by Dan Jones
The crusader armies had set out so confident of a swift triumph that they had not brought siege engines, or provisions to last more than a few days. It was calculated that fruit plundered from the orchards and water drawn from the river would sustain them, and that the maximum time needed to break the city would be a fortnight. The Christians had not reckoned on the ferocity of the Muslim defence, nor on the fact that almost as soon as their armies approached the city walls, reports began arriving of relieving forces making their way imminently to the crusader camp. ‘Large numbers of bowmen’ rode in from the Beqaa Valley, east of Beirut, to harass the besiegers, while forces from within the city started to bombard the Franks’ positions ‘with the swiftness of hawks swooping on mountain partridges’.18
What happened next would be a matter of debate for years to come. On Tuesday 27 July observers peering out from the city watchtowers saw the crusader camp fall strangely silent. Occasional sallies of horse or footsoldiers were repelled with a hail of lances and arrows, but for the most part the siege had fallen still. ‘It was thought’, wrote Ibn Al-Qalanisi, ‘that they were planning a ruse and preparing a stratagem.’
In this he was quite correct. The three kings leading the siege were taking counsel, and coming to a bold and highly controversial decision. Abruptly – and, to many, perplexingly – it was decided to abandon the offensive on the western side of the city and to move instead to a new position in the south-east, where intelligence suggested that the orchards were thinner and the walls weaker, and where victory would be faster. Rumours of several large relieving forces seem to have spooked the Frankish leadership to the point of being willing to gamble heavily on a switch in strategy to force a rapid victory.19 Their hard-won positions were abandoned and the entire army moved east. As it transpired, this was a disastrous move.
Although he was not himself present at the siege of Damascus, William of Tyre interviewed as many veterans as he could, and he painted a bleak picture of events.20 The removal of the armies caused widespread grumbling, soon amply justified by events. On arriving at their new position, the Franks found it perfectly well defended and not at all an open door to conquest. There were no orchards, it was true, but all this meant in practice was that the besieging army now went hungry. Any possibility of returning to the west side of the city had immediately been cut off, for having seen the Franks move, the city’s defenders had rushed to barricade the roads with huge rocks and felled trees, guarded by archers. The Christians could no longer go forward, for the army was not provisioned for long enough to effect a successful siege, and neither could they go back. The possibility of an attack from relieving forces grew by the hour. Somehow, the Franks had thrown away their most promising military position in years.
The leading lords assembled for a conference and concluded, after a poisonous discussion in which accusations of treachery were flung around, that the only sensible strategy was to pack up and go home. It was almost unbearably humiliating. Men had travelled thousands of miles, enduring disease, starvation, shipwreck, ambush and poverty, in the hopes of following in the footsteps of the first crusaders and winning a string of magnificent victories in the name of the Lord. But in the end, the eastern thrust of the Second Crusade had turned out to be nothing more than a four-day hack through a booby-trapped fruit-field, a few isolated skirmishes and an impotent retreat. ‘Our people’, wrote William of Tyre, drily, ‘returned without glory.’21
*
The Templars had invested a great deal in the Second Crusade. They had marched Louis VII through Asia Minor and propped up his crusade with enormous loans. They had taken Conrad III in and provided him with protection and their considered military advice. Together with the master of the Hospitallers, Robert of Craon had backed the plan to attack Damascus rather than Edessa. Their reward for all this was vanishingly slight.
After Damascus the Frankish kings briefly considered an assault on Ascalon, but it came to nothing. Conrad left the Holy Land in September 1148. Louis stayed for seven more months, celebrating Easter in Jerusalem before going home to France in late April. And then the recriminations began.
The consensus among the Frankish chroniclers was that their masters could not possibly have failed so roundly unless they had been in some way betrayed. It was a matter of accepted fact that someone had sabotaged the campaign – that was how Conrad III himself explained the disaster, although he could not pinpoint the source of the treachery. Various people were suspected: one name bandied about was that of the crusader Thierry, count of Flanders, who was thought to have coveted the lordship of Damascus for himself, arousing a jealousy among his peers that persuaded them to deliberately hobble the whole mission just to thwart him. Others said that an eastern lord called Elinandus of Tiberias had accepted a massive bribe – paid in fake treasure – to persuade his superiors to change tactics. Even King Baldwin and his mother were suspected, as men sought an earthly explanation for a military travesty that could only otherwise be attributed to the wrath of a capricious God.
The Templars, too, came under suspicion. The English polemicist and bureaucrat John of Salisbury, who served as ambassador at the papal court, expressly blamed the order for its part in the debacle, although he could not quite say what it had done. He was no supporter of the Templars, whose privileges he considered to be actively dangerous to the church, but he paid close attention to the gossip of the papal court under Eugene III, where tongues were wagging, and the Templars were often discussed.
There is no evidence to suggest that this was anything more than slander. The Templars had done their job with as much diligence and devotion as anyone could reasonably have asked of them. Their purpose was to protect pilgrims – and their role in escorting, defending, training, financing, advising and fighting alongside the pilgrims of the Second Crusade represented the highest possible demonstration of duty. They had risked their lives and courted bankruptcy in order to prop up the efforts of the crusader armies which were at times negligently, even suicidally led. To blame them for the failure of the crusade was in one sense deeply ungrateful. Yet it also showed just how intimately the Templars were now associated with the fortunes of the Holy Land and the defence of the Christian settlements there. In three decades they had become almost synonymous with the kingdom of God that had been carved out of the Islamic Near East. This was to be both their highest honour and their greatest curse.
* A mark was an accounting unit equal to two-thirds of a pound, so in this case 1,333.33 livres parisis.
7
‘The God-Forsaken Tower’
The wrecked town of Gaza lay silent and empty. It had once been among the finest cities of the Near East: a stopping point on the coastal road from Syria through Palestine to Egypt, made rich by a thriving market and renowned for its mosques, churches and massive airy houses built in marble.1 But in 1149 only its natural wells and reservoirs remained to indicate that this was once a place where people of many religions had thrived. War had swept through the elegant streets and emptied Gaza, seemingly for good. ‘It was now in ruins’, wrote William of Tyre, ‘and entirely uninhabited.’2 Its vacant and shattered buildings bore out the words of one of the city’s finest native poets, Abu Ishaq al-Ghazzi: ‘The past is gone... You have but the moment in which you exist.’3
In the winter of 1149–50 Gaza began to stir. Spades broke the earth to dig new foundations, and stonemasons cut blocks for new fortifications. The city – or a significant part of it – was rising once again. On a hill in the centre of the broken town a new castle was being erected, ‘notable for its wall and towers’. This was not just an act of urban regeneration. It was part of an aggressive new military strategy being pursued in the far south of the crusader kingdom, with the Templars at its heart. For as the new castle was erected, the brothers were being earmarked to serve as both its guardians and beneficiaries.
That winter was an unsettled moment for the knights of the Temple. Robert of Craon died on 13 January 1149, and in his place was el
ected Everard of Barres, the master in France who had served King Louis VII so diligently during the fiasco of the Second Crusade. Everard was clearly a competent financier and adept diplomat, but his heart lay in France. Like Robert of Craon, he saw more value in representing the order among its sponsors in Europe than serving in a full-time military role in Jerusalem, not least because of the sheer scale of the credit the order had extended to the French crown.
Everard returned to Paris when the royal ships set sail in the spring of 1149. He left in charge Andrew of Montbard, a middle-aged knight who had served the Templars since at least 1130. Andrew was one of eight children from a noble family in Burgundy; two of his brothers were Cistercian monks at Cîteaux,4 and he was an uncle (although a few years younger) of Bernard of Clairvaux, whom he regularly appraised by letter of the Temple’s successes and hardships in the land of the Lord. Andrew once likened his work to that of an ant, but his humility masked considerable military talent.5 During his time with the order, he had risen to the office of seneschal and was therefore the man who had ultimate responsibility for the Templar flag, the confanon bauçant or piebald banner: a simple black-and-white standard which was raised on the battlefield by another officer, the marshal, for the Templars to fight around, and which could not be lowered unless every knight on the field was dead.* Andrew of Montbard knew the politics of the Latin East well, and diligently reported events to friends back home.
Unfortunately, almost as soon as Master Everard had left for Paris, Andrew of Montbard was sending letters after him, reporting on the deaths of many brothers in defence of a blood-spattered piebald banner.
On 29 June a disastrous battle at Inab, near Antioch, saw Prince Raymond of Antioch’s forces obliterated by Zengi’s son Nur al-Din, the atabeg of Aleppo. Raymond was a controversial character, to say the least. Since travelling from Poitiers to claim Antioch by marriage to its nine-year-old heiress, he had fallen out with the king of Sicily, the Byzantine emperor and Antioch’s patriarch. He was rumoured to have seriously offended Louis VII by behaving rather too chivalrously towards Louis’ wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, who happened to be his niece. The battle of Inab marked the end of Raymond’s colourful progress: he was captured on the battlefield and beheaded. Nur al-Din sent his head to the Sunni caliph in Baghdad as a trophy.
It fell upon the kingdom of Jerusalem to stem further losses. Baldwin and his mother Queen Melisende asked the Templars to help prevent Nur al-Din’s armies from seeing in the crisis of Raymond’s death an opportunity to march on the city of Antioch. The Templars had immediately joined the king’s army, providing 120 knights and approximately 1,000 ‘well-armed squires and sergeants’. Then they raced north, wrote Andrew of Montbard, borrowing on the way 7,000 Acre bezants† and 1,000 Jerusalem bezants to fund their campaign.6
They reached Antioch, but were immediately pinned down by Muslim soldiers arriving from Iconium (modern-day Konya, in Turkey) and Khorosan (in Persia). Now they were in desperate straits and required urgent resupply and reinforcement. ‘We are writing to ask you to return to us in haste with no delay,’ Andrew told Everard:
You will never have a better reason for coming back nor could your return ever be more welcome to God, more useful to our house and the land of Jerusalem... Many in our army are dead, which is why we need you to come to us with those brothers and sergeants you know to be fit for the task. No matter how quickly you come we do not think you will find us alive, but come without delay; that is our wish, our message and our request... Venerable father, sell everything you can and bring the proceeds to us yourself so that we may live on. Farewell.
Andrew of Montbard’s letter gave a bleak picture of the military situation in Antioch as the Franks tried to resist a buoyant Nur al-Din. It also summed up much of the reality of life for the Templars in the kingdom of Jerusalem. They were expected to provide rapid-response military support wherever the enemy struck throughout the three remaining crusader states of Jerusalem, Tripoli and Antioch.
It was in the context of this wide-ranging duty that the Templars had begun to be regularly granted fortresses from which they could police the more vulnerable areas subject to Latin rule. One such was then being built on the hilltop in Gaza. ‘When it was entirely finished in all its parts,’ wrote William of Tyre, ‘it was committed by general consent to the Knights of the Temple, to be held by them in perpetuity together with all the adjacent district. This charge the brothers, brave and valiant warriors, have faithfully and wisely guarded.’7
This was high praise from William of Tyre. An erudite Latin scholar born in Jerusalem around 1130, a second-generation crusader schooled within sight of the Templar palace at the cathedral school attached to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, William had finished his education in Paris and Bologna – the two leading universities in Europe – before returning to the east to pursue a career in the church. He eventually rose to become archdeacon and finally archbishop of Tyre – a spiritual rank second only to the patriarch of Antioch. A friend of kings, a gossip and a significant political player in his own right, William of Tyre wrote several epic histories, including an account of Islam since the time of the Prophet Muhammad. From around 1170 he composed a massive Latin chronicle of the Christian east called the Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum (History of Deeds Done Beyond The Sea) – its title making it evident that it was designed for consumption in the learned circles of European courts and universities.
William shared with other western churchmen a gingerness towards the whole concept of the military orders. He particularly distrusted the Templars and he seldom missed an opportunity in his chronicle to cast doubt on their motives. In the case of Gaza, however, facts were facts: almost as soon as the Templars took possession of the castle, they beat back a Fatimid attack so effectively that no further assaults were made. The castle was essentially the first line of defence in the southernmost reaches of the kingdom of Jerusalem: an outpost of Latin influence before the coast turned uniformly hostile. The order knew the job that was expected of it in Gaza, and they did it well.
*
The new castle at Gaza was not built for its views. It was built to serve a specific policy of extending Christian influence south. Gaza lay at the extreme south-west of the Latins’ territories: south of Jaffa, Jerusalem, and, most importantly of all, Ascalon, a heavily fortified town still loyal to the Fatimids. Ascalon was a forward base on the windswept coastal road, from which assaults could be launched into Christian territory; it was also a bulwark against any advance into Egypt by the kings of Jerusalem. Conquering Ascalon promised greater safety and the possibility of consolidating Christian influence in the direction of the Sinai peninsula. A march on Ascalon had been considered but rejected by the armies of the Second Crusade both before and after the failure of the siege of Damascus, but there was now a growing sense that the city could – and should – be taken. Three years had passed before the young king Baldwin III could put that idea into full effect, preoccupied as he was by a power struggle with his mother, who did not wish to relinquish the control she had exercised during her son’s minority. But the new fortress suggested a move on Ascalon was at last underway.
The Templars’ presence in Gaza isolated Ascalon from Egypt, making the coast road unsafe and unsuitable for Fatimid troops. The only way the Shi’a Caliph in Cairo could send reinforcements to the city was by sea: a serious inconvenience as the city did not have a protected harbour, but only a sandy beach that made landings difficult except in very calm weather.8 The fortress at Gaza completed a containing circle of castles around Ascalon, under construction for a decade and a half.
About 25 miles (40 km) across the plains east of Ascalon lay Bethgibelin, a medium-sized fortress built around 1136 and given to the Knights Hospitaller.9 A short distance north of Bethgibelin were two more castles built to defend the kingdom’s southern borderlands: Ibelin and Blanchegarde, constructed in 1141 and 1142 respectively. Individually and collectively they were unsubtle statements o
f Frankish power, signalling the Christians’ intent to choke Ascalon slowly, with a noose made of stone.
*
On 25 January 1153 a flag bearing the sign of the cross flew outside the turreted walls of Ascalon, which swept in a great crescent guarding the landward side of the heavily militarized coastal city. The flag advertised the arrival of the twenty-two-year-old King Baldwin III and an excited Christian army, whose members were busy swearing oaths to harm the defenders of Ascalon as much as they could.10 The leadership of the army, a massive delegation of princes, lords, high churchmen and experienced soldiers, surveyed the imposing edifice before them as their men pitched tents in a circular camp, sub-divided into various quarters, each loyal to a different lord. Amid this bloodthirsty crowd was a sizeable delegation of Templars.
The city was a formidable target. Built in a natural basin on sandy ground planted with vines and fruit trees, its walls were lit by the winter’s sunshine during the day, while at night the masonry flickered by the flames of glass oil lamps. allowing watchful sentries to peer down at anyone who approached the four fortified gatehouses. The largest of these, known as the Jerusalem gate, indicated in its angry architecture the wariness of Ascalon’s citizens: lofty towers peered down upon a barbican with a series of smaller interior gates defending a winding passageway that led to the main entrance.