A History of the Crusades IIIRunciman's great Crusades trilogy reissued in Penguin Modern Classics 'The whole tale is one of faith and folly, courage and greed, hope and delusion.' In 1187, the catastrophic Battle of Hattin resulted in Saladin's destruction of the crusaders' main army. In an atmosphere of total crisis, the three principal leaders of Europe, Philip Augustus, Richard the Lionheart, and Frederick Barbarossa, decided that they should personally lead armies to relieve