A History of the Crusades-Vol 3 (27 page)

Filangieri did not attempt to follow up
his victory, but retired with all his booty to Tyre, leaving a contingent to
guard the pass of the Ladder of Tyre. John of Ibelin, hearing of the disaster,
hastened up from Acre and rescued his sons, but when he tried to catch up with
the heavily laden enemy he was held at the pass. He returned to Acre. Meanwhile
Filangieri crossed to Cyprus with reinforcements for Barlais. John thereupon
confiscated all the ships in the harbour of Acre, while King Henry offered
fiefs in Cyprus to local knights and even to Syrian merchants if they would
join him, and arranged that the Genoese should give help in return for freedom
from tolls and the right to have their own quarters and courts in Nicosia,
Famagusta and Paphos. Money was short; but John of Caesarea and the younger
John of Ibelin, Philip’s son, sold property in Caesarea and Acre to the
Templars and the Hospitallers and loaned the 31,000 besants that they raised to
the King.

Thus equipped, John and King Henry set
sail from Acre on 30 May. They called at Sidon to pick up Balian of Ibelin, on
his way from his embassy at Tripoli, and crossed to Famagusta. Filangieri’s
Lombards were in the town, with over 2000 horsemen, while the Ibelins had only
233. Nevertheless John risked landing his main troops after dark on a rocky
islet, just to the south of the harbour. It was unguarded as no one thought
that horses could be put ashore there. Then a small detachment in boats forced
its way into the harbour, with such loud cries that the Lombards thought a
great army to be upon them. They fired their own ships and hastily left the town.
In the morning, when the Ibelin army crossed the rocks to the mainland,
Famagusta was deserted.

John stayed there long enough for the King
to fulfil his promise to the Genoese by signing a treaty with them which
allotted them a quarter. Then the army set out for Nicosia. The Lombards had
made themselves unpopular on the island by brutal behaviour, and they feared
that the peasants would rise against them. As they retired before the Ibelins
they burnt all the granaries where the new harvest had just been stored. They
decided not to hold Nicosia but moved along the road that goes over the hills
to Kyrenia, where they would be in touch with Filangieri himself, who was
besieging Dieu d’Amour, and where they would have their rear protected by
Kyrenia, which they held. The garrison of Dieu d’Amour was known to be starving
and on the point of surrender. If Filangieri could hold his enemies till the
castle was in his power, together with the King’s two sisters who were within
it, he would be in a strong position for bargaining with the King.

The Ibelins moved slowly to Nicosia,
suffering from lack of food; but in Nicosia itself they found large stores,
overlooked by the Lombards. John was so suspicious of this that he would not
camp within the city but led his army on at once on is June towards Kyrenia,
intending to camp at Agridi, just below the pass. Fearing an attack at any
moment it marched in battle array. John’s son Balian should have led the
vanguard, but he had been excommunicated for marrying his cousin Eschiva, the
gallant lady who watched the whole campaign from her eyrie at Buffavento, and
his father would not allow him a high command. The first company was therefore
commanded by his brother Hugh, with Anselm of Brie. John’s third son, Baldwin,
commanded the second company, John of Caesarea the third, and John of Ibelin
himself the rearguard, with his other sons and the King. They were a small
army, so short of horses that the knights’ squires had to fight on foot. To the
Lombards, looking down from the top of the pass, where the track from Dieu d’Amour
joins the road, they seemed contemptible. The order was given to attack them
without delay.

1232: Battle of Agridi

The first troop of Lombard horses came
thundering down the hill under the command of Walter, Count of Manupello. It
passed along the flank of the Ibelin army but could not break its lines, and
then it was carried on by the momentum of the charge into the plain below. John
forbade his men to pursue them; and the Lombards did not venture to turn and
ride up the steep slope, but galloped on eastward, never stopping till they
reached Gastria. The second Lombard troop, under Walter’s brother Berard,
charged straight into the lines commanded by Hugh of Ibelin and Anselm of Brie.
But the rough rocky hillside was difficult for the horses. Many stumbled and
threw their riders, who were too heavily armed to regain their feet. The Ibelin
knights fought mainly on foot, and though outnumbered soon mastered the enemy.
Berard of Manupello was killed by Anselm himself. Filangieri, waiting at the
head of the pass, had intended to come down to Berard’s rescue; but suddenly
Balian of Ibelin appeared with a handful of knights, who had ridden up from the
rear of the Ibelin army by a mountainous track to the west of the road, and
charged into Filangieri’s camp. Here again the Lombards had the superiority in
numbers, and Balian was hard pressed. His father refused to detach troops for
his assistance; but soon Filangieri lost his nerve, finding that Manupello’s
divisions were not returning, and led his men off in disorder down to Kyrenia.

Dieu d’Amour was relieved, its besiegers
fleeing south-westward into the plain, where, when darkness fell, they were
surprised and captured by Philip of Novara. Walter of Manupello reached Gastria,
but the Templars, who held the castle, refused to admit him, and he was
captured, hiding in the fosse, by John, son of Philip of Ibelin. Meanwhile John
of Beirut marched on to besiege Filangieri in Kyrenia.

The siege of Kyrenia lasted for ten months.
The Ibelins lacked ships at first, whereas Filangieri had a squadron that kept
in touch with Tyre. It was not until the Genoese could be induced to help once
more that it was possible to blockade the fortress from the sea. Before the
blockade was complete, Filangieri fled with Amalric Barlais, Amalric of Beisan
and Hugh of Jebail, going first to Armenia to try, vainly, to secure aid from
King Hethoum, then to Tyre, and eventually to Italy, to report to the Emperor.
The Lombards in Kyrenia, under Philip Chenart, put up a vigorous defence. In
the course of the fighting the young Ibelin lords were all of them wounded, and
the staunch warrior, Anselm of Brie, whom John of Beirut nicknamed his ‘red
lion’, was struck by an iron shaft and died after six months of agony. Amongst
the refugees within Kyrenia was Alice of Montferrat, the Italian princess whom
Frederick had chosen to be the bride of King Henry. She had been married by
proxy and it is doubtful if she had ever seen her husband, having arrived in
Cyprus escorted by the imperialists after the King had joined the Ibelins.
During the siege she was taken ill and died; and the fighting was interrupted
while her corpse, dressed as became a Queen, was ceremoniously handed over and
borne to Nicosia for a royal burial by the husband who had never known her
living.

Kyrenia surrendered in April 123 3. The
defenders, with their personal belongings, were allowed to retire to Tyre, and
the prisoners captured by the Ibelins were exchanged for those held by
Filangieri at Tyre. Cyprus was now wholly restored to the rule of Henry and his
Ibelin cousins. The King’s loyal vassals were rewarded, and loans that they had
made were repaid. The island entered into an era of peace, marred only by the
attempts of the Latin Church hierarchy, in spite of the opposition of the lay
barons, to suppress any of the Greek clergy who would not admit their authority
or who would not conform with their usages. The more obstinately disobedient of
the Greek monks were even burnt at the stake.

1233: Maugastel appointed Bailli

Though Cyprus was pacified, Filangieri
still held Tyre on the mainland, and, Frederick was still legal ruler of
Jerusalem for his young son. When Frederick learned, possibly from Filangieri
himself, of the failure of his policy, he sent letters to Acre, by the hand of
the Bishop of Sidon, who had been visiting Rome, cancelling Filangieri’s
appointment as
bailli
and appointing in his stead a Syrian noble, Philip
of Maugastel. If he had hoped to appease the barons by naming a local lord, he
was disappointed; for Maugastel was an effeminate young man whose intimacy with
Filangieri had given rise to scandal. And Filangieri was left in possession of
Tyre. Kyrenia had not yet been captured when the news of the appointment
reached John of Beirut. He at once hurried across to Acre. There Balian of
Sidon and Odo of Montbeliard had been prepared to accept Maugastel, and had
arranged that oaths should be taken to him in the Church of the Holy Cross, but
John of Caesarea rose when the ceremony opened and declared the proceedings
illegal. The Emperor could not cancel by his own whim arrangements made before
the High Court. An angry dispute began; and John sounded the tocsin of the
Commune of Acre, summoning its members to his aid. A furious crowd rushed into
the church. It was only John’s personal intervention that saved Balian and Odo
from death at its hands, while Maugastel fled in terror to Tyre. John was
re-elected mayor of the Commune and became in fact the ruler of the kingdom,
except for Tyre, which Filangieri ruled in the Emperor’s name, and Jerusalem
itself, which seems to have been under a direct representative of the Emperor.
It is probable that Balian of Sidon remained nominal
bailli,
but in fact
the High Court accepted John’s leadership till some new legal arrangement
should be made. Two envoys, Philip of Troyes and Henry of Nazareth, were sent
to Rome to explain the barons’ and the Commune’s actions; but Hermann of Salza,
the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, who was there, saw that they were not
given a fair hearing. The Pope was still" on good terms with Frederick and
was anxious to restore his authority in the East. In 1233 he sent the
Archbishop of Ravenna as his Legate to Acre, but the Archbishop only
recommended that Filangieri’s authority should be obeyed; which was
unacceptable. The barons in return sent a jurist, Geoffrey Le Tor, to Rome.
Pope Gregory was beginning to quarrel with the Emperor again, but was
determined to act correctly. In February 1236, he wrote to Frederick and to the
barons, saying that Filangieri must be accepted as
bailli,
but that Odo
of Montbeliard should assist him till September, when Bohemond of Antioch
should be appointed
bailli.
As Frederick and Conrad were legal rulers,
the barons had acted wrongly, but all should be forgiven except the Ibelins,
who must stand trial before the High Court. The Commune of Acre must be
dissolved.

These terms were unacceptable to the
barons and the Commune, who ignored them. At this juncture John of Ibelin died,
as the result of a riding accident. The Old Lord of Beirut, as his
contemporaries called him, had been the dominant figure of the Frankish East.
Of his high personal qualities no one could have any doubt. He was courageous,
honourable and correct, and his blameless character did much to strengthen the
barons’ cause. But for him Frederick might well have succeeded in establishing
an autocracy in both Cyprus and the Syrian kingdom; and, though the barons’
government tended to be haphazard, it is hard to see how autocratic rule would
have been an improvement. Frederick himself was too far away to control it; and
he was a bad judge of men. Absolutist government in the hands of a man such as
Richard Filangieri would have soon brought disaster. The better solution was
what the Pope himself recommended, the union of the mainland government with
Cyprus. But the legalism of the barons which made them oppose the autocracy of
Frederick would not allow them to have any king other than their lawful
sovereign, his son Conrad. Union with Cyprus must wait till it should be
authorized by the hand of God. The barons’ attitude was consistent and correct.
But in the meantime it legalized anarchy.

CHAPTER
IV

LEGALIZED
ANARCHY

‘The law made nothing perfect.’
HEBREWS VII, 19

The death of the Old Lord of Beirut
deprived Outremer of its natural leader. No other Frankish baron was ever to
enjoy again such a high prestige. But he had fulfilled his role. He had founded
an alliance between the baronage and the Commune of Acre, and he had given them
a common policy based on their legal rights. Of his four sons two remained on
the Syrian mainland, Balian, who succeeded to Beirut, and John, who inherited
his mother’s fief of Arsuf, and two took over the family estates in Cyprus,
both making politic marriages that reunited the nobility of the kingdom;
Baldwin, who became Seneschal, married the sister of Amalric of Beisan, and
Guy, who became Constable, the daughter and heiress of the arch-rebel, Amalric
Barlais. The Old Lord’s nephew, another John, later to become Count of Jaffa,
and the author of the
Assizes of Jerusalem,
was the leading lawyer in
the kingdom. Their cousin, Balian of Sidon, still acted as
bailli,
together
with Odo of Montbeliard, but the failure of his policy of compromise had
lessened his authority. The most vigorous among the barons was another cousin,
Philip of Montfort, son of Helvis of Ibelin and her second husband, Guy of
Montfort, brother of that Simon who led the Albigensian Crusade. Philip had
recently married the Armenian Princess Maria, daughter of Raymond-Roupen, who
was heiress of Toron through her great-grandmother, sister of its last lord.
Yet another cousin, John of Caesarea, son of Margaret of Ibelin, completed the
family party that now dominated Outremer. It was a tribute to the Old Lord’s
posthumous reputation that his sons and nephews were ready to work together in
amity; and they were further united by their hatred of Filangieri, who still
held Tyre for the Emperor.