A History of the Crusades-Vol 3 (18 page)

Meanwhile hatred had been sown between
Eastern and Western Christendom. The bland hopes of Pope Innocent and the
complacent boasts of the Crusaders that they had ended the schism and united
the Church were never fulfilled. Instead, their barbarity left a memory that
would never be forgiven them. Later, East Christian potentates might advocate
union with Rome in the fond expectation that union would bring a united front
against the Turks. But their people would not follow them. They could not
forget the Fourth Crusade. It was perhaps inevitable that the Church of Rome
and the great Eastern Churches should drift apart; but the whole Crusading
movement had embittered their relations, and henceforward, whatever a few
princes might try to achieve, in the hearts of the East Christians the schism
was complete, irremediable and final.

CHAPTER
II

THE
FIFTH CRUSADE

‘Can two walk together, except they be agreed?’
AMOS III, 3

The failure of the Fourth Crusade to send
material help to Palestine was not without its compensations. For over ten
years the little kingdom was left in peace. The truce that King Amalric had
arranged with the Sultan held good. Without Western aid the Franks could not
venture to break it, while al-Adil was sufficiently busy keeping together his
own dominions not to trouble himself over the conquest of a state that was
harmless, whereas if he were to attack it, he might well provoke a Crusade. For
three years John of Ibelin was able to rule undisturbed as regent for his niece
Queen Maria.

In 1208 the Queen reached the age of
seventeen, and it was time to find a husband. An embassy consisting of Florent,
Bishop of Acre, and Aymar, lord of Caesarea, was sent to France to ask King
Philip to provide a candidate. It was hoped that the offer of a crown would
lure some rich and vigorous prince to come to the rescue of the Frankish East.
But it was not so easy to find a bridegroom. At last, in the spring of 1210,
Philip announced that a knight from Champagne, called John of Brienne, had
accepted the position.

1210: John of Brienne King of Jerusalem

It was a disappointing choice. John was a
penniless younger son who had already reached the age of sixty. His elder
brother Walter had married King Tancred of Sicily’s eldest daughter and had put
in an ineffectual claim to the Sicilian throne; but John had spent his life in
comparative obscurity as one of the French King’s commanders. It was rumoured
that he was chosen now because of a love-intrigue with the Countess Blanche of
Champagne which was scandalizing the Court. But, apart from his poverty, he was
not ill-fitted for the post. He had a wide knowledge of international politics,
and his age was guarantee that he would not embark on rash adventures. To make
him more acceptable King Philip and Pope Innocent each gave him a dower of
40,000 silver pounds.

Meanwhile, till he should arrive, John of
Ibelin carried on the government. In July
1210
the truce with al-Adil came to an end, and
the Sultan sent to Acre to suggest its renewal. John of Ibelin presided over a
Council at which he recommended the acceptance of the offer; and he was
supported by the Grand Master of the Hospital, Guerin of Montaigu, and the
Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, Hermann Bardt. But the Grand Master of
the Temple, Philip of Le Plessiez, persuaded the bishops to insist on rejecting
the suggestion, on the legal ground that the future King could not be bound by
any new truce. There was little actual fighting. Al-Adil sent his son, al-Mu’azzam,
with a few troops to Mount Thabor and their presence there kept the Franks in
check.

John of Brienne landed at Acre on 13
September 1210. Next day the Patriarch Albert of Jerusalem married him to Queen
Maria; and on 3 October the royal pair were crowned at Tyre.

The new King soon became popular. He
showed tact in the handling of his vassals and the Military Orders and caution
in his dealings with the Moslems. While the court was at Tyre for the coronation
al-Mu’azzam had raided the suburbs of Acre but had not ventured to attack the
city itself. Early next summer John allowed some of his vassals to combine with
the Templars on an expedition by sea to the Damietta mouth of the Nile; but it
was ineffectual. A few months later he accepted a fresh offer from al-Adil to
sign a truce for five years, which came into force in July
1212.
In the meantime messages were sent by the
King to Rome, to ask that a new Crusade should be ready to come to Palestine as
soon as the truce should expire.

The same year the young Queen died, after
giving birth to a daughter called Isabella after her grandmother, but more
usually known as Yolanda. Her death made John’s judicial position doubtful. He
had reigned as the Queen’s husband. Now the kingdom had passed to Yolanda; and
her father had no legal right. But he was her father, and he was accepted as
natural regent of the kingdom, at least until she should marry. He continued to
govern the country in peace till the coming of the next Crusade. To console
himself in his widowhood he married in 1214 the Princess Stephanie of Armenia,
daughter of Leo II. She proved a bad stepmother; and gossip attributed her
death in 1219 to the severe beating that John had given her for having tried to
poison the child Yolanda.

The neighbouring Latin states were less
fortunate than the kingdom of Acre. In Cyprus King Amalric had been succeeded
by his ten-year-old son Hugh, and the regency was given to Walter of
Montbeliard, a French knight who had been Amalric’s constable and had married
Hugh’s eldest sister Burgundia. He was an unsuccessful regent, who involved the
island in an unhappy war with the Turks; and when he handed over the power to
his brother-in-law in 1210 he was forcibly exiled on the suspicion of gross
peculation during his period of office. King Hugh was now fifteen. Two years
previously he had married his stepsister, Alice of Jerusalem, according to the
arrangement made by their respective fathers. The negotiations for the actual
marriage were conducted by the bride’s grandmother, Queen Maria Comnena, and
the dowry was provided by Blanche of Navarre, Countess of Champagne, widow of
the bride’s uncle. She feared that unless Alice and her sister were both safely
married in the East, one of them might come and claim the county of Champagne from
her own infant son. King Hugh was a youth with a fiery temper, whose relations
with his neighbours, his vassals, his Church and the Papacy were consistently
stormy. But he provided his kingdom with a firm government.

1201: The Succession at Antioch

The situation in the Principality of
Antioch was far stormier. Bohemond, Count of Tripoli, had established himself
there on his father Bohemond III’s death in 1201, in defiance of the rights of
his nephew, Raymond-Roupen. Raymond’s maternal great-uncle, Leo of Armenia,
continued to press his cause. Complications were introduced by Leo’s quarrel
with the Templars, whose castle of Baghras he refused to return. The
Hospitallers therefore sided with him against Bohemond. Bohemond, however,
could call on the help of the Seldjuk Turks, with whom Leo was perpetually at
war; and az-Zahir of Aleppo was always ready to send him reinforcements.
Al-Adil was therefore hostile to Bohemond. The Kings of Jerusalem and Cyprus
were inconstant in their sympathies. Religious problems added to the chaos. In
the interests of the whole Crusading movement it was essential that the
question of the Antiochene succession should be settled; and Pope Innocent felt
it his duty to intervene. Two of his legates, Sofred of Saint-Praxedis and
Peter of Saint-Marcel, in turn, then together, attempted to hear the case; but
while Leo was verbally deferential to Rome, he refused to make peace with the
Templars by the cession of Baghras, as the Pope bade him. Bohemond on the other
hand denied the Pope’s right to take notice of a purely feudal question. Soon
after Bohemond III’s death the Patriarch Peter of Antioch had joined Leo’s
party, for which neither Bohemond IV nor the Commune of Antioch, which was
strongly anti-Armenian, forgave him. But in 1203 Leo had written to the Pope to
ask that the Armenian Church should be put directly under the jurisdiction of
Rome; and in 1205 the Patriarch quarrelled with the Papal Legate Peter of
Saint-Marcel over the appointment of the Archdeacon of Antioch. The Patriarch
found himself without friends; and Bohemond could take vengeance on him.

Bohemond himself had his troubles. Though
he held Antioch and had the support of the Commune, his power in the
countryside was restricted. His county of Tripoli was disturbed at the end of
1204 by the revolt of Renoart, lord of Nephin, who had married the heiress of
Akkar without Bohemond’s leave. Several lords joined him, including Ralph of
Tiberias, whose brother Otto was now at Leo’s court; and the rebels had the
sympathy of King Amalric. While Bohemond sought to suppress the revolt, Leo
laid siege to Antioch and only retired when an army sent by az-Zahir of Aleppo
came to Bohemond’s help. After Amalric’s death John of Ibelin withdrew any
support for the rebels, whom Bohemond defeated at the end of the year, after
losing an eye during the campaign. Meanwhile, to show that Antioch as a lay
state was outside of the Pope’s jurisdiction, he announced that its overlord
had always been the Emperor of Constantinople. When Maria of Champagne, wife of
the new Latin Emperor Baldwin, visited Palestine in 1204 on her way to join her
husband, he journeyed to Acre to pay her homage.

1206: A Greek Patriarch at Antioch

In 1206, irritated now both with the Pope
and with his Patriarch, Bohemond deposed the latter, and summoned the titular
Greek Patriarch, Symeon II, to take his place. It is probable that Symeon was
already living in Antioch; and it is certain that Bohemond’s move was supported
if not suggested by the Commune. Despite a century of Frankish rule the Greek
element in Antioch was still large and prosperous, and, in the course of time,
many of the Latin merchant families must have intermarried with Greeks. They
all hated the Armenians; and the Pope’s flirtation with Leo turned them against
Rome. Bohemond for his part, now that Byzantium could no longer menace him, was
very ready to favour a Church whose traditions enjoined deference to the
secular prince. It was ironical that the restoration of the Greek Patriarchate,
for which the Byzantine Emperors of the last century had fought so hard, should
have been achieved after the destruction of Byzantium by the Latins. The Latin
Patriarch Peter at once made up his quarrel with the Legate, who restored to
him his power of excommunication which had been questioned. With the full
approval of Rome he excommunicated the Prince and the Commune. They answered by
crowding to the Greek churches in the city. The Latin Patriarch then resorted
to plots. Towards the end of the next year, 1207, he introduced some knights
that were faithful to him into the city by night. They managed to capture the
lower city but Bohemond collected his forces in the citadel and soon drove them
out. The Patriarch Peter, whose complicity was patent, was tried for treason
and thrown into prison. No food nor water was given to him there. In despair he
swallowed the oil from his lamp and died in agony.

Pope Innocent began to weary of the
interminable struggle, and handed the responsibility of settling it to the
Patriarch of Jerusalem. In 1208 Leo angrily devastated the country round
Antioch while Tripoli was invaded by al-Adil’s forces, who had come, unfairly,
to avenge an attack by some Cypriots on Moslem merchants, and an aggressive
raid by the Hospitallers. Bohemond saved himself by calling in the Seldjuks against
Leo, while the Pope appealed to az-Zahir of Aleppo to save Antioch from the
Greeks. There followed a diplomatic revolution. The Patriarch of Jerusalem,
Albert, was a friend of Bohemond’s allies, the Templars. He offended Leo by
insisting that the first preliminary to any settlement must be the return of
Baghras to the Order. Meanwhile Bohemond agreed to accept a new Latin
Patriarch, Peter of Locedio, in Antioch. Leo therefore forgot his obedience to
Rome. He ostentatiously made an alliance with the Greek Emperor at Nicaea; he
welcomed the Greek Patriarch of Antioch, Symeon, to Cilicia, and he gave much
of the Latin church lands there to the Greeks. But at the same time he sought
the friendship of Hugh of Cyprus, whose sister Helvis was married to Raymond-Roupen,
and he gave castles in Cilicia to the Teutonic Order. The struggle went on.

In 1213 Bohemond’s eldest son, Raymond,
who was aged eighteen, was murdered by a band of Assassins in the cathedral of
Tortosa. It seems that the murderers were instigated by the Hospitallers, to
whom the Assassins now paid tribute. The Patriarch Albert of Jerusalem, another
enemy of the Hospitallers, was murdered by Assassins the following year.
Bohemond sought vengeance, and with a Templar reinforcement attacked the Assassin
castle of Khawabi. The Assassins appealed to az-Zahir, who in his turn appealed
to al-Adil. The siege of Khawabi was lifted, and Bohemond apologized to
az-Zahir. But az-Zahir was less ready now to support him. Moreover, rumours of
a new Crusade brought the Moslem world together. Az-Zahir began to woo the friendship
of his uncle al-Adil.

1212: The Preaching of the Children’s Crusade

Leo profited by the situation to make his
peace once more with Rome. The new Patriarch of Jerusalem, Ralph, former Bishop
of Sidon, was amenable, and the Pope was ready to forgive Leo if he would help
in the coming Crusade. John of Brienne’s marriage with Leo’s daughter Stephanie
sealed an alliance between Armenia and Acre. In 1216 Leo managed by a
successful intrigue, in which the Patriarch Peter undoubtedly helped, to
smuggle troops into Antioch and to occupy the city without a blow. Bohemond was
away at Tripoli, and his troops in the citadel soon yielded to Leo.
Raymond-Roupen was consecrated as Prince. In his joy at the successful outcome
of the long war, Leo at last gave back Baghras to the Templars and restored the
Latin church lands in Cilicia. But he paid for his victory by losing fortresses
in the west and across the Taurus to the Seldjuk Prince Kaikhaus of Konya.