by Robert Payne
Shortly after Baldwin II was ambushed, there arrived in Palestinian waters a huge Venetian fleet commanded by the Doge Domenico Michiel. The fleet put in at Acre to learn that Jaffa was being besieged by an Egyptian fleet. Nothing could have delighted the doge more. He detached eighteen ships that looked like pilgrim ships from the main fleet and sent them to Jaffa. The Egyptians exulted at the prospect of booty. The captains of the doge’s decoy ships played their roles well, pretended to be too weak to fight, and took only such evasive action as would convince the Egyptians that they were terrified. Suddenly the Venetian ships came over the horizon, their brightly colored sails filled with wind, the great banks of oars flashing in unison. The doge had ordered the Venetians to permit no Egyptians to escape. The entire Egyptian fleet was surrounded; the Venetians boarded them and massacred everyone on them. The sea turned red.
This was one of the greatest of all naval victories up to that time. It was carried out with precision and daring, with superb seamanship. Ten more Egyptian ships were found off Ascalon. They, too, were full of booty: gold and copper coins; balks of timber for making siege engines; pepper, cumin, and other spices. Those ships that succeeded in beaching themselves were burned while the rest were taken to Acre, which had never previously seen so many ships riding at anchor.
There remained Tyre, the last seaport in Muslim hands north of Ascalon. Tyre was the Mediterranean seaport for Damascus, well fortified, proud and imperious on its rocky peninsula. Toghtekin, Atabeg of Damascus, had sent in a powerful garrison. The Egyptians were attacking Jerusalem in order to make a diversion; the troops of Ascalon were confronted with the common people of Jerusalem, who fought to preserve the city without benefit of armed knights, for the chivalry was at Tyre. The land walls were surrounded by Crusading knights and crossbowmen; the seawalls were blockaded by the huge Venetian fleet, which had increased in numbers during these last days. Tyre was doomed. Toghtekin made one last despairing effort to penetrate the ring around the city, but failed. On July 7, 1124, the citizens capitulated and the Crusaders entered the city and raised the royal standard on its towers. There was some irony in this, for the king was still a prisoner in his remote castle in the Kurdistan mountains. Tyre was conquered in his name and became a part of his kingdom.
This time the conquerors behaved honorably. They permitted the Muslims to remain or to leave with all their wealth, as they pleased, according to the terms of the capitulation. This was probably due to Pons, who played an important role in the siege and was becoming increasingly respected.
Less than two months after the fall of Tyre, Baldwin was released from his prison. His enemy, Balak, had been killed in a fracas among the Muslims and was succeeded by the Emir Timurtash who offered Baldwin his freedom in exchange for some territories beyond the Orontes and a payment of eighty thousand dinars, of which only twenty thousand dinars were payable in advance. Baldwin found the terms acceptable. He was entertained at a banquet by the emir and given a royal robe, a gold cap, and embroidered buskins, like those worn by the emperor of Byzantium. He was also given his favorite charger, which had been well cared for during his imprisonment.
Baldwin repaired at once to Antioch, of which he was the regent. A new army was raised to attack Aleppo, fifty-five miles to the east of Antioch, but a five-month siege failed to reduce the city. A new Muslim commander had entered the stage. His name was Aksungur al-Bursuqi, the White Falcon, Emir of Mosul. Aleppo, Mosul, and Damascus were now allied under a brilliant commander determined to extend the limits of his frontiers at the expense of the Christians. While Baldwin returned to Jerusalem to enjoy the congratulations of his people, the White Falcon was marching toward Antioch. Baldwin hurried north, accompanied by Pons of Tripoli. At the battle of Azaz, Baldwin insisted that the Christians should employ the tactics of the enemy: a feigned retreat, a sudden wheeling about in a place which offered them the utmost advantage as attackers, and then an attack by the armored knights in massed formation. Azaz, which lies in the northeast of the principality of Antioch, offered exactly the right terrain, and the maneuver was executed faultlessly. The enemy lost as many as two thousand men; the Christians as few as twenty. The figures may be improbable, but nevertheless it was a disastrous defeat for the Muslims.
The task of the Christians was to press their advantage. Early in 1226, Baldwin moved against Damascus, assembling his troops at Tiberias. Beyond the Wadi ar-Rahub, they came to a stronghold held by Syrian Christians and a valley known as Sophar of the Meadows, where, according to tradition, the Apostle Paul had had his conversion experience. Beyond Sophar, the Atabeg Toghtekin of Damascus was waiting for them. Baldwin formed his army into twelve columns. At Tel el-Saqhab, twenty miles from Damascus, Baldwin fought one of the hardest battles of his life. He was always in the midst of the fighting, calling on his knights by name and encouraging them. The Crusaders lost their entire baggage train and the tent that served as the royal chapel. The entire army of Damascus, scenting victory, then charged-—and might have won the day if Baldwin had not ordered a countercharge. Luck was with the Crusaders, for Toghtekin was unhorsed. Believing he was dead, the Muslims gave ground, panicked, and fled back to Damascus, closely followed by the Crusader army. Baldwin’s forces penetrated the suburbs of Damascus, but they had been badly mauled and they had no hope of conquering the city. The king returned to Jerusalem, satisfied that the army had injured the Damascenes severely. In fact, very little was gained, there was no victory, only an enormous bloodletting.
This, of course, was the danger inherent in these indecisive border wars. The Christians could not afford to lose many men, and the Muslims with their inexhaustible manpower could always return to the attack. But the Crusaders still lived on dreams and wild hopes, miracles and portents, as men do when they are living in desperate circumstances.
Now, fifteen years after the death of the near-legendary Bohemond, his son arrived in Antioch to claim his patrimony. He was about eighteen, tall and handsome like his father, and bearing his father’s name. He arrived in the port of St. Symeon in October 1126, with a fleet of ten galleys and twelve freighters laden with provisions and armaments. He was welcomed by Baldwin, who confirmed the young prince in the possession of Antioch, and to ensure that there should be a bond between them, he gave to Bohemond II his daughter Alice in marriage. In the presence of the king, all the knights of Antioch swore fealty to their new liege lord.
Alice was the king’s second daughter, and it was necessary to find a husband for his eldest daughter, the imperious and wilful Melisende. Baldwin’s choice fell on Count Fulk of Anjou, a distant kinsman, then living in France. There were lengthy negotiations, for it was clearly understood that Fulk would inherit the throne. Baldwin was seeking a king of Jerusalem who had never been to the East and knew very little about Jerusalem. Fulk was nearly forty, a widower with many children, calm, intelligent, and ambitious. He had made Anjou much larger by his attacks on Maine, a region in France, and therefore knew a great deal about warfare. His interests extended to England, France, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem. His son, Geoffrey Plantagenet, had recently married Matilda, the heiress to the Norman throne of England.
Fulk served Baldwin well. He possessed an exquisite loyalty, an admirable discretion. Of all those who came to rule Jerusalem he was probably the most intelligent. He reached Acre in the spring of 1129 and was greeted with great pomp and ceremony. He married Melisende on June 2. It would be a difficult marriage, for Melisende was even more ambitious than her husband and was rarely reasonable.
As far as reasonableness goes Bohemond II was no more so than his father. The people of Antioch worshipped him; his height, his beauty, and his bearing marked him out as a youth of extreme distinction. Soon after he came to the throne, he led his army against the fortress of Kafartab. There was a short siege, the people surrendered, and the young prince ordered all of them massacred. The lessons learned by Pons of Tripoli were lost on Bohemond II, who quarreled violently with Joscelin of Edessa, which would h
ave led to war between them if Joscelin had not providentially fallen ill, thus giving Baldwin time and opportunity to heal the wounds.
Baldwin was still determined to conquer Damascus; and, with new recruits from western Europe, he amassed a large army and invaded Damascene territory. The armies of Joscelin of Edessa, Bohemond II, and Pons of Tripoli were with him, and there were many knights who came in the retinue of Fulk of Anjou. This powerful force marched against the army of Buri, son of the Atabeg Toghtekin, who had died the previous year. Buri was a capable general, but Baldwin’s army pressed hard against him; he was in danger of losing Damascus when a violent storm arose, there were continuous claps of thunder, the rain fell in torrents, and the battlefield became a sea of mud. The Crusaders withdrew, defeated not by the enemy but by the weather.
This was Baldwin’s last battle. Soon Bohemond II fought his last battle as well. He was leading a large raiding party in Cilicia. Amazingly careless, he appears to have thought no enemy would dare to attack him. While he was marching at a leisurely pace along the banks of a river, Danishmend Turks fell on him. The Turks killed everyone in the raiding party. When found, Bohemond’s body was headless; the head had been enbalmed and sent as a present to the caliph. Bohemond was only twenty-three years old when he died.
The news of his death stunned the Antiochenes, who thought of him as their talisman, the man who would bring them luck for fifty years. He left a daughter, Constance, who was only two years old. His widow, the Princess Alice, was determined to be a sovereign princess in her own right, independent of her father.
Alice, therefore, entered into secret communication with Zengi, the Atabeg of Aleppo, offering to marry off her daughter to a Muslim prince on condition that she remain during her lifetime the ruler of Antioch. Through a trusted messenger, she sent a superb gift to Zengi: a snow-white palfrey shod with silver, the bridle and all the trappings also of silver, the saddle covered with silver brocade. By chance Baldwin II, hurrying to Antioch as soon as he learned of the death of Bohemond, heard that the messenger had been arrested by his troops. He immediately ordered that the messenger should be brought to him. The messenger confessed everything. In a rage Baldwin II ordered that he should be put to death with every refinement of torture.
Knowing that the king was on his way, Alice ordered that the gates of Antioch be closed. There were some in Antioch who disliked Alice intensely, and they arranged that the Gate of St. Paul and the Gate of the Duke be left open. The king’s troops poured in. Alice retreated to the citadel, barricading herself in the tower. She still had many followers and might have attempted to fight against her father’s troops, but wiser counsel prevailed. She came out and threw herself at her father’s feet, begging for mercy. She was ordered never again to assume power in any place except Lattakieh and Jabala, which were her dowry. The affairs of Antioch were entrusted to capable men of Antioch, who were made to swear on oath that they would keep Antioch for Constance, the infant princess, until she came of age. Then, very sadly, the king returned to Jerusalem.
The excitement of those days in Antioch may have hastened his death. He fell ill in Jerusalem, perhaps of typhus, and knew that he was dying. He asked to be taken from his palace to the patriarch’s palace near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and then called Melisende and Fulk of Anjou and his three-year-old grandson Baldwin to his bedside, and abdicated in favor of the prince he had summoned from beyond the seas. He wore the habit of a canon regular of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and in this habit he died on August 21, 1131, in the thirteenth year of his reign. He was buried beside Godfrey and Baldwin I at Golgotha.
Baldwin was the last of the Crusader kings who fought in the First Crusade. A change was coming over the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Lotharingians, Normans, Frenchmen, and Provençals were becoming subtly orientalized. It was not that they were suffering from a lethargy of the soul or were learning the vices of the Orient, though they were sometimes lethargic and their vices were legendary. Something much more important was happening to them: they were becoming a new nation belonging to both East and West, but more to the East. They depended upon Europe, but were alienated from Europe. They had thought of conquest as a simple thing—the preservation of Jerusalem and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre—and they had discovered that conquest was ambiguous and complicated. The Crusade itself was becoming a jihad, a holy war, Islamic in the intensity it provoked.
On this subject, writing shortly before the death of Baldwin II, the usually rather lukewarm Fulcher of Chartres wrote with passionate feeling:
We who were once Westerners are now Easterners, a Roman or a Frenchman in this country becomes a Galilean or a Palestinian. He who was of Rheims or Chartres has become a citizen of Tyre or Antioch. For we have already forgotten the lands of our birth, which are unknown to many of us and never mentioned among us.
Some already possess homes and households and tenants by inheritance. Some have taken wives not only of their own people but of Syrians or Armenians or Saracens who have been granted the grace of baptism. . . . Those who were poor in the West, God has made rich in the East. Those who had little money there have innumerable bezants here, and a man who did not even have a house in the West now possesses a city. Why return to the West when there is an Orient like this?
Why, indeed! And why should not more people come to settle in the East under the conquering banner of the Crusaders? There were never enough settlers. The Kingdom of Jerusalem might be close to Paradise, but it was also a blood-soaked battleground, and so it would remain during the whole course of its existence.
King Fulk
of Anjou
MUCH of our knowledge of the Crusaders of this period comes from one of the greatest historians the world has known, William, Archbishop of Tyre. He writes with quite extraordinary tact and intelligence, never raising his voice, and always alert to reasonable explanations of events. He has the modern historian’s gift for painting a portrait, so that we can see the characters he sets down on the stage of history, and he always writes with assurance. Events follow one another in logical order, and he rejoices quietly in their logic and their orderly progression. From the pages of his history he gazes up at us with steady eyes and a look of profound understanding; he is always solemn, judicious, good-tempered. He raises good sense to the height of genius.
The title he chose for his history was Historia Return in Partibus Transmarinis Gestarum, which may be translated A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea. The title, which begs many questions, was probably chosen during one of his infrequent journeys to Rome. For him, the Kingdom of Jerusalem was not “beyond the sea”; it was the place where he grew up. He was a busy man with many ecclesiastical duties, and increasingly as he grew older he was given governmental duties. He went on embassies, served as the tutor of the heir to the throne, became Chancellor of the Kingdom, was the close adviser of King Amaury, the only king of Jerusalem who was book-learned and therefore capable of discussing matters of state with a man of trained intelligence. The government of the kingdom was partly in the hands of William of Tyre, and his word counted for much in the royal court. All this he conceals quite properly in his recording of historical events. His prose rises and falls like the waves of an inland sea; events reach their crises; new crises follow; all are seen to be contained within the framework of divine providence.
One of William of Tyre’s chief virtues was his understanding of the Arab mind. He was fully aware that the enemy often acted intelligently and that the Crusaders often acted stubbornly and stupidly. The intelligence of the Muslims did not, of course, prevent them from being heretics who must necessarily live outside the mercy of God.
Fulk of Anjou came to the throne in 1131, which was probably the year in which William of Tyre was born. Fulk was quick, decisive, and alert, fighting on many fronts, and he had more than his fair share of troubles with the princes who ruled over the coastal principalities. Alice of Antioch was a thorn in his flesh. Very early in his reign, he lost Joscelin o
f Edessa, who died gloriously after being severely injured by falling masonry during an attack on a Turkish fortress. As Joscelin lay close to death, a messenger came to say that the sultan of Iconium was besieging his castle at Cresson. Joscelin summoned his son, also named Joscelin, and ordered the young man to lead the army in an attack on the sultan’s forces. The son made excuses, saying the enemy was too large, their resources too few. In despair, Joscelin ordered that the entire army be called out; everyone who could bear arms would attack the Muslims at Cresson. He ordered a litter to be built and had himself strapped to it. From this litter, he took command of his army, and they set out for Cresson. On the way, he heard that the siege had been raised because the Turkish chieftain heard that a vast army was driving toward him; and so it was. Joscelin died soon afterward, still lying in the litter and praising God for all the benefits conferred on him.
The courage of Joscelin I was not inherited by his son; Baldwin II’s intelligence was not inherited by his daughters Melisende and Alice, both of whom were troublesome, wanted power, and would stop at nothing to get it. Alice, the former Princess of Antioch, wanted to be princess again. She had schemed with Zengi; now she schemed with Joscelin II, which may not have been difficult, but also with Pons of Tripoli, which shows that Pons had a more desperate side to his character than people generally knew.