For educational purposes
Proclaimed by Pope Gregory VIII, the Third Crusade set out to reclaim Jerusalem from Saladin, the sultan of Egypt and Syria, who had seized it after the battle of Hittin in 1187.
Led by the three great leaders of western Christendom Richard I, Frederick I and Philip II, the Crusaders left home with high hopes and expectations.
Their hopes, however, would be dashed and expectations would largely go unmet.
Frederick drowned before even reaching the Holy Land and as a consequence the German effort fell apart.
Tensions between the English and the French saw Philip return home early.
The siege of Acre was brought to a successful conclusion in 1191 and there was a morale-boosting victory over Saladin's armies at Arsuf during the same year, but by the time domestic problems forced Richard to return home 1192, Jerusalem was still in Muslim hands.
Proclaimed by Pope Gregory VIII, the Third Crusade set out to reclaim Jerusalem from Saladin, the sultan of Egypt and Syria, who had seized it after the battle of Hittin in 1187.
Led by the three great leaders of western Christendom Richard I, Frederick I and Philip II, the Crusaders left home with high hopes and expectations.
Their hopes, however, would be dashed and expectations would largely go unmet.
Frederick drowned before even reaching the Holy Land and as a consequence the German effort fell apart.
Tensions between the English and the French saw Philip return home early.
The siege of Acre was brought to a successful conclusion in 1191 and there was a morale-boosting victory over Saladin's armies at Arsuf during the same year, but by the time domestic problems forced Richard to return home 1192, Jerusalem was still in Muslim hands.
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00:00For almost 200 years from 1096, a steel tide of knights, men-at-arms and pilgrims travelled
00:22from Western Europe to the burning sands of Palestine.
00:26They carried before them the cross of Christ and they marched to liberate Jerusalem, the
00:32most sacred city of the medieval world, from the hated infidel.
00:46History remembers these savage wars, seven in number, as the Crusades.
00:52The most famous of these was the Third Crusade, for it was centred around the exploits of
00:58charismatic figures such as the Emperor Saladin and Richard the Lionheart of England, who
01:03faced each other in the line of fire in the late 12th century.
02:03This is modern-day Jerusalem. For centuries, the sacred city has been a symbol of the differences
02:10between the Christian, Muslim and Jewish faiths. Today, Jerusalem is the focus for all the
02:17problems of a troubled region. But there was a time when it enjoyed a more tolerant atmosphere.
02:26Ever since the 7th century, when Caliph Umar had captured Jerusalem, Christians had still
02:33enjoyed almost unfettered access to the city, which endured from 638 right through to 1071,
02:43at which point the picture dramatically changes and the Christians find themselves denied
02:50access to this most important of sites.
02:53Out of nowhere, out of Central Asia, the Caspian Sea region, come the Seljuks, who were a Turkic
03:02speaking people, and they come roaring out of the Central Asian plains and roaring into
03:09the Middle East, and they start taking things over.
03:12The Greek Emperor at the time, a man called Romanus Diodorus, who was the first Roman
03:16The Greek Emperor at the time, a man called Romanus Diogenes, had a reputation as a soldier,
03:21so he decided to go and tackle the Turks, in fact engage them in battle.
03:25Unfortunately, his forces were overwhelmed, he was captured, imperial strategy was paralyzed
03:32and Turks flooded into Asia Minor and into the Near East, as a result of which cities
03:38and fortifications fell, including Jerusalem.
03:47It was the French Pope, Urban II, who proclaimed the First Crusade in the year 1095.
03:55With his passionate call for the expulsion of the Muslims from Jerusalem, the idea of a Christian
04:01crusade aroused great religious passion in the Western world.
04:06Pope Urban II was a Frenchman, he was a French nobleman, and he thought it was a problem that
04:15a lot of French noblemen spent a lot of their time going to war with other French noblemen.
04:22And he wanted everyone in Europe, especially in France, to give up fighting each other
04:29and go and kill non-Christians.
04:33What he intended was that well-equipped, well-armed warriors, knights effectively, should be inspired.
04:40And indeed they were, they responded with the cry of Deus le Volte, which means God wills it.
04:45And that was marvellous, because there was a good, well-equipped force going out there.
04:49But the enthusiasm was such that many poorer people also wanted to go.
04:54Their leaders were a man called Peter the Hermit, and a knight called Walter the Penniless.
05:00Cuckoo Peter was what people called him, and that was meant to be a good thing.
05:05And Cuckoo Peter got together a great howling mob of people, and they also set off towards the Middle East
05:15in order to conduct a crusade.
05:17They were going to, by strength of their own piety, take back the Holy Land from Muslims.
05:25However, Cuckoo Peter lost control of the crusade, and the ordinary people who had gone east
05:36end up roaring around the Byzantine Empire, picking fights with people they shouldn't be picking fights with,
05:45being destroyed by disease, by pointless fighting, and Peter is unable to hold them back.
05:53By the time the noble crusaders get to Byzantium, get to Constantinople,
06:00and make their final push towards Jerusalem, the beggars' crusade is already dissipated.
06:09The first crusaders, under the command of Godfrey of Bouillon,
06:13finally arrived outside the walls of Jerusalem in June 1099.
06:19With the great prize suddenly before them, the 25,000 Christian soldiers could not contain themselves.
06:26They hurled themselves at the city walls, but the determined Muslim defenders beat off their attacks.
06:33By the 14th of July, an enormous siege tower had been built and moved towards the city walls
06:40under the protection of archers and crossbowmen.
06:44The fighting was bitter and bloody.
06:50The chronicler, William of Malmesbury, recalled that soldiers unmatched in courage ascended the tower,
06:56waging nearly equal war against the enemy with missile weapons and stones,
07:02while our foes poured grease and burning oil upon the tower.
07:07The crusaders finally took control of the city walls of Jerusalem
07:11and swarmed into the city on July 15th.
07:15What followed was in stark contrast to Caliph Umar's conquest of 609 BC.
07:22The city walls of Jerusalem were completely destroyed by the Crusaders.
07:27The city walls were completely destroyed by the Crusaders.
07:32What followed was in stark contrast to Caliph Umar's conquest of 698.
07:38The Christian soldiers embarked on a crazed orgy of violence
07:43that resulted in the ritual slaughter of some 40,000 of Jerusalem's Muslim inhabitants.
07:50No one was safe from the merciless killing.
07:52Men, women, children were summarily put to the sword.
07:57Mosques and holy places were defiled and desecrated.
08:01The Jewish synagogue was razed to the ground
08:04and those who had sought shelter from the bloodlust of the Crusaders
08:08within its walls were burned alive.
08:12Great piles of Saracen bodies, some as tall as houses,
08:16appeared outside the city gates.
08:21The soldiers of Christ took a terrible revenge upon the Muslims
08:25for their determined defence of Jerusalem.
08:28It was an act of bloodthirsty vengeance that would never be forgotten.
08:33Meanwhile, in Europe, news of the Crusaders' victory
08:36and the city's deliverance from the infidel was greeted with wild rejoicing.
08:42The capture of Jerusalem was not a permanent event
08:45and soon the city was back in Muslim hands.
08:49A second crusade followed, this time without success.
08:54The so-called Second Crusade was inspired by the loss of Odessa.
08:59Odessa was an important fortified town.
09:02That was captured by a great Muslim leader, Nur ad-Din, in 1144.
09:08And when the news got back to the West, there was a great outcry
09:11because they thought that Jerusalem would be threatened.
09:14Add to that Pope Eugenius III,
09:17who believed in a great crusading movement on all fronts,
09:21and St Bernard of Clairvaux,
09:23who was a marvellously inspirational Cistercian monk and preacher.
09:28This meant that the King of France, Louis VII,
09:31and Conrad, King of Germany,
09:33were able to raise large armies and set out east.
09:38They advanced across Anatolia, just as the Crusaders had done in 1097,
09:42and their armies suffered very large casualties.
09:45So it was only a small number, in fact, that arrived at Acre,
09:49which was the kicking-off place for most of the Crusades.
09:52When they got there, the Crusaders wanted to attack Damascus,
09:56which was a rich town on the caravan route between Egypt and Iran.
10:01The problem was that the locals, the Kingdom of Jerusalem,
10:04had been trying to make an alliance with Damascus
10:08because its ruler was frightened of being taken over by Nur ad-Din.
10:12So the issue really came down to a botched siege.
10:16The Crusaders didn't know how to cope in the conditions.
10:19They suffered from loss of water.
10:21Within a few days, they were driven off,
10:23and the whole thing ended as a complete fiasco.
10:34Nearly 100 years after the first successful crusade,
10:38a third great army of Christ set out to reclaim the holy city.
10:43Once again, they hoped to emulate the bloody success of the first crusade.
10:52The central characters of the third crusade
10:55were two of the most glamorous of the age.
10:58Saladin, sultan of Egypt and Syria,
11:01was the charismatic leader of the Muslim forces.
11:04The dominant personality of the Crusader armies
11:07was Richard the Lionheart of England.
11:13Yusuf ibn Ayyub was a fellow who called himself Salah al-Din.
11:18Salah al-Din means the rectifier of the law,
11:22and he viewed himself as being a very tough man,
11:26and indeed he was a ruthless empire builder.
11:29Saladin was a Kurd, so in other words,
11:31he didn't come from the elite of Muslim society at the time,
11:36but by virtue of his own talents,
11:39he had achieved the status of the dominant ruler in the area.
11:44Saladin has become recognised, and probably rightly so,
11:48as one of the great generals of his age.
11:51He was able to marshal his forces very well
11:54to thwart the ambitions of the Crusaders.
11:58In addition, he was a very cultured man,
12:00he was a very sophisticated operator,
12:02he was a politician as well as a soldier,
12:05and in that respect he was probably leagues ahead of Richard.
12:08Richard is a brutal man.
12:11He's not Sean Connery at the end of Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves,
12:15coming to save the world from despotism.
12:18He is a brutal despot.
12:20Richard had grown up to maturity
12:23in the shadow of his very long-lived
12:26and very illustrious father, King Henry II,
12:29and he was a man who had a lot to prove.
12:32King Henry II of England had pledged to go on crusade
12:35and had actually raised taxes, called the Saladin Tithe,
12:38in order to finance it.
12:40But when he died in 1189 and was succeeded by Richard,
12:43the Third Crusaders, it became called,
12:46got a truly inspirational leader.
12:49Richard was already a very experienced warrior
12:52and he showed great skills of organisation
12:55in transporting the English Crusaders in ships,
12:58together with their horses, across to the Holy Land.
13:02Pope Gregory VIII proclaimed the Third Crusade amid much optimism.
13:08Saladin's capture of Jerusalem had come as a shock to all Christians
13:13and now the three great rulers of Western Christendom
13:16were to be joined together in a holy alliance
13:19to reclaim the sacred city.
13:22Joining Richard were Philip II of France
13:25and the German king and Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I,
13:30known as Barbarossa.
13:33A holy alliance it may have been, happy it was not.
13:37Richard and Philip detested each other
13:40and agreed to go on crusade together
13:42mainly because each knew that if only one went,
13:45the other would make trouble.
13:48Philip was also no natural soldier,
13:51unlike the dashing and handsome Richard.
13:54Against this epitome of a warrior,
13:57the one-eyed Philip compared badly.
14:00You have these two rulers,
14:02the king of England and the Angevin Empire
14:05and the king of France,
14:07neck and neck going on crusade together,
14:09each one trying to prove himself better than the other.
14:13And Richard is constantly trying to claw some advantage over Philip.
14:18And this colours the entire crusade.
14:20It's like a race between two bull elephants.
14:23Neither one is willing to give up any advantage to the other.
14:27Somebody asks King Philip for a loan
14:30and King Richard turns and gives him the money free
14:33and everybody's constantly trying to outdo the other.
14:38The largest crusading army ever to leave Europe
14:41was about to make the worst possible start.
14:45Frederick Barbarossa was nearly 70 years old when he took the cross.
14:49But seized by the crusaders' zeal,
14:52he set out for the Holy Land on June 10th, 1189.
14:58His army was so large that there were not enough ships to carry it,
15:02so he travelled overland, across the Dardanelles and into Asia,
15:07along a route not used since the First Crusade
15:11almost 100 years earlier.
15:14Although the army was successful
15:16as it fought its way through the Byzantine Empire,
15:19it fell prey to the old non-military enemies of hunger and thirst.
15:24Many men died and many more deserted.
15:28But in July 1190, it suffered the worst blow of all.
15:33The 80-year-old German emperor, Frederick Barbarossa,
15:36the name means red beard, was a legend in his own lifetime.
15:39He was a conqueror of Italy and he directed campaigns,
15:43crusades, if you like, against the pagan Slavs of Eastern Europe.
15:47He led the largest contingent of the Third Crusade.
15:51Crucially, Barbarossa himself was drowned
15:54crossing a river on the southern coast.
15:57The stories vary.
15:59We don't know if he was simply riding his horse over
16:01or, it's also suggested, he'd gone for a swim.
16:04Anyway, as an 80-year-old,
16:06he seems to have suffered a severe heart attack.
16:08He died. His crusade promptly fell apart.
16:11His nobles, his knights, were worried
16:13what was going to happen at home with the succession dispute
16:16and many of them left the crusade.
16:18The army just disintegrates bit by bit until there's nothing left.
16:23The entire German army,
16:25supposed to be one of the main parts of that crusade,
16:28just peters away into the distance in the Middle East.
16:33In July 1190, one month after Frederick's death
16:37and nearly three years after Saladin's capture of Jerusalem,
16:41the armies of Philip and Richard gathered at Vézelay in France.
16:47The crusaders, known to the Muslims collectively as Franks,
16:52had decided to travel to the Holy Land via Sicily
16:56and so the English army travelled to Marseille
16:59where it awaited the arrival of the English fleet.
17:02Philip marched his men to Genoa,
17:05there to join a specially contracted flotilla of ships.
17:12MUSIC
17:17Spending the winter in Sicily gave the crusader armies
17:21ample opportunity to prepare for the coming battles
17:24by falling out among themselves,
17:26with their barely trusted allies and with the local population.
17:31King Richard, applying his unique diplomatic skills,
17:35quickly settled the argument with the locals.
17:38He sacked the town of Messina.
17:41At the end of March 1190, Philip set sail for the Holy Land,
17:46eventually arriving at the city of Acre
17:49with his cousin, the slippery Conrad of Montserrat.
17:52He was Philip's preferred candidate for the throne of Jerusalem
17:57and who had joined the king's army at Tyre.
18:04Acre was in the grip of a long and increasingly ineffective siege
18:09laid by Guy of Lusignan, the king of Jerusalem.
18:19Acre was the most important city in the Holy Land
18:23from the Christian point of view.
18:25It was well fortified and it was economically rich.
18:28It sort of straddled the east-west trade
18:30and the ships of the Italians were constantly in the port.
18:33Unfortunately, it had been lost to the Christians in 1187,
18:37although they had managed to retain nearby Tyre,
18:40which was also a well-fortified port.
18:42In the summer of 1189, King Guy, who had been released from captivity,
18:47set out from Tyre with a small force and set siege to Acre.
18:51Initially, his troops simply weren't enough of them to surround the town,
18:57but gradually more crusaders came in
19:00and so he was able to establish a blockade of the town.
19:03The walls of Acre, which had been constructed by the crusaders,
19:07were too strong for them to attempt a storm to recapture the town
19:12and so they had to resort to the normal techniques of siege warfare,
19:16which included battering them with siege artillery.
19:20Siege warfare became quite an art during the Middle Ages
19:25as military men struggled to find a way to break down the walls
19:29of the castles and fortified cities of the period.
19:32The problems facing the army of the Third Crusade were no different.
19:37There were several ways to bring a siege to a successful conclusion,
19:41the simplest being to starve the defenders into submission.
19:45But this was an unpopular and dangerous route.
19:49A well-supplied castle could hold out for weeks, months, even years,
19:54giving time for other armies to come to their aid.
19:57While the threat of illness and disease
20:00breaking out among the invading army was never far away.
20:04In any case, the crusader was a man of action,
20:07far better to force the pace
20:09and minimise the need for unnecessary waiting around.
20:14There were two main types of missile-throwing siege engines
20:18available to the Middle Age besieger.
20:21One of these, the mangonel, was hardly a new design,
20:25having been used to great effect by the Romans,
20:28but its strong wooden frame, thick skein of rope and large beam
20:33made it possible to hurl large and murderous objects
20:37up to a distance of 500 yards.
20:40The mangonel's cousin, the trebuchet, was a 12th-century innovation
20:45that worked on the principle of counterweight,
20:48with an uneven beam being attached to a crossbar.
20:51The short end was packed with rocks,
20:55while the longer end was equipped with a sling,
20:58in which a missile was placed.
21:00When the sling was released, the heavier end dropped much faster
21:05and the deadly projectile made its way to the target
21:08at great speed and with huge force.
21:11There were several trebuchets at Acre.
21:14One of them was called Malvoisard, which means bad neighbour.
21:18You know, a sort of grim soldier's joke
21:20on the impact they'd have on the walls of Acre.
21:23The business of hurling rocks again and again at a stone wall,
21:28which could in some cases be 12 or 15 foot thick,
21:31obviously took a very, very long time.
21:34It was by no means a precise art.
21:37Aiming was difficult, the machinery was cumbersome
21:40and the results weren't that effective.
21:42It's not going to break the wall down.
21:44What you need to do is knock the battlements off the top of the wall
21:48so that the defenders can't shoot at you
21:51when you bring up a different sort of siege engine.
21:55The kind of siege engine that's effective at actually taking the wall
21:59is not one that attempts to batter it down with brute strength.
22:03It's a siege engine that you wheel up and climb over the wall with.
22:08The siege tower, or belfry, were wooden constructions
22:12which were made with several floors with ladders connecting each apartment
22:16and were wheeled to the foot of the fortress walls.
22:20Attacking soldiers packed the siege tower, waiting to get to the top,
22:25where they were required to fight their way across a drawbridge
22:29that provided a hazardous route between the belfry and the fortress wall.
22:34At the foot of the belfry, it fell to slingers, archers and crossbowmen
22:39to make easier this difficult route of entry
22:42by shooting the defenders from the ramparts.
22:45Their task was often fraught with danger
22:48due to the rocks, fire arrows and blazing pitch hurled down on them from above.
22:56All manner of materials were thrown at or into a fortification under siege,
23:01either to make a breach in the walls or to cause devastation in the streets.
23:06Other favourite projectiles included the deadly Greek fire,
23:11a naphtha-based mixture that made its way over the walls in a barrel,
23:16which some have called the middle-age equivalent of napalm.
23:20Because medieval sieges relied not just on the effects of military action,
23:26they also required disease to wear down the defenders.
23:30Often carcasses would be hurled into the walls of a besieged city, dead horses.
23:37Anything that was likely to carry disease would be catapulted into the city.
23:41They would also be used to try and wear down morale.
23:44There are instances, for example, where the severed heads of friendly forces
23:49were fired into the walls of a city to sap the morale of the defenders to continue.
23:57The crusaders that besieged the city of Acre
24:00employed some or all of these tactics in its attempts to force a surrender.
24:05But it was King Richard's arrival outside the city on 8 June 1191
24:12that had a galvanising effect on the crusaders.
24:15The sight of the Frankish army also threw the Muslim defenders into a great panic.
24:22Fresh from sacking Cyprus,
24:24to which island he had been blown by a storm during his journey from Sicily,
24:29Richard was in no mood to let the siege drag on into a third year.
24:35Almost immediately, his fleet sank a vital supply ship bound for the city.
24:41The siege was stepped up and on 12 July 1191, Acre finally surrendered.
24:48The surrender of Acre can be viewed slightly akin to something like
24:52the fall of Berlin at the end of World War II.
24:55It was actually divided up into a Richard the Lionheart section
25:01and a Philip of France section.
25:03If Barbarossa had been there, no doubt it would have been sectioned into three blocks.
25:08As well, that's not enough.
25:10Richard also demands that there would be a big cash indemnity
25:15paid to the crusaders for their trouble in taking the town,
25:18that the so-called True Cross that Salah al-Din had be returned to Christian hands.
25:26Salah al-Din had taken it from the Crusaders.
25:29Salah al-Din had taken it before
25:31and give all of the former Christian inhabitants back their old property.
25:38The actual soldiers had been promised shares in the town as part of their payment,
25:46but they never got anything out of it.
25:48Philip of France, now fed up equally with crusading and with Richard,
25:54decided to return home and leave the final assault on Jerusalem to the English king.
26:03King Philip of France was tired, worn out.
26:07He'd been neck and neck with the very vigorous King Richard the entire crusade,
26:13each one constantly trying to outdo the other.
26:16And after the crusaders took Acre, Richard turns to Philip and he says,
26:22Very well King Philip, my royal cousin, we've taken Acre,
26:26we can now begin operations against our enemies.
26:30I suggest that you and I both pledge to stay here in the Holy Land for three years
26:37until we have defeated the infidel.
26:41And Philip does not want to stay in the Middle East for three years.
26:47He's got a kingdom back in France that he has to look after,
26:50and worst of all, he's got a very bad case of dysentery.
26:54This means that Philip is making his decision,
26:58should I stay or should I go, with a case of explosive diarrhea.
27:04He's dehydrated, he's unwell, he's hating life.
27:09He wants nothing more than to go home.
27:13So he gives up, he's not interested,
27:16and he leaves all the glory of the third crusade to King Richard.
27:20We know from the historical record that Richard the Lionheart
27:24was very sceptical of Philip's motives in returning home.
27:29It's interesting to note that he actually made him sign a pact
27:33vowing not to attack Richard's territories when Richard's back was turned.
27:39So he clearly wasn't convinced by what he patently saw as the excuse of illness.
27:53There now followed one of the most notorious incidents
27:57in the entire history of the Crusades,
28:00and one that flies in the face of Richard's reputation in legend and folklore.
28:10The Muslim defenders of Acre surrendered
28:14and were given their lives and property.
28:17Then there began negotiations with Saladin as to paying a ransom for them.
28:22Richard became angry because he thought Saladin was just dragging out negotiations
28:27so that the crusade would be delayed.
28:30The people in Acre wanted to leave.
28:33They said, we'll give up the town, but we have to go.
28:38And King Richard said, no, no, no.
28:42You resisted, you will now pay the price.
28:46And Richard insists that the 6,000 people who lived in Acre
28:51had to stay so that he and his army could go in and butcher them.
28:57Their payment for all those months of horrible siege
29:02was going to be the wholesale murder of the population of Acre.
29:08And so he brought several thousand of the defenders out in front of the walls of Acre
29:14and had them decapitated.
29:16He had them massacred because then they were no longer a burden to him.
29:20Nowadays this would be considered a war crime.
29:23At the time, in fact, the man who suffered most was Saladin
29:26because his followers believed that he should have rescued his men
29:30and it did actually undermine morale in the Muslim army.
29:41In all, nearly 3,000 citizens,
29:44including about 300 women and children, met their end.
29:49Richard was unfazed.
29:51He had rid himself of the problem and was now free to march on Jerusalem.
30:01Richard's army set out from Acre on August 22nd, 1191,
30:06heading for the strategically important town of Jaffa,
30:09the place Richard believed was the best situated for the attack on Jerusalem.
30:15Soon the Crusaders and the Saracens would meet for the first time in open battle
30:21and for the first time in a war.
30:24Soon the Crusaders and the Saracens would meet for the first time in open battle
30:29and for the first time the very different fighting tactics of the two sides
30:34would be put to the test.
30:38The battle tactics of the Saracen forces were based upon speed and mobility.
30:46Recognising that the Crusaders' greatest strength
30:49lay in the use of their formidable cavalry in conjunction with the infantry,
30:53the aim of the lightweight Saracen horsemen was to isolate the two
30:58by drawing the cavalry away from the main army.
31:01When this was done, the plan was to further isolate smaller groups of cavalry
31:06and to defeat each in detail.
31:09At the Battle of Hattin in 1187,
31:12ingenious use had been made of hit-and-run tactics
31:16which had involved the lighter Saracen cavalry feigning withdrawal,
31:20luring the Crusader cavalry away from their positions
31:23before turning on them when they were beyond help from the infantry.
31:32The Saracen horsemen had then been free to return to the static Crusader infantry
31:37and launch attacks on them.
31:43King Richard may have been a poor diplomat and politician
31:47but he was a fine soldier and military strategist.
31:51He too recognised that the greatest threat to success came not from the Turks
31:56but from the indiscipline of his own cavalry.
32:00He knew full well that if it attacked as a coordinated unit
32:04with the infantry positions used as a solid base from which to make those attacks,
32:08Saladin's forces would have no answer.
32:11King Richard's courage, daring and battle skills are not in question.
32:16But he also possessed a gift rare in a commander of the Middle Ages,
32:21the ability to control an army.
32:24As his army made its way down the coast of Palestine towards Jaffa,
32:28these skills, combined with great strategic awareness, made themselves felt.
32:34Richard marched his men close to the shore
32:37not only to nullify the possibility of Saracen attacks on his right flank
32:41but also to facilitate easy supply from the English fleet
32:45that followed the army slowly along the shoreline.
32:49Time and again the Saracens made their lightning quick charges
32:53against Richard's column of troops
32:55but the king had cleverly placed dismounted men-at-arms
32:59and horseless armoured knights with the crossbowmen of the infantry
33:03forming the solid base the cavalry so needed.
33:06Try as they might, the Saracens could not tempt the crusader cavalry
33:11into breaking formation.
33:13Their iron discipline, even holding out under an almost constant shower
33:18of Turkish arrows and the scorching heat of the sun
33:22which itself claimed many Frankish victims.
33:26Finally, with Jaffa coming ever nearer,
33:30Finally, with Jaffa coming ever nearer
33:33and the threat to Jerusalem growing by the day,
33:36Saladin was forced into making an all-out attack on Richard's army
33:40at Ashuf, 15 miles north of Jaffa, on September 7th, 1191.
33:47At the time, there were wooded hills that came almost down to the beach
33:51and Richard is marching down from Acre towards Jaffa
33:57along the beach
33:59and Saladin's plan was to come out of the woods, come out of the hills
34:06and cut off the tail of Richard's army as they marched.
34:11The way that Richard countered this was to defend his very valuable cavalry,
34:16his knights, behind lines of infantry,
34:19so there was a column of infantry on each side,
34:21cavalry and the baggage marching in the middle of this
34:25so their horses would be protected against the arrows of the Muslims.
34:28And two of the best units of crusader warriors,
34:32that is, the knight's hospitaller and the knight's templar from the military orders,
34:37took it in turns to take the advance guard and the rear guard
34:40because these were the most dangerous positions.
34:42As Richard's army is marching south along the beach,
34:46Saladin does come out of the woods
34:48and with his archers especially, he is cutting up the rear guard, the hospitallers
34:54and Richard is trying to keep his army moving.
34:57The last thing he wants to do is stop his army
34:59where Saladin's archers can shoot at them out of the woods,
35:02last thing Richard wants, so he keeps his army going
35:05and all the while, the cavalry keep begging King Richard,
35:10let us attack, let us attack.
35:13Richard knows that if the cavalry attack too soon,
35:16they'll just be cut up by the excellent Turkish archers
35:20and they'll all be dead and Richard won't have a cavalry force anymore.
35:24So he's saving his cavalry as a tactical reserve.
35:28And the cavalry are begging him, they're almost calling him a coward.
35:33They're saying, we will look bad if we haven't charged yet.
35:36Come on King Richard, let us go, let us go.
35:39And King Richard is saying, no, wait, wait, wait,
35:42because he has a bigger mission in mind, he wants to get to Jaffa.
35:46He doesn't want to fight a pitched battle on the beach in Arsuf.
35:50And then a couple of his cavalrymen say,
35:53right, we are not going to wait any longer.
35:56And one turns to the other and says, did you hear the signal to charge?
35:59I heard the signal to charge.
36:00And the other guy says, I heard the signal to charge as well.
36:03And they cry out, St. George!
36:05And they go charging towards the Muslims.
36:08And King Richard said, all right, I guess it's time to charge.
36:11And he joins in with them and they all charge at the Muslims
36:14and scatter them.
36:16We should be slightly careful because a lot of the records of Arsuf
36:44actually come from the Chronicles.
36:46And these are very much the PR men of their day.
36:50And although the victory is depicted as an overwhelming
36:54and huge crushing blow over the Saracens,
36:58I think there's some room for doubt in that.
37:02At the end of the Battle of Arsuf, there is no decision.
37:05Saladin still got an army, Richard still got an army, no decision at all.
37:10In a letter to the Abbot of Clairvaux,
37:13Richard recalled that the army finally reached Jaffa
37:16on September 29, 1191,
37:19and fortified the city with ditches and a wall
37:22with the intention of protecting the interests of Christianity
37:26to the best of our ability.
37:29Constant fighting had, however,
37:31taken its toll on the king and his army.
37:34Practical considerations had, to some extent,
37:38supplanted religious zeal.
37:41To continue inland to Jerusalem would mean a march
37:44away from the army's much-needed supply ships.
37:48Richard concluded that if ever there was a time to talk, it was now.
37:53And he opened negotiations with Saladin
37:56through the sultan's brother, al-Adil.
38:01The Muslims and the Franks are bleeding to death,
38:04the country is utterly ruined,
38:06and lives have been sacrificed on both sides.
38:09The time has come to stop this.
38:12So wrote Richard in a letter to Saladin,
38:15who replied that he would hand over the cross
38:18only in exchange for something of value.
38:21Richard concluded from the sultan's reply
38:24that there was a deal to be done,
38:26and presented Saladin with the proposal that,
38:29while original in its concept had very little to do
38:32with religious ideology,
38:34and everything to do with practical politics.
38:37Richard was certainly a man who was keen to explore
38:40as many avenues as possible,
38:42and one of the proposals that he made
38:44was that his sister should be married to Saladin's brother.
38:50Now, this is a huge leap across a divide for a medieval mind.
38:55In those days, they didn't have our concept
38:57of how races should be treated fairly,
39:00so that alone was an enormous leap.
39:02However, Richard, in his usual fashion,
39:05slightly over-egged the pudding,
39:07because he suggested that not only would Saladin's brother
39:10be free to marry his sister,
39:12but in order to do so, he had to become a Christian,
39:15and that, of course, was never likely to happen.
39:18Not surprisingly, the proposal was declined.
39:21However, with the army camped at Beit Nuba,
39:24a mere 12 miles from Jerusalem,
39:27there were important decisions to be made.
39:30Richard knew the military position only too well,
39:33and the question was a simple one.
39:36If he were to capture Jerusalem,
39:38how would it be held after he had returned home?
39:43It had become clear that while the surviving Christian knights
39:47were as keen as ever to wrest the holy city from the infidel,
39:51fewer relished the thought of living there
39:54for the rest of their lives.
39:56There was nothing to be done.
39:58An organised retreat was the only option.
40:01The news was broken to the disappointed and disheartened troops,
40:06and the army headed back to the ruined city of Ascalon
40:10in January 1192.
40:13And so, the great Holy Crusade was about to end
40:17in a terrible anticlimax.
40:20The Frankish army that had sacked Cyprus, besieged Acre,
40:24and been victorious at Arshuf,
40:26had been told to turn on its heels within sight of the final prize.
40:31Religious ideals had been swallowed up by grubby politics,
40:36as Conrad of Montserrat and Guy of Lusignan
40:39bickered over how the newly-conquered Christian lands
40:42should be ruled.
40:45To make matters worse, King Richard received urgent news from England
40:49that his brother John was creating trouble
40:52and that Philip II, despite his sworn oath,
40:55was contemplating a move against Normandy,
40:58threatening the security of the Angevin Empire.
41:03Conrad's mysterious but timely assassination
41:06helped solve one of the problems.
41:09Richard, perhaps against his better judgement,
41:12was persuaded to make another final attempt to take Jerusalem.
41:18On June 11th, the Crusader army arrived back at Beyt Nubar,
41:23only to be confronted, of course, with the very same problems
41:26that had forced their withdrawal six months earlier.
41:30Despite bitter arguments, they were forced once again to turn back,
41:36this time to Acre.
41:38There was, however, to be a final twist in the tale,
41:42for on July 27th, only one day after Richard's arrival,
41:47Saladin's forces appeared at the gates of Jaffa.
41:51This was to be Richard the Lionheart's last great battle.
41:56The battle at Jaffa in 1192 is the sort of event
42:00that heroic tales are made of.
42:03Richard had, in actual fact, been outmanoeuvred by Saladin,
42:06who launched a surprise attack on the port of Jaffa.
42:10They're sneaking up, and a Genoese sailor
42:15sees the glint of sun on armour, and he sounds the alarm.
42:20And the Crusaders leap up, and they're defending themselves,
42:24and they fight for an entire day.
42:26They're surprised, but they manage to fight,
42:28and they fight with astonishing ferocity,
42:31considering how exhausted they must have been.
42:41Saladin captured the town,
42:43and the defenders were forced to withdraw into the citadel.
42:46They then negotiated a truce with Saladin,
42:49that if they were not relieved by the 1st of August,
42:52if no troops came to support them, they would surrender.
42:55It was very tight.
42:57Richard was north up the coast at Acre.
43:00He had to get men into ships, and he had to sail south.
43:03Eventually, he just did it.
43:05He sailed into the harbour on the evening of July 27th,
43:08and he sailed into the harbour on the evening of July 31st.
43:12But he wasn't sure if the town was still in Christian hands.
43:17So there was a lot of dithering on the following day,
43:20on the 1st of August, and it wasn't until a priest
43:23jumped into the water and swam out to the Crusader ships
43:26and said, look, we're still surviving, please come and help us,
43:30that the ships came in.
43:32Richard jumped out, fully armoured, onto the beach,
43:35with just a handful of knights and a few horses.
43:38Really, he only had a few hundred men, archers and spearmen.
43:42But despite the fact that he was under such pressure,
43:45he went onto the offensive against several thousand Muslim soldiers.
43:49The archers and the spearmen formed a line, mutually defensive,
43:53and Richard launched a couple of counterattacks
43:56with his cavalry, with his knights.
43:59Really, it was no contest. It was like the Alamo.
44:02He should not have survived.
44:04It was Richard's brilliance, his genius for war,
44:07his inspiration of his men, that after a while,
44:10the Muslims realised they weren't going to make any headway
44:13and withdrew, defeated.
44:16Saladin decides that he's not going to destroy the Crusader army,
44:20and the Muslims all melt off in the darkness.
44:25And from that point,
44:28the Muslims stop trying to get Jaffa away from King Richard.
44:33So as long as King Richard remains in the theatre,
44:38the Crusaders control the coastal strip from Acre down to Jaffa.
44:43But that's all.
44:45The Third Crusade had at last run its course.
44:49Both sides were completely exhausted,
44:52and King Richard himself had fallen dangerously ill.
44:56The only sensible course open to the king
44:59was to make peace with Saladin
45:01and go home to attend to his affairs there.
45:04And so the tired leaders finally agreed a three-year truce
45:09on September 2nd, 1192.
45:12Given the unsatisfactory state of affairs,
45:15the terms suited both sides.
45:17Ascalon was to remain in Muslim control,
45:20while the conquered coastal land between Tyre and Jaffa
45:24was to be kept by the Christians.
45:26Jerusalem, the city over which so much blood had been shed,
45:30remained with the Muslims,
45:32who nevertheless agreed to let Christians make their holy pilgrimages.
45:37Finally, after nearly three years of campaigning,
45:41Richard the Lionheart set sail from the Holy Land
45:45on October 9th, never to return.
45:54Its purpose had been to free the holy city,
45:57and in that, the Third Crusade had failed.
46:01The crusaders had used brute force and sophisticated siege weapons
46:06to break the walls of Acre,
46:08and had harnessed great leadership with superior tactics to win at Arshuf.
46:13But the capture of Jerusalem had proved to be beyond them.
46:18Thousands of lives had been sacrificed in the name of God.
46:22The crusade left behind it the clearest record
46:25of the sharp differences in religious, moral and military ideology
46:30between East and West in the 12th century.
46:37It also provided military history
46:39with one of its most brutal and bloody episodes.
46:44The crusades consumed an enormous number of lives.
46:49They took hopes and they took aspirations away
46:52from a large number of people who actually dedicated themselves
46:55to the pursuit of the recapture of Jerusalem.
46:58To an extent, they got off to a slightly false start
47:01because having captured Jerusalem on the First Crusade,
47:04they could never again aspire to reach that level of success.
47:08So ultimately, the crusades can be seen as a rather tragic affair.
47:12They were never going to produce the results
47:15that the men who set off them hoped they would achieve.
47:22MUSIC
47:52MUSIC