a cacophony of trumpets sounding on both sides, the two forces ploughed into one another and battle was joined.

Sea-borne combat was still a relatively rudimentary affair in 1190. Larger ships might try to ram and sink enemy craft, but on the whole fighting took place at close quarters and consisted of the exchange of short-range missiles and attempts to draw in opposing vessels with grappling hooks and board them. The greatest horror, as far as sailors were concerned, was Greek fire, because it could not be extinguished by water, and in this engagement both sides possessed supplies of this weapon. The Muslim fleet came close to gaining the upper hand on a number of occasions. One Frankish galley was bombarded with Greek fire and boarded, prompting its oarsmen to leap into the sea in terror. A small number of knights who were weighed down by their heavy armour, and who did not know how to swim anyway, chose to hold their ground ‘in sheer desperation’ and managed to win back control of the half-burnt vessel. In the end, neither side achieved an overwhelming victory, but the Muslim fleet came off the worst, being forced back behind Acre’s harbour chain. One of their galleys was driven ashore and ransacked, its crew dragged on to the beach and summarily butchered and beheaded by a merciless pack of knife-wielding Latin women. In a grim aside, a crusader later noted that ‘the women’s physical weakness prolonged the pain of death’ because it took them longer to decapitate their foes.

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