A History of the Crusades-Vol 3 (43 page)

Rukn ad-Din Baibars Bundukdari was now
approaching his fiftieth year. He was a Kipchak Turk by birth, a huge man with
a brown skin, blue eyes and a loud resonant voice. When he came first to Syria
as a young slave, he was offered for sale to the emir of Hama, who examined him
and thought him too coarse a lout. But a Mameluk emir, Bundukdar, noticed him
in the market and sensed his intelligence. He was bought for the Sultan’s
Mameluk Guard. Thenceforward he had risen rapidly, and since his victory over
the Franks in 1244 he had been marked as the ablest of the Mameluk soldiers. He
now showed that he was a statesman of the highest calibre, unimpeded by any
scruple of honour, gratitude or mercy.

His first task was to establish himself as
Sultan. In Egypt he was accepted without demur, but at Damascus another Mameluk
emir, Sinjar al-Halabi, seized the power. Sinjar was popular in Damascus; and
the simultaneous attack of the Mongols on Aleppo threatened Baibars’s control
of Syria. But the Ayubite princes of Horns and Hama defeated the Mongols, while
Baibars marched on Damascus and routed Sinjar’s troops outside the city on 17
January 1261. The citizens of Damascus fought on for Sinjar, but their
resistance was stamped out. Baibars went on to deal with the Ayubites. The
Prince of Kerak was induced by pleasant promises to put himself into the Sultan’s
power and was quietly eliminated. Al-Ashraf of Horns was allowed to retain his
city till his death in 1263, when it was annexed. It was only at Hama that a
branch of the family was able to last on, closely supervised, for another three
generations. Baibars also wished to give his government a religious sanction.
Some Bedouins brought to Cairo a dark-skinned man called Ahmet whom they
declared to be the uncle of the late Caliph. Baibars pretended to verify his
genealogy and saluted him as Caliph and religious leader of Islam, but deprived
him of any material power. Ahmet, who was renamed al-Hakim, was soon sent to
recover Baghdad from the Mongols. When he was killed during his attempt, to
which Baibars gave very little support, a son of his was raised to the nominal
Caliphate. This shadowy line of doubtful Abbasids was preserved in Cairo so
long as the rule of the Mameluks lasted.

1263: Baibars in Palestine

The Sultan’s next task was to punish the
Christians who had helped the Mongols. His particular resentment was reserved
for King Hethoum of Armenia and Prince Bohemond of Antioch. In the late autumn
of 1261 he sent an army to take control of Aleppo, whose Mameluk governor had
been insubordinate, and to carry out extensive raids in Antiochene territory.
Further raids were made next summer, and the port of Saint Symeon was sacked.
Antioch itself was threatened; but Hethoum appealed to Hulagu and arrived with
a force of Mongols and Armenians in time to save it. The Mongol power in
north-east Syria was still strong enough to deter Baibars; so he had recourse
to diplomacy. The Khan Berke of the Golden Horde had by now come out openly as
a Moslem and was ready to ally himself with Baibars. One of the two Seldjuk
Sultans of Anatolia, Kaikaus, who had been deprived of his lands by an alliance
between the Mongols, the Byzantines and his own brother Kilij Arslan, had fled
to Berke’s Court and had been sent back with aid from the Golden Horde and from
Baibars, while a Turcoman chief called Karaman, now established south-east of
Konya, could be used to put permanent pressure on the Armenians.

The Franks of Acre had hoped that their
friendliness to the Mameluks at the time of the Ain Jalud campaign would
preserve them from hostile attentions. But when John of Jaffa and John of
Beirut went to his camp late in 1261 to attempt to negotiate for the return of
Frankish prisoners made during recent years and for the fulfilment of a promise
made by Sultan Aibek to restore Zirin in Galilee, or else pay an indemnity for
it, Baibars, though he seems to have liked John of Jaffa, refused to listen to
them and instead sent off all the prisoners to labour-camps. In February 1263,
John of Jaffa paid a second visit to the Sultan, who was then encamped by Mount
Thabor, and obtained the promise of a truce and an exchange of prisoners. But
neither the Temple nor the Hospital would then agree to give up the Moslems in
their possession, as they were all trained craftsmen and of material value to
the Orders. Baibars himself was shocked by such mercenary greed. He broke off
negotiations and marched into Frankish territory. After sacking Nazareth and
destroying the Church of the Virgin he made a sudden swoop on Acre, on 4 April
1263. There was severe fighting outside the walls, in which the Seneschal,
Geoffrey of Sargines, was badly wounded. But Baibars was not yet ready to
besiege the city. He retired after sacking the suburbs. It was suspected that
he had arranged to have the co-operation of Philip of Montfort and the Genoese
from Tyre, but at the last moment their Christian consciences held them back.

Raids and counter-raids continued on the
frontier. The Frankish towns in the maritime plain were constantly threatened.
As early as April 1261, Balian of Ibelin, lord of Arsuf, leased his lordship to
the Hospital, knowing that he could not afford its defence. Early in 1264 the
Temple and the Hospital consented to unite forces to capture the little
fortress of Lizon, the ancient Megiddo, and a few months later they made a
joint raid down to Ascalon, while in the autumn the French troops, paid for by
Saint Louis, penetrated very profitably as far as the suburbs of Beisan. But in
return the Moslems so ravaged the Frankish countryside south of Carmel that
life was no longer safe there.

At the beginning of 1265 Baibars set out
from Egypt at the head of a formidable army. The Mongols had shown signs of
aggression in northern Syria that winter; and his first intention was to
counter-attack. But he learned that his troops in the north had held them. He
could therefore use his army to attack the Franks in the south. After feigning
to amuse himself with a great hunting expedition in the hills behind Arsuf, he
suddenly appeared before Caesarea. The town fell at once, on 27 February, but
the citadel held out for a week. The garrison capitulated on 5 March and was
allowed to go free; but the town and castle alike were razed to the ground. A
few days later his troops appeared at Haifa. Those of the inhabitants that were
warned in time fled to boats in the anchorage, abandoning both the town and the
citadel, which were destroyed; and the inhabitants that had remained there were
massacred. Baibars himself meanwhile attacked the great Templar castle at
Athlit. The village outside the walls was burned, but the castle itself
resisted him successfully. On 21 March he gave up its siege and marched on
Arsuf. The Hospitallers had garrisoned and provisioned it well. There were 270
knights within the castle, who fought with superb courage. But the lower town
fell on 26 April, after its walls had been broken down by the Sultan’s
siege-engines; and three days later the commander of the citadel, who had lost
a third of his knights, capitulated in return for a promise that the survivors
should go free. Baibars broke his word and took them all into captivity. The
loss of the two great fortresses horrified the Franks, and inspired the Templar
troubadour, Ricaut Bonomel, to write a bitter poem complaining that Christ
seemed now to be pleased by the humiliation of the Christians.

1265: Death of Hulagu

It was now the turn of Acre. But the
regent, Hugh of Antioch, who had been in Cyprus, had already hurried across the
sea with the men that he could raise in the island. When Baibars moved north
again from Arsuf he found that Hugh had landed at Acre on 25 April. The
Egyptian army returned home, after leaving troops to control the newly
conquered territory. The frontier now was within sight of Acre itself. Baibars
hastened to write news of his victories to Manfred, King of Sicily, with whom
the Egyptian Court kept up the friendship forged with his father Frederick II.

It had been a good year for Baibars. On 8
February 1265, Hulagu died in Azerbaijan. His brother Kubilai had given him the
title of Ilkhan and the hereditary government of the Mongol possessions in
south-western Asia; and, though his difficulties with the Golden Horde and with
the Mongols of Turkestan, who also were converts to Islam, had kept him from
resuming a serious offensive against the Mameluks, yet he was still formidable
enough to deter the Mameluks from attacking his allies. In July 1264 he held his
last Kuriltay at his encampment near Tabriz. His vassals were all present,
including King David of Georgia, King Hethoum of Armenia and Prince Bohemond of
Antioch. Hethoum and Bohemond were both in disgrace with Hulagu for having, the
previous year, kidnapped Euthymius, the Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, on whose
installation Hulagu had insisted in 1260, and carried him off to Armenia. The
Latin Opizon had then been introduced into Antioch. To Hulagu the alliance of
the Byzantines was important as a means for keeping the Turks of Anatolia in
control. He was negotiating for a lady of the imperial family of Constantinople
to be added to the number of his wives; and when the Emperor Michael selected
for the honour his bastard daughter, Maria, she was escorted to Tabriz by the
Patriarch Euthymius, who found refuge at Constantinople and who returned to the
east no doubt at Hulagu’s express invitation. But the Mongols remained
broad-minded and would not allow sectarian quarrels amongst the Christians to
interfere with their general policy. It seems that Bohemond was able to excuse
himself and that Euthymius was not received back in Antioch.

Hulagu’s death inevitably weakened the
Mongols at a critical moment. The influence of his widow, Dokuz Khatun, secured
the succession for his favourite son, Abaga, who was governor of Turkestan. But
it was not till June, four months after his father’s death, that Abaga was
formally installed as Ilkhan; and several more months passed before the
redistribution of fiefs and governorships was completed. Dokuz Khatun herself
died during the summer, deeply mourned by the Christians. Meanwhile Abaga was
continually threatened by his cousins of the Golden Horde, who actually invaded
his territory next spring. It was impossible for the Mongol government to
intervene for the time being in western Syria. Baibars, to whose diplomacy the
Ilkhan’s troubles with his northern neighbours were mainly due, could resume
his campaigns against the Christians without fear of interference.

1266: Baibars conquers Galilee

In the early summer of 1266, while Abaga’s
armies were occupied in beating off the Khan Berke’s invasion of Persia, two
Mameluk armies set out from Egypt. One, under the Sultan himself, appeared
before Acre on 1 June. But the regiment maintained there by Saint Louis had
recently been reinforced from France. Finding the city so strongly garrisoned,
Baibars turned aside to make a demonstration before the Teutonic fortress of
Montfort, then marched suddenly on Safed, from whose huge castle the Templars
dominated the Galilean uplands. The fortifications had been entirely
reconstructed some twenty-five years before, and the garrison was numerous,
though many of the soldiers were native Christians or half-breeds. The Sultan’s
first assault, on 7 July, was beaten back, nor was he more successful with his
next attempts, on 13 and 19 July. He then announced through heralds that he
offered a complete amnesty to any of the native soldiers that would surrender
to him. It is doubtful how many of them would have trusted his word; but the
Templar knights at once grew suspicious. There were recriminations, which came
to blows; and the Syrians began to desert. The Templars soon found it
impossible to hold the castle. At the end of the month they sent a Syrian sergeant
whom they believed to be loyal down to Baibars’s camp to offer surrender. The
Syrian, whose name was Leo, returned with the promise that the garrison should
be allowed to retire without hurt to Acre. But when the Templars handed over
the castle to Baibars on these terms, he had them all decapitated. Whether Leo
had been a conscious traitor was uncertain; but his prompt conversion to Islam
was evidence against him.

The capture of Safed gave Baibars control
of Galilee. He next attacked Toron, which fell to him with hardly a struggle.
From Toron he sent a troop to destroy the Christian village of Qara, between
Homs and Damascus, which he suspected of being in touch with the Franks. The
adult inhabitants were massacred and the children enslaved. When the Christians
from Acre sent a deputation to ask to be allowed to bury the dead, he roughly
refused, saying that if they wished for martyrs’ corpses they would find them
at home. To carry out his threat he marched down to the coast and slaughtered
every Christian that fell into his hands. But, once again, he did not venture
to attack Acre itself, where the Regent Hugh had just arrived from Cyprus. When
the Mameluks retired in the autumn, Hugh assembled the knights of the Orders
and the French regiment under Geoffrey of Sargines and made a counter-raid
through Galilee. But on 28 October the vanguard was ambushed by the garrison of
Safed, while local Arabs attacked the Frankish camp. Hugh was obliged to retire
with heavy losses.

1266: The Mameluks ravage Cilicia

While Baibars campaigned in Galilee, the
second Mameluk army, under the ablest of his emirs, Qalawun, assembled at
Horns. After a lightning raid towards Tripoli, during which he captured the
forts of Qulaiat and Halba and the town of Arqa, which controlled the approach
to Tripoli from the Buqaia, Qalawun hurried northward to join with the army of
al-Mansur of Hama. Their combined troops then marched to Aleppo and turned
westward into Cilicia. King Hethoum had expected a Mameluk attack. In 1263, on
the news of Hulagu’s death, he had attempted to come to terms with Baibars. The
Egyptian navy depended for its shipbuilding on wood from southern Anatolia and
the Lebanon. Hethoum and his son-in-law Bohemond controlled these forests and
hoped to use their control as a bargaining point. But the attempted blockade
only made Baibars the more determined on war. In the spring of 1266, knowing
that a Mameluk attack was imminent, Hethoum set out for the Court of the Ilkhan
at Tabriz. While he was there, pleading for Mongol help, the storm burst on
Cilicia. The Armenian army, led by Hethoum’s two sons, Leo and Thoros, waited
by the Syrian Gates, with the Templars at Baghras guarding its flanks; but the
Mameluks turned northward to cross the Amanus mountains near Sarventikar. The
Armenians hastened to intercept them as they descended into the Cilician plain.
A decisive battle took place on 24 August. The Armenians were outnumbered and
were routed. Of their two princes Thoros was slain and Leo taken prisoner. The
victorious Moslems swept through Cilicia. While Qalawun and his Mameluks sacked
Ayas, Adana and Tarsus, al-Mansur led his army past Mamistra to the Armenian
capital at Sis, where he plundered the palace, burned down the cathedral and
slaughtered some thousands of the inhabitants. At the end of September the
victors retired to Aleppo with nearly forty thousand captives and great
caravans of booty. King Hethoum hurried back from the Ilkhan’s Court, with a
small company of Mongols, to find his heir a captive, his capital in ruins and
his whole country devastated. The Cilician kingdom never recovered from the
disaster. It was no longer able to play more than a passive part in the
politics of Asia.