A History of the Crusades-Vol 3 (28 page)

Even so, the position of Outremer was
precarious. Bohemond IV, Prince of Antioch and Count of Tripoli, had died in
March 1233, reconciled at last with the Church. During the wars between the
Imperialists and the barons of Outremer he had shown a remarkable suppleness.
He had at first welcomed Frederick, chiefly from his dislike of the Ibelins,
who had opposed the appointment of his son Bohemond, the husband of Queen
Alice, to the regency of Cyprus. Then, fearing Frederick’s ambition, he had changed
his policy, and, when Alice and the young Bohemond were divorced for
consanguinity, willingly agreed to a suggestion by John of Ibelin that his
youngest son, Henry, should marry Isabella of Cyprus, King Henry’s eldest
sister, a marriage that was eventually to put a Prince of Antioch on the
Cypriot throne. But at that moment Filangieri won the battle of Casal Imbert;
so Bohemond prevaricated, wishing to be on the victor’s side. It was only after
the Imperialists’ defeat in Cyprus that the marriage took place. About the same
time Bohemond reconciled himself with the Hospitallers. Their common dislike of
the Emperor Frederick had made the Temple and the Hospital co-operate for a
while, and he could not play off the one against the other. He therefore made his
own submission to the Church and asked Gerold, Patriarch of Jerusalem, to
negotiate with the Hospital for him. In return for large rents on property in
the cities of Antioch and Tripoli, the Order agreed to abandon its claim to the
privileges promised it by Raymond-Roupen and to recognize Bohemond’s feudal
rights. At the same time Gerold lifted the sentence of excommunication against
him, and sent to Rome to have the settlement confirmed; the Pope’s approval
came a few weeks after Bohemond’s death.

1233: Bohemond V of Antioch

For all his faults, Bohemond IV had been a
vigorous ruler; and even his enemies admired his culture and his learning as a
lawyer. His son, Bohemond V, was a feebler man. He was a good son of the
Church, and allowed the Pope, Gregory IX, to choose him his second wife,
Lucienne of Segni, who was of the Pope’s family. A few years later, in 1244,
profiting from his father’s experience, he obtained from Rome a guarantee that
he could only be excommunicated by the Pope in person. But he was not master in
his own principality. Antioch itself was governed by its Commune, with which he
did not enjoy his father’s popularity, probably because his friendship with
Rome displeased the strong Greek element there. He preferred therefore to
reside at his second capital, Tripoli. He had no control over the Military
Orders. Armenia, under the Hethoumians, was unfriendly. The Moslem enclave of
Lattakieh cut his dominions in two. His reign marks a rapid decline.

Frederick, who was annoyed at the time with
Bohemond IV, had excluded Antioch and Tripoli from his peace treaty with
al-Kamil. Bohemond had, however, kept the peace with his Moslem neighbours,
apart from some desultory attacks on the Assassins, whom he disliked as the
allies of the Hospital. Much to his disapproval, the Military Orders were more
incautious. The Hospitallers had provoked al-Kamil to make a raid against Krak
when he was attacking Damascus in 1228. In 1229 they made a counter-raid on
Barin; and in 1230 they combined with the Templars of Tortosa to make an attack
on Hama, where they were caught in ambush and severely defeated. Next year the
Orders made a sudden swoop on Jabala, only to hold it for a few weeks. A truce
was at last made in the spring of 1231, which lasted for two years.

Soon after his accession, Bohemond V sent
his brother Henry, together with contingents from Acre and Cyprus, to help the
Orders in another attack on Barin, which was bought off by the promise of a
tribute to be paid by Hama to the Hospital. The renewed truce lasted till 1237,
when the Templars of Baghras fell upon the unsuspecting Turcoman tribes settled
east of the Lake of Antioch. In revenge the army of Aleppo moved in force to
besiege Baghras, which was only rescued by the arrival of Bohemond himself, who
arranged to renew the truce. The Preceptor of the Temple at Antioch, William of
Montferrat, resented this humiliation, and, against Bohemond’s expressed
wishes, decided to break the truce almost as soon as it was made. In June that
year he induced his own knights, together with the lord of Jebail and a few
other lay barons, to attack the castle of Darbsaq, to the north of Baghras. The
garrison there was taken by surprise, but put up a strong resistance, while
messengers hastened to Aleppo whose governor at once dispatched a powerful
army. Some Christian captives in Darbsaq, hearing of the relieving force,
managed to send a message to William to urge him to retire. He arrogantly
ignored the warning, only to find the Moslem cavalry upon him. His small force
was routed, he himself slain and most of his comrades captured. On the news of
the disaster both the Temple and the Hospital wrote anxiously to the West for
succour; but the Moslems did not follow up their victory. After receiving the
promise of ample sums of money for the ransom of their prisoners they agreed to
renew the truce. The Orders were abashed, and they kept the peace for ten
years, with the approval of the Pope, who had been obliged to provide most of
the ransom money.

1229: Al-Kamil re-unites the Ayubite Empire

The lack of aggressive spirit fortunately
shown by the Moslems was largely due to the personality of the great Sultan
al-Kamil. Al-Kamil was a man of peace and honour. He was ready to fight and to
indulge in unscrupulous intrigue in order to unite the Ayubite dominions under
his rule; for the family quarrels and divisions were to no one’s advantage; and
he was ready to ward off attacks from the Seldjuk or the Khwarismian Turks. But
so long as the Christians caused no trouble, he would leave them in quiet. All
the Moslem princes were well aware of the commercial advantages of having the
Frankish sea-ports close to their borders. They were unwilling to risk the
dislocation of the great trade between the East and West by imprudent hostilities.
Al-Kamil in particular was anxious to secure his subjects’ material prosperity.
He was moreover, like his friend Frederick II, a man of wide intellectual
interests and curiosity; and he was more genuinely tolerant and far more kindly
than the Hohenstaufen. Though he lacked the heroic grandeur of his uncle
Saladin and the brilliant subtlety of his father al-Adil, he had more human
warmth than either. And he was an able King. Moslem contemporaries might
deplore his liking for the ‘blond men’, but they respected the justice and good
order of his government.

Al-Kamil succeeded in his ambition to
restore unity to the Ayubite world. In June 1229, his brother al-Ashraf at last
managed to oust their nephew, an-Nasir, from Damascus. An-Nasir was given as
compensation a kingdom in the Jordan valley and Transjordan, with Kerak as its
capital, to hold under al-Kamil’s effective suzerainty. Al-Ashraf kept
Damascus, but acknowledged al-Kamil’s hegemony and ceded to him lands in the
Jezireh and along the middle Euphrates. These were the provinces of the Ayubite
Empire that were most open to attack; and al-Kamil wished to have a more direct
control of them. Jelal ad-Din the Khwarismian was a very positive menace; and
behind him to the east was the unknown strength of the Mongols, while the great
Seldjuk Sultan Kaikobad was pressing eastward from Anatolia. In 1230, when
al-Ashraf was at Damascus, Jelal ad-Din captured his great fortress of Akhlat,
near Lake Van, and moved on to attack the Seldjuks. Al-Ashraf hastened northward
and made an alliance with Kaikobad. The allies decisively beat Jelal ad-Din
near Erzinjan. Attacked at the same time in the rear by the Mongols, the
Khwarismian Empire began to disintegrate. Next year Jelal ad-Din was defeated
in person by the Mongols. During his flight from the battle he was murdered on
15 August 1231 by a Kurdish peasant, whose brother he had long ago slain.

His elimination upset once more the
balance of power. The Seldjuks were left without a rival in eastern Anatolia,
and the Mongols could advance freely westward. Meanwhile the Abbasid Caliphate
of Baghdad enjoyed a few, rare, precarious months of independence. It was not
long before Kaikobad cast his eye on al-Kamil’s lands on the middle Euphrates.
From 1233 to 1235 there was continual war while Edessa, Saruj and other towns
of the province passed from one master to the other, till at last al-Kamil
re-established his position. Al-Kamil’s successes roused his relatives’
jealousy. Al-Ashraf disliked his subservient position. At Aleppo the young King
al-Aziz, az-Zahir’s son, suddenly died in 1236, and his mother Dhaifa, al-Kamil’s
sister, who took over the regency for her young grandson, az-Zahir II, feared
her brother’s ambition. A number of minor Ayubite princes shared her fears.
During the early months of 1237 al-Ashraf assembled his allies and secured the
active help of Kaikobad. A civil war seemed inevitable when, early in the
summer, Kaikobad died, and al-Ashraf fell dangerously ill. His death on 27
August dissolved the conspiracy. A younger brother, as-Salih Ismail, took over
Damascus and tried to reunite the conspirators, in vain. With the aid of
an-Nasir of Kerak, al-Kamil marched on Damascus in January 1238, and annexed
it. As-Salih Ismail was compensated with an appanage at Baalbek. But al-Kamil
did not long survive his triumph. Two months later, on 8 March, he died at
Damascus, aged sixty.

1239: Civil Wars among the Ayubites

His death let loose civil war. His elder
son, as-Salih Ayub, whose mother was a Sudanese slave, was in the north, but
marched at once on Damascus, where one of al-Kamil’s nephews, al-Jawad, had
seized power. With the help of Khwarismian freebooters he dislodged his cousin.
Meanwhile his younger brother, al-Adil II, was installed as Sultan in Egypt.
Ayub was determined to have his father’s richest province, but when he set out
to invade Egypt a sudden
coup d’etat
in Damascus dethroned him in favour
of his uncle as-Salih Ismail. As Ayub fled southward he fell into the hands of
an-Nasir of Kerak, who, however, joined his cause and lent his troops for the
invasion of Egypt. It was an easy task; for al-Adil offended his ministers by
entrusting the government to a young negro whom he adored. A successful plot
deposed him in June 1240; and Ayub was invited to take over the Egyptian
throne. An-Nasir was rewarded with the post of military governor of Palestine.
But Ismail remained master of Damascus; and for the next decade the Ayubite
world was torn by the rivalry between uncle and nephew. The north was soon in
chaos. Leaderless Khwarismians roamed ravaging through northern Syria,
nominally under the orders of Ayub. In the Jezireh the Ayubite prince of
Mayyafaraqin, al-Muzaffar, kept small authority. Ayub’s son, Turanshah,
attempted to hold his grandfather’s lands together, but many of the towns fell
into the hands of the Seldjuk Sultan, Kaikhosrau II. In Aleppo an-Nasir Yusuf,
who had succeeded his brother in 1236, remained on the defensive, while the
princes of Hama and Homs were fully occupied in warding off the Khwarismians.

It was in the midst of these convulsions
that the treaty made between Frederick II and al-Kamil came to an end. In
preparation for this, Pope Gregory IX had sent out in the summer of 1239 agents
to preach the Crusade in France and England. Neither the French nor the English
King felt ready to respond in person to his appeal, but they gave every
encouragement to the preachers. By the early summer a distinguished company of
French nobles was ready to sail for the East. At their head was Tibald of Champagne,
King of Navarre, the nephew of Henry of Champagne and cousin therefore to the
Kings of France, England and Cyprus. With him were the Duke of Burgundy, Hugh
IV, Peter Mauclerc, Count of Brittany, the Counts of Bar, Nevers, Montfort,
Joigny and Sancerre, and many lesser lords. The number of infantrymen was less
than might have been expected, considering the eminence of the leaders; but the
whole expedition was formidable.

Tibald had hoped to embark with his
comrades at Brindisi; but wars between the Emperor and the Pope made travel
through Italy difficult; and the Emperor, in whose dominions Brindisi lay, was
not pleased by the Crusade. He considered himself ruler of Palestine for his
young son, and an expedition to help his kingdom should have been organized
under his authority. He could not approve of French nobles whose instinct would
certainly be to support the barons of Outremer against him. Moreover, aware of
the position in the Moslem world, he hoped to drive a good bargain for the
kingdom by diplomacy. The coming of these rash impatient knights would ruin any
such negotiations. But, owing to his troubles in Italy he could not afford to
send men himself to control them. He secured a promise that nothing would be
done till the truce came to an end in August, then dissociated himself from the
whole affair. The Crusaders were therefore obliged to embark from Aigues-Mortes
and Marseilles.

1239: Tibald of Champagne’s Crusade

The Crusade had a stormy voyage through
the Mediterranean, some of its ships being driven to Cyprus and some even back
to Sicily. But Tibald himself arrived at Acre on 1 September; and during the
next few days an army of about a thousand knights had assembled there. A
Council was held at once to decide how best this army could be used. Besides
the visiting princes the chief local barons were present, with representatives
from the Military Orders, while the Archbishop of Tyre, Peter of Sargines,
deputized for the Patriarch of Jerusalem. It was a moment for diplomatic
enterprise. The quarrels between al-Kamil’s heirs offered to the Christians the
opportunity of using their new strength as a bargaining point and to obtain
handsome concessions from one or other of the warring factions. But the
Crusaders had come to fight; they would not follow Frederick II’s disgraceful
example. The local barons therefore recommended an expedition against Egypt.
This would not only cause no offence to their immediate Moslem neighbours in
Syria, but in view of the Sultan al-Adil’s known unpopularity promised a good
chance of success. Others maintained that Damascus was the enemy; the army
should fortify the Galilean castles, then march on against the Syrian capital.
But Tibald desired a plurality of victories. He decided that the army would
first attack the Egyptian outposts of Ascalon and Gaza, probably on the
suggestion of the Count of Jaffa, Walter of Brienne, who did not belong to the
Ibelin family faction; then, when the southern frontier was secure, he would
attack Damascus. On the news of his decision messengers hurried round the
Ayubite Courts, to arrange a temporary armistice between the Moslem princes.