The towns and cities and castles had been emptied to defend the Holy Land against the Muslim invasion. Now, after the battle of Hattin, Outremer stood almost entirely defenceless against Saladin. Acre surrendered without a fight on 10 July, Sidon followed suit on the 29th, and Beirut capitulated on 6 August. Jaffa refused to yield; in July it was taken by storm and its entire population were killed or sent to the slave markets and harems of Aleppo. Ascalon offered some brief resistance but surrendered on 4 September. A few days later Saladin brought Gerard of Ridefort to the walls of Gaza and made him tell the Templars inside to surrender, which obedient to their Grand Master they promptly did. In the south only Tyre resisted capture; in the north there was Tripoli, Tortosa and Antioch, and they could be dealt with later. Saladin’s immediate aim was to take Jerusalem.
Refugees were flooding into Jerusalem, but there were few fighters among the men, and for every man there were said to be fifty women and children. The patriarch Heraclius together with officials of the military orders tried to prepare the city’s defence, but Jerusalem lacked a leader until Balian of Ibelin appeared. After Hattin his wife and children had sought safety within its walls, and Balian had come to Jerusalem to bring them to the coast at Tyre. But the people of the city clamoured for him to stay, and finally Balian accepted the task of readying Jerusalem against Saladin’s attack. His most immediate need was to raise morale; there were only two knights left in the city, so Balian knighted every boy over sixteen of noble birthand also thirty burgesses. To fund the defence he took over the royal treasury and even stripped the silver from the dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He sent parties out into the areas all around to collect all the food before the Muslims arrived, and he gave arms to every able-bodied man.
On 20 September Saladin was camped outside the city. He inquired about the location of al-Aqsa mosque and asked the shortest route to it, saying that was also the shortest route to heaven. Then he set his sappers to work undermining that section of the northern battlements where Godfrey of Bouillon had forced his way into Jerusalem eighty-eight years before. By 29 September a great breach was made in the wall which was tenaciously defended, but it was only a matter of time before they would be overwhelmed by Saladin’s hordes. Balian with the support of the Patriarch decided to seek terms, and on 30 September he went to Saladin’s tent.
Saladin was uncompromising. He had been told by his holy men, he said, that Jerusalem could only be cleansed with Christian blood, and so he had vowed to take Jerusalem by the sword; only unconditional surrender would make him stay his hand. But Balian warned that unless they were given honourable terms the defenders in their desperation would destroy everything in the city: ‘We shall slay our sons and our daughters, we shall burn the city and overthrow the Temple and all the sanctuaries which are also your sanctuaries.’ Saladin consented that Jerusalem’s 20,000 Christians couid ieave the city if they paid him ten dinars for each man, five for each femaie, and one for each boy up to seven years oid. But the poorest wouid be unabie to ransom themseives, and so Baiian produced 30,000 dinars from pubiic funds to pay for the reiease of the poorest 7000 peopie.
World History
