The Third Crusade
Doubting their own faith and strength, the various Christian Kingdoms—Europe, Byzantium, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem—inadvertently brought 40 years of peace with an increasingly more united Islamic civilization under Saladin. This peace was broken when Reginald of Châtillon, a Christian troublemaker, tried to invade Arabia in 1183. He failed. By 1185 another truce was established but was broken again by Reginald—this time taking Saladin's sister as prisoner. Saladin's patience had a limit, and Reginald had found it. The Sultan sounded the alarms for a holy war and swore to kill Reginald with his own hand. The war raged for several months and Jerusalem capitulated to Saladin's forces on Friday, October 2nd 1187. Saladin, showing more civility, virtue, and strength than the Christian leaders, was able to broker peace yet again—dividing Palestine evenly and allowing Christians and Jews alike to dwell and worship their gods in the holy city. Back in Europe, outrage grew when William, Archbishop of Tyre, returned and recounted the fall of Jerusalem to assemblies in Italy, France, and Germany. He appealed to Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, who had fought on the Second crusade as a lad of twenty five but was now sixty-seven. This initiated the third Crusade. Barbarossa set out with his army in 1189 and ignominiously drowned the next year in the little river of Salef in Cilicia. Meanwhile, Richard I of the Lion Heart of England and the French King Phillip Augustus also took the cross. They distracted themselves with a dozen side-quests, and eventually reached Acre; it was seized, and the Muslims expelled. Philip Augustus, ill with fever, returned to France, leaving behind him a French force of 10,500 men. Richard became sole leader of the Third Crusade which became a confused and unique campaign in which blows and battles alternated with compliments and courtesies between Saladin and Richard. On September 2nd 1192, they signed a truce for a year, and split the cities amongst them yet again. Jerusalem, however, was to remain in Muslim hands.
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Source: Durant, Will, 1885-1981, The Age of Faith: A History of Medieval Civilization, Christian, Islamic, and Judaic, From Constantine to Dante, A.D. 325-1300. Simon and Schuster, 1950.
Image by Sarflondondunc under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license
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Full disclosure, I may occasionally borrow a sentence from Will Durant's Story of Civilization. I absolutely love that collection!