The Battle Of Hattin

Had the Christian leaders possessed the least regard for strategy, they could not have chosen to move as they did on this day, for the road before them was devoid of water-except for one well which proved to be empty-and almost devoid of shade. It was the hottest part of the year, and the heavily armored knights almost at once began to suffer the pangs of thirst, quickly exhausting their drinking supplies. Yet Tiberias lay near, not twenty miles forward, and the very thought of Eschiva Countess of Tripoli, who was alone commanding the defense of the castle there, fired them with enthusiasm.

Saladin, who had learned of his enemies' movement along the northern road, had meanwhile brought his camp to the village of Hattin in their path, and joyfully sent out swarms of skirmishers to hamstring the Crusaders. This they did by riding in upon the vanguard, which was commanded by Raymond Count of Tripoli, Eschiva's husband, loosing sheets of arrows, and then riding off before the Christians could close upon them in counter-attack. They pursued the same tactics upon the flanks and rear, thus pinning Guy's mighty cavalcade down in the merciless heat of the desert.

By afternoon the harried, desperate Frankish force reached the plateau above Hattin, Saladin's headquarters which barred the way to Tiberias. Between the Crusaders and the village lay a hill with two peaks, called the Horns of Hattin. The northern summit was believed to be the Mount of Beatitudes mentioned in the New Testament, from which Jesus Christ had delivered his message of blessed peace to the world. It was soon to be a scene of carnage and agony for those who wore his emblem.

About this time Count Raymond rode in from the van to urge King Guy forward, asserting that, unless they reached the Sea of Galilee or the River Jordan that day, all would be lost. Guy agreed, but then received word from his rearguard, commanded by Gerard of Ridfort, Grand Master of the Knights Templars, that the troops in that quarter could go no farther. Guy now reversed his previous decision, and ordered his men to camp below the Horns. Hearing this, Raymond rode back from the front crying, "Ah, Lord God! The war is over! We are dead men, and the kingdom is fallen!"

The Sultan of Egypt was of the same mind. He had long prayed for the opportunity to catch his opponents out in the open, away from their impregnable castles, and now at last his moment had come. He exploited it to the full, offering the Franks no rest throughout the night. His men set fire to the brush on the hillside, thus sending billows of fumes into the camp of the already thirst-choked Christians. They kept up a constant bombardment of arrows, and rent the night air with cries of "Allah Akbar!" (God is most great!) and "La ilala il Allah!" (There is no other god but God!)

In the morning the Crusaders found themselves utterly surrounded. Though Count Raymond was able to fight his way some distance forward with his knights in the vanguard, the infantry panicked in the face of Saladin's relentless archers, and fled up the Horns. Guy, unable to draw them down, at last pitched his tent near them, on the summit of the northern peak. He now made use of one of the most potent stimulants to morale any commander ever possessed: he raised as his standard the True Cross, the very one on which Jesus Christ had been crucified. Inlaid with gold and jewels, it had long been the sacred trust of the kings of Jerusalem, and had more than once before accompanied these fierce men of the West in battle. Today it was nearly all they had left in the way of strategies.

The sight of the Cross sent a shiver of hope through the heartsick Christians, and they rallied round Guy's red tent, supplicating the sacred object, begging for a miracle to save them. While the rank and file thus turned to the God they claimed to serve, Guy turned to Count Raymond, and asked him what to do. Almost alone among the Frankish leaders, the Count of Tripoli had from the start opposed the dangerous expedition to relieve Tiberias, but jealous and headstrong counsels had turned Guy from his advice. Now the fate of the army was placed in his hands.

Raymond at once organized his knights as best he could and charged against the Moslem ring that encircled them. Taki ed-Din, the Saracen commander of that section, gauging the fury end desperation of this attempt, ordered his forces to part before the Christian onslaught. After the breakout had been accomplished, he moved his men back into place. Thus Raymond escaped, but the bulk of the Christian army, along with its leaders, remained pinned down on the Horns of Hattin. Unable to even consider a rear attack upon the enemy with his meager and exhausted forces, Raymond rode on, while Saladin mounted assault after assault upon the Frankish camp.

Terrific fighting took place at this point, the cornered Crusaders battling with such ferocity that we are told the Sultan himself once blanched and pulled at his beard in dismay. But in the end the triumph was his, an almost unqualified triumph, which entailed the annihilation of Christian military power in the Holy Land. Furthermore, the True Cross had fallen into the hands of the Moslem.

To many Christians this was a disaster not only of exterior political importance, it was a personal calamity of the soul, for Christian men had fought under the shadow of the Holy Cross in the Christian cause-and lost to the infidel. Was its power, then, less than the power of the worldly sword? To many, this seemed the case. More than any other single event, the Battle of the Horns of Hattin marks the point at which secular power began its ascendancy over the Church in the West, for it marked the point at which Popes, divine decrees, miracles and faith had failed. Unable to conceive that Islam might be "right" and Christianity "wrong," people preferred to think that men were suddenly on their own in the world, with God on no one's side.