Текст книги "The Crusades. The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land"

Автор книги: Thomas Asbridge

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III

THE TRIAL OF CHAMPIONS

13

CALLED TO CRUSADE

In late summer 1187, with Outremer still reeling from the cataclysm at Hattin and Saladin’s dismemberment of Frankish Palestine proceeding apace, Archbishop Joscius of Tyre set sail for the West. He bore tidings of Christendom’s calamitous defeat to the frail Pope Urban III, who promptly died of shock and grief. In the weeks and months that followed, the devastating news raced across Europe, eliciting alarm, anguish and outrage–triggering a new call to arms for the campaign known to history as the Third Crusade. The most powerful men in the Latin world took up the cross, from Frederick Barbarossa, mighty emperor of Germany, to Philip II Augustus, the astute young king of France. But it was Richard the Lionheart, king of England–one of the greatest warriors of the medieval age–who emerged as champion of the Christian cause, challenging Saladin’s dominion of the Holy Land. Above all, the Third Crusade became a contest between these two titans, king and sultan, crusader and mujahid. After almost a century, the war for the Holy Land had brought these heroes to battle in an epic confrontation: one that tested both men to breaking point; in which legends were forged and dreams demolished.¹

THE PREACHING OF THE THIRD CRUSADE

The injuries suffered by Christendom at Hattin and Jerusalem in 1187 moved the Latin West to action, rekindling fires of crusading fervour that had lain dormant for decades. After the failure of the Second Crusade in the late 1140s, Christian Europe’s enthusiasm for holy war had waned dramatically. At the time, some began to question the purity of the papacy and the crusaders. One German chronicler described the Second Crusade in damning terms, writing: ‘God allowed the Western Church, on account of its sins, to be cast down. There arose, indeed, certain pseudo-prophets, sons of Belial, and witnesses of the anti-Christ, who seduced the Christians with empty words.’ Even Bernard of Clairvaux, arch-propagandist and passionate advocate of crusading, could offer scant consolation, merely observing that the setbacks experienced by the Franks were part of God’s unknowable design for mankind. Christian sin was also advanced as an explanation for divine punishment–and, more often than not, the supposedly dissolute Franks living in the Levant were targeted as transgressors.²

Not surprisingly, attempts to launch major crusading expeditions after 1149 foundered. Muslim strength and unity in the Near East increased under Nur al-Din and Saladin, while Outremer faced a succession of crises: Prince Raymond of Antioch’s death in the Battle of Inab; the defeat at Harim in 1164; the incapacitation of Baldwin the Leper King. Throughout, the Levantine Franks made ever more desperate and frequent appeals to the West for aid, and, while some few came to defend the Holy Land in minor campaigns, in the main the calls went unanswered.

Meanwhile, western monarchs, now crucial to any major crusading venture, had their own kingdoms to preserve and defend–tasks, so it was widely believed, that were themselves divinely appointed. Caught up in the concerns of politics, warfare, trade and economy, the prospect of spending months, even years, in the East crusading often proved less than inviting. Inertia rather than action predominated.

This problem was exacerbated by deepening rivalries between Latin Europe’s leading powers. In 1152 power in Germany passed to the Hohenstaufen Frederick Barbarossa (or Red Beard), a veteran of the Second Crusade. Frederick assumed the title of emperor three years later, but spent decades trying to subdue warring factions within his own realm and seeking to secure control of northern Italy, all the while enmeshed in a rancorous conflict with the papacy and Norman Sicily. In France the Capetian dynasty retained the crown, but in terms of territorial dominion and political control the real authority wielded by King Louis VII and his son and successor Philip II Augustus (from 1180) was still severely constrained. The Capetians were challenged, above all, by the rise of the counts of Anjou.

In 1152, just a few short years after the disappointments of the Second Crusade, Louis VII’s wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, pushed for the annulment of their marriage–their union had produced two daughters, but no sons, and Eleanor derided Louis’ desultory sexual appetite, likening him to a monk. Eight weeks later, she was wed to the more vigorous Count Henry of Anjou, a man twelve years her junior, who had already added the duchy of Normandy to his dominions. By 1154, he had ascended to the throne of England to become King Henry II, and together the pair created a new, sprawling Angevin ‘Empire’, uniting England, Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine. Controlling most of modern-day France, their wealth and power far outstripped those of the French king, even though, nominally at least, they were still subjects of the Capetian monarch for their continental territories. Under the circumstances, it was all but inevitable that the Angevin and Capetian houses would become entrenched opponents. And throughout the mid-to late twelfth century, the festering antipathy and resentment between these two dynasties severely curtailed western participation in the war for the Holy Land. Locked into this struggle, Henry II of England proved unwilling or unable to honour repeated promises to go on crusade, usually providing financial support to Outremer by way of recompense.³

Only the truly epochal events of 1187 broke this deadlock, prompting real engagement. Old quarrels were not forgotten–indeed, Angevin–Capetian enmity had a profound effect upon the course of the Third Crusade. But the dreadful news from the Near East caused such uproar that the rulers of Latin Christendom not only heeded the call to arms; this time, they made good on their promises and actually went to war.

A cause for weeping

Upon his death on 20 October 1187, Pope Urban III was replaced by Gregory VIII, and by the end of the month a new papal encyclical–Audita Tremendi–had been issued, proclaiming the Third Crusade. As usual, care was taken to establish a justification for the holy war. The disaster at Hattin was described as ‘a great cause for mourning [for] the whole Christian people’ Outremer, it was said, had suffered a ‘severe and terrible judgement’ and the Muslim ‘infidels’ were depicted as ‘savage barbarians thirsting after Christian blood and [profaning] the Holy Places’. The encyclical concluded that any sane man ‘who does not weep at such a cause for weeping’ must surely have lost his faith and his humanity.

Two new themes were sewn into this familiar, if particularly impassioned, exhortation. For the first time, evil was personified. Earlier calls to arms had projected Muslims as sadistic but faceless opponents. Now, Saladin was named specifically as the enemy and likened to the Devil. This move bespoke both greater familiarity with Islam and the mammoth scale of the blow struck by the sultan’s ‘crimes’. Audita Tremendi also set out to explain why God had allowed his people to ‘be confounded by such great horror’. The answer was that the Latins had been ‘smitten by the divine hand’ as punishment for their sins. Franks living in the Levant were identified as the prime transgressors, having failed to show penitence after the fall of Edessa, but Christians living in Europe were also guilty. ‘All of us [should] amend our sins…and turn to the Lord our God with penance and works of piety’, the encyclical declared, ‘[and only] then turn our attention to the treachery and malice of the enemy.’ In line with this theme of contrition, crusaders were encouraged to enlist not ‘for money or worldly glory, but according to the will of God’, travelling in simple clothing, with no ‘dogs or birds’, ready to do penance rather than ‘to effect empty pomp’.

Audita Tremendi referred to the ‘misfortunes…recently fallen upon Jerusalem and the Holy Land’, but perhaps because news of Saladin’s actual conquest of the Holy City had yet to reach the West, special emphasis was placed upon the physical loss at Hattin of the True Cross–the relic of Christ’s cross. From this point forward, the recovery of the revered totem of the faith became one of the crusade’s primary objectives.

In common with earlier crusading encyclicals, the closing sections of the 1187 proclamation detailed the spiritual and temporal rewards on offer to participants. They were assured full remission of all confessed sins, and those who died on campaign were promised ‘eternal life’. For the duration of the expedition, they would enjoy immunity from legal prosecution and interest on debts, and their goods and families would be under the protection of the Church.⁴

Spreading the word

The unprecedented scale and significance of the disasters endured by the Franks in 1187 all but ensured a massive response in the West. Even in its barest form, the news carried to Europe by Joscius of Tyre had the power to terrify and inspire–indeed, before meeting the pope, the archbishop first made landfall in the Norman kingdom of Sicily and immediately convinced its ruler William II to send a fleet of ships to defend Outremer.

Nonetheless, Audita Tremendi set the tone for much of the preaching of the Third Crusade. In fact, the whole process of disseminating the crusading message was increasingly subject to centralised ecclesiastical and secular control, and the methods used to encourage recruitment ever more refined and sophisticated. The pope appointed two papal legates–Joscius of Tyre and Cardinal Henry of Albano, former abbot of Clairvaux–to orchestrate the call to the cross in France and Germany respectively. Large-scale recruitment rallies were also timed to coincide with major Christian festivals, with assemblies during Christmas 1187 at Strasbourg and Easter 1188 at Mainz and Paris, when crowds were already gathered and primed for a devotional message.

Preaching within the Angevin lands of England, Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine was planned carefully at conferences at Le Mans in January 1188 and Geddington, in Northamptonshire, on 11 February. At the latter meeting Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, another former Cistercian abbot, took the cross himself and thereafter led the recruitment drive. He carried out an extensive tour of Wales, spreading the word, while also reinforcing Angevin authority over this semi-independent area, and ended up enlisting three thousand Welshmen ‘skilled in the use of arrows and lances’.⁵

From this point forward, the act of crusading seems to have attained a more distinct identity, although it is not clear whether this was a response to centralised control or simply a by-product of gradual recognition and definition over time. Whereas previously crusaders had been variously dubbed pilgrims, travellers or soldiers of Christ, now, for the first time, documents began to describe them as crucesignatus (one signed by the cross)–the word that ultimately led to the terms ‘crusader’ and ‘crusade’.

The Third Crusade was also publicised and popularised within secular society. In the course of the twelfth century, troubadours (court singers who often were themselves nobles) came to play increasingly important roles in aristocratic circles, and notions of courtly life and chivalry began to develop, particularly in regions such as south-western France. Forty years earlier, the first traces of courtly commentary about the Second Crusade had been apparent. Now, after 1187, troubadour songs about the coming holy war poured out, drawing upon, and in places extending, the message inherent in Audita Tremendi.

Conon de Béthune, a knight from Picardy who joined the Third Crusade, composed one such Old French verse between 1188 and 1189. Here, familiar themes were echoed–lamentation at the capture of the True Cross and the observation that ‘every man ought to be downcast and sorrowful’. But elsewhere, new emphasis was placed upon the notions of shame and obligation. Conon wrote: ‘Now we will see who will be truly brave…[and] if we permit our mortal enemies to stay [in the Holy Land] our lives will be shameful for evermore’, adding that any who are ‘healthy, young and rich cannot remain behind without suffering shame’. The Holy Land was also portrayed as God’s imperilled patrimony (or lordship). This implied that, in the same way a vassal was obliged to protect his lord’s land and property, Christians, as God’s servants, should now rush to defend his sacred territory.⁶

The call to crusade prompted tens of thousands of Latin Christians to enlist. According to one crusader, ‘such was the enthusiasm for the new pilgrimage that already [in 1188] it was not a question of who had received the cross, but who had not yet done so’. This was something of an exaggeration, as many more stayed in the West than set out for the Holy Land, but the expedition nonetheless caused a staggering upheaval in European society. Particularly in France, whole tranches of the local aristocracy led armed contingents to war. The involvement of kings proved critical, just as it had done in the 1140s, prompting a chain reaction of recruitment across the Latin West through ties of vassalage and obligation. Around 1189 the crusader Gauclem Faidit commented on this phenomenon, arguing in a song that: ‘It behoves everyone to consider going there, and the princes all the more so since they are highly placed, for there is not one who can claim to be faithful and obedient to him if he does not aid [his lord] in this enterprise.’⁷

Yet even before the ominous news of Saladin’s victories spread, before the fever of enthusiasm took hold, one leader made an immediate commitment to the cause. In November 1187 Richard Coeur de Lion (the Lionheart) took the cross at Tours–the first noble to do so north of Alps.

COEUR DE LION

Today Richard the Lionheart is one of the most widely remembered figures of the Middle Ages, recalled as England’s great warrior-king. But who was Richard? This is a vexed question, because even in his own lifetime he became something of a legend. Richard certainly was aware of the extraordinary power of reputation and actively sought to promote a cult of personality, encouraging comparisons with the great figures of the mythic past such as Roland, scourge of the Iberian Moors, and King Arthur. Richard even set out on crusade with a sword named Excalibur, although admittedly he later sold it to pay for additional ships. By the mid-thirteenth century stories of his epic feats abounded. One author tried to account for Richard’s famous appellation by explaining that he had once been forced to fight a lion with his bare hands. Having reached down the beast’s throat and ripped out its still-beating heart, Richard supposedly ate the blood-dripping organ with gusto.

A contemporary eyewitness and ardent supporter offered this stirring portrait of his physical appearance:

He was tall, of elegant build; the colour of his hair was between red and gold; his limbs were supple and straight. He had quite long arms, which were particularly convenient for drawing a sword and wielding it most effectively. His long legs matched the arrangement of his whole body.

The same source claimed that Richard had been endowed by God ‘with virtues which seemed rather to belong to an earlier age. In this present age, when the world is growing old, these virtues hardly appear in anyone, as if everyone were like empty husks.’ In comparison:

Richard had the valour of Hector, the heroism of Achilles; he was not inferior to Alexander…Also, which is very unusual for one so renowned as a knight, Nestor’s tongue and Ulysses’ wisdom enabled him to excel others in every undertaking, both in speaking and acting.⁸

Perhaps not surprisingly, scholars have not always accepted this startling image of the Lionheart as an almost superhuman hero. As early as the eighteenth century, English historians were criticising Richard both as a monarch and as a man–accusing him of exploiting England for his own ends and of being possessed of a brutish and impulsive character. In recent decades the exceptional University of London scholar John Gillingham has reshaped the perception and understanding of the Lionheart’s career. Gillingham acknowledged that Richard barely spent one year out of ten in England during his reign, but contextualised this fact, stressing that he had been not just a king of England, but the ruler of an Angevin Empire at a moment of crisis in Christendom. Likewise, the Lionheart’s headstrong nature was recognised, but his image as a savage and tempestuous brute overturned. Richard is now generally regarded as having been a well-educated ruler, adept in politics and negotiation, and above all a man of action, beloved of warfare and imbued with a visionary flair for military command. Although much of this reassessment still holds true, in seeking to rejuvenate the Lionheart’s reputation Gillingham may have overstated some of Richard’s achievements on the Third Crusade, sparing him criticism when it was justified.⁹

Richard, count of Poitou, duke of Aquitaine

The Lionheart may have become king of England, but he was most assuredly not English by either birth or background. His native tongue was Old French, his heritage that of Anjou and Aquitaine. He was born in Oxford on 8 September 1157 to King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. With such parentage, the young prince was almost predestined to leave his mark on history, but Richard was not expected to inherit this vast Angevin realm; that glory fell to his elder brother, known to history as Henry the Younger. To begin with, at least, Richard was groomed to be a lieutenant, not a commander. In twelfth-century Europe, however, high rates of infant and adolescent mortality meant that a change in prospects was always possible.

As a boy, Richard was associated with Aquitaine. On the expectation that he would not inherit the throne of England, and perhaps through the influence of his mother, the young prince was designated as ruler of this vast region of south-western France. In 1169 Richard paid homage to the French King Louis VII for Aquitaine and then, in 1172 at the age of fifteen, he was installed formally as duke of Aquitaine (with the associated title of count of Poitou). Richard was further woven into the complex web of relations between the Angevin and Capetian dynasties through his betrothal, in 1169, to King Louis’ daughter Alice–although the French princess spent her time from this point onwards in King Henry II’s court rather than with Richard, and reputedly became Henry’s mistress.

Aquitaine was among the wealthiest and most cultured regions of France–a flourishing centre of music, poetry and art–and these factors seem to have left their marks on Richard. He was a generous patron of troubadours and himself a keen singer, and a writer of songs and poetry. He likewise possessed an excellent knowledge of Latin and a good-natured, if acerbic, wit. His duchy was also notable for its associations with the legendary holy wars against Islam waged in Spain during the time of Charlemagne. Churches within the region claimed to house the body of Roland, the mighty hero of the campaign, and the very horn with which he had sought to summon aid against the Moors.

For all its veneer of civility, Aquitaine was a quarrelsome hotbed of lawlessness and civil discord–really it was just a loosely agglomerated collection of fiercely independent territories, peopled by powerful, recalcitrant families like the Lusignans. Given this, Richard looked set to rule a polity that was all but ungovernable, but he proved to be remarkably competent. Through the 1170s and 1180s he not only maintained order, quelling numerous rebellions, but even managed to expand his ducal territory at the expense of the county of Toulouse. These trials provided the Lionheart with valuable military experience, particularly in the field of siegecraft, and he revealed a marked aptitude for warfare.

Richard also had to contend with the fractious reality of contemporary politics. Throughout his early career, he was enmeshed in a complex, constantly shifting power struggle within the Angevin dynasty–with Henry II skilfully defending his own position against the rising power of his sons and the ambitions of his wife, while the Lionheart and his brothers squabbled over the Angevin inheritance as often as they united against their father. As early as 1173, Richard was involved in a full-scale rebellion against Henry II alongside his brothers. The Lionheart’s status was transformed in 1183 when, in the midst of another rebellion, his brother Henry the Younger died, leaving Richard as Henry’s eldest son and heir designate. Far from resolving the internecine feuding, this simply made Richard a clearer target for attacks and intrigue, as Henry sought to recover possession of Aquitaine and to rearrange the distribution of Angevin territory in favour of his youngest son John. Richard certainly did not prevail in all of these convoluted machinations, but by and large he held his own against Henry II, perhaps the most devious and adroit Latin politician of the twelfth century.

As an Angevin, Richard was also party to the continued rivalry with the Capetian monarchy and often found himself drawn into disputes with King Louis VII and then, after 1180, his heir Philip Augustus. The lingering matter of Richard’s betrothal to Alice of France was also at issue, because Henry continued to use the proposed union as a diplomatic tool and no marriage had yet taken place. This pattern of confrontation looked set to continue in June 1187 when King Philip invaded Angevin territory in Berry, prompting Henry II and Richard to ally and move in for a counter-attack. A major pitched battle seemed imminent, but at the last minute a rapprochement was reached and a two-year truce brokered. But once this agreement was finalised, Richard suddenly switched sides, riding back to Paris with Philip in a deliberately public demonstration of friendship. This was an agile diplomatic manoeuvre that even the now-ageing Henry II had not foreseen, and the message it sent was clear. Should the Angevin monarch seek to deprive Richard of Aquitaine of his wider inheritance, the Lionheart was more than willing to break with his family and side with the Capetian enemy. Outplayed, Henry immediately sought to repair relations with Richard, confirming all his territorial rights. The old king won his son back into the Angevin fold and, for now, an uneasy standoff held, but the shadows of a more decisive confrontation involving Henry, Richard and Philip were looming.

Richard and the crusade

Barely a week later, Saladin defeated the Jerusalemite Franks at Hattin on 4 July 1187. By November that same year, Richard had taken the cross at Tours, evidently without consulting his father. Under the circumstances, the Lionheart’s decision was extraordinary. In 1187 Richard was deeply immersed in the power politics of western Europe and had shown an absolute determination to retain the duchy of Aquitaine and assume control of the Angevin Empire after Henry II died. Richard then joined the crusade, seemingly without considering the consequences–a move that threatened his own prospects and those of his dynasty. King Henry was enraged by what he deemed to be an ill-considered and unsanctioned act of folly. Philip Augustus, too, was aghast at the prospect of such a potentially critical ally heading off to holy war. The Lionheart’s enlistment in the Third Crusade promised to disrupt massively the delicately balanced web of power and influence in England and France. On the face of it, Richard had little to gain and everything to lose.

How then can this apparently anomalous deed be explained? Aware, with the benefit of hindsight, that the West soon would be swept by crusade enthusiasm–indeed, that Henry II and Philip Augustus themselves would take the cross within a few months–scholars have all but passed over Richard’s decision, presenting it as normative and inevitable. Yet, taken on its own terms and in context, his choice was quite the opposite.

Perhaps a multiplicity of factors was at work. Impulsiveness probably played its part. If the Lionheart had a weakness, it was his emerging streak of overconfident, reckless arrogance. Even one of Richard’s supporters admitted that ‘he could be accused of rash actions’, but explained that ‘he had an unconquerable spirit, could not bear insult or injury, and his innate noble spirit compelled him to seek his due rights’. In addition, Richard may well have been moved, like so many crusaders before him, by a heartfelt and authentic sense of religious devotion. Such feelings surely would have been intensified by his familial and seigneurial connections to Frankish Palestine, being the great-grandson of Fulk of Anjou, king of Jerusalem (1131–42), cousin to Queen Sibylla and former feudal overlord to the Poitevin, Guy of Lusignan. The Lionheart was also struggling to emerge from the shadow of his parents. Much of his life had been devoted to emulating and eclipsing the achievements of his father (and to a degree those of his mother). Before 1187 the fulfilment of that goal had lain in defending Aquitaine and succeeding to the Angevin realm. But Hattin and the launching of the Third Crusade opened up another path to greatness–a new chance to leave a lasting mark on history as a leader of men and a military commander, in a sacred war far beyond the confines of Europe. The crusade may also have appealed to Richard as an ardent warrior, born into a world in which ideas about knightly honour and chivalric conduct were beginning to coalesce. For the coming campaign would serve as the ultimate proving ground of prowess and valour.¹⁰

The true balance between these various stimuli is impossible to determine. In all likelihood, Richard himself would have been unable to define a singular motive or ambition that shaped his actions in late 1187. Certainly, in the years that followed, he showed flashes of anger and impetuosity. It also became clear that he was wrestling with a deep-seated crisis of identity and intention–striving to reconcile his roles as a crusader, a king, a general and a knight.

THE TAKING OF THE CROSS

The shock of Richard’s enlistment in the Third Crusade prompted a political crisis, with Philip of France threatening to invade Angevin territory unless Henry II made territorial concessions and compelled the Lionheart to marry Philip’s sister, Alice of France. On 21 January 1188 the Capetian and Angevin monarchs, Philip and Henry, met near the border castle of Gisors, in the company of their leading magnates, to discuss a settlement. But Archbishop Joscius of Tyre also attended the assembly. He proceeded to preach a rapturous sermon on the imperilled state of the Holy Land and the merits of the crusade, speaking ‘in [such] a wonderful way [that he] turned their hearts to taking up the cross’. At this moment a cross-shaped image was supposedly seen in the sky–a ‘miracle’ which prompted many other leading northern-French lords to join the expedition, including the counts of Flanders, Blois, Champagne and Dreux.¹¹

Amid an impassioned groundswell of crusading enthusiasm, Henry II and Philip Augustus made public declarations of their determination to fight in the Levantine holy war. It is not known whether one king pledged his willingness first, thus all but forcing the other to follow suit. What is certain is that, by the meeting’s end, both were committed. The effectively simultaneous nature of this enrolment was telling, because it reflected a wider determination only to act in tandem. Angevin and Capetian alike had vowed to crusade in the East, but it was soon obvious that neither would leave Europe without the other. To do so would have been tantamount to political suicide–the abandonment of one’s realm to the privations of a despised arch-enemy. The absolute necessity for coordinated action and synchronised departure had a profound effect on the Third Crusade, contributing to a series of interminable delays as the English and French monarchs eyed one another with suspicion and distrust.

Frederick Barbarossa and the German crusade

In 1187, Frederick Barbarossa, the Hohenstaufen emperor of Germany, was Europe’s elder statesman. Through a mixture of tireless military campaigning and shrewd politicking, he had imposed an unprecedented degree of centralised authority over the notoriously independent-minded barons of Germany and reached advantageous accommodations with northern Italy and the papacy. Now in his mid-sixties, Frederick could claim dominion over a swathe of territory from the Baltic coast to the Adriatic and the Mediterranean. In terms of wealth, martial resources and international prestige, his power easily outstripped that of the Angevins and Capetians. Naturally, most contemporaries expected him to play a leading role in the Third Crusade.

The first call to arms in Germany was made at Barbarossa’s 1187 winter court in Strasbourg. This secured a stream of eager recruits, but the emperor bided his time, gauging the scale of public support for the expedition, before taking the cross at a second great assembly at Mainz, on 27 March 1188, and announcing his firm intention to set out in just over one year. Frederick then made relatively swift but assiduous preparations for his departure: exiling his political enemy Henry the Lion; leaving his eldest son, Henry VI, in Germany as heir designate, while taking his second son, Frederick of Swabia, with him on crusade. Barbarossa marshalled his own economic resources, establishing a significant imperial war chest, but otherwise devolved financial responsibility for funding the expedition on to individual crusaders, requiring each participant to carry their own money east.

Some German crusaders sailed to the Levant–including those from Cologne, Frisia and, eventually, those under Duke Leopold V of Austria–but Frederick elected to lead the vast majority along the land route used by earlier expeditions. Hoping to ease the journey eastwards, he initiated diplomatic contacts with Hungary, Byzantium and even the Muslim ruler of Seljuq Anatolia Kilij Arslan II. On 11 May 1189, only marginally later than scheduled, he set out from Regensburg at the head of a massive army, including eleven bishops, around twenty-eight counts, some four thousand knights and tens of thousands of infantry.