I recently finished Warriors of God. The book documents the Third Crusade from Richard Lionheart's and Saladin's point of view. It becomes a clash of military titans, highly capable in the medieval paradigm of chivalry, total war, brutality and politics. The book enjoys the mythical nature of the two characters from the occident and orient and rather than a clash of cultures and religion it became a harmony of chivalry and royal graciousness.

Ultimately however Saladin kept his army together and unified longer then Richard, which was why the Muslims kept Jerusalem even when the Christian army could have taken it.

Image: Crusade - Hamburg - O Heylandt komme

The book tracks the militarism of both Christianity and Islam in the medieval period where the warrior monks of the Templars and Hospitalars replaced the piety and pacificism of prior ages. The reason was mainly politics, it was one way Rome could keep the monarchs of Europe from squabbling with each other and leading divisive wars throughout Christendom. Rome used the device of the crusade as a mechanism to stop the numerous Barons in England, Wales, Brittany, Normandy, Belgium, France, Germany and Austria constantly fighting with each other over politics, marriages and power.

This led to the Third Crusade which was led by Richard Lionheart and Phillip Augustus of France. Richard and Phillip were lovers, but their passionate relationship went through the gamut of closeness to ultimately Phillip poisoning Europe against Richard. A medieval romance could not have been better written. Richard was also the greater general and did lead the Crusader army to the gates of Jerusalem.

The irony of the Crusade was that neither Saladin nor Richard could hold Jerusalem once it was taken. Richard could have laid siege to the city and soon taken it. However he would not have been able to defend it from Saladin who had his army poised to take the city back. By the same token Saladin could not put his army in Jerusalem to defend it as it would become besieged and his army lost.

It is safe to say that Jerusalem was militarily useless. But it was the purpose and goal of both the Christian crusade and Saladin's call to jihad. Richard blinked first and when he determined Jerusalem was impossible to hold the French faction of his army left him and went to Acre and Tyre. Saladin and Richard then passed back and forth differing forms of chivalry, diplomacy and reparte until a deal was forged in which the Christians could leave the Middle East to tend to the degrading politics in their home kingdoms.

A united English and French crusader army led by Richard was too strong and militarily savvy for Saladin. It is fair to say that Richard's generalship was the difference in this situation as Saladin had been defeating crusader and christian armies prior to Richard's arrival. Richard's generalship was not good enough to make his army stronger than Saladin's without the French, and the splitting of the crusader army for political and religious reasons meant that Saladin was more powerful and had a larger/united army.

The book is written in a fast style and the author enjoys the romanticism and chivalrous nature of the period, as well as the two lead characters. There is the nod to history as the author documents where history does not know what happened or when there is conflicting recordings of the events. A good book. I enjoyed it.