Only Stephen of Sancerre had seemed to offer more. The one concrete result of Frederick of Tyre's mission had been to persuade him to come to the East to marry Sibylla, Amalric's daughter, now aged about eleven. His lineage was impressive and, although a third son, he had a patrimony of his own. The plan, however, fell apart, perhaps because Stephen disliked what might have been seen as the kingdom's subservience to Constantinople, or perhaps because the detailed negotiations with Amalric suggested to him that the marriage was less desirable than he had been led to believe. William of Tyre was not disappointed to see him go, for he thought Stephen an immoral and worthless individual and claimed that he had made himself hated in the kingdom.114
William of Tyre was therefore realistic in seeing the main hope for a further attack on Egypt as lying with the Byzantines rather than with any western ruler. Moreover, his role as negotiator gave him a personal interest in the alliance. In the autumn Manuel did indeed send a formidable force, led by Andronicus Contostephanus, Alexander of Gravina and Theodore Maurozumes. Two of these men had had experience of the crusader states in the past: Andronicus had been a leader of Manuel's punitive expedition against Raymond of Antioch in 1144–5, while Alexander had been one of the Byzantine envoys in 1168. The emperor sent a powerful fleet, which included 150 galleys, sixty large ships capable of carrying and unloading horses, and between ten and twenty dromonds, carrying large quantities of supplies and equipment. The fleet arrived at Tyre before anchoring at Acre.115
Amalric had been making his own preparations during the summer. In August 1169, he confirmed the 1168 agreement with the Hospitallers, as well as bringing the Templars back into his army.116 Bertrand of Blancfort had died on 2 January 1169, as Amalric returned from Egypt, opening the way for a new master more amenable to the king's policies. Philip of Nablus had joined the Temple in 1166 and had long been associated with Amalric, for they had both supported Melisende in her struggle with Baldwin III. In August 1169, Philip was elected master of the Temple, obviously as a result of royal influence. When Bertrand of Blancfort withdrew the Templars from the expedition of 1168 he disappeared from royal charters, but Philip's appearance as a signatory to the Hospitaller confirmation and to grants made to the Pisans of privileges in Cairo and other cities on 17 September shows that the Templars were once more involved.117
Common sense demanded that if the Christians were ever to regain control of Egypt, they needed to strike quickly before Shirkuh and Saladin had had time to establish themselves. Their position was precarious. William of Tyre says that the Egyptians hated the Turks, feelings that doubtless applied equally to Kurds and mamluks as well.118 Amalric's plans were furthered by the sudden death of Shirkuh on 23 March 1169, apparently from the effects of overeating, and by Saladin's difficulties in the months which followed. Nur al-Din was angry at what he saw as Saladin's insubordination, particularly by the irresponsible way he spent money (a characteristic which he never lost), while Saladin himself was wary of the caliph, who he feared might have him killed. Resentment at the Turkish occupation came to a head in August when Egyptian discontent fused with the truculence of the black soldiers who served the caliph, creating a violent revolt in Cairo. After several days of fierce fighting, the revolt was quelled on 23 August and the remaining rebels were killed at Giza, but it showed what could happen if Saladin was obliged to face another external threat.119
The Franks and the Byzantines now attempted the difficult feat of a co-ordinated attack on Egypt: Amalric left Ascalon on 16 October, while the Byzantine fleet sailed from Acre a few days before. Although hindered by sea flooding on the coast road, Amalric reached Farama, which had been abandoned, and then, on 27 October, Damietta, where his army encamped nearby. Both William of Tyre and Niketas Choniates are critical of the delay that followed, allowing time for the Turks to send in reinforcements from further upriver, including men and supplies provided by Nur al-Din.120 As the siege became increasingly drawn out, the Byzantines began to suffer from shortages of supplies, a problem not rectified by the Franks who, according to William, needed to conserve what little they had for themselves. The besiegers now began to lose heart: ‘It was the general opinion that the expedition had been undertaken against the will of the Lord.’ In the end they decided to make peace, for they foresaw only death, either by famine or the sword.121
There were repercussions for all parties. Amalric and his army successfully accomplished their return, reaching Ascalon on 21 December, but the kingdom of Jerusalem had not escaped unscathed. Nur al-Din had adopted his previous tactics when Egypt was under pressure, ‘plundering and ruining’ the undefended land, where he had reached ‘areas not previously touched’.122 Nor could Gilbert of Assailly avoid the consequences. He had burdened the Hospitallers with a debt of 100,000 pieces of gold which could not be repaid.123 The disaster precipitated a personal crisis for Gilbert, who resigned the mastership, causing a schism within the order, and opening up arguments about both the extent of papal authority over the Hospital's affairs and the nature of the order's mission.124 The Byzantine fleet was obliged to set out in December, well past the usual sailing season, and was hit by a storm from which few of their ships escaped.125 To the Turks, however, the threat had been real enough. John Kinnamos says that envoys came from Egypt offering tribute in the hope of preventing another attack, but that Manuel rejected this ‘as he intended to overrun their whole land again’.126
Inevitably there were recriminations. William of Tyre is reluctant to blame the Greeks, since he remained aware of his part in negotiating the original alliance, and says they fought bravely. However, his informants were less charitable, telling William that the disaster had been caused by Manuel, who had not spent enough money on supplies.127 Michael the Syrian, who as a Jacobite was always ready to castigate the Byzantines, says that ‘when the Greeks arrived in Egypt, driven by their inveterate malice, they wished to deceive the king, and to seize the country for themselves’. When Amalric was warned of this, he decided to take the customary Egyptian offer of gold and return to Jerusalem.128
The Greek sources are equally forthright. Both John Kinnamos and Niketas Choniates believed that the failure had been caused by procrastination on the part of the Latins, who had left the Greeks to do most of the fighting. Kinnamos saw this as treachery, which he claimed stemmed from Latin reluctance to share conquests equally, while Choniates ascribed the failure of supplies to the prolongation of the campaign. Manuel had provided the fleet with a supply of grain for three months, beginning in August.129 Andronicus, he says, had been instructed to obey Amalric, but had finally lost patience with ‘talking into the ear of the dead’ and, ignoring ‘the Latin drivel’, had decided to conduct the campaign on his own. However, just as the Byzantines were about to take the city by storm, Amalric appeared and announced he had made a treaty with the Saracens, completely undermining the Greeks, whose only thought thereafter was to return home. It was this disorganised embarkation that had exposed the ships to the Mediterranean in December and caused the foundering of the Byzantine fleet.130
Within seven months the crusader states had suffered a new disaster, but this time the effects were felt in Antioch and Tripoli rather than Jerusalem. The earthquake that struck on 29 June 1170 dealt a shattering blow to the inhabitants of Syria, Christian and Muslim alike.131 In Antioch, the walls along the banks of the Orontes crumbled, several churches were destroyed and the sanctuary of the cathedral collapsed. Bohemond III was deeply affected, cutting his hair and dressing in sackcloth before leading a deputation to Aimery of Limoges, still in his castle of al-Qusair. Here he pressed the patriarch to return, but he would not be moved while Athanasius, the Greek patriarch, remained in the city. However, it happened that Athanasius was one of the victims of falling masonry in the cathedral of St Peter, where he was conducting a service. Although he was pulled out alive, he did not survive for long, enabling Aimery to be restored to the patriarchate.132 In the county of Tripoli, the shield of castles granted to the militar
y orders by Raymond II was torn apart. Crac des Chevaliers, Chastel Blanc and al-'Arimah needed major reconstruction; only the Templar castle of Tortosa escaped damage, while in Tripoli itself the cathedral of St Mary was brought down.
The Muslim cities were equally affected, and a temporary peace was made between Amalric and Nur al-Din while these regions recovered from the death and destruction brought by the earthquake. Even so, Ibn al-Athir says that each side feared the other while they set about repairing the damage.133 In a letter written immediately after the events, in July or August, Amalric told Louis VII that an earthquake of unprecedented severity had struck the county of Tripoli and that its effects had been felt all the way north to Antioch. If help was not forthcoming, Tripoli, Arqa, Gibelet, Latakia, Marqab and Antioch would be occupied by the enemy.134 At much the same time, Amalric, in his role as administrator of the county, granted the Hospitallers the castles of Arqa and Gibelacar, north-east of Tripoli, exempting them from the count's rights of overlordship, but leaving the order with the cost and responsibility of rebuilding.135 It is unlikely that the order made much immediate progress, since it was still suffering from the effects of the huge debts incurred by Gilbert of Assailly in the Egyptian campaigns of 1168 and 1169.
Saladin's consolidation of his power in Cairo had, however, added another dimension to the Islamic jihad. Ibn Shaddad claims that, after the death of Shirkuh, Saladin became convinced that he was destined by God to conquer the coast (that is, the lands occupied by the Franks) and that he should therefore make appropriate changes to both his lifestyle and his policies. ‘He renounced wine, gave up vain pastimes and donned the garments of seriousness and pious endeavour. He never retreated from that, but grew ever more serious until God gathered him to His mercy.’136
Although there is a suspicion that Ibn Shaddad is remoulding Saladin's earlier career to fit his presentation of later events, Saladin's own actions to some extent confirm this account. By the early 1170s, perhaps encouraged by the additional problems created for Amalric by the regency of the shattered county of Tripoli, he felt strong enough to attack the south of the kingdom of Jerusalem, both on the coast and in Jordan. In December 1170, he suddenly appeared at Darum (Dair al-Balah), about 9 miles south of Gaza, and the first Frankish settlement encountered by an army coming from Egypt. Darum was a square fortress of simple plan with four corner towers built by Amalric as a centre for the collection of taxes and tolls, and it was not equipped to withstand the kind of force brought against it by Saladin. By the time Amalric had gathered his forces, Saladin had already besieged it for two days and had broken into the compound. The king clearly believed that this was not simply a raid but the preliminary to an important battle, for he assembled an army of 250 knights and about 2,000 foot soldiers under the protection of the True Cross, as well as Templars from the garrison at Gaza. There may have been a more general summoning of the host, for sixty-five youths from the agrarian settlement of al-Bira, north of Jerusalem, were among those who came to Gaza.137
However, when they saw the Muslim army they were shocked by its size and could do little more than defend themselves. They were unable to prevent Saladin moving on to Gaza, where he again broke into the town, although the citadel held out under Miles of Plancy. During the fighting most of the youths from al-Bira were killed. The major battle, nevertheless, did not materialise and Saladin turned back to Egypt, leaving the Franks to contemplate the destruction he had left behind. Darum had particularly suffered, for it was left in a ‘half-destroyed’ state.138 Amalric rebuilt it more strongly than before, but the change in the balance of power was evident. When, in late December, Saladin had some prefabricated boats transported across Sinai, and used them to attack and plunder Ailah, the Franks were powerless to stop him.139 For the first time since the death of the vizier al-Afdal in 1121, there was a real threat from Egypt.
Both sides now acted to protect their positions. In the summer of 1171, Nur al-Din pressed Saladin to bring Egypt into Abbasid allegiance, a process that would involve the removal of the Shi'ite Fatimids. Saladin was aware of the dangers, but was greatly helped by the illness of al-Adid, who died on 13 September 1171. Two days before he had put on a show of military strength by parading the bulk of his army through Cairo. On 10 September, the Fatimid regime was brought to an end and the khutbah (Friday sermon and prayer) proclaimed in the name of al-Mustadi, the Abbasid caliph, apparently without provoking any general unrest.140
Amalric was equally active. Early in 1171, he held a general curia to discuss the state of the kingdom. He may well have announced the recoining of the deniers and oboles at this time and, like Baldwin, reasserted his authority through control of the currency (see plate 11).141 However, the major reason for the assembly was to discuss future military policy. It was decided to ask for western help by means of embassies and letters to all the major rulers, and at the same time to send a mission to Emperor Manuel. To the shock and surprise of most of the barons, Amalric then proposed to visit Manuel himself, an action that suggests he placed little confidence in the prospect of effective western help in the foreseeable future, for no previous king of Jerusalem had visited Constantinople. He set out on 10 March, accompanied by leading nobles and royal officers, having sent Philip of Nablus ahead to prepare the ground. Philip had resigned his position as master of the Templars specifically for this purpose, and was replaced by Odo of Saint-Amand, a former royal marshal and butler who had served both Baldwin and Amalric since the mid-1150s and might be expected to continue to reflect royal interests within the order.142
Manuel was perhaps surprised by the visit, but he nevertheless arranged a lavish welcome, culminating in a personal greeting in a special audience room hung with precious curtains. When the curtains were drawn aside, the emperor was seen seated on a golden throne; Amalric was placed next to him but, like Baldwin III in 1158, on a slightly lower throne. Amalric and his delegation were shown every consideration, including being given access to the private imperial apartments, a special viewing of Constantinople's most precious relics, and musical and theatrical entertainments. The king was given a guided tour of Constantinople and was taken by ship to view the mouth of the Black Sea. At the same time intensive negotiations took place during which the Latins convinced Manuel that they should once more attempt ‘the subjugation of Egypt’.143
The king finally returned from this fantasy world on 15 June, when he landed at Sidon. Despite the bitterness that had developed between the two armies at Damietta in 1169, he had gained a promise for a new joint attack on Egypt and, had he not died in 1174, there is no doubt that Amalric would have continued with this strategy. Manuel had his own agenda. Until the phenomenal expansion of Islam in the seventh century, Egypt had been an integral part of the Byzantine empire. As Kinnamos puts it, Manuel, ‘who had already recovered many of the regions in the east for the Romans, longed very intensely to reclaim this one too’. Amalric was well aware of this. The price that the crusader states had to pay for Manuel's aid was subordination to the Byzantine concept of empire, and no amount of elaborate ceremonial in Constantinople could disguise this. Like his brother before him, Amalric had been obliged to agree to what Kinnamos calls ‘his subjection’ to the Romans.144 It seems very likely that one consequence was a much more overt Byzantine presence in the kingdom. The extensive fresco decoration of the east end of the Hospitaller church of Abu Ghosh, for example, dates from the early 1170s and was executed by Byzantine artists (although working under Hospitaller instruction), suggesting that other Byzantine figures, such as diplomats and military advisers, must also have been in Jerusalem, even though they have not left such material evidence of their existence.145
However, the treaty with the Byzantines did nothing to alleviate the immediate threats to the crusader states. Almost at once it was necessary to gather a force at the Springs of Saffuriya to meet an incursion by Nur al-Din in the region of Banyas, a threat exacerbated by Saladin's almost simultaneous attack on Montréal. According to Ibn al-
Athir, in October 1171 Montréal was close to falling, but Saladin was advised that if Nur al-Din defeated Amalric at the same time, nothing would prevent him from forcing Saladin to submit to him, perhaps even depriving him of Egypt. This may not be the full truth, since Montréal was extremely difficult to capture, but whatever the reason, for a brief period, the distrust between Nur al-Din and Saladin prevented a concerted attack on the kingdom of Jerusalem.146
The next year Amalric was obliged to travel to Antioch, still suffering from the effects of the terrible earthquake, to block Malih, brother of Thoros II, who was trying to seize control of Cilicia after the latter's death. Not only had Malih expelled the Templars from their fortresses in Cilicia, but he had also obtained help from Nur al-Din. Malih excited the censure of both William of Tyre and Michael the Syrian. This remained unfinished business, because although the king obliged Malih to submit, he was forced to abandon the north when he heard that Kerak was under attack, only to find that the crisis had subsided by the time he reached Jerusalem.147 Nur al-Din was adept at such diversionary tactics, creating a sense of insecurity that made long-term strategies difficult to implement.
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