Today in History: With Christians being massacred at Jaffa, and outnumbered ten to one, Richard the Lionheart accomplished the impossible.
In a feat of heroism that even Hollywood fiction cannot match, today in history witnessed Richard Lionheart and a few thousand Christian knights put to flight a massive Muslim army that, moments earlier, had been torturing and murdering Christian civilians.
On July 27, 1192, Saladin, the great sultan-hero of Islam, besieged the tiny Christian-held town of Jaffa. According to contemporary chronicles, the Muslims numbered as many as 20,000 and “covered the face of the earth like locusts.”
Messengers were instantly dispatched to King Richard I, then in Acre preparing to sail for England. Before the battered envoys had even finished recounting Jaffa’s plight, Richard declared, “With God as my guide, I will set out to do what I can,” and immediately boarded his fleet with just over 2,000 fighting men.
Jaffa, meanwhile, was fighting for its life. According to Saladin’s court historian, Baha’ al-Din, who witnessed the siege, after one of its walls collapsed, all the Muslims rushed into the city, “and there was not an enemy heart that did not tremble and shake.” Even so, the Christians “were more fierce and determined in the fight and more eager for and devoted to death.”
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