8
The early part of 1270 passed in a whirl of preparations for the Crusade. Edward was still short of funds, but in April 1270 the negotiations with the laity finally paid off, with there being agreement for the grant of a ‘twentieth’, or a levy of a twentieth of the value of all personal property and income, the quid pro quo for which may have been a promise by Henry to enforce Edward’s proposed restrictions on Jewish moneylending. This yielded about £30,000, the greater part of which was paid to Edward, with sums also assigned at the rate of 100 marks per knight to the nobles accompanying him. So Henry of Almain, accompanied by fourteen knights, received 1,500 marks, William de Valence with his nineteen received 2,000, and so on.
Still, however, a major hurdle remained: the Earl of Gloucester. Certainly at this stage in their lives Edward and Gloucester could never stay in each other’s good graces for long, and although Gloucester had pledged to go on Crusade, he and Edward had subsequently had another falling out – and a highly serious one, which provides the other possible dating for Eleanor’s Douce Apocalypse depiction of him as Satan’s minion. The row has been variously attributed to a number of different causes, but the result was that Gloucester had been refusing to make preparations for the Crusade or to attend court since autumn 1269. He had missed the translation of Edward the Confessor in the previous October and even pressure from Louis of France, the head of the Crusade, was not productive. However, in spring 1270, Richard of Cornwall brought his fabled diplomatic skills to bear on this difficult problem and brought about an apparent solution: it was agreed that the earl was to follow Edward on Crusade within six months. If he co-operated with Edward he would receive 8,000 marks; if not he would receive only 2,000 marks.1
Eleanor, meanwhile, had much to do on her own account. Her land business had to be brought to a position where it could be left in the hands of subordinates for a few years. Therefore, as was discussed in the previous chapter, previous grants in the New Forest, Leicestershire, Norfolk and Northampton were all ‘tidied up’ in the early months of 1270. This will inevitably have been a time-consuming business. In addition, she had to take decisions on her own provisioning and staff for the Crusade – in the end she took her steward, her valet, her tailor and two clerks (John of London and the lower-ranked clerk Mr Richard) as well as a number of women staff – it is likely that Joan de Valle Viridi and Margerie Haustede, as well as their husbands, will have been part of the group. There would also have been considerable business about who else should make up the group which was to provide the constant companions of the future king and queen for some years – and here, it is interesting to note that Eleanor’s relatives William and Michael de Fiennes were both included.2
In addition, Eleanor and Edward had to agree on who should take charge of political and family matters while they were away. The former was primarily Edward’s concern, of course, and it was a serious concern given that Henry seems never to have regained full health and vitality after the Barons’ War and there was a real possibility that he might die while Edward was out of the country. When it comes to the family side, we see evidence that the relationship between Eleanor and her mother-in-law was not perfectly harmonious: despite Eleanor of Provence’s excellent record as a devoted mother, and her closeness to her grandchildren, she was not left in charge of them. That job was given to Richard of Cornwall, along with the primary responsibility for minding Edward’s political interests. Were Richard to die, his responsibilities were to devolve on his son Henry of Almain – a particularly odd choice, since he was pledged to go on Crusade with his fourteen knights.
Richard of Cornwall was to head up a committee composed of himself, the Archbishop of York, Philip Basset, Roger Mortimer and Robert Walerand. The latter was later replaced by Robert Burnell, who had, since about 1266, assumed the mantle of Edward’s chancellor and assumed such importance that he was remunerated at a higher rate than the king’s own treasurer. From a political standpoint this made perfect sense; though, as Howell notes, even politically the exclusion of Eleanor of Provence, a previous regent of the country, is a little surprising. But certainly the failure to commit the children to her care is striking. Howell rationalises the decision as one by Edward to avoid any appearance of ‘alien’ influence, in particular in the light of Gilbert of Gloucester’s strong views on the subject and the need to keep him sweet. This may be the explanation for the political omission, although if it were the case then it would seem odd that Edward’s brother Edmund made Eleanor of Provence his sole agent during his absence on Crusade.
Whatever rationalisations can be conjured up for the political side of the decision, they cannot adequately explain the omission to involve the queen in custody of the children. It seems likely that the exclusion of Eleanor of Provence was a joint decision by Edward and Eleanor. In the political sphere it did all that Howell says, and marked Edward out clearly as having emerged from his mother’s and mother’s family’s tutelage. However, in the familial sphere it demonstrated the fault line which had begun between the two Eleanors shortly after Edward and Eleanor’s marriage, and which was solidifying as Eleanor of Provence’s day in the sun drew to a close and Eleanor of Castile was looked to as queen in waiting.3
Thus, at the parliament held in July 1270, Henry gave his blessing to Edward’s fulfilment on his behalf of his crusading vows, and thereafter the final steps were taken to prepare for departure. The party, which comprised probably about a thousand soldiers (including knights) plus some wives and household staff, assembled in Portsmouth to sail to Gascony and then to proceed to Aigues-Mortes near Montpellier – the plan being for an August rendezvous. Whether this would in any event have been feasible must be open to serious doubt – as must the suggestion that Eleanor and Edward somehow planned to sandwich in a trip to visit Alfonso of Castile on the way. However, if the date had ever been achievable, other factors intervened. First the winds were unhelpful – the Crusaders were left twiddling their thumbs within reach of port. Edward and Eleanor seem to have based themselves at Winchester, where he tied up the last details of his administration for his absence, including the revised version of the committee to mind his affairs, and finally the charter establishing Darnhall (later Vale Royal) Abbey.
By about 7 August, now at Portsmouth and still waiting for favourable winds, it appears that the news had arrived of the death of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Boniface of Savoy. The plans for Burnell’s travel were revoked and Edward rushed to Canterbury to try to persuade the monks to elect his chancellor as the new archbishop – without success. The monks of Canterbury were apparently less than enthusiastic about recommending a career clerk and pluralist whose dealings in Jewish debts were already beginning to be talked about.
While Edward was at Canterbury, the rest of the party reconvened in Dover and eventually started out on 20 August. They reached Aigues-Mortes in late September, to find that the French had already gone; in fact, Louis of France had not even awaited the appointed date. Doubtless aware that the English contingent would miss the ‘sail-by’ date agreed, he and his troops had left at the end of July. What is more, he had not headed for the Holy Land but for Tunis.4
The reason for this diversion was to assist his younger brother Charles of Anjou, who had taken the title of King of Sicily, which Eleanor of Provence had so expensively coveted for Edmund. Charles wished to strike against the Emir of Tunis, who had assisted Sicilian rebels and ceased to pay tribute to him. Charles, probably with help from Louis’ Dominican advisers, had persuaded Louis that the arrival of the Crusaders might convince the emir to convert to Christianity, thereby improving the balance of power in the vicinity of the Holy Land, and that if this plan did not come off, Tunis would provide both a good muster port and a good base for attacking into Egypt – as Louis had done on his previous Crusade in 1248. This was not a bad point – Charles would in fact later lose Sicily via an invasion from Tunis – as would the Axis powers seven centuries later, in the Second World War. Furthermore, Charles dangled the carrot of adding his own considerable, and experienced, forces to those of the other Crusaders. Faced with this change of plan, what were the English Crusaders to do? Go ahead without the leader of the Crusade, or follow him on a campaign which formed no part of their crusading intent? They ultimately decided to do the latter, and the party set forth again in October, headed for Tunis.
They arrived on 9 November 1270 to find yet another disaster. Louis, along with many of his army, had been struck by dysentery caused by poor drinking water soon after their arrival, and by the time the English contingent reached Aigues-Mortes he was already dead, along with 400 of his force of 1,800, including his constable, Eleanor’s cousin Alphonse of Brienne. His heir, Philip III, struck by the same illness, was only just on the road to recovery. To make matters still worse, such fighting as had been necessary in Tunis had already been done by the French contingent. Indeed, a peace had been concluded involving the payment of tribute and liberty of worship and movement to Christians, and part of the French army had already left – not for Crusade but for France. This final round of bad news must have been inexpressibly disappointing to Edward, Eleanor and their party; the entire future of the Crusade, which they had planned for years to bring about, seemed in question.5
Interestingly, among the Sicilian rebels fighting against Louis and Charles was Eleanor’s brother Fadrique, who had been exiled from Castile in 1255 at around the time of Enrique’s rebellion. He had since pursued a career of knight errantry alongside his brother. Whether Eleanor re-established contact with him is uncertain, but given that Alfonso and Fadrique reconciled after years of alienation in 1272, near the time of Eleanor’s return, it seems at least possible that she did so, and then assisted in brokering some kind of deal between her brothers. Indeed, given the timeline, he (and his sons) may even have joined the crusading party; one of his sons has been tentatively identified as a member of Eleanor’s household in later years.6
Certainly, however, the much-delayed meeting of the crusading parties will have brought one reunion for Eleanor. With the new King Philip III of France was his wife Isabelle of Aragon, Eleanor’s childhood acquaintance. She, like Eleanor, was travelling on Crusade with her husband, despite her pregnancy. Another likely reunion was with Jeanne of Châtellherault, Eleanor’s cousin through her mother’s sister Mathilde de Dammartin. Jeanne had, with Eleanor’s probable encouragement, married Geoffrey de Lusignan, now part of the French crusading party.
The future of the Crusade was subject to a number of differing interests. At this point, the way forward for Philip, the new French king, was simply uncertain – he had unexpectedly lost not just his father but also his younger brother Jean Tristan, who had also died within days of reaching Tunis on 3 August, as well as his brother-in-law Theobald, Count of Champagne and King of Navarre – the former candidate for Eleanor’s hand and now the husband of Philip’s sister Isabelle. Mourning and administration therefore both called him home. However, what better memorial to his pious father could there be than to continue the Crusade which he had pledged to lead?
Edward, by contrast, saw matters in black and white – the Crusade must go on: ‘This is only the beginning, and the highway shall be made plain before us so that we may go on to the holy city of Jerusalem!’ Charles of Anjou was almost certainly not in favour of continuing the Crusade; he was already a notable Crusader, having fought with distinction at Damietta and Mansourah in the 1248 Crusade. Furthermore, his position in Sicily was still delicate and he was alive to the risk of spreading himself too thin by concentrating on Sultan Baibars, particularly with Aragonese naval power growing in the west. It is also possible that he considered keeping Baibars sweet a better political approach than antagonising him.7
With these various interests impossible to easily reconcile, Charles of Anjou proposed that all the Crusaders should convene in Sicily to plan the way forward. This plan resulted in a further stroke of bad luck for the Crusaders; the French fleet anchored on 14 November at Trapani on the west of the island, where they were struck on the next night by a huge storm which destroyed the fleet, killed many and resulted in the loss of much of the treasure and supplies needed to support the Crusade. This decided Philip: he announced his withdrawal from the Crusade and commenced a return with his relations’ remains to France via Italy, trusting the sea no further. But even the land journey held perils: his wife Isabelle would die weeks later in Calabria, aged just twenty-seven, in premature childbirth brought on following a fall from a horse in the course of this already funereal journey. Whether Eleanor’s cousin Jeanne and her husband Geoffrey returned with the French contingent is not recorded. Given the Lusignan links both to Edward and to the Crusader empire – a Lusignan cousin was King of Cyprus – there is a real chance that they pressed on with the fighting contingent. This suggestion appears to be supported by the familiar terms in which Jeanne was to address Edward, in 1276 asking for news of him ‘because you are the man in all the world in whom I have the most confidence’.8
The English fleet’s contrasting fortunes pointed them in a different direction to the French. They had anchored elsewhere and been unaffected by the storm. After the catalogue of disasters to date, Edward determined that this showed that God had spared them for the work of the Crusade; the English crusading force would go on alone. Some reports suggest that Charles was persuaded to join them by Edward’s vow that ‘if all my companions and all my fellow countrymen desert me I shall go onto Acre, if only with Sowin my groom, and keep my word unto the death!’. It is more probable, however, that Charles, with his Mediterranean interests, was always prepared to continue to offer some support, even without the French – but he was never seriously minded to commit to the extent of going himself.
In any event, the Crusade could not simply go on at once; mindful of the weather risk in the light of the Trapani disaster, the Crusaders would winter in Sicily and move on to the Holy Land in spring. Charles issued Edward with letters of protection, which safeguarded him and his force from external control. Meanwhile, Henry of Almain was sent back by Edward. A number of rationales have been suggested for this move – that it was in response to messages from home – or possibly (as Edward himself was to claim later) with a view to a rapprochement with the sons of Simon de Montfort – his former friends, and Charles’s present employees. In reality, the reason was probably with a view to dealing with Gascon problems, as Henry was now uniquely qualified to do following his recent marriage to Constance of Béarn. But whatever the motivation, this was a decision which Edward was to regret.9
The Crusaders spent a pleasant winter in Sicily – possibly the more so without the company of the elder Charles, who accompanied the French northwards. Close association with the man who now employed the younger Montforts can hardly have been congenial to Edward. As far as Eleanor was concerned, to this was added the serious awkwardness caused by the fact that Charles had been a close associate of her brother Enrique, but was now his jailer. Enrique had supported Charles in the latter’s campaign to become King of Naples, and lent him considerable sums of money. However, while Charles arranged for him to become a senator of Rome (hence his nickname – El Senador), he did not produce any larger reward, such as the kingship of Sardinia, at which Enrique aimed; nor did he repay the sums lent to him. There had been a serious falling out in 1268: Enrique had defected on the eve of the Battle of Tagliacozzo – and had picked the wrong side, being captured by Charles shortly afterwards. The victorious Charles was to have him held prisoner until at least 1291, in Castello di Canossa in Puglia from 1268 to 1277 and in Castel del Monte from 1277 to 1291. Typically, some accounts suggest Enrique finally escaped.10
For Eleanor, after fifteen years of English winters, the milder climate of the Mediterranean would have been a particular pleasure. They stayed in the beautiful palaces of La Ziza and La Cuba whose architecture, referencing Muslim, Roman, and Byzantine stylistic influences, and gardens, with their splendid parks featuring pavilions, tree-lined promenades and decorative Moorish watercourses, offered another echo of home. Further, despite the political bumps in the relationship, Charles would have ensured that their stay was made extremely comfortable. His eldest son, Edward’s cousin Charles of Salerno, was at this point in his late teens and may well have acted as host in his father’s absence. Certainly Edward and Eleanor at some point got to know Charles of Salerno well, and learnt to value him highly.
The lands surrounding the Sicilian palaces were also well adapted for hunting, and many afternoons will have been spent in this always beloved occupation. As for other preoccupations, it seems that reading and discussion of romances figured too, for at some point either on the outwards or return journey an Arthurian romance in the possession of Edward caught the eye of Marco Polo’s secretary and ghostwriter, Rusticiano of Pisa, who borrowed it and used it as the basis for his French work The Romance of King Arthur. This, rather suitably, told the tale of Palamedes, a Saracen knight who joined the round table, as well as including the adventures of Banor le Brun, Tristan and Lancelot.11
Eleanor was also expecting a child and it is possible that this further delayed the progress of the Crusade – the date of birth of the child, again only known as Anonyma, is not known. Parsons, following the one chronicler to mention the child, gives her birth location as Palestine 1271. However, this seems unlikely once the calendar is considered. Given the arrival of Joan of Acre in spring 1272, she was conceived in June or July 1271. For Anonyma to be born in Acre, Eleanor would therefore have had to be travelling right up to her due date. Much more likely, therefore, is that the anonymous baby was born in Sicily in early 1271, and Eleanor and the baby then travelled to Acre a few weeks or months later. Not an ideal programme, but infinitely better than risking childbirth in the bowels of a military transport. As it is, it seems likely that the vicissitudes of such an early start on campaigning life may have contributed to the death of Anonyma shortly after the arrival of the Crusaders in Acre.12
Whatever the exact reason for the delay, the result was that the English Crusaders did not arrive in Acre until 9 May 1271, having stopped en route in Cyprus, where they had been entertained by the King of Cyprus, Hugh III – a member of the Lusignan family. It may well have been here that Edward and Eleanor received the appalling news of Henry of Almain’s murder at the hands of the Montforts.
Since the end of the civil war, Simon and Guy de Montfort had done well in Charles of Anjou’s service. Guy in particular had excelled, becoming governor of Tuscany and marrying into a rich and influential Italian family. In March 1271, they headed to Viterbo in northern Italy to rendezvous with the French royal party and Charles of Anjou. Quite how the murder came about is unclear – the circumstances suggest a lack of premeditation, but, on 13 March 1271, Guy and Simon found Henry of Almain hearing Mass in either the church of St Silvester or that of St Blaise. Guy attacked him, refusing Henry mercy when he pleaded for it: ‘You had no mercy on my father and brothers.’ One account, which has Guy cutting off Henry’s fingers, which were clutching the altar for protection, and dragging his body from the church to better brutalise it, is particularly revolting. Whatever the precise details, the accounts agree that on leaving Henry dead, he claimed, ‘I have taken my vengeance.’
If it was vengeance, it was an indirect one, since Henry was not even at Evesham. He and his father were in captivity at the time. Thus, if vengeance it was, it was directed straight at Edward – killing the cousin he loved as a brother. Whether, as some accounts claim, Henry’s body was in fact later dragged outside and mutilated as Simon de Montfort’s had been, is unclear. So too is the precise involvement of the hapless Simon the younger. What is clear is that the murder became an international scandal and cause célèbre – it was a devastating blow to Edward, whose companion Henry had been in the schoolroom, in captivity and in battle; and the attempt to bring Guy to justice was to be a feature of his foreign relations for years. Even Dante, a child at the time of the murder, shows how famed was the misdeed by the fact that he later immortalised Guy de Montfort as one of the murderers in the seventh circle of hell – submerged to his neck in a river of boiling blood – a fate which Edward would certainly have wholeheartedly endorsed.13
At this point it is necessary to try to summarise the position in the Holy Land, in late spring 1271, when the Crusade finally arrived. Following the fall of Jerusalem in 1244, a Crusade (the Seventh Crusade) had eventually been organised under the aegis of King Louis of France. The Crusade, which commenced in 1248 and lasted until 1254, was a costly failure. Good progress was made early on; Damietta in Egypt was taken in a single day as a promising base for an attack on Jerusalem, and the pregnant Queen Margaret was installed there. However, all went badly wrong thereafter. Both Louis and his brother Robert of Artois failed in an attempt to take Mansourah. The cost of the battle was heavy and included Robert’s life, squandered in a foolhardy dash ahead of the main body of the army. Louis then tried to besiege Mansourah but ran out of provisions over the winter, with a resulting heavy loss of life for his Crusaders, who succumbed in their hordes to scurvy, dysentery and other diseases.
Louis tried to withdraw back to Damietta in April 1250, but, in scenes which suggest considerable similarities to the British retreat from Kabul in 1841, his army were harried, looted and picked off until finally forced into battle at Fariskur. The army was heavily defeated, and Louis himself taken prisoner and taken back in chains to Mansourah. It was during his imprisonment that Queen Marguerite bore the son Jean ‘Tristan’ (Sorrow), who died with his father in 1270. Louis was released following payment of a massive ransom – and the return of Damietta.
Hopes of recovering Jerusalem faded following this catastrophe, but the interests of the broader Christian territories in the Holy Land remained. However, in the 1260s these came under serious threat too. This threat has its origin in events in Syria, where the Mamluks (soldiers of slave origin) overthrew the Ayyubid sultanate and seized power themselves. The most prominent of the Mamluk generals was one of those who had defeated Louis at Mansourah: Sultan al-Zahir Baibars. He had, of recent years, been attacking and picking off the remnant of the Crusader states. By 1265, he had captured Nazareth, Haifa, Toron and Arsuf. Attacks continued at Caesarea in 1265, Athlith, Haifa, Ramla, Lydda and Saphed in 1266 and Jaffa in 1268. The fall of these cities was what had prompted the coalition which had set off on Crusade.
Nor was Baibars waiting quietly for the Crusade to descend upon him. In 1268, he also captured Antioch, thereby destroying the last remnant of the Principality of Antioch. Next he took Ascalon. Here, the citadel built by Richard the Lionheart, which had been refortified in 1241 by Richard of Cornwall, was demolished. Next, Chastel Blanc and Gibelcar fell to him. In spring 1271, just as the Crusaders arrived, the Crac de l’Ospital (now better known as the Crac des Chevaliers), the greatest of the Crusader castles, fell and Tripoli came under siege.14
Given the position, it was decided that Edward would take his forces onward to Acre, capital of the remnant of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the final objective of Baibars’ campaign. Awaiting them there was one of the cardinals principally responsible for the Crusade – Teobaldi Visconti. One of the current contenders for the papacy, he had accompanied Cardinal Ottobuono to England after the civil war and was consequently well known personally to Edward and Eleanor.
While some accounts suggest that Edward managed to attack Baibars’ interior lines and break the siege of Tripoli, the reality is less impressive. Their arrival was certainly a great move in terms of morale, but the cause of the let-up in the siege was simply prudence on the part of Baibars. Unsure what sort of threat the new Crusaders offered, he was not prepared to be committed in one direction and possibly taken by surprise in another. Accordingly, Tripoli got a ten-year truce and Baibars moved towards Acre, where he performed a calculated show of strength: he took the castle of Montfort and then released its defenders before the walls of Acre, with all their belongings – a gesture to the Crusaders to indicate that he considered their force too small to be reckoned with. He then withdrew.15
And in indicating that the Crusaders could not hope to beat him, he was quite right. Precise figures for either side cannot be found, but given that the major part of the crusading army was the English contingent of a thousand, that Mamluk armies were very numerous and that we know Baibars had both trebuchets and engineering battalions (which indicates a very large army indeed), it was indeed a match the Crusaders could not hope to win.
It was apparent that more troops would be needed for any major inroads to be made in Baibars’ gains, and these could only come from new allies. Edward therefore made some attempts to form a Franco-Mongol alliance, sending an embassy to the Mongol ruler of Persia, Abagha, the great-grandson of Genghis Khan and an enemy of the Mamluks. Meanwhile, Edward dealt with ‘domestic’ issues: preparing his horses and troops after the journey, and dealing with administrative problems in Acre, such as trying to ban trading with the enemy – with no great success, as it transpired that such trade had been licensed by Hugh of Cyprus.
One small raid was attempted alone in July 1271– on Saint-Georges de Lebeyne, fifteen miles east of Acre. The raid was not a success – the troops were unused to the heat and many of them were suffering from food poisoning. Consequently the results were limited to destruction of a few houses and some crops at the cost of quite a number of casualties. After this, Edward determined to await the arrival of reinforcements.16
In around September 1272, the arrival of the additional forces from England and Hugh III of Cyprus, under the command of Edward’s younger brother Edmund, and a reply from Abagha agreeing to co-operate, put Edward into a position where a further raid could be contemplated. In October, a small force of Mongols arrived in Syria and ravaged the land from Aleppo southward. Baibars immediately moved to deal with this threat. In fact, by the time Baibars mounted his counter-offensive, the Mongols had already retreated beyond the Euphrates. This was the only help Abagha sent; he was occupied by other conflicts in Turkestan.
However, while it lasted, the raid left the way open for the Crusaders to mount an attack in Baibars’ rear, and on 23 November (very possibly Eleanor’s thirtieth birthday) the joined forces of England, Cyprus and the Hospitallers rode out against Qaqun, a town some forty miles distant, which Baibars had developed and which was a strategic objective on the road to Jerusalem. The result of this, the major engagement of the Crusade, was not exactly triumphant. Tactful commentators (such as Asbridge) call it a ‘punitive raid’. Morris more realistically points out that it achieved nothing other than a bit of cattle rustling. The city was not taken. On the contrary, it appears likely that the Crusaders were chased off by a mere back-up relief force, left by Baibars when he took his main strength against the Mongols. Baibars’ rather cutting, but realistic, comment was that ‘if so many men cannot take a house it seems unlikely that they will conquer the Kingdom of Jerusalem’.17
On a personal level, it was probably at around this time that news reached Eleanor and Edward of the death of their eldest son, John. He had died at Wallingford Castle, the favourite residence of Richard of Cornwall, on 3 August 1271. He was buried in Westminster Abbey on the north side of the Confessor’s shrine on 8 August. His death will naturally have been a blow to both of them, but it appears in personal terms to have been a moderate one; Edward’s lack of mourning was later noted by Charles of Anjou. Of course, the loss of children was not new to Edward and Eleanor, and the evidence suggests that they were much more emotionally invested in relations with adults, particularly each other, than with their children. At this point, one slightly suspects Edward at least of the view attributed to William Marshal’s father: ‘I have hammer and anvil to forge other sons.’ And, on this theme, Eleanor was again pregnant with their child.18
Another piece of news which can definitely be traced to this time is the receipt by Teobaldo Visconti of the news that he had been elected Pope on 1 September 1271. The new Gregory X therefore had to leave Acre before any real action was taken. Before he left, the Pope elect preached a sermon in the church of the Holy Cross on the text ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, yea if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy’ – a sermon which reportedly went largely unheard for the weeping of the Crusaders.19
But the Crusade was at least bothering Baibars. Over winter, he came to suspect there would be a combined land-sea attack on Egypt and endeavoured to head off such a manoeuvre by building a fleet, with which he attempted to land on Cyprus, hoping to draw Hugh III of Cyprus and his fleet out of Acre, with the objective of conquering the island and leaving Edward and the Crusader army isolated in the Holy Land. However, in the ensuing naval campaign the fleet was destroyed and Baibars’ armies were forced back.
Meanwhile, Edward was ensuring that the Crusader forces were ready for any attack. He arranged for a new tower to be built in the walls of Acre and tried to remedy disputes within the Crusaders’ numbers, mediating between Hugh of Cyprus and his unenthusiastic knights. He also sent a message to Gregory X in March requesting that he continue to defend the Holy Land.
However, the English alone had real appetite for the fight. Early in 1272, less than a year after the Crusade’s arrival, King Hugh began negotiating a truce with Baibars. The negotiations bore fruit: an agreement to last ten years, ten months and ten days was reached in May 1272, at Caesarea. Edward was furious, and refused to sign it. However, considering the lack of any real military success on the part of the Crusaders – Tyerman summarises Edward’s actions as constituting ‘a couple of military promenades’ – the truce can be counted as a pretty good result. It must not be forgotten that on their arrival, Tripoli had been under siege and Acre considering surrender. The truce left both towns free for over ten years, and additionally allowed a right of pilgrim access to Nazareth.20
Pausing here, what can we know about Eleanor’s experience of the Crusade? For a fact, very little, but by drawing on experiences of other Crusaders we can infer a good deal. The route taken by the Crusaders is not entirely clear, but it is clear that whichever the route, there would have been extensive sea and land journeys. The land journey would have been, except in the balance of the people attending, not hugely dissimilar to movements of courts to which Eleanor and Edward would be used. The differences would be that the numbers involved would be even greater and biased towards the military, as opposed to the domestic household staff who predominated on moves of court household, and that the length of the journey would have been much greater than any single move of a court would be.
However, in crusading terms, it would have been fairly straightforward – and unlikely to give rise to the kinds of violence which were seen in some of the earlier Crusades, where larger groups of Crusaders crossed countries that were not themselves involved in the Crusade. The main issue would have been simple fatigue, and the social problems which inevitably beset a group of people thrown closely together for a long period of time. While there would have been some stops of some days, the party would have been on the move fairly constantly for a lengthy period. For some of that time, Eleanor, the keen rider, would have ridden. But for some portions, she and the other aristocratic ladies would have been confined to an unsprung wagon or a litter – both unspeakably tedious and uncomfortable ways to travel – a mode of travel which would force the women into close intimacy for days at a time. For Eleanor, who seems to have dealt notably well with men, this was probably very trying, and we may imagine that she rode whenever she could. Nor, of course, was even riding without risk – as the departure of the French from this very Crusade had proved; Isabelle of Aragon had died as a result of a miscarriage, true – but it was a miscarriage brought on by a fall from her horse while she was fording a river.
Nor was the land journey without its dangers. The accounts which suggest that the crusading party commenced its expedition by land report that, although the party were under a safe conduct from King Louis, they were attacked by William de Tournon, who used his stronghold on the Rhȏne to make off with some of the Crusaders’ stores.
However, the land portion of the journey would have had considerable advantages over the sea voyage. A sea voyage imported danger at any time – Henry I had famously lost his heir in the White Ship catastrophe of 1120, and Edward himself had been inspired to found Vale Royal by a sea voyage which left him fearing for his life. Likewise, Louis of France, after his terrible Crusade of 1254, nearly lost his life again on his return journey, when his ship ran onto a sandbank at Cyprus and part of the keel was torn off. The seaborne portions of the voyage would therefore have been cause for concern in themselves.
They would also have been cause for discomfort in no small measure, too. Eleanor and her ladies likely had the use of a few rooms below deck – the bishop elect of Acre, James of Vitry, had four rooms in 1216 – one to sleep, one to read and eat, a third for storage and a fourth for his servants and kitchen. But they would have been affected, as he was, by the darkness and dampness of below-deck rooms. What is more, if the weather turned lively and the hatches had to be battened down, their rooms would have been airless – and doubtless redolent of seasickness. Meanwhile, food was poor – provisions would (unsurprisingly) go off in the course of a voyage – and Crusaders even report the water becoming putrid and swarming with worms. Just how physically challenging the journey was can be seen from the fact that 250 companions of Louis IX supposedly died during a stop at Cyprus in 1248–9. Further evidence can be seen from the rapid and violent way the French Crusaders succumbed to dysentery after their disembarkation in Tunis on the 1270 Crusade.21
Once arrived, Eleanor of course did not get to see that much – her time will have been spent confined within the walls of Acre, with maybe an occasional short journey a few miles outside. Acre (now Akko) was the Crusaders’ foothold in the Holy Land, a mighty fortress facing constant Muslim threat. It is one of the places on earth where human occupation can be documented most consistently: it is mentioned in Egyptian texts of the nineteenth century BC. It had played host to Alexander the Great and St Paul, among others. It was, therefore, even in 1271, a place deeply imbued with history. It was also stuff of Crusader legend, having been taken by King Baldwin I, retaken by Saladin and recaptured by Richard the Lionheart. What is more, it offered a hugely vibrant political and commercial environment: following the fall of Jerusalem, it served as the political and administrative capital of the Latin Kingdom and its port served as the Crusader states’ link with Christian Europe, and also for trans-shipment westward of valuable cargoes originating in the East.
The city had expanded from its original base around a south-oriented peninsula with a south-east-facing harbour. This natural defensive position had been bolstered by very considerable fortifications by the first Crusader conquerors. Walls and towers were built all around the town, while the port was also rebuilt to boast an outer and an inner harbour. To the south was a breakwater with a massive tower, known (then and now) as the Tower of Flies, at the end. Along the east and north aspects of the city a double wall, further protected by a moat, warded off any landward attack.
The area near the harbour was dominated by trading interests. Merchant quarters or communes were the outposts of the great Italian traders, the Pisan quarter running from the southern breakwater, the Venetians facing directly onto the harbour and the Genoese slightly north-west of both. Each of these areas had a marketplace and boasted warehouses, shops and houses of the merchant families. Around this trading hub were the centres for the various military orders, on whom the Latin Kingdom depended for day-to-day protection. The Templars held the south-west corner of the peninsula, the Hospitallers the north-east of the original town and the Teutonic knights held the east face. The palace of the Crusader kings was located in the northern part of city, enclosed by massive fortifications. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, a new residential quarter called Montmusard had been founded north of the city. It was surrounded by its own wall. The city boasted numerous churches – St Laurence, St Brida, St Michael and the Holy Cross to name but a few – as well as hospitals and other civic amenities. In the middle of the century the city further benefited from sponsorship by Louis IX of France. By 1270, it was comfortably the largest city of the Crusader states and was probably home to around 40,000 people – not far off the size of London.
Eleanor will most likely have stayed in the citadel of the Knights Hospitaller or Knights of St John. They had a substantial building complex of nearly 5,000 square metres – about three times the size of the Tower of London compound. It housed an extensive range of buildings built into the original north wall of the city. It had thick sandstone walls, and was itself fortified with corner towers. Fortuitously, owing to the entire complex having been filled in for later building, considerable traces remain and continue to be explored by archaeologists. While much remains unclear about the complex, it was certainly not a bad base for a prolonged stay, offering halls and many rooms built around a broad, open central courtyard of about 1,200 square metres. The rooms were set out over two storeys, the upper storey of which was supported by arches and was accessed from a wide staircase on the eastern side of the courtyard. While blocked off from the outside, the rooms obtained light and air from broad openings in the walls of the courtyard. Water was well considered: a network of drainage channels carried rainwater from the courtyard to a main sewer, and in the south-western corner of the courtyard was a stone-built well that guaranteed the residents’ water supply.
Within the complex were a number of impressive larger rooms. South of the courtyard was (and is) a hall, which was later misnamed the Crypt of St John. This 450-square-metre rectangular hall is in the Gothic style, with a ten-metre-high groin-vaulted ceiling supported by three large, round central piers. The carving of fleurs-de-lis in two corners of the hall suggest that it was built as part of the works sponsored by Louis IX, and it seems to have served as a kitchen and refectory.
The true crypt of St John (now known as al-Bosta), over which the church itself was built, lies to the south of this hall. Again it is a large hall with several enormous piers supporting a groin-vaulted ceiling. North of the central courtyard lay a row of long, parallel underground vaulted halls, ten metres high, known as the Knights’ Halls, which were the barracks of the members of the order. To the east of the courtyard lay the 1,350-square-metre Hall of the Pillars, which may have acted as a storage room, hospital or dormitory. Above it probably stood the four-storey Crusader palace depicted in contemporary drawings. On the western side of the complex was a further building, where it seems likely that distinguished guests (such as Edward and Eleanor) would have been lodged.22
Less progress has been possible in recreating the appearance of the city outside the complex. There was certainly a broad road from the Templars’ complex to the port. And apparently in the Genoese quarter there were roofed streets with shops facing the street, and courtyards behind. Overall, the atmosphere may well have been some way between the former Moorish cities familiar to Eleanor from her childhood and the Norman architecture with which she had become familiar in England since her marriage.23
However, as for that vagrant quality – atmosphere – the reports from earlier Crusaders suggest that Acre, despite its magnificence, may not have been the most congenial city in the world. James of Vitry called it a ‘second Babylon’ – citing the prevalence of murder, the easy availability of poison and the fact that certain clerics rented out their property to high-ranking prostitutes. Echoing this is Oliver of Paderborn, who called it ‘a sinful city and one filled with all uncleanness’. Meanwhile, Joinville, who accompanied Louis IX on his earlier Crusade, spoke of the ‘treacherous sins’ committed in Acre – and predicted that the inhabitants’ blood would be required to wash it clean. Edward’s discovery that the Venetian merchants were trading with the enemy suggests that not much had changed.
With this in mind, it may well be that, after the first excitement of arrival, Acre rapidly palled on the party. Although the Pelrinages et Pardouns de Acre, compiled between around 1258 and 1264, listed forty places of pilgrimage within the vicinity of Acre, it is unlikely that many of these could be explored in what was, in 1271–2, a warzone; and without a congenial town to enjoy, time must have hung pretty heavy. Aside from religious services and the preparations for the two forays which were made by their small contingent of troops, there was probably relatively little to do. One suspects that much chess – a favourite pastime of Eleanor and Edward – was played in this period. Other accounts of the Crusades refer to Crusaders playing dice – indeed, Louis IX caught Charles of Anjou playing dice en route in 1248 and threw board and dice into the sea.
Plainly Eleanor had recourse to her books. Most notably, this period sees the production by Eleanor’s clerk Mr Richard of the very first Anglo-Norman translation of the key Roman military handbook, Vegetius’ De Re Militarii. It was a work with which Eleanor would have been familiar from her own childhood, since it formed the backbone of the military advice in the Siete Partidas. However, this book was destined for Edward, who would be unlikely to read it in the original Latin. It is also tempting to place the production of the book as a Christmas gift for 1271. Considerable efforts had clearly been made to make it attractive to and engaging for Edward. One illustration shows him approaching Vegetius, and receiving instruction. Another is a most spirited depiction of a naval battle, perhaps inspired by the recent rout of Baibars’ fleet. It is also rather touchingly annotated with a note describing Edward’s dash to Kenilworth before Evesham as a perfect example of Vegetius’ principles.24
Eleanor would also have a chance to see at close range the recreations of the soldiers – there are, of course, recurrent stories of the Crusaders patronising prostitutes, but more innocently Joinville tells of soldiers building miniature versions of siege engines – with which they attacked each other’s dinners. And again and again talk would fall to home, the missed greenness of England, and families – including chats about marriages past and future. Joinville tells of some knights, themselves shortly to fall at Mansourah, passing another knight’s memorial Mass by discussing a possible remarriage for his wife.
Another absorbing topic of conversation will have been the history of the Crusades, and for the English this would involve tales of Richard the Lionheart. As Richard was a figure around whom many myths and romantic stories had aggregated over the years, there will have been much to hear. One aspect, however, can perhaps be traced into the approach which Edward and Eleanor later took to mythmaking domestically – the impact of Arthurian romance and chivalric approaches. Richard was closely associated with both of these. In particular, he was reputed to have taken Excalibur on Crusade and he organised the reburial of the reputed Arthur and Guinevere. Sadly, they were not inspired to imitate Richard’s approach to telling his own story by means of newsletters or accompanying minstrels – one of the reasons why material for this Crusade is so thin on the ground. Richard had sent regular bulletins back home and maintained an ‘embedded’ minstrel, Amboise, to whose work we owe some of the more poetic stories about Richard.25
Edward and Eleanor will also have had much to discuss about the future at home – how to occupy themselves after the Crusade in Henry III’s twilight years, and how they would conduct themselves once the throne passed to Edward. It is most likely that it was at some point during the crusading years that Edward and Eleanor decided on the role which she was to perform as queen – not simply to support him as a traditional queen, yet not to usurp his authority (unlike Eleanor of Provence). Eleanor’s role was to work as a businesswoman to build up a self-standing portfolio of property which could support a queen, as it was now apparent that at any one time appanages for two queens (the present and either the future or the past queen) would need to be available.
The need for such work would only have been emphasised as the bills for the Crusade racked up. Prestwich powerfully recounts the list of monies which Edward received (and obviously spent) on the Crusade: 70,000 livres from Louis of France, £31,000 by way of the grant of a twentieth, 6,000 marks from the Jewry, plus Edward’s own revenues. And still, in early 1272, Edward was calling for further funds – he needed 3,000 marks in Acre as soon as possible and the total of his borrowings from his main financiers only, the Ricciardi, was £22,364. There are also references to debts of 2,000 marks to the Hospitallers’ Paris branch, 7,000 livres owed to Italian merchants, plus nearly 28,000 livres owed to the Templars.26
The other matter which was, of course, central to Eleanor’s existence during the Crusade was her role as child bearer – and practically throughout the campaign she was pregnant. By the time of the conclusion of the peace treaty in April/May 1272, it is likely that the birth of her next child was imminent. This is probably the reason why, although Edmund departed for England almost at once, Edward and Eleanor did not. Some accounts put it down to Edward’s refusal to accept the peace, and there may certainly have been a desire on his part to pause a while and see whether the peace held; but realistically Eleanor and Edward simply could not move at once. The sensible thing was for them to await the birth of Eleanor’s next child and head home in summer.
The new baby was a daughter known to posterity as Joan ‘of Acre’, in honour of her birthplace. As with so many of Eleanor’s children, precise details for the birth are lacking and we know only that she was born sometime in spring 1272. Inferentially, however, it seems likely that she was born in May itself, since Eleanor makes her next – and most famous – historical appearance in June 1272, and at that time she was plainly neither about to give birth or awaiting churching.
Before this great event, however, was to come another piece of sad news: the death on 2 April 1272 of Richard of Cornwall, aged sixty-two. Richard was a great loss to the Royal family, and his death also provided a considerable family problem – Richard had, after all, been charged with the custody of Eleanor and Edward’s children in their absence. Although backup plans had been made, they were to entrust the children to Henry of Almain, who was also dead. It would have been fairly obvious that Eleanor of Provence would move to fill the gap and assume the role which Edward and Eleanor had expressly denied her on their departure, as she did. However, it appears that in the circumstances Eleanor and Edward were content with this approach – there is no trace of their trying to put in place any other arrangement; nor did they hurry home. Doubtless they accepted that, as matters had transpired, Eleanor was the best option, both politically and for the children – as a devoted mother and grandmother, her household would have been a familiar one to the small children.27
But events at home were soon overshadowed by the one event in Eleanor’s life which can properly be called well known: the assassination attempt on Edward – and Eleanor’s reputedly heroic actions to save him. Here, the myth and fact (so far as it can be established) are regrettably at some variance. The backstory is as follows: if the authorities cited earlier are correct, Edward refused to sign the truce. He then also failed to vacate the area as the rest of the Crusaders did. Whether or not he had any warlike intent – and it seems unlikely that he did, given Baibars’ huge military superiority – his presence was regarded with disquiet by Baibars. It may be that Baibars was concerned that Edward planned to stay and link up with the kings of France, Aragon and Sicily who had all spoken of resuming the Crusade in around 1273. Possibly also Baibars was vexed at the real check on his progress which the Crusade had achieved, and attributed it to Edward as the Crusade’s leader. For whatever reason, it is certain that Baibars arranged to have Edward assassinated.
Quite how this took place will probably never be known – there are a variety of accounts. One tells us that the assassin had gained a position as a servant, another that he was a known emissary, a third that he was part of an embassy bearing gifts. One particularly complex version has the assassin pretending to betray the sultan to gain access to Edward. Some accounts are more circumstantial than others, with some suggesting that Edward was just rising from his siesta and that he was lured away from the members of his household who surrounded him by a suggestion that a further message was for Edward’s ear only.
However, what does appear clear is that, on 17 June 1272, Edward’s thirty-third birthday, an assassin got close enough to Edward to stab him, possibly with a poisoned dagger and probably in the arm. That the wound was no worse was down to Edward’s own reactions – he is reported to have struggled with the assassin and killed him in doing so, or at least seriously injured him with a mighty kick, his own dagger being out of reach. There is no account from anyone who was present, but Walter of Guisborough, one of the main English sources, and probably the least unreliable, records that Edward was stabbed in the arm with a poisoned dagger and his life was despaired of until a surgeon cut inflamed flesh from the wound. Eleanor’s only role in this version is to be led away weeping and lamenting by Edward’s brother Edmund and John de Vescy, who is reputed to have tried to calm her with the remark, ‘Better that you should shed tears than that all the English land should weep.’ Of course (as the careful reader will have noticed), this account itself cannot be fully trusted – Edmund had left soon after the truce was signed. However, it is at least near-contemporaneous, whereas the account which elevates Eleanor’s role does not emerge until the next century.28
The other versions of the story are threefold. The first is a short account in a book called Historia Ecclesiastica written in the 1320s by an Italian Dominican, Bartolomeo Fiadoni (also known as Ptolemy of Lucca), who recounts a ‘popular tradition’ that Eleanor ‘showed great faithfulness; for with her tongue she licked his open wounds all the day, and sucked out the humour, and thus by her virtue drew out all the poisonous material’. This version was, perhaps unsurprisingly, picked up by the Spanish historian Sanctius and retold with variations in English in the late sixteenth century. From these comes the high romantic tradition of Eleanor’s heroism.
Just to complicate matters, there is another late version of the story which gives Eleanor’s role to Otho de Grandison. The bottom line appears to be that while we cannot be satisfied that Guisborough’s version is quite accurate (a sensible reinterpretation would be to allocate the roles of friends who removed Eleanor from Edward’s bedside to Vescy and Grandison, great friends of Edward and Eleanor and of each other), it is likely that it is his story which is at least roughly true. Thus, in all likelihood Edward was attacked and wounded, and, whether by reason of poison or lack of hygiene or otherwise, the wound festered and became dangerous. The possibility of poison is supported by the fact that he made a will on 18 June, which would suggest that within a day of the injury it was considered that he might die. The list of executors appointed by Edward is interesting: Otho de Grandison, John of Brittany, William de Valence, Roger de Clifford, Payn De Chaworth, Chaworth’s son-in-law Robert de Tybetot, Robert Burnell and Antony Bek. With Edward’s life in danger, an unpleasant operation to excise the affected flesh, which Edward might also not have survived, was necessary. Eleanor was at his bedside at this point and, unsurprisingly given their devotion and her recent childbirth, became hysterical and had to be removed by the couple’s friends.29
The rough veracity of the Guisborough version, it should be noted, is also supported by the facts of the next few months – as will be seen, Edward and Eleanor’s return was slow, and at some point this was ascribed by at least one friend to Edward’s need to recuperate.
In August, William of Valence left Acre. On 14 September, John of Brittany left, presumably with his wife, Edward’s sister Beatrice. Edward and Eleanor followed on 22 September 1272 for Sicily, leaving behind a small force under Jean de Grailly and Hamo Lestrange, one of the young Marchers, who had used his time on Crusade to arrange a marriage with the heiress of Beirut.30
Edward and Eleanor’s party arrived at Trapani in October or November and stayed into the New Year. The prolonged stay which Edward and Eleanor made in Sicily may be attributable to the fact that Edward was still recovering from his injuries; this is certainly the suggestion of a letter from Gregory X to Eleanor at around this time. While they were there, however, it is clear that Eleanor took the opportunity to intercede for her brother Enrique – with rather limited success. In late 1272, Charles did order Enrique’s prison to be cleaned and it was perhaps in this less rigorous confinement that the imprisoned knight errant wrote Amadis de Gaula.
Another contrasting intercession which the pair sought to make with Charles of Anjou was in respect of Henry of Almain’s murderers, the young Montforts, who had not yet been handed over to justice and were understood to be hiding out somewhere in the Apennines. Again, the success of the intercession was rather limited. While Charles promised that his new vicar of Tuscany would do all in his power to bring the fugitives to justice, no concrete results eventuated.31
Late in December or very early in the year 1273 came major news: Henry III was dead. The news probably came in the form of a notification of Henry’s death and burial, and a pledge of loyalty from the bishops and nobles of England. Henry had died on 16 November 1272 at the age of sixty-five, after fifty-six years as king. Although the news cannot have been much of a surprise – sixty-five was considered a very good age, Henry had been in ill health for some time, and Edward had been urged to come home earlier in the Crusade because of this – Edward was very upset indeed. Indeed, Charles of Anjou remarked on the fact that he grieved more for his father than he had the year before over the death of his heir. Edward’s reply was that while children could be replaced, a father could not. For Eleanor, too, the loss of Henry will have been a grief. Henry had been in many respects a congenial companion to her, with their shared tastes for domestic comfort and finery, and he was the member of the family who had been closest to her in the dark days of de Montfort’s victory and her daughters’ deaths.32
Yet, too, for both, there must have been a sense of destiny fulfilled. Their crusading obligations discharged, they could return home – as king and queen.