Richard and Saladin: The Third Crusade

Richard the Lionheart and Saladin

Richard the Lionheart and Saladin are known as some of the greatest leaders and warriors to fight in The Crusades. The book Warriors of God, by James Reston describes these two men throughout their battles in the Third Crusade. Many portrayals of these two men are either ones that make them look like the kindest of any of the Crusaders or some of the meanest, most gruesome men to fight. James Reston does a very good job of finding a medium between the two and gives the reader a good understanding of what these two great leaders were like without being biased.

Richard the Lionheart was portrayed by Reston as one of the greatest Crusaders of all. After reading this book, the reader would not be able to help holding him in higher regards than anyone else that he or she would hear about. The author depicts Richard as a great leader and commander throughout the book. He continually shows examples of Richard's leadership and ability to control and motivate his army. Time after time he gets his men to fight for him. Most men would eventually get sick of this. Having been away from their families and loved ones for so long, they would have stop putting in effort and waited to go home. Granted each soldier was promised that he would automatically go to the Holy Land upon death after fighting in the Holy War, but it was still very impressive the way that his men stuck by him throughout the entire thing and didn't lose faith in him. Towards the end of the book, there is a battle at Jaffa where his army goes against what is said to be an army four times greater than that of the Christians. Somehow Richard the Lionheart rallies his army to completely dominate and destroy the Muslims to decisively win the final battle of the Third Crusade. It is even said that the win was so one sided that the Muslims had lost 700 men and the Crusaders only 2.

Although Richard the Lionheart is known for his greatness and even sometimes kindness, his is described in parts of the book as being somewhat cruel at times. Once he got started, he rarely showed mercy to his enemies. There was one point in the book during a battle where some of the Muslims wished to surrender. He denied their request, saying that they should have done it before any bloodshed and that it was too late to surrender now. He continued the battle until he had a decisive victory. Another example of him showing no mercy to his enemy was when he was holding Muslims as prisoners. He and Saladin were having trouble negotiating terms for a prisoner exchange. He threatened Saladin with executing all of the prisoners to try to swing negotiations in his favor. When Saladin didn't take him seriously, Richard went ahead and killed them all. It seemed like Richard had a short temper and once he became enraged, he did whatever he could to gain his revenge.

In the book, Richard was almost portrayed at times as being superhuman. There were stories of him doing things that were so amazing that you would think that he was actually more than human. There was one story of him having to fight a lion. When the lion attacked him, Richard ducked under the leaping animal. As it passed over him, he quickly punched it. The lion then fell down, groaning with pain and as it did, Richard reached down the lion's throat and pulled out his heart. He then held it up to his captor and squeezed it, ringing out the blood. In another part of the book, Reston makes him out to be almost superhuman again. He talks about how Richard was "the hero of Europe...the greatest warrior of the Continent," as well as mentioning other great qualities and characteristics of Richard throughout the book.

I think that James Reston's portrayal of Richard the Lionheart was fairly convincing and accurate. The only discrepancy that I could find was Reston making Richard's homosexuality such a big part of the story. Through previous knowledge of The Crusades, I had heard of the rumor that Richard was homosexual, but have also previously learned that there is little or no factual evidence to support this. Other than this, I was convinced of Reston's portrayal of him.

Saladin was also portrayed as a great warrior of the Third Crusade. He was surprisingly generous for his position, as most people leading an army would not be. I previously talked about Richard the Lionheart's ruthlessness. Saladin was in no way like that. An example of Saladin showing his generosity was at the battle at Jaffa. Richard was down in battle and had lost his horse. Saladin saw this and sent him two horses. He said that "a