Chapter II The Outward Voyage 1190
Initia Regis Ricardi, qui nondum elapso triennio regni sui probitatis suae radios longe lateque dispersit; nam Messanas civitatem Siciliae uno die viriliter subjecit, et terram Cypri in quindecim diebus potenter subjugavit.—Chron. Edw. II, auct. monacho Malmesburiensi, ii. 191.
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A march of eight days brought the Crusaders to Lyons on July 10 or 13.473 Here they were to cross the Rhône and then proceed down its left bank to the coast. The two kings with their personal followers crossed at once and encamped on the further side of the river (seemingly on a height whence their tents were visible from the hither side) to wait till the stragglers and late comers should overtake the main body of pilgrims, who lodged as they could in and around the city.474 When the muster seemed to be complete, the kings gave the signal for departure by causing their tents to be struck.475 The main body of the host on the other bank476 thronged to the narrow wooden bridge; when a small number had crossed one of the arches broke down.477 Only two persons were drowned, but the multitude left behind were sorely puzzled how to get across the “crested waters” of the Rhône in flood.478 According to one account they in three days achieved the passage “as best they could, in little boats, with great difficulty.”479 Another version, however, tells us that it was only Philip who had actually set out before the bridge gave way,480 and Richard, having merely escorted him out of the camp, was still at hand when the catastrophe occurred; whereupon he, “whose constancy never failed in action,” quickly caused a bridge to be made of boats lashed together, and waited three days while by this means the whole host made its passage in safety.481 Then, while the French king’s subjects followed their sovereign to Genoa or went by whatever route they chose to meet him at Messina,482 the English king at the head of his own contingent set out483 for Marseille, July 31 where he arrived on the last day of July.484
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“From Marseille to Acre,” says a contemporary writer, “is a sail of only fifteen days. But,” he adds, “then you go through the Great Sea, so that after the mountains round about Marseille cease to be visible you will, if you keep the direct course, see no land either to right or left till you see the land of Syria.”485 Some of the Crusaders who accompanied Richard—among them Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury and Ranulf de Glanville—faced the mysterious terrors of the “Great Sea” and took this route486 to Tyre, which they reached on September 16.487 The two kings had chosen Messina as the final starting-point of their voyage at a time when they deemed themselves sure of finding there every possible facility for refitting and revictualling their ships, and substantial help of every kind for their enterprise; King William of Sicily being married to a sister of Richard, and having long ago promised every assistance in his power to the Crusade.488 In March, however, they had learned that William had died in the preceding November.489 The original scheme nevertheless had obvious advantages both for Richard, who knew that William had made some testamentary dispositions for his benefit, and for Philip, who “dreaded the sea.”490 As the difficulties and dangers of the real overland route from northern France to Apulia and Sicily through the Alpine passes and Italy were apparently still considered even more formidable than those of the Mediterranean sea, Philip had arranged to be conveyed by the practised mariners of Genoa from their city to Messina, not exactly as an English chronicler says “by land,” but by the shortest and easiest coasting route. Richard on the contrary was minded to go by water as much as he could, and had ordered his fleet to meet him at the nearest Mediterranean port—Marseille.491 When a week had passed and no fleet appeared, he grew weary of waiting; so he hired “two large busses and twenty well armed galleys,” in which he set sail with his household troops on August 7.492 He was “grieved and confounded at the delay of his navy,”493 and seems to have coasted along very slowly in the hope of its overtaking him, for it was not Aug. 13 till the 13th that he reached Genoa, where he went ashore to visit Philip, who was lying there sick. Next day, at Portofino, Aug. 14 he received a message from Philip asking for the loan of five galleys; Richard offered three, but this Philip declined. On the 23rd Richard relieved the tediousness of the slow Aug. 23 coasting voyage by landing with a small escort at Baratto and hiring horses on which the party rode to Piombino; Aug. 24 there they rejoined their ships. “Then the king went on board the galley of Fulco Rustac” (or “Rustancri”) instead of the one in which he had been sailing (the “Pumbone”), and they proceeded to Porto Ercole, which was reckoned to be half way between Marseille and Messina. “But that day the sail of the galley in which the king was got torn; so he went back to the Pumbone.” On the same day, August 25, he landed at Ostia,494 where he was met by the cardinal bishop and some other persons sent by the Pope to receive him and invite him to visit Rome; this he declined to do,495 preferring, it seems, to spend a day in what a modern traveller might call seeing the sights of the neighbourhood. Aug. 28 to Sept. 8 He spent nearly a fortnight in the same way at Naples, making excursions round about (August 28-September 8); thence he went on horseback to Salerno,496 and stayed there till on September 13 he heard that his fleet had arrived at Messina, and at once set out to rejoin it.497 The report was Sept. 14 premature; but the fleet did in fact reach Messina next day. The story of its voyage illustrates the spirit of adventure in which the men of the more remote western lands set out upon their Crusade. The “justiciars of the navy” appointed in the spring had apparently taken each the command of a little squadron, and these squadrons had sailed in April, according to the king’s order, from various ports of England, Normandy, Britanny, and Poitou. Ten ships of the English division set out from Dartmouth; some of them touched at Silvia in Portugal, others at Lisbon, and all stopped to help the Christian Portuguese in their war against the Moors. Other ships of Richard’s—perhaps from more distant ports—came into Lisbon harbour at the close of the war; the whole fleet sailed thence on July 26, passed the Straits of Gibraltar on August 1, and sailing along the coasts of Spain and Provence reached Marseille on August 22. Finding that the king was gone, they stayed a week for necessary refitting, set out again on the 30th, and came to Messina on Holy Cross day.498 According to English accounts Philip of France Sept. 14 arrived there two days later;499 his own biographer, however, says he came in August.500 As he had no ships of his own, the greater part of his host had either gone before him to Messina or proceeded towards Syria by other routes; and to the disappointment of the townsfolk and the pilgrims assembled at Messina, who all hoped to see a king arrive with great pomp and majesty, only the ship which bore Philip himself came into the harbour, and landing at the steps of the royal palace501 he slipped out of sight as quickly and quietly as possible.502
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The disappointed spectators of Philip’s landing were to be more than compensated ere long by the arrival of another royal guest. By September 21 Richard, travelling leisurely along the coast from Salerno, had reached Mileto in Calabria. Here a characteristic adventure nearly brought to an untimely end both his enterprise and his life. He was riding forth next day, accompanied only by one knight, “and as they passed through a little township the king turned aside towards a house where he heard the voice of a falcon, and he went into the house and took the bird; and when he would not let it go, a number of villagers came running up and attacked him with stones and sticks. One of them drew his knife upon the king, and the king beat the man with the flat of his sword till the sword broke. The other assailants he overcame with stones, and narrowly escaping from their hands made his way to the Priory of La Bagnara.” There, finding himself close to what an English chronicler describes as “the great river which is called the Far of Messina,” he took boat and crossed it immediately, and “lay that night in a tent hard by the great stone tower which stands by the entrance to the Far on the Sicilian side”—that is, the pharos, lighthouse, or beacon-tower which gave the strait its medieval name.503 He probably crossed in a vessel of his own fleet, the whole of which seems to have been assembled at the northern end of the strait in readiness to meet him. Sept. 23 Next day (September 23) he sailed at its head into the harbour of Messina. “The galleys filled the Strait; they were crowded with hardy looking warriors, and decked with pennons and banners. So came the king to the shore,”504 amid such blowing of horns and trumpets that “all the city was alarmed at the sound.” Philip and the governors and people of Messina went down to the beach and stood there “marvelling at that which they saw and heard of the king of England and of his power.”505 Richard “leaped ashore,” and went immediately to speak with Philip.506 Meanwhile those of his barons who had reached Messina before him brought “the fine destriers which had come over in the transport ships; and he and his people all mounted on horseback,”507 and rode to their lodging, which—the royal palace being, by permission of the new sovereign of Sicily, occupied by Philip—was being prepared for them in the house of one of the Sicilian king’s officers, “in the suburb outside the city wall, among the vineyards.”508
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The next of kin to the late king of Sicily and the person whom he had designated as his successor was his father’s sister Constance; but she was far away in Germany—being married to the Emperor’s son—and a cousin, Tancred, had without much difficulty become master of the kingdom, or at least of its insular half. Tancred had, as has been seen, provided lodgings for his two royal guests at Messina; he himself was at Palermo, and so was the widowed Queen Joan, Richard’s sister. Richard knew that a very liberal dowry in land had been settled upon Joan by King William at their marriage,509 and also that William had made a will containing a bequest to his father-in-law, Henry II, of “a golden table twelve feet long and a foot and a half wide, three golden tripods for sitting at the table, a silken tent large enough for two hundred knights to eat in it together, a hundred first-rate galleys with all necessary gear and food for the crews, sixty thousand seams of wheat, the same number of barley and of wine, and twenty-four cups and twenty-four dishes” of either silver or gold.510 This bequest was evidently intended by William, who seems to have been long in ill-health and expecting an early death, as his contribution to the Crusade. Richard, as Henry’s heir, now claimed it from Tancred, and he also demanded that Joan should be sent to him immediately with her dowry and a golden chair511 for her use “according to the custom of the queens of that land.”512 Tancred sent Joan off at once by sea “with just her bedroom furniture” and a million terrini for her expenses.513 Sept. 28 She reached Messina on Michaelmas Eve, and was conducted by her brother to a lodging prepared for her in the Hospital;514 but he speedily took steps for removing her to a safer place; for trouble, possibly with Philip, certainly with the townsfolk of Messina and with their king, was now evidently close at hand.
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The English king’s subjects who had reached Messina before him on the fleet had been refused admittance into the city; they were obliged to encamp on the shore, and suffered much annoyance and persecution from a section of the townsfolk whom one of them describes as “a parcel of Griffons and low fellows of Saracen extraction.” These people not only insulted the Crusaders in the vilest ways, but even killed some of them and outraged the corpses.515 All “Ultramontanes,” or men from beyond the Alps, were hated by the two races with which Sicily was mainly peopled—the “Griffons” or Greek-speaking folk, and the Italian-speaking whom the western writers call Lombards. In the minds of the last-named especially the memory of the Norman conquest of Sicily and Apulia still rankled; “they always had a grudge against us,” says the Norman poet-historian of Richard’s Crusade, “because their fathers had told them that our ancestors had conquered them; so they could not love us.”516 It seems not unlikely that Tancred had gained the support of both Griffons and Lombards by posing as the champion of a sort of national government in opposition to the representatives of the foreign royal line, and that they looked with suspicion upon the crusading host as possibly designed to be the instrument of a new Norman conquest; more especially when they discovered, as they very soon did, that although it had nominally two crowned leaders, its real and sole commander-in-chief was the Anglo-Norman king. On the morrow of his arrival Richard set up outside the camp a gallows for thieves and robbers. “His judges delegate spared neither sex nor age; and there was one punishment for a stranger and for one born in the land.” The French king took no notice of any ill-doing on the part of his own men, nor of any evil done to them; but Richard cared not whose subject the criminal might be; “considering every man as his own,” he left no wrong unpunished; “wherefore the Griffons called him the Lion and Philip the Lamb.”517
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Both Griffons and Lombards did their utmost to make the position of the “tailed Englishmen”—as they called Richard and all his followers indiscriminately—absolutely intolerable. They tried to starve them by refusing to let them buy food in the city; they fell upon and slew any whom they caught in small parties and unarmed; they even began to raise the town walls, as if challenging the strangers to besiege them.518 By the time of Joan’s arrival matters had come to such a pass that two days later (September 30) Richard with a small armed force re-crossed the strait into Calabria, turned the Griffons out of a fortress called La Bagnara, Oct. 1 and next day established his sister in it with a guard of his own men.519 He next seized a very strong fort or tower, which went by the name of “the Griffons’ Minster,” on an island in the Far, midway between La Bagnara and Messina,520 put its garrison to death, and made it a storehouse for the provisions which had been brought by his fleet from England and his other dominions.521 Scarcely was this done when on October 3 a dispute between a pilgrim and a townswoman about the price of some bread which the woman brought into the camp for sale led to an outbreak of hostilities. Richard, hearing the noise, sprang on horseback and strove to recall his men, riding in and out among them and striking with his staff all whom he could reach, to check the attack which they were threatening on the city gate. His efforts and those of the “elders” of the city at length quieted the tumult.522 Both parties, however, felt that the matter was not ended. Before nightfall Richard went by boat to the palace Oct. 4 and held a consultation with Philip.523 Next morning the archbishops of Messina, Monreale, and Reggio, with the “justices of Sicily”—that is, the governors whom Tancred had put in charge of Messina, Margarit and Jordan du Pin524—and some others of Tancred’s chief counsellors came to Richard’s lodging, bringing with them the French king and some of his nobles, and also some of the chief nobles of Richard’s dominions, to discuss terms of peace.525 Three times the colloquy was interrupted by tidings, first that the English were being attacked, next that they were getting worsted, and finally that they were being killed “both within and without the city.” The Sicilian members of the conference hurried away, ostensibly for the purpose of checking their own people, “but they lied,” says Richard’s Norman chronicler.526 Richard hastened forth to control his troops, learned that the quarters of one of his Aquitanian followers, Hugh the Brown of Lusignan, had been attacked by a party of the townsfolk, and that another party was lying in wait for himself, the city wall bristling with armed men, and another strong body of citizens posted on the hills at the back of the town.527 He hurried back for his armour and instantly gave orders to “assault the city all round by land and by sea.”528 He himself began by driving out the assailants from the camp. With scarce twenty men at his back, he made for the quarters of Hugh the Brown; the Lombards turned and fled from him “like sheep from a wolf,” says one who saw the scene, and he drove them “as oxen are driven under the yoke” all the way to “the postern gate which is towards Palermo,” the west gate of the city.529 Meanwhile the whole English host was in motion. The fleet could do nothing, because Philip, who had returned to the palace under a promise from the governor that he should not be molested, intercepted the galleys as they approached and forbade them to proceed.530 The land attack met with a fierce resistance; part of the host endeavoured to storm the walls and the gates; Richard himself led a small party up a hill “so high and steep that no one would have thought they could by any means climb it,” drove down in headlong flight the Sicilians who occupied its summit,531 and rejoined his main force in time to be one of the first to enter the city. “A good ten thousand went in after him,” says one of the number.532
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The suddenness and rapidity with which the city was captured, and the contemporary French form of its name, “Messines,” or in the Norman dialect “Meschines,” appear to have suggested to some Norman or Angevin rimester in the host a jingle which from the camp has found its way into history:
“Our king and his men have taken Messines
More quickly than priest can say his matines.”533
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The whole fight had lasted less than five hours.534 The town was plundered, “and there would have been more people slain, but that the king took pity” and restrained his men. The Sicilian galleys in the harbour were set on fire and destroyed.535 Philip and his followers meanwhile had sat at their ease within the palace and the city, doing nothing to help their fellow-Crusaders, and totally unmolested by the Sicilians, among whom they seemed quite at home. But when Philip learned that the victorious host had set up their royal leader’s banners on the walls, he angrily declared that this act was an insult to himself as Richard’s feudal superior, and demanded that the banners should be taken down and replaced by his own. Richard at first ignored the demand; but some of the prelates and nobles brought about a compromise; the banners of both kings were placed on the towers together, and the custody of the fortifications was given to the Templars and Hospitaliers till it should be seen how matters would go between Richard and Tancred.536 The compromise was a fair one on Richard’s part; as his poet-chronicler says, “Sirs, I ask your judgement—which of the two had the best right to set his banners over the city, the one who would take no part in its assault, or the one who dared the enterprize?”537 “But,” he remarks no less truly, “the king of France’s envy on that subject was like to be lifelong; that was the origin of the war whereby Normandy was ruined.”538 According to one account, Philip next, on the strength of the agreement made at Vézelay, demanded his share of the spoils of the city, and grew so insolent and quarrelsome that Richard prepared to load up his ships and depart on his pilgrimage alone with his own people rather than be tied any longer to so disagreeable a comrade. Hereupon, however, Philip made overtures for reconciliation, and Oct. 8 they renewed their alliance,539 swearing and making their respective barons swear to keep good faith with each other Oct. 6 throughout the expedition.540 Two days earlier, on October 6, the governors of Messina had given hostages to Richard, pledging themselves to keep peace towards him and his men and to let him have free possession of the city unless Tancred speedily satisfied all his demands.541
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Those demands, for the whole of Joan’s dowry and William’s legacy to Henry, were now again transmitted to Palermo, by envoys who represented both the Crusader kings, for one of them was no less a personage than the duke of Burgundy.542 In the Anglo-Norman camp it seems to have been reported that the French envoys returned loaded with gifts because they had carried a private message from Philip to Tancred encouraging him to resist Richard’s demands and promising that in any strife which might ensue the French would remain neutral.543 However this may have been, the envoys of the English king brought back a very unsatisfactory reply to their master. “I gave to your sister Joan,” said Tancred, “a million terrins for quit-claim of her dower before she went away from me. Concerning your other demands I shall do whatever I ought to do according to the custom of this realm.”544 During the absence of the envoys a very suspicious event took place at Messina. One night the two governors of the city, Jordan du Pin and Margarit, stole away with their respective households, taking with them all the gold and silver they possessed. Richard at once seized their houses, their galleys, and whatever other property they had left behind them. His own treasure was already stored in the “Griffons’ Minster,” which he further strengthened by digging a deep and wide ditch across the island on which the fort stood.545 When his envoys returned from Palermo they found him busy with another piece of work “which gave him pleasure,”546 the erection, on the top of a hill overlooking the city, of a strong wooden fortress to which he gave the name of Mategriffon, “Check” or “Kill-Greek.”547 All these precautions did in fact check the Griffons effectually; but when Richard on hearing Tancred’s reply straightway retorted that he would enter upon no pleadings at law and would get what he wanted in his own way,548 the Lombards again began to give trouble. They refused to sell even necessary food to the host, “and but for God and the navy, many would have led a poor life”; the ships, however, had ample stores. Philip was accused of being secretly in league with the Lombards. The city and the camp were guarded day and night. Mediators went to and fro between the palace and Mategriffon, but could not bring the two kings back to friendship.549
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At last Tancred intervened. “He was,” says Ambrose the poet-Crusader, “very wise; he had heard tell of many happenings; he was a good scholar; he knew his business.”550 Through all these months he had played a waiting game till he could feel sure which of the two kings would be most useful to him as an ally. At first he had inclined to Philip, and “would have given him untold gold” for the marriage of one of his daughters to either the French king himself or to his infant son Louis; but Philip declined this proposal because he did not wish to quarrel with Tancred’s rival, Constance’s husband, who was now king of the Germans and Emperor elect,551 and whose friendship he doubtless foresaw might be useful to him in future struggles with Richard. By the end of October, however, Tancred not only knew that the townsfolk of Messina had gone too far; he also perceived that he had himself gone too far in his haughtiness towards the English Lion. He therefore despatched two messengers to Richard with an offer of alliance. He proposed to give twenty thousand ounces of gold to Joan instead of her dower-lands, and to Richard, in place of King William’s legacy, the same amount as the dowry of one of his (Tancred’s) daughters on condition of her marriage with Richard’s nephew, Arthur of Britanny.552 Richard saw at once that this offer must be accepted. The necessity of coming to a settlement of some kind with Tancred, and the outrageous conduct of Tancred’s subjects, had already detained him in Sicily much longer than he had originally contemplated. Now it was quite clear that he would be obliged to remain there for several more months, as the season of the year had begun when the “inclemency of winds and waves and weather”553 made navigation so difficult and dangerous that no fleet could attempt a voyage to Palestine till the return of spring. The same cause must of course detain Philip also; and to reject Tancred’s offer would have been to throw Tancred and Philip into each other’s arms. Nor was the offer itself a bad one. Whatever might be the intrinsic value of Joan’s dower-lands and of William’s legacy, there was obviously very little chance of ever gaining either the one or the other; while forty thousand ounces of gold would be a very convenient addition to the treasury of the Crusade. A treaty on these terms was therefore drawn up and executed forthwith. Richard promised that all questions about his sister’s dowry and his own claims should be henceforth at rest; that he and his men would faithfully keep peace by sea and by land with Tancred and all his subjects, and if the Sicilian realm should be invaded or attacked while they were in it, they would help the king against his assailants; that Arthur—“our dear nephew, and our heir if we should die without issue”—should be contracted to Tancred’s daughter; and that the bride should have a dower of lands within her husband’s duchy “befitting a lady so illustrious and the daughter of so magnificent a king.” If Arthur succeeded to the Crown, his wife was to have the customary dower of a queen of England. If, on the other hand, from any cause dependent on Richard or Arthur, the marriage should not take place “in due time” (that is, when the children should be old enough; Arthur was in his fourth year), the dowry given by the bride’s father was to be returned.554 Tancred on his part promised that he and his subjects would keep peace with Richard and his men,555 and he paid over the covenanted sum without delay.556 Richard was in a pacific mood; although none of the gold which he had just received could fairly come under his agreement with Philip as to the division of conquests, he at once made Philip a peace-offering of part of it.557 He next insisted on his men restoring to the townsfolk the plunder which they had taken from them, and Archbishop Walter of Rouen enforced this order by threatening to excommunicate those who failed to obey it. Finally, a set of ordinances for the regulation of intercourse and trade between the pilgrims and the townsfolk was issued in the joint names of all the three kings.558 Thenceforth town and camp were on friendly terms, and so were—for a while—the two pilgrim kings. There was, however, some grumbling in the host, especially among the knights who had reached Messina before Richard, at their long detention there and the expense which it entailed on them, and at being forced to give back the plunder with which they had recouped themselves. Richard “was not avaricious or stingy”; he silenced the grumblers by a distribution of costly gifts, of which all ranks, down to the lowest foot-soldiers, received such a share that every Feb. 1191 man was fully satisfied.559 Early in the next year he made a present to the French king of several of the ships which had come from England, and to his own troops, of all ranks, a further distribution of “more treasures than any of his predecessors had ever given away in a whole year.”560
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Before Christmas Richard’s growing sense of the weightiness of his enterprise showed itself in another step in his preparations. One day he called together in the chapel of the house where he was lodging all the bishops in his host, came before them as a penitent, with three scourges in his hands, fell at their feet and openly confessed to them a vice in which he had lived and which he now solemnly abjured; he received his penance at their hands, “and thenceforth returned to his iniquity no more.”561 At Christmas he entertained Philip and the French nobles at a great feast in Mategriffon.562 The festivities were disturbed by a quarrel between the Genoese and Pisan sailors and some of the men belonging to Richard’s galleys, and not till some lives were lost did the two kings in person succeed in quelling 1191
Feb. 2 the strife.563 An incident on Candlemas Day (1191) throws a curious side-light on one phase of Richard’s character of which there is little trace elsewhere, and also on his relations with the other crusading chiefs during this dreary time of waiting. He and some English and French knights, on their way back from a ride, met a countryman with a load of reeds or bulrushes and bought some for a game such as boys played, tilting with the rushes for spears. The king challenged William des Barres, with whom he had had at least two encounters in real warfare, and who (according to one account) on the second of these occasions,564 being made prisoner, had committed a breach of the rules of chivalry which Richard was not a man to condone easily: he had regained his liberty by breaking his parole. When William’s first thrust broke the head of Richard’s bulrush, Richard was seized with one of those fits of unaccountable, irrational fury before which all persons accustomed to associate with the Angevin counts quailed as before a direct manifestation of the powers of darkness whence the house of Anjou was said to have sprung. He set his horse furiously at his opponent; the shock of the encounter failed to unseat William, but caused Richard’s own saddle to slip; he leapt from it, mounted another horse, and renewed the attack, but with no better success; nor did his angry threats disturb the coolness of the Frenchman. The Earl of Leicester, trying to intervene, was roughly bidden by his sovereign, “Leave me to deal with him alone!” and finally, after a long struggle and much bandying of words, the king burst out to William, “Get thee hence, and take heed that I see thee no more, for henceforth I will be an enemy to thee and thine for ever.” William, now thoroughly alarmed, went and besought counsel and help of his own sovereign. Philip in person interceded for his unlucky vassal; some of the highest nobles of France actually went down on their knees to Richard for the same purpose; but Richard would hear none of them; and on the third day William des Barres had to leave Messina “because the king of France would not keep him against the will of the king of England.”565
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The time was now approaching when the seas would again be navigable, and Philip presently asked Richard to get ready to accompany him on what was called “the March passage” to Holy Land. Richard is said by a French chronicler to have answered that he could not go before August.566 It seems that either August here must be a mistake for April, or Richard cannot have been serious in answering thus, unless indeed he entertained some vague project of going back for a short visit to his island realm before proceeding further eastward. Such a project is not impossible; for the reports which had been coming to him through the winter about the state of affairs in England were at once so disquieting and so contradictory that he may well have longed to see for himself how matters really stood and settle by his personal authority the quarrels which had arisen between his justiciars and his brother. In the end he committed the solution of these very puzzling difficulties to Archbishop Walter of Rouen. He had, however, another reason for delaying at least for a few weeks his own departure for Acre. Early in the year King Sancho of Navarre had placed his daughter Berengaria in Queen Eleanor’s charge to take her to Richard to become his wife.567 Before the end of February the two ladies reached Naples, and Richard sent some galleys to meet them there; but “on account of the multitude of men who accompanied them” Tancred’s people refused them leave to go to Messina—which indeed must have been already overwhelmed with foreign visitors—and they had to spend a month in his continental dominions.568 Their coming was a clear intimation that Richard was now fully determined to shake off the bonds of his engagement to Aloysia. Philip peremptorily bade him, as his vassal, choose between two alternatives: either to go with his overlord across the sea, in which case he should be at liberty to marry Berengaria, or, if he would not go, to keep his promise of marriage with Aloysia. Richard bluntly refused both.569 Meanwhile Tancred had invited him570 to a March 3 meeting at Catania. A splendid welcome was given him there on March 3, and for three days he was Tancred’s guest in the palace. Tancred offered him “gifts many and great” in gold and silver, cloth of silk, and horses, but Richard, “needing none of such things,” would accept only one small ring as a token of friendship; in return for this he presented Tancred with a sword which he seems to have asserted to be the famous Excalibur of King Arthur. Finally Tancred offered a substantial gift which Richard did not decline: a contribution of four large ships “which they call ussers” and fifteen galleys to the crusading fleet.571 The Sicilian king escorted his guest on the way back as far as Taormina, where Philip was to meet them on March 8. There Tancred is said to have put into Richard’s hands a letter which he declared had been brought to him by the duke of Burgundy from the French king, containing an assertion that Richard had no intention of keeping faith with Tancred, and a promise that if Tancred were disposed to attack Richard, the French troops and their sovereign would give their help in effecting Richard’s destruction. Richard on this left Taormina before Philip reached it and returned to Messina by another way so as to avoid meeting him. When he did meet him again, he at first studiously avoided him or ignored his presence; when asked the reason, he showed the letter. Philip accused him of having invented the whole affair as an excuse for “casting off” the daughter of France whom he had promised to wed. Thus driven to extremity, Richard said plainly that a marriage between him and Aloysia was impossible, and gave a reason which, as he produced several witnesses who declared themselves ready to swear to its truth, fully justified his refusal.572 The result was that Philip formally released him from his engagement and declared him free to marry whomsoever he would. On the basis of this and certain other conditions which were to take effect only at a later time, a “firm peace” was once again made between the king of France and his “friend and faithful liegeman, the illustrious king of England.”
The treaty was made before March 25;573 shortly afterwards Philip and his “company” sailed, in the galleys which Richard had given him, for Acre.574 Before starting he again besought Richard to pardon William des Barres, and Richard after some demur promised to keep the peace towards William so long as they were both engaged in the cause of the Cross.575 He convoyed Philip through the Far, and then himself went to Reggio, having just heard that Eleanor and Berengaria had arrived there. He took them on board and brought his mother back with him to Messina, after, it seems, placing Berengaria at La Bagnara with Joan; the men of the queen’s suite seem to have been left at Reggio, and possibly even Eleanor and her ladies may not have landed at Messina at all, for she stayed with her son only four days and then departed for England.576 He had nothing more to wait for. With all speed the fleet was made ready, and on April 10, the Wednesday before Easter, it put to sea.577
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The ships which Richard had found awaiting him in the harbour of Messina when he arrived there are said to have numbered one hundred and fourteen.578 Stragglers that had come in later, Tancred’s gift, and other vessels bought or hired by Richard had now raised the total to about two hundred.579 Of these, some forty or fifty were galleys or battleships, built after the pattern of the old Roman liburnae or the “long keels” of Richard’s Norse forefathers, long, slender, with armed prows, and propelled by two tiers of oarsmen.580 The rest were transport vessels; those of the largest size, of which there seem to have been now twenty-four, were called “busses” by the northerners and “dromonds” in the Mediterranean and the Levant. Of these vessels, fourteen which had formed part of the original English fleet had each of them three spare rudders, thirteen anchors, thirty oars, two sails, triple ropes of every kind, and a double set of everything else that a ship could need, except the mast and the boat; the lading of each consisted of forty war-horses, forty knights with all their arms and accoutrements, forty foot-soldiers, and fifteen sailors, with food enough for all these men and horses for a whole year. The other ships of burden, called “huissiers,” “ushers,” “enekes” or “smacks” (esneccae) were round-shaped vessels, seemingly dependent on sails alone; their carrying capacity was half that of the busses. The king had taken the precaution to distribute his treasure among all the transport ships, “so that if part were lost, another part should be saved.”581
April 10
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If the fleet’s arrival had been a great sight for the people of Messina, its departure must have been a much more imposing spectacle. Three dromonds, one of which carried Queen Joan and the Damsel of Navarre, went in advance of all the rest. Thirteen ships formed the second line or squadron; in the third were fourteen, in the fourth twenty, in the fifth thirty, in the sixth forty, in the seventh sixty; the last consisted of the galleys, on one of which was the king himself. Throughout the fleet the order of its going was so carefully arranged that a trumpet’s sound could be heard from squadron to squadron, and a man’s voice from ship to ship.582 When all had passed, with a fair wind, through the Far into the open sea, the galleys sped forward to overtake the slower vessels583 and took their place as the advanced guard of the whole fleet, Richard’s own ship leading.584 “The king had arranged, as far as possible, that the ships should never be separated unless indeed a storm should disperse them. So the galleys moderated their speed and endeavoured to keep pace with the transports, for the protection of the multitude and the comfort of the weak.”585 Suddenly the wind dropped, and the whole fleet had to anchor for the night. Next morning, Maunday Thursday, April 11 “He Who took the wind from us,” as one of the pilgrims says, “gave it us back again”; but the breeze was so faint that they made very little progress, and at night they were again becalmed. On the following morning (Good Friday, April 12) they were met by “a contrary wind on the left,”586 and all that day they had to struggle with a heavy gale and storm. As good pilgrims they endured their sufferings “right willingly, as a fitting discipline for the holy day.”587 On their leader wind and weather had no effect; he was “just as healthy and hearty, brave and strong, on sea as on land”;588 throughout this first experience of Mediterranean storms and all those that followed, he “remained perfectly calm, and ceased not to comfort the others and encourage them to endure with confidence, hoping for better things.”589 Every evening he had “a large candle in the lantern” lighted on his galley, to show the way to the other ships; they all followed the light, and if one got out of the course he waited for it to get back. “Thus as a hen leads her chickens out to feed he led his mighty fleet,” sailing day and night till late on the Wednesday in Easter Week (April 17) they anchored off Crete.590 Next morning, it seems, Richard counted up the ships, and found to his “great wrath” that despite all his precautions no less than twenty-five were missing.591 He then directed his course to Rhodes, reached its capital city on the following Monday (April 22), and stayed there three days, partly because he was unwell, partly in the hope of hearing some tidings of the missing vessels, and also to make inquiries about Cyprus and its “tyrant.”592
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This “tyrant” was Isaac Comnenos, who, sent to Cyprus as governor for the Byzantine Emperor in 1185, had made himself master of the island and ruled it as an independent sovereign for six years. His “tyranny,” or usurpation, was not one of the least of the hindrances to the deliverance of Holy Land; the Franks in that land had in former times depended largely on the fertile and wealthy Greek island for its supplies, but now they could get nothing thence, for Isaac was in close alliance with Saladin, and “never ceased doing as much ill to Christians as he could.”593 Whether April Richard’s detour to Rhodes had any special motive or was caused merely by circumstances and stress of weather we do not know; but it seems quite clear that he went out of his direct way from Rhodes to Acre in consequence of information received at Rhodes as to what was going on in Cyprus. Probably, too, he thought Cyprus a likely place in which to obtain news of his strayed ships; and so it proved to be. Among the ships dispersed in the great storm of Good Friday were the three dromonds which carried the ladies and their escort. These three and some others had drifted southward, and while Richard was sailing by the north coast of Crete to Rhodes, they were passing through the open sea between Crete and Libya. On April 24, two or three days after Richard’s arrival at Rhodes, they were trying to put into the harbour of Limisso, or as the Crusade writers call it Limasol, the ancient Amathus, on the south April 24 coast of Cyprus, when a storm arose and dashed two of them to pieces against the rocks;594 a third ship put back into the open sea in time to save itself595 and its precious freight—it was the ship which carried not only a considerable part of the king’s treasure (under the charge of Stephen of Turnham, now restored to the king’s favour and acting as his marshal and treasurer), but also Joan and Berengaria. The “Griffons” of Cyprus took the men who struggled ashore from the wrecks to a fort hard by, promising them food and shelter, but stripped them of their arms on the plea that this was necessary till the pleasure of the “Emperor” (Isaac) concerning them should be known; and they also seized the clothes and other necessaries which the knights on the remaining ships sent to their distressed comrades. These latter, finding themselves prisoners and May 2 almost starved, at the end of a week made a determined effort to escape. With three bows which they had either secreted or found in the fort they did such execution that the whole party was able to make its way to the harbour, where their friends in the ships, seeing what was going on, had meanwhile landed and were fighting hard with the Griffons; finally the Griffons were worsted, and the queen’s ship was brought into the harbour.596 That evening Isaac came to Limasol; the pilgrims appealed to him, and he May 3 promised them redress for their wrongs. Next day he sent the queen and her future sister-in-law a courteous invitation to land; this being prudently declined, he followed it up May 4 on the morrow with hospitable gifts of bread, meat, and the famous wine of Cyprus. On the Sunday he again tried May 5 to persuade the ladies to come ashore; after anxious consultation they, fearing that longer resistance might lead to their being taken captives by force—for Isaac meanwhile was assembling his troops on the shore—promised to commit themselves to his protection on the morrow. But on that same Sunday Richard’s fleet came in sight.597 It had left Rhodes on May 1; the galleys, headed as usual by Richard’s own ship, had been driven by the wind into the dangerous gulf of Satalia (or Atalia) on the coast of Pamphylia, and narrowly escaped destruction, but were extricated and brought in safety to Cyprus, seemingly by the fine seamanship May 6 of their royal leader.598 On the morning of Monday they reached the entrance to the harbour of Limasol. As soon as Richard learned what had been taking place there he sent a messenger ashore with a civilly worded remonstrance to Isaac and a request that he would make amends for his people’s ill-treatment of Crusaders. Isaac was on the shore with all the troops that he had been able to collect from every part of his island “empire.” He cut the messenger short with an insulting word—“Tproupt, sir!”; the messenger went straight back and repeated it to the king. Richard’s retort was equally brief; it was a command to his own men—“To arms!”599
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Between the fleet and the shore five armed galleys lay in the harbour. On the shore Isaac’s troops were drawn up behind a barricade composed of every bit of wood that the town could supply, doors and window-frames or shutters, barrels and casks, shields and bucklers, pieces of old ships and boats, planks, steps, benches, boxes, all piled up along the water’s edge.600 At the back of the troops was the fortified town, overtopped by a lofty castle or citadel built on the rock.601 The Crusaders could land only by means of their boats. Knights and crossbowmen hurriedly obeyed the king’s order, and all weary and worn with long tossing on the sea and laden with their heavy armour and cumbrous weapons, crowded into the tiny cockle-shells602 to join battle as foot-soldiers with an army of which part at least was well provided with good horses and mules, and which, moreover, was on its own soil; “but,” as one of the pilgrims says, “we knew the most about war.” Richard’s crossbowmen opened the fight by shooting at the enemy’s galleys; “there were some who did not miss their aim,” says the same eye-witness; the Greek sailors in a panic leaped into the water, and while they were struggling there their ships were captured and taken outside the harbour to be guarded by the English fleet. Meanwhile the king, when he saw his comrades struggling to land from the boats under a storm of arrows, “leaped from his boat into the sea and made for the Greeks, and assailed them.” His men followed his example and drove the Greeks back, some into the town, more into the fields. Isaac took to flight; Richard, running after him, caught a horse “with a sack attached to its saddle, and stirrups of cord,” sprang on its back, and shouted “Emperor! come and joust!” But Isaac “had no mind to joust,” and continued his flight.603 The town of Limasol now submitted to Richard, and he brought his sister and his bride ashore.604 That same night the horses were May 7 landed and exercised; and next morning Richard with a small force set out in search of the enemy. A party of them was soon found in an olive garden, dislodged, and chased till the main body suddenly came into view. Then Richard, having with him at the moment only fifty knights, called a halt. Meanwhile the shouts of the Greeks whom he had been chasing reached the ears of Isaac, half a league in advance, where he had stopped to dine and sleep, for he had no idea that the Franks possessed any horses. He and his escort climbed a hill “to see what their folk would do.” All they did was to keep turning about and shooting and shouting back at the little band of Franks, who stood motionless. One Hugh de la Mare, who though he bore arms was a clerk, said to the king, “Come away, sire, their numbers are too overwhelming.” “Get you to your own writing-business, sir clerk, and leave matters of chivalry to us,” retorted Richard. He knew that reinforcements were not far behind him; even before they came up, the suddenness and vehemence of his onset threw the Greeks into confusion; and the victory was soon complete. Isaac fled to the mountains; his standard-bearer was struck down and the standard taken by Richard’s own hand. After chasing the enemy for a couple of leagues the king called off his troops from the pursuit and leisurely returned, the men-at-arms stopping on the way back to collect countless spoils left by the Emperor in the place where he had camped. On reaching the town the king caused a proclamation to be made that “all people of the land who did not desire war might come and go in safety; but such as did seek war should have no peace or truce from him.”605
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On the way from Rhodes to Cyprus Richard had spoken a ship westward bound from Acre and heard of Philip’s arrival there.606 Some vessel sailing from Rhodes or Cyprus to Acre seems to have carried thither news of Richard’s whereabouts. On May 11 three galleys were seen approaching Limasol. Richard characteristically607 set off in a little May 11 boat to ascertain for himself what they were,608 and found that they carried King Guy of Jerusalem and some of his chief nobles, who had come in search of the king of England to secure his alliance and support against a scheme which had been set on foot at Acre under Philip’s auspices for deposing Guy and making Conrad of Montferrat, the lord of Tyre, king in his stead. Richard welcomed them cordially and royally. His marriage and the coronation of his queen took place next day (May 12). A few more days were spent in festivities and in waiting for some belated ships to come into port.609 Among those irretrievably lost in the great storm there seem to have been several galleys, but some at least of these were now replaced by the Cypriote ones which had been captured.610 When at last the tale of vessels was complete, Richard prepared to resume his pursuit of Isaac. Isaac, however, who had retired inland to the capital of Cyprus, Nicosia, anticipated him by sending proposals for a parley. It took place “in a garden of fig trees between the shore and the Limasol road.”611 The king went in regal state, attired in a tunic of rose-coloured samite and a mantle “bedight with small half-moons of solid silver set in rows, interspersed with shining orbs like suns”; his head was covered with a scarlet cap; he was girt with a well-proved sword “with a golden hilt, a silken belt, and a finely chased scabbard edged with silver”; his spurs were golden (or gilt), and he was mounted on a Spanish horse of great beauty as well as of a size befitting a rider of such lofty stature; “his saddle was red, studded with little golden and bright-coloured stars, and having on its hinder part two golden lion-cubs rampant, and as if snarling at each other.”612 Isaac swore fealty to Richard, promising to accompany him to Holy Land and serve under him there with five hundred knights; meanwhile Richard was to hold the castles and imperial domains of Cyprus in pledge and to receive an indemnity of three thousand five hundred marks. On these terms they exchanged the kiss of peace.613 That night, however, Isaac mounted his fleetest horse, a wonderful animal called Fauvel, and fled to Famagosta (the ancient Ammochontos, on the east coast). His flight was discovered immediately, but Fauvel seems to have had a reputation which was already known to Richard, for the king forbade all direct pursuit as useless. Instead, he took stronger measures; he put to sea at the head of his galleys and May 15-30 sailed round to Famagosta while his land-forces were, at his request, led by Guy along the coast-road to meet him there. When they reached the place, however, they found it deserted. Richard sent some ships round to the other coast-towns to guard against Isaac’s escape by sea; he himself stayed three days at Famagosta, and there gave an audience to some envoys from Philip, charged with a pressing request that he would proceed to Acre without further delay. Their urgency was so vehement and so insulting that “the king grew angry, and raised his eyebrows, and there were words spoken which it is not meet to write.” “Not for half the wealth of Russia” would he leave Cyprus till he had conquered it and made sure that the supplies of food of which it was the storehouse should be available for the Crusade. So he marched upon Nicosia, whither Isaac had again retired. This time Richard, fearing an c. May 18 attack from behind, took the command of the rearguard. Isaac was lying in wait with his household troops; after an unsuccessful attempt to check the advance of the Frankish vanguard, he “like a Turcople” harassed the flanks of the host till he came near enough to Richard to shoot at him two arrows. Richard dashed forward and would have taken summary vengeance, but the Cypriote Emperor was mounted on Fauvel, and the matchless steed carried him away, at a pace which defied pursuit, to the strong castle of Candaria or Kantara. His troops retired in confusion. Next morning the citizens of Nicosia made their submission to Richard, and he “had their beards shaved off in token of the transfer of their allegiance to a new lord.” He then divided his army into three parts, probably intending himself to take the command of one of them; but he fell sick and was obliged to remain at Nicosia and leave the direction of the campaign to the king of Jerusalem. Guy, who seems to have known the country, besieged and took the castle of Cherina,614 on the north coast, and found within its walls the emperor’s only child, a young girl. Her father was so dismayed at her capture that he ordered the immediate surrender of the next fortress, “Didemus,”615 to which Guy laid siege. Richard, as soon as he recovered, went to attack a third stronghold, “Bufevent.”616 Scarcely had he reached it when Isaac offered complete surrender of his castles, lands, “everything,” begging only to be spared the indignity of “irons or bonds.” Isaac followed close on his messenger and threw himself at the king’s feet. Richard raised him up graciously, seated him at his side, and relieved his anxiety about his daughter by bringing her to meet him. As for the fetters, Isaac’s request evidently ran counter to the king’s inclination or to his fears of a possible escape; but, “lest folk should make an outcry,” he granted it after a fashion: he put the fallen tyrant in chains of silver.617
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Thus in fifteen days—the last fortnight of May618—Richard, with Guy’s help, had “won the mastery of Cyprus for the service of God.” For the same purpose he took possession of a mass of treasures of all kinds which he found in the castles.619 Moreover, the people of the land, to whom Isaac had been a “tyrant” in every sense of the word,620 gave to their new ruler “the half of all they possessed” “for the restoration of the laws and institutes which they had had under the Emperors of Constantinople” and which Richard confirmed to them by charter.621 He further secured his conquest by turning out all the Greek garrisons,622 replacing them with Franks, and appointing two Englishmen, Richard de Camville and Robert of Turnham, governors or “keepers” of the island,623 who were charged to send regular supplies of the victuals—barley, wheat, sheep, bullocks—which Cyprus produced in abundance, to the Franks in Syria, “where,” adds the poet-pilgrim, “they were of great use.”624 Meanwhile he had sent Isaac, under the charge of Guy,625 straight across the sea to the nearest point on the Syrian coast, the fortress of Markab in Tripoli. The Damsel of Cyprus, who seems to have been almost a child, was placed under the care of the two queens and remained with them throughout the Crusade.626 On June 5, the Wednesday in Whitsun week, the fleet sailed for Palestine.627 The various losses which it had sustained in the Mediterranean Sea were compensated by the acquisition of the Cypriote navy; the total of ships was now a hundred and sixty-three, of which thirteen were three-masted busses and fifty were triremes.628
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One more adventure at sea awaited the king before he reached the Holy Land. “Full of health, and light as a feather,” he led the way “as fast as a stag could run” in a direct line across the water till Markab was sighted. Thence the fleet sailed down the coast past Tortosa, Tripoli, and June
6 or 7 Beyrout.629 Suddenly, between Beyrout and Sidon, Richard and his companions in the leading galley saw ahead of them a ship of such size “that we read of no larger one ever existing save the ark of Noah.”630 On a nearer view they perceived that it had three tall masts; one side of it was covered with green felt or tarpaulin, the other with yellow;631 and its whole appearance, to western eyes, was unnatural and uncanny.632 Richard’s men hailed it and demanded whence it came and where it belonged. “We are Genoese, for Tyre,” was the answer. But one of Richard’s oarsmen said: “Hang me, sire, if that ship be not Turkish!” At his suggestion another galley was ordered to go close up to the ship without hailing her; this was done, and her crew immediately opened fire on the galley with arbalests and Damascus bows. Richard’s galley came swiftly up; his men tried to board the ship, but in vain. The king swore he would hang them all if they let the Turks escape. Again and again they renewed the attack; at last they fairly stormed the ship, but were driven back again into their own vessels. Then Richard bade them make a breach in the enemy ship’s side or keel; in this they succeeded, and she sank. Some thirty-five of her officers and engineers were saved and kept as prisoners by Richard’s orders; the rest of the men on board her were either slain or drowned.633 When the victors reached their destination they learned that the ship had been specially built by order of Saladin’s brother Safadin and despatched from Beyrout to carry reinforcements and supplies to the besieged Saracens in Acre, but had been unable to enter the harbour and was, when the Franks overtook her, cruising about, waiting for an opportunity to return thither;634 she carried, besides her crew, at least six hundred and fifty picked soldiers;635 a man, doubtless one of the prisoners, who had seen her loaded at Beyrout, said eight hundred, and further asserted that she contained a hundred camel-loads of arms of all kinds, victuals and other stores “beyond reckoning,” bottles filled with Greek fire, and two hundred “ugly grey serpents” which, according to one account, he had himself helped to stow in her, and which were destined to be let loose against the Christian host;636 probably these were some kind of serpent-like contrivances for throwing the fire. In the Saracen camp the story of the catastrophe was somewhat differently told by a Moslem who represented himself as its sole survivor, rescued and sent by the Christians to inform his people of the disaster which had befallen their cause. He seems to have stated that the dromond had been sunk by its own captain to save it from capture. Saladin’s biographer, however, frankly admits that the issue of Richard’s first encounter with Turks was a severe blow to the defenders of Acre.637 To Richard and his followers it must have seemed a good omen; and it was immediately followed by another. At the opening of the fight they had had the wind in their faces;638 suddenly it dropped639 and then shifted to the north and carried them before nightfall to Tyre.640 Here Richard landed, intending to spend the night in the city, but its keepers refused to admit him, asserting that their lord, Conrad of Montferrat, and the king of France had forbidden them to do so.641 Next day the wind still favoured him and his fleet, and bore them past Scandalion and Casal Imbert straight to the haven where they would be.642