The crusader lord whose raids provoked Saladin into destroying Jerusalem's army
Raynald of Châtillon arrived in the Holy Land as a younger son of French nobility and married his way into ruling Antioch and later Transjordan. His raids on Muslim caravans and a Red Sea fleet that menaced pilgrims to Mecca made Saladin swear never to forgive him, and the feud ended at Hattin.
Born around 1124, the younger son of Hervé II, Lord of Donzy, he held Châtillon-sur-Loire but complained that part of his inheritance had been seized unjustly, which may explain why he joined Louis VII's army on the Second Crusade in 1147 and stayed when the French withdrew. William of Tyre, a political opponent, called him a kind of mercenary knight. In 1153 he secretly became engaged to Constance, the widowed heiress of Antioch, who had rejected every suitor put to her, and King Baldwin III consented, glad to be spared defending so distant a land.
As prince, Raynald was chronically short of money. He tortured the Latin Patriarch Aimery of Limoges for refusing him a subsidy and in 1156 plundered Byzantine Cyprus, until Emperor Manuel I Komnenos marched on Antioch four years later and forced him to accept Byzantine overlordship. Captured by the governor of Aleppo while raiding the Euphrates valley in 1160 or 1161, he stayed a prisoner until ransomed in 1176. His wife had died meanwhile, so he wed Stephanie of Milly, heiress of Transjordan, and with Hebron added became one of the kingdom's richest barons.
In 1177 the leper king Baldwin IV made him regent, and Raynald led the army that beat Saladin at Montgisard. Straddling the caravan routes between Egypt and Syria, he alone among Christian leaders kept up an offensive against Saladin, and his new fleet raided the Red Sea coast in early 1183. He helped Sybilla and Guy of Lusignan take the throne in 1186, then struck a caravan in late 1186 or early 1187 despite a truce, insisting it did not bind him.
When he refused compensation, Saladin invaded and crushed the crusader army at the Battle of Hattin. Raynald was taken prisoner and, after refusing to convert to Islam, was executed by Saladin himself on 4 July 1187. Many historians blame his recklessness for the kingdom's fall, but Bernard Hamilton argues he was the only crusader leader who tried to stop Saladin uniting the surrounding Muslim states.
Source: Raynald of Châtillon
