A History of the Crusades-Vol 3 (24 page)

The Empress-Queen Yolanda was less
fortunate than her father. Frederick sent her to the harem that he kept at
Palermo; and there she lived in seclusion, pining for the bright life of
Outremer. On 25 April 1228 she gave birth to a son, Conrad, and having done her
duty, she died six days later. She was not yet seventeen.

Frederick had promised the Pope first that
he would marry his bride in Syria, but at his request, made through King John
and the Master of the Teutonic Knights he was granted two years’ delay. On 25
July 1225, he met two Papal Legates at San Germano, and took an oath that he
would start out for the East in August 1227, that he would send a thousand
knights at once, and that he would deposit 100,000 ounces of gold at Rome, to
be forfeit to the Church should he break his vow. Had advice from Outremer been
taken, the Emperor’s departure would have been postponed till 1229, when the
truce with al-Kamil would end.

The promised knights were sent in the
convoy that was to bring back the future Empress. Frederick himself used his
two years of grace in an attempt to establish his rule in northern Italy and so
link up his German and south Italian lands. The determined enmity of the
Lombard League thwarted him; and he was only able to secure a working
compromise with the Lombards by wooing the Papacy with a fresh demonstration of
enthusiasm for the Crusade. But his old tutor, Pope Honorius, died in March
1227. The new Pope, Gregory IX, was cast in a grimmer mould. He was a cousin of
Innocent III, and like Innocent was a man with a clear legalistic mind and a
proud unyielding faith in the divine authority of the Papacy. Stern and ascetic
himself, he disliked Frederick as a man, and he saw that there could be no
truce between the Caesaropapism desired by the Emperor and his own conception
of his authority. Policy as well as piety demanded that Frederick should depart
for the East.

1228: Frederick embarks for the East

Frederick seemed ready to go. A party of
English and French Crusaders under the Bishops of Exeter and Winchester had
already sailed for the East. Throughout the summer of 1227 the Emperor mustered
a great army in Apulia. An epidemic of malaria enfeebled the army; but several
thousand soldiers sailed from Brindisi in August, under Henry IV, Duke of
Limburg. Frederick joined the army a few days later, and embarked on 8
September. They had hardly weighed anchor before one of his companions, Louis,
Landgrave of Thuringia, fell desperately ill. Their ship put in at Otranto,
where the Landgrave died and Frederick himself took the sickness. He left the
fleet, which he sent off to Acre under the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Gerold of
Lausanne, and went to recover his health at the spa of Pozzuoli. An envoy was
despatched to Pope Gregory at Anagni to explain the unavoidable delay. But
Gregory was unconvinced by the tale. The Emperor, he thought, was prevaricating
again. He excommunicated him at once, and repeated the sentence solemnly at St
Peter’s in November. Frederick, after issuing a dignified manifesto to the
princes of Europe denouncing Papal pretensions, went on with his preparations
for the Crusade. Though the Pope warned him that he could not lawfully set out
for the Holy War while he was under the ban of the Church, he gathered a small
company and embarked from Brindisi on 28 June 1228. The delay had, however,
altered his status; for the Empress Yolanda was dead. Frederick was no longer
King and the Queen’s husband, but guardian of the infant King Conrad, his son.
The barons of the kingdom would be entitled, if they so chose, to refuse him
the regency.

It was not with unmixed pleasure that the
rulers of the Frankish East awaited the Emperor’s coming. Bohemond of Antioch
and Tripoli was the least disquieted; for he acknowledged no overlord except,
perhaps, the Latin Emperor at Constantinople. But Frederick could claim a suzerain’s
rights over Cyprus; for it was from the Emperor Henry VI that King Amalric had
obtained his crown; and, until the death of the Empress, which was not known in
the East until about the time of his arrival, he was certainly King of
Jerusalem. He had already intervened in the affairs of the kingdom of
Jerusalem. In 1226 he sent out Thomas of Aquino, Count of Acerra, to replace
Odo of Montbeliard as regent; and Thomas showed a vigour and decision in his
dealings with the High Court that was not quite to the barons’ liking.

In Cyprus the official regent for the
child King, Henry I, was his mother, Alice of Jerusalem. She had entrusted the
government to her uncle Philip of Ibelin, the second son of Queen Maria
Comnena. The relations between the Queen and her
bailli
were not happy.
She complained that her wishes were always disregarded; and an open breach came
in 1223 when Philip refused to allow the Orthodox clergy to be robbed of their
tithes for the benefit of the Latins, as Cardinal Pelagius had recommended at a
Council held at Limassol. The Queen had agreed with the Cardinal; and when she
failed to have her way, she retired in a rage to Tripoli, where she married
Prince Bohemond’s eldest surviving son, the future Bohemond V. In 1225, when it
was certain that the Emperor seriously intended to come to the East, Philip
ordered the coronation of the eight-year-old King Henry, so that at least when
Henry came of age at fifteen a regency could not be prolonged on the ground
that he was not yet crowned. Queen Alice, though in voluntary exile, still
regarded herself as regent. Her attempt to appoint her new husband as
bailli
came to nothing because none of the barons would accept him. She then
offered it to one of the leading barons, Amalric Barlais, who, though he had
opposed Bohemond’s candidature, accepted for himself, largely because he hated
the Ibelins. But the barons, with one dissentient, declared that a
bailli
could
only be appointed with the consent of the High Court, which demanded that
Philip should continue in his post. After an open quarrel with Ibelin
adherents, Barlais retired to Tripoli to await the coming of Frederick, while
one of his friends, Gavin of Chenichy, went to join the Emperor in Italy.
Philip of Ibelin died in 1227; and the High Court invited his elder brother
John, lord of Beirut, to take his place as
bailli.
Queen Alice appears
to have confirmed his appointment.

1228: Frederick lands in Cyprus

John of Ibelin was now the greatest person
in Outremer. He was the nearest male relative in the East both of the King of Cyprus
and of the Empress-Queen Yolanda. He was rich; he owned the city of Beirut, and
his wife was heiress of Arsuf. His personal qualities won him general respect.
His birth, wealth and integrity had made him for some decades already the
accepted leader of the baronage of Outremer. Half Levantine-French and
half-Greek, he understood the East and its peoples and he was equally versed in
the history and the laws of the Frankish kingdom. The Emperor Frederick at once
sensed him to be the chief danger to his policy. Frederick too understood the
East and its peoples, from his training in Sicily. His dealings with the
Moslems were of a sort that the established barons of Outremer could follow
with sympathy, But Frederick’s conception of monarchy was not theirs. The King
of Jerusalem was by tradition a king bound by a constitution, little more than
president of the High Court and commander-in-chief. But Frederick saw himself
as an autocrat in the Roman-Byzantine manner, the repository of power and law,
God’s supreme viceroy on earth, with all the advantages that hereditary right
could give him thrown in. The Emperor of the Romans was not going to be
controlled by a few petty Frankish barons.

Barlais and his party were already in
touch with Frederick before he arrived off Limassol on 21 July 1228. On their
advice he at once summoned John of Ibelin to come with his sons and the young
King of Cyprus to meet him. John’s friends warned him of Frederick’s reputation
for perfidy; but John was courageous and correct. He would not refuse an
invitation from the suzerain of Cyprus. On his arrival with his sons and the
King, Frederick received him with honour, calling him uncle and offering him
rich gifts. He was told to lay aside the mourning that he wore for his brother
Philip, and to attend a feast given in his honour. But at the feast Frederick’s
soldiers crept in and stood behind each of the guests, with their swords drawn.
Then Frederick demanded of John that he surrender his fief of Beirut and hand
over all the revenues of Cyprus that had come in since the death of King Hugh.
John replied that Beirut had been given to him by his sister Queen Isabella,
and he would defend his right to it before the High Court of the kingdom of
Jerusalem. As for the revenues, both Philip and he had given them, as was
right, to the Regent, Queen Alice. Frederick broke into open threats, but John
stood firm. He would not have it said, he declared, that he refused to aid the
Emperor on his Crusade, but even should he be slain for it he would not break the
laws of the land. Frederick, who had only three or four thousand troops with
him, dared not risk an open breach. He demanded that twenty nobles, including
John’s two sons, should be left with him as hostages, that the King should
remain with him and that John should come with him to Palestine. In return John
and the Cypriot nobles recognized, as was correct, Frederick as suzerain of
Cyprus, but not as Regent, — for Queen Alice was the lawful Regent — and as
Regent but not as King of Jerusalem; for they knew now that Yolanda was dead
and the King was her infant son, Conrad.

1228: Frederick at Acre

The Emperor had meanwhile summoned the
leading potentates of Outremer to Cyprus. In August, Balian, Lord of Sidon,
arrived with a contingent of troops from the mainland, and soon afterwards Guy
Embriaco of Jebail, who disliked the Ibelins, and from whom, like Leopold VI of
Austria a few years previously, Frederick borrowed a large sum of money. With
these reinforcements the Emperor marched on Nicosia. On the way there he was
joined by Bohemond IV of Antioch. John of Ibelin cautiously retired to the
castle that the Greeks called the Twin Peaks, Didymi, and the Franks Dieu d’Amour
and today we call Saint Hilarion. He had already sent the ladies and the
children of his household there, with ample stores of provisions. Feudal law
laid down that, during a regency, the barons could not be ejected from castles
entrusted to them by the late monarch. Frederick did not attempt now to flout
the law. He was anxious to move on to Palestine. Balian of Sidon, who was John’s
nephew, seems to have acted as mediator. It was arranged that the King should
pay homage to the Emperor, and that all the Cypriots should swear fealty to him
as overlord. Though Alice alone was recognized as Regent, Frederick would
appoint
baillis
to govern the country, and John should come to
Palestine, to defend his right to Beirut before the High Court. All the
hostages would be released. On these terms, after oaths had been sworn to
preserve the peace, the Emperor sailed from Famagusta on 3 September,
accompanied by the King, the Ibelins and most of the barons of Cyprus. Amalric
Barlais was left as
bailli,
aided by Gavin of Chenichy and his other
friends.

Frederick had also suggested that Bohemond
should pay him homage for Tripoli and Antioch. Bohemond at once feigned a
nervous breakdown and slipped off secretly home, where he made a remarkable
recovery.

When the Emperor and his companions
arrived at Acre, John of Ibelin hurried at once to Beirut, to be sure that it
could resist an attack from the Emperor. He then returned to Acre, to defend
himself before the High Court. But Frederick did not hasten to take action.
News had reached Palestine that the Pope had excommunicated him again, for
setting out for the Crusade before he had obtained absolution from his previous
excommunication. There was some doubt therefore whether oaths of fealty sworn
to him held good; and many pious folk, including the Patriarch Gerold, refused
to co-operate with him. The Templars and the Hospitallers would have nothing to
do with an excommunicate. He could only rely on the Teutonic Knights, whose
Master, Hermann of Salza, was his friend. His own army was not large. Of the
troops that had gone out with the Duke of Limburg in 1227, many had already
returned home, from impatience or from fear of offending the Church. A few more
had sailed East with the Patriarch a month later; and Frederick had sent out in
the spring of 1228 five hundred knights under his loyal servant, the Marshal
Richard Filangieri. Even with the whole army of Outremer he could not muster an
impressive force capable of striking a decisive blow against the Moslems. To
add to his disquiet word came from Italy that his lieutenant, Duke Reynald of
Spoleto, had failed in an attack on the March of Ancona, and that the Pope was
massing forces to invade his own kingdom. Frederick could not afford to embark
on a large campaign in the East. His Crusade should be a crusade of diplomacy.

1228: Ayubite Family Quarrels

Fortunately for the Emperor, the Sultan
al-Kamil held similar views. The alliance of the three Ayubite brothers,
al-Kamil, al-Mu’azzam of Syria and al-Ashraf of the Jezireh had not long
survived their triumph over the Fifth Crusade. Al-Mu’azzam had always been
jealous of al-Kamil, and now he rightly suspected that al-Kamil and al-Ashraf
were planning to divide his lands. To the east of the Ayubites, the great
Khwarismian Empire of Jelal ad-Din was reaching its apogee. Jelal ad-Din had
driven off a Mongol invasion and now ruled from Azerbaijan to the Indus,
dominating the Caliph at Baghdad. Though the presence of the Mongols in his
rear kept him from adventuring too far into the West, he was a potential danger
to the Ayubites; and when al-Mu’azzam, to spite his brothers, called on him for
help and in 1226 recognized his suzerainty, al-Kamil was genuinely frightened.
Al-Ashraf was on the defensive, enduring a siege in his capital of Akhlat. The
Mongols at this moment were busy in China, and an appeal to them, were it
indeed a wise idea, would go unheeded. So, in the autumn of 1226, al-Kamil had
sent one of his most trusted emirs, Fakhr ad-Din ibn as-Shaikh, to Sicily, to
ask help from the Emperor Frederick. Frederick was sympathetic but made no
promises. He was then still contemplating an active Crusade. But, to keep the
negotiations open, he sent Thomas of Acerra, who was already in Palestine,
together with the Bishop of Palermo, to Cairo, with gifts and friendly messages
for the Sultan. Al-Kamil suggested, as he had done during the Fifth Crusade,
that he was ready to restore Jerusalem to the Christians. Unfortunately, it
belonged to his brother al-Mu’azzam; and when the Bishop of Palermo went to
Damascus to clinch the arrangement, al-Mu’azzam angrily replied that he was no pacifist;
he still used his sword. Meanwhile Fakhr ad-Din revisited Sicily, where he
became an intimate friend of the Emperor and received knighthood from him.
Frederick’s departure for the East, so eagerly pressed by the Pope, was equally
urged by the Sultan.