Continuation of the material about the unique victory of the Palestinian crusaders over a much larger army of Islamists moving to Jerusalem.
The course of the battle
So, at the end of November 1177, the huge Sultan's army, successively defeating several Christian troops, relaxed somewhat (like Saladin himself), dispersed across the Kingdom of Jerusalem and engaged in looting. Moreover, the day of November 27, the Sultan of Egypt and Syria considered for himself a happy "day of triumph", and apparently assumed that on this day he would be able to enter Jerusalem without a fight, or thanks to a light assault, as 3 years before. he triumphantly entered Damascus. But on November 25, 1177, everything suddenly changed - the Islamist army had to take a battle with a detachment of crusaders who suddenly approached their camp.
The location of the battlefield is localized in different ways: some believe that Mons Gisardi is the Al-Safiya hill near Ramla, other researchers assume that the battle took place at Tell As-Safi, not far from the modern settlement of Menehem, near Ashkelon; but, one way or another, the battle took place on a flat area with ridges of hills, somewhere between Ashkelon and Ramla.
Crusader states in the overseas.
It should be noted that the strike forces of Baldwin IV's army still managed to avoid annihilation thanks to their fast march and excellent maneuvering. The fact is that its small infantrymen were not city militias (like the surrounded and destroyed Jerusalem rearbone), but foot and mounted "sergeants", professional warriors, for the speed of movement of which various "skinny" horses, mules and even donkeys were used. That is, in fact, they acted as "dragoons" of the New Time or "dimakhs" of Antiquity, not yielding to the knights in speed of movement and professionalism. It was thanks to the speed that the factor of surprise worked: under Montjisar, the “Franks” managed to catch the “Saracen” by surprise.
However, Baldwin IV still had very few warriors: about 450-600 knights as the main striking force (another 84 Templars joined the 300-375 secular knights of Jerusalem, led by the Grand Master of the Order of the Temple, Odo de Saint-Aman, about 50 Hospitallers and a number of other equestrian contingents). At the same time, the riding infantry (even in the dragoon version) in the army of Christians played only an auxiliary role and hardly fought in the horse ranks, while the Muslims had a huge superiority in the cavalry. The Jerusalemites were in confusion, because saw in front of them a huge camp of the enemy army, and realized the insignificance of their chances. But there was nothing to do - Christians had to enter the battle with the fury of the doomed in order to try to save the Holy City at the cost of their lives.
In addition, in their hands was a great Christian shrine - a part of the Cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified, which was found during excavations in Jerusalem by Queen Helena, the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine. Part of this relic was carved by the crusaders, following the Byzantine model, into a cruciform battle standard, which became the main banner of the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
The vanguard of the Templar and Hospitaller crusaders on the march.
Now let's give the floor to the already familiar Patriarch of the Syrian Church, Michael, in whose chronicle one of the best descriptions of the battle of Monjisar has been preserved, in fact, this is a recorded story of the unnamed participant in the battle.
“… Everyone lost hope… But God showed all his might in the weak, and inspired the weak king of Jerusalem with the idea of attacking; the remnants of his army gathered around him. He descended from his horse, prostrated himself before the Holy Cross, and offered up a prayer … At the sight of this, the hearts of all the soldiers trembled and filled with hope. They laid their hands on the True Cross and vowed that they would not leave the battle until the end, and if the infidel Turks had won the victory, then the one who tried to flee and did not die would be considered worse than Judas. And then they sat down in the saddles, moved forward and found themselves in front of the Muslims, who were already celebrating the victory, because they believed that they had destroyed all the Franks before.
Seeing the Turks (as the Syrian hierarch calls all Muslim warriors), whose troops were like the sea, the knights dismounted again, cut off their hair; hugged each other as a sign of reconciliation and asked each other for forgiveness one last time, and then rushed into battle. At that very moment, the Lord raised a fierce storm, which raised dust from the Franks and drove it to the Turks. Then the Christians realized that God accepted their repentance and heard their prayer, they rejoiced and cheered up …”.
As is known from other testimonies, the crusaders, having offered prayers to Jesus Christ, the Blessed Virgin and the Great Martyr George, rushed to the attack, "putting everything on one card." Saladin at this time, seeing a small, but decisive and ready for battle enemy, began to gather his regiments. However, despite the fact that only about 500 knightly spears stuck into the center of the Muslim army, the Christians were successful (sources do not report whether the Christian infantry attacked on foot or in horse ranks, which supported the attack of the knights).
If Saladin had shown himself at the hill of Mont-Gisard as a brave and managerial commander, then he would certainly have been able to turn the tide of the battle in his favor. However, the "Piety of Faith" apparently loved to kill only unarmed prisoners (according to the chronicler, at the beginning of the invasion, the sultan cut the throat of the first captured Christian warrior, apparently from a defeated detachment of border guards - the Turcopols), while the prospect of real hand-to-hand combat with an unknown result greatly frightened him. According to the testimony of a Muslim participant in the battle, a small detachment of knights, apparently led by the king of Jerusalem (less than 100 soldiers), clearly focusing on the Sultan's banner, made their way to his guardsmen, and attacked them so fiercely that, despite their large numerical superiority (700-1000 soldiers), began to gradually retreat. Facing immediate danger, Saladin himself, and with him and his retinue, fled before all their other soldiers.
A decisive attack by a small detachment of crusaders led by the king on the headquarters of Salahuddin.
Seeing this, the soldiers of the Islamist army, already hesitating under the blows of the Christians, realized that everything was lost, since the Sultan himself was running, and they also ran. Attempts by junior officers to restore order in the ranks of the Muslims came to nothing; the senior officers ran immediately after their master. Let us again give the floor to Mikhail the Syrian: “… The unfaithful Turks, on the contrary, hesitated, and then turned around and fled. The Franks pursued them all day and took away from them many thousands of their camels and all their belongings. Since the Turkish troops were scattered across the desert areas, it took the Franks 5 days to find them. … Some of them, having reached Egypt, led by Saladin, dressed in all black and were in deep mourning…”.
Results and consequences of the battle
Flight always means a disproportionate increase in losses on the part of the loser, and the Battle of Monjisar was no exception: the crusaders were very few, and they simply did not have the strength to take large numbers of prisoners. In addition, the bitterness of the Christians was added by the fact that the Islamists, apparently, killed all captured militias from the defeated rearban, probably thinking that many slaves would be captured after the capture of Jerusalem, or they cut the prisoners, seeing that the battle was lost. … Therefore, the persecution of the fleeing Muslims lasted long enough, and was very fierce. Salahuddin himself escaped, according to an eyewitness, only by changing from a horse to a fast camel, and practically did not climb off her to the very walls of Cairo.
A huge wagon train and the entire fleet of siege engines, prepared with such difficulty in advance, fell into the hands of the Christian army. The chronicles especially emphasize the incredible number of captured camels - their number was so great that prices for them fell several times in the Middle Eastern bazaars. However, due to the fact that Saladin's entourage fled one of the first, the top officers of his army (unlike ordinary soldiers, especially infantrymen) died little - it is only known about the death of Ahmad, the son of Taqi Ad-Din, a famous military leader, a relative of Saladin.
After the battle, the crusaders fell into the Sultan's field office, including his personal, jeweled copy of the Koran, which had been presented to him earlier by the king of Jerusalem. At the conclusion of peace between Ayyubid Egypt and the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1180, Baldwin IV again presented this copy to the one to whom it had been presented earlier, with the words: “You then lost this gift of mine at Mont Hissar. Take it again. You have already seen that the lion should not act like a jackal. I sincerely hope that you will no longer disturb the peace between us and you, and I hope that I will not have to give this book to you again for the third time."
The behavior after the battle of the Sinai Bedouins, who were apparently attracted by the Sultan to the campaign against Jerusalem with promises of rich booty, is very indicative. When the Muslim army fled, their contingent fled one of the first, and, realizing that the promised booty was not foreseen, they began to attack other fugitives from the Sultan's army. According to eyewitnesses, the Bedouins killed many of their fellow believers for insignificant trophies, and even tried to attack the retinue of Saladin himself.
The losses of the army of Baldwin IV even in the decisive battle were very serious and amounted, according to the surviving letter of the Grand Master of the Order of the Hospital Roger des Moulins, 1,100 people. killed and 750 people. wounded, who were transported to the famous Jerusalem hospital. To this should be added the several thousand dead Jerusalem infantrymen of the encircled militia and an unknown number of the Turcopols of the defeated vanguard.
The losses of Saladin's army by both sides are assessed as catastrophic - up to 90% of the army, apparently overstated by Christian authors. But one way or another, the Muslim infantry (which could not escape from the mounted warriors) suffered very badly, while the Muslim cavalry (part of which was generally out of the battlefield, devastating the country) basically retained its combat capability. And I must say that another confirmation of the huge losses of Muslims is that the regiments of black Sudanese mercenaries in the army of Saladin never again reached the number they had before Monjisar.
The Christian army, having won a grandiose victory, did not organize a strategic pursuit and, moreover, did not advance to Cairo, since suffered heavy losses, and was physically and mentally severely exhausted. In addition, a more urgent matter was the need to cleanse the center of the country from the detachments of marauders that had flooded it. But the Muslim army already suffered huge losses, and most importantly, the direct threat to the very existence of the Kingdom of Jerusalem was removed for many years.
In commemoration of the victory, Baldwin IV ordered the construction of a Catholic monastery on the site of the battle in honor of St. Catherine of Alexandria, “the defender of Christianity,” who was martyred during the reign of Emperor Maximinus in Egyptian Alexandria. the victory was won on the day of her memory.
The borders of Saladin's state are "from Iraq to Libya," as his modern ISIS followers dream.
Saladin, for 8 years, while his victor was alive, remembered well the "lesson learned", and did not dare to declare a new large-scale campaign "to Jerusalem", making only disturbing raids on Christian lands. The Sultan of Egypt directed his main efforts to annexing the territories of other Muslim rulers, gradually capturing half of the Arabian Peninsula, most of Syria, Iraq, Eastern Libya, all of Sudan and even part of Ethiopia. In fact, he managed to revive the fading Arab Caliphate and gradually unite the entire Middle East (excluding the territories of modern Israel and Lebanon, which were part of the crusader principalities) into a "single Islamic state" from Libya to Iraq, which is also the dream of his current ideological followers - jihadists from ISIS …
The Battle of Monjisar (Tel As-Safit) became one of the greatest victories of the Crusaders in the Middle East and is considered one of the examples not only of the military leadership of European knighthood, but also an example of how decisive tactics, heroism and dedication on the one hand make it possible to overcome, it seemed it would be an incredible numerical ratio, while on the other hand, the cowardice of the commanding staff, imprudence in the conduct of the offensive and low discipline with a huge thirst for profit lead to the death of a huge army.
