Lionheart A Novel - By Sharon Kay Penman Page 0,339

of such importance that I put everything else aside and devoted my time to researching all the contemporary sources for the siege of Acre. I read every chronicle I could find that dealt with this tragic episode; I even sought out different translations of Ambroise and Bahā’ al-Dīn. In none of them did I find it said that the families of the garrison were put to death. To the contrary, Arab Historians of the Crusades, the translation of Bahā’ al-Dīn’s account of the massacre, refers to the martyrdom of three thousand men in chains. I also found a passage in al-Athir’s chronicle in which he said Saladin had sworn that all Franks taken prisoner would be killed in revenge for the men put to death at Acre; see The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir for the Crusading Period from al-Kamil fi’l-Ta’rikh, Part 2, “Crusade Texts in Translation,” translated by D. S. Richards, page 390. So this turned out to be just another one of the myths that trailed in Richard’s wake—and a valid reason for not recommending the Runciman book. (Bahā’ al-Dīn said three thousand had been slain, Richard said two thousand six hundred, and I decided he was in the better position to know.)

The execution of the garrison remains troubling, though; these were men who’d fought bravely and surrendered in good faith, believing that they would be ransomed. But Richard was ruthless when he waged war, and the matter-of-fact tone of his letter to the abbot of Clairvaux shows that he felt himself justified in executing them after Saladin defaulted on the terms of the surrender. Bahā’ al-Dīn admitted that Saladin had been seeking to delay their departure from Acre, although I find it highly unlikely that he expected to have his bluff called in such a brutal fashion. But the Saracens must have seen Richard’s action as a military decision, for how else could Richard have formed friendships with so many of Saladin’s emirs and Mamluks?

I still found myself feeling enormous sympathy for the slain men and the loved ones they left behind. I felt sympathy for all those who died during the Third Crusade, soldiers and civilians alike. It is not always easy for an instinctive pacifist to wade through so much blood and gore while writing of medieval battles! As a writer and a reader, I am faced with one of the greatest challenges, which is not to judge people of another age by our standards of conduct. The truth is that virtually every medieval ruler committed acts that we would find abhorrent, and that includes Richard, his father, Henry, Saladin, and most of the men I’ve been writing about over the years, with the possible exception of poor, addled Henry VI. But I never feel too sanctimonious, not when I remember the death toll for civilians in the wars that have convulsed our world during my own lifetime. St Francis of Assissi has always been a lonely voice crying out in the wilderness.

Lionheart was a unique writing experience. I’ve never had such a wealth of eyewitness accounts of events; the closest I’d come was Becket’s murder in Canterbury Cathedral. This was beyond wonderful, spoiling me for other books. I had amazing resources to draw upon—two chronicles written by men who accompanied Richard on the Third Crusade, and three Saracen chronicles written by men who were there, two of them members of Saladin’s inner circle. There were other chronicles, too, which I list on my Acknowledgments page, but it was the ones written by the poet Ambroise, the clerk Richard of the Temple, and Bahā’ al-Dīn ibn Shaddād that I found absolutely riveting.

Imagine being able to read accounts of battles by the men who actually fought in them. Bahā’ al-Dīn watched as Richard landed on the beach at Jaffa, vividly describing his red galley, red tunic, red hair, and red banner. Ambroise’s account of the crusaders’ march along the coast reads like a battlefield dispatch. The author of the Itinerarium compared the fleet Saracen horses to the flight of swallows, and explained how the stings of tarantulas were treated with theriaca, which only the wealthy could afford. Both the crusader and Saracen chroniclers reported Guilhem de Préaux’s heroic sacrifice. Occasionally, I had to reconcile differing accounts. Ambroise said the huge Saracen ship was rammed by Richard’s galleys when they could not capture it; Bahā’ al-Dīn said the captain gave the order to scuttle it. So I went with the most likely scenario that both chroniclers were correct.

Even