war

In the summer of 1187, Saladin did not simply defeat the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He destroyed it. And he did it before the serious fighting had even begun. The trap was set with characteristic patience. When Saladin moved against the city of Tiberias, he was not primarily interested in Tiberias. He was interested in what the Christian army would do next. He knew that Raymond of Tripoli, whose wife was inside the city, would argue for restraint. He also knew that others at the war council would not listen. Pride, obligation, and the politics of the Crusader nobility would do the rest. They marched. The decision to leave the well-watered position near Saffuriyya and advance toward Tiberias condemned the army to a slow death before a battle was even joined. The route ran across open, arid land in the full heat of a Palestinian July. Saladin's cavalry shadowed every mile of the march, launching arrows, retreating, and returning. There was no rest and no relief. Men began to suffer from thirst before the first day's march was done. By nightfall on the third of July, the army had failed to reach water. They were forced to camp on the dry plateau, surrounded by the enemy, with nothing to drink. The knights, the infantry, the military orders who were the finest fighting force the Crusader world could field, spent the night in desperate misery. Some attempted to break out toward the lake and were cut down. At dawn, the Muslim forces set fire to the dry grass. Smoke rolled across the plateau and into the faces of men who were already half-broken by heat and thirst. The flames did not need to kill anyone. They simply needed to add one more layer of torment to soldiers who were already reaching the limits of human endurance. The Crusader army made one last effort to fight its way forward. The infantry began to collapse, breaking formation and stumbling toward the twin peaks known as the Horns of Hattin. The cavalry charged again and again, but without the infantry to anchor them there was nothing to achieve. Saladin's forces were fresh, supplied, and fighting on ground of their own choosing. The True Cross, carried into battle as a rallying point and a symbol of divine protection, fell with the rest. Guy of Lusignan, the king of Jerusalem, was taken prisoner. The Templars and Hospitallers who survived the fighting were executed on Saladin's orders, one by one, because he understood that ransom would simply return them to the battlefield. Within months, Jerusalem had fallen. Hattin was not a battle that Saladin won with superior numbers or extraordinary courage, though he had both. He won it by understanding that an army can be made to defeat itself. Take away its water. Take away its sleep. Take away its hope. The swords at the end were almost a formality. What makes Hattin worth remembering, nearly nine centuries later, is the cold precision of it. The Crusaders walked into a desert with an enemy on all sides and no way out, and they did it because Saladin knew exactly which levers to pull. He never gave them a chance... #archaeohistories