The Strategy of Saladin 4: The Conquest of Jerusalem (1185-1188)

The Strategy of Saladin 4

The Conquest of Jerusalem (1185-1188)

 

Introduction
Hi, and welcome to Strategy Stuff. In the previous video, we detailed how the strategic and political failures of the Crusaders, particularly the Kingdom of Jerusalem, prevented them from effectively confronting Saladin. All these accumulated problems would come home to roost during the Hattin campaign of 1187, where Saladin would finally achieve his lifelong ambition.

 

The Crisis in Jerusalem, 1185-1187

Baldwin V became the new King of Jerusalem in early 1185. He inherited a realm in big trouble: its borders permanently threatened by Saladin, its economy ruined by repeated mobilization, its allies too busy with their own affairs. The Crusader leadership was deeply split between the ‘established’ and ‘new’ nobility, and even his own mother and stepfather were in rebellion. Worse still, Baldwin V was only a child of 7, meaning that he needed a regent to govern for him.

Under normal circumstances Baldwin’s stepfather, Guy de Lusignan, would be regent. His recent purge and revolt, however, left the regency in the hands of his political enemy, the great established lord Raymond of Tripoli. But Raymond himself had also long been suspected of disloyalty, so he had to share much of his power with Guy’s allies anyway.

Little wonder, then, that Raymond hastened to make peace with Saladin, who was at this time stalled before Mosul. This policy is often seen as proof of Raymond’s Islamophilia, but in reality, Raymond was too politically vulnerable to march out on campaign. He therefore could not allow Saladin any pretext to invade, even if it meant doing nothing as Saladin experienced his near-death illness. Presumably Raymond expected Mosul and its allies to continue stalling Saladin – a hope which unexpectedly failed due to events in Persia, far beyond Jerusalem’s control.

By early 1186, Saladin was firmly committed to conquering Jerusalem. A few months later, Baldwin V died, and the Kingdom’s political turmoil reached a catastrophic peak. Medieval child mortality meant that this situation was not entirely unforeseen, but the succession plan had called for an extended consultation with the Pope and the Western European kings, which was utterly unrealistic given the imminent war. The choice could only be between Baldwin’s surviving blood relatives, both female: either his mother Sibylla and her husband Guy, or his half-aunt Isabella and her husband, the stepson of the great new lord, Reynald de Chatillon.

Given what followed, the history of what happened next is shrouded in highly partisan myth. But it is likely that the established nobility, led by Raymond, were prepared to accept Sibylla as Queen, so long as she divorced Guy. Sibylla agreed, was proclaimed Queen, but then went back on her word and made Guy King. This was not an act of irrational love as is often presented, but instead a recognition that Guy’s military experience and connections with Angevin England still made him the best available option in these desperate times.

Outraged, Raymond summoned the local nobles and tried to make Isabella Queen instead. But Isabella and her husband sensibly refused to plunge Jerusalem into civil war, and Raymond’s coup quickly collapsed. Raymond nevertheless remained defiant, retreating to his fiefdom in northern Jerusalem and launching a rebellion against Guy. To protect himself, Raymond even requested Saladin’s protection, offering Muslim troops free rein across his territory.

And it wasn’t only Raymond going his own way. While all this was going on, the other great lord in Jerusalem, Reynald de Chatillon, decided to unilaterally attack Saladin’s caravans, ignoring King Guy’s orders to stop. This action was not as senseless as is often portrayed: Reynald recognized that war was imminent, and Saladin was probably using the caravans to move troops and supplies into position. Furthermore, by demonstrating his independence vis-à-vis the King, Reynald hoped to gradually turn his fiefdom of Oultrejourdain into a semi-autonomous state, allowing him to enjoy the same status as Raymond and his County of Tripoli.

Whatever the reason, Reynald’s actions gave the Muslims the desired pretext, and in 1187 Saladin ended the peace and declared Holy War against Jerusalem.

 

The Hattin Campaign, Mar-Jul 1187

Despite his promise to capture Jerusalem, Saladin couldn’t have had high expectations for the campaign of 1187. That’s because he still had no counter to the ‘Crusader military template’, which we described in the previous video. In short, whenever Saladin invaded Jerusalem, his army would always be held up before a Crusader castle. This would give time for the Crusaders to mobilize their own field army and then march out: not to suicidally attack the large Muslim force, but to hold them up further. If Saladin wanted to push on, he would have to attack the Crusader army, even as Crusader castles menaced his rear. Saladin almost always chose to withdraw instead.

The campaign’s start gave no cause for optimism. Similar to previous invasions, Saladin first targeted Kerak, the castle of the trucebreaker Reynald. Kerak held out, the Crusaders mobilized, and a frustrated Saladin retreated.

Saladin now switched his area of operations to Raymond’s fiefdom in northern Jerusalem, where he hoped to use his military access to achieve a breakthrough. In May, the Muslim advance guard managed to surprise and destroy a large group of Crusaders there, eliminating about 10% of Jerusalem’s knights. This was certainly a success, but its effect was neutralized somewhat when Raymond, under universal condemnation for his role in the disaster, renounced Saladin’s protection and reconciled with King Guy.

By this time, Jerusalem was in the throes of yet another extraordinary mobilization. This time, Guy appropriated treasure that was meant to fund a future Angevin Crusade: the money was used to mobilize every castle garrison, producing an army of about a thousand knights and 20 thousand infantry.

Saladin arrived in July with an army of 15 thousand cavalry and 25 thousand infantry. Similar to their previous confrontation in 1183, the armies engaged in a stand-off with each other, Guy sticking to his military template and refusing to attack Saladin’s army.

With the benefit of hindsight, most historians have agreed with Guy’s instincts here. But we should note that, just as before, Jerusalem didn’t have the resources to continuously mobilize against Saladin. At some point, Guy needed to risk battle, or else see Jerusalem bleed out from a thousand attacks.

On the other side, Saladin knew that, if this campaign was to end in anything but another retreat, he needed to get the Crusaders to ditch their template and attack him. He therefore took a major gamble and split his force: one part remained before the Crusader army, while the other overran the nearby town of Tiberias, forcing Raymond’s wife to flee to the local citadel.

Saladin’s gambit worked, and Jerusalem’s leadership felt pressure to react to this turn of events. Again, the histories here are very politicized, but the consensus seems to be that Raymond wanted to stick to the template, even if it meant the complete fall of Tiberias, while Reynald saw a golden opportunity to attack. Guy ultimately followed Reynald’s advice, expecting to crush Saladin’s split force and score a major victory, which would both buy Jerusalem a few years’ respite and also buttress his shaky rule.

The decision to battle was risky, but perhaps not fatal. Jerusalem’s battle tactics were designed to fight a cavalry-heavy army, like the one Saladin led: the Crusaders would march in boxes, with infantry on the outside and knights on the inside. The idea was to use the infantry to shield the knights from cavalry archer fire, while the formation maneuvered into a good position, at which point the knights would launch their devastating and decisive charge. When discipline was good, these tactics often worked well.

Unfortunately for the Crusaders, Guy’s sudden choice left little time for preparation or logistics. Not long after he led his army out to attack, water supplies began to run low. The exhausted infantry broke formation and dissolved into a straggling mass, allowing Saladin’s cavalry archers to kill off the knights’ horses. Once the Crusader cavalry was destroyed, the Muslims could freely drive the enemy up the Horns of Hattin, where they were surrounded and annihilated in due course.

The Crusader field army was destroyed at Hattin. Guy and his supporters were captured and held for ransom, save for Reynald whom Saladin killed as a trucebreaker. Raymond and his allies fled early, only to live lives of shame afterwards. The lower-born were either enslaved, or in the case of the Military Orders, killed outright. And the Levant now lay defenseless before Saladin.

The Conquest of Jerusalem, 1187-88

Hattin also destroyed the military template that the Crusaders relied on to repel Muslim invasion. The template relied on mutual support between the castles and the field army: without a field army in support nearby, an enemy could easily bypass and isolate a castle, leaving the latter with no real military relevance nor possibility of relief. Most garrisons in this situation quickly surrendered; a few resisted for years, most notably Reynald’s castle at Kerak, but their efforts were of little strategic significance.

So Saladin faced little military pressure after Hattin, but he recognized that his troops expected rewards for their work. He therefore split his army into several parts, and spent the next two months plundering every easy target in Jerusalem, especially the surrendered cities on the rich coastal plain. In the process, even slightly-resisting towns were bypassed, mostly in the south and in the north. The failure to capture these resisters – especially Tyre in the north – is often seen as a lost opportunity, but in his defense Saladin’s army was in no mood for such efforts.

Besides, Saladin believed he had a foolproof solution. By late August, the army was finally put back to the task of Holy War, specifically the capture of Jerusalem. This meant first clearing the strategic obstacles in the way, namely the castles of southern Jerusalem. Here, Saladin deployed his solution: the Crusader nobles captured at Hattin. Saladin offered to ransom them, not for cash, but for the surrender of their castles. It worked, and southern Jerusalem passed meekly into Muslim control.

Saladin reached Jerusalem in late September: the city put up a stiff defense, but soon agreed to surrender and pay a ransom. The campaign objective – and Saladin’s life ambition – had finally been achieved; what now?

Saladin was already thinking about rehabilitating the conquered lands. Initially, he was even willing to let civilian Franks live under his rule, which the Franks themselves rejected. Saladin arranged for their semi-orderly expulsion back to Europe, but he still sought to preserve the Levant’s economic base. In this vein, he rejected a proposal to destroy the Christian shrines in Jerusalem city, hoping to retain the lucrative pilgrimage trade.

Such magnanimity might also indicate that Saladin expected the rest of the Crusader Levant to fall easily, which would firmly secure his conquests from European retribution. Without a local harbor, a successful naval invasion was near-impossible: the coastal ports of northern Jerusalem, and Tripoli itself, were important in this regard. Alternatively, a large European army could technically survive the overland route through Balkan, Byzantine and Turkish territory; the city of Antioch would be the primary defense against such an invasion. These were the targets Saladin needed to take next.

In late November, Saladin began a serious effort against the northern Jerusalem port of Tyre, a city he had bypassed earlier. Initially, he tried exchanging the city for another noble, but was foiled thanks to an unexpected arrival from Europe – Conrad of Montferrat, who took charge and rejected all trades, even for King Guy himself. Saladin released Guy anyway to undermine Conrad’s leadership, but it was now clear that taking Tyre would require a proper siege, which Saladin’s army had never been good at.

Even worse, since Tyre was on a peninsula, the city would also need to be blockaded from the sea. Now Saladin’s underinvestment in the navy would come back to haunt him, as he could only deploy 10 ships against this strategically-critical objective. Presumably he had more vessels in Egypt, but those were probably needed there to defend against Sicily, whose fleet was already sailing to help the Crusaders. Without a proper fleet, Tyre could not be taken, and Saladin lifted the siege at the end of 1187.

The failure to capture Tyre meant that a European invasion of the Levant was virtually guaranteed. Over the winter, the Pope declared a Third Crusade, and the Sicilian navy began operating around the Levant. Saladin’s main focus now was to preserve his strength: he did invade Tripoli and Antioch in 1188, but focused on the capture of easy but strategically-irrelevant targets, rather than the well-defended Crusader capitals. This was also when the castles within the interior of the former Kingdom of Jerusalem finally surrendered.

Nevertheless, a storm from Europe was coming, and weathering it would mark the final phase of Saladin’s career…

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