A History of the Crusades-Vol 3 (48 page)

We have very little information about the
activities of the
bourgeois
classes in Outremer. They seem to have taken
no part in international trade but to have confined themselves to shop-keeping
and the manufacture of goods for local consumption. Politically they had some
power. The Commune of Acre, which was composed of the Frankish
bourgeoisie,
was
an important element in the state. But it seems to have kept itself apart from
the native communities, even from the Orthodox, who were treated as a separate
entity. In Antioch, where the Commune was even more influential, the Frankish
and Greek
bourgeoisie
worked together. There was probably more
intermarriage there, and the Franks had never been as numerous as in Acre, or
in Tripoli, which seems to have followed the pattern of Acre. The labouring
classes were mostly of native or of half-caste origin; and there were usually
considerable numbers of slaves, Moslems captured in the war, to work in the
mines or on the construction of public buildings or on royal or noble estates.

The Coinage of Outremer

The government was always short of money.
Even in times of peace the country had to be ready for a sudden outbreak of
war; and war usually resulted in the devastation of large areas of the
countryside. The revenue from tolls and taxes was inadequate; and a sudden
emergency, such as the capture of the King or of whole sections of the army,
could not be met without outside help. Fortunately, outside help was often
forthcoming. Quite apart from the money obtained, usually unwisely, by raids
for plunder into Moslem territory, continual gifts were sent from Europe.
Palestine was the Holy Land, and the Crusaders and colonists were generally
regarded as the soldiers of Christ. Visitors paid a tax on arrival; and not
only did pilgrims bring money with them into the country, to spend there or to
give in alms, but many of the shrines and abbeys there were given lands in the
West, whose revenues were sent out to them. The Military Orders derived most of
their income from their endowments in the West, to such an extent that they
were still enormously wealthy even after the loss of all their Syrian
possessions. Individual citizens of Outremer, from the King downwards, would
receive occasional gifts from Western relatives or sympathizers. These
subsidies helped largely to balance the finances of Outremer; and thus the
luxuries that visitors from the West admired in the Syrian cities were paid for
in part by their compatriots at home.

Another source of economic strength, whose
effect is more difficult to evaluate, was the coinage of Outremer. When the
Crusades began, there was no gold coinage in western Europe, except in Sicily
and Moslem Spain. Silver was the most precious metal employed. Nor at that time
were the Moslem states in Syria issuing gold coins, though the rival Caliphs at
Baghdad and Cairo both kept up the practice. Yet almost as soon as the
Crusading states were established, the King of Jerusalem, the Prince of Antioch
and the Count of Tripoli all began to mint
dinars
of gold, which were
known by the name of
Saracenate Besants
and which were imitated from the
dinars
of the Fatimids but contained only about two-thirds of their gold
content. These coins, particularly the coins of the kingdom of Jerusalem, which
were known to the Moslems as
souri,
the dinars of Tyre, soon circulated
widely through the Near East. It is difficult to understand where the Franks
obtained the gold. Plunder and ransom can only have produced a small and
irregular amount. The main source of gold at the time was the Sudan, and it is
possible that some gold was brought to the Frankish ports by the Moghrabi
merchants that came to trade there. But to explain the appearance of the
coinage there must have been a general movement of gold from the Moslem
countries to the Christian. The European settlers must have bought gold, no
doubt at a very high price, from the Moslems in return for silver, which was
plentiful in Europe; and the issues of this debased gold coinage must have
helped in the whole movement. Large quantities of gold must have passed on
further to the West; for it is remarkable that during the thirteenth century
gold coinage of an excellent alloy began to appear in western Europe.

The right to issue gold coins was kept
firmly in the hands of the rulers of Outremer. Neither the Italian colonies
there nor the Military Orders were allowed to infringe on this monopoly. The
tenants-in-chief could only mint bronze coins for local needs.

The Military Orders had an additional
source of wealth, derived from their banking activities. With their vast
possessions all over Christendom they were admirably placed to finance
Crusading expeditions. The French participation in the Second Crusade was only
made possible by the help of the Templars, who paid out enormous sums to Louis
VII in the East, and were repaid in France. By the end of the twelfth century
the Templars made a regular practice of money-lending. They charged a high
interest, but, however unreliable they might be politically, their financial
reputation was so high that even the Moslems had confidence in them and made
use of their services. The Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights conducted
similar operations, but on a lesser scale. The governments of Outremer gained
nothing directly from these activities, which increased the power and
insubordination of the Orders; but they were for the financial benefit of the
country as a whole.

Economic Dilemma of Outremer

The economic history of the Crusades is
still very obscure. Information is inadequate, and there are many details that
cannot now be explained. But it is impossible to understand their political
history without taking into account the commercial and financial needs of the
settlers and of the Italian merchants. These needs usually ran counter to the
ideological impulse that started and maintained the Crusading movement.
Outremer was permanently poised on the horns of a dilemma. It was founded by a
blend of religious fervour and adventurous land-hunger. But if it was to endure
healthily, it could not remain dependent upon a steady supply of men and money
from the West. It must justify its existence economically. This could only be
done if it came to terms with its neighbours. If they were friendly and prosperous,
it too would prosper. But to seek amity with the Moslems seemed a complete
betrayal of Crusader ideals; and the Moslems for their part could never quite
reconcile themselves to the presence of an alien and intrusive state in lands
that they regarded as their own. Their dilemma was less painful, for the
presence of the Christian colonists was not necessary for their trade with
Europe, however convenient it might be at times. Good relations were therefore
always precarious. The second great problem that Outremer had to face was its
relations with the Italian merchant-cities. They were an indispensable element
in its existence. Without them communications with the West would have been
almost impossible to maintain, and it would have been quite impossible to
export the products of the country or to have captured any of the through-trade
from the further East. But the Italians, with their arrogance, their rivalries
and the cynicism of their policy, caused irremediable harm. They would hold
aloof from vital campaigns and openly parade the disunity of Christendom. They
supplied the Moslems with essential war-material. They would riot and fight
against each other in the streets of the cities. The rulers of Outremer must
often have regretted the rich commerce that brought such dangerous and unruly
allies to their shores; and yet without this commerce the story of Outremer
would have been shorter and grimmer. It is never easy to decide between the
hostile claims of material prosperity and ideological faith. Nor can any
government hope to satisfy either claim completely. Man cannot live on ideology
alone, while prosperity depends on wider issues than can be contained in one
narrow strip of land. The Crusaders made many mistakes. Their policy was often
hesitant and changeable. But they cannot be entirely blamed for failing to
solve a problem for which, in fact there was no solution.

CHAPTER
II

ARCHITECTURE
AND THE ARTS IN OUTREMER

‘Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself
with glory and beauty.’
JOB XL, 10

The Franks of Outremer allowed the
commerce that should have established their country to slip out of their grasp.
But in some of the arts they kept control of their productions. Their
achievements here were remarkable; for the colonists were not numerous and only
few of them can have been artists. Moreover they had come to a land whose
artistic traditions were far older than their own; nor could they find there
the materials to which they were used. Yet they began to develop a style which
answered satisfactorily to their needs.

Most of their smaller works of art have
perished. The turbulent history of Syria and Palestine has not permitted the
survival of things that are delicate and fragile. Their architecture was more
durable, though there, as in most medieval countries, there is little left
except for military and ecclesiastical monuments. Even in these change and
decay have altered the original form. Apart from the holiest shrines of
Christendom, which the Moslems were too scrupulous to touch, but which later
Christians have repaired, the churches that still stand were preserved because
they were adapted to become mosques. Others have fallen into ruin. The Frankish
castles and fortifications were all so severely damaged in the course of the
wars that the Moslem conquerors were obliged, if they wished to use them, to
reconstruct much of them, especially the outside walls and the gates. What man
left alone, nature helped to ruin, in that earthquake-stricken land. Even where
modern archaeologists have brought their scholarship to the work of restoration,
as at Krak des Chevaliers, it is not always possible to distinguish clearly
between what is Crusader and what is Mameluk.

The first buildings that the Crusaders
needed to construct were for their defence. Churches and palaces must wait till
the country was securely held. The walls of the towns had to be repaired, and
castles built to guard the frontiers and to serve as safe administrative
centres for the country districts. The fortifications of the main cities only
required to be patched here and there; except in the few cases where the
Crusaders had only forced an entry by breaching the walls. At Antioch the great
defence system constructed by the Byzantines towards the close of the tenth century
had suffered very little damage. The Latin princes had no need to add to them.
Similarly little repair work was required on the Fatimid walls of Jerusalem,
though the Crusaders seem almost at once to have made alterations and
improvements to the Tower of David. But soon they began to build castles in
towns where the fortifications were already adequate. These castles were all
built on the edge of the town and could be defended independently. Their lords
wished not only to be able to carry on resistance even if the town fell to the
enemy, but also to be in a position to awe the town, should it prove unruly.
The first castle that can be dated with certainty is Count Raymond’s at Mount
Pilgrim, built in 1104 to provide him with headquarters while he besieged
Tripoli. It was outside the town, though Moslem Tripoli was later built at its
base. But of Raymond’s own work little more than the west wall now survives.
The castles of the Princes of Galilee at Tiberias and Toron must have been
built about the same time. But the first great age of castle-building began in
the second decade of the twelfth century, under Baldwin II, and was continued
under Fulk, when such magnificent fortresses as Kerak of Moab, Beaufort and,
further north, Sahyun, were constructed, as well as the smaller forts of
Judaea, such as Blanchegarde and Ibelin.

The Byzantine Castle

The Crusaders found military architecture
far more highly developed in the East than in the West, where the stone-built
castle was only now beginning to appear. The Romans had studied military
defence as a science. The Byzantines, stimulated by the endless foreign
invasions that they had to face, had evolved it to suit their needs, and the
Arabs had learned from them. But the Byzantines’ problems were not the same as
the Crusaders’. The Byzantines assumed that man-power was always available;
they could afford large garrisons. They took immense trouble to defend their
cities well. The walls of Constantinople were still able, a thousand years
after they were built, to defy the up-to-date cannon of the Ottomans, and the
walls of Antioch struck the Crusaders with admiration. But the Byzantine castle
was not much more than a fortified camp. It was designed to deal with an enemy
whose armaments were less formidable than the Byzantines’; for the Arabs, who
were their most dangerous rivals, were less advanced in siege-machinery. Its
walls did not have to be solid; for a system of outworks, of which the main
feature was at least one ditch of considerable width, prevented the enemy from
bringing his battering-rams or grappling-ladders close up against them. Towers
were built with a slight salient at regular intervals along the walls, less to
defend the walls themselves than to give the archers and pitch-throwers of the
garrison a longer range into the enemy lines. The keep in the centre of the
enceinte was designed not to be an ultimate point of defence, but, rather, to
be a storehouse for armaments and provisions. Except for a few examples on the
Armenian frontier where semi-independent border barons lived, the Byzantine
castle was not intended to be a residence. The commander was a professional
soldier who left his wife and children at home. Finally, though advantage was
taken of natural defences, the inaccessibility of the site was not the first
consideration. The main use of the castle was as barracks. It was inconvenient
to force the soldiers to toil up and down a mountain every time that they
moved.