Richard the Lionheart: the crusader king

Richard the Lionheart was the warrior king of medieval legend, a fearless soldier who spent almost his whole reign at war far from England¹. On the Third Crusade he proved one of the finest commanders of the age, beating the great Saladin in the open field, yet even he could not win back Jerusalem.

A king made for war

Born in 1157, Richard was a gifted and ruthless soldier long before he became king of England in 1189¹. He cared little for governing England and much for war, and he took the cross for the Third Crusade, called to recover Jerusalem after Saladin had retaken it in 1187.²

Arsuf

In 1191, marching down the coast of the Holy Land³ under constant harassment from Saladin's horse archers, Richard held his army in an iron-disciplined column. Near Arsuf, when the Hospitallers in his rearguard broke ranks and charged, he threw his whole army in behind them in a charge that broke the enemy, a rare open-field defeat for Saladin that restored crusader confidence².

So near Jerusalem

Richard twice advanced toward Jerusalem and twice decided he could not take and hold it. Instead, in 1192, he made a truce with Saladin that left the city in Muslim hands⁴ but open to Christian pilgrims. The two great rivals respected each other and never met in person.⁵ His crusade also had a brutal side: after the fall of Acre in 1191 he had some 2,600 Muslim prisoners executed⁴, and his modern reputation is more mixed than the old legend allows.

Captivity and a soldier's death

On his way home Richard was captured and held for a huge ransom¹, then spent his last years fighting in France. He was killed in 1199 by a crossbow bolt⁴ while besieging a minor castle, an almost careless end for so great a soldier. He is remembered less as a king of England than as the crusader knight of legend.

See his victory at the Battle of Arsuf, or meet his rival Saladin.