Most of you are women and children, but I’m going to make every man here over sixteen into a knight, and we’ll do our best to fight for Jesus and Jerusalem!’ The siege began, and at first the Franks held the city. But after a few days, Saladin moved his army and all his siege engines to attack the town’s walls from the Mount of Olives. Muslim arrows made the blue sky as black as night, and fell like rain on the Franks. Worse was ‘Greek fire’, a terrible weapon that Saladin’s soldiers shot from their siege engines. It lit fires at once on anything that it hit, and so the town began to burn, and the city walls began to fall. The Franks prayed for God’s help in their churches, and mothers cut their daughters’ hair very short in the hope of making them ugly, to keep them safe from the soldiers. People remembered what happened when the Franks took the town one hundred years before. They couldn’t stop thinking about how many people died then. Patriarch Heraclius not only worried about the people, but also about all the holy things and the gold in the churches. He told Balian, ‘Go and see Saladin. He’s always generous.’ ‘My men are already on the walls!’ the Muslim commander told Balian when he came to talk, ‘You said that you wanted to fight, so the time to be merciful is over!’ Balian answered, ‘Many of the people are not fighting very hard in the hope that you will be generous with us as you have been with other towns in Palestine. But we soldiers, when we see that a fight to the death is the only way, we’ll come out and fight you and we’ll die for God. We’ll take as many of your men as we can with us, or we’ll win with honour!’ Saladin liked Balian’s brave words so he turned to his generals and the imams and said, ‘What must I do? I promised to take the town by the sword, and I can’t break my word!’ Chapter 8 – A man of honour ‘We must save the holy places!’ went on Saladin. But the imams said to him, ‘The Franks will be our prisoners. To be free, they must pay a ransom: ten gold pieces for a man, five gold pieces for a woman, and one gold piece for a child. They’ll have forty days to find the money. It’s the only way that we can pay for the war!’ Saladin spoke to Balian. ‘Our soldiers will watch the streets to stop criminals hurting people and stealing things,’ he said. ‘Churches will be safe, and people can come on pilgrimage here when they want.’ Balian answered, ‘You’re very generous, but I’m worried about the poor. I’ll pay for as many poor people as I can to go free.’ When Saladin’s brother Al-Adil heard this, he said, ‘I want to help too! I’ll pay the ransom for a thousand poor people!’ Saladin said, ‘I have another good idea! Old people and men with young children can go free too. Also, many women have lost their husbands in the fighting, and many children are without mothers or fathers. To all of these I want to give money.’ Saladin’s treasurers were worried. ‘If all these people can leave freely, how will we pay our soldiers? We must ask the rich people to give more!’ they said. When the Patriarch left with all the gold from the churches, many Muslims were angry, but Saladin said, ‘We won Jerusalem to give the city back to God and to Islam, not to be rich!’ But Saladin’s work wasn’t over. Tyre was still in the hands of the Franks, who came from all over Palestine when their home towns fell. Now they were ready to fight from Tyre to get their land back. Some of Saladin’s generals said, ‘We’re afraid that the Franks will get help from their friends in Europe.’ 4248945 Saladin FP.indd 50 20/4/10 09:27:41