Book review: God’s Wolf The Life of the Most Notorious of All Crusaders: Reynard de Chatillon by Jeffrey Lee
In some respects, Lee seems to stick with received wisdom about the period, such as the assumption that Europe was mired in a backward civilization relative to the Arab world.However, he definitely has a revisionist spring in his step as well.
This isn’t to say that he tries to hide his subject’s violent ways (an impossibility, in any case). One of Reynald’s first acts as Prince of Antioch was to deal brutally with the Patriarch Aimery who was undermining him at every turn: the ageing churchman was beaten and then chained to the top of a tower in the blazing sun.
With flies already attracted to his blood, Reynald had him smeared in honey to draw bees and wasps.
His assault on Cyprus was brutal in the extreme and carried out in revenge for the Byzantine Emperor’s refusal to compensate him as promised for Reynald’s support in defeating troublesome Armenians. The innocence of the Cypriots themselves was no protection.
And all of this before he had lifted a finger against Muslims. The act of Reynald’s as a Crusader that has attracted some of the greatest condemnation is his attack on a great caravan making its way from Cairo to Damascus.
This supposedly broke the truce with Saladin in force at the time. However, Lee makes the case that perhaps Saladin was in fact the truce-breaker as the caravan may well have been a disguised troop movement.
It is hard to pick the bones of such an event 830 years after it took place, so Lee keeps his questioning of the standard account fairly restrained.
However, there is no doubt he thinks Reynald has been unfairly vilified. Here was a violent, ruthless warrior who did some despicable things, “an insatiable, aggressive man of action”, a man “brought up to kill who did so with devotion and skill”, but other, more lauded men, were as violent and ruthless as he. On both sides of the conflict was a bellicose warrior class of “barely varnished brutality”, men who lived to fight and kill.
It was Reynald’s penchant for “dramatic, unforgettable” action that makes him stand out. He loved the “grand gesture”. Lee also sees a man who, while originally a “landless soldier of fortune”, was resilient, brave, loyal and astute in an ultimately hopeless cause.
Jeffrey Lee isn’t a professional academic, but he can boast a First in Arabic and Islamic History from Oxford. He opts to the tell the tale in a punchy, slightly breathless style.
As direct information about Reynald is thin on the ground, he is forced into much educated guesswork to fill in some pretty large blanks (such as Reynald’s 15 years as a prisoner of war in Aleppo).
This is a thought-provoking book. When we strip out religion from the Crusades (however impossible that may sound) we seem to be confronted by men such as Reynald still following a primal urge to compete with, fight and dominate the stranger in the pursuit of power, glory and wealth, whether the road to salvation lay that way or not.
After all, Christians and Muslims when they weren’t squaring up to one another in their gigantic confessional blocks were not slow in picking blood-soaked fights among themselves, riven by factions large and small.
The way of life described in these pages was a continuous hand-to-hand dance with death: pitched battles, ambushes, sieges, raids, skirmishes, massacres, torture. This was the survival of the fiercest. Life was generally short in any case. Victory was all.
Jeffrey Lee
Atlantic Books, €32
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