Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

by Sara Cockerill

  Louis tried to withdraw back to Damietta in April 1250, but, in scenes which suggest considerable similarities to the British retreat from Kabul in 1841, his army were harried, looted and picked off until finally forced into battle at Fariskur. The army was heavily defeated, and Louis himself taken prisoner and taken back in chains to Mansourah. It was during his imprisonment that Queen Marguerite bore the son Jean ‘Tristan’ (Sorrow), who died with his father in 1270. Louis was released following payment of a massive ransom – and the return of Damietta.

  Hopes of recovering Jerusalem faded following this catastrophe, but the interests of the broader Christian territories in the Holy Land remained. However, in the 1260s these came under serious threat too. This threat has its origin in events in Syria, where the Mamluks (soldiers of slave origin) overthrew the Ayyubid sultanate and seized power themselves. The most prominent of the Mamluk generals was one of those who had defeated Louis at Mansourah: Sultan al-Zahir Baibars. He had, of recent years, been attacking and picking off the remnant of the Crusader states. By 1265, he had captured Nazareth, Haifa, Toron and Arsuf. Attacks continued at Caesarea in 1265, Athlith, Haifa, Ramla, Lydda and Saphed in 1266 and Jaffa in 1268. The fall of these cities was what had prompted the coalition which had set off on Crusade.

  Nor was Baibars waiting quietly for the Crusade to descend upon him. In 1268, he also captured Antioch, thereby destroying the last remnant of the Principality of Antioch. Next he took Ascalon. Here, the citadel built by Richard the Lionheart, which had been refortified in 1241 by Richard of Cornwall, was demolished. Next, Chastel Blanc and Gibelcar fell to him. In spring 1271, just as the Crusaders arrived, the Crac de l’Ospital (now better known as the Crac des Chevaliers), the greatest of the Crusader castles, fell and Tripoli came under siege.14

  Given the position, it was decided that Edward would take his forces onward to Acre, capital of the remnant of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the final objective of Baibars’ campaign. Awaiting them there was one of the cardinals principally responsible for the Crusade – Teobaldi Visconti. One of the current contenders for the papacy, he had accompanied Cardinal Ottobuono to England after the civil war and was consequently well known personally to Edward and Eleanor.

  While some accounts suggest that Edward managed to attack Baibars’ interior lines and break the siege of Tripoli, the reality is less impressive. Their arrival was certainly a great move in terms of morale, but the cause of the let-up in the siege was simply prudence on the part of Baibars. Unsure what sort of threat the new Crusaders offered, he was not prepared to be committed in one direction and possibly taken by surprise in another. Accordingly, Tripoli got a ten-year truce and Baibars moved towards Acre, where he performed a calculated show of strength: he took the castle of Montfort and then released its defenders before the walls of Acre, with all their belongings – a gesture to the Crusaders to indicate that he considered their force too small to be reckoned with. He then withdrew.15

  And in indicating that the Crusaders could not hope to beat him, he was quite right. Precise figures for either side cannot be found, but given that the major part of the crusading army was the English contingent of a thousand, that Mamluk armies were very numerous and that we know Baibars had both trebuchets and engineering battalions (which indicates a very large army indeed), it was indeed a match the Crusaders could not hope to win.

  It was apparent that more troops would be needed for any major inroads to be made in Baibars’ gains, and these could only come from new allies. Edward therefore made some attempts to form a Franco-Mongol alliance, sending an embassy to the Mongol ruler of Persia, Abagha, the great-grandson of Genghis Khan and an enemy of the Mamluks. Meanwhile, Edward dealt with ‘domestic’ issues: preparing his horses and troops after the journey, and dealing with administrative problems in Acre, such as trying to ban trading with the enemy – with no great success, as it transpired that such trade had been licensed by Hugh of Cyprus.

  One small raid was attempted alone in July 1271– on Saint-Georges de Lebeyne, fifteen miles east of Acre. The raid was not a success – the troops were unused to the heat and many of them were suffering from food poisoning. Consequently the results were limited to destruction of a few houses and some crops at the cost of quite a number of casualties. After this, Edward determined to await the arrival of reinforcements.16

  In around September 1272, the arrival of the additional forces from England and Hugh III of Cyprus, under the command of Edward’s younger brother Edmund, and a reply from Abagha agreeing to co-operate, put Edward into a position where a further raid could be contemplated. In October, a small force of Mongols arrived in Syria and ravaged the land from Aleppo southward. Baibars immediately moved to deal with this threat. In fact, by the time Baibars mounted his counter-offensive, the Mongols had already retreated beyond the Euphrates. This was the only help Abagha sent; he was occupied by other conflicts in Turkestan.

  However, while it lasted, the raid left the way open for the Crusaders to mount an attack in Baibars’ rear, and on 23 November (very possibly Eleanor’s thirtieth birthday) the joined forces of England, Cyprus and the Hospitallers rode out against Qaqun, a town some forty miles distant, which Baibars had developed and which was a strategic objective on the road to Jerusalem. The result of this, the major engagement of the Crusade, was not exactly triumphant. Tactful commentators (such as Asbridge) call it a ‘punitive raid’. Morris more realistically points out that it achieved nothing other than a bit of cattle rustling. The city was not taken. On the contrary, it appears likely that the Crusaders were chased off by a mere back-up relief force, left by Baibars when he took his main strength against the Mongols. Baibars’ rather cutting, but realistic, comment was that ‘if so many men cannot take a house it seems unlikely that they will conquer the Kingdom of Jerusalem’.17

  On a personal level, it was probably at around this time that news reached Eleanor and Edward of the death of their eldest son, John. He had died at Wallingford Castle, the favourite residence of Richard of Cornwall, on 3 August 1271. He was buried in Westminster Abbey on the north side of the Confessor’s shrine on 8 August. His death will naturally have been a blow to both of them, but it appears in personal terms to have been a moderate one; Edward’s lack of mourning was later noted by Charles of Anjou. Of course, the loss of children was not new to Edward and Eleanor, and the evidence suggests that they were much more emotionally invested in relations with adults, particularly each other, than with their children. At this point, one slightly suspects Edward at least of the view attributed to William Marshal’s father: ‘I have hammer and anvil to forge other sons.’ And, on this theme, Eleanor was again pregnant with their child.18

  Another piece of news which can definitely be traced to this time is the receipt by Teobaldo Visconti of the news that he had been elected Pope on 1 September 1271. The new Gregory X therefore had to leave Acre before any real action was taken. Before he left, the Pope elect preached a sermon in the church of the Holy Cross on the text ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, yea if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy’ – a sermon which reportedly went largely unheard for the weeping of the Crusaders.19

  But the Crusade was at least bothering Baibars. Over winter, he came to suspect there would be a combined land-sea attack on Egypt and endeavoured to head off such a manoeuvre by building a fleet, with which he attempted to land on Cyprus, hoping to draw Hugh III of Cyprus and his fleet out of Acre, with the objective of conquering the island and leaving Edward and the Crusader army isolated in the Holy Land. However, in the ensuing naval campaign the fleet was destroyed and Baibars’ armies were forced back.

  Meanwhile, Edward was ensuring that the Crusader forces were ready for any attack. He arranged for a new tower to be built in the walls of Acre and tried to remedy disputes within the Crusaders’ numbers, mediating between Hugh of Cyprus and his unenthusiastic knights. He also s
ent a message to Gregory X in March requesting that he continue to defend the Holy Land.

  However, the English alone had real appetite for the fight. Early in 1272, less than a year after the Crusade’s arrival, King Hugh began negotiating a truce with Baibars. The negotiations bore fruit: an agreement to last ten years, ten months and ten days was reached in May 1272, at Caesarea. Edward was furious, and refused to sign it. However, considering the lack of any real military success on the part of the Crusaders – Tyerman summarises Edward’s actions as constituting ‘a couple of military promenades’ – the truce can be counted as a pretty good result. It must not be forgotten that on their arrival, Tripoli had been under siege and Acre considering surrender. The truce left both towns free for over ten years, and additionally allowed a right of pilgrim access to Nazareth.20

  Pausing here, what can we know about Eleanor’s experience of the Crusade? For a fact, very little, but by drawing on experiences of other Crusaders we can infer a good deal. The route taken by the Crusaders is not entirely clear, but it is clear that whichever the route, there would have been extensive sea and land journeys. The land journey would have been, except in the balance of the people attending, not hugely dissimilar to movements of courts to which Eleanor and Edward would be used. The differences would be that the numbers involved would be even greater and biased towards the military, as opposed to the domestic household staff who predominated on moves of court household, and that the length of the journey would have been much greater than any single move of a court would be.

  However, in crusading terms, it would have been fairly straightforward – and unlikely to give rise to the kinds of violence which were seen in some of the earlier Crusades, where larger groups of Crusaders crossed countries that were not themselves involved in the Crusade. The main issue would have been simple fatigue, and the social problems which inevitably beset a group of people thrown closely together for a long period of time. While there would have been some stops of some days, the party would have been on the move fairly constantly for a lengthy period. For some of that time, Eleanor, the keen rider, would have ridden. But for some portions, she and the other aristocratic ladies would have been confined to an unsprung wagon or a litter – both unspeakably tedious and uncomfortable ways to travel – a mode of travel which would force the women into close intimacy for days at a time. For Eleanor, who seems to have dealt notably well with men, this was probably very trying, and we may imagine that she rode whenever she could. Nor, of course, was even riding without risk – as the departure of the French from this very Crusade had proved; Isabelle of Aragon had died as a result of a miscarriage, true – but it was a miscarriage brought on by a fall from her horse while she was fording a river.

  Nor was the land journey without its dangers. The accounts which suggest that the crusading party commenced its expedition by land report that, although the party were under a safe conduct from King Louis, they were attacked by William de Tournon, who used his stronghold on the Rhȏne to make off with some of the Crusaders’ stores.

  However, the land portion of the journey would have had considerable advantages over the sea voyage. A sea voyage imported danger at any time – Henry I had famously lost his heir in the White Ship catastrophe of 1120, and Edward himself had been inspired to found Vale Royal by a sea voyage which left him fearing for his life. Likewise, Louis of France, after his terrible Crusade of 1254, nearly lost his life again on his return journey, when his ship ran onto a sandbank at Cyprus and part of the keel was torn off. The seaborne portions of the voyage would therefore have been cause for concern in themselves.

  They would also have been cause for discomfort in no small measure, too. Eleanor and her ladies likely had the use of a few rooms below deck – the bishop elect of Acre, James of Vitry, had four rooms in 1216 – one to sleep, one to read and eat, a third for storage and a fourth for his servants and kitchen. But they would have been affected, as he was, by the darkness and dampness of below-deck rooms. What is more, if the weather turned lively and the hatches had to be battened down, their rooms would have been airless – and doubtless redolent of seasickness. Meanwhile, food was poor – provisions would (unsurprisingly) go off in the course of a voyage – and Crusaders even report the water becoming putrid and swarming with worms. Just how physically challenging the journey was can be seen from the fact that 250 companions of Louis IX supposedly died during a stop at Cyprus in 1248–9. Further evidence can be seen from the rapid and violent way the French Crusaders succumbed to dysentery after their disembarkation in Tunis on the 1270 Crusade.21

  Once arrived, Eleanor of course did not get to see that much – her time will have been spent confined within the walls of Acre, with maybe an occasional short journey a few miles outside. Acre (now Akko) was the Crusaders’ foothold in the Holy Land, a mighty fortress facing constant Muslim threat. It is one of the places on earth where human occupation can be documented most consistently: it is mentioned in Egyptian texts of the nineteenth century BC. It had played host to Alexander the Great and St Paul, among others. It was, therefore, even in 1271, a place deeply imbued with history. It was also stuff of Crusader legend, having been taken by King Baldwin I, retaken by Saladin and recaptured by Richard the Lionheart. What is more, it offered a hugely vibrant political and commercial environment: following the fall of Jerusalem, it served as the political and administrative capital of the Latin Kingdom and its port served as the Crusader states’ link with Christian Europe, and also for trans-shipment westward of valuable cargoes originating in the East.

  The city had expanded from its original base around a south-oriented peninsula with a south-east-facing harbour. This natural defensive position had been bolstered by very considerable fortifications by the first Crusader conquerors. Walls and towers were built all around the town, while the port was also rebuilt to boast an outer and an inner harbour. To the south was a breakwater with a massive tower, known (then and now) as the Tower of Flies, at the end. Along the east and north aspects of the city a double wall, further protected by a moat, warded off any landward attack.

  The area near the harbour was dominated by trading interests. Merchant quarters or communes were the outposts of the great Italian traders, the Pisan quarter running from the southern breakwater, the Venetians facing directly onto the harbour and the Genoese slightly north-west of both. Each of these areas had a marketplace and boasted warehouses, shops and houses of the merchant families. Around this trading hub were the centres for the various military orders, on whom the Latin Kingdom depended for day-to-day protection. The Templars held the south-west corner of the peninsula, the Hospitallers the north-east of the original town and the Teutonic knights held the east face. The palace of the Crusader kings was located in the northern part of city, enclosed by massive fortifications. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, a new residential quarter called Montmusard had been founded north of the city. It was surrounded by its own wall. The city boasted numerous churches – St Laurence, St Brida, St Michael and the Holy Cross to name but a few – as well as hospitals and other civic amenities. In the middle of the century the city further benefited from sponsorship by Louis IX of France. By 1270, it was comfortably the largest city of the Crusader states and was probably home to around 40,000 people – not far off the size of London.

  Eleanor will most likely have stayed in the citadel of the Knights Hospitaller or Knights of St John. They had a substantial building complex of nearly 5,000 square metres – about three times the size of the Tower of London compound. It housed an extensive range of buildings built into the original north wall of the city. It had thick sandstone walls, and was itself fortified with corner towers. Fortuitously, owing to the entire complex having been filled in for later building, considerable traces remain and continue to be explored by archaeologists. While much remains unclear about the complex, it was certainly not a bad base for a prolonged stay, offering halls and many rooms built around a broad, open central courtyard of about 1,2
00 square metres. The rooms were set out over two storeys, the upper storey of which was supported by arches and was accessed from a wide staircase on the eastern side of the courtyard. While blocked off from the outside, the rooms obtained light and air from broad openings in the walls of the courtyard. Water was well considered: a network of drainage channels carried rainwater from the courtyard to a main sewer, and in the south-western corner of the courtyard was a stone-built well that guaranteed the residents’ water supply.

  Within the complex were a number of impressive larger rooms. South of the courtyard was (and is) a hall, which was later misnamed the Crypt of St John. This 450-square-metre rectangular hall is in the Gothic style, with a ten-metre-high groin-vaulted ceiling supported by three large, round central piers. The carving of fleurs-de-lis in two corners of the hall suggest that it was built as part of the works sponsored by Louis IX, and it seems to have served as a kitchen and refectory.

  The true crypt of St John (now known as al-Bosta), over which the church itself was built, lies to the south of this hall. Again it is a large hall with several enormous piers supporting a groin-vaulted ceiling. North of the central courtyard lay a row of long, parallel underground vaulted halls, ten metres high, known as the Knights’ Halls, which were the barracks of the members of the order. To the east of the courtyard lay the 1,350-square-metre Hall of the Pillars, which may have acted as a storage room, hospital or dormitory. Above it probably stood the four-storey Crusader palace depicted in contemporary drawings. On the western side of the complex was a further building, where it seems likely that distinguished guests (such as Edward and Eleanor) would have been lodged.22