Before the age of gunpowder, the battering ram, sapping and mining were the only ways of breaching a wall. It was essential, therefore, that the teams of men engaged with battering rams could be shot at along the curtain of the wall. Mining was largely defeated by building the castle upon a base of solid rock.

Whereas in western Europe the single defence line that had evolved from the stake palisade was usually considered sufficient, in the East—where the besiegers might be expected to throw thousands of men for day after day at the defences—it was soon realised that a second line needed to be built within the outer. Inside that again, as the last place of resort, was the keep. This was usually a tower, slightly larger than all the rest, and sometimes built into the enceinte itself. The castle of course was always made strongest along its most exposed front. ‘Because of the shortage of manpower,’ as Quentin Hughes points out, ‘impregnable sites had to be chosen and exploited. Strong keeps built after the manner of the French castles became a feature of these fortresses, and concentric rings of defences, built one inside the other and rising higher and higher, were constructed, so that those defending the outer walls were covered by fire from positions behind and above them.’ T. E. Lawrence called Krak des Chevaliers ‘perhaps the best preserved and most wholly admirable castle in the world’. To see it rising out of the Syrian foothills with a little fine-blown cirrus cloud feathering above it is to experience an emotional shock—to understand suddenly what the Crusaders really meant. ‘I am the kingdom, the power and the glory’ are the words that these walls shout to the sky.

The rivalry of the various factions in the Latin kingdoms of the East was largely responsible for their ultimate downfall. By 1187 conditions in the kingdom of Jerusalem were so bad that it was on the brink of civil war. There could have been no worse moment for the Europeans to engage in their internecine strife, for the shadow of Saladin was on the horizon. This brilliant and remarkable man, the first Ayyubite Sultan of Egypt, was by birth a Kurd from Armenia. Educated at Damascus, that great centre of Moslem learning, he was a devout Mohammedan (his name means ‘Honouring the Faith’), and the possessor of so many virtues that he would have been rare at any time in history. Honest, brave, chivalrous to a fault, he was devoted to children, and invariably generous and hospitable—as is shown by his treatment of captives, as well as by his many gifts to Richard Coeur de Lion. Saladin was lucky in the fact that his life spanned the period when the Moslem East had reached a point when there was a genuine desire for unity among the Faithful. It had become clear to many men that it was only because of the constant dissensions and religious divisions between the Moslems that the Franks had managed to retain a hold upon their lands. Saladin with his intense religious zeal was to unite them. Islam to him was everything, and he was determined to drive these Christian interlopers into the sea. ‘Let us purge the air of the very air they breathe,’ he said.

Despatched by Nur-ed-Din, the ruler of Syria, to assist in the conquest of Egypt he succeeded so well in his task that he was made vizier. It was during this period that four different Christian expeditions were sent to Egypt by King Amalric of Jerusalem, all of which ended in heavy Christian losses, particularly among the Templars and the Hospitallers. On the death of Nur-ed-Din Saladin set about the conquest of Syria. For nearly ten years he was engaged in encircling the Christians, town after town falling to him, so that by 1186 the Latin kingdom was completely surrounded by Saladin’s empire.

A four years’ truce which had been concluded between Christians and Saracens was almost immediately broken by the Lord of Montreal, Reginald de Châtillon, who ambushed a Moslem caravan and refused to surrender his plunder. Saladin had probably been expecting that something like this would happen. He could control the territories under his command and ensure the obedience of his subjects, but the anarchic Latins with their divided interests and warring factions had no such similar discipline. He intended to impose it with the sword. His orders went out, and soon the whole East began to stir.

In the summer of 1187 Saladin reviewed his troops, about 20,000 men, 12,000 being his formidable cavalry, magnificent horsemen who were to prove so deadly to the knights. On July 1st, he crossed the Jordan and the invasion had begun.