A History of the Crusades-Vol 3 (12 page)

1194: Henry’s Government

The family squabbles of the Ayubites prevented
the Moslems from taking the offensive against the renascent Frankish kingdom.
Henry of Champagne had slowly been able to restore some order there. It was not
an easy task; nor was Henry’s position entirely secure. For some reason that
cannot now be explained, he was never crowned king. He may have waited in the
fond hope of some day recovering Jerusalem; he may have found public opinion
unwilling to accept his royal title; or he may have found the Church un-cooperative.
The omission limited his authority, particularly over the Church. On the death
of the Patriarch Heraclius there had been some difficulty in finding a
successor to his throne. Eventually an obscure cleric called Radulph had been
appointed. When he died in 1194, the Canons of the Holy Sepulchre, who were now
at Acre, met together and elected as Patriarch Aymar, surnamed the Monk,
Archbishop of Caesarea, and sent to Rome to have the election confirmed. Henry,
who was displeased at the choice, complained angrily that he had not been consulted
and arrested the Canons. His action was severely criticized even by his
friends; for he was not the crowned king and therefore had no right to
intervene. His chancellor, Josias, Archbishop of Tyre, persuaded him to climb
down and to appease the Church by releasing the Canons with an apology and by
presenting the new Patriarch’s nephew with a rich fief near Acre; and at the
same time he received a sharp reproof from the Pope. Though peace was restored
the Patriarch may well have been unwilling to oblige Henry now by crowning him.
With his lay vassals Henry was more fortunate. He had the support of their
leader, Balian of Ibelin, and of the Military Orders. But Guy of Lusignan still
looked longingly from Cyprus at his former kingdom, and was encouraged by the
Pisans, to whom he had promised rich concessions and who were angry at the
favour shown by Henry to the Genoese. In May 1193, Henry discovered that the
Pisan colony at Tyre was plotting to seize the city and hand it over to Guy. He
at once arrested the ringleaders and ordered that the colony should be reduced
to thirty persons. The Pisans retaliated by raiding the coastal villages
between Tyre and Acre. Henry therefore expelled them from Acre itself. The
Constable of the kingdom was still Guy’s brother, Amalric of Lusignan, who had
been responsible for Guy’s arrival in Palestine many years before but who had
managed to establish good relations with the local baronage. His wife was
Eschiva of Ibelin, Balian’s niece and daughter of Guy’s bitterest opponent
Baldwin of Ramleh; he had not been a faithful husband in the past but he was
now reconciled to her. He intervened on behalf of the Pisans only to be
arrested himself by Henry for his interference. The Grand Masters of the
Hospital and the Temple soon persuaded Henry to release him; but he thought it
prudent to retire to Jaffa, of which King Richard had appointed his brother
Geoffrey as Governor. He did not resign from his office of Constable, but Henry
considered that he had forfeited it and in 1194 appointed as his successor John
of Ibelin, Balian’s son and Isabella’s half-brother. Peace was made about the
same time with the Pisans, whose quarter in Acre was restored to them and who
henceforward admitted Henry’s government.

1197: The Kingdom of Cyprus

A general reconciliation was made possible
by the death of King Guy in Cyprus in May 1194. His elimination left Henry
secure and deprived the Pisans and other dissidents of a rival candidate. Guy
had bequeathed his authority in Cyprus to his eldest brother Geoffrey. But
Geoffrey had returned to France; and the Franks in Cyprus had no hesitation in
summoning Amalric from Jaffa to take his place. Henry at first demanded as
representative of the Kings of Jerusalem to be consulted about the succession,
but he could not implement his claim; and both he and Amalric soon saw that
they must work together. The Constable of Cyprus, Baldwin, formerly lord of
Beisan, came to Acre and induced Henry both to recognize Amalric and to offer
to visit him in Cyprus. Their interview was very friendly, and they planned a
close alliance, binding it with the betrothal of Amalric’s three young sons,
Guy, John and Hugh, with Isabella’s three daughters, Maria of Montferrat and
Alice and Philippa of Champagne. It was thus hoped to unite their possessions
in the next generation; but two of the little Cypriot princes died too young.
The only one of the marriages to be achieved was that between Hugh and Alice,
which bore its dynastic fruit in time to come. Some such arrangement was badly
needed; for if the Frankish possession of Cyprus was to benefit the Franks in
Palestine and provide them with a secure base, the two countries must
co-operate. There was a continuous temptation not only for immigrants from the
West to settle in the pleasant island rather than in the small remnant of the
Palestinian kingdom where no fiefs were now to be found, but also for the
dispossessed baronage of Palestine itself to cross the narrow sea. If the
Cypriot lords were willing to come over the ea to fight for the Cross whenever
danger approached, then Cyprus would be an asset to the Frankish east. If there
were misunderstandings it might well become a dangerously centrifugal force.

Friendly though he was, Amalric was not
prepared to be subservient to Henry. He had already sought for himself the
title of king, in order to define clearly to his subjects and colonists, as
well as to foreign powers, the nature of his authority. But he felt in need of
some higher sanction. It must have been the past history of the Kings of
Jerusalem that made him unwilling to apply to the Pope for his crown. The
Eastern Emperor would certainly never give it to him. So, unwisely for the
future, he sent to the Western Emperor, Henry VI. The Emperor was planning a
Crusade; and a client king in the East would suit him well. In October 1195,
Amalric’s ambassador, Rainier of Jebail, did homage for the kingdom of Cyprus
on his master’s behalf to the Emperor at Gelnhausen, near Frankfurt. Amalric
was sent a royal sceptre by his suzerain; and the coronation took place in
September 1197, when the Imperial Chancellor, Conrad, Bishop of Hildesheim,
came to Nicosia to take part in the ceremony, and Amalric did homage to him.
The government of the country was planned to follow the strictly feudal practices
that had been worked out in the kingdom of Jerusalem, with a High Court
equivalent to the High Court of Jerusalem; and the laws of Jerusalem, with the
emendations made by its kings, were held to operate in the island. For
organizing his church, Amalric had recourse to the Pope; who appointed the
Archdeacon of Lattakieh and Alan, Archdeacon of Lydda and Chancellor of Cyprus,
to establish sees as they thought best. They created an Archbishopric of
Nicosia, of which Alan became the holder, and Bishoprics at Paphos, Famagusta
and Limassol. The Greek bishops were not immediately expelled, but they lost
their tithes and much of their lands to the new Latin incumbents.

Though Henry of Champagne could not obtain
control over Cyprus, the barons in his own kingdom were now loyal to him.
Indeed, his opponents retired happily to Cyprus, leaving the Palestinian lands
to his friends. The former lords of Haifa, Caesarea and Arsuf were reinstated
in their former baronies; and Saladin, before he died, presented Balian of
Ibelin with the valuable fief of Caymon, or Tel-Kaimun, on the slopes of
Carmel. The friendship of the Ibelins, his wife’s stepfather and half-brothers,
was of value in making Henry’s authority generally acceptable. A greater
problem was provided by the Principality of Antioch.

1186: Leo II of Armenia

Bohemond III of Antioch, ruler also of
Tripoli in the name of his young son, had played a rather equivocal part during
Saladin’s wars of conquest and the Third Crusade. He had made no serious effort
to prevent Saladin’s capture of his castles in the Orontes valley in 1188, nor
to recover Lattakieh and Jabala, which had been betrayed to the Moslems by his
Moslem servant, the qadi Mansur ibn Nabil. He had been glad to accept from
Saladin a truce that allowed him to keep Antioch itself and its port of Saint
Symeon. Tripoli had been saved for his son only by the intervention of the
Sicilian fleet. When Frederick of Swabia and the remnants of Barbarossa’s army
had arrived at Antioch, Bohemond made a mild suggestion that they might fight
for him against the Moslems in the north, but when they pressed on southward,
he took no active part in the Crusade, beyond paying a deferential visit to
King Richard in Cyprus. He had meanwhile changed his position with regard to Palestinian
party politics. As soon as his cousin Raymond of Tripoli was dead and he had
secured his inheritance for his own son, he gave his support to Guy of Lusignan
and his friends, probably for fear lest Conrad of Montferrat should have
designs on Tripoli. He had no wish for a strong aggressive king on his southern
border, for he was fully occupied in a quarrel with his northern neighbour, the
Roupenian prince of Armenia, Leo II, brother and heir of Roupen III.

On his accession in 1186 Leo sought an
alliance with Bohemond and recognized his suzerainty. The two princes joined to
beat off a Turcoman raid in 1187; and soon afterwards Leo married a niece of
the Princess Sibylla. About the same time he lent a large sum of money to
Bohemond. But there the friendship ended. Bohemond showed no haste to repay the
loan; and when Saladin invaded Antiochene territory, Leo remained carefully
neutral. In 1191 Saladin dismantled the great fortress of Baghras, which he had
captured from the Templars. Hardly had his workmen left before Leo came up and
reoccupied the site and rebuilt the fortress. Bohemond demanded its return to
the Templars and, when Leo refused, complained to Saladin. Saladin was too busy
elsewhere to intervene; and Leo remained in possession of Baghras. But he was
furious at Bohemond’s appeal to Saladin, and his resentment was fanned by
Bohemond’s wife, Sibylla, who hoped to use his help in securing the Antiochene
inheritance for her own son William, at the expense of her stepsons. In October
1193, Leo invited Bohemond to come to Baghras to discuss the whole question.
Bohemond arrived, accompanied by Sibylla and her son, and accepted Leo’s offer
of hospitality within the castle walls. No sooner had he entered than he was
taken prisoner by his host, with all his entourage, and was told that he would
be released only if he yielded the suzerainty over Antioch to Leo. Bohemond
ruefully accepted the terms, persuaded, perhaps, by Sibylla who hoped that Leo
as overlord of Antioch would give the succession there to her son. Bohemond’s
Marshal, Bartholomew Tirel, and Leo’s nephew-in-law, Hethoum of Sassoun, were
sent with Armenian troops to Antioch to prepare the city for the new regime.

When the delegation arrived at Antioch,
the barons there, who had no great liking for Bohemond and many of whom had
Armenian blood, were ready to accept Leo as overlord, and allowed Bartholomew
to bring the Armenian soldiers into the city and establish them in the palace.
But the bourgeois citizens, Greeks as well as Latins, were horrified. They
believed that Leo intended to govern the city himself and that Armenians would
be put over them. When an Armenian soldier spoke disrespectfully of Saint
Hilary, the French bishop to whom the palace chapel was dedicated, a cellarer
who was present began to throw stones at him. At once a riot began in the
palace and spread through the city. The Armenians were driven out and prudently
retired with Hethoum of Sassoun back to Baghras. The citizens then assembled in
the Cathedral of St Peter, with the Patriarch at their head, and proceeded to
set up a Commune to take over the administration of the city. To legalize their
position the elected members hastened to take an oath of allegiance to Bohemond’s
eldest son, Raymond, till Bohemond should return. Raymond accepted their homage
and recognized their claims. Meanwhile messengers were sent to his brother
Bohemond of Tripoli and to Henry of Champagne, begging them to come and
preserve Antioch from the Armenians.

1194: Henry and the Assassins

The episode showed that while the barons
of Antioch were ready to go even further than their cousins in Jerusalem to
identify themselves with the Christians of the East, opposition to such a
merger came from the commercial community. But the circumstances differed from
those in the Kingdom a few years before. Both the Franks and the Greeks in
Antioch considered the Armenians as barbarous mountaineers. The Latin Church,
in the person of the Patriarch, showed its sympathy with the Commune, but it is
doubtful whether it played a leading part in its inception. The Patriarch,
Radulph II, was a weak and aged man who had only recently succeeded the
redoubtable Aimery of Limoges. It is more likely that the chief instigators
were the Italian merchants, who feared for their trade under Armenian
domination. The idea of a commune was one which at that time would occur more
easily to an Italian than to a Frenchman. But whoever promoted the Commune, the
Greeks of Antioch soon played a leading part in it.

Bohemond of Tripoli hurried to Antioch in
answer to his brother’s summons; and Leo realized that he had missed his
chance. He retired with his prisoners to his capital at Sis. Early next spring
Henry of Champagne decided to intervene. It was fortunate that the Saracens
were in no state after Saladin’s death to be aggressive; but so dangerous a
situation could not be allowed to continue. As he moved northwards he was met
by an embassy from the Assassins. The Old Man of the Mountains, Sinan, had
recently died; and his successor was anxious to revive the friendship that had
existed between the sect and the Franks. He sent apologies for the murder of
Conrad of Montferrat, a crime that Henry found easy to forgive; and he invited
Henry to visit his castle at al-Kahf. There, on a rugged crest in the Nosairi
mountains, Henry was offered sumptuous entertainment. He was shown, till he
begged that the demonstration should stop, how willingly the sectaries would
kill themselves at their sheikh’s orders. He left laden, with costly gifts and
the Assassins’ friendly promise to assassinate any of his enemies whom he might
name.

From al-Kahf Henry marched up the coast to
Antioch, where he barely paused before continuing his journey into Armenia.
Leo, unwilling to face an open war, met him before Sis, ready to negotiate a
settlement. It was agreed that Bohemond should be released without any ransom,
that Baghras and the country around should be recognized as Armenian territory
and that neither prince should be suzerain of the other. To seal the treaty and
ultimately, it was hoped, to unite the principalities, Bohemond’s heir Raymond
was to marry Leo’s niece and heiress-presumptive, Alice, daughter of Roupen
III. Alice, it is true, was already married to Hethoum of Sassoun. But the
difficulty was easily overcome. Hethoum met with a sudden but timely death. The
settlement promised peace for the north; and Henry as its architect showed
himself a fit successor of the early kings of Jerusalem. He returned southward
with his prestige greatly enhanced.

1198: Leo II’s Coronation

Leo’s ambitions were not, however,
satisfied. Knowing that Amalric of Cyprus was seeking a royal crown he followed
his example. But legal opinion at the time considered that a crown could only
be granted by an Emperor or, according to the Franks, by the Pope. Byzantium,
cut off now from Cilicia and Syria by Seldjuk conquests, was no longer strong
enough for its titles to carry weight with the Franks, whom Leo wished to
impress. He therefore sent to the Western Emperor, Henry VI. Henry prevaricated.
He hoped to come soon to the East and he would look into the Armenian question
then. So Leo approached the Pope, Celestine III. He had already been in touch
with Rome in the time of Clement III, hinting at the submission of his Church
to the Papacy; for he knew that as chief of a heretic state he would never be
an acceptable overlord for Franks. His own clergy, jealous for their
independence and their creed, violently opposed the flirtation. But Leo
patiently persevered. His bishops were at last grudgingly persuaded that Papal
suzerainty would be merely nominal and would change nothing, while Pope
Celestine’s legates were told that the bishops unanimously welcomed the change.
The Pope had ordained forbearance and tact; so the legates asked no questions.
Meanwhile the Emperor Henry, who had now promised a crown to Amalric, made the
same promise to Leo, in return for a recognition of his suzerain rights over
Armenia. The actual coronation would take place on his arrival. He never
visited the East; but in January 1198, soon after his death, his Chancellor,
Conrad of Hildesheim came with the Papal legate Conrad, Archbishop of Mainz, to
Sis and was present at a great coronation ceremony. The Eastern Emperor,
Alexius Angelus, hoping to retain some influence in Cilicia, had a few months
previously sent Leo a royal crown, which was gratefully received. The Armenian
Catholicus, Gregory Abirad, placed the crown on Leo’s head, while Conrad gave
him a royal sceptre. The Orthodox Archbishop of Tarsus, the Jacobite Patriarch
and ambassadors from the Caliph all assisted at the rite, as well as many of
the nobility from Antioch. Leo could claim that his title was recognized by all
his subjects and his neighbours.

It was a great day for the Armenians, who
saw in it a revival of the ancient kingdom of the Armenians; and it completed
the integration of the Roupenian principality into the world of the Frankish
East. But it is doubtful whether Leo’s policy was in the interests of the
Armenians as a whole; for it divided off the Armenians of old Great Armenia,
the home of the race, from their southern brothers. And, after a brief spell of
glory, the Cilician Armenians were to find that in the end occidentalization
brought them very little profit.

The Archbishop Conrad’s presence in the
East was due to the determination of the Emperor Henry to launch a new Crusade.
Owing to his father Frederick’s untimely death the German contribution to the
Third Crusade had been pitiably ineffective. Henry was ambitious to make of his
empire an international reality; and his first task, as soon as he was firmly
established in Europe, must be to restore German prestige in the Holy Land.
While he himself laid plans for a great expedition that would bring the whole
Mediterranean under his control, he arranged for the early dispatch of a German
expedition to sail straight to Syria. Archbishop Conrad of Mainz and Adolf,
Count of Holstein, set out from Bari with a large company of soldiers, derived
mainly from the Rhineland and the Hohenstaufen duchies. The first contingents
arrived at Acre in August, but the leaders paused in Cyprus for Amalric’s
coronation. Henry, Duke of Brabant, with a regiment of his companions had
preceded them.

Henry of Champagne did not welcome them
gladly. He had learned from experience of the folly of provoking an unnecessary
war. His chief advisers were the Ibelins, his wife’s stepfather and
stepbrothers, and the lords of Tiberias, the stepsons of Raymond of Tripoli.
They, faithful to their family traditions, advised an understanding with the
Moslems and a delicate diplomacy playing off the sons and brothers of Saladin
against each other. The policy had been successful, and peace, vital for the
recovery of the Christian kingdom, had been maintained, in spite of the
provocation caused by the pirate emir of Beirut, Usama, whom neither al-Adil at
Damascus nor al-Aziz at Cairo could control. Beirut and Sidon were still in
Moslem hands, separating the kingdom from the county of Tripoli. Early in 1197
this gap was lessened by the recovery of Jebail. Its Dowager Lady, Stephanie of
Milly, was the niece of Reynald of Sidon, and had his gifts for dealing with
Moslems. An intrigue with the Kurdish emir there enabled her to reoccupy the
town without a struggle and to hand it over to her son.

1197: Death of Henry of Champagne

The Germans had come determined to fight.
Without stopping to consult the government of Acre, the first arrivals marched
straight into Moslem territory in Galilee. The invasion roused the Moslems.
Al-Adil, to whom the land belonged, summoned his relatives to forget their
quarrels and join him. Hardly had the Germans crossed the frontier before there
was news of al-Adil’s approach. Rumour exaggerated the size of his army; and,
without waiting to meet it, the Germans fled in panic towards Acre, the knights
deserting the infantrymen in their haste. It seemed likely that al-Adil would
march on unopposed to Acre. But Henry, on the advice of Hugh of Tiberias,
rushed up his own knights and such Italian soldiers as he could muster to
reinforce the German infantrymen; who, braver than their leaders, were ready
now to stand firm. Al-Adil was not prepared to risk a pitched battle, but was
unwilling to waste his army. He swerved southward and marched on Jaffa. Jaffa
was well fortified, but its garrison was small; and Henry could not afford to
replenish it. Amalric of Lusignan had governed the town before he went to
Cyprus. Henry now offered it back to him if he would defend it. It would be
better to have the Cypriots there than that it should pass either to the
Moslems or to the irresponsible Germans. As soon as the offer reached him,
Amalric sent one of his barons, Reynald Barlais, to take command at Jaffa and
to prepare for the coming siege. But Reynald was an easy-going man. News soon
came to Acre that he was spending his days in frivolous gaiety and had no
intention of putting up any resistance to al-Adil. Henry therefore gathered
together what troops he could spare in Acre and asked the Pisan colony there to
provide reinforcements.