A History of the Crusades-Vol 3 (52 page)

1282: Collapse of Charles of Anjou’s Power

On the evening of 30 March 1282, the
Sicilians, exasperated by the arrogance of Charles of Anjou and his soldiers,
suddenly rose and massacred every Frenchman in the island. The Sicilian Vespers
had far wider-flung effects than ever the angry islanders can have suspected.
Charles’s great Mediterranean empire was shown to be without foundation. For
the next decades he and his successors vainly tried to recover Sicily from the
Aragonese princes who were elected to its throne. The Angevin kingdom of Naples
was no longer a world-power; and the Papacy which had guaranteed to the
Angevins their Sicilian kingdom, was humiliated and ruined financially in its
attempts to restore its clients. Angevin schemes in the Balkans and further to
the east were abandoned. At Constantinople the Emperor sighed with relief. He
had no longer to infuriate his people by offering the submission of their
Church to Rome if Rome would curb Charles’s ambitions. In Outremer Roger of San
Severino suddenly found himself without any backing. He was summoned to return
to Italy by his master, and left Acre towards the end of the year, confiding
his position as
bailli
to his Seneschal, Odo Poilechien.

To the Mameluks of Egypt the collapse of
Charles’s power came as a shock but also as a relief. Both Baibars and Qalawun
had feared and respected him, and therefore had refrained from attacking his
new province in Outremer. Now there was no one to restrain the Sultan, as long
as the Franks could be kept from alliance with the Mongols. In June 1283, when
the truce signed at Caesarea ended, Qalawun offered Odo Poilechien to renew it
for another ten years. Odo gladly accepted, but he was unsure of his authority.
The treaty was therefore signed on the Frankish side in the name of the Commune
of Acre and the Templars of Athlit and Sidon. It guaranteed the Franks in their
possession of the territory from the Ladder of Tyre, north of Acre, to Mount
Carmel and Athlit, and also of Sidon. But Tyre and Beirut were excluded. The
right of free pilgrimage to Nazareth was maintained.

Odo was glad to preserve the peace; for
King Hugh was once more about to try to recover his mainland kingdom. The Lady
Isabella of Beirut had recently died, and her city had passed to her sister
Eschiva, the wife of Humphrey of Montfort, who was the younger brother of the
Lord of Tyre. Knowing that he could trust the Montforts, Hugh sailed from
Cyprus at the end of July, with two of his sons, Henry and Bohemond. He had
intended to land at Acre, but the wind blew him to Beirut, where he arrived on
I August and was well received. He sailed on a few days later to Tyre, sending
his troops by land down the coast. On the way they were badly mauled by Moslem
raiders, incited, so Hugh believed, by the Templars of Sidon. When he landed at
Tyre, the omens were unfavourable. His standard fell into the sea. When the
clergy came in procession to meet him the great Cross that they carried slipped
and broke the skull of the Jewish court-physician. Hugh waited at Tyre; but no
one at Acre made any move to welcome him there. The Commune and the Templars
preferred the unobtrusive government of Odo Poilechien. His Cypriot nobles
would not stay with him for more than the lawful four months. On 3 November,
before the period was over, the most promising of his sons, Bohemond died. Even
more serious to him was the death of his friend and brother-in-law, John of
Montfort. John left no children; so the King allowed Tyre to pass to his brother
and heir, Humphrey, Lord of Beirut; but he added a clause that should he wish
he could buy the city back for the crown for a hundred and fifty besants. But
Humphrey himself died the following February. After a suitable interval his
widow was married to Hugh’s youngest son, Guy, to whom she brought Beirut. Tyre
remained for the time under the rule of John’s widow, Margaret.

Even after his nobles left him Hugh
remained on at Tyre. There he died himself, on 4 March 1284. He had done his
best to restore authority in Outremer. His own qualities had handicapped him;
for, with all his good looks and his charm, he was ill-tempered and tactless.
But his failure was due far more to the hostility of the merchants of Acre and
the Military Orders, who preferred an absentee, distant monarch, who would not
interfere with them.

1285: Loss of Marqab

Hugh was succeeded by his eldest son,
John, a handsome but delicate boy of about seventeen. He was crowned King of
Cyprus at Nicosia on II May, and immediately afterwards crossed to Tyre where
he was crowned King of Jerusalem. But outside of Tyre and Beirut his authority
was unrecognized on the mainland. He reigned only one year, dying at Cyprus on
20 May 1285. His heir was his brother Henry, aged fourteen, who was crowned
King of Cyprus on 24 June. He did not venture for the moment to cross into
Syria.

There Qalawun was preparing to attack
those of the Franks who were not protected by the truce of 1283. The widowed
ladies who governed Beirut and Tyre, Eschiva and Margaret, hastened to ask him
for a truce, which was granted to them. The Sultan’s objective was the great
castle of the Hospital at Marqab, whose inmates had too often allied themselves
with the Mongols. On 17 April 1285, the Sultan appeared with a great army at
the foot of the mountain on which the castle stands, bringing a larger number
of mangonels than had ever been seen together before. His men dragged them up
the hillside and began to pound at the walls. But the castle was well equipped,
and its own mangonels had the advantage of position. Many of the enemy’s
machines were destroyed. For a month the Moslems could make no progress. At
last the Sultan’s engineers succeeded in digging a mine under the Tower of Hope
which rose at the end of the northern salient, and filling it with inflammable
wood. On 23 May the mine was fired, and the tower came crashing down. Its fall
interrupted the assault of the Moslems, and they were driven back. But the
garrison had discovered that the mine penetrated far further under their defences.
They knew that they were lost and capitulated. The twenty-five officers of the
Order who were in the castle were allowed to retire with all their portable
possessions, on horseback and fully armed. The rest of the garrison could go
free but could take nothing with them. They retired to Tortosa and then to
Tripoli. Qalawun made his formal entry into the castle on 25 May.

The loss of Marqab alarmed the citizens of
Acre; and about the same time they learned that Charles of Anjou had died. His
son, Charles II of Naples, was too deeply involved in the Sicilian war to
trouble himself about Outremer; and the war was gradually embroiling the whole
of western Europe. The time had come for a ruler nearer at hand. On the advice
of the Hospital, Henry II sent an envoy from Cyprus, called Julian le Jaune, to
Acre to negotiate for his recognition as King. The Commune acquiesced. The
Hospital and the Teutonic Order sympathized. The Templars, after some
hesitation, agreed to give their support; but Odo Poilechien refused to resign
his
bailli
-ship. The French regiment, still provided by the King of
France, supported Odo.

On 4 June 1286, Henry landed at Acre. The
Commune received him with joy, though the Grand Masters of the three Orders
thought it more prudent to be absent from his reception, saying that their
religious profession obliged them to be neutral. Henry was taken in state to
the Church of the Holy Cross. There he announced that he would lodge in the
castle, as previous Kings had done. But Odo Poilechien refused to leave the
castle, which he had garrisoned with the French. The Bishop of Famagusta and
the Abbot of the Templum Domini at Acre went to plead with him and when he
would not listen to them drew up a legal protest. The King, who was staying
temporarily in the palace of the late Lord of Tyre, proclaimed three times that
the Frenchmen could leave the castle in safety with all their belongings and no
one must harm them. Meanwhile the citizens were growing exasperated with Odo
and prepared to attack him. Thereupon the three Grand Masters, having seen
which way the wind was blowing, persuaded Odo to hand the castle over to them,
and they gave it to Henry. He made his solemn entry there on 29 June.

1286: The Last Festivities of Outremer

Six weeks later, on 15 August, Henry was
crowned at Tyre by the Archbishop, Bonnacorso of Gloria, acting as vicar of the
Patriarch. After the ceremony the Court returned to Acre, and there they held a
fortnight of festivity. There were games and tournaments, and in the great Hall
of the Hospital pageants were enacted. There were scenes from the Story of the
Round Table, with Lancelot and Tristram and Palamedes; and they played the tale
of the Queen of Femenie, from the Romance of Troy. Not for a century had there
been so gay and splendid a festival in Outremer. The handsome boy-King charmed
everyone; for it was not yet known that he was epileptic. Behind him, to advise
him in everything, were his uncles, Philip and Baldwin of Ibelin, who were
deeply respected. On their advice, he did not remain long at Acre but returned
in a few weeks’ time to Cyprus, leaving Baldwin of Ibelin as
bailli.
His
uncles knew that a resident King would not be to the liking of the people.

The Sultan at Cairo must have smiled to
hear of the frivolous gaieties of the Franks; but to the Mongol Ilkhan at
Tabriz it seemed that the time had come for more serious action. Abaga had died
on r April 1282. His successor was his brother, Tekuder, who in his childhood
had been baptized into the Nestorian faith under the name of Nicholas. But his
tastes lay towards the Moslems. Hardly was he on the throne before he announced
his conversion to Islam and took the name of Ahmed and title of Sultan. At the
same time he sent to Cairo to conclude a treaty of friendship with Qalawun. His
policy horrified the older Mongols of his Court, who complained at once to the
Great Khan Kubilai. With Kubilai’s approval, Abaga’s son Arghun led a revolt in
Khorassan, where he was governor. He was defeated at first. But Ahmed was soon
deserted by his generals and was murdered in a palace conspiracy on 10 August
1284. Arghun at once mounted the throne. Like his father, Arghun was
religiously eclectic. His own sympathies were for Buddhism, but his vizier, Sa’ad
ad-Daulah, was a Jew, and his best friend was the Nestorian Catholicus, Mar
Yahbhallaha. This remarkable man was Turk in origin, an Ongut born in the
Chinese province of Shan-si by the banks of the Hoang-Ho. He had come with his
compatriot, Rabban Sauma, westward in the vain hope of making a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem. While he was in Iraq in 1281, the Catholicate fell vacant, and he
was elected to the office. He had a great influence over the new Ilkhan, who
longed to rescue the Holy Places of Christendom from the Moslems, but who
always said that he would not do so unless the Christian Kings of the West gave
their aid.

1287: Embassy of Rabban Sauma

In 1285 Arghun wrote to Pope Honorius IV
to suggest common action, but he received no answer. Two years later he decided
to send an embassy to the West, and he chose as his ambassador Mar Yahbhallaha’s
friend Rabban Sauma. The ambassador, who wrote a vivid account of his mission,
set out early in 1287. Sailing from Trebizond, he reached Constantinople about
Easter-time. He was cordially received by the Emperor Andronicus and visited
Saint Sophia and the other great shrines of the Imperial city. Andronicus was
already on excellent terms with the Mongols and was ready to help them as far
as his dwindling resources allowed. From Constantinople Rabban Sauma went to
Naples, arriving there at the end of June. While he was there he saw a sea
battle in the harbour between the Aragonese and the Neapolitan fleets. It was
his first indication that western Europe was preoccupied with its own
squabbles. He rode on to Rome. There he found that Pope Honorius had just died,
and the conclave to elect his successor had not yet assembled. The twelve
Cardinals who were resident in Rome received him, but he found them ignorant
and unhelpful. They knew nothing of the spread of Christianity among the
Mongols and were shocked that he should serve a heathen master. When he tried
to discuss politics, they cross-questioned him about his faith and criticized
its divergencies from their own. In the end he almost lost his temper. He had come,
he said, to pay his respects to the Pope, and to make plans for the future, not
to hold a debate on the Creed. After he had worshipped in the chief churches of
Rome, he went gladly to Genoa. The Genoese welcomed him with great ceremony.
The Mongol alliance was important to them, and they gave due attention to the
ambassador’s proposals.

At the end of August Rabban Sauma crossed
into France, reaching Paris early in September. There his reception was all
that he could desire. An escort brought him into the capital, and when he was
given an audience by the young King, Philip IV, he was paid sovereign honours.
The King rose from his throne to greet him and listened with deep respect to
his message. He left the audience with a promise that, if it pleased God,
Philip would himself lead an army to the rescue of Jerusalem. The ambassador
was delighted by Paris. The University, then at the height of its medieval
glory, particularly impressed him. The King himself escorted him round the
Sainte-Chapelle to see the sacred relics that Saint Louis had bought from
Constantinople. When he moved on from Paris the King nominated an ambassador,
Gobert of Helleville, who was to return with him to the Ilkhan’s Court and
arrange further details of the alliance.

Rabban Sauma’s next host was Edward I of
England, who was then at Bordeaux, the capital of his French possessions. With
Edward, who had fought in the East and had long advocated a Mongol alliance, he
found an intelligent and practical response to his proposals. The King struck
him as the ablest statesman that he had met in the West; and he was
particularly flattered when he was asked to celebrate Mass before the English
Court. But when it came to making a time-table Edward prevaricated. Neither he
nor Philip of France could say when exactly he would be ready to embark on the
Crusade. Rabban Sauma went back to Rome a little uneasy in his mind. Pausing at
Genoa for Christmas he happened to meet the Cardinal-Legate John of Tusculum
and told him his fears. The Mameluks were preparing at that moment to
extinguish the last Christian states in Syria, and no one in the West would
take the threat seriously.