On 25 November 1177 King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, sixteen years old and already suffering from leprosy, defeated the army Saladin had led out of Egypt to destroy the crusader kingdom. Saladin's forces had spread out to raid the countryside; the Franks caught them at Montgisard with a few hundred knights and a charge by the Templars that came within striking distance of the sultan himself. Saladin escaped, but his army was hunted down over the following days.
Saladin invades
In November 1177 Saladin marched out of Egypt against the Kingdom of Jerusalem and attacked Ascalon. The historian Steve Tibble, writing for Medievalists.net, says he had an army of over 20,000 men with a core of some 8,000 disciplined household cavalry, while the Franks could muster just 375 knights, with infantry and Turcopole light horsemen. Baldwin rushed to the aid of Ascalon and was shut up inside its walls.1
With the Frankish army apparently penned in its castles, Saladin's men grew careless. Tibble quotes the chronicler Ibn al-Athir, who wrote that they scattered across the country in raiding parties, moving around secure and confident. Baldwin broke out of Ascalon and went after them.2
The Templar charge
On 25 November the Franks met Saladin's army at Montgisard. Tibble draws on the English chronicler Ralph of Diceto, whose account came from a Templar eyewitness: the master of the Templars, Odo of Saint-Amand, led 84 knights of the order straight at the troops around Saladin, broke into them and scattered them. Saladin's nephew Taqi al-Din tried to slow the charge, and many of the sultan's bodyguards died in the attempt. One knight cut his way to within a few yards of Saladin before he was struck down; the sultan abandoned his armor and fled, Tibble writes, on a racing camel.3
Britannica sums up the result: trapped within the fortifications of Ascalon, Baldwin broke out and defeated Saladin near Mont Gisard. Tibble calls it a disaster that nearly destroyed Saladin's empire before it was fully formed.4
Saladin's revenge
Saladin did not forget. In June 1179 he cut up the Frankish field army at Marj Ayyun and captured Odo of Saint-Amand, who died in captivity a year later; in August that year he stormed the new Templar castle at Jacob's Ford and had the Templar prisoners executed. Baldwin made a two-year truce with him in 1180 and died in 1185. Two years later Saladin destroyed the army of Jerusalem at Hattin, told in our article on the Battle of Hattin; his life is in our biography of Saladin.5
Also on this day
- 1950: Battle of the Ch'ongch'on River. Chinese forces struck UN troops advancing up the Ch'ongch'on valley in North Korea, answering MacArthur's Home-by-Christmas Offensive in the Korean War.
