by Jeffrey Lee
The inevitable factionalism was not long in reappearing. At Easter 1180, with all to play for, Raymond of Tripoli made his move. Supported by Bohemond of Antioch, he approached the kingdom with a substantial force. William of Tyre says that King Baldwin, fearing a coup d’état, refused them entry to the kingdom:
At that time the lord Prince Bohemond of Antioch and the Lord Count Raymond of Tripoli, entering the Kingdom with an army, terrified the lord king who feared lest they should attempt to organise a revolution by deposing the king and laying claim to the kingdom for themselves.8
To head off this attempted coup, Baldwin and the Courtenay faction quickly needed to find a viable, adult male heir. Perhaps partly following Sybilla’s personal preference, they turned to a surprising candidate, a handsome young knight from Poitou, Guy de Lusignan, brother of Constable Amalric. Reynald would have well understood the consternation that accompanied the king’s choice of this little-known knight. William of Tyre was even more critical of Guy than he had been of Reynald on his marriage to Constance a generation earlier. He said that Guy, who had taken the cross to expiate his murder of the Earl of Salisbury, was ‘an obscure man, wholly incapable and indiscreet’. Archbishop William, a partisan of Count Raymond, thought the king had made a hasty error of judgement:
Although there were men in the kingdom who were more noble, more brave and more wealthy… to whom [King Baldwin] might more fittingly for reasons of state have given his sister’s hand, he did not give sufficient weight to the maxim that ‘acting on impulse causes harm to everything.’9
The powerful Ibelin clan, with lands throughout the kingdom, was also disgusted with the choice of Guy as heir to the throne. This was partly because the head of the family, Baldwin of Ibelin, had fancied a royal title and aspired to marry Sybilla himself. Reynald, as a member of the royal ‘Courtenay’ faction in opposition to Raymond and the Ibelins, was naturally a key supporter of Guy.
This debilitating factionalism is the background to the two-year truce that was agreed with Saladin around May 1180. Reynald was presumably involved in the decision, but not as executive regent. He could not have retained that post after Guy’s marriage into the royal family; that would have suggested Guy was unfit for his role as king-in-waiting. This truce, however, was a humiliation for the Franks. It was on equal terms and so, for the first time ever, the Muslims had the benefit of an armistice without paying for the privilege. It was stark proof of Frankish disunity and weakness. Saladin was now free to extend and consolidate his domains in Syria and Mesopotamia without interference from the Latin states.
Saladin’s freedom of manoeuvre was further increased later in the year when, on 24 September 1180, the basileus Manuel Comnenos died. Last of the three great Comnenos emperors, he was succeeded by his eleven-year-old son, Alexius II, whose mother, Maria of Antioch, became regent. Maria continued her husband’s pro-Latin policy, as her stepfather Reynald would have wished, but she had little real opportunity to provide concrete help to the crusaders. Byzantine power was waning, and a virulently anti-Latin movement was swiftly building momentum in Constantinople.
By now Reynald was probably well into his fifties. He had retained a young knight’s capacity for violence and love of drama, but he had learned to cloak it well, if need be. The intervening years had added patience, an appreciation of the broader picture and the capacity for planning ahead. Secretly he took advantage of the truce to lay the groundwork for a series of momentous military strikes against Saladin.
On the surface he was acting sensibly, steadily building his power; occupying himself with administration of his great fief, alliance-building and diplomacy. Amongst other acts, he confirmed grants to the Knights Hospitaller in Petra and Mont Real. Then in October 1180, yet again showing his grasp of advantageous marriage alliances, Reynald oversaw the betrothal of his stepson Humphrey IV of Toron to King Baldwin IV’s younger sister, Princess Isabella. This match, which he pursued ‘with much ardour’, further enhanced Reynald’s prestige and tied him even more closely to the royal party. It also put Humphrey in line as a possible contender for the throne in the future, via the claims of his royal wife. That meant Reynald was stepfather to a potential future King of Jerusalem. Isabella was only twelve, however, so the actual nuptials were postponed until she reached fifteen, the canonical age for marriage.
The other important political development of 1180, and one that is fundamental to our appreciation of Reynald, was the election of a new Patriarch of Jerusalem. The election result is relevant to Reynald’s story because one of the two candidates was the great historian, William, Archbishop of Tyre. The principle support for William came from the faction of his patron, Raymond of Tripoli, who had appointed him chancellor. William’s rival for the post was Heraclius, Archbishop of Caesarea, who was backed by Queen Agnes and her faction, headed by Prince Reynald. The good-looking Heraclius was a controversial figure who openly kept a mistress, the flamboyant Pasqua de Riveri. Although she was only a lowly shopkeeper’s wife, one chronicler wrote that her lover decked her with so many gems and precious garments that you might have thought her a baroness. So blatant was their affair that she was sarcastically known as Madame La Patriarchesse. Heraclius was also rumoured to have had an affair with the king-mother, Agnes. ‘She loved him because of his beauty,’ according to the gossipy Ernoul. Largely thanks to Agnes’ influence, Heraclius was elected. This was despite the ominous prophecy, which Ernoul puts into the mouth of William of Tyre, that, just as a Heraclius had once recovered the True Cross, so a Heraclius would lose it.**
In his history, William recorded his painful defeat very tersely, simply recording that after the Patriarch Aimery died, ‘less than ten days later, Heraclius, Archbishop of Caesarea was elected in his place’.10 In reality William was devastated. His bitterness emerged in the disparaging portraits of his enemies. The queen, Agnes of Courtenay was ‘a most grasping woman, utterly detestable to God’. The cabal of close advisers around the king, such as Joscelin and Reynald, who advised Baldwin to beware of Raymond’s ambition, were ‘sons of Belial… troublemakers… wicked men’.
Ernoul is equally unsympathetic to the Courtenays and their allies. Thanks to the debauched and adulterous example set by Heraclius, he claims that ‘you could hardly find a respectable woman in the whole of Jerusalem’.11 It should be remembered that Ernoul’s patrons, the Ibelin family, were allied with Raymond of Tripoli against the queen’s party, and therefore against Heraclius and Reynald as well. Unfortunately for William, he never made his peace with Heraclius and his faction. The new patriarch excommunicated William, who travelled to Rome to clear his name. Around the year 1184, William died. He was poisoned, some alleged, on the orders of Heraclius. William’s critical portrait of Reynald in his work is tainted by bitterness at his electoral defeat. If William had become patriarch, he might well have left us a much more generous record of Reynald’s deeds.
William does record that Reynald was needed again for his diplomacy in the winter of 1180. After Emperor Manuel died, Prince Bohemond of Antioch swiftly repudiated his Byzantine wife Theodora and married a woman called Sybille. She was not a popular choice. Christian chroniclers call her a witch and a prostitute, but as Muslim sources reveal, the reality was much worse; she was actually an agent of Saladin:
The wife of the prince of Antioch, called dame Sybille, had taken the sultan’s side, spying on his enemies… in return, he showed her consideration and sent her rich gifts.12
Reynald’s old enemy, the Patriarch Aimery, excommunicated Bohemond for adultery. Bohemond retaliated by seizing Church property. True to form, Aimery put the principality under interdict and took refuge once again in his stronghold of Cursat. Bohemond’s actions towards the Church were described in similar terms to Reynald’s, more than twenty-five years earlier:
[Bohemond] treated the patriarch, the bishops, and other prelates of the church in that land as enemies and laid violent hands upon them. He violated the precincts of sacred places, both chu
rches and monasteries, carried off their sacred objects, and, in a wicked spirit of presumptuous daring, disturbed their possessions.13
But Bohemond never tied his victims naked to a turret, daubed with honey, and so his image has not suffered as a result. However, his actions were still extreme enough to drive powerful barons like Renaud Mazoir to side with the patriarch. The spectre of civil war loomed.
King Baldwin IV then sent a delegation to Antioch to negotiate a settlement. Reynald was the only lay member of the group, which also included the Patriarch Heraclius and the Masters of the Templar and Hospitaller Military Orders. As they passed through Tripoli, they recruited Bohemond’s friend Count Raymond as well. Reynald, as Bohemond’s stepfather, would have been important in the negotiations, which successfully ended the crisis. Bohemond agreed to return Church property and to go back to his first wife. He did the former, and was forgiven by Patriarch Aimery, but he never got back together with Theodora. Sybille remained his consort for life, presumably influencing Bohemond to follow her master’s wishes, and keeping Saladin up to date with Antioch’s state secrets the entire time.
Reynald took advantage of his trip to Antioch to wrap up another piece of diplomacy – arranging the marriage of his stepdaughter Isabelle of Toron, daughter of Stephanie de Milly and her first husband, to the Armenian prince Roupen of Cilicia. Amongst other things, this alliance may well have improved relations between the Armenians and the regime of Reynald’s stepson Bohemond in neighbouring Antioch. We are told that Reynald, indulging one of his favourite talents – matchmaking – for the last time, negotiated this marriage with his customary enthusiasm.
Then, in November 1181, the Zengid ruler of Aleppo, Al-Malik al-Salih, died from a sudden illness. Poison was suspected. With the death of the rightful heir of Nur al-Din, the way was open for Saladin to overwhelm the Zengid forces and finally capture Aleppo. Frustratingly for the Franks, they had a truce in place with Saladin and were in no position to hinder his movements.
But Reynald cared little for truces. He had other ideas.
* For instance, William Clito, grandson of William the Conqueror, captured a caravan of 4,000 camels while on crusade.
** The Byzantine Emperor Heraclius had won the True Cross back from the Persians in AD 628.
The Pilgrim Road, Arabia, December 1181
Near the oasis of Tabuk, where the Syrian Desert blends into the Arabian, wormwood into tamarisk, a column of mailed horsemen moved purposefully down a wide trail. They were heading south along the Darb al-Hajj, the pilgrim road. The path is easy to follow, a wide, darker-brown rut in the arid waste, worn down by the shuffling tread of pilgrims and their caravans since the foundation of Islam.
Bedouin guided this party, but fell horsemen like these had never been seen on the Hajj route before. They were infidels, Christians, knights. At their head, on his warhorse, swaying easily in the saddle, rode Reynald de Chatillon.
Already his raiders had taken prisoners and booty, weighing down their baggage camels. Now they were hunting richer prey – an immense caravan not far ahead on the trail.
As they rode through the landscape of rock and sand, across the tracks of ostrich and oryx, Reynald’s thoughts ranged still further ahead. The guides had told him that the road beyond Tabuk was long and hard, but he knew that it lay open, unprotected, all the way to Tayma, the gateway to the Hejaz and to the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina.
Prince Arnat was breaking the truce, and in a way that no Muslim could ignore.
Chapter 14
DESERT RAIDER
And I do not care for Monday, or Tuesday, or weeks or months or years, nor for April or May do I stop planning how harm may come to those who do me wrong.
Bertran de Born
Restlessness is one of the many character traits that is consistent between the pre- and post-prison Reynald. As long as he was at liberty, the prince was never one to sit quietly in his lair. In the winter of 1181–2 he launched his startling raid down the pilgrim trail, deep into that desert ‘of which the saying goes: “He who enters it is lost, and he who leaves it is born”’.1
Unusually heavy rains had carpeted the dry country with grass, providing enough grazing to support the Frankish horses, even in the deep desert. And so, led by his Bedouin allies, Reynald struck south into La Grande Berrie, further than any Frankish force had ever dared. They plundered at least as far as Tabuk, 130 miles beyond Aila. Tayma, ‘the vestibule of Medina’, was only a few days’ ride along the trail.
When the shocking news reached Damascus, Saladin’s governor, Farrukh-Shah, was obliged to hurry south with a large force to the southern borders of the Frankish territories. They ravaged some of Oultrejordan, then took up positions across Reynald’s line of retreat from Arabia. Reynald in turn abandoned his raid and turned back to protect his fief.
Why would Reynald have launched this chevauchée, possibly breaking a truce in the process and exposing the kingdom to Saladin’s retaliation? The obvious motive – one that came naturally to Reynald – was to win booty, but this raid was not simply the act of a short-sighted robber baron. With Saladin’s forces poised to seize Aleppo for the sultan, Reynald realized that prompt action was called for. Respecting the truce would have left the Franks powerless to interfere. This was the moment Reynald chose to launch his raid. Bernard Hamilton sees this operation as a strategic move to divert Saladin’s forces from Aleppo.2 And, indeed, when the sultan ordered his army from Damascus to Oultrejordan, Saladin’s rival, the Zengid Izz al-Din, was able to take charge of Aleppo unopposed. Reynald’s strategy of keeping the military pressure on Saladin was roundly justified.
The raid also had considerable impact beyond the military sphere, and maybe we see here the fruit of many years of Reynald’s imprisonment. If not evidence of a profound hatred of Islam, it feels very much like the beginnings of a long-planned revenge. Certainly the raid should be seen as a conscious strike at the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, which is one of the five pillars of the Islamic faith. This was certainly how the Muslims saw it. Arnat’s ‘evil plan’, wrote the great Muslim historian Ibn al-Athir, was ‘to march overland to Tayma and from there to the City of the Prophet [Medina]’.3 Muslims were appalled that: ‘The insolent master of [Kerak] dared to invade the Hejaz and spread his impious nets across the pilgrim route.’4
Reynald well understood the significance of the pilgrimage to Muslims. He knew that this incursion would require a response and would call into question Saladin’s religious credentials, which were key to his prestige. A vital component of these credentials was how well the sultan protected the Holy Cities and the pilgrimage routes that led towards them. By attacking the Hajj, while Saladin remained focused on his contest with the Muslim Zengids, Reynald raised questions about Saladin’s dedication to Islam and the jihad, as opposed to his own dynastic interests.
The raid was a spectacular success. It had the strategic effect of keeping Aleppo out of Saladin’s grasp, won substantial booty, damaged the sultan’s authority and disrupted the Hajj. The overland route to the Holy Cities had been blocked. Ibn Jubayr, who made the Hajj in 1183, was not able to reach Mecca by land. He complained that the road from Egypt to Mecca was via Aila, but that Reynald had barred the route: ‘the Franks have near to it a garrisoned castle which prevents men from passing it’.5
So the attack struck home, shaming and enraging Saladin. Even for some Franks it was too much provocation. The chronicler Ernoul’s version of this period describes how Reynald plundered a great caravan in violation of the truce, and that this was the cause of Saladin’s subsequent attacks on the Latin Kingdom. Ernoul adds that the booty from the raid added up to a staggering 200,000 bezants. Saladin complained to the King of Jerusalem, demanding restitution, but when Baldwin asked Reynald to release his prisoners and return the spoils, the Lord of Kerak simply defied him. Ernoul’s account here is muddled, though. For the year 1183 he tells what appears to be the identical story again, and both tales may reflect a later adven
ture of Reynald’s with another caravan. If this caravan were captured in 1181, it must have fallen victim to Reynald’s raid.
It is not even conclusive that Reynald actually broke the truce with Saladin in 1181. William of Tyre, usually scrupulous in these matters, wrote that Saladin himself was actually responsible for breaching the truce, when he illegally seized 1,600 passengers and the valuable cargo of a Frankish ship forced ashore by a storm in Egypt. William mentions reports of Reynald taking ‘certain Arabs’ prisoner and not releasing them at Saladin’s demand, but he clearly did not see this as a breach of the king’s truce with Saladin.
Whether Reynald violated the truce or not, Saladin waited for the agreement to expire before attacking the kingdom of Jerusalem. In May 1182 he marched from Egypt, heading for Syria. Thousands of civilians took the chance to travel with his army for safety – a sure sign of how effectively Reynald’s activities had scared off normal caravan traffic. As Saladin approached Oultrejordan, Reynald persuaded King Baldwin to take the army to Kerak to block the sultan’s advance. Raymond of Tripoli, never keen to help Reynald, disagreed, arguing that this would leave the north of the kingdom dangerously exposed. The Frankish host forced Saladin to skirt Oultrejordan, but Raymond’s fears were realized when the forces of Damascus launched a raid through Galilee, sacking some villages and capturing the cliff fortress of the Cave de Sueth.
In July 1182, the sultan invaded Galilee with a great host. Led by King Baldwin IV and the True Cross, the army of Jerusalem marched to meet the invaders, mustering as usual by the ancient wells of Sephora. On 15 July, in heat so intense that many on both sides died of sunstroke, including one of the canons attending the True Cross, the Franks offered battle near the fort of Le Forbelet. Veteran Frankish soldiers said they had never seen such a large Muslim army, estimating the number at 20,000. With just 700 knights and an unknown number of sergeants, the Franks were severely outnumbered, but with their charismatic leper-king at their head, they were a determined, unified force and their internal rivalries were forgotten. It was a savage fight. The Franks suffered substantial casualties amongst the lower ranks, but only a few knights were killed. The Muslims fared worse and buried their dead after dark to hide their losses. Saladin was forced to retire across the Jordan ‘with great anguish in his heart’.