A History of the Crusades-Vol 3 (30 page)

The decision removed from Filangieri the
vestige of authority that had made the barons hesitate to attack him in Tyre.
On the appointment of Thomas of Acerra, he himself had just been summoned back
to Italy by the Emperor; and he had left his city under the command of his
brother Lothair. On 9 June Lothair was ordered by the parliament at Acre to
surrender Tyre to the Regents. On his refusal Balian of Ibelin and Philip of
Montfort, with contingents from the Venetians and the Genoese, marched on the
city. Lothair put his faith in the great walls, which had successfully defied
Saladin himself. But the local citizens were weary of Filangieri, and offered
to open the postern of the Butchers, close by the sea. On the night of 12 June
Balian and his men crept round over the rocks to the postern and were let in.
They then opened the main gates to their allies. Once they had occupied the
houses of the Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights, the city was theirs,
except for the citadel, on the south, to which Lothair retired. It was a
formidable fortress; and for four weeks the Imperialists held out. But by an
unlucky chance the ship that was carrying Richard Filangieri to Italy was
forced by bad weather to turn back. Richard landed unsuspecting at the port of
Tyre and fell straight into his enemies’ hands. They carried him bound to the
gate of the citadel and threatened to hang him unless the garrison surrendered.
Lothair refused till he saw the rope tightening round his brother’s neck; then
he accepted the easy terms offered by the victors. The brothers were allowed to
go free with their households and their possessions. Lothair retired to
Tripoli, where Bohemond V received him well. He was joined there by Thomas of
Acerra. Richard conscientiously returned to his Imperial master, who promptly
threw him into gaol. With the Filangieri gone, Jerusalem and Ascalon passed
officially with Tyre into the Regents’ hands.

1243: Treaty with Ismail of Damascus

Ralph of Soissons had confidently expected
that the control of the captured city would be given to the Regents. But Philip
of Montfort desired Tyre for himself, to round off his fief of Toron; and the
Ibelins gave him their support. When Ralph angrily demanded the city, the
barons with cynical amusement replied that they would hold it in trust
themselves till it was certain to whom it should belong. Ralph suddenly
realized that he was intended to be a mere figurehead. In his humiliation and
disgust he promptly left the Holy Land and returned to France. Queen Alice, whose
fifty years of life had taught her patience, remained as titular regent till
she died in 1246.

The triumph of the barons meant the
triumph of Templar over Hospitaller foreign policy. Negotiations were reopened
with the Court of Damascus. Ayub of Egypt had recently quarrelled with an-Nasir
of Kerak and was alarmed at the Frankish defection. When Ismail of Damascus,
with the approval of an-Nasir, offered the Franks to withdraw from the Temple
area at Jerusalem the Moslem priests whose presence there had been guaranteed
by Frederick II, Ayub at once made the same offer. By skilfully playing off the
Moslem princes against each other, the Templars, who were managing the
transaction, secured the approval of them all to the restoration of the area to
the Christian cult. The Grand Master, Armand of Perigord, wrote
enthusiastically to Europe at the end of 1243 to relate the happy result and to
announce that the Order was now busily refortifying the Holy City. It was the
last diplomatic triumph of Outremer.

The Emperor Frederick wrote rather acidly
to Richard of Cornwall to comment on the Order’s readiness to seek a Moslem
alliance, when it had denounced him for so doing.

The success encouraged the Templars. When
war broke out between Ayub and Ismail in the spring of 1244, they persuaded the
barons to intervene actively on the latter’s behalf. An-Nasir of Kerak and the
young Prince of Homs, al-Mansur Ibrahim, had both joined Ismail; and al-Mansur
Ibrahim came in person to Acre to seal the alliance and to offer on the allies’
behalf a share of Egypt to the Franks, when Ayub should be defeated. The Moslem
prince was received with great honour. The Templars provided most of the
entertainment.

But Ayub was not to be so easily defeated.
He had found allies that were more effective than the Franks. The Khwarismian
Turks, ever since the death of Jelal ad-Din, their king, had been wandering
through the Jezireh and northern Syria, raiding and pillaging as they went. A
coalition of the Ayubite princes of Syria had attempted to control them in 1241
and had severely beaten them in a battle not far from Edessa. But the
Khwarismians then established their headquarters in the countryside between
Edessa and Harran, and were still prepared to sell their services. Ayub had
been in touch with them for some time, and now he invited them to invade the
territory of Damascus and Palestine.

1244: Final Loss of Jerusalem

In June 1244 the Khwarismian horsemen, ten
thousand strong, swept down into Damascene territory, ravaging the land and
burning the villages. Damascus itself was too strong for them to attack, so
they rode on into Galilee, past the town of Tiberias, which they captured, and
southward through Nablus towards Jerusalem. The Franks suddenly realized the
danger. The newly elected Patriarch, Robert, hastened to the city with the
Grand Masters of the Temple and the Hospital, and reinforced the garrison in
the fortifications that the Templars had just rebuilt, but they did not
themselves dare to remain there. On 11 July the Khwarismians broke into the
city. There was fighting in the streets, but they forced their way to the
Armenian convent of St James and massacred the monks and nuns. The Frankish
governor was killed in making a sortie from the citadel, together with the
Preceptor of the Hospital. But the garrison held out. No help came from the
Franks; so they appealed to their nearest Moslem ally, an-Nasir of Kerak.
An-Nasir had no liking for the Christians and had resented the necessity of
their alliance. So, after sending some troops which cowed the Khwarismians into
offering the garrison a safe-conduct to the coast if they would surrender the
citadel, he then dissociated himself from its fate. On 23 August some six thousand
Christian men, women and children marched out of the city, leaving it to the
Khwarismians. As they moved along the road towards Jaffa, some of them looked
back and saw Frankish sags waving on the towers. Thinking that somehow rescue
had arrived, many insisted on returning towards the city, only to fall into an
ambush under the walls. Some two thousand perished. The remainder, as they
journeyed down to the sea, were attacked by Arab bandits. Only three hundred
reached Jaffa.

Thus Jerusalem passed finally from the
Franks. Nearly seven centuries passed before a Christian army would once again
enter its gates. The Khwarismians showed little mercy to the city. They broke
into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. A few old Latin priests had refused to
leave the city and were celebrating Mass there. These were slain, as well as
the priests of the native denominations that were there. The bones of the Kings
of Jerusalem were torn up from their tombs, and the church itself set on fire,
Houses and shops throughout the city were pillaged, and churches burned. Then,
when the whole place was desolate, the Khwarismians swept on, to join the
Egyptian army at Gaza.

While the Khwarismians sacked Jerusalem,
the knights of Outremer had been gathering outside Acre. There the armies of Homs
and Damascus joined them, under the command of al-Mansur Ibrahim of Homs; and
an-Nasir brought up the army of Kerak. On 4 October 1244, the allied forces began
to march south-ward, along the coast road. Though an-Nasir and his Bedouins kept
themselves apart, there was perfect comradeship between the Franks and
al-Mansur Ibrahim and his men. The Christian army was the largest that Outremer
had put into the field since the fatal day of Hattin. There were six hundred
lay horsemen, led by Philip of Montfort, lord of Toron and Tyre, and Walter of
Brienne, Count of Jaffa. The Temple and the Hospital both sent over three
hundred of their Orders, under the two Grand Masters, Armand of Perigord and
William of Chateauneuf. There was a contingent
from
the Teutonic Order. Bohemond of Antioch
sent his cousins, John and William of Botrun, and John of Ham, Constable of
Tripoli. The Patriarch Robert himself accompanied the army, with the Archbishop
of Tyre and Ralph, Bishop of Ramleh. There was a proportionate number of
sergeants and foot-soldiers. The troops under al-Mansur Ibrahim’s command were
probably more numerous, but lighter armed. An-Nasir seems to have provided
Bedouin cavalry.

The Egyptian army lay before Gaza, under
the command of a young Mameluk emir, Rukn ad-Din Baibars. It consisted of five
thousand picked Egyptian soldiers and the Khwarismian horde. The opposing
armies made contact on 17 October at the village of Herbiya, or La Forbie, on
the sandy plain a few miles north-east of Gaza. The allies hastily held a
council of war. Al-Mansur Ibrahim recommended that they should stay where they
were, fortifying their camp against any Khwarismian attack. He calculated that
the Khwarismians would soon grow impatient. They disliked attacking a strong position;
and the Egyptian army could not attack without them. With good luck, the whole
Egyptian army might soon retire to Egypt. Many of the Christians agreed with
him; but Walter of Jaffa eagerly urged an immediate attack. Their forces were
superior in number; it was a glorious opportunity for destroying the
Khwarismian menace and humiliating Ayub. He had his way; and the whole army
moved out to the attack. The Franks were on the right flank, then came the
Damascenes and the men of Horns in the centre, and an-Nazir on the left.

1244: Disaster at La Forbie

While the Egyptian troops held the
Frankish attack, the Khwarismians charged down upon their Moslem allies.
Al-Mansur Ibrahim and his men from Horns stood their ground, but the Damascene
troops could not withstand the shock. They turned and fled, and with them
an-Nasir and his army. While al-Mansur Ibrahim fought his way out, the
Khwarismians turned and swooped on to the flank of the Christians, driving them
against the Egyptian regiments. The Franks fought bravely but in vain. Within a
few hours their whole army was destroyed. Amongst the dead were the Grand
Master of the Temple, and its Marshal, the Archbishop of Tyre, the Bishop of
Ramleh and the two young lords of Botrun. The Count of Jaffa, the Grand Master
of the Hospital and the Constable of Tripoli were taken prisoner. Philip of
Montfort escaped with the Patriarch back to Ascalon, where they were joined by
the survivors of the Orders, thirty-three Templars, twenty-six Hospitallers and
three Teutonic Knights. They went on by sea to Jaffa. The number of the dead
was estimated as being not less than 5000 and probably far more. Eight hundred
prisoners were taken back to Egypt.

The victorious army marched at once on
Ascalon, which was now garrisoned by the Hospital. Its fortifications proved
their value. The Egyptians’ assaults failed, and they settled down to blockade
it, bringing up ships from Egypt to watch the coast. Meanwhile the Khwarismians
hurried to Jaffa with its captive Count, whom they threatened to hang unless
the garrison surrendered. But he shouted to his men to hold firm. The
fortifications were too formidable for the Khwarismians. They retired with
their prisoner whose life they spared. He died later in captivity, after a
brawl with an Egyptian emir, with whom he was playing chess.

The disaster at Gaza robbed the Franks of
all the precarious gains that diplomacy had won for them during the last
decades. It is unlikely that Jerusalem and Galilee could have been held against
any serious Moslem attack, but the loss of manpower left Outremer quite unable
to defend more than the coastal districts and a few of the strongest inland
castles. Only at Hattin had the losses been greater. There was, however, a
difference between Hattin and Gaza. The victor of the earlier battle, Saladin,
was already master of all Syria and Egypt. Ayub of Egypt still had to overcome
his rival of Damascus before he could venture to finish with the Christians.
This delay saved Outremer.

The Khwarismians had hoped that as a reward
for their help Ayub would settle them in rich lands in Egypt. But he refused to
allow them across the frontier and posted troops there to see that they
remained in Syria. They turned back to raid Palestine, as far as the suburbs of
Acre, then moved inland to join the Egyptians at the siege of Damascus. The
Egyptian army, under the emir Mu’in ad-Din, marched up through central
Palestine, depriving an-Nasir of Kerak of all of his lands west of the Jordan
and eventually arrived before Damascus in April 1245. The siege lasted for six
months. Ismail of Damascus cut out the dykes that held in the river Barada and
the land outside the walls was an impenetrable marsh. But the tight blockade
organized by the Egyptians soon caused unrest amongst the merchants and
shopkeepers. Early in October Ismail came to terms. He yielded up Damascus in
return for a vassal-principality consisting of Baalbek and the Hauran. But the
Khwarismians were still left unrewarded. They therefore decided to abandon Ayub’s
cause and early in 1246 offered their services to Ismail. With their help he
returned towards Damascus and laid siege to the city. He had hoped that other
Ayubite princes would join him against Ayub; but they disliked the Khwarismians
more. The Regent of Aleppo and the Prince of Horns, subsidized by Ayub, sent an
army to the relief of Damascus. Ismail and his allies raised the siege and came
northward, and met the relieving force early in May, somewhere on the road from
Baalbek to Horns. He was severely defeated and the Khwarismians almost
annihilated. Those that survived found their way to the East, to join up with
the Mongols, while the head of their leader was carried in triumph through the
streets of Aleppo. The whole Arab world rejoiced at their disappearance. Ayub’s
possession of Damascus was confirmed. Ismail was restricted once more back to
Baalbek, and the Ayubites of the north recognized Ayub’s seniority. He could
give his attention again to the Franks.

1247: Loss of Ascalon

On 17 June 1247, an Egyptian army captured
Tiberias and its castle, which Odo of Montbeliard had recently rebuilt. Mount
Thabor and the castle of Belvoir were occupied soon afterwards. The army moved
next to the siege of Ascalon. The fortifications which Hugh of Burgundy had
constructed were in good condition, and there was a strong garrison of
Hospitallers. Further help was summoned from Acre and from Cyprus. King Henry
of Cyprus at once sent a squadron of eight galleys with a hundred knights under
his Seneschal, Baldwin of Ibelin, to Acre, where the Commune, with the aid of
the Italian colonists, had fitted out seven more galleys and fifty lighter
vessels. The Egyptians had brought up a fleet of twenty-one galleys which was
blockading the town and which now sailed out to meet the Christians. But before
contact was made it ran into a sudden Mediterranean storm. Many of the ships
were driven ashore and wrecked; the survivors sailed back to Egypt. The
Christian fleet was able to sail on unmolested to Ascalon and revictual the
garrison and land the knights. But the bad weather continued, and the ships
could not remain in the unprotected anchorage off the town. They returned to
Acre and left Ascalon to its fate. The besieging army had been handicapped by a
lack of wood for siege-engines; but the wreckage of their ships scattered along
the shore provided them with all the material that they needed. A great
battering-ram forced a passage-way under the walls right into the citadel; and
on 15 October the Egyptian army poured through. The defenders were taken by
surprise. Most of them were killed outright, and the remainder taken prisoner.
By the Sultan’s orders the fortress was dismantled and left desolate. Ayub did
not follow up his victory. He paid a visit to Jerusalem, whose walls he ordered
to be reconstructed, and then passed on to hold court in Damascus. He was in
residence there over the winter of 1248 and the spring of 1249, and all the
Moslem princes of Syria came to do him homage.

In the diminished kingdom of Outremer,
despite its losses and its lack of a central authority, there was internal
tranquillity. Queen Alice died in 1246; and the regency passed to the next
heir, her son King Henry of Cyprus, after a protest from her half-sister, the
Dowager Princess Melisende of Antioch. King Henry, whose chief distinction was
his enormous corpulence, was not the man to assert his powers. He appointed
Balian of Ibelin as his
bailli
and confirmed Philip of Montfort in the
possession of Tyre. When Balian died in September 1247, he was succeeded as
bailli
by his brother, John of Arsuf, and as lord of Beirut by his son, another
John.

Further north, Bohemond V of Antioch and
Tripoli tried to keep himself apart as far as possible from the concerns of his
neighbours. The influence of his Italian wife, Lucienne of Segni, kept him on
good terms with the Papacy; but the number of her Roman relatives and friends
whom she invited to the East irritated his barons and was to cause him trouble
later. It was probably at the Pope’s request that he sent a contingent to the
disastrous battle of Gaza. But at the same time he kept up friendly relations
with Frederick II, and gave Lothair Filangieri and Thomas of Acerra asylum at
Tripoli, to the Pope’s annoyance, though he refused them active aid. His
quarrel with the Armenian Kingdom lasted for some years. He vainly attempted to
persuade the Pope to arrange a divorce between the young Roupenian heiress
Isabella and the new King Hethoum, in order to deprive Hethoum of his right to
the throne. But both he and Henry of Cyprus were specifically forbidden by Rome
to attack the Armenians, while Hethoum for his part was too busily engaged in
warding off the attacks of the great Seldjuk Sultan, Kaikhosrau, to be
aggressive. The marriage of Hethoum’s sister Stephanie to Henry of Cyprus in 1237
gradually paved the way to a general reconciliation.