A History of the Crusades-Vol 3 (46 page)

Prince Edward was known to wish to come
back to the East at the head of a greater Crusade. So, despite the truce,
Baibars decided to eliminate him. On 16 June 1272, an Assassin disguised as a
native Christian penetrated into the Prince’s chamber and stabbed him with a
poisoned dagger. The wound was not fatal, but Edward was seriously ill for some
months. The Sultan hastened to dissociate himself from the deed by sending his
congratulations on the Prince’s escape. As soon as he had recovered, Edward
prepared to sail for home. Most of his comrades had already left. His father
was dying. His own health was bad; and there was nothing more that he could do.
He embarked from Acre on 22 September 1272, and returned to England to find
himself its king.

1272-4: Gregory X collects Reports on the Crusades

The Archdeacon of Liege, who had
accompanied Edward to Palestine, had left the previous winter on the unexpected
news that he had been elected Pope. As Gregory X he never lost his interest in
Palestine; and he made it his chief task to see how the Crusading spirit could
be revived. His appeals for men to take the Cross and fight in the East were
circulated throughout Europe, as far as Finland and Iceland. It is possible
that they even reached Greenland and the coast of North America. But there was
no response. Meanwhile he collected reports that would explain the hostility of
public opinion. These reports were tactful. None of them touched on the
essential trouble, that the Crusade itself had become debased. Now that
spiritual rewards had been promised to men who would fight against the Greeks,
the Albigensians and the Hohenstaufen, the Holy War had merely become an instrument
of a narrow and aggressive Papal policy; and even loyal supporters of the
Papacy saw no reason for making an uncomfortable journey to the East when there
were so many opportunities of gaining holy merit in less exacting campaigns.

Though the reports sent in to the Pope
were discreet in their criticism of Papal policy, they were frank enough in
pointing out the faults of the Church. Four of these reports deserve
consideration. First, the
Collectio de Scandalis Ecclesiae,
probably
written by a Franciscan, Gilbert of Tournay, while it mentioned the harm done
to the Crusades by the quarrels of the kings and nobles, made its main themes
the corruption of the clergy and the abuse of indulgences. While prelates spent
their money on fine horses and pet monkeys, their agents raised money by the
wholesale redemption of Crusading vows. None of the clergy would contribute to
the taxes levied to pay for the Crusades, though Saint Louis, to their rage,
had refused them exemption. Meanwhile the general public was taxed again and
again for Crusades that never took place.

The report sent in by Bruno, Bishop of
Olmutz, took a different line. Bruno also spoke of scandals in the Church; but
he was a politician. There must, he said, be peace in Europe and a general
reform; but this could only be achieved by a strong Emperor. He implied that
his master, King Ottocar of Bohemia, was the proper candidate for the post.
Crusades in the East, he maintained, were now pointless and outmoded. Crusades
should be directed against the heathens on the eastern frontiers of the Empire.
The Teutonic Knights were mishandling this work by their greed and lust for
power; but were it properly directed by a suitable potentate, it would provide
financial as well as religious advantages.

William of Tripoli, a Dominican living at
Acre, submitted a more disinterested and constructive memoir. He had little
hopes for a Holy War in the East conducted from Europe, but he was impressed by
prophecies that the end of Islam was near at hand and believed that the Mongols
would be its destroyers. The time had come for missionary activity. As a member
of a preaching Order he had faith in the power of sermons. It was his
conviction that the East would be won by missions, not by the sword. In this
opinion he was supported by a far greater thinker, Roger Bacon.

1274: The Council of Lyons

The fullest report came from another
Dominican, the ex-Master-General of the Order, Humbert of Romans. His
Opus
Tripartitum
was written in anticipation of a General Council, which should
discuss the Crusade, the Greek Schism and Church reform. He had no faith in the
possibility of converting the Moslems, though the conversion of the Jews was
divinely promised and that of the East European pagans should be feasible. He
held that another Crusade in the Orient was essential. He mentioned the vices
that kept men from sailing eastward, their laziness, their avarice and their
cowardice. He deplored the love of the homeland that kept them from travelling
and the feminine influences that tried to anchor them at home. Worst of all,
few now believed in the spiritual merit that was promised to the Crusader. This
incredulity which Humbert sadly reports was certainly widespread. Numerous popular
poems made it their theme; and there were many among the troubadours who
frankly declared that God had no more use for the Crusades. Humbert’s
suggestions for combating it and rousing fresh enthusiasm were not very
helpful. It was useless to go on maintaining that defeats and humiliations were
good for the soul, as Saint Louis believed. It was too late to try to persuade
men that the Crusade was the best penance for their sins. The reform of the
clergy, which Humbert strenuously advocated, might be of some help. But as a
practical guide for the reform of public sentiment, Humbert’s advice was of
little value. In consequence his recommendations for the running of the Crusade
were premature. There should be a programme of prayers, fasts and ceremonies;
history must be studied; there should b
e
a panel of godly and experienced counsellors; and there
ought to be a permanent standing army of Crusaders. As for finance, Humbert
hinted that Papal methods of extortion had not always been popular. He believed
that if the Church were to sell some of its vast treasure and superfluous
ornaments, it would have a good psychological as well as material result. But
the princes as well as the Church must play their part.

Armed with all this advice, which cannot
much have reassured him, Gregory X summoned a Council to meet at Lyons. Its
sessions opened in May 1274. There was good attendance from the East, led by
Paul of Segni, Bishop of Tripoli. William of Beaujeu, newly elected Grand
Master of the Temple, was there. But the pressing invitations sent to the kings
of Christendom were ignored. Philip III of France declined to attend, and even
Edward I, on whom Gregory specially relied, pleaded business at home. Only
James I of Aragon appeared, a garrulous old man whose first attempt at an
Eastern Crusade had come to nothing but who was genuinely eager in a
swashbuckling way to set out on another adventure, but who was soon bored by
the discussions and hurried back to the arms of his mistress, the Lady
Berengaria. Delegates from the Byzantine Emperor Michael promised the
submission of the Church of Constantinople; for Michael was terrified of the
ambition of Charles of Anjou. But it was a promise that could not be fulfilled;
the Emperor’s subjects would have none of it. The abortive Union of the
Churches was the only success of the Council. Nothing of any value was achieved
for the reform of the Church; and while everyone was ready to talk about the
Crusade
s
no one came forward with the
offers of practical help that would be necessary to launch it.

Nevertheless Gregory persevered, seeking
to make the rulers of Europe carry out the pious resolutions passed by the
Council. In 1275 Philip III took the Cross. Later that year Rudolph of Hapsburg
followed his example, in return for the promise of a coronation by the Pope at
Rome. In the meantime Gregory tried to prepare the Holy Land for the arrival of
the Crusade. He ordered that fortresses should be repaired and more and better
mercenaries sent out. From his personal experience in the East it seems that he
had concluded that there was nothing to be hoped from King Hugh’s government.
He therefore was sympathetic to the claims of Maria of Antioch and encouraged
her to sell those claims to Charles of Anjou, whom he wished to take a more
active interest in Outremer, not only for its own welfare but also to divert
him from his Byzantine ambitions. But all Pope Gregory’s plans came to nothing.
When he died, on 10 January 1276, no Crusade had left for the East, and none
was likely to leave.

1275: The Regency at Tripoli

King Hugh in Cyprus had a more realistic
vision. He neither expected nor desired a Crusade, but merely wished to
preserve the truce with Baibars. Yet the truce did little to ease his position.
In 1273 he lost control of his chief mainland fief, Beirut. Its lordship had
passed on John II of Ibelin’s death to his elder daughter, Isabella,
Dowager-Queen of Cyprus, who had been left a virgin-widow in 1267. Her
virginity was of short duration. Her notorious lack of chastity and, in particular,
her liaison with Julian of Sidon, provoked a Papal Bull, which strongly urged
her to remarry. In 1272 she gave herself and her lordship to an Englishman,
Hamo L’Estrange, or the Foreigner, who seems to have been one of Prince Edward’s
companions. He distrusted King Hugh, and on his deathbed next year he put his
wife and her fief under the protection of Baibars. When Hugh tried to carry off
the widow to Cyprus, to remarry her to a candidate of his choice, the Sultan at
once cited the pact that Hamo had made and demanded her return. The High Court
gave the King no support. He was obliged to send Isabella back to Beirut, where
a Mameluk guard was installed to protect her. It was only long after Baibars’s
death that Hugh resumed control of the fief. Isabella married two more husbands
before her death, in about 1282, when Beirut passed to her sister Eschiva, the
wife of Humphrey of Montfort, who was
a
loyal friend of the King.

Hugh’s next rebuff was over the county of
Tripoli. Bohemond VI, last Prince of Antioch, died in 1275, leaving a son,
Bohemond, aged about fourteen, and a younger daughter, Lucia. King Hugh, as the
next adult heir of the House of Antioch, claimed the regency of Tripoli. But
the Princess-Dowager, Sibylla of Armenia, at once assumed the office, as the
custom of the family entitled her to do. When Hugh arrived at Tripoli to
maintain his claim, he found that the young Bohemond VII had been sent to the
Court of his uncle, King Leo III of Armenia, and that the city was administered
in Sibylla’s name by Bartholomew, Bishop of Tortosa, who seems to have belonged
to the great Antiochene family of Mansel. No one in Tripoli supported Hugh, for
Bishop Bartholomew was for the moment highly popular. He was a bitter enemy of
the Bishop of Tripoli, Paul of Segni, Bohemond VI’s maternal uncle, and of all
the Romans that he and Lucienne had installed in the county. With the support
of the local nobility, Sibylla and Bartholomew put some of the Romans to death
and exiled others. Unfortunately, Bishop Paul had the support of the Temple,
whose Master he had met at the Council of Lyons. When Bohemond VII came from
Armenia in 1277 to take over the government, he was faced by the implacable
hostility of the Order.

It was only further north, at Lattakieh,
that Hugh’s prestige won a minor victory. Lattakieh was all that remained of
the Principality of Antioch, and Baibars did not consider it to be covered by
his treaties with Tripoli or with Acre. His armies were closing round it, when
its citizens made a direct appeal to King Hugh. He was able to negotiate a
truce with the Sultan, who called off his troops in return for an annual
tribute of twenty thousand dinars and the release of twenty Moslem prisoners.

It was not long before Hugh’s difficulties
extended to Acre itself. The Commune of Acre had always resented his direct
rule, while the Order of the Temple, which had disliked his reconciliation with
the Montforts and had opposed his accession to the throne, grew steadily more
unfriendly to him. The Hospital, on whose good-will he might have counted, had
declined in importance after the loss of its headquarters at Krak. Its only
remaining great castle was Marqab, on its high hill overlooking Buluniyas.
Already in 1268 the Grand Master, Hugh of Revel, wrote that the Order could now
only maintain 300 knights in Outremer, instead of 10,000 as in the old days.
But the Temple still possessed its headquarters at Tortosa, as well as Sidon
and the huge castle of Athlit, while its banking connections with the whole
Levantine world increased its strength. Thomas Berard, who was Grand Master
from 1256 to 1273, had in his earlier days been loyal to the Cypriot regents,
and, although he had grown to dislike Hugh, he had never openly challenged him.
But his successor, William of Beaujeu, was of a different calibre. He was
related to the Royal House of France and was proud, ambitious and energetic.
When he was elected he was in Apulia, in the territory of his cousin Charles of
Anjou. He came to the East two years later, determined to further Charles’s
projects and opposed, therefore, from the outset to King Hugh.

1276: King Hugh retires to Cyprus

In October 1276, the Order of the Temple
purchased a village called La Fauconnerie, a few miles south of Acre, from its
landlord, Thomas of Saint-Bertin, and deliberately omitted to secure the King’s
consent to the transaction. Hugh’s complaints were ignored. In his exasperation
with the Orders, with the Commune and with the merchant-colonies, he determined
to leave the thankless kingdom. He suddenly packed up his belongings and
retired to Tyre, intending to sail from there to Cyprus. He left Acre without
appointing a
bailli.
The Templars and the Venetians, who were their
close allies, were delighted. But the Patriarch, Thomas of Lentino, the
Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights, as well as the Commune and the Genoese,
were shocked, and sent delegates to Tyre to beg him at least to appoint a
deputy. He was too angry at first to listen to them, but at last, probably on
the pleading of John of Montfort, he nominated as
bailli
Balian of
Ibelin, son of John of Arsuf, and he appointed judges for the Courts of the
kingdom. Immediately afterwards he embarked for Cyprus, by night, taking leave
of no one. From Cyprus he wrote to the Pope to justify his action.

Balian had a difficult task. There were
riots in the streets of Acre between Moslem merchants from Bethlehem, under the
Templars’ protection, and Nestorian merchants from Mosul, whose patrons were
the Hospitallers. Hostilities flared up again between the Venetians and the
Genoese. It was only with the help of the Patriarch and of the Hospital that
any government was maintained.

In 1277 Maria of Antioch completed the
sale of her rights to Charles of Anjou. Charles at once assumed the title of
King of Jerusalem and sent out Roger of San Severino, Count of Marsico, with an
armed force, to be his
bailli
at Acre. Thanks to the help of the Temple
and the Venetians, Roger was able to land at Acre, where he produced
credentials signed by Charles, by Maria and by the Pope, John XXI. Balian of
Ibelin was acutely embarrassed. He had no instructions from King Hugh, and he
knew that the Templars and the Venetians were ready to take up arms on behalf
of Roger, while neither the Patriarch nor the Hospital would promise to
intervene. To avoid bloodshed he delivered the citadel to the Angevin. Roger
hoisted Charles’s banner and proclaimed him King of Jerusalem and Sicily, and
then ordered the barons of the kingdom to do homage to himself as the King’s
bailli.
The barons hesitated, less for love of Hugh than for dislike of an
admission that the throne could be transferred without a decision of the High Court.
To preserve some legality they sent delegates to Cyprus to ask if Hugh would
release them from their allegiance to him. Hugh refused to give an answer. At
last Roger, who was firmly in the saddle, threatened to confiscate the estates
of anyone who did not pay him homage, but he allowed time for one more appeal
to Hugh. It was equally fruitless; so the barons submitted to Roger. Soon
afterwards Bohemond VII acknowledged him as lawful
bailli.
Roger
appointed various Frenchmen from Charles’s Court as his chief officers. Odo
Poilechien became Seneschal, Richard of Neublans Constable and James Vidal
Marshal.

1277: Baibars invades Anatolia

These arrangements were very much to the
liking of Baibars. He could trust Charles’s representative neither to provoke a
new Crusade nor to intrigue with the Mongols. With this sense of security he
was ready to allow Outremer a few more years of existence. In the meantime he
could take the offensive against the Ilkhan. Abaga was conscious of the danger
and was eager to build up an alliance with the West. In 1273 he sent a letter
to Acre, addressed to Edward of England, asking when his next Crusade would
take place. It was conveyed to Europe by a Dominican, David, who was chaplain
to the Patriarch, Thomas of Lentino. Edward sent a cordial answer, but
regretted that neither he nor the Pope had decided when there could be another
expedition to the East. Mongol envoys appeared next year at the Council of
Lyons, and two of them received Catholic baptism from the Cardinal of Ostia,
the future Innocent V. The replies that they received from the Pope and his
Curia were again friendly but vague. In the autumn of 1276 the Ilkhan tried
again. Two Georgians, the brothers John and James Vaseli, landed in Italy to
visit the Pope, with orders to go on to the Courts of France and England. They
bore a personal letter from Abaga to Edward I, in which he apologized that his
help had not been more effective in 1271. None of this diplomatic activity
produced any result. King Edward sincerely hoped to go on another Crusade, but
neither he nor Philip III of France was ready yet to do so. The Papal Curia was
under the sinister influence of Charles of Anjou, who disliked the Mongols as
the friends of his enemies, the Byzantines and the Genoese, and whose whole
policy was based on an entente with Baibars. The Popes optimistically hoped to
welcome the Mongols into the fold of the Church but would not realize that the
promise of rewards in Heaven were an insufficient inducement for the Ilkhan.
Even the pleas of Leo III of Armenia, who was at the same time the Ilkhan’s
faithful vassal and in communion with Rome, could not produce any practical
help from the Papacy.

Baibars was able to pursue his schemes
without the threat of Western intervention. In the spring of 1275 he led a raid
in person into Cilicia, in which he sacked the cities of the plain, but was
unable to penetrate to Sis. Two years later he decided to invade Anatolia. The
Seldjuk Sultan was now a child, Kaikhosrau III. His minister, Suleiman the
Pervana, or Keeper of the Seals, was the chief power in the land but was quite
unable to control the local emirates that were arising, of which the most
important was the Karamanian. The Ilkhan maintained a loose protectorate over
the Sultanate, enforced by the presence of a considerable Mongol garrison. On
18 April 1277, this garrison was routed by the Mameluks at Albistan. Five days
later Baibars entered Caesarea-Mazacha. The Sultan’s minister, Suleiman, and
the Karamanian emir both hastened to congratulate the victor; but Abaga was
roused and himself led a Mongol army by forced marches into Anatolia. Baibars
did not wait for its arrival, but retired to Syria. Abaga quickly recovered
control of the Seldjuk Sultanate. The treacherous Suleiman was captured and
executed; and rumour said that his flesh was served in a stew at the Ilkhan’s
next state banquet.

Baibars did not long survive his Anatolian
adventure. Various stories were told of his death. According to some
chroniclers he died as a result of wounds received in the recent campaign;
according to others he drank too much kumiz, the fermented mare’s milk loved by
the Turks and the Mongols. But the dominant rumour was that he had prepared
poisoned kumiz for the Ayubite Prince of Kerak, al-Qahir, son of an-Nasir
Dawud, who was with his army and who had offended him, and then carelessly
drank from the same cup before it was cleaned. He died on 1 July 1277.

His death removed the greatest enemy to
Christendom since Saladin. When Baibars became Sultan the Frankish dominions
stretched along the coast from Gaza to Cilicia, with great inland fortresses to
protect them from the East. In a reign of seventeen years he had restricted the
Franks to a few cities along the coast, Acre, Tyre, Sidon, Tripoli, Jebail and
Tortosa, with the isolated town of Lattakieh and the castles of Athlit and
Marqab. He did not survive to see their entire elimination, but he had made it
inevitable. Personally he had few of the qualities that won Saladin respect
even from his foes. He was cruel, disloyal and treacherous, rough in his
manners and harsh in his speech. His subjects could not love him, but they gave
him their admiration, with reason, for he was a brilliant soldier, a subtle
politician and a wise administrator, swift and secret in his decisions and
clear-sighted in his aims. Despite his slave origins he was a patron of the
arts and an active builder, who did much to beautify his cities and to
reconstruct his fortresses. As a man he was evil, but as a ruler he was amongst
the greatest of his time.

BOOK IV

THE END OF OUTREMER

CHAPTER
I

THE
COMMERCE OF OUTREMER

‘By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of
thee with violence.’
EZEKIEL XXVIII, 16

Throughout the history of Outremer the
straightforward issue between Christianity and Islam was often obscured or
deflected by questions of economic advantage. The Frankish colonies lay in an
area that was reputedly rich and that certainly controlled some of the greatest
trade-routes in the world. The financial and commercial ambitions of the
colonists and their allies sometimes ran counter to religious patriotism, and
there were occasions when their basic human needs demanded friendship with
their Moslem neighbours.

There was no commercial motive force
behind the launching of the First Crusade. The Italian maritime cities, whose
merchants were the shrewdest money-makers of the time, had at first been
alarmed by a movement that might well ruin the trading relations that had been
built up with the Moslems of the Levant. It was only when the Crusade was
successful and Frankish settlements were founded in Syria that the Italians
offered their help, realizing that they could use the new colonies to their own
advantage. The economic urge that impelled the Crusaders was, rather,
land-hunger among the lesser nobles of France and the Low Countries and the
desire of the peasants there to escape from their grim, impoverished homes and
the floods and famines of recent years and to migrate to lands of legendary
wealth. To many of the simple folk the distinction between this world and the
next was vague. They confused the earthly with the heavenly Jerusalem and
expected to find a city paved with gold and flowing with milk and honey. Their
hopes deceived them; but disillusion came slowly. The urban civilization of the
East and its higher standard of living gave an appearance of opulence which
returning pilgrims reported to their friends. But as time went on the reports
were less favourable. After the Second Crusade there was no mass-movement
amongst the peasants of the West to find new homes in the Holy Land.
Adventurous noblemen still went East to make their fortunes, but one of the
difficulties in organizing the later Crusades was the lack of economic
inducement.

In fact, the Frankish provinces of
Outremer were not naturally rich. There were fertile districts, such as the
plains of Esdraelon, of Sharon and of Jericho, the narrow coastal strip between
the Lebanon mountains and the sea, the valley of the Buqaia and the plain of
Antioch. But, in comparison with the country beyond the Jordan and the Hauran
and the Bekaa, Palestine was barren and unproductive. The value of
Oultrejourdain to the Franks had lain as much in the corn that it grew as in
its command of the road from Damascus to Egypt. Without the help of
Oultrejourdain it was not always easy for the kingdom of Jerusalem to feed
itself. If the harvest were bad, corn had to be imported from Moslem Syria.
During the last decades of Outremer, when the Franks were reduced to the towns
of the coastal strip, corn must always have been imported.

Products of Outremer

Other foodstuffs were in adequate supply.
The hills supported large numbers of sheep, goats and pigs. There were orchards
and vegetable gardens surrounding all the towns, and there were plentiful
olive-groves. Indeed, it is possible that olive oil was exported in small
quantities to the West, while rare Palestinian fruits, such as the sweet-lemon
or the grenadine, were sometimes seen on the dinner-tables of the wealthy in
Italy.

There were, however, few products that
Outremer could export on a big enough scale to bring any appreciable revenue
into the country. The most important of these was sugar. When the Crusaders
arrived in Syria they found that sugar-cane was cultivated in many coastal
areas and in the Jordan valley. They continued the cultivation and learned from
the natives the process of extracting sugar from the cane. There was a great
sugar factory at Acre, and factories in most of the coastal cities. The main
centre of the industry was Tyre. Almost all the sugar consumed in Europe during
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries came from Outremer. The second chief
export was cloth of various sorts. The silk-worm had been cultivated round
Beirut and Tripoli since the end of the sixth century, while flax was grown in
the plains of Palestine. Silken stuffs were sold for export. Samite was made up
at Acre, Beirut and Lattakieh; and Tyre was famed for the fabric known as
zendado or cendal. The linen of Nablus had an international reputation. The
purple dye from Tyre was still fashionable for clothes. But the Italians could
also buy silks and linens in the markets of Syria and Egypt, where supplies
were larger and prices often lower. It was the same with glass. The Jews in
various cities, especially Tyre and Antioch, produced glass for export; but
they had to face the competition of glass from Egypt. Tanneries probably only
supplied local needs, but pottery was occasionally exported.

There was always a market in Egypt for
wood. From the earliest ages the Egyptian fleet had been built with timber that
came from the forests of Lebanon and the hills south of Antioch, and the
Egyptians also required large quantities of timber for architectural purposes.
Wars between Egypt and the Crusading states seldom interrupted this traffic for
long. There were iron mines near Beirut, but their production probably was
insufficient for export.