• Some accounts claim that one of the assassins had been in Ibelin’s service so that they would have access to Montferrat, which is not completely logical. The assassins’ method was to win the trust of their victim, and that was done better within his own household. Ibelin was often nowhere near Montferrat, reducing the opportunity to strike. I have therefore not followed this version of events.
• The French demanded that Isabella surrender Tyre to them, but she refused. The Itinerarium, which is shamelessly biased in favor of Richard I, claims she refused on the grounds that her dying husband admonished her to give it to no one but Richard. Since Richard had been Montferrat’s bitter opponent up until only a few days earlier, I find that very unlikely. It is far more probable that she was interested in upholding the constitution and independence of her kingdom, which meant deferring to the High Court.
• Accounts claiming that Henri de Champagne was acclaimed and elected by “the common people” of Tyre are nonsense. “The people” had nothing to say about who was elected King of Jerusalem, much less the marriage of a princess or a widow. The High Court of Jerusalem, on the other hand, both elected kings and selected consorts for their queens. It was without doubt the High Court of Jerusalem that selected Henri de Champagne as Isabella’s next husband. That her stepfather, as one of the most influential members of the High Court, would have a particularly strong voice in such a decision is logical and is supported by the high standing the Ibelins had ever after.
• The chronicles say that Isabella went to meet Henri de Champagne to assure him she was willing to marry him. Allegedly it was this meeting that overcame his reluctance to enter a bigamous marriage. The accounts stress that he was very pleased with her and later could not bear to be separated from her.
• The second attempt to capture Jerusalem took place over King Richard’s objections (he preferred an assault on Cairo), and the decision to abandon the attempt was made by an elected council made up of five French, five local lords, five Templars, and five Hospitallers. Allegedly the decision was unanimous, but presumably only after the local lords, Templars, and Hospitallers had convinced the reluctant French that holding Jerusalem would be impossible even if they could take it.
• The Frankish army withdrew from their positions before Jerusalem on July 4, and Richard did not return to Acre until July 26. His wife and sister would certainly have heard about the withdrawal long before he arrived. The attack on Jaffa started either immediately or two days after Richard’s arrival at Acre, and he received the news either that same night or after nearly a week. I condensed events for dramatic effect.
• The French refused to relieve Jaffa, and the army of Jerusalem with the Templars and Hospitallers was stopped on the road near Caesarea. The Count of Champagne loaded a ship with as many men as possible and sailed to Jaffa. The accounts are so fixated on what happened to King Richard, however, that what happened to the army of Jerusalem after Champagne left it is not clear. The army did, however, somehow rejoin Richard at Jaffa without a fight, so I invented this maneuver along the shore and Ibelin’s role in devising it.
• The accounts also differ on how long it took Richard to reach Jaffa, some saying he arrived in the morning after a night departure, others that he was becalmed for three days. I’ve chosen a compromise of a one-day delay.
• The chronicles describe Richard entering by a postern and mounting a spiral stairway into the Templar commandery; presumably he knew about the door from earlier stays in the city.
• The accounts explicitly mention the large number of pigs killed and that the Frankish dead were heaped up with the pigs as an insult. Likewise, the broken wine casks and the slaughter of men in the infirmary are recorded.
• The Itinerarium describes the surprise attack on Richard’s camp on August 5, saying that some men didn’t have time to put on even their braies. It describes Richard riding clear through the Saracen lines, then bringing a horse to the Earl of Leicester, and finally rescuing Ralph de Mauleon from being dragged off as a prisoner. To keep the number of characters down, I substituted Aimery de Lusignan for Ralph de Mauleon, and al-Afdal for his brother al-Zahir.
• Both the Itinerarium and the Lyon Continuation of William of Tyre claim al-Adil offered Richard a horse (or two) during the battle on August 5. The Itinerarium paints it as a chivalrous gesture between brothers-in-arms. The Lyon Continuation, which follows the lost Chronicle of Ernoul more closely, paints it as a trick. I’ve opted for the version offered by a contemporary from Outremer, rather than one by an English clerk writing after the legend of Salah ad-Din as “the chivalrous Saracen” had already taken root.
• Baha ad-Din relates that toward the end of the day King Richard rode up and down the entire Saracen line, challenging anyone to fight with him—and no one dared.
• Ibelin was instrumental in negotiating the truce between Richard of England and Salah ad-Din that ended the Third Crusade. Significantly, this agreement, known as the Treaty of Ramla, left Ibelin’s own baronies of Ibelin, Ramla, and Mirabel in Saracen hands.
• Although an “exchange of prisoners” was included in the treaty, the return of tens of thousands of captives is not explicitly mentioned in the chronicles. On the other hand, tens of thousands of Christians (some estimates put the number as high as 100,000) had been enslaved after the collapse of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Most of these were women and children, many the families of surviving fighting men. Others were the husbands, sons and fathers of women who had escaped to Tyre. The human drama was real and acute—even if ignored by churchman living half a world away and writing decades after the fact. Furthermore, it is recorded that Ibelin offered to stand surety for the poor unable to pay their ransom after the surrender of Jerusalem; it is unlikely that someone who felt that strong a responsibility for the women and children sent into slavery would forget them easily. The fact that Ibelin negotiated the Treaty of Ramla yet failed to obtain the return of his own baronies, although they lay very close to Jaffa, may be an indication of Frankish weakness, or—as I chose to interpret in this novel—an indication of Ibelin’s continued willness to put the fate of innocent women and children ahead of his own material well-being.
• The oath-taking for the Treaty of Ramla was conducted twice, with al-Adil and al-Afdal taking the leading role for the Saracens, and Champagne and Ibelin the principals for the Franks.
• Female genital mutilation (female circumcision) was widely practiced in Muslim society in the Middle Ages and more than 90% of Egyptian women over the age of 15 have been victims of it even today. Islamic scholars recommended female genital mutilation for even adult sexual slaves.
• The lordship of Caymont near Acre was restored to the Kingdom of Jerusalem at a slightly later date in a separate agreement, and allegedly Salah ad-Din designated it was to go to Ibelin. Unlike Sidon, however, he did not grant it directly as an iqta, but rather returned it to the Kingdom, and Queen Isabella bestowed it on her stepfather as a fief.
• All dialogue is, of course, fictional, and so is Ernoul’s song.
The Abduction of Isabella
IN NOVEMBER 1190, PRINCESS ISABELLA OF Jerusalem, then eighteen years old, was forcibly removed from the tent she was sharing with her husband Humphrey de Toron in the Frankish camp besieging the city of Acre. Just days earlier, her elder sister, Queen Sibylla, had died, making Isabella the hereditary queen of the all but nonexistent—yet symbolically important—Kingdom of Jerusalem. A short time after her abduction, she married Conrad, Marquis de Montferrat—making him, through her, the de facto King of Jerusalem. This high-profile abduction and marriage scandalized later Church chroniclers and is often cited to this day as evidence of the perfidy of Conrad de Montferrat and his accomplices. The latter included Isabella’s mother, Maria Comnena, and her stepfather, Balian d’Ibelin.
The anonymous author of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi (Itinerarium), for example, describes with blistering outrage how Conrad de Montferrat had l
ong schemed to “steal” the throne of Jerusalem, and at last stuck upon the idea of abducting Isabella—a crime the author compares to the abduction of Helen of Sparta by Paris of Troy, “only worse.” To achieve his plan, the Itinerarium claims, Conrad “surpassed the deceits of Sinon, the eloquence of Ulysses, and the forked tongue of Mithridates.” Conrad, according to this English cleric writing after the fact, set about bribing, flattering, and corrupting bishops and barons alike as never before in recorded history. Throughout, the chronicler says, Conrad was aided and abetted by three barons of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Sidon, Haifa, and Ibelin) who combined (according to our chronicler) “the treachery of Judas, the cruelty of Nero, and the wickedness of Herod, and everything the present age abhors and ancient times condemned.” Really? The author certainly brings no evidence of a single act of treachery, cruelty, or wickedness —beyond this one alleged abduction, which (as we shall see) was neither an abduction nor a travesty of justice, much less a case of rape.
Indeed, this chronicler himself admits that Isabella was not removed from Humphrey’s tent by Conrad himself, nor was she handed over to him. On the contrary, she was put into the care of clerical “sequesterers,” whose role was to assure her safety and prevent a further abduction “while a clerical court debated the case for a divorce.” Furthermore, in the very next paragraph, our anonymous slanderer of some of the most courageous and pious lords of Jerusalem, declares that although Isabella at first resisted the idea of divorcing her husband Humphrey, she was soon persuaded to consent to divorce because “a woman’s opinion changes very easily” and “a girl is easily taught to do what is morally wrong.”
While the Itinerarium admits that Isabella’s marriage to Humphrey was reviewed by a church court, it hides this fact under the abuse it heaps upon the clerics involved. Another contemporary chronicle, the Lyon Continuation of William of Tyre, explains in far more neutral and objective language that the case hinged on the important principle of consent. By the twelfth century, marriage could only be valid in canonical law if both parties (i.e., including Isabella) consented. The issue at hand was whether Isabella had consented to her marriage to Humphrey at the time it was contracted.
The Lyon Continuation further notes that Isabella and Humphrey testified before the church tribunal separately. In her testimony, Isabella asserted she had not consented to her marriage to Humphrey, while Humphrey claimed she had. The Lyon Continuation also provides the colorful detail that another witness, who had been present at Isabella and Humphrey’s wedding, at once called Humphrey a liar, and challenged him to prove in combat that he spoke the truth. Humphrey, the chronicler says, refused to “take up the gage.” At this point the chronicler states that Humphrey was “cowardly and effeminate.”
Both accounts (the Itinerarium and the Lyon Continuation) agree that following the testimony and deliberations, the Church council ruled that Isabella’s marriage to Humphrey was invalid. There was only one dissenting voice, that of the Archbishop of Canterbury. However, both chroniclers insist that this decision was reached because Conrad corrupted all the other clerics, particularly the Papal Legate, the Archbishop of Pisa. The Lyon Continuation claims that the Archbishop of Pisa ruled the marriage invalid and allowed Isabella to marry Conrad only because Conrad promised commercial advantages for Pisa should he win Isabella and become King. The Itinerarium, on the other hand, claims Conrad “poured out enormous generosity to corrupt judicial integrity with the enchantment of gold.”
There are a lot of problems with the clerical outrage over Isabella’s “abduction”—not to mention the dismissal of Isabella’s change of heart as due to the inherent moral frailty of females. There are also problems with the slander heaped on the barons and bishops who dared to support Conrad de Montferrat’s suit for Isabella.
Let’s go back to the basic facts of the case, as laid out by the chroniclers themselves but stripped of moral judgments and slander:
• Isabella was removed from Humphrey de Toron’s tent against her will.
• She was not, however, taken by Conrad or raped by him.
• Rather, she was turned over to neutral third parties and sequestered and protected by them.
• Meanwhile, a Church court was convened to rule on the validity of her marriage to Humphrey.
• The case hinged on the important theological principle of consent.
• Humphrey claimed that Isabella had consented to the marriage, but when challenged by a witness to the wedding, he “said nothing” and backed down.
• Isabella testified before the tribunal that she had not consented to her marriage.
• The court ruled that Isabella’s marriage to Humphrey had not been valid.
• On November 25, with either the French Bishop of Beauvais or the Papal Legate himself presiding, Isabella married Conrad. Since a clerical court had just ruled that no marriage was valid without the consent of the bride, we can be confident that she consented to this marriage. In fact, as the Itinerarium (vituperously) reports, “She was not ashamed to say . . . she went with the Marquis of her own accord.”
To understand what really happened in the siege camp at Acre in November 1190, we need to look beyond what the Church chronicles write about the abduction itself.
The story really begins ten years before the alleged abduction in 1180, when Isabella was just eight years old. Until this time, Isabella had lived in the care and custody of her mother, the Greek princess and Dowager Queen of Jerusalem, Maria Commena. In 1180, King Baldwin IV (Isabella’s half-brother) arranged the betrothal of Isabella to Humphrey de Toron. Having promised this marriage without the consent of Isabella’s mother or stepfather, the King ordered the physical removal of Isabella from her mother and stepfather’s care and sent her to live with her future husband, his mother, and his stepfather. The latter was the infamous Reynald de Châtillon, notorious for having seduced the Princess of Antioch, tortured the Archbishop of Antioch, and sacked the Christian island of Cyprus. Isabella was effectively imprisoned in his border fortress at Kerak, and his wife, Stephanie de Milly, explicitly prohibited Isabella from even visiting her mother for three years.
In November 1183, when Isabella was just eleven years old, Reynald and his wife held a marriage feast to celebrate the wedding of Isabella and Humphrey. They invited all the nobles of the Kingdom to witness the feast. Unfortunately, before most of the wedding guests could arrive, Salah ad-Din’s army surrounded the castle and laid siege to it. The wedding took place, and a few weeks later the army of Jerusalem relieved the castle, chasing Salah ad-Din’s forces away.
Note that at the time the wedding took place, Isabella was not only a prisoner of her in-laws, she was only eleven years old. Canonical law in the twelfth century established the “age of consent” for girls at twelve. Isabella, therefore, could not legally consent to her wedding even if she wanted to. The marriage had been planned by the King, however, and carried out by one of the most powerful barons during a crisis. No one seems to have dared challenge it at the time.
At the death of Baldwin V three years later, Isabella’s older sister, Queen Sibylla, was first in line to the throne, but found herself opposed by almost the entire High Court of Jerusalem (the body that was constitutionally required to consent to each new monarch). The opposition sprang not from objections to Sibylla herself, but from the fact that the bishops and barons of the Kingdom almost unanimously detested her husband, Guy de Lusignan. Although she could not gain the consent of the High Court necessary to make her coronation legal, she managed to convince a minority of the secular and ecclesiastical lords to crown her Queen by promising to divorce Guy and choose a new husband. Once anointed, Sibylla promptly betrayed her supporters by declaring that her “new” husband was the same as her old husband: Guy de Lusignan. She then crowned him herself (at least according to some accounts).
This struck many people at the time as duplicitous, to say the least, and the majority of the barons and bishops decided that since she had not had
their consent in the first place, she and her husband were usurpers. They agreed to crown her younger sister Isabella (then fourteen years old) instead. The assumption was that since they commanded far larger numbers of troops than did Sibylla’s supporters (many of whom now felt duped and were dissatisfied anyway, no doubt), they would be able to quickly depose Sibylla and Guy.
The plan, however, came to nothing because Isabella’s husband, Humphrey de Toron, had no stomach for a civil war (or a crown, it seems), and chose to sneak away in the dark of night to do homage to Sibylla and Guy. The baronial revolt collapsed. Almost everyone eventually did homage to Guy, and he promptly led them all to an avoidable defeat at the Battle of Hattin. With the field army annihilated, the complete occupation of the Kingdom by the forces of Salah ad-Din followed—with the important exception of Tyre.
Tyre only avoided the fate of the rest of the Kingdom because of the timely arrival of a certain Italian nobleman, Conrad de Montferrat, who rallied the defenders and defied Salah ad-Din. Montferrat came from a very good and well-connected family. He was first cousin to both the Holy Roman Emperor and King Louis VII of France. Furthermore, his elder brother had been Sibylla of Jerusalem’s first husband (before Guy), and his younger brother had been married to the daughter of the Greek Emperor Manuel I. Furthermore, he defended Tyre twice against the vastly superior armies of Salah ad-Din, and by holding Tyre he enabled the Franks to retain a bridgehead by which troops, weapons, and supplies could be funneled back into the Holy Land for a new crusade to retake Jerusalem. While Conrad was performing this heroic function, Guy de Lusignan was an (admittedly unwilling) “guest” of Salah ad-Din, a prisoner of war following his self-engineered defeat at Hattin.
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