On 7 September 1191, during the Third Crusade, King Richard I1 of England, known as the Lionheart, defeated the great Muslim leader Saladin at Arsuf on the coast of the Holy Land. Richard's army was marching south toward Jaffa under constant attack from Saladin's fast horse archers. He held his column together with iron discipline until the Hospitallers in his rearguard broke ranks and charged, then committed his whole army to a charge that shattered the enemy. It was a rare open-field defeat for Saladin and it restored the crusaders' belief that he could be beaten.
Two of the most famous soldiers of the Middle Ages faced each other on a hot September day on the road to Jaffa. One had built an empire and taken Jerusalem; the other had come from the far west to win it back. Arsuf would not decide the war, but it would decide something almost as important: whether Saladin could be beaten in the open field.
The Third Crusade
In 1187 Saladin, sultan of Egypt and Syria, had destroyed the crusader army at Hattin and retaken Jerusalem, shocking Christian Europe. In answer came the Third Crusade, and with it Richard I of England, the Lionheart, one of the finest soldiers of the age. After taking the port of Acre in 1191, Richard set out down the coast toward Jaffa, the gateway to Jerusalem.
A march under fire
Richard knew his danger and marched in a tight, disciplined column, the sea and his supply fleet on his right2, his infantry and crossbowmen screening the knights from Saladin's mounted archers on his left. For days the Muslims harassed the column with arrows and feints, trying to goad the crusaders into breaking ranks and charging early, where they could be surrounded and cut down. Richard forbade it, and held the army together3 mile after punishing mile.
The charge
As the army neared Arsuf, Saladin threw in his full strength, and the pressure on the rearguard, held by the Knights Hospitaller1, became almost unbearable. When the Hospitallers could take no more and charged1, Richard read the moment and committed his whole line. The sudden, massed charge of the crusader knights caught Saladin's army out of shape and drove it from the field in confusion.
Victory, but not Jerusalem
Arsuf was a clear crusader victory and a heavy blow to Saladin's aura of invincibility. Richard reached and refortified Jaffa4, and the crusaders regained the coast. Yet the war ground on without a decisive end: Richard twice advanced toward Jerusalem and twice judged4 he could not hold it, and in 1192 the two men agreed the Treaty of Jaffa2, leaving the city in Muslim hands but open to Christian pilgrims. Richard sailed for home, and the two great rivals never met in person2.