A History of the Crusades-Vol 3 (44 page)

After eliminating the Armenians, Baibars
sent troops in the autumn of 1266 to attack Antioch. But his generals were
sated with loot and were unenthusiastic. Bribes from Bohemond and the Commune
induced them to abandon the attempt.

Baibars was furious at his deputies’
weakness. He himself allowed the Franks no respite. In May 1267, he appeared
once more before Acre. By displaying banners that he had captured from the
Templars and the Hospitallers he was able to approach right up to the walls
before the ruse was discovered. But his assault on the walls was repulsed, and
he contented himself with ravaging the countryside. The headless bodies were
left in the gardens round Acre till the citizens ventured out to bury them.
When the Franks sent ambassadors to ask for a truce he received them at Safed,
where the whole castle was encircled with the skulls of murdered Christian
prisoners.

Life at Acre was not made easier by a
renewal of the war between the Venetians and the Genoese for the control of the
harbour. On 16 August 1267, the Genoese admiral Luccheto Grimaldi forced his
way into the port with twenty-eight galleys, after capturing the Tower of
Flies, which stood at the end of the breakwater. But after twelve days he took
fifteen of his ships to Tyre for repairs. During his absence a Venetian fleet
of twenty-six galleys appeared and attacked the remaining Genoese. Five Genoese
ships were lost in the battle. The others fought their way through to Tyre.

Early in 1268 Baibars set out once more
from Egypt. The only Christian possessions south of Acre itself were the
Templar castle of Athlit and the lawyer John of Ibelin’s town of Jaffa. John,
who had always been treated with respect by the Moslems, died in the spring of
1266. His son Guy had not the same prestige. He had hoped that the Sultan would
honour the truce that his father had made. In consequence, when the Egyptian
army appeared before the town on 7 March, it was in no state to defend itself.
After twelve hours of fighting it fell into the Sultan’s hands. Many of the
inhabitants were slaughtered, but the garrison was allowed to retire unharmed
to Acre. The castle was destroyed, and its wood and marble were sent to Cairo
for the great new mosque that Baibars was building there.

1268: The Fall of Antioch

The Sultan’s next objective was the castle
of Beaufort, which the Temple had recently taken over from Julian of Sidon.
After ten days of heavy bombardment the garrison surrendered on 15 April. The
women and children were sent free to Tyre, but the men were all kept as slaves.
The castle itself was repaired by Baibars and strongly garrisoned. On 1 May the
Mameluk army appeared suddenly outside Tripoli, but, finding it well
garrisoned, turned equally suddenly towards the north. The Templars from
Tortosa and Safita sent hastily to beg the Sultan that their territory might be
spared. Baibars respected their wishes and marched swiftly down the Orontes
valley. On 14 May he was before Antioch. There he divided his forces into three
parts. One army went to capture Saint Symeon, thus cutting off Antioch from the
sea. The second army moved up to the Syrian Gates, to prevent any help reaching
the city from Cilicia. The main force, under Baibars himself, drew closely
round the city.

Prince Bohemond was at Tripoli; and
Antioch was under the command of its Constable, Simon Mansel, whose wife was an
Armenian, related to Bohemond’s Princess. Its walls were in good repair, but
the garrison was hardly large enough to man their long extent. The Constable
had rashly led out some troops to try to dispute the investment of the city,
and had been captured by the Mameluks. He was ordered by his captors to arrange
for the capitulation of the garrison; but his lieutenants within the walls
refused to listen to him. The first assault on the city took place next day. It
was beaten back, and negotiations were opened once again, with no greater
success. On 18 May the Mameluk army made a general attack on all sections of
the walls. After fierce fighting a breach was made where the defences ran up
the slope of Mount Silpius; and the Moslems poured into the city.

Even the Moslem chroniclers were shocked
by the carnage that followed. By order of the Sultan’s emirs, the city gates
were closed, that none of the inhabitants might escape. Those that were found
in the streets were slaughtered at once. Others, cowering in their houses, were
spared only to end their days in captivity. Several thousands of the citizens
had fled with their families to the shelter of the huge citadel on the mountain
top. Their lives were spared, but their persons were divided amongst the emirs.
On 19 May the Sultan ordered the collection and distribution of the booty.
Though its prosperity had been declining for some decades Antioch had long been
the richest of the Frankish cities, and its accumulated treasures were
stupendous. There were great mounds of gold and silver ornaments, and coins
were so plentiful that they were handed out in bowlfuls. The number of captives
was enormous. There was not a soldier in the Sultan’s army that did not acquire
a slave, and the surplus was such that the price of a boy fell to twelve
dirhems and a girl to only five. A few of the richer citizens were allowed to
ransom themselves. Simon Mansel was set free and retired to Armenia. But many
of the leading dignitaries of the government and of the Church were killed or
were never heard of again.

The principality of Antioch, the first of
the states that the Franks founded in Outremer, had lasted for 171 years. Its
destruction was a terrible blow to Christian prestige, and it brought the rapid
decline of Christianity in northern Syria. The Franks were gone, and the native
Christians fared little better. It was their punishment for their support, not
of the Franks but of those more dangerous foes to Islam, the Mongols. The city
itself never recovered. It had already lost its commercial importance, for,
with the frontier between the Mongol and Mameluk Empires running along the
Euphrates, trade from Iraq and the Far East no longer came through Aleppo but
kept to Mongol territory and debouched to the sea at Ayas in Cilicia. The
Moslem conquerors had therefore no interest in repopulating Antioch. Its
importance now was only as a frontier fortress. Many of the houses within its
great walls were not rebuilt. The hierarchs of the local churches moved to more
lively centres. It was not long before the headquarters both of the Orthodox
and of the Jacobite churches in Syria were established at Damascus.

1268: Hugh, King of Cyprus and Jerusalem

With Armenia weakened and Antioch
destroyed, the Templars decided that it was impossible to hold their castles in
the Amanus mountains. Baghras and the lesser castle of La Roche de Russole were
abandoned without a struggle. All that was left of the Principality was the
city of Lattakieh which had been restored to Bohemond by the Mongols and was
now an isolated enclave, and the Castle of Qusair, whose lord had made friends
with the Moslems of the neighbourhood and was allowed to remain on there for
seven more years as vassal to the Sultan.

After his triumph at Antioch Baibars
rested awhile. There were signs that the Mongols were ready to play a more
active role, and there were rumours that Saint Louis was preparing a great
Crusade. When the Regent Hugh sent to ask for a truce, the Sultan replied with
an embassy to Acre to offer a temporary cessation of hostilities. Hugh had
hoped for some concessions and tried to threaten the ambassador, Muhi ad-Din,
by showing his troops in battle-array; but Muhi ad-Din merely replied that the
whole army was not so numerous as the host of Christian captives at Cairo.
Prince Bohemond asked to be included in the truce. He was offended when the
Sultan’s reply addressed him merely as Count, because he had lost his
principality; but he gladly accepted the respite offered to him. There were
minor Mameluk raids into Christian lands in the spring of 1269, but on the
whole the truce was observed for a year.

Meanwhile the Franks tried to set their
house in order. In December 1267, King Hugh II of Cyprus died at the age of
fourteen, and the Regent Hugh of Antioch-Lusignan succeeded to the throne as
Hugh III. He was crowned on Christmas Day. His accession gave him a surer
authority over his vassals, for there was no danger now that his government
would abruptly end when his ward came of age. But he was unable to overcome
their claim that they were not obliged to serve in his army outside the limits
of the kingdom. Whenever he wished to take troops to the mainland he was
dependent on men from the royal estates and on volunteers. On 29 October 1268,
Conradin of Hohenstaufen was beheaded at Naples by the orders of Charles of
Anjou, from whom he had vainly tried to wrest back his Italian inheritance. His
death meant the extinction of the elder line of the royal house of Jerusalem,
which descended from Queen Maria, La Marquise. Next in the line came the house
of Cyprus, descended from Maria’s half-sister, Alice of Champagne. King Hugh
III’s claim to be heir had been tacitly acknowledged by his appointment as
regent, when his cousin, Hugh of Brienne, whose hereditary rights were legally
better than his own, had been passed over. Hugh of Brienne had gone to seek his
fortune in the Frankish duchy of Athens, whose heiress he married. He did not
now challenge his cousin. But before King Hugh could receive his second crown
there was another competitor to be considered. Queen Maria’s second
half-sister, Melisende of Lusignan, had married as his second wife Prince
Bohemond IV of Antioch, and their daughter Maria was still alive. While Hugh
could claim to be descended from an earlier marriage of Queen Isabella than
Maria, Maria was one generation closer to Queen Isabella. She appeared before
the High Court, maintaining that the succession should be decided by the degree
of kinship with Queen Isabella, who was the common ancestress of Conradin, Hugh
and herself. A granddaughter, she argued, took precedence over a
great-grandson. Hugh replied that his grandmother, Queen Alice, had been
accepted as regent because she was the next heir, and that her son, King Henry
of Cyprus, had been accepted as regent on her death, and after Henry his widow
and then Hugh himself as guardians of the young Hugh II. He now represented
Alice’s line. Maria countered by saying that there had been a mistake; her
mother, Melisende, should have succeeded Alice as regent. After some argument, in
which Maria was upheld by the Templars, the lawyers of Outremer supported Hugh’s
claims. Had they refused, they would have been forced to admit that they had
been previously in error. Public opinion was on their side; for the vigorous
young King of Cyprus was obviously a more desirable candidate than a
middle-aged spinster. Maria would not accept the verdict. She issued a formal
protest on the day of Hugh’s coronation, then bustled off to Italy to lay her
case before the Papal Curia. She arrived at Rome during an interregnum; but
Gregory X, who was elected in 1271, showed her sympathy and allowed her to
bring up the question at the Council of Lyons in 1274. Representatives from
Acre appeared and argued that the High Court of Jerusalem alone had
jurisdiction over the succession to the kingdom, and the matter was dropped.
Before he died in 1276, Gregory arranged for Maria to sell her claim to Charles
of Anjou. The transaction was completed in March 1277. The Princess received a thousand
gold pounds and an annuity of four thousand pounds
tournois.
The annuity
was confirmed by Charles II of Naples; but it is doubtful how much money Maria,
who was still living in 1307, actually received.

1269: Hugh’s Coronation

Hugh was crowned on 24 September 1269, by
the Bishop of Lydda, acting for the Patriarch. His first task was to try to
restore some unity to his new kingdom. Already before his coronation he managed
to compose the old quarrel between Philip of Montfort and the government at Acre.
Philip’s pride had been humbled by the loss of Toron; he was no longer so
anxious to play a lone hand. When Hugh proposed that his own sister, Margaret
of Antioch-Lusignan, the loveliest girl of her generation, should marry Philip’s
elder son, John, Philip was glad to accept the offer. Hugh was thus able to go
to Tyre to be crowned in its cathedral, which had been since the fall of
Jerusalem the traditional crowning-place of the Kings. Soon afterwards Philip’s
younger son, Humphrey, married Eschiva of Ibelin, younger daughter of John II
of Beirut. This reconciliation between the Montforts and the Ibelins was easier
as the older generation of Ibelins was extinct. John of Beirut had died in
1264, John of Jaffa in 1266 and John of Arsuf in 1268. After Baibars’s recent
campaigns the only Ibelin fief left on the mainland, and, indeed, the only lay
fief in the kingdom other than Tyre, was Beirut, which had passed to John’s
elder daughter, Isabella. She had been married as a child to the child-king of
Cyprus, Hugh II, who died before the marriage was consummated. Hugh III hoped
to use her as an eligible heiress to attract some distinguished knight to the
East. In Cyprus the Ibelins were still the most powerful family. The King soon
afterwards won their loyalty by marrying another Isabella of Ibelin, daughter
of the Constable Guy.

Though he managed to make peace between
his few remaining lay vassals, it was less easy to secure the co-operation of
the Military Orders, the Commune of Acre, or the Italians. Venice and Genoa
were not going to give up their quarrels at any monarch’s bidding. The Templars
and the Teutonic Knights resented Hugh’s reconciliation with Philip of
Montfort. The Commune of Acre was equally jealous of any favour shown to Tyre
and disliked to see the end of the absentee monarchy under which their own
power had increased. Nor could Hugh call in his Cypriot vassals to enhance his
authority. His attempt to make his rule effective was doomed to failure.