A History of the Crusades-Vol 2 (51 page)

1174: Death of
King Amalric

Nur ed-Din’s heir was his son, Malik as-Salih
Ismail, a boy of eleven, who had been with him at Damascus. There the emir Ibn
al-Muqaddam, backed by the boy’s mother, seized the regency, while Gumushtekin,
governor of Aleppo, which had been Nur ed-Din’s chief capital, proclaimed
himself there as regent. The boy’s cousin, Saif ed-Din of Mosul, intervened to
annex Nisibin and all the Jezireh as far as Edessa. Saladin, as the governor of
Nur ed-Din’s richest province, wrote to Damascus to claim that the regency was
his. But he was powerless at the moment to follow up his claim. The collapse of
Moslem unity offered the Franks a chance that Amalric was swift to take. In
June he marched on Banyas. Al-Muqaddam came out from Damascus to meet him and,
probably as Amalric intended, at once proposed to buy him off with the promise
of a large sum of money, the release of all the Frankish prisoners at Damascus
and an alliance in the future against Saladin.
Amalric, who was
beginning to suffer from an attack of dysentery, accepted the proposals. After
a pact was signed he rode back through Tiberias and Nablus to Jerusalem,
refusing the comfort of a litter. He arrived there seriously ill. Greek and
Syrian doctors were summoned to his bedside, and he told them to bleed him and
give him a purge. They refused, for they thought him too weak to stand the
strain. So he had recourse to his own Frankish doctor, who had no such
scruples. The treatment seemed to do him good, but only for a day or two. On 11
July 1174, he died, at the age of thirty-eight.

If history is only a matter of challenge and
response, then the growth of Moslem unity under Zengi, Nur ed-Din and Saladin
was the inevitable reaction to the First Crusade. But fate too often
capriciously loads the dice. At the beginning of 1174 Saladin’s star seemed to
be setting. The death of Nur ed-Din and the death of Amalric, neither of them
expected, saved him and opened the gateway for his victories to come. For the
Franks of the East the death of Amalric, at such a moment, and the accidents
that had befallen his family foreboded the end of their kingdom. Amalric was
the last king of Christian Jerusalem worthy of his throne. He had made mistakes.
He had been swayed by the enthusiasm of his nobles in 1168 and by their
hesitations in 1169. He had been too ready to accept gifts of money, which his
government needed for the moment, rather than carry out a policy far-sightedly.
But his energy and his enterprise had been boundless. He had shown that neither
his vassals nor the Orders could defy him unscathed. Had he lived longer he
might have challenged the inevitability of the triumph of Islam.

BOOK V

THE TRIUMPH OF ISLAM

CHAPTER I

MOSLEM UNITY

‘
The wise shall
inherit glory: but shame shall be the promotion of fools.’
PROVERBS III, 35

To Saladin, watching anxiously in Cairo, King
Amalric’s death came as a sign of God’s favour. Shia intrigues against him had
come to a head in April when a plot to kill him was betrayed to him. He struck
at once and crucified the ring-leaders; but he could not be sure that there
were not others ready to conspire, should a Christian army come to their aid.
And in the meantime Nur ed-Din’s heritage might pass firmly into other hands.
Now, with Amalric dead, there was no danger of an invasion by land. A Sicilian
fleet was, it is true, in the offing; for King William II had heard neither of
the collapse of the Shia conspiracy nor of the death of Amalric. On 25 July
1174 the Sicilians, with two hundred and eighty-four ships to convey their men,
their beasts and their provisions, under Tancred, Count of Lecce, appeared
suddenly before Alexandria. But they found themselves deprived of the support
on which they had counted; and they had already refused to countenance any help
from the Emperor, for William had quarrelled with Manuel, who had offered him
the hand of his daughter Maria and then had withdrawn the offer; and anyhow he
wished to show that he could do better than the Byzantines in 1169. On their
failure to surprise the city and on Saladin’s approach with an army, they took
to their ships again and sailed away on 1 August. Saladin was free now to march
into Syria.

Ibn al-Muqaddam, governor at Damascus, was
frightened and appealed to the Franks for help. His fear increased when the
young as-Salih fled with his mother to Aleppo to the more vigorous guardianship
of Gumushtekin. Ibn al-Muqaddam next appealed to Saif ed-Din of Mosul to come
to his rescue; but Saif ed-Din preferred to consolidate his gains in the
Jezireh. The people of Damascus then insisted on their governor summoning
Saladin. Saladin set out at once, with seven hundred picked horsemen. He rode
swiftly through Oultrejourdain where the Franks made no attempt to stop him,
and arrived at Damascus on 26 November. He was received there with joy. He
spent the night at his father’s old house. Next morning Ibn al-Muqaddam opened
the citadel gates to him. He installed his brother Toghtekin as governor in
as-Salih’s name and, after delighting the Damascenes by generous gifts to them
from as-Salih’s treasury, marched on northward against Gumushtekin.

1174:
Raymond
of Tripoli Regent

King Amalric’s death had left the Franks
powerless to intervene. The only remaining prince of the royal house was the
thirteen-year old leper, Baldwin. His sister Sibylla, a year older, was still
unmarried. His step-mother, Queen Maria Comnena, had only given birth to
daughters, of whom one had died and the other, Isabella, was aged two. The
barons accepted Baldwin as their king without demur. Four days after his father’s
death he was crowned by the Patriarch. No regent was appointed. The Seneschal,
Miles of Plancy, the late King’s closest friend and lord in his wife’s right of
the great fief of Oultrejourdain, carried on the government. But Miles was
unpopular, particularly amongst the locally-born aristocracy, with whose
support Count Raymond of Tripoli claimed the regency. Next to the King’s
sisters Raymond was his closest relative on the royal side of the family. His
mother, Hodierna of Jerusalem, had been Amalric’s aunt. Though Bohemond of
Antioch was descended from Hodierna’s elder sister, Alice, he was a generation
further away from the Crown. Moreover, he lived far off; whereas Raymond had
recently married the second great heiress in the Kingdom, Eschiva of Bures,
Princess of Galilee, widow of Walter of Saint-Omer. Raymond’s supporters, led
by the old Constable, Humphrey II of Toron, by the Ibelin family and by Reynald
of Sidon, insisted on his rights being heard before the High Court. Miles
prevaricated for as long as he could, but had to yield. Late in the autumn
Raymond was installed as Regent. A few weeks later Miles, who had taken his
fall from power with an ill grace, was assassinated one dark night in the
streets of Acre.

Raymond was now aged thirty-four, a tall, thin
man, dark-haired and dark-skinned, his face dominated by a great nose, in
character cold and self-controlled and a little ungenerous. There was nothing
in him of the enthusiastic chivalry of the early Crusaders. During his long
years in captivity he had read deeply, he had learnt Arabic and he had studied
the ways of the Moslems. He saw the problems of the Frankish states from a
local standpoint. He was interested in their survival, not in their role as the
spearhead of aggressive Christendom. He was able and ably supported by his
friends, but he was only regent and he had enemies.

His regency began a cleavage within the
kingdom. There had been factions before, especially in the days of Queen
Melisende. But they had been short-lived. The Crown had kept control. Now two
definite parties arose, the one composed of the native barons and the Hospitallers,
following the leadership of Count Raymond, seeking an understanding with their
foreign neighbours and unwilling to embark on risky adventures; the other
composed of newcomers from the West and the Templars. This party was aggressive
and militantly Christian; and it found its leaders in 1175, when at last
Reynald of Chatillon was released from his Moslem prison, together with
Joscelin of Edessa, a Count without a county, whom fate had turned into an
adventurer. Personal animosities were even stronger than differences in policy.
Most of the nobles now were cousins of each other; and family quarrels are
always the most bitter. The two wives of King Amalric hated each other. Agnes
of Courtenay, Count Joscelin’s sister, had married twice since her divorce. Her
next husband, Hugh of Ibelin, had died a few years after the marriage; his
successor, Reynald of Sidon, was glad to discover that he, like Amalric, was
too closely related to his wife and secured an annulment. While Agnes sided
with her brother and the Templars, he joined the other party. Queen Maria
Comnena was soon remarried, to Hugh of Ibelin’s brother Balian, to whom she
brought her dower-fief of Nablus. This marriage was happy; and the
Dowager-Queen played a great role in her husband’s party. Reynald of Chatillon,
a few months after his release, married the heiress of Oultrejourdain,
Stephanie, the widow of Miles of Plancy, who considered Count Raymond to be her
husband’s murderer. Raymond’s long quarrel with the Templars began on a
personal question. A Flemish knight, Gerard of Ridfort, came to Tripoli in 1173
and took service under the Count, who promised him the hand of the first
suitable heiress in his county. But when the lord of Botrun died a few months
later, leaving his lands to his daughter Lucia, Raymond ignored Gerard’s claim
and gave her to a rich Pisan called Plivano, who ungallantly put the girl on to
a weighing-machine and offered the Count her weight in gold. Gerard, angry and
disappointed, joined the Order of the Temple and soon became its most
influential member and its seneschal. He never forgave Raymond.

1174: Saladin
attacks Aleppo

The young King, precociously aware of the
intrigues around him, tried to hold the balance between the parties. Raymond
remained his regent for three years; but ties of kinship drew him closer to the
Courtenays. He made his uncle Joscelin seneschal in 1176; and his mother, the
Lady Agnes, returned to the Court. Her influence was disastrous. She was
vicious and greedy, insatiable for men and for money. She had not been allowed
to bring up her children. Baldwin had been given to the care of William of Tyre
and Sibylla to that of her great-aunt, the Princess-Abbess Joveta of Bethany.
But now she began to interfere in their lives. Baldwin listened to her, against
his better judgment; and Sibylla fell under her domination.

Raymond’s first duty as regent was to curb the
growth of Saladin’s power. The Franks had been unable to prevent the union of
Damascus with Cairo; but at least Aleppo was still separate. As soon as
reinforcements came from Egypt Saladin had marched to Aleppo from Damascus. On
9 December 1174 he entered Homs and left troops to invest the castle, which
held out against him. He passed on through Hama to Aleppo. When Gumushtekin
closed the gates in his face, he began a regular siege of the city, on 30
December. The citizens were half inclined to surrender to him; but the young
as-Salih came down himself into their midst and pleaded with them to preserve
him from the man who had filched his heritage. Touched by his plight the
defenders never flagged. Meanwhile Gumushtekin sent for help from the Assassins
and from the Franks. A few days later some Assassins were found in the heart of
Saladin’s camp, at his very tent. They were slain after a desperate defence. On
1 February Count Raymond and a Frankish army appeared before Homs, and with the
help of the castle garrison began to attack the city walls. This had the
desired effect. Saladin raised the siege of Aleppo and came hurrying south.
Raymond did not stay to meet him. For the next month Saladin was held up by the
siege of the castle of Homs. By April he was master of all Syria as far north
as Hama; but Aleppo was still independent. In gratitude to the Franks
Gumushtekin released Reynald of Chatillon and Joscelin of Courtenay and all the
other Christian prisoners languishing in the dungeons of Aleppo.

Saladin’s successes roused Nur ed-Din’s nephew,
Saif ed-Din of Mosul, who sent his brother, Izz ed-Din, with a large army into
Syria to join Gumushtekin. Saladin, hoping perhaps to cause trouble between
Aleppo and Mosul, offered to cede to Gumushtekin Hama and Homs. The offer was
rejected. But the allied army was caught in a ravine amongst the hills north of
Hama and cut to pieces by Saladin’s veterans. Saladin did not feel strong
enough to follow up his victory. A truce was arranged, which allowed Saladin to
occupy a few towns north of Hama but otherwise left things as they were.

Saladin now threw off his alleged vassaldom to
as-Salih. He had, he said, done his best to serve him loyally, but as-Salih had
preferred other counsellors and rejected his help. He therefore took the title
of King of Egypt and Syria and struck coins in his own name alone. The Caliph
at Baghdad graciously approved and sent royal robes that reached him at Hama in
May.

1176: Saladin
defeats Saif ed-Din of Mosul

The truce with the house of Zengi was
short-lived. In March 1176 Saif ed-Din of Mosul himself crossed the Euphrates
with a large army and joined with Gumushtekin’s troops outside Aleppo. Saladin,
whose army had been reinforced again from Egypt, went up to meet him. An
eclipse of the sun on 11 April alarmed his men as they crossed the Orontes near
Hama; and they were caught by surprise ten days later by Saif ed-Din, as they
were watering their horses. But Saif ed-Din hesitated to attack at once. Next
morning, when Saif ed-Din brought all his forces up to attack Saladin’s camp on
the Mound of the Sultan, some twenty miles south of Aleppo, it was too late.
Their first onrush almost succeeded; but Saladin counter-charged at the head of
his reserves and broke the enemy’s lines. By evening he was master of the
field. The treasure that Saif ed-Din had left in his camp on fleeing was all
given by Saladin to reward his own men. The prisoners that were taken were well
treated and soon sent back to their homes. His generosity and clemency made an
excellent impression.