The Dream and the Tomb (23 page)

When he learned all this, Raymond sued for peace. Ambassadors from Antioch were sent to the emperor's camp, and it was agreed that Raymond should swear fealty to the emperor, who would be permitted to enter the city whenever he pleased. It was also agreed that if the emperor succeeded in taking Aleppo, Shaizar, Hama and Hims (Homs), these too should be added to the fiefdom of the prince of Antioch. In this way peace was established, Raymond knelt before the emperor, and the imperial standard flew from the tower of the citadel. The emperor returned to Cilicia, intending to spend the winter on the seacoast near Tarsus.

During the winter, plans were made for a combined Byzantine-Crusader attack on Zengi's strongholds. Shaizar was selected as the principal objective. In April, the entire Byzantine army, together with the armies of the prince of Antioch and Joscelin of Edessa, converged on Shaizar. The siege engines were set up, and thousands of heavy rocks and stones were hurled into the city. From early morning until late at night, the emperor himself, in gold helmet and breastplate, sword at his side, acted as the field commander, mingling with the soldiers and directing the men manning the siege engines. The prince of Antioch and Joscelin of Edessa, perhaps in protest against the emperor's assumption of the powers of commander in chief, remained apart from the battle. They sat in their tent, playing at dice. The emperor was furious and ordered them onto the battlefield.

After three weeks, with the news that Zengi was approaching from the east, the emperor accepted a huge indemnity from the emir in return for raising the siege.

The emperor returned to Antioch with the intention of teaching the prince of Antioch a lesson. He had not previously entered the city. Now he entered in triumph, riding on horseback, with the prince and the count
walking like lowly footmen on either side of him. He provided himself with a large escort of Byzantine troops. The patriarch met him at the city gate and escorted him to the cathedral through streets hung with carpets and scented with incense. After a solemn mass, the emperor rode to the prince's palace, and it was clear that he intended to stay there. In a speech from the throne, he announced his dissatisfaction with many things seen in Antioch and Shaizar. The Byzantine army would take over the citadel, where he intended to store his own treasure and his own weapons, and henceforth Antioch would become the war capital, the center for the mobilization of a Christian army against the Saracens in Syria. The prince of Antioch was the emperor's prisoner and must henceforth do the emperor's bidding.

Help came from an unexpected corner. Joscelin of Edessa, a bad soldier but an excellent conspirator, devised a superb stratagem for getting rid of the emperor. He spread the rumor that the Byzantines would dispossess and expel the people of Antioch. He issued a call to revolt against these usurpers from overseas. Crowds formed, arms were seized; with the whole city in a frenzy, Joscelin went to the emperor. An armed mob had accused him of being a traitor, ready to sell the city to the emperor, he told the emperor.

He presented himself as an innocent spectator who had stumbled on a revolt. The emperor offered to leave Antioch for the sake of the Christian peace, and when that news spread, the revolt abated,

A few days later the emperor's army returned with him to Cilicia. Spurned by the Crusaders, John Comnenus washed his hands of them.

The man who was most pleased by the departure of the Byzantine army was Zengi, who was engrossed in a plan to seize Damascus, which was then under the government of an old Turk called Unur. Damascus was in great danger, and Unur had no hesitation in calling for help from the king of Jerusalem. Unur offered twenty thousand bezants a month, the restoration of the fortress at Banyas to the Christians, and a firm alliance against Zengi. Fulk set out for Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, only to find part of Zengi's army parading on the farther shore. Fulk moved his army toward Damascus; and Zengi pulled out, and set up his headquarters at Baalbek. By moving toward Damascus, Fulk had shown that he could be relied upon to help Unur, who was properly grateful. The alliance between Unur and Fulk was based on a common interest and on similar habits of mind. William of Tyre describes him as “a man of much wisdom and a lover of our people.” Actually, at heart Unur detested the Christians, yet he was one of the few Muslim leaders who had an understanding of them and could deal with them in a civilized manner.

Fulk invited Unur to attend his court at Acre. It was the first time that a Muslim ruler had been invited to attend the court of a king of Jerusalem. There were festivities, ceremonious exchanges of gifts, and endless diplomatic
conversations. In Tiberias, there were more festivities. In Jerusalem a rather simple-minded Templar approached Unur and said, “Would you like to see God as a child?” “Yes, certainly,” Unur replied. Then the Templar led the vizier to a painting of the Virgin Mary with the Christ child on her lap. “Here,” said the Templar, “is God as a child.” Unur said nothing; there was wisdom in his silence.

The alliance between Damascus and the Kingdom of Jerusalem continued into the reign of Fulk's successor. The battles with Zengi continued, but they were more like sustained skirmishes than real battles; and sometimes the Egyptians tested the strength of the kingdom. Once an Egyptian raiding party reached the Plain of Sharon but was forced back. Under Fulk the kingdom in alliance with Damascus seemed to be as secure as it had ever been. Fulk had learned the hard lesson that to survive at all the Crusaders must be more malleable in their attitude to the Muslims, more understanding, and more strenuous in their effort to penetrate the Muslim mind.

IN the autumn of 1142, King Fulk and Queen Melisende went on holiday to Acre, accompanied by the court. The king had a good deal of business to do in the palace, and soon the queen, bored by the ceremonial life at court and anxious to see more of her husband, suggested that they should visit a place called the Springs of the Oxen, where according to the ancient legend Adam found the oxen which enabled him to plow the earth. So they went off in a long cavalcade, the servants being sent ahead to prepare the way and to arrange for the festivities that would take place when they reached the springs. Everyone was in good spirits; it was a fine sunlit day and the plain of Acre had never looked lovelier.

It was not a hunting party; it was simply a ride into the country. But it became a hunting party when one of the servants riding ahead startled a hare lying in a furrow. Suddenly, all were chasing after the hare. The king, accompanied by his escort, dug his spurs into his horse, and with his lance at the ready he pursued the hare with wild excitement and at breakneck speed. Suddenly his horse stumbled and fell, and he was thrown head foremost over the horse's head. His saddle fell on him and crushed his skull. There was nothing to be done for him. He lingered on for three days without regaining consciousness.

The dying king was brought to Acre, where huge crowds gave expression to their grief. He died on November 10, 1142, at the age of fifty-three. A few days later King Fulk was buried in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He left two children: Baldwin, who was thirteen, and Amaury, who was seven.

Baldwin was crowned on Christmas day in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the boy-king standing beside his mother, who was crowned at the same time to emphasize her position as regent and controlling power of the kingdom. The princes and nobility of the kingdom were all present at the long and complicated ceremony, which was conducted by William, Patriarch of Jerusalem. Afterward there was a coronation feast.

The boy-king looked the part to perfection. William of Tyre, who was
about the same age and knew him well, could find few faults in him. The boy-king had inherited his father's vigor and his mother's beauty. Unlike his father, who could never remember names, Baldwin III remembered the names of his lowliest servants and of everyone he met. He had a passion for books and rode a horse magnificently. He talked easily and well, possessed a sharp wit, permitted himself and others great freedom of speech, and never refused an audience. As a youth he had many mistresses but after his marriage he remained faithful to his wife. He drank little. “Excess,” he liked to say, “was the touchstone for the worst crimes.”

He was the first king of Jerusalem to be born in the Holy Land. His three predecessors came from the West, and brought with them certain Western prejudices and clerkly habits of mind. Although devout, he was more interested in history than in theology, and he had studied the history of the kingdom minutely. His roots were in Jerusalem; he was the son of the Judaean wilderness and the lush coastal plains. When he was daring, it was in a peculiarly straightforward, Jerusalem-like way, and when he was obstinate—he needed to be very obstinate indeed to wrest the power from his mother—then, too, he was so in a straightforward, Jerusalem-like way. He was never cunning, and this was to his advantage. They said of him that he came to the throne at exactly the right time and with exactly the right qualities and if wit, courage, intelligence, kindness, and physical beauty could have saved the kingdom, he would have saved it. But it was during his reign that there could be seen for the first time the fatal flaws that would bring about the destruction of the kingdom.

Societies decay and renew themselves continually, provided they have reasonably stable frontiers and that there exists an essential unity of purpose. Corrupt ministers and treacherous soldiers can attempt to destroy a society from within, but as long as the frontiers are held and the unity of purpose remains, the society, even though it is given a deathblow, can be resurrected. But conquest and consequent assimilation can destroy a kingdom utterly. Frontiers, therefore, are of paramount importance: they are lines drawn on a map, but they are also spiritual, enclosing arms, angelic guardians. In the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the frontiers were continually shifting. The essential unity had been in jeopardy from the beginning, from the time Bohemond took Antioch for himself, and Baldwin took Edessa. Contending principalities were ruinous, for they wasted the energy of the people. In a country where the Arabs possessed an excellent intelligence system, every dispute between the princes was quickly known to the kingdom's enemies.

The danger came from northern Syria, where the cold and calculating Prince Zengi was attempting to build up a large kingdom of his own. A bitter feud had broken out between Raymond, Prince of Antioch, and Joscelin of Courtenay, Count of Edessa. Zengi heard about the dispute and took full advantage of it. Joscelin had removed his army from Edessa,
leaving the city virtually defenseless. Zengi brought up his own army, surrounded the city, and attacked it with mangonels. The defenders, though there was scarcely a trained soldier among them, fought well, and the siege was much longer than Zengi had intended. He therefore vowed that all the Franks remaining in the city would be killed without mercy. He had a very large force, having summoned troops from all over the East to besiege the city. His aim was to smother the city by sheer numbers. Food was running out; but the defenders fought on behind their massive walls. Messengers were sent to Antioch and Jerusalem to appeal for aid. The prince of Antioch refused aid, while Queen Melisende, acting as regent, sent a strong force which arrived too late to do any good. Edessa's fortress wall was mined, and Zengi's troops poured in. All the Franks were killed, but the native Christians were spared.

The loss of Edessa and the butchery of the Franks sent shock waves through the kingdom. Edessa was the northeastern anchor of the kingdom, forming a salient into enemy territory, so heavily fortified that it was believed to be impregnable. Now it was lost, and except for a very brief occupation by a Christian force a few years later, it was lost forever.

The shock waves reached Europe. The pope and the king of Jerusalem sent out appeals for help. Similar appeals had been issued often before, but this time they were more insistent, more demanding. The fall of Edessa would bring about the Second Crusade. For the first time, kings would come from Europe to the Holy Land. They would find themselves confronting someone even more crafty and cunning than Zengi—his son Nur ed-Din, who would succeed him when Zengi fell to an assassin's knife.

Meanwhile, the boy-king Baldwin III was leading a charmed life. He was genuinely loved by the people and they loved him in return. There are men who seem to be fortunate from birth, and he was one of them. In his first campaign to reclaim Val Moysis, a Crusader castle built by Baldwin II in 1127, that had been taken by Turks and local tribesmen, who had massacred the entire Crusader garrison, Baldwin Ill's success was crowned by the fact that he had not lost a single one of his soldiers.

But his second campaign was a disaster. It began strangely and ended in horror. A certain Altuntash, an Armenian nobleman converted to Islam, arrived in Jerusalem with a small retinue, declaring that he had come from Bosra, a town in the Hauran some forty-five miles east of Tiberias. Altuntash was the governor of Bosra. He was a tall, imposing man with a gift for easy argument and a congenial personality. He told a convincing story about his quarrel with Unur, an official whose power exceeded that of the king of Damascus. He offered to surrender Bosra to the Christians if a suitable compensation could be paid to him. In addition he offered the town of Salkhad. Queen Melisende offered to present his request to the nobles; a general conference was held, and it was unanimously agreed that this extension of Christian power into the Hauran would be acceptable to
God. Suitable compensation was provided; heralds were sent out to raise an army; the boy-king marched out of Jerusalem at the head of his troops with the now-bejeweled True Cross, the most precious object in the kingdom, held high in the hands of Robert, Archbishop of Nazareth. Altuntash was also in their company.

Although the royal councillors had discussed Altuntash's offer at great length, it appears that no one paid more than passing attention to the difficulties of the enterprise. The Hauran was a plain of volcanic ash, unexplored by the Crusaders. Even more important was the fact that the area was under the control of Damascus, and Baldwin II had signed a treaty with the king of Damascus. It was a treaty of alliance and temporary peace, which according to the custom of the time, meant a ten-year truce. By invading the Hauran, Baldwin III was breaking a solemn treaty. In a rather off-hand way the secretary of the royal court of Jerusalem wrote to Unur, explaining the king's intention, and Unur not unexpectedly wrote back that he would do everything he could to prevent the threatened invasion. Since Unur was the vizier to the king of Damascus and the chief power in the state, it might have been better if Queen Melisende had arrested Altuntash and sent him back to Bosra. Unur had shown himself to be friendly to the Christians and nothing was to be gained by making him an enemy.