Crusade against the Pope

Chapter 265: Battle of the Jordan River
Saladin was always paying attention to the Franks' construction of the castle. When the latest news came, he breathed a sigh of relief and felt much more relaxed.

The Jordan River Ferry Castle has not been completed yet. To be precise, it is still in the foundation laying stage. There are traces of excavation everywhere, gullies spreading across the land, and wooden military camps have been built.

"Your Majesty, now is a great time!"

Many generals under Saladin firmly believed this.

Ever since the failed siege of Tyre in early 1188, the Ayyubid dynasty's wars had been in an awkward situation.

After Barbarossa launched the offensive, the Ayyubid dynasty suffered two consecutive defeats, although the losses were not heavy.

If it weren't for the accidental death of Barbarossa that could be boasted about, the jihad enthusiasm in the Islamic world would probably have fallen to the bottom.

The subsequent attack and defense of Acre further revealed the weakness of their own army.

Especially at times like this, the more we need news of victory to boost military morale!

Now is a good opportunity to attack the Franks when they are unprepared and fight them in the field before they build their castles. This is how we can use our strengths to attack their weaknesses.

Under such an urgent desire for war, even Saladin was somewhat shaken. He hesitated again and again. After confirming again and again that the enemy's troops were not large, with a size of less than 3,000 people, he decided to launch an attack on the Franks with the army of Jerusalem.

The purpose was to avenge the previous humiliation and restore the morale of the Ayyubid dynasty.

Due to the climate in Palestine in November and the fact that the Jordan River runs deep inland, Saladin could not gather too many troops and could only use the relatively elite Egyptian Mamluks as the core.
The troops he led were not large, only about two thousand light cavalry, four thousand infantry, and more than three hundred heavy cavalry.

This number was already twice that of the Transjordanian Franks and was almost the upper limit of the march for this season.

Too many troops are actually not suitable for deployment in that terrain condition.

According to the scouts' report, the ferry was actually where a tributary of the Jordan River merged into the main river.

Half of the Franks' construction sites were backed by the river, making them difficult to attack.

In this situation, Saladin was still clear that quality of soldiers was more important than quantity.

Just as Saladin had expected, it would only take one day for troops from Jerusalem to reach the Frankish position.

When he stood on the top of the hill and looked at the river crossing point, he saw a scene he had never seen before.

Just as the scouts had said before, there were no impressive strong castles here, and it didn't look like there was any terrain that was so steep that it was difficult to pass.
What appeared before Saladin was a slightly undulating plain. At the end of the plain was a wooden wall, which looked like a military camp.

According to Saladin's own estimation, the distance from where he was standing to the enemy's camp was at least a thousand steps. In this distance of a thousand steps, there was nothing miscellaneous that could obscure the situation.

Apart from some things like wooden stakes, the place can only be described as desolate.

There is nothing on this land that can be described as a city wall, nor are there any towers that were necessary to defend a city in the Middle Ages. If there is anything that is unnatural, it is only the wooden stakes stuck everywhere on this flat ground.

It looks like the fortress fort in this area is still in the planning stages and has not been formally renovated.

This was undoubtedly good news for Saladin, as it meant that he did not need to launch a siege.

But where are the Franks?

It does not exist in sight.

"Muzaffar, ask your riders to go and see where the Franks are hiding."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

As Muzaffar gave orders to his troops, a small group of cavalrymen marched across the desolate land in the afternoon sun toward the woods.

Because it had rained a few days ago, they were not riding very fast.

When we got close to the woods of logs, we just ran around for a while and never went deeper.

"Why don't they go in?" Saladin asked casually.

"Maybe we have made some discovery. Maybe there is something mysterious about those wooden stakes," Muzaffar replied.

When the reconnaissance riders returned to King Saladin's tent, they reported the situation there.

"Wire? Do you mean those wooden stakes are wrapped with a lot of barbed wire?" Muzaffar learned the situation ahead from his riders.

Saladin naturally heard what happened, but for a moment he still didn't understand why they did that. After all, could they stop his legion with just wire?

Strategically speaking, Saladin believed he had insight into the Franks' intentions.

After the Franks in Tyre in the north launched a counterattack and captured Acre, they were bound to continue to advance southward.

At this time, Transjordan in the south took the opportunity to make an offensive gesture, forcing Saladin to withdraw troops to support the city of Jerusalem.

In this way, the main Frankish army in the north will be able to take more initiative and regain more territory.

In this situation, Saladin knew very well that his army had been mobilized by the enemy, and he also knew that the newly built "fortress" next to the city of Jerusalem was actually a poison bait.

If Saladin spent too much manpower and time on this "fortress", then Saladin would actually be tied down.

If such a "fortress" is left unattended, it will sooner or later become more solid and more difficult to remove.

So Saladin decided to give the Franks a warning with thundering force before the city was completed.

It just so happened that they had suffered two losses in a row in the previous battles around Acre. Now they had a new and highly motivated Mamluk force around them. They could start with an unfinished fortress and win a small victory to give their subordinates courage, which could also wipe out the bad luck of the previous losses.

Although he thought so, Saladin was actually prepared for the poison bait to be hard to swallow, after all, the enemy was the Franks.

But who could tell him what this desolate empty space before him was? Was it a fortress? Was it a fortress? Were there Franks hiding in it? Were the Franks rats?
Just a few wooden stakes wrapped with wire and a few trenches, can that be considered a castle?
Saladin was really confused. This form of war was too different from the overall style of this era.

When he was fighting with the troops under Gellis before, he could still understand what the Frankish troops were doing and what their purpose was, but now, he had no idea at all.

Saladin was not in a hurry to launch an attack. His troops were setting up camp. Even if he wanted to launch a tentative attack, he would have to wait until the next day.

……

[The dark purple-red shadows were replaced by pomegranate red, and the blood-red light engulfed the sky, as if dawn was overflowing the night sky, and this brilliance did not come from the sun or the moon, but from the gnawing of endless fire.]

[Tons of blazing flames burst forth, reducing people and stones to ashes. Disaster cries out with a hoarse and sinister voice: "Hear me, neighbor! Hear me!", and its shrill cries echo in the wind: "It is horrible! It is horrible!"]

Saladin's scribe, Qadi al-Fadil, who had described the disasters befalling the Franks in beautiful words to the Caliph in Baghdad, now found that those words, with a few minor revisions, more accurately described his own suffering.

On November 11, in King Saladin's tent as he was attacking the "fortress" at the Jordan River crossing, the atmosphere was depressing and all the generals dared not say a word, as heavy as lead.

From time to time, there would be a roar outside, and they knew it was the Franks' artillery firing, and from time to time there would be an explosion, which was the wooden stakes harvesting the lives of the soldiers...

These sounds were the ones that the generals and Saladin himself would hear during every attack, and along with these sounds came all kinds of incredible bad news.

Starting three days ago, Saladin launched several exploratory attacks.

When recalling this process, Saladin felt like he was in a strange world.

In this strange world, all the iron laws of war in the past have been broken.

The truth of the world is distorted and presented before you in a way you have never imagined.

Putting aside those panic thoughts, Saladin silently recited some scriptures, and then left the royal tent, and the emirs followed him silently.

As soon as I walked out of the tent, the first thing I saw was wounded soldiers everywhere.

The autumn wind in November brings desolation and despair.

The wounded soldiers were either lying or groaning, or just staring at Saladin silently, their eyes full of pain. He knew exactly what had happened in the past three days. And because he knew it clearly, he knew that he was wrestling with an opponent of another level.

Saladin glanced at the hundreds of wounded soldiers and did not stay in the camp for long. He walked out of the camp to the west.

This was not his first time here, but he hoped that this would be the last time he witnessed the scene before him: nearly a thousand corpses were spread out on the ground, and many of the still-living people were digging pits nearby to bury the bodies.

Soon, after climbing over a mound, a pungent stench hit us in the face.

He stopped, and the scene before him made him close his eyes and pray: hundreds of corpses were scattered all over the ground, and not far away, people were digging pits to bury their dead companions.

Unlike the corpses he had seen before, these people had been torn into pieces. The missing limbs, blasted chests and abdomens, mixed with the smell of iron and gunpowder, turned the battlefield into a meat grinder.

Iron and gunpowder turned the battlefield into a meat grinder, and Saladin himself was an executioner, sending his subordinates and soldiers in with his own hands, and then getting a bloody answer.

The Franks showed a kind of mocking kindness by allowing Saladin's men to collect the bodies and even treating some of the wounded, who returned to the camp not with hope but with suffocating fear.

Saladin accepted this "favor", but in return he got the chance to witness the tragedy with his own eyes.

The low temperature in November was not enough to breed too many insects and flies, but the stench and smell of death were enough to make people nauseous.

The soldiers who were in charge of burying the bodies had sad faces, and they mechanically threw the limbs into the pit with shovels in their hands.

They were no longer able to identify whether these mutilated bodies belonged to the same person, so they could only collect the reward money and relics from the corpses and record their ownership in detail.

Saladin stood there for a long time, and finally praised and prayed to the Greatest again, his hands trembling slightly. He did not look at the corpses again, but turned and left in silence.

The emirs behind him also said nothing, only the sound of iron boots stepping on the mud was like the humming of a dirge.

Ten minutes later, Saladin arrived at the front line and saw the wooden stakes, breastworks, barbed wire and the unclear trenches that had swallowed up countless Saracens.

Here, Muzaffar, with a pale and hysterical face, was gathering an army of thousands of people, preparing for another charge. For him, this "fortress" had become his lifelong nightmare.

"Stop, let's retreat." Saladin came to the side of the veteran and whispered.

The blue wolf in front of him knelt on the ground, grabbed two handfuls of blood-stained soil with both hands, and burst into tears.

In the past three days, the pain and powerlessness he had experienced were greater than anything he had experienced in his entire life.

Behind Saladin were many elite Mamluks, "elite" soldiers who had been bought as slaves since childhood and received intensive military training.

They all showed expressions of panic. Their comrades died worthlessly on this land, and they were powerless to do anything.

Seeing such a scene, Saladin knew that the spirit and vitality of his troops had been crushed into the dust.

Recalling what he saw on the first day, Saladin didn't know how to start a conversation to boost their morale.

It was November 11th. On that slightly chilly morning, a group of Mamluk soldiers, after having a full meal, came to this wilderness where blood and flesh had not yet been shed with high morale.

The sunlight barely shone on the land through the thin clouds, and the desolation was filled with a kind of depression that was about to be stained with blood.

In front of them, there seemed to be only some wooden stakes and iron wires as obstacles, which seemed insignificant, and it seemed that nothing could stop them from moving forward.

Before the infantry charged, the bronze cannons brought from Egypt opened fire. The noise was deafening, and the flames cut through the morning mist. The Mamluks' morale was boosted by these loud explosions, as if victory was within reach.

But there was nothing worth shooting at in sight.

The bombardment was more like a morale-boosting ceremony than an actual battle.

Accompanied by war cries praising Allah, the Mamluks finally took action.

They advanced forward courageously, with neat steps and great momentum.

Because of the obstruction of barbed wire, the cavalry could not participate in the charge, and this was a purely infantry offensive.

The heavy infantry in the front row held their swords tightly, ready for possible close combat, while the archers in the back row were ready for the battle that might come at any time.

When they approached the first barbed wire, the soldier in the front took out his sword and tried to cut the barbed wire in front to open a path for the infantry behind, while other soldiers looked for gaps in the barbed wire and tried to cross it as quickly as possible.

At this moment in this wilderness, except for the occasional roar of the Mamluks, the Franks or enemies hiding somewhere did not make any sound.

Until the Mamluks found a gap in the position through which they could quickly break into it, the Mamluks swarmed forward, and when the front soldier rushed in a few steps, he did not notice what he stepped on.

Immediately afterwards, a dull bang was heard, and along with that sound was the explosion of two kilograms of black gunpowder. Metal fragments danced in the crowd, and the air wave generated by the explosion stirred up a cloud of yellow earth, in which blood was splashed on this position for the first time.

But this was just a beginning, just a signal. The successful detonation of the mines told the militia of Arnon that the fish had been hooked and the beast had fallen into the trap.

There was no barbed wire connecting the two wooden stakes, which was a deliberate gap left for the Mamluks to advance. It was not difficult to cut the wire with an iron sword, but it was quite time-consuming. It was very difficult to stay rational on the battlefield. When the blood was excited, the actions of ordinary soldiers in groups were not difficult to guess.

As they swarmed through the gap, the Mamluk soldiers saw the Franks for the first time.

In addition, they also saw the black muzzle of the gun and the flash of flame a few seconds later.

With a command, the fuse was lit, followed by a dull explosion and a 4-pound iron ball flying through the air and hitting the crowd.

Wherever the iron ball went, there was blood and flesh everywhere, and the soldiers screamed in pain.

The Grim Reaper wielded his sickle and quickly harvested the lives of the Mamluks. The air was filled with the smell of blood and gunpowder, and wailing and groaning began to resound across the wilderness.

This was a battle between two eras, a collision between flesh and artillery. Just two rounds of shells fired from each gun muzzle were enough to disintegrate the once arrogant Mamluk corps.

They could not find anyone to fight hand-to-hand, and all they faced was the ruthless gunpowder and metal.

When the smoke cleared and the fleeing soldiers fled to a safe distance, they looked back at the deserted, slightly undulating land and found that the enemy had once again disappeared from their sight.

If it weren't for the wounded soldiers bleeding beside them and the ground covered with corpses, they would have doubted whether everything that had just happened was true.

This is similar to the Battle of Bicocca in 1522, where French troops (mainly Swiss mercenaries) attacked the Holy Roman Empire's camp in Bicocca.

At that time, the Spaniards on the Shinra side occupied an advantageous defensive position, built earth ramparts around the village of Bicoca, and deployed a large number of musketeers.

Not only that, trenches were dug to limit the charge of the Swiss guns.

When the Swiss launched the charge, the trenches on the battlefield restricted their movements and slowed down their speed.

As they were about to approach the Spanish position, they were shot head-on by musketeers ambushed behind the earthworks. The dense musket firepower greatly weakened the impact of the Swiss formation.

The Spanish then used light infantry and artillery to crush any subsequent Swiss advances.

The Transjordanian army was not equipped with muskets, but its more carefully prepared defensive positions played a miraculous role.

The production of iron wire is not complicated. In fact, chain mail is made of iron wire.

With the help of some simple machines, barbed wire can be produced quickly. Although iron is expensive in this era, why not gain battlefield advantage through productivity?

Besides, wire is not non-recyclable.

It was not just the trenches and wire that limited the Mamluk charge. Saladin was unable to effectively besiege the position because of its back to the Jordan River.

Even if it is by ship, the ships in the Arnon Valley can transport supplies directly to the position via the Dead Sea.

Saladin had no fleet in the Dead Sea, and he had never thought about why he needed to pay attention to the control of the Dead Sea...

The Dead Sea? Isn't it just a big bathhouse...

On the other side, in Transjordan, it was a completely different story.

(End of this chapter)