Chapter 16

Following the Fourth Crusade and Other Failures

In This Chapter

● Taking Constantinople with the Fourth Crusade

● Attacking heretics and carrying out Crusades at home

● Assessing the later Crusades

● Charting the end of Crusading

The Third Crusade didn’t turn out as the Western European powers expected. Despite some notable victories, the contest between the Christian and Muslim forces ended up in a draw. As Chapter 15 describes, the kings of England and France took massive armies to the Christian states of Outremer in the Middle East and came back without a great deal to show for the effort.

The idea of Crusading may have lost some of its allure, but from the late twelfth century, and throughout the thirteenth century, various groups again ventured eastwards or engaged in Crusades within Europe against people whom the Church decided were enemies.

In this chapter, I discuss the end of the Crusading period and cover the truly bizarre events that took place in Europe and elsewhere.

Playing a Game of Smash 'n' Grab:

The Fourth Crusade

After the chaos of assembling and coordinating the Third Crusade (which I cover in detail in Chapter 15), the papacy initially struggled to drum up interest in a new expedition. Between 1195-1198, a group of German troops led by Emperor Henry VI did venture eastwards but met with little success. In fact, Henry never made it to Jerusalem, dying at Messina, Italy.

Nevertheless, in 1198 Pope Innocent III decided the time was right to ask for another Crusade, to aid the failing kingdom of Outremer and gain full and permanent control of the cities of the Holy Land. He orchestrated a vast plan, applying to many groups and hoping for the best.

Upping the ante: Bigger papal bargains

Because Crusades cost a fortune, major figures such as the kings of France and England had to take the cross and underwrite all the expenses. Pope Innocent III quickly realised that the great nobles of Europe weren’t interested in a new expedition.

Crusade was still popular with ordinary people though, who had little to lose and everything to gain. Although the risk of death was obvious - and great - the chance to make a new life for themselves elsewhere and perhaps become wealthier with more land to their name was a powerful incentive. But an even bigger inducement was also on offer.

Innocent made the Fourth Crusade an even better spiritual deal than previous ones by promising not only that participants would have all their sins wiped away, but that they would also definitely enter Heaven and get a ‘greater share of eternal salvation’. A great deal indeed!

Struggling to find a leader

Persuading the leading nobles of Europe to take part in a new Crusade proved more difficult. In 1200, however, England and France signed a truce in their ongoing war and some leading Frankish nobles signed up for the Fourth Crusade, among them Theobald, Count of Champagne, who was elected leader. At roughly the same time Pope Innocent applied a new tax on Church revenues to pay for the expedition.

Unfortunately, just as the campaign was gaining momentum, Theobald of Champagne fell gravely ill and died in 1201. One of Europe’s leading noblemen, Boniface of Montferrat, replaced him. Boniface was a good choice but no friend of Pope Innocent. One of Boniface’s closest associates was Philip of Swabia, who had claimed the title of Holy Roman Emperor but was denied by Innocent III.

The Fourth Crusade finally had a leader, but one likely to do his own thing. Which is exactly what Boniface did, as I discuss in the following section.

Securing Venetian transport

A logistical problem that arose early in the Fourth Crusade was transporting the army eastwards. This situation was solved when papal envoys travelled to Venice and arranged for Venetian-provided ships to transport men and 50 armed galleys to protect the fleet and give naval support.

Unfortunately, not quite enough people turned up to board the Venetian ships. The Venetians had been hired to transport around 35,000 troops and 12,000 at the most actually arrived. In fact, the Crusade was so short of the pope’s estimates that the organisers owed the Venetians around 34,000 marks for ships and provisions that they didn’t need - and they didn’t have the cash to pay Venice.

The Venetians were traders (check out Chapter 18 for more details) and knew how to make a deal. Their leader, known as the doge, was Henry Dandalo. Although he was 81 years old and completely blind at the time of the Crusade, he was still able to wheel and deal. Specifically, he promised that if the Crusaders assisted Venice in its war with Hungary and helped attack the Adriatic port of Zara (in modern-day Croatia) on their way east, he would cancel the Crusaders’s outstanding debt. Boniface and friends didn’t have much choice, and so the deal was made.

Innocent III was furious when he heard about the Venetians hijacking the Crusade for their own purposes, but the Crusaders ignored him: Boniface and the Venetian doge were no friends of the pope. The expedition sailed from Venice in the autumn of 1202, and the port of Zara was taken without much resistance.

Unfortunately, the peaceful occupation of Zara was undermined when the Frankish and Venetian armies took a dislike to each other. Geoffrey of Villehardouin was on the Fourth Crusade and gives this account:

Shortly after this [the taking of Zara] the most unfortunate conflict exploded between French and Venetian soldiers. Scuffles broke out and soon spread, everyone rushed for their arms and battles raged in every street with swords, lances, crossbows and spears. There were many wounded and killed.

Tensions were on the rise and were about to get worse.

Sacking Constantinople

The Crusaders wintered in Zara and planned their next move. At this point they came to a quite remarkable decision - to make their next target the city of Constantinople.

Changing direction

Taking Constantinople was a million miles from Pope Innocent Ill's plan to regain Jerusalem, but the Crusade leaders didn’t care. The pope threatened excommunication, but what else could he do? In the event, Innocent sent a letter expressing his disapproval and forbidding the Crusaders from going ahead, but they had already left by the time it arrived.

The Venetians and the Crusaders had their own reasons for attacking Constantinople. For the Venetians, the decision was economic: taking Constantinople would give them total trade dominance in the region. The Crusaders, however, were offered an attractive deal by Alexius (the future Alexius IV), a Byzantine prince who had joined the Crusade at Zara. His father, Isaac Angelus, had been blinded and imprisoned by the current Constantine emperor Alexius III, Isaac’s own brother. Alexius said that if the Crusaders helped him get rid of the emperor and gain the throne, he would give them anything they wanted - including a cash reward and, crucially, a formal acknowledgement that Rome was the overlord of Constantinople. The Crusaders were never going to say no.

Plotting and counterplotting

In late May 1203, the combined Frankish and Venetian force set sail for Constantinople. The journey was relatively easy and when the armies arrived, they sailed around the walls of the city parading Alexius on deck, hoping that this display would provoke the people of the Constantinople into revolt. This plan failed.

Instead they were forced to attack: the original Frankish, Crusader army from the land and the Venetians from the sea. The battle featured a remarkable episode in which the elderly, blind doge was carried ashore at the head of his army waving the flag of Saint Mark; he was determined to lead them into battle just as the other Crusade leaders were doing. The armies encamped around the city, and the siege began.

Byzantine defeat seemed clear from the start, and so the weakened emperor, Alexius III, did a runner in the night leaving the city without an emperor. The Byzantine response was to release Isaac Angelus from prison and make him emperor again!

The Byzantines hoped the Crusade army would go away after they elevated Isaac Angelus to emperor, but the Crusaders didn’t back down and stayed encamped outside the city. Alexius III may have fled, but Alexius IV had promised the Crusaders a cash reward for their help. In August 1203 the young prince was officially crowned Emperor Alexius IV, alongside Isaac, and they agreed to rule as co-emperors. Meanwhile, the Crusaders prepared to collect their reward.

The treasures of Venice?

One of the most famous results of the sack of Constantinople was the manner in which Venice was decorated with the proceeds. A huge number of valuable items were taken and still survive in the Italian city, including holy icons and relics and many Greek and Roman antiquities.

Indeed, the fabulous bronze horses that still stand in St Mark's Square in Venice were looted from the Hippodrome during the sacking of Constantinople. These sculptures, known as 'the Greek Horses' because they date back to classical Greece, were separated from a bronze sculpture of a chariot. The horses there now are copies but you can still see the originals in the Marciano Museum in Venice, along with many other 'acquired' Byzantine artefacts!

Awaiting payment

Alexius IV owed the Crusaders something like 200,000 marks, provisions for their men and a detachment of around 10,000 Byzantine mercenaries to join them on a mission to Egypt. Unfortunately, he had a bit of a problem - no money. His predecessor had been fond of splashing out, and despite being the richest city in the world, Constantinople was absolutely broke.

Alexius asked the Crusaders to hang on for a year or find something else to do while he made some money. The doge and his fellow Crusader leaders were unimpressed with this suggestion, but for several months the two forces hung around Constantinople like an army of occupation. The bored soldiers continually got into fights, vandalised public monuments and at one point even accidentally set fire to a large area of the city.

Alexius and Isaac were soon taken out the equation when they were murdered by a rival called Murzuphlus, who promptly seized the throne and demanded that the Crusaders go home.

Taking the city

The situation had to change, and fairly soon the Venetians managed to persuade the Franks that the only way forward was to sack the city. In April 1204, they launched an attack. The European armies easily gained control of the city, and the soldiers were given three days to pillage. They didn’t waste the opportunity; Constantinople was completely ravaged. The violence was terrible and the booty seized extraordinary, as related in the following quote by the knight and historian Geoffrey of Villehardouin:

Each of the powerful men took gold objects or whatever he wanted and stole away with it. . . and the booty was never shared amongst the common soldiers and poor knights, all they ever received was some of the plain silver. The rest of the treasure was wickedly hidden.

At this point, both the Crusaders and the Venetians forgot about their mission to the Holy Land. Byzantium had fallen, and that was enough. They crowned Baldwin of Flanders as the new Latin emperor of Constantinople and divided the territory of the empire up between Boniface and the Venetian doge.

For the Crusaders, taking Constantinople was a victory, of sorts. A Venetian, Thomas Morosini, was elected as Patriarch (the first Latin cleric to take this role in the Byzantine church) and a large part of the East was effectively reclaimed in the name of the Western Roman Catholic Church, without a single Westerner in the campaign having arrived in Outremer.

Leading Byzantine nobles fled the city and founded new fledgling states in Nicaea, Epirus and Trebizond. They would have to wait over 50 years before managing to wrestle back control of the city, in 1261.

Crusading in Europe

The outcome of the Fourth Crusade - specifically the taking of Constantinople - was rather different than Pope Innocent III imagined (see the earlier section ‘Sacking Constantinople’). But, despite threatening excommunication to the Crusaders, the Eastern states were returned to the control of the Roman Church. Ignoring the fact that victory over the Byzantines was very much a side effect of the Crusaders’s and Venetians’s lust for cash, the papacy launched a new series of Crusades, this time throughout Europe.

Crusades had taken place within Europe before (check out Chapter 14 for more details), mainly aimed at non-Christians who lived within the wider boundaries of the continent. Innocent III was quick to act in a similar way in the early part of the thirteenth century.

Converting the Baltic region, again

An official Crusade in the Baltic took place in 1198, but in 1204 Innocent appointed Albert, archbishop of Riga (in modern-day Latvia) to lead a new expedition against the pagan people living in Livonia. Albert was determined to convert these people to Christianity, and his expedition was manned by Augustinian and Cistercian monks to preach the gospels to the Livonians. Just in case they weren’t convinced, he also took along a large body of Templar Knights (whom I discuss in Chapter 14) to kill a few people as alternative examples.

In a series of campaigns that lasted more than 20 years, forced conversions took place across Eastern Europe. By the time Albert died in 1234, modern-day Estonia and Latvia were entirely converted to Roman Christianity. In many ways Albert’s campaigns formed one of the most successful Crusades because thousands of people were converted to Christianity as a result of them. His campaigns had very different aims to those of the Crusaders who went to the Holy Land, but had a much more successful outcome.

Reclaiming Castile: The Reconquista

After Innocent III developed a habit of proclaiming Crusade, he just kept doing so. His target after Eastern Europe was the far west of Europe, targeting the Muslim caliphs who had retaken territory from the Christian kingdom of Castile, in modern-day Spain. Innocent had received a request for support from Peter II (who lived 1178-1213), the king of Aragon in northeast Spain.

In 1212, Innocent proclaimed Crusade against non-Christian enemies, and the armies of Castile, Aragon and Navarre were joined by knights from Portugal and France under the command of Alfonso VIII of Castile. In July 1212, Crusading forces won a massive victory over Muslim forces at the town of Las Navas de Tolosa.

This process, which historians call the Reconquista, dates back to the first Muslim gains in Spain during the eighth century. The Reconquista carried on all the way through until the fifteenth century and included the siege of Lisbon in 1147 that I look at in Chapter 12. Innocent III’s proclamation of Crusade undoubtedly gave the Reconquista fresh impetus.

Fighting the enemy within: Heretics a plenty

By far the greatest and most famous of Pope Innocent III’s proclamations was against those he thought of as enemies of the Church within the kingdoms of Western Europe. These campaigns were known as the Albigensian Crusades. Albigensians, perhaps better known as Cathars, were heretics that Innocent III wanted to eliminate.

Meeting some heretics

During the second half of the twelfth century, the heretical group the Cathars sprung up in southern France and became extremely popular even among the aristocracy. Their most prominent supporter was Raymond VI of Toulouse who tolerated their activities in his lands. Many different groups of Cathars existed, but in general they supported two heretical beliefs:

● Dualism: According to this belief, love and power were incompatible, and therefore the existence of one God, who was both all-powerful and all-loving, was impossible. Dualists thus believed in the existence of two gods, each representing one element.

● Gnosticism: According to this belief, the physical world was evil and created by an imperfect god. By extension, human souls were divine and trapped in this world. Only death could free humans and enable their souls to join with the god of love.

Both views put Cathars completely at odds with the Catholic Church, an institution that Cathars considered to be created by an imperfect god.

Countering Cathars: The Albigensian Crusade

Pope Innocent III spent many years trying to overturn Cathar influence in southern France, without success. But in January 1208 his legate Peter of Castlenau was murdered, reputedly on the orders of Cathar supporter Raymond of Toulouse. In response, Innocent proclaimed a Crusade against the Cathars.

The resulting Albigensian Crusade was an enticing prospect to potential Crusaders because Innocent promised them Raymond’s wealthy and fertile lands if they took up arms. By the middle of 1209, a huge army of around 10,000 men gathered at Lyon, intending to march south.

Massacring at Beziers

The campaign progressed successfully. Nobles, such as Raymond, who tolerated the Cathars, tried to negotiate, but their envoys were refused an audience. The Crusade captured a number of small villages before arriving at the town of Beziers. The attackers demanded that true Catholics leave the town and the Cathars surrender, but they received no response.

The next day the army attacked, and the town fell. In the frenzy that followed, the entire population was massacred, Catholic and Cathar alike. Estimates of the numbers killed are as high as 20,000. In a letter to Innocent III, Arnold abbot of Citeaux describes the horrific events:

Our forces spared neither rank nor sex nor age. About twenty thousand people lost their lives at the point of the sword. The destruction of the enemy was on an enormous scale. The entire city was plundered and put to the torch. Thus did divine vengeance vent its wondrous rage.

Suddenly the kind of massacre and brutality in the name of God that had been carried out in the Holy Land was happening in the middle of mainland Europe.

Nobody expects the Albigensian Inquisition

One result of the Albigensian Crusades was particularly sinister: the Crusade's religious fervour eventually turned in on itself.

In 1229, with Languedoc - formerly Cathar-controlled regions of southern France - under French control, Pope Gregory IX initiated the Inquisition, an institution intended to investigate those suspected of heresy.

Over the next 100 years, thousands of people were tortured and burned as suspected Cathars, with the full backing of the papacy. This institution was the forerunner of the Spanish Inquisition that began in the fifteenth century.

Burning heretics for decades

The Albigensian Crusade didn’t finish after the horrors of Beziers. Unsurprisingly, the Cathars were on the retreat after the massacre, but they were remorselessly pursued by the Crusade leaders, in particular one Simon de Montfort. The Crusaders’s next target, in 1209, was the mountain town of Carcassone, which quickly fell. Many other towns and villages subsequently surrendered without a fight.

Captured Cathars were offered the choice between returning to Catholicism or death. If they refused to convert, they were burned at the stake, sometimes hundreds at a time. By 1211 many Cathar strongholds had fallen, and their leaders rounded up. Senior knights were hanged and around 700 other Cathars burned in a huge execution.

Campaigns against the Cathars, and revolts by them, took place almost continually over the next 20 years. Eventually the French king, Louis VIII took the cross in 1226. Campaigns continued under his successor, the child-king Louis IX, and in 1229 Raymond of Toulouse was captured, publicly whipped and forced to make the French king his heir.

The big winner in the Albigensian Crusades wasn’t the papacy but the French crown, which eventually inherited a huge amount of territory and a real foothold in the south of the country.

Finishing with the Final Crusades

The Crusades didn’t go terribly well in the first quarter of the thirteenth century. Although Constantinople did fall under Latin control (see the earlier section ‘Sacking Constantinople’), Outremer hadn’t received any substantial military support since the short-lived German Crusades over 25 years earlier.

The mystery of the 'Children's Crusade'

One of the strangest and saddest stories associated with the Crusades is that of the so-called 'Children's Crusade'. Historians still debate the true nature of this unofficial Crusade, but are unlikely to ever resolve the issue because so little written evidence of the episode and its consequences exists.

The traditional version of the Children's Crusade claims that a small boy began preaching in Germany in 1212, claiming that Jesus had called him to bring together an army of children to march on Jerusalem. The boy was remarkably successful and gathered together a group of around 30,000 runaways who walked all the way to the southern French coast where they expected the sea to part and allow them to march to Jerusalem. When this didn't happen, they negotiated free passage from a number of merchants and sailed off never to be seen again. Apocryphal contemporary sources claim that the children were sold into slavery in Tunisia or died in a series of shipwrecks.

Modern historians have argued that this traditional story is probably based on the movement of two groups of young people (not children) who came from France and Germany. The French group never left the country, whereas the group from Germany (about 7,000) ventured as far east as Marseille, but broke up when the Mediterranean didn't part in front of them. Many tried to make their way home, but many others were captured and sold into slavery at the French port.

Whatever the truth, a vast number of young people in the early thirteenth century were apparently moved by preachers to leave their homes and walk hundreds of miles in a bizarre attempt to stage a Crusade. Huge numbers probably lost their lives - or certainly their liberties - as a result.

The Fifth Crusade in 1218 was a total disaster. Having targeted Egypt to strike at the heart of the Muslim power base, the invading army was almost entirely destroyed by the army of Al-Kamil, the Ayyubid Sultan, at Damietta on the northern coast of Egypt. The period of Crusading was coming to an end - but two further significant expeditions did take place.

Regaining Jerusalem: Frederick II and the Sixth Crusade

One man who made a massive impact on the Holy Land in the final years of the Crusades was the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, who was known as Stupor Mundi - the ‘Wonder of the World’.

The wonderful world of Frederick II

Frederick II was an extraordinary man, but then again you have to be to get a name like Stupor Mundi. He spent most of his young life in Sicily, where his father Emperor Henry VI gave him his first title of king of the island. Eventually, he controlled an empire that included Germany, Italy and Burgundy, as well as Sicily.

He was unusual for a Holy Roman Emperor in that he was extremely literate, being fluent in several languages (including Arabic), and had a huge interest in all branches of science and knowledge. In fact, he was much more like an Arab leader: his court was full of astronomers and he regularly contacted the great scholars of the age to ask questions of them.

He was hugely sceptical about religion and openly denounced large parts of the Bible as fables and stories and took a notably tolerant and even interested attitude towards people of other faiths living within his lands. He was known to read the Koran.

Devoted to science, particularly the natural world, he was a skilled falconer and possessed a huge menagerie of exotic animals. His interest in human beings was rather more sinister, and he is said to have practised experiments on live victims, including disembowelling two prisoners to ascertain who had better digested his meal that evening! Another experiment involved starving a victim to death in a barrel to see whether his soul was visible emerging through the hole in the top of the barrel when he died!

When he died in 1250, the Medieval World was certainly less colourful without him.

Frederick had been keen to go on Crusade ever since taking the crown as emperor in 1215, but Pope Innocent III ignored him. Innocent enjoyed being ‘top dog’ in organising Crusades and didn’t want one led by anybody too powerful - just look at what happened when the Fourth Crusade went its own way under the leadership of the Doge of Venice (flip to ‘Securing Venetian transport’ earlier in this chapter).

Getting his way

Frederick eventually got his way when Innocent died and was succeeded by Honorius III in 1216. Honorius had no objection to Frederick and wanted a successful Crusade. Frederick needed no convincing: he was keen to add Jerusalem to his massive empire (see the earlier sidebar, ‘The wonderful world of Frederick II’) and add honour and glory to his successes.

In 1220, Frederick announced he was going on the Sixth Crusade and asked for volunteers. He even persuaded Honorius III to excommunicate anybody who offered to go and then didn’t turn up.

Unfortunately, one of the people who didn’t turn up was Frederick himself. Delayed by his own business, he didn’t get around to engaging with a Crusade until 1227. During this period he married Isabella, the daughter of John of Brienne the king of Jerusalem. Clearly the war he intended for Jerusalem and beyond was about more than God and the Church - he was looking to expand his empire to include Jerusalem as well.

Holy (dis)orders

During the early thirteenth century, Outremer became increasingly divided and unstable. One of the reasons for the disorganisation was increasing competition, and in some cases, open warfare, between the Holy Orders of Knights in the region. I talk about the Templars in Chapter 14, but equally powerful in the Holy Land were the Knights of St John of the Hospital - called 'Hospitallers' because they built hospitals for pilgrims in Jerusalem - and the Teutonic Knights.

The original purpose of these orders when they were established in the twelfth century was to protect pilgrims and Christian visitors to the Holy Land, but the orders became powerful institutions, hugely rich from trade revenues and taxes, and in almost total control of the cities of Acre and Tyre. The influence of these various knights spread throughout Eastern and Central Europe, and their commercial and banking activities were underpinned by successful Crusading against pagan peoples all over the Medieval World. Unfortunately, their increased factionalism and infighting disabled the Crusader states at a vital time, and they must bear some of the responsibility for the eventual collapse of Outremer. Despite possessing the means to defend, their infighting allowed enemies to take advantage.

The orders had evolved a great deal from their original intentions, well-expressed in the sworn oath of the Teutonic Order: I promise the chastity of my body, and poverty, and obedience to God, Holy Mary and you the Master of the Teutonic Order, and your successors according to the rules and practice of the order. Obedience until death.' By the thirteenth century, the latter part was very much the most influential aspect of these immensely rich and powerful knights.

Making a false start

By the time Frederick was ready to leave, Honorius had died and been replaced by a new pope, Gregory VIII, who was much less keen to indulge a headstrong emperor such as Frederick. Gregory’s concerns were too little too late, however, because in August 1227 Frederick set sail.

Within two months, though, Frederick was back in Italy suffering from a mystery disease. While he was out of action, Gregory excommunicated him, which meant that, technically, he was unable to lead a Crusade.

Crying for help

Just as this Crusade seemed to be off, it was back on! Frederick received an extraordinary letter from Al-Kamil, the Ayyubid Sultan who had defeated the Fifth Crusade at Damietta. Al-Kamil was under threat from a revolt by his brother and made Frederick an astonishing offer: if Frederick provided him with military aid, Al-Kamil would give back Jerusalem in exchange. The deal was so good, Frederick must have almost bitten his hand off!

Frederick set sail immediately for Acre, ignoring Gregory VIII and his excommunication. The Sixth Crusade became a deal between monarchs.

Retaking the Holy Land

Everything seemed set for a glorious triumphal cap on Frederick’s reign, but when Frederick arrived in Acre, he found a very different situation to the one Al-Kamil described in his letter. Specifically, Al-Kamil’s brother was already dead and the sultan no longer needed Frederick’s help!

Al-Kamil recognised, however, that he was in an embarrassing position and was forced to give in. On 18 February 1229, he officially handed Jerusalem over to Frederick’s Frankish forces. Not a single sword had been raised in anger.

With typical humility Frederick crowned himself ‘King of Jerusalem’ and ‘The Last Emperor’. The pope responded by excommunicating him once more and banning all religious services in Jerusalem, the holiest of cities. Happy days.

Frederick left his new kingdom soon after taking Jerusalem and returned to find that the pope had organised a military invasion of some of his territories. He spent the rest of his life fighting papal interference and very soon forgot all about Jerusalem. Crusading was old news, and the papacy was more concerned about heretics in Europe (see the earlier section ‘Fighting the enemy within: Heretics a plenty’).

Experiencing the last hurrah

By the middle of the thirteenth century, the Crusading period was drawing to a close but one last campaign took place. Although this effort was again driven by a cry for help from the East, Europe wasn’t able to respond in time.

Beginning the end

In the middle of the twelfth century, the Mongols and Genghis Khan (see the earlier sidebar ‘If anyone can, Genghis Khan’) emerged as a new and terrifying threat from the East. Part of the reason for the weakness in the Muslim leadership, which provoked so many civil wars during the twelfth century, was pressure from these new invaders, coming westwards from the very Far East.

In particular, the Egyptian sultan was a worried man. His rich cities were clearly the next targets of the unstoppable Mongol army, and he needed friends and allies. In 1240 he struck a deal with the Franks of Outremer to return all former lands west of Jerusalem to Frankish control in return for military support. Unfortunately the Franks were in no position to take advantage of the additional lands. Two prominent Holy Orders within the Frankish population, the Templars and Hospitallers, were virtually at war with one another, with the cities of Tyre and Acre almost functioning as independent states (the earlier sidebar ‘Holy (dis)orders’ has more details on these squabbling knights).

Instead of Outremer, the sultan looked to the Khwarazmian Turks, a warlike people who the Mongols had displaced and forced westwards, for help. They became his mercenaries, but he was unable to control them and they attacked Jerusalem in 1244: the Franks were too preoccupied with their internal fighting to protect it. Almost the entire Christian population of 6,000 was slaughtered, the holy sites desecrated and the city destroyed.

Taking the cross: Louis IX

The response from Europe to the fall of Outremer was deafening silence. The world had changed since the first Crusade in 1196, and the Muslim forces no longer seemed to pose the threat that they once had. European monarchs and the papacy were more concerned with internal heretics such as the Cathars. Europe’s only connection with Jerusalem was the steady supply of pilgrims journeying there.

One man, however, did respond - the French king Louis IX. He had to, really. When news of the sacking of Jerusalem broke, he was ill, probably with malaria. He promised that if he recovered he would take the cross. Sadly for him, he got better. Given the way that his Crusade went, he may have been better off sticking with malaria.

Louis IX took more than four years to get ready for a Seventh Crusade. The quest was specifically a French expedition, although the pope paid for it. Nobody else wanted to go; Frederick II even advised Louis not to bother.

Messing around by the river

This Seventh Crusade was doomed from the start. Louis’s plan was to invade Egypt and unseat the sultan, before taking back the cities of the Holy Land. Louis sailed to Cyprus to use it as a base for attacking Egypt and left there in May 1249 with the intention of landing at Damietta, the Egyptian port and taking the city. However, Sultan as-Salih Ayub knew that Louis was coming - Frederick II had written him a letter tipping him off! Not the best of starts.

For a short time, things were more promising. Damietta was eventually captured and by November 1249 the Crusaders were advancing towards the Egyptian town of Mansourah in the Nile delta region. The Nile proved a continuing problem for the Crusaders: in order to cross the many branches of the river, wood was taken from ships to help build causeways, and many men were lost when they tried to swim.

If anyone can, Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan, leader of the Mongols, was an absolute leader, and his people numbered hundreds of thousands. In 1141, the Seljuk Sultan had sent a force against the Mongols near Samarkand (in modern-day Uzbekistan), and the Mongols had utterly destroyed them. Although he never came as far as the Mediterranean himself, the chaos and upheaval that Genghis caused had a huge impact on Outremer and the surrounding states.

By the time he died in 1227, Genghis Khan's huge empire stretched between the Caspian Sea and the Sea of Japan. The situation continued under Genghis's successor, Ogedai Khan. The Mongol army continued to push west and hundreds of thousands of people were displaced and fled into Syria where they sold themselves into the service of the local emirs.

In February 1250 the Crusade army attempted an attack on the Muslim camp outside Mansourah. Despite initial success, the army was quickly surrounded and, more importantly, cut off from any potential escape route. Louis IX and his nobles were eventually found in a small village nearby and captured by the sultan’s troops.

Paying the price

Getting captured was hugely embarrassing for Louis IX: it was also expensive, really expensive. The ransom was set at a massive 400,000 livres. To put this amount in perspective, the annual income of the kingdom of France at the time was probably around 250,000 livres.

The French nobles had to take out a massive loan from the Templar Knights to pay for Louis’s release. They also had to give up Damietta. The end result was that nothing had been gained from the Seventh Crusade at absolutely vast expense.

Blundering on

But Louis wasn’t finished yet! He spent the next four years in the Crusader kingdoms of Acre and Jaffa trying to rebuild their defences and heal the huge issues between the various nobles and the Holy Orders of Knights who were still pretty much openly at war with each other.

Back when Louis was laying siege to Damietta in 1248, he had sent an embassy to the Mongol Khan, providing him with gifts and asking for support. In 1251, three years later, Louis finally got an answer, and the news wasn’t good. The Khan stated that he readily accepted the gifts and was pleased to accept Louis as a vassal!

The Khan also insisted that as his new subordinate, the king of France must send him a tribute every year. His tone was rather threatening:

We command you to send us a yearly tribute of gold and silver if you wish to retain our goodwill. Otherwise we will destroy you and your people as we destroyed others who rebelled against us.

Thundering West: Mongols

The Khan’s words weren’t an idle threat; they were a promise. In 1256, the Mongol army moved westwards led by Ogedai Khan himself. All the traditional heartlands of the East were utterly destroyed and armies routed along the way. The Muslim caliph was killed in Baghdad, and the former Seljuk Empire completely finished off.

To Louis IX, the Mongol advance through Muslim territory must have seemed like deliverance, but it wasn’t because the Mongols didn’t stop there. They advanced on Aleppo in Syria, and the city fell. Soon after Damascus was under threat and then Antioch. The Prince of Antioch submitted to the Khan as did the Emir of Damascus. By 1259, the influence of Islam was being utterly eradicated from the Holy Land - not by a Crusader army but by a pagan ruler who was also wiping out the last remnants of Western influence.

Fortunately for the Franks, Ogedai Khan died later in 1259, and the majority of his army returned to Mongolia to dispute succession before turning on the Crusader states. Outremer wasn’t totally finished, but had experienced a close-run thing.

Ending things: The Mameluks

The death of the Mongol leader, Ogedai Khan, failed to save Egypt. Khwarazmian Turks - who were responsible for the pillaging of Jerusalem (see the earlier section ‘Beginning the end’) and known as the Mameluks, which means ‘owned’ - were in the service of the Egyptian sultan, as-Salih Ayub, as mercenaries. When he passed away during Louis IX’s Crusade, the Mameluks rose up, killing his successor and seizing control of Egypt.

They named their own sultan, a man called Kutuz ibn Abdullah. As warlike as any Mongol Khan, Kutuz ibn Abdullah began systematically destroying all opposition to his sultanate. He left the Crusader states alone for the time being, only proving what minnows they had become, and instead headed for a confrontation with the Mongols. The two sides came together in battle at a place called Ain Jalut, known as ‘The Pools of Goliath’ in modern-day Palestine, on 3 September 1260. For the first time in history, a Mongol army was completely defeated in open battle.

Within a few years the cities of Aleppo and Damascus had fallen to the Mameluks and a new sultan called Baibars built an empire stronger and more fearsome than that of Nu red-Din or Saladin (turn to Chapters 14 and 15,

respectively). The Holy Orders and small groups of European nobles made various small-scale attempts to protect the Crusader states, but these came to very little, mostly because of the petty squabbling and infighting of the Frankish nobles. In 1271, Prince Edward of England (the future King Edward I - check out Chapter 17) arrived in Tyre. Disgusted by the infighting and political intrigue that he found, he left without going on a campaign.

In many ways, the Crusader states lasting as long as they did was a surprise.

In 1289, Tripoli fell to the Mameluks and in 1291 the Mameluk army arrived at Acre. The situation was hopeless. The Franks attempted a night-time raid on the Mameluk camp, but it ended with disastrous consequences, as told by the Mameluk chronicler Abu al-Fida:

Seeing that our troops had begun to outnumber them, the Franks fled back to the town. The Mameluk troops managed to kill some of them. As dawn broke al-Malik al-Muzaffar, leader of the Mameluks, had a number of Franks’ heads fixed to the necks of the horses which the Mameluk troops had captured that night, and sent them to Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil.

Acre fell shortly afterwards and the city was razed to the ground on 18 May. Within the month, the Franks abandoned Tyre and shortly afterwards Sidon and Beirut. By 1 June 1291, Crusader rule anywhere in the Middle East had come to an end.

Critiquing Crusading

Various sporadic attempts were made in Europe during the fourteenth century to revive interest in campaigns in Outremer, but none came to anything. Hugely expensive foreign missions with no guarantee of success were out of fashion. New issues and causes were ripe throughout Europe (see Part IV for details).

Crusader rule and the kingdom of Outremer lasted for a little under 200 years. A Muslim state run by former slaves, known as the Mamluk Sultunate of Egypt, replaced it; a state that created a system of financial and social control the likes of which the Crusaders were never capable. The sultanate lasted for hundreds of years and was still in place at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

In 1297 Pope Boniface VIII decided to canonise the recently deceased Louis IX because of his Crusading valour. The decision was hugely ironic: the folly of Louis’s Crusade created a far harder-line and more destructive enemy of Christianity in the Mameluks than the First Crusade had been called to defeat almost exactly 200 years before.

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