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Battle of Hattin
Saladin lured the thirst-maddened Crusader army into the volcanic hills above Lake Tiberias and annihilated them. King Guy was captured, the True Cross was lost, and within months Jerusalem itself fell - undoing eighty-eight years of Latin rule in the Holy Land. The defeat was so complete that Saladin took fifty Crusader castles in the weeks that followed, reducing the Latin kingdom to a few coastal strongholds.
Audita tremendi calls the Third Crusade
Pope Gregory VIII, elected days after the news of Hattin reached Rome, issued the encyclical calling for a new crusade to recover Jerusalem. He prescribed fasting on Fridays, forbade sumptuous clothing, and promised plenary indulgences. He died before the campaign was under way. The encyclical's tone of apocalyptic urgency mobilized three European kings and the largest military expedition the West had mounted since the First Crusade.
Saladin takes Jerusalem
Balian of Ibelin negotiated the surrender of the Holy City after a twelve-day siege. Saladin allowed most Christians to ransom themselves and ride out. The great gold cross atop the Dome of the Rock was pulled down and dragged through the streets. Europe heard the news weeks later. Saladin's relatively merciful terms stood in stark contrast to the bloodbath the Crusaders had inflicted when they had taken the city eighty-eight years earlier.
Battle of Cresson
A small Templar and Hospitaller force, refusing to retreat, charged a vastly larger Muslim reconnaissance party near Nazareth and was annihilated. Only Gerard de Ridefort of the Templars escaped. The reckless defeat stripped the Crusader kingdom of its most experienced military cadre weeks before Hattin. The disaster at Cresson removed the very knights whose tactical discipline might have prevented the catastrophic decisions that led to the kingdom's downfall.
Saladin captures Sidon and Beirut
In the weeks after Hattin, Saladin's armies rolled up the Crusader coast almost unopposed. Sidon, Beirut, Jbeil, and eventually Ascalon all fell without significant fighting. Only Tyre, defended by the newly arrived Conrad of Montferrat, held out as a foothold for the Latin kingdom. Conrad's defense of Tyre saved the Crusader presence in the Levant from total annihilation and provided the base from which the Third Crusade would operate.