A History of the Crusades-Vol 3 (45 page)

Foreign affairs were hardly more
encouraging. The shadow of Charles of Anjou lay darkly across the Mediterranean
world. Great hopes had been built in the East on Saint Louis’s forthcoming
Crusade; but in 1270 Charles diverted it to suit his own interests. Louis’s
death at Tunis that year released Charles from the one altruistic influence
that he respected. He was on friendly terms with the Sultan Baibars, but he was
personally hostile to King Hugh, against whom he encouraged the claims of Hugh
of Brienne to the throne of Cyprus and of Maria of Antioch to that of
Jerusalem. It was, indeed, fortunate for Outremer that Charles’s main ambitions
were directed against Byzantium; for it was clear that any Crusade that he
assisted would be turned to suit his own selfish ends.

1269: The Crusade of the Infants of Aragon

The Crusading spirit was not, however,
entirely dead in Europe. On 1 September 1269, King James I of Aragon sailed from
Barcelona with a powerful squadron to rescue the East. Unfortunately it ran
almost at once into a storm, which caused such havoc that the King and the
greater part of his fleet returned home. Only a small squadron, under the King’s
two bastards, the Infants Fernando Sanchez and Pedro Fernandez, continued the
journey. They arrived at Acre at the end of December, eager to fight the infidel.
Early in December Baibars broke his truce with Hugh and appeared with three
thousand men in the fields before Acre, leaving others concealed in the hills.
The Infants wished to hurry out at once to attack the enemy; and it needed all
the tact of the Military Knights to restrain them. An ambush was suspected.
Moreover the Christians’ numbers were depleted, as the French regiment, which
the Seneschal Geoffrey of Sargines had commanded till his death that spring,
had gone with its new commander, Oliver of Termes, and the new Seneschal,
Robert of Creseques, on a raid beyond Montfort. These raiders caught sight of
the Moslem forces as they were returning. Oliver of Termes wished to slip
unobserved through the orchards back into Acre; but the Seneschal Robert insisted
on attacking the enemy. The Frenchmen fell straight into the ambush laid for
them by Baibars. Very few of them survived. When the troops inside Acre
clamoured to go to their rescue, the Infants of Aragon, who had learned their
lesson, restrained them. Soon afterwards they returned to Aragon, having
achieved nothing.

Though help from the West was inadequate,
there was still hope from the East. The Ilkhan of Persia, Abaga, like his
father Hulagu, was an eclectic Shamanist with strong Christian sympathies. The
death of his Christian stepmother, Dokuz Khatun, had robbed her co-religionists
of every sect of their chief friend; but they found a new protector in the
Byzantine Princess Maria. She had arrived at the Ilkhan’s Court to find Hulagu
dead, but was married at once to Abaga, who soon conceived a deep respect for
her; and all his subjects, to whom she was known as Despina Khatun, revered her
for her goodness and her sagacity. News of the Ilkhan’s good-will induced the
King of Aragon, in conjunction with Pope Clement IV, to send James Alaric of
Perpignan on a mission to him in 1267, to announce the forthcoming Crusade of
the Aragonese and of King Louis and to suggest a military alliance. But Abaga,
who was fully occupied by his war against the Golden Horde, would only make
vague promises. His inability to do more was shown by his failure to rescue
Antioch from the Mameluks next year. He was soon faced with a new war, with his
cousins of the House of Jagatai, who invaded his eastern dominions in 1270 and
were only driven back after a tremendous battle near Herat. For the next two
years Abaga’s main task was to reopen communications with his uncle and
overlord, the Great Khan Kubilai in China. But in 1270, after his victory at
Herat, he wrote to King Louis undertaking to grant military aid as soon as the
Crusade appeared in Palestine. King Louis went instead to Tunis, where the
Mongols could not help him. The only practical assistance that the Ilkhan was
able to give to the Christians was to provide Hethoum of Armenia with a
distinguished Mameluk captive, Shams ad-Din Sonqor al-Ashkar, the Red Falcon,
whom the Mongols had captured at Aleppo. In return for his release Baibars
agreed to free Hethoum’s heir, Leo, and to make a truce with Hethoum on
condition that the Armenians ceded the fortresses of the Amanus, Darbsaq,
Behesni, and Raban. The treaty was signed in August 1268. Early next year Leo,
who had been permitted to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, returned to Armenia.
His father at once abdicated in his favour and retired to a monastery, where he
died the following year. Leo’s title as King was confirmed by Abaga, to whom he
went personally to pay homage.

1270: Murder of Philip of Montfort

Throughout the summer of 1270 Baibars
remained quiet, fearing that he might have to defend Egypt against the King of
France. But, in order to weaken the Franks, he arranged for the assassination
of their one leading baron, Philip of Montfort. The Assassins of Syria were
grateful to the Sultan, whose conquests freed them from the necessity of paying
tribute to the Hospital, and they strongly resented the Frankish negotiations
with the Mongols, who had destroyed their headquarters in Persia. On Baibars’s
request they sent one of their fanatics to Tyre. There, pretending to be a
Christian convert, he penetrated on Sunday, 17 August 1270, into a chapel where
Philip and his son John were praying, and suddenly fell upon them. Before help
could arrive Philip was mortally wounded, surviving just long enough to learn
that his murderer was captured and his heir was safe. His death was a heavy
blow to Outremer; for John, though he remained devoted to King Hugh, his
brother-in-law, lacked his father’s experience and prestige.

King Louis’s death before Tunis greatly
relieved the Sultan, who had been ready to march to the assistance of the
Tunisian emir. He knew that he had nothing to fear from Charles of Anjou. In
1271 he marched again into Frankish territory. In February he appeared before
Safita, the White Castle of the Templars. After a spirited defence the small
garrison was advised by the Grand Master to surrender. The survivors were
allowed to retire to Tortosa. The Sultan then marched on the huge Hospitaller
fortress of Krak des Chevaliers, Qalat al-Hosn. He arrived there on 3 March.
Next day contingents joined him from the Assassins, as well as al-Mansur of Hama
and his army. Heavy rain for some days prevented him from bringing up his
siege-engines; but on 15 March, after a brief but heavy bombardment, the
Moslems forced an entry into the gate-tower of the outer enceinte. A fortnight
later they broke their way into the inner enceinte, slaughtering the knights
that they met there and taking the native soldiers prisoner. Many of the
defenders held out for ten more days in the great tower at the south of the
enceinte. On 8 April they capitulated and were sent under a safe-conduct to
Tripoli. The capture of Krak, which had defied even Saladin, gave Baibars
control of the approaches to Tripoli. He followed it up with the capture of
Akkar, the Hospitaller castle on the south of the Buqaia, which fell on 1 May,
after a fortnight’s siege.

Prince Bohemond was at Tripoli. Fearful
that it was to share the fate of his other capital, Antioch, he sent to Baibars
to beg for a truce. The Sultan mocked at his lack of courage, and demanded that
he should pay all the expenses of the recent Mameluk campaign. Bohemond had
enough spirit left to refuse the insulting terms. Baibars had meanwhile made an
unsuccessful attack on the little fort of Maraclea, built on a rock off the
coast between Buluniyas and Tortosa. Its lord, Bartholomew, had gone to seek
help from the Mongol Court. Baibars was so furious at his failure that he tried
to induce the Assassins to murder Bartholomew on his journey.

At the end of May Baibars suddenly offered
Bohemond a truce for ten years, with no other terms than the retention of his
recent conquests. On its acceptance he set out to return to Egypt, pausing only
to besiege the Teutonic fortress of Montfort, which surrendered on 12 June,
after one week’s siege. There were now no inland castles left to the Franks.
About the same time he sent a squadron of seventeen ships to attack Cyprus,
having heard that King Hugh had left the island for Acre. His fleet appeared
unexpectedly off Limassol, but owing to bad seamanship eleven ships ran aground
and the crews fell into the hands of the Cypriots.

1271: Arrival of Edward of England

The Sultan’s forbearance towards Bohemond
was due to the arrival of a new Crusade. Henry III of England had long ago
taken the Cross, but he was now an old man, worn out by civil wars. In his
stead, he encouraged his son and heir, Prince Edward, to set out for the East.
Edward was in his early thirties, an able, vigorous and cold-blooded man who
had already shown his gifts as a statesman in dealing with his father’s rebels.
He decided on his Crusade after he heard of the fall of Antioch; but he planned
it carefully and methodically. Unfortunately, though many of the English nobles
had agreed to accompany him, one by one they made their excuses. It was with
only about a thousand men that the Prince eventually left England in the summer
of 1271, together with his wife, Eleanor of Castile. His brother Edmund of
Lancaster, one time candidate for the Sicilian throne, followed him with
reinforcements a few months later. He was also accompanied by a small
contingent of Bretons, under their Count, and one from the Low Countries, under
Tedaldo Visconti, Archdeacon of Liege. Edward’s intention had been to join King
Louis at Tunis and sail on with him to the Holy Land, but he arrived in Africa
to find the King dead and the French troops about to return home. He wintered
in Sicily with King Charles, whose first wife had been his aunt, and sailed on
next spring to Cyprus and then to Acre, where he landed on 9 May 1271. He was
joined there soon afterwards by King Hugh and Prince Bohemond.

Edward was horrified by the state of
affairs in Outremer. He knew that his own army was small, but he hoped to unite
the Christians of the East into a formidable body and then to use the help of
the Mongols in making an effective attack on Baibars. His first shock was to
find that the Venetians maintained a flourishing trade with the Sultan,
supplying him with all the timber and metal that he needed for his armaments,
while the Genoese were doing their best to force their way into this profitable
business and already controlled the slave-trade of Egypt. But when he reproved
the merchants for thus endangering the future of the Christian East they showed
him the licences that they had received from the High Court at Acre for this purpose.
He could do nothing to stop them. Next, he hoped that the whole chivalry of
Cyprus would follow its King to the mainland. But, though some feudatories had
come, they insisted that they were volunteers; and when King Hugh demanded that
they should stay in Syria as long as he was there, their spokesman, his wife’s
cousin, James of Ibelin, declared firmly that they were only obliged to serve
in the defence of the island. He arrogantly added that the King could not count
it as a precedent that Cypriot nobles had gone to fight on the mainland, for
they had done so more often at the bidding of the Ibelins than at any King’s
bidding. But he hinted that if Hugh had made his request more tactfully it
might have been granted. The argument was carried on till 1273, when, in a rare
spirit of compromise, the Cypriots agreed to spend four months on the mainland,
if the King or his heir in person were present with the army. It was by then
too late for Edward’s purpose.

1272: Truce between Edward and Baibars

The English Prince was not much more
successful with the Mongols. As soon as he arrived at Acre he sent an embassy
to the Ilkhan, consisting of three Englishmen, Reginald Russell, Godfrey Welles
and John Parker. Abaga, whose main armies were fighting in Turkestan, agreed to
send what aid he could. In the meantime Edward contented himself with a few
minor raids just across the frontier. In mid-October 1271, Abaga fulfilled his
promise by detaching ten thousand horsemen from his garrisons in Anatolia. They
swept down past Aintab into Syria, defeating the Turcoman troops that protected
Aleppo. The Mameluk garrisons of Aleppo fled before them to Hama. They
continued their course past Aleppo to Maarrat an-Numan and Apamea. There was
panic amongst the local Moslems. But Baibars, who was at Damascus, was not
unduly alarmed. He had a large army with him, and he summoned reinforcements
from Egypt. When he began to move northwards, on
12
November, the Mongols turned back. They
were not strong enough to face the full Mameluk army, and their Turkish vassals
in Anatolia were restive. They retired behind the Euphrates, laden with booty.

While Baibars was distracted by the
Mongols, Edward led the Franks across Mount Carmel to raid the Plain of Sharon.
But his troops were too few for him even to attempt to storm the little Mameluk
fortress of Qaqun which guarded the road across the hills. A more effective
Mongol invasion and a larger Crusade were needed if any territory was to be
reconquered.

By the spring of
1272
Prince Edward realized that he was wasting
his time. All that he could do without greater man-power and more allies was to
arrange a truce that would preserve Outremer for the time being. Baibars on his
side was ready for a truce. The pathetic remnant of the Frankish kingdom lay at
his mercy so long as he was not hampered by external complications. His army’s
first task was to ward off the Mongols, who must further be restrained by
diplomatic action in Anatolia and on the Steppes. Till he felt secure on that
front it was not worth while to make the effort necessary for the reduction of
the last Frankish fortresses. In the meantime he must prevent intervention from
the West, and for that purpose he must maintain good relations with Charles of
Anjou, the only potentate who might have brought effective help to Acre. But
Charles’s main ambition was the conquest of Constantinople. Syria was for the
moment of secondary interest to him. He already had vague thoughts of adding
Outremer to his Empire. He therefore wished to preserve its existence but to do
nothing that would enhance the power of King Hugh, whom he hoped some day to
displace. He was willing to mediate between Baibars and Edward. On
22
May 1272, a peace was signed at Caesarea
between the Sultan and the government of Acre. The kingdom was guaranteed for
ten years and ten months the possession of its present lands, which consisted
mainly of the narrow coastal plain from Acre to Sidon, together with the right
to use without hindrance the pilgrim-road to Nazareth. The county of Tripoli
was safeguarded by the truce of 1271.