Going from factional rivalry to treason. Count Raymond of Tripoli entered into a secret treaty with Saladin. Not only did it apply to Tripoli itself but also to his wife’s principality of
Galilee, even though it was part of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which might soon be at war with the Muslims. Saladin also promised his support for Raymond’s aim to overthrow Sibylla and Guy of Lusignan and make himself king. In April 1187 Guy responded by summoning his loyal barons and marching north to Galilee to reduce it to submission before the expected Muslim attack began. But Balian of Ibelin, fearing the consequences of civil war, persuaded Guy to let him lead a delegation to Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee and try to negotiate a reconciliation between Raymond and the king. The delegation would include the Grand Masters of the Hospitallers and the Templars, and Balian would meet them at the Templar castle of La Feve on 1 May.
Meanwhile Saladin had asked Raymond’s permission to send a reconnaissance party of Mameluke slave troops through Galilee on that day, and though the timing was embarrasing Raymond was obliged to agree under the terms of the secret treaty, stipulating only that the Muslims should traverse his territory within the day and be gone by dark, and do no harm to any town or village. Raymond broadcast the news that the Muslim party would be passing through and urged his people to stay indoors. But Balian had heard nothing of this when he arrived at Le Feve in the middle of the morning on 1 May expecting to join the Grand Masters there. Instead he found the castle empty, and after waiting in the silence for an hour or two, he set out again towards Tiberias, thinking the others had gone ahead.
When suddenly a bleeding Templar knight galloped by shouting out news of a great disaster.
Raymond of Tripoli’s message about the Muslim party had reached La Feve in the evening of the previous day, 30 April, where Gerard of Ridefort heard the news. At once he summoned the Templars from the surrounding neighbourhood and by nightfall ninety had joined him there. In the morning they rode north through Nazareth where forty secular knights joined the hunt for the enemy’s scouting party. But as they passed over the hill behind Nazareth what they saw was a large expedition of perhaps 7000 elite Mameluke horsemen watering their mounts at the Springs of Cresson in the valley below. Both the Templar marshal and the Hospitaller Grand Master advised retreat, but Gerard of Ridefort, the Templar Grand Master, insisted on attack. Charging furiously down the hillside, the 130 knights rode into the mass of the Muslim cavalry and were slaughtered almost to a man, only three Templars, Gerard among them, escaping with their lives.
That at any rate was the account given by an anonymous chronicler who obtained much of his information from the lost chronicle of Ernoul, who was a member of Balian’s entourage. But neither Balian nor Ernoul were at the battle, and any account issuing from Balian’s camp was likely to paint their factional opponent Gerard of Ridefort in the worst possible light. Another chronicle, the Itinerarium Regis Ricardi, apparently based on the lost journal of an English knight writing in about 1191, contradicts the story that Gerard rushed recklessly at the enemy; instead, and much more plausibly, it reports that the Templars were caught unaware and were the victims of a Muslim attack. Even so, Saladin’s expedition kept to his agreement with Raymond of Tripoli, for his horsemen rode home long before nightfall, and they had not harmed a town or village in Galilee. But fixed to the lances of the Mameluke vanguard were the heads of the Templar knights.
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