‘It profiteth a man nothing that he should delight himself with God.’ JOB XXXIV, 9
In December 1244, Louis IX, King of France, fell desperately ill of a malarial infection. As he lay near to death he vowed that if he recovered he would set out for a Crusade. His life was spared; and as soon as his health permitted him, he began to make his preparations. The King was now thirty, a tall, slightly built man, fair-haired and fair-skinned, perpetually suffering from erysipelas and anaemia; but his character never lacked strength. Few human beings have ever been so consciously and sincerely virtuous. As King, he felt that he was responsible before God for the welfare of his people; and no prelate, not even the Pope himself, was allowed to come between him and this duty. It was his task to provide a just government. Though he was no innovator and scrupulously regarded the feudal rights of his vassals, he expected them to play their part, and if they failed, their powers were curtailed. This stern devotion won him admiration even from his enemies; and their admiration was enhanced by his personal piety, his humility and his spectacular austerity. His standard of honour was high; he never broke his pledged word. Towards malefactors he was merciless; and he was harsh, even cruel, in his dealings with heretics and with the infidel. His intimates found his conversation full of charm and gentle humour, but he kept aloof from his ministers and his vassals; and to his own children he was an autocratic master. His Queen, Margaret of Provence, had been a gay and proud-spirited girl, but he tamed her into a demeanour more suited to the wife of a saint.
In that age, when virtue was so much admired and so seldom achieved, King Louis stood out far above his fellow-potentates. It was natural that he should wish to go Crusading; and his actual adherence to the movement was greeted with delight. A Crusade was desperately needed. On 27 November 1244, just after the disaster at Gaza, Galeran, Bishop of Beirut, sailed from Acre to tell the princes of the West, on behalf of the Patriarch Robert of Jerusalem, that reinforcements must be sent if the whole kingdom were not to perish. In June 1245, Pope Innocent IV, driven from Italy by the forces of the Emperor, held a Council in the Imperial city of Lyons, to discuss how Frederick should be restrained. Bishop Galeran joined him there, together with Albert, Patriarch of Antioch. Innocent was somewhat offended with Louis, who scrupulously refused to condone all his actions against the Emperor, but hearing the sombre report brought by Galeran from the East, he gladly confirmed the King’s Crusading vows, and sent Odo, Cardinal-Bishop of Frascati, to preach the Crusade throughout France.
1248: King Louis sails from Aigues-Mortes
The King’s preparations lasted for three years. Extraordinary taxes were levied to pay for the expedition, and the clergy, to their fury, were not exempted from paying them. The government of the country had to be settled. The Queen-Mother Blanche, whose ability as a ruler had been proved during her son’s stormy minority, was entrusted once more with the regency. There were foreign problems to solve. The King of England must be persuaded to keep the peace. Relations with the Emperor Frederick were particularly delicate. Louis had won Frederick’s gratitude by his strict neutrality in the quarrel between Papacy and Empire; but in 1247 he had to threaten intervention when Frederick proposed to his allies an attack on the Pope’s person at Lyons. Moreover, Frederick was the father of the legal King of Jerusalem. Without King Conrad’s permission Louis had no right to enter his country. It seems that French envoys kept Frederick fully informed of the intended Crusade, and that Frederick, while expressing his sympathy, passed the information on to the Court of Egypt. Then ships had to be found to carry the Crusade to the East. After some negotiations Genoa and Marseilles agreed to supply what was needed. The Venetians, who were already annoyed at a scheme that might interrupt their good commercial arrangements with Egypt, were thereby made still more hostile.
At last, on 12 August 1248, King Louis left Paris and on the 25th he set sail from Aigues-Mortes for Cyprus. With him were the Queen and two of his brothers, Robert, Count of Artois, and Charles, Count of Anjou. He was followed by his cousins, Hugh, Duke of Burgundy, and Peter, Count of Brittany, both of whom had been Crusaders in 1239, by Hugh X of Lusignan, Count of La Marche, King Henry III’s stepfather, who had been as a young man on the Fifth Crusade, by William of Dampierre, Count of Flanders, by Guy III, Count of Saint-Pol, whose father had been on the Third and Fourth Crusades, by John, Count of Sarrebruck, and his cousin John of Joinville, Seneschal of Champagne, the historian, and by many lesser folk. Some of them embarked at Aigues-Mortes, others at Marseilles. Joinville and his cousin, who had nine knights each, chartered a boat from the latter port.
An English detachment under William, Earl of Salisbury, grandson of Henry II and Fair Rosamond, followed close behind. Other English lords had planned to join the Crusade, but Henry III had no wish to lose their services and arranged for the Pope to block their passage. From Scotland came Patrick, Earl of Dunbar, who died on his journey at Marseilles.
The royal squadron reached Limassol on 17 September; and the King and Queen landed there next morning. During the next few days the troops for the Crusade gathered in Cyprus. In addition to the nobles from France, there arrived from Acre the Acting Grand Master of the Hospital, John of Ronay, and the Grand Master of the Temple, and many of the Syrian barons. King Henry of Cyprus received them all with cordial hospitality.
When the plan of campaign was discussed, everyone agreed that Egypt should be the objective. It was the richest and most vulnerable province of the Ayubite Empire; and men remembered how during the Fifth Crusade the Sultan had been willing to exchange Jerusalem itself for Damietta. When the decision was made, Louis wished to start operations at once. The Grand Masters and the Syrian barons dissuaded him. The winter storms would soon begin, and the coast of the Delta, with its treacherous sandbanks and rare harbours, would be dangerous to approach. Besides, they hoped to persuade the King to intervene in the family squabbles of the Ayubites. In the summer of 1248 the Prince of Aleppo, an-Nasir Yusuf, had driven his cousin al-Ashraf Musa out of Horns, and the dispossessed prince appealed for help from Sultan Ayub, who came up from Egypt and sent an army to recover Horns. The Templars had already entered into negotiations with the Sultan suggesting that territorial concessions would win him Frankish auxiliaries. But King Louis would have nothing to do with such a scheme. Like the visiting Crusaders of the previous century, he had come to fight the infidel, not to indulge in diplomacy. He ordered the Templars to break off their negotiations.
1245-7: Pian del Carpine’s Mission to Mongolia
The scruples that forbade the King to come to terms with any Moslem did not apply to the pagan Mongols. He had a good precedent. In 1245 Pope Innocent IV had supplemented his efforts to save Christendom in the Nearer East by sending two embassies to Mongolia to the Court of the Great Khan. One, led by the Franciscan John of Pian del Carpine, left Lyons that April and, after travelling for fifteen months across Russia and the steppes of Central Asia, reached the Imperial camp at Sira Ordu, close to Karakorum, in August 1246, in time to witness the Kuriltay that elected Guyuk to supreme power. Guyuk, who had many Nestorians among his advisers, received the Papal envoy kindly; but when he read the Pope’s letter requiring him to accept Christianity, he wrote an answer ordering the Pope to acknowledge his suzerainty and to come with all princes of the West to do him homage. John of Pian del Carpine on his return to the Papal Curia at the end of 1247 gave Innocent, together with this discouraging letter, a detailed report in which he showed that the Mongols were only out for conquest. But Innocent would not allow his illusions to be entirely shattered. His second embassy, under the Dominican Ascelin of Lombardy, had set out a little later and travelled across Syria, and met the Mongol general Baichu in May 1247, at Tabriz. Baichu, whom Ascelin found personally offensive and disagreeable, was ready to discuss the possibility of an alliance against the Ayubites. He planned to attack Baghdad, and it would suit him to have the Syrian Moslems distracted by a Crusade. He sent two envoys, Aibeg and Serkis, the latter of whom was certainly a Nestorian, back with Ascelin to Rome; and, though they had no plenipotentiary powers, the hopes of the West rose again. They stayed about a year with the Pope. In November 1248 they were told to return to Baichu with complaints that nothing further was happening about the alliance.
While King Louis was in Cyprus, in December 1248, two Nestorians, called Mark and David, arrived at Nicosia, saying that they were sent by a Mongol general, Aljighidai, who was the Great Khan’s commissioner at Mosul. They brought a letter talking in fulsome terms of the Mongols’ sympathy for Christianity. Louis was delighted and at once dispatched a mission of Dominicans under Andrew of Longjumeau and his brother, who both spoke Arabic. Andrew had indeed been the Pope’s chief agent in recent negotiations with the Monophysites. They carried with them a portable chapel, as a suitable gift for a nomad convert Khan, and relics for its altar and other worldlier presents. They left Cyprus in January 1249, for Aljighidai’s camp, and were sent on by him to Mongolia. On their arrival at Karakorum they found that Guyuk had died and his widow Oghul Qaimish was acting as Regent. She was gracious to the mission, but regarded the King’s gifts as the tribute from a vassal to a sovereign, while dynastic difficulties at home prevented her, even had she so intended, from sending any large expedition to the West. Andrew returned three years later with nothing more than a patronizing letter in which the Regent thanked her vassal for his attentions, and requested that similar gifts should be sent every year. Louis was shocked by this response, but still hoped some day to achieve a Mongol alliance.
1249: The Crusade Arrives off Damietta
The sojourn of the Crusade in Cyprus was thus wasted diplomatically. Almost a year previously King Louis had sent agents to collect food and armaments for the army. The latter task was usefully performed, but the commissariat had not expected to have to feed so many mouths for more than a month or two. It was, however, not till May 1249, that it was practicable for the expedition to sail against Egypt. When spring came Louis applied to the local Italian merchant colonies to provide him with ships. The Venetians disapproved of the whole Crusade and would not help. In March there began an open war between the Genoese and Pisans along the Syrian coast, and the Genoese, on whom Louis principally relied, had the worst of it. John of Ibelin, lord of Arsuf, managed after some three weeks to make the colonies in Acre sign a truce for three years. By the end of May it was possible to find the ships that the Crusade required. Meanwhile Louis received visitors and embassies at Nicosia. Hethoum of Armenia sent him rich gifts; Bohemond of Antioch asked for and obtained a company of six hundred archers to protect his principality from Turcoman brigands. The Latin Empress of Constantinople, Maria of Brienne, made the journey there to beg for help against the Greek Emperor of Nicaea. Louis was sympathetic, but told her that the Crusade against the infidel must take precedence. Finally, in May, William of Villehardouin, Prince of Achaea, arrived with twenty-four ships and a regiment of Franks from the Morea. The Duke of Burgundy had spent the winter with him at Sparta and had persuaded him to join the King. The army assembled in Cyprus was reaching formidable proportions. But the pleasures of the gracious island softened its morale; and the stocks of food that were to have sufficed for the Egyptian campaign were almost exhausted.
On 13 May 1249, a fleet of one hundred and twenty large transports and many smaller vessels lay off Limassol, and the army began to embark. Unfortunately a storm scattered the ships a few days later. When the King himself set sail on 30 May, only a quarter of his army sailed with him. The others made their way independently to the Egyptian coast. The royal squadron arrived off Damietta on 4 June.
Sultan Ayub had spent the winter at Damascus, hoping that his troops would finish the conquest of Horns before the Frankish invasions began. He had first expected Louis to land in Syria, but when he realized that an attack was to be made on Egypt, he lifted the siege of Horns and himself hurried back to Cairo, ordering his Syrian armies to follow him. He was an ill man, in an advanced stage of tuberculosis, and could no longer lead his men in person. He ordered his aged vizier, Fakhr ad-Din, the friend of Frederick II, to take command of the army that was to oppose the Frankish landing, and he sent stores of munitions to Damietta and garrisoned it with the tribesmen of the Banu Kinana, Bedouins famed for their courage. He installed himself at Ashmun-Tannah, to the east of the main branch of the River Nile.
On board the royal flagship, the Montjoie, the King’s advisers begged him to wait till the rest of his transports arrived before attempting to disembark. But he refused to delay. At dawn of 5 June the landing began in the teeth of the enemy, on the sands to the west of the river mouth. There was a fierce battle on the very edge of the sea; but the fearless discipline of the French soldiers, with the King at their head, and the gallantry of the knights of Outremer under John of Ibelin, Count of Jaffa, forced the Moslems back with heavy losses. At nightfall Fakhr ad-Din drew off his men and retired over the bridge of boats to Damietta. Finding the population there in panic and the garrison wavering, he decided to evacuate the city. All the Moslem civilians fled with him, and the Banu Kinana followed them, after setting fire to the bazaars but neglecting his orders to destroy the bridge of boats. Next morning the Crusaders learned from Christians who had remained in their homes that Damietta was undefended. They marched triumphantly over the bridge into the city.
1249: Louis at Damietta
Their easy capture of Damietta astounded and delighted the Franks. But, for the moment, they could not follow it up. The Nile floods were soon due to begin; and Louis, profiting from the bitter experience of the Fifth Crusade, refused to advance further till the river should go down. Besides he was waiting for the arrival from France of reinforcements under his brother, Alfonso, Count of Poitou. In the meantime Damietta was transformed into a Frankish city. Once again, as in 1219, the Great Mosque became a cathedral and a bishop was installed. Buildings were allotted to the three Military Orders and money benefices to the leading lords of Outremer. The Genoese and Pisans were rewarded for their services by a market and a street apiece, and the Venetians, repenting their hostility, begged successfully for a similar gift. The native Christians, Coptic Monophysites, were treated with scrupulous justice by King Louis and welcomed his rule. The Queen, who had been sent to Acre with the other ladies of the Crusade when the army left Cyprus, was summoned to join the King. Louis also welcomed another distinguished if impoverished friend, Baldwin II, Emperor of Constantinople, whom he had known in Paris where the Emperor had visited him in order to raise money by selling him relics of the Passion that had survived the Crusaders’ sack of the Imperial capital. Throughout the summer months Damietta was the capital of Outremer. But to the soldiers this inaction in the humid heat of the Delta brought demoralization. Food began to run short, and there was disease in the camp.
The loss of Damietta had shocked the Moslem world. But, while the Franks hesitated, the dying Sultan took action. Like his father thirty years before, he offered to buy back Damietta with the cession of Jerusalem. The offer was rejected; King Louis still refused to treat with an infidel. Meanwhile Ayub punished the generals responsible for the loss of the city. The emirs of the Banu Kinana were executed, and Fakhr ad-Din was disgraced, along with the chief Mameluk commanders. The Mameluks wished to carry out a palace-revolution. But Fakhr ad-Din dissuaded them; and his loyalty restored him to the Sultan’s favour. Troops were rushed up to Mansourah, the town whose name means ‘victorious’, built by Sultan al-Kamil on the site of his triumph over the Fifth Crusade. Ayub himself was carried there in his litter to organize the army. Bedouin guerrilla-fighters were let loose on the countryside and would creep right up to the walls of Damietta, killing any Frank that strayed outside. Louis was obliged to erect dykes and dig ditches to protect his camp.
The Nile waters went down at the end of October. About the same time, on 24 October, Louis’s second brother, Alfonso of Poitou, arrived with the reinforcements from France. It was time to advance on Cairo. Peter of Brittany, supported by the barons of Outremer, then suggested that it would be wiser to attack Alexandria. The Egyptians would be surprised by such a move. The Crusaders had enough ships to cross the branches of the Nile; and once they had taken Alexandria they would control the whole Mediterranean littoral of Egypt. The Sultan would be forced to make terms. But the King’s brother, Robert of Artois, passionately opposed such a project, and the King took his part. On 20 November the Frankish army set out from Damietta, along the southern road to Mansourah. A strong garrison was left behind in the city with the Queen and the Patriarch of Jerusalem.
1249: The Crusaders Advance towards Mansourah
Fortune seemed to favour King Louis; for Sultan Ayub was now on his deathbed. He died at Mansourah three days later, on the 23rd. He had been a grim, solitary man, with nothing of the affability, the liberality or the love of learning of most of his kin. His health was consistently poor; and it may be that his Sudanese blood set him consciously apart from the rest of his family, whose Kurdish descent was unimpaired. But he was an able ruler and the last great member of the great Ayubite dynasty. His death threatened the Moslems with disaster; for his only son, Turanshah, was far away, acting as Viceroy in the Jezireh. Egypt was saved by the widowed Sultana, the Armenian-born Shajar ad-Durr. Confiding in the eunuch Jamal ad-Din Mohsen, who controlled the palace, and in Fakhr ad-Din, she concealed her husband’s death and forged a document under his signature which appointed Turanshah as heir and Fakhr ad-Din as generalissimo and viceroy during the Sultan’s illness. When the news of Ayub’s death eventually leaked out, the Sultana and Fakhr ad-Din were firmly in power, and Turanshah was on his way to Egypt. But the Franks were encouraged to hear of it. It seemed to them that this government of a woman and an aged general would soon collapse. They pressed on their march towards Cairo.
The road from Damietta was cut by numberless canals and branches of the Nile, of which the largest was the Bahr as-Saghir, which left the main river just below Mansourah and ran past Ashmun-Tannah to Lake Manzaleh, thus cutting off the so-called Island of Damietta. Fakhr ad-Din kept the bulk of his forces behind the Bahr as-Saghir, but sent cavalry to harass the Franks as they crossed each canal. None of these skirmishes was successful in holding up the Frankish advance. King Louis proceeded slowly and cautiously. There was a battle near Fariskur on 7 December, where the Egyptian cavalry was repulsed, and the Templars, in defiance of the King’s orders, insisted on pursuing the fugitives too far and had some difficulty in rejoining their comrades. On 14 December the King reached Baramun, and on the 21st his army encamped on the banks of the Bahr as-Saghir, opposite to Mansourah.
For six weeks the armies faced each other across the wide canal. An attempt by the Egyptian cavalry to cross into the island of Damietta lower down and attack the Franks in the rear was beaten off near the camp by Charles of Anjou. Meanwhile Louis ordered the construction of a dyke to bridge the stream; but, though he built covered galleries to protect the workmen, the Egyptian bombardment from the other bank, and in particular the use of Greek fire, was so formidable that the work was abandoned. Early in February 1250, a Copt from Salamun came to the King’s camp and offered to reveal for 500 besants the whereabouts of a ford across the Bahr as-Saghir. On 8 February, at dawn, the Crusaders set out across the ford. The Duke of Burgundy was left with strong forces to maintain the camp; while King Louis travelled with the advancing army. His brother, Robert of Artois, led the van, with the Templars and the English contingent. He was given stern orders not to attack the Egyptians till the King gave permission. The difficult passage was successfully achieved, but it was slow. Once he was himself across the river with his men, the Count of Artois feared that unless he attacked the enemy at once, the element of surprise would be lost. The Templars vainly reminded him of his instructions; but when he insisted on advancing, they agreed to accompany the charge. His rashness was justified. The Egyptian camp, some two miles out of Mansourah, was beginning its daily round quite unsuspecting, when suddenly the Frankish cavalry thundered into its midst. Many of the Egyptians were slaughtered as they hurried to find their arms. Others fled half-clad to the safety of Mansourah. The generalissimo Fakhr ad-Din had just left his bath and a valet was dyeing his beard with henna when he heard the uproar. Without waiting to don his armour he leapt on to his horse and rode out into the battle. He found himself in the midst of some Templar knights, who hacked him down.
1250: Battle of Mansourah
Robert of Artois was now master of the Egyptian camp. Once again the Grand Master of the Temple begged him to wait till the King and the main army were over the ford and had joined him, and William of Salisbury too advised caution. But Robert was determined to capture Mansourah and finish off the Egyptian army. After denouncing the Templars and the English as cowards, he rallied his men and charged once more into the fleeing Egyptians; and once more the Templars and William felt obliged to follow him. Though Fakhr ad-Din was dead, the Mameluk commanders managed to restore discipline among their troops; and the ablest of them, Rukn ad-Din Baibars, surnamed Bundukdari, ‘the arbalestier’, took control. He stationed his men at crucial points within the town itself, then let the Frankish cavalry come pouring in through the open gate. When the French knights, with the Templars close behind them, swept up to the very walls of the citadel, the Mameluks rushed out on them from the side-streets. The Frankish horses could not easily turn in the narrow space and at once were thrown into confusion. A few knights escaped on foot to the banks of the Nile, only to drown in its waters. A few others managed to extricate themselves from the town. The Templars fell fighting in the streets; only five out of their two hundred and ninety knights survived. Robert of Artois barricaded himself and his bodyguard in a house, but the Egyptians soon burst in and massacred them all. Amongst the knights that fell in the battle were the Earl of Salisbury and almost all his English followers, the Lord of Coucy and the Count of Brienne. Peter of Brittany had been with them in the vanguard, and was severely wounded on the head. But he succeeded in riding back out of the town and hurried to warn the King.
The Crusading army had almost entirely crossed the Bahr as-Saghir. On hearing of the disaster Louis at once drew up his front line to meet an attack, and meanwhile sent his engineers to make a bridge over the stream. The corps of crossbowmen had been left on the far side, in order that they could if necessary cover the crossing; and he was anxious for them to join him. As he expected, the victorious Mameluks soon charged out of the town into his lines. Louis firmly held back his men while the enemy poured arrows into their ranks; then, as soon as the Mameluks’ ammunition began to run short, he ordered a counter-charge. His cavalry swept the Saracens back; but they soon re-formed and charged again, while detachments tried to hinder the building of the pontoon. The King himself was almost forced back into the canal, but another counter-charge saved him. At last, towards sundown, the pontoon was finished and the bowmen crossed over. Their coming gave the King the victory. The Egyptians retired again into Mansourah; and Louis set up his camp on the spot where they had camped the night before. It was only then that he learned from the Acting Grand-Master of the Hospital that his brother had been killed. He broke down in tears.
1250: Turanshah takes Command of the Moslems
The Crusaders were victorious, but it had been a costly victory. Had Robert of Artois not led his wild foray into Mansourah, they might have felt strong enough to attempt to attack the town later, though they would have been opposed by war-engines better than their own. As it was, there was nothing to be done. The situation was ominously reminiscent of the Fifth Crusade, when the Christian army that had captured Damietta was held up close to the same spot and at last forced to retreat. Louis could not hope now for a better fate, unless troubles at the Egyptian Court might induce the government at Cairo to offer him acceptable terms. In the meantime he fortified his camp and strengthened the pontoon. It was wise; for three days later, on 11 February, the Egyptians attacked again. Reinforcements had arrived from the south, and they were stronger than before. It was one of the fiercest battles that the men of Outremer could remember. Again and again the Mameluks charged, firing a cloud of arrows as they came; again and again Louis restrained his men till it was time to counter-charge. Charles of Anjou on the left wing and the Syrian and Cypriot barons in the left centre held their ground firmly, but the remnants of the Templars and the French nobles in the right centre were wavering and the King himself had to rescue them in order not to lose contact with the left. The Grand Master William, who had lost an eye at Mansourah; lost the other and died from it. At one moment Alfonso of Poitou, who was guarding the camp, on the right wing, was encircled and was rescued by the cooks and the women camp-followers. At last the Moslems wearied and retired in good order back to the town.
For eight weeks King Louis waited in the camp before Mansourah. The hoped-for Egyptian revolution never occurred. Instead, on 28 February, Turanshah, son of the late Sultan, arrived at the Egyptian camp. As soon as he heard from his stepmother of his father’s death, he had left his capital at Diarbekir and rode swiftly south. He spent three weeks at Damascus, where he was proclaimed Sultan, and reached Cairo towards the end of February. His arrival at Mansourah was the signal for new activity by the Egyptians. He caused a squadron of light boats to be made, which were transported on camel-back to the lower reaches of the Nile. There they were launched and began to intercept the vessels that brought food to the Crusader camp from Damietta. More than eighty Frankish ships were captured one after the other and on 16 March a convoy of thirty-two were lost at one swoop. The Franks were quickly threatened by famine. Famine was followed by disease, dysentery and typhoid.
At the beginning of April King Louis understood that he must extricate the army as best he could from the miasmas of the camp and retreat to Damietta. Now, at last, he brought himself to open negotiations with the infidel, and sent to offer Turanshah the exchange of Damietta for Jerusalem. It was too late. The Egyptians knew now how precarious was his position. When his offer was rejected, Louis called his officers together to discuss the retreat. They begged him to slip ahead himself with his bodyguard to Damietta. But he proudly refused to leave his men. It was decided that the sick should be sent by boat down the Nile and the able-bodied should march along the road by which they had come. The camp was struck on the morning of 5 April 1250, and the painful journey began, with the King in the rearguard to encourage the stragglers. The Mameluks in Mansourah saw the movement and set out in pursuit. They found that the Franks were all across the Bahr as-Saghir, but the engineers had forgotten to destroy the pontoon. They hurried across and soon were harassing the Franks from all sides. Throughout that day their attacks were beaten off, as the Franks moved slowly on. The King’s own gallantry was beyond all praise. But that night he fell ill, and next morning he could scarcely keep himself on his horse. As the day dragged on, the Moslems closed in round the army and attacked in full force. The sick and weary soldiers scarcely tried to resist them. It was clear that the end had come. Geoffrey of Sargines, who commanded the royal bodyguard, took the King into a cottage in the village of Munyat al-Khols Abdallah, just north of Sharimshah, in the centre of the fighting. The French knights could not bear to admit defeat; but the barons of Outremer took control and sent Philip of Montfort to negotiate with the enemy. Philip had almost succeeded in persuading the Egyptian generals to allow the free departure of the army in return for the surrender of Damietta, when suddenly a sergeant called Marcel, bribed, it was thought, by the Egyptians, rode through the Christian ranks telling the commanders in the King’s name to surrender without conditions. They obeyed this order, of which Louis himself knew nothing, and they laid down their arms; and the whole army was rounded up and led into captivity. About the same hour the ships conveying the sick to Damietta were surrounded and captured.
1250: Louis in Prison
The Egyptians were at first embarrassed by the numbers of their prisoners. Finding it impossible to guard them all, those that were too feeble to march were executed at once, and on every evening for a week three hundred were taken out and decapitated, by the Sultan’s own orders. King Louis was moved from his sick-bed and lodged, in chains, in a private house in Mansourah. The leading barons were kept together in a larger prison. Their captors would constantly threaten them with death, but had in fact no intention of slaying anyone who might bring in a good ransom. Joinville, who was on board one of the captured ships, saved his own and his comrades’ lives by letting it be understood that he was the King’s cousin; and when the Egyptian admiral questioned him about it and learned that it was untrue but that in fact he was a cousin of the Emperor Frederick, his reputation was greatly enhanced.
Indeed, the prestige of the infidel Emperor did much to ease the situation of the Crusaders. When Louis in his prison was ordered by the Sultan to cede not only Damietta but all the Frankish lands in Syria, he replied that they belonged not to him but to King Conrad, the Emperor’s son, and only the Emperor could give them away. The Moslems at once dropped the suggestion. But the terms that they exacted from the King were harsh enough. He was to ransom himself by the cession of Damietta, and his army by the payment of 500,000 pounds tournois, that is to say, a million besants. It was a vast sum; but the prisoners to be released were very numerous. As soon as the terms were agreed, the King and the chief barons were taken on board galleys, which sailed down the river to Fariskur, where the Sultan took up his residence. It was arranged that they should go on to Damietta and the city be handed over two days later, on 30 April.
It was only through the fortitude of Queen Margaret that the bargain could be made at all. When the King left her to march on Mansourah she had been about to bear a child; and the child was born, with an octogenarian knight as midwife, three days after the news came of the surrender of the army. She called her little son John Tristan, the child of sorrow. That same day she heard that the Pisans and Genoese were planning to evacuate Damietta, as there was insufficient food left to feed the inhabitants. She knew that she could not hold Damietta without the aid of the Italians and she summoned their leaders to her bedside to plead with them; for if Damietta were abandoned there would be nothing to offer in return for the release of the King. When she proposed herself buying up all the food in the city and seeing to its distribution, they agreed to stay. The purchase cost her more than 360,000 pounds, but it saved the morale of the city. As soon as she was well enough to travel, her staff insisted on moving her by sea to Acre, while the Patriarch Robert went with a safe-conduct to the Sultan, to Fariskur, to complete the arrangements for the ransom.
He arrived there to find the Sultan dead. There had been some delay over the final negotiations; and on Monday, 2 May, Turanshah and his captives were still at Fariskur. That day he gave a banquet to his emirs. But he had lost the support of the Mameluks. This great army corps of Turkish and Circassian slaves had grown in importance and power during the reign of Ayub, whose favour had been rewarded by their loyalty; and their support of the Sultana Shajar ad-Durr had preserved the throne for Turanshah. But now, as victor over the Franks, he felt himself strong enough to fill the government with favourites from the Jezireh; and when the Mameluks protested he answered with drunken threats. At the same time he offended his stepmother by claiming from her property that had belonged to his father. She wrote at once to the Mameluk commanders to protect her.
1250: Murder of Turanshah
As Turanshah rose to leave his banquet on 2 May, soldiers of the Bahrid regiment of Mameluks, with Baibars Bundukdari at their head, burst in and began, Baibars first of all, to slash at the Sultan with their swords. He fled wounded to a wooden tower beside the river. When the soldiers followed and set it alight, he leapt into the Nile and there, standing in the water, he begged for mercy, offering to abdicate and go back to the Jezireh. No one answered his appeal. After a volley of arrows had failed to kill him, Baibars leapt down the bank and finished him off with his sabre. For three days the mutilated body lay unburied. Eventually the ambassador of the Caliph of Baghdad obtained leave to commit it to a simple tomb. The triumphant conspirators appointed the senior Mameluk commander, Izz ad-Din Aibek, as generalissimo and regent; and he married the Dowager Sultana, Shajar ad-Durr, who represented legitimacy. An infant cousin of the late Sultan, al-Ashraf Musa, was later produced and proclaimed co-Sultan, only to be deposed four years later. His ultimate fate is unknown.
When the aged Patriarch arrived from Damietta with a safe-conduct signed by Turanshah, the new government feigned to regard it as valueless and treated him as a prisoner. Some Mameluks appeared before King Louis with blood still on their swords, claiming money from him for having slain his enemy. Others with a grim sense of fun brandished their swords in the faces of the captive barons. Joinville was frankly terrified. But the Mameluks had no intention of forgoing the huge ransom. They confirmed the previous terms. When Damietta was surrendered, the King and the nobles would be released, but the ordinary soldiers, some of whom had been taken to Cairo, would have to await the payment of the money, which was reduced to 400,000 pounds tournois, half to be paid at Damietta and half when the King arrived at Acre. When the King was asked to swear that if he failed in his bargain he would renounce Christ, he firmly refused. Throughout his captivity his dignity and integrity deeply impressed his captors, some of whom jestingly proposed that he should be their next Sultan.
On Friday, 6 May 1250, Geoffrey of Sargines went to Damietta and handed the fortress over to the Moslem vanguard. The King and the nobles were brought there that afternoon; and Louis set about finding money for the first instalment of the ransom. But the money in his own coffers came only to 170,000 pounds. Till the remainder was found, the Egyptians held back the King’s brother, Alfonso of Poitou. The Templars were known to have large stocks of money in their chief galley; but it was only when they were threatened with violence that they agreed to disgorge what was required. When the whole sum was handed over to the Egyptians the Count of Poitou was set free. That evening the King and the barons set sail for Acre, where they arrived six days later, after a stormy voyage. Neither clothes nor bedding had been made ready for the King on his ship. He was obliged to wear the robes and sleep on the mattress that he had used in prison.
Many wounded soldiers had been left behind at Damietta. Contrary to their promise the Moslems massacred them all.
1250: Louis Remains in Outremer
Soon after his arrival at Acre Louis took counsel of his vassals about his future plans. His mother had written to him from France to urge his speedy return. King Henry of England was said to be on the war-path, and there were many other urgent problems. But he felt that he himself was needed in Outremer. The disaster of the Egyptian campaign had not only destroyed a French army, but it had robbed Outremer of almost all its troops. Moreover it was his duty to remain at hand till the last of the prisoners in Egypt was released. The King’s brothers and the Count of Flanders advised him to return to France. But in fact his mind was made up. On 3 July he publicly announced his decision. His brothers and any who wished should go home, but he would stay, and would take into his personal service all those, such as Joinville, who were willing to stay with him. A letter was sent to the barons of France explaining his decision and begging for reinforcements for the Crusade. He had felt bitterly the failure of his great effort. It was all very well for him to declare that the catastrophe was a sign of God’s grace, sent to teach him humility, but he must have reflected that he had paid for the privilege of that lesson with the loss of many thousands of innocent lives.
The King’s brothers, together with the leading nobles of the Crusade, sailed from Acre about the middle of July. They left behind all the money that they could spare but only about 1400 men. The Queen remained with the King. He was at once accepted as de facto ruler of the kingdom. The throne still belonged legitimately to Conrad of Germany; but it was obvious that Conrad would never now come to the East. On Alice’s death the regency passed to her son, King Henry of Cyprus, who had nominated his cousin, John of Arsuf, as bailli. He gladly handed over the government to Louis.
The departure of his French vassals permitted Louis to listen more readily to advice. His experience had broadened his mind, and his lack of armed force taught him the need for diplomatic relations with the infidel. Some of his friends found him too ready to follow a poulain policy; but he was wise to do so and the moment was favourable for diplomacy. The Mameluk revolution in Egypt had not been well received in Moslem Syria, where loyalty to the Ayubites persisted. When the news came of Turanshah’s death, an-Nasir Yusuf of Aleppo marched down from Horns and on 9 July 1250, occupied Damascus, where he was enthusiastically welcomed as the great-grandson of Saladin. Once more there was bitter rivalry between Cairo and Damascus, and both courts were eager to buy Frankish aid. Hardly had Louis arrived at Acre before an embassy came there from an-Nasir Yusuf. But Louis would not commit himself. The Damascene alliance might be strategically preferable, but he had to think of the Frankish prisoners still in Egypt.
In the winter of 1250 the army of Damascus began an invasion of Egypt. On 2 February 1251, it met the Egyptian army under Aibek at Abbasa, in the Delta, twelve miles east of the modern Zagazig. The Syrians were at first successful, though Aibek’s own regiment held firm; but a regiment of Mameluks in an-Nasir Yusuf’s army deserted his cause in the midst of the battle. The Sultan, whose courage was not remarkable, thereupon turned and fled. The Mameluk power in Egypt was saved. But the Ayubites still held Palestine and Syria. When an-Nasir Yusuf next sent to Acre hinting that he might cede Jerusalem in return for Frankish help, Louis sent an embassy to Cairo to warn Aibek that unless the question of the Frankish prisoners was soon settled he would ally himself with Damascus. His ambassador, John of Valenciennes, succeeded in the course of two visits in securing first the release of the knights, including the Grand Master of the Hospital, taken in 1244 at Gaza, and then some 3000 of the more recent captives, in return for 300 Moslem captives in Frankish hands. Aibek showed his growing anxiety to make friends with the King by sending him, with the second batch, the gift of an elephant and a zebra. Louis was then emboldened to demand the release of all the prisoners remaining in Mameluk hands without any further payment. When Aibek realized that an envoy from Louis, the Arabic-speaking Yves the Breton, was visiting the Court of Damascus, he consented to the King’s request, in return for a military alliance against an-Nasir Yusuf. He further promised that when the Mameluks had occupied Palestine and Damascus, they would return the whole of the old Kingdom of Jerusalem as far east as the Jordan to the Christians. Louis agreed; and the prisoners were all released at the end of March 1252. The treaty had nearly been wrecked by the Templars’ refusal to break off relations with Damascus. The King was obliged to rebuke them publicly and demand a humble apology.
1253: The Caliph makes Peace between the Moslem Princes
The Franco-Mameluk alliance came to nothing. As soon as he heard of it, an-Nasir Yusuf sent troops to Gaza, to intercept a junction between the allies. Louis moved down to Jaffa; but the Mameluks failed to advance out of Egypt. For about a year the Syrians and the Franks remained stationary, neither wishing to provoke a battle. Meanwhile Louis repaired the fortifications of Jaffa. He had already strengthened those of Acre, Haifa and Caesarea. Early in 1253 an-Nasir Yusuf appealed to Baghdad to mediate between him and the Mameluks. The Caliph, al-Mustasim, was anxious to unite the Moslem world against the Mongols. He induced Aibek, who recognized his nominal suzerainty, to accept an-Nasir Yusuf’s terms. Aibek should be accepted as ruler of Egypt and should be allowed to annex Palestine up to Galilee on the north and the Jordan on the east. The peace was signed in April 1253; and Aibek’s arrangement with the Franks was forgotten.
The Damascene army travelled home from Gaza through Frankish territory, raiding as it came. The cities were too strong to be attacked, except for Sidon, whose walls were being reconstructed. Though they made no attempt against the castle on its little island, they sacked the town and retired laden with booty and prisoners. King Louis retaliated by sending an expedition to raid Banyas, but with no success. Fortunately for Outremer, neither Aibek nor an-Nasir Yusuf showed any more serious desire for war.
Their restraint was largely due to the presence of the King of France in the East. Though his military record had been disastrous, his personality made a definite impression. It was as well; for in December 1250, the Emperor Frederick, whose name still carried weight in Moslem circles, died in Italy. His son Conrad inherited none of his prestige. Louis was, moreover, far more successful in handling the inhabitants of Outremer than Frederick had been, for he was tactful and disinterested. His value was shown by his intervention in the Principality of Antioch. Bohemond V died in January 1252, leaving two children, a daughter, Plaisance, who had married a few months before, as his third wife, the childless King Henry of Cyprus, and a son, Bohemond, aged fifteen, who succeeded under the regency of the Dowager Princess, the Italian Lucienne. Lucienne was a feckless woman, who never left Tripoli and handed the government of the Principality to her Roman relatives. Bohemond VI was soon conscious that his mother was unpopular, and, with Louis’s approval, obtained permission from the Pope to come of age a few months before the legal date. When Innocent IV agreed, Bohemond came to Acre where he was knighted by the King. Lucienne was removed from power, and compensated with a handsome income. At the same time Louis completed the reconciliation of the Court of Antioch with that of Armenia. Bohemond V in his later years had entered into relations with King Hethoum; but for him the past was too full of bitter memories. Bohemond VI bore no such rancour. In 1254, on Louis’s suggestion, he married Hethoum’s daughter Sibylla; and he became to some degree his father-in-law’s vassal. The Armenians agreed to share in the responsibility for the protection of Antioch.
King Henry of Cyprus died on 18 January 1253. As his son, Hugh II, was only a few months old, Queen Plaisance claimed the regency of Cyprus and the titular regency of Jerusalem. The High Courts of Cyprus confirmed her position there, but the mainland barons required her attendance in person before they would recognize her. John of Ibelin, lord of Arsuf, remained meanwhile as bailli, and Plaisance contemplated marrying his youthful son Balian. In fact, King Louis continued to administer the government.
1252: Frankish Alliance with the Assassins
There was no hope of a new Crusade from Europe. Henry III of England, who had taken the Cross with many of his subjects in the spring of 1250, induced the Pope to allow him to postpone any expedition. Louis’s brothers refused to send help from France. There public opinion was indignant but disillusioned. When news first arrived of the disaster at Mansourah, a hysterical mass-movement of peasants and labourers, who called themselves the Pastouraux and were led by a mysterious ‘Master of Hungary’, swept through the country, holding meetings to denounce the Pope and his clergy and vowing themselves to rescue the Christian King. The Queen-Regent Blanche gave them her approval at first; but they became so disorderly that they had to be suppressed. The French nobles contented themselves with bitter comments against a Pope who preferred to preach a Crusade against the Christian Imperialists rather than to send help to those who were struggling against the infidel. Blanche went so far as to confiscate the property of any Royal vassal who responded to the appeal of Innocent IV for a Crusade against King Conrad in 1251. But neither she nor her advisers ventured to send reinforcements to the East.
In his search for foreign allies, King Louis entered into the friendliest relations with the Assassins. Immediately after the disaster at Damietta, their chief in Syria had sent to Acre to demand to be paid for their neutrality, but was deterred by the firm answer that the King gave to his envoys in the presence of the Grand Masters of the Orders. The sect had particularly asked to be released from the obligation of paying a tribute to the Hospital. Its next embassy was far humbler. It brought handsome gifts for the King, with the request for a close alliance. Louis, who had learned of the hostility of the Ismailian Assassins towards the orthodox Sunni Moslems, encouraged their advances and sent Yves the Breton to arrange a treaty. Yves was fascinated by the library kept by the sect at Masyad. He found there an apocryphal sermon addressed by Christ to Saint Peter, who, the sectaries told him, was the reincarnation of Abel, Noah and Abraham. A pact of mutual defence was signed.
Louis’s main diplomatic ambition, however, was to secure the friendship of the Assassin’s fiercest enemy, the Mongols. Early in 1253 a report reached Acre that one of the Mongol princes, Sartaq, son of Batu, had been converted to Christianity. Louis hastened to send two Dominicans, William of Rubruck and Bartholomew of Cremona, to urge the Prince to come to the aid of his fellow-Christians in Syria. But it was not within the power of a junior Mongol prince to conclude so momentous an alliance. While the Dominicans journeyed further into Asia to the Court of the Great Khan himself, King Louis was obliged to leave Outremer. His mother, the Queen-Regent Blanche, had died in November 1252; and her death was quickly followed by disorders. The King of England began to make trouble, in spite of an oath to go on the Crusade; nor would he support his bishops whom the Pope had charged to preach the Crusade. Civil war broke out over the inheritance to the county of Flanders, and all the great vassals of France were growing restive. Louis’s first duty was to his own kingdom. Reluctantly he prepared to go home. He set sail from Acre on 24 April 1254. His boat was nearly wrecked off the coast of Cyprus; but the Queen promised a silver ship to the shrine of Saint Nicholas at Varangeville, and the storm abated. A few days later the Queen’s presence of mind saved the boat from destruction by fire. In July the royal party landed at Hyeres, in the territory of the King’s brother, Charles of Anjou.
1254: Effects of Louis’s Departure
Saint Louis’s Crusade had involved the Christian East in a terrible military catastrophe, and, though his four years’ sojourn at Acre did much to repair the damage, the loss of man-power could never quite be recovered. He had the noblest character of all the great Crusaders; but it might have been better for Outremer had he never left France. And his failure struck deeper. He had been a good and God-fearing man, and yet God had led him into disaster. In earlier days the misadventures of the Crusaders could be explained as due punishment for their crimes and their vices, but so facile a theory was now no longer tenable. Was it possible that the whole movement was frowned upon by God?
Though the French King’s coming to the East had been unfortunate, his departure brought the risk of immediate harm. He left behind him as his representative Geoffrey of Sargines, who was given the official post of Seneschal to the kingdom. The bailli was now John of Ibelin, Count of Jaffa, who succeeded his cousin John of Arsuf in the office in 1254 but returned it to him in 1256. It is possible that John of Arsuf was absent in Cyprus during these years, advising Queen Plaisance, who continued as legal regent of both kingdoms. The death of Conrad of Germany in Italy in May 1254, gave the title of King of Jerusalem to his two-year-old son Conradin, whose nominal rights were scrupulously remembered by the lawyers of Outremer. Just before his departure King Louis had arranged a truce with Damascus, to last from 21 February 1254, for two years, six months and forty days. An-Nasir Yusuf of Damascus was well aware now of the Mongol peril and had no wish for war with the Franks. Aibek of Egypt equally wished to avoid a large war, and in 1255 made a ten years’ truce with the Franks. But he expressly excluded Jaffa from the truce, as he hoped to secure it as a port for his Palestinian province. There were raids and counter-raids across the frontier. In January 1256, Geoffrey of Sargines and John of Jaffa captured a huge caravan of beasts. When the Mameluk governor of Jerusalem led an expedition in March to punish the raiders, he was defeated and killed. Aibek, who had been having difficulties with his generals, including Baibars, made a new treaty with Damascus, again on the Caliph’s mediation, and retro-ceded Palestine; but both Moslem powers renewed their truces with the Franks, to last ten years and to cover the territory of Jaffa.
1256: The War of Saint Sabas
This forbearance shown by Cairo and Damascus, dictated to them by their growing fear of the Mongols, saved the Franks from the deserved results of a civil war that began soon after King Louis’s departure. The most active elements now in the cities of Outremer were the various Italian merchants. The three great republics of Genoa, Venice and Pisa, with their colonies in every Levantine seaport, dominated Mediterranean trade. Apart from the banking enterprises of the Templars, their commerce provided for Outremer most of its revenues and was almost as beneficial to the Moslem princes, whose periodical willingness to sign a truce was largely induced by the fear of interrupting this source of profit. But the republics were bitter rivals. Trouble between Pisa and Genoa had delayed Louis’s embarkation from Cyprus in 1249. In 1250, after the murder of a Genoese merchant by a Venetian, there was fighting in the streets of Acre. When Louis had left for Europe trouble broke out again. The Venetian and Genoese quarters in Acre were separated by the hill of Montjoie, which belonged to the Genoese except for its highest spur, crowned by the ancient monastery of Saint Sabas. Both colonies claimed the monastery; and one morning early in 1256, while lawyers still disputed the case, the Genoese took possession of it and, on the Venetians protesting, rushed armed men down the hill into the Venetian quarter. The Pisans, with whom they had some pre-concerted arrangement, hurried to join them; and the Venetians, taken by surprise, saw their houses sacked, together with their ships that were tied up at the quay. It was only with difficulty that they drove the invaders out again. The monastery and many of their ships were lost to them.
At that moment, Philip of Montfort, lord of Toron and Tyre, who had long contested the title of the Venetians to certain villages near Tyre, thought it opportune to turn them out of the third of Tyre that was theirs by the treaty made when Tyre was captured in 1124, and of their possessions in the suburbs. With the Genoese dispute on their hands, they could not prevent him; but when the government of Genoa, which did not wish to start a war with Venice, offered to mediate, they were too angry to accept the offer. The Venetian Consul at Acre, Marco Giustiniani, was a skilful diplomat. Philip’s high-handed action shocked his Ibelin cousins, who were all sticklers for legal correctitude. The bailli, John of Arsuf, suspected that the Montforts intended to declare Tyre independent of the government at Acre. Though he had been on cold terms with the Venetians, chiefly because of their chilly attitude towards Louis’s Crusade, he was won by Giustiniani over to their side. John of Jaffa was already on bad terms with the Genoese, one of whom had tried to assassinate him. The Fraternities of Acre, alarmed lest Philip should make Tyre a successful commercial rival to their own city, added their sympathy and help to Giustiniani, who next persuaded the Pisans that the Genoese were selfish and untrustworthy allies and secured their support. The Marseillais merchants, who were always jealous of the Genoese, also joined him; whereat the Catalan merchants, who were jealous of the Marseillais, took the other part. The Temple and the Teutonic Knights supported the Venetians, and the Hospital the Genoese. Further north, the Embriaco family, who reigned at Jebail, remembered its Genoese origin. Its head, Henry, defying the specific prohibition of his suzerain, Bohemond VI of Antioch Tripoli, with whom he had quarrelled, sent troops to help the Genoese in Acre. Bohemond himself tried to maintain neutrality, but his sympathies were with the Venetians and his feud with the Embriaco clan forced him into the conflict. His sister, the Queen-Regent Plaisance, could do nothing. The only man in Outremer that she could trust was Geoffrey of Sargines; and he, as a stranger, had little influence and no material power. The civil war began to involve the whole society of Outremer. It was no longer a case of the native barons combining against an alien master, as in the days of Frederick II. Petty family disputes exacerbated the struggle. Philip of Montfort’s mother and Henry of Jebail’s wife had been born Ibelins. Bohemond VI’s grandmother had been an Embriaco. But ties of kinship meant nothing now.
The Venetian government had been swift to take action. As soon as the Genoese learned that the Pisans had deserted them, they overran the Pisan quarter in Acre, which gave them command of the inner port. But they barely had time to stretch a chain across the entrance before a large fleet under the Venetian admiral Lorenzo Tiepolo sailed up. His ships burst through the chain and landed men on the quay. There was a bloodthirsty battle in the streets. The Genoese were at last driven back into their quarter, protected by the Hospitallers’ quarter just to the north. The monastery of Saint Sabas was occupied by the Venetians, but they could not dislodge the Genoese or the Hospitallers from their own buildings.
1258: Queen Plaisance at Acre
In February 1258, Plaisance made an attempt to assert her authority. She crossed from Cyprus with her five-year-old son, King Hugh, to Tripoli to her brother Bohemond, who escorted her to Acre. The High Court of the kingdom was summoned; and Bohemond asked it to confirm the claim of the King of Cyprus, as next heir after the absentee Conradin, to be recognized as depository of the royal power, and of his mother and guardian as regent. But Bohemond’s hope that his sister’s authority and presence would still the civil war was disappointed. As soon as the Ibelins admitted Hugh’s and Plaisance’s claims, always excepting the rights of King Conradin, and the Templars and Teutonic Knights concurred, the Hospitallers at once declared that nothing could be decided in Conradin’s absence, using the argument that had been overruled in 1243. The royal family were thus drawn into the civil war, the Venetian party supporting Plaisance and her son, and, by the cynical irony of history, Genoa, the Hospital and Philip of Montfort, all of them in the past bitter opponents of Frederick II, becoming the advocates of the Hohenstaufen. A majority vote acknowledged Plaisance as regent. John of Arsuf formally resigned his office of bailli into her hands and was reappointed by her. She then returned with her brother to Tripoli and thence to Cyprus, after instructing her bailli to act sternly against the rebels.
The Patriarch of Jerusalem was James Pantaleon, the son of a shoemaker of Troyes. He had been appointed in December 1255, and only reached Acre in the summer of 1260, when the civil war had begun. Though he had recently shown great ability in dealing with the heathen in Baltic lands, the situation in Outremer was beyond him. He correctly gave his support to Queen Plaisance, and appealed to the Pope to take action in Italy. Pope Alexander IV summoned delegates from the three republics to his court at Viterbo and ordered an immediate armistice. Two Venetian and two Pisan plenipotentiaries were to go to Syria on a Genoese ship, and two Genoese on a Venetian ship, and the whole affair was to be settled. The envoys set out in July 1258, only to hear on the journey that they were too late. The Republic of Genoa had already sent out a fleet under the admiral Rosso della Turca, which arrived off Tyre in June and there joined the Genoese squadrons in the Levant. On 23 June the combined fleet of some forty-eight galleys set sail from Tyre, while a regiment of Philip of Montfort’s soldiers marched down the coast. The Venetians and their Pisan allies had about thirty-eight galleys, under Tiepolo. The decisive battle took place off Acre on 24 June. Tiepolo proved himself the better tactician. After a fierce struggle the Genoese lost twenty-four ships and 1700 men and retired in disorder. Only a sudden breeze from the south enabled the survivors to return safely to Tyre. Meanwhile the militia of Acre halted Philip’s advance, and the Genoese quarter within the city was overrun. As a result of their defeat the Genoese decided to abandon Acre altogether and establish their headquarters at Tyre.
In April 1259, the Pope sent a legate to the East, Thomas Agni of Lentino, titular Bishop of Bethlehem, with orders to resolve the quarrel. About the same time the bailli, John of Arsuf, died; and Queen Plaisance came again to Acre and on 1 May appointed Geoffrey of Sargines as bailli.He was a respected and a more uncontroversial figure, and he worked with the legate to secure an armistice. In January 1261, a meeting of the High Court, attended by delegates from the Italian colonies, came to an agreement. The Genoese were to have their establishment at Tyre and the Venetians and Pisans theirs at Acre; and the warring nobles and Military Orders were officially reconciled. But the Italians never regarded the arrangement as final. Their war soon began again and dragged on, to the detriment of all the commerce and the shipping along the Syrian coast.
1261: The Byzantines Recapture Constantinople
It was to the detriment, too, of the Franks on the east, far beyond the border of Syria. The tottering Latin Empire of Constantinople had survived chiefly through the help of the Italians, who feared to lose their trading concessions. Venice, with her property in Constantinople itself and in the Aegean islands, had a particular interest in its preservation. Genoa therefore gave active support to the vigorous Greek Emperor of Nicaea, Michael Palaeologus. Michael had already laid the foundations for the Byzantine recovery of the Peloponnese in 1259 by his great victory at Pelagonia, in Macedonia, where William of Villehardouin, Prince of Achaea, was captured with all his barons and obliged to cede the fortresses, Maina, Mistra and Monemvasia, that dominated the eastern half of the peninsula. In March 1261, Michael signed a treaty with the Genoese, giving them preferential treatment throughout his dominions, present and future. On 25 July, with the help of the Genoese, his troops entered Constantinople. The Empire of Romania, the child of the Fourth Crusade, was ended. It had done nothing but harm to the Christian East.
The Byzantine recovery of Constantinople and the collapse of the Latin Empire were thus the outcome of a war started round an ancient monastery in Acre. It was a tremendous blow to Latin and to Papal prestige, and a triumph for the Greeks. But Byzantium, even with its capital restored, was no longer the oecumenical Empire that it had been in the twelfth century. It was now only one state amongst many. Besides the remaining Latin principalities, there were now powerful Bulgarian and Serbian kingdoms in the Balkans; and in Anatolia, though the Seldjuk Sultanate had been crippled by the Mongols, there could never be any hope of dislodging the Turks. Indeed, the possession of their ancient home added to the problems rather than to the strength of the Emperors. The chief beneficiaries were the Genoese. They had been beaten in Syria; but their alliance with Byzantium gave them control of the Black Sea trade, a trade which was growing in volume and importance as the Mongol conquests developed the caravan-routes across central Asia.
In Outremer Geoffrey of Sargines, with the prestige of Saint Louis’s memory behind him, restored some semblance of order between the barons of the kingdom. Though Italian sailors might continue to fight, active hostilities died down on shore; but there was no return to the old friendship between the Montforts and the Ibelins. The Temple and the Hospital would not mitigate their traditional enmity; while the Teutonic Order, despairing of the future of Syria, began to devote its main attention to the distant shores of the Baltic, where, from 1226 onwards, it had been given lands and castles in return for its help in taming and converting the heathen Prussians and Livonians.
Geoffrey’s authority did not extend into the county of Tripoli. There the dislike of Bohemond for his vassal, Henry of Jebail, had blazed up into war. Not only did Henry repudiate Bohemond’s suzerainty and maintain himself, with the help of the Genoese, in perfect independence, but his cousin Bertrand, head of the younger branch of the Embriaco family, attacked Bohemond in Tripoli itself. The Dowager Princess Lucienne, when she was removed from the regency, had managed to keep many of her Roman favourites in important posts in the county, to the fury of the native barons. They found their leaders in Bertrand Embriaco, who owned large estates in and around Jebail, and his son-in-law, John of Antioch, lord of Botrun, Bohemond’s second cousin. In 1258 the barons marched on Tripoli, where Bohemond was in residence, and laid siege to the city. Bohemond made a sortie but was defeated and wounded on the shoulder by Bertrand himself. He was forced to stay beleaguered in his second capital till the Templars sent men to rescue him. He burned for revenge. One day as Bertrand was riding through one of his villages some armed peasants suddenly attacked him and slew him. His head was cut off and sent as a gift to Bohemond. No one doubted that Bohemond had inspired the murder. For the moment it served his purpose. The rebels were cowed and retired to Jebail. But there was now a blood-feud between the Houses of Antioch and Embriaco.
1264: Hugh of Cyprus Regent of Jerusalem
Geoffrey of Sargines’s government came to an end in 1263. Queen Plaisance of Cyprus died in September 1261, deeply mourned; for she was a lady of high integrity. Her son, Hugh II, was eight years old; and a new regent was required for Cyprus and Jerusalem. Hugh II’s father, Henry I, had had two sisters. The elder, Maria, had married Walter of Brienne and had died young, leaving a son, Hugh. The younger, Isabella, was married to Henry of Antioch, brother of Bohemond V, and was still living. Her son, also called Hugh, was older than his cousin of Brienne, whom Isabella had brought up along with her own son. Hugh of Brienne, though next heir to the throne, was unwilling to compete against his aunt and her son for the regency. After deliberation the High Court of Cyprus, considering that a man made a better regent than a woman, passed over Isabella’s claim in favour of her son, who was appointed as being the eldest prince of the blood royal. The High Court of Jerusalem was given more time for reflection. It was not till the spring of 1263 that Isabella came with her husband, Henry of Antioch, to Acre. The nobles there accepted her as Regent de facto, but, showing scruples that had hitherto been ignored, they refused to give her an oath of allegiance. That could only be done if King Conradin were present. Geoffrey of Sargines resigned the office of bailli, which the Regent then gave to her husband. She herself returned happily without him to Cyprus.
She died in Cyprus next year; and the regency of Jerusalem again was vacant. Hugh of Antioch, Regent of Cyprus, claimed it as her son and heir; but a counter-claim was now put in by Hugh of Brienne. He declared that, by the custom of France which was followed in Outremer, the son of an elder sister preceded the son of a younger, no matter which cousin was the senior in age. But the jurists of Outremer considered that the decisive factor was kinship to the last holder of the office. As Isabella had been accepted as the last Regent, her son Hugh took precedence over her nephew. The nobles and high officers of state unanimously accepted him and gave him the homage that they had denied to his mother. The communes and foreign colonies offered him fealty and Grand Masters both of the Temple and Hospital gave him recognition. Though the Italians still fought each other on the seas, there was a general if superficial atmosphere of reconciliation in the kingdom, due in the main to Hugh’s energy. He did not appoint a bailli to act for him on the mainland, but travelled to and fro between Cyprus and Acre. While he was in Cyprus, the mainland government was entrusted to Geoffrey of Sargines, who was Seneschal once more. It was as well that the administration was in respected hands; for there were great and increasing dangers ahead.
King Louis of France never forgot the Holy Land. Every year he sent a sum of money to maintain the small company of troops that he had left behind at Acre under Geoffrey of Sargines; and the practice was continued even after Geoffrey’s death and his own. He always hoped one day to set out again on a Crusade, but the needs of his own country gave him no respite. It was only in 1267, when he was weary and ill, that he felt able to prepare for his second Crusade and began slowly making the necessary arrangements and collecting the necessary money. In 1270 he was ready to embark for Palestine.
1270: Louis’s Last Crusade
The pious project was twisted out of shape and ruined by the King’s brother Charles. In 1258 the child Conradin, titular King of Sicily and of Jerusalem, had been displaced by his uncle, Frederick II’s bastard son Manfred. Manfred had much of his father’s arrogant brilliance; and he received the same measure of hatred from the Papacy. The Popes began to search for a prince to put in his stead upon the Sicilian throne which traditionally was under their suzerainty. After considering Edmund of Lancaster, Henry of England’s son, they found their candidate in Charles of Anjou. Charles bore little resemblance to his saintly brother. He was cold and cruel and inordinately ambitious; and his wife, the Countess Beatrice, heiress of Provence and sister of three queens, yearned to wear a crown herself. In 1261 James Pantaleon, Patriarch of Jerusalem, became Pope as Urban IV. He soon persuaded Louis that the elimination of the Hohenstaufen from Sicily was a needful preliminary for the success of any future Crusade.
Louis gave his approval to his brother’s candidature and even raised taxes in France on his behalf. Urban died in 1264, but his successor, Clement IV, another Frenchman, completed the arrangements with Charles; who in 1265 marched into Italy and defeated and slew Manfred at the battle of Benevento. The victory put southern Italy and Sicily into his power, and his wife received the crown that she desired. Three years later Conradin made a valiant effort to recover his Italian heritage. It met with disaster near Tagliacozzo; and the sixteen-year-old boy, the last of the Hohenstaufen, was taken prisoner and beheaded. Charles’s ambitions now rose higher. He would dominate Italy; Constantinople should be recovered from the schismatic Greeks; he would found a Mediterranean Empire, such as his Norman predecessors had dreamed of in vain. Pope Clement began to fear the monster that he had raised; but he died in 1268. For three years Charles, by intrigues with the Cardinals, blocked the election of a new Pope. There was no one to curb him. But the thought of his brother’s intended Crusade disquieted him. Frenchmen and French money should be used to his advantage, not to prop up a distant kingdom in which he was not yet ready to be interested. He had hoped for help for an attack on Byzantium. If that was not forthcoming, at least the Crusade must be diverted into some channel that would bring him profit.
Mustansir, Emir of Tunis, who dominated the African coast opposite to Sicily, was known to be well disposed towards the Christians, but he had offended Charles by giving refuge to rebels from Sicily. Charles persuaded Louis, whose optimism for the Faith had not been dimmed by experience, that the Emir was ready for conversion. A slight show of force would bring him to the fold, and a new province would be added to Christianity in a spot of vast strategic importance for any new Crusade. It may be that Louis’s judgement was warped by illness. Wise friends, such as Joinville, made no secret of their dislike of the project. But Louis believed in his brother. On 1 July he set sail from Aigues-Mortes at the head of a formidable expedition. With him were his three surviving sons, his son-in-law, King Tibald of Navarre, his nephew, Robert of Artois, the Counts of Brittany and La Marche and the heir to Flanders, all sons of comrades of his earlier Crusade, and the Count of Saint Pol, a survivor of that Crusade, and the Count of Soissons. The armada arrived off Carthage on 18 July, in the full heat of the African summer. The Emir of Tunis showed no desire to become a Christian convert. Instead, he refortified and re-garrisoned his capital. But he did not need to fight. The climate did his work for him. Disease spread quickly through the French camp. Princes, knights and soldiers fell ill in thousands. The King was among the first to be struck down. When Charles of Anjou arrived on 25 August with his army, he learned that his brother had died a few hours before. The heir of France, Philip, was dangerously ill; John Tristan, the prince born at Damietta, was dying. Charles’s vigour preserved the expedition from disaster till the autumn, when the Emir paid him a large indemnity to go back to Italy; but the Crusade as a whole had been wasted.
When the news of the tragedy at Tunis reached the East, the Moslems were deeply relieved, and the Christians were plunged into mourning. Their grief was well justified. Never again would a royal army set out from their motherland to rescue the Franks of Outremer. King Louis had been a great and good King of France, but to Palestine, which he had loved even more dearly, he had brought little but disappointment and sorrow. As he lay dying he thought of the Holy City which he had never seen and for whose deliverance his labours had been fruitless. His last words were ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem’.