Arn allowed about a hundred of the enemy to pass through the ravine’s bottleneck, even though Armand de Gascogne was squirming with impatience next to him. A new wave of dense fog then cloaked the entire enemy below in invisibility. Arn gave the order to advance, but at a walk so that they could better form a straight line and hopefully come so close to the enemy before being discovered that all their own men would be ready to spur their mounts on to a full gallop.
It felt unreal and dreamlike to advance at a walk. Down in the ravine the snorts of the horses and the ringing of their hooves on stone resounded from all directions, so it would be impossible for anyone to guess that two armies were now approaching each other.
Arn soon realized that he had to launch the offensive at full speed, hurtling straight out into the unknown. He bowed his head and prayed, but the Virgin Mary answered his prayer by showing something unrelated to the battle. She showed him Cecilia’s face, her red hair rippling in the air as she rode, her brown eyes smiling as always, and her childlike face covered with all those freckles. It was a brief but utterly clear image in the fog. But the next instant he saw instead a Mameluke horseman scarcely a lance-length before him. The Mameluke gaped in shock and seemed unable to do anything else when he looked around and discovered that he was surrounded by ghostlike, bearded white knights on all sides.
Arn lowered his lance and roared the battle cry Deus vult!, which was repeated by hundreds of voices both near him and far off in the fog. In the next instant the whole valley reverberated with the thundering stallions of the Templar knights, and almost at once came the clang of metal meeting metal and the screams of the wounded and dying.
At precisely this narrow pass in the ravine where the enemy was forced to squeeze together in multiple ranks to proceed, the iron fist of the Christian army struck hard. In an onslaught of heavy horses and sharp steel they tossed Mameluke riders in every direction, though many fell, pierced through by a lance. The Egyptian archers were in the rear and had no chance of hitting the intended targets with their arrows; soon they were overrun by riderless horses fleeing to the rear in panic. At the same time new Egyptian soldiers were rushing forward from the rear as they hurried toward the sounds of battle.
The Templar knights held the entire width of the narrow passage, and knee to knee they fought their way forward through hard-pressed Mamelukes. At such close range it was almost an impossible task to defend themselves against the long, heavy swords of the Christians which sliced their way forward like scythes during harvest.
The Egyptians who had made it through the bottleneck in the valley before the attack was launched now tried to turn around and ride to the aid of their comrades, but Arnoldo de Aragon had already anticipated this and on his own initiative countered them by taking twenty-five knights to form a front facing the other direction.
Where the battle was raging most fiercely in the middle of the valley, no man could see much farther than the end of his lance. For the Templar knights, who knew that they were so few in comparison with even those enemy soldiers they could see, this worked to their advantage, for all they needed to do was keep hacking their way forward through the heavily massed forces of the enemy. But for the Mamelukes who felt the weight of the Christians’ cavalry in this worst of all possible situations, this was a nightmare to end all nightmares.
Some of the Mameluke commanders finally brought their fear and their thoughts under control and blew the signal to retreat straight back, since it was too uncertain to try and climb up the hillsides.
Arn summoned the men nearest to him and asked them to call a council and regroup instead of pursuing the enemy into the fog. Siegfried de Turenne, out of breath, appeared at his side along with the section he had led. At first he and Arn looked at each other in shock, because they each expected to find a mortally wounded temple brother. Their white clothing was so drenched with blood that the red crosses on their chests were hardly visible.
“Are you really unhurt…brother?” panted Siegfried de Turenne.
“Yes, as are you…but the battle is going well for us so far. What do we do now? How are things in the direction they fled?” said Arn, realizing that he must look much like his fortress master brother.
“We’re regrouping and we’ll advance in a line at a walk until we spy them again. The valley ends in that direction, so we have them in a trap,” replied Siegfried, having regained his composure with astonishing rapidity.
No more needed to be said just now. Rather than lose their advantage it was now important to re-form the whole line of attack while advancing slowly, and spreading more widely across the widening valley. A breeze had come up and there was a risk that the fog, which had served the Christians for so long, might now vanish.
The Mameluke lancers and archers had also tried to regroup as they fled down the valley. But when they realized that they were trapped by steep cliffs, they found it difficult to turn around. Once they did, they decided to attack at speed before they were pushed together again in the narrowing part of the valley where they now found themselves. The horns blew among the Egyptians, calling for a rapid attack, and the valley was filled with the thunder of light, fast horses advancing.
But at the same time the horn signals for a swift pace were misunderstood by the supply train bringing provisions, spare horses, and plundered goods, following the fighting troops on their way down the valley. Now they tried to flee by cutting across, which led to the two Egyptian forces clashing together as if they were enemies.
At this sound Arn ordered another attack. The Egyptians who first saw the long, attacking line of Templar knights that in the fog looked like it was composed of thousands, were seized by wild panic and tried to flee to the rear through their own ranks.
The battle lasted for several hours, until finally the merciful darkness fell. The Knights Templar had never won such a brilliant victory.
As it transpired much later, the Egyptian center force which was to have served as bait for Saladin’s envelopment was finally captured by the secular army and forced to defend themselves without aid from the large force that never arrived. The realization that they were all alone without their main force stripped them of courage, and some began to flee. That was when the Egyptian defenses were completely shattered and the army was routed.
When the secular Frankish army returned to celebrate its victory, which they thought they had accomplished on their own without any Templar knights, the battle of Mont Gisard was still raging.
Saladin’s army was totally broken. There were still many Mamelukes left, both alive and uninjured, enough so that Saladin could have won under entirely different circumstances on another day, in another location and in better weather. But none of the groups of soldiers in the scattered and splintered army knew where the others were.
As a result of this confusion combined with the rumor of the bloodbath at Mont Gisard, a wild and unorganized flight began to the south. This retreat would eventually claim as many lives as the battle of Mont Gisard, for it was very far from the regions of Ramle to the safety of the Sinai. And all along the way, plundering and murderous Bedouins waited. Sooner or later they would seize many prisoners and an abundance of rich spoils.
Among the many captives who were dragged behind camels to the fortress in Gaza were Saladin’s brother Fahkr and his friend the emir Moussa. They had been found next to Saladin when he was almost captured by a group of Templar knights, but they had sacrificed themselves without hesitation. Not even in the darkest hour of defeat did they doubt for a moment that Saladin was the one that God had chosen to lead them to victory.