‘And now, I have sent a cunning man, endued with understanding.’ II CHRONICLES II, 13
When the Crusade sailed away despondent from Damietta, King John returned straight to Acre, but the Cardinal Pelagius went further north, to carry out the Pope’s instructions at Antioch and in the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia. On King Leo’s death Honorius had recognized John of Brienne’s claim that his wife or her son should succeed. On their death he transferred the support of the Church to Raymond-Roupen of Antioch who had come in person to Damietta in the summer of 1220 to consult with Pelagius. A few months previously Bohemond of Tripoli had recaptured Antioch, though the Hospitallers held the citadel. Raymond-Roupen had then invaded Cilicia, together with his Armenian mother, Alice, and established himself at Tarsus, awaiting help from the Hospitallers, with whom he was on good terms; for he had given the citadel of Antioch into their care. But the Armenian nobles carried out the late King’s wishes and accepted his young daughter Isabella as the Queen, under the regency of Adam of Baghras. Adam was murdered after a few months’ power by the Assassins, doubtless at the instigation of the Hospital. His successor as regent was Constantine, head of the Hethoumian family. The Hethoumians had in the past represented the pro-Byzantine party in Armenia. Now they came forward as the champions of nationalism against the latinizing tendencies of the ruling dynasty. Early in 1221 Constantine marched on Tarsus and captured it, together with the Prince and his mother. Raymond-Roupen died in prison soon afterwards. His elimination left Isabella secure on the Armenian throne and Bohemond of Tripoli at Antioch.
Pelagius was warned by the Pope to act carefully. It was useless to put forward the claims of Raymond-Roupen’s infant daughters, who retired with their Lusignan mother to Cyprus. But Bohemond was a bad son of the Church. He managed to wrest the citadel of Antioch from the Hospitallers, and he also deprived them of the promise of Jabala, which Raymond-Roupen had offered to them if they would conquer it, and handed the right to it over to the Templars. There was danger now of open war between the Orders. Pelagius managed to persuade each to accept half of the town; but Bohemond not only refused to readmit the Hospital to Antioch, but annexed its possessions there, even though Pelagius threatened him with excommunication and carried out the sentence. The Templars remained in communion with him, and the Regent of Armenia sought his alliance. The Seldjuk Sultan Kaikobad was now the greatest potentate in Asia Minor. He had occupied the western Taurus mountains and made his winter capital at the coast of Alaya, and he was menacing the whole Armenian frontier. The Armenians needed the good-will of Antioch; so the Regent suggested that Bohemond should send his fourth son, Philip, to marry the young Armenian Queen, insisting only that the bridegroom should join the separated Armenian Church. Bohemond, rankling under his excommunication by the Legate, readily allowed his son to lapse into heresy. The alliance between Armenia and Antioch served its immediate purpose. Kaikobad turned his attention away from them to his Moslem neighbours on the East.
1226: The Armenian Succession
The Armenians had hoped that Philip, who had no expectations of ever inheriting Antioch, would himself become a good Armenian. But his tastes were incorrigibly Latin, and he spent as much time as possible at Antioch. The Hethoumians and their friends were exasperated. At last, at the end of 1224, they arrested him one night as he was journeying to Antioch and imprisoned him at Sis, where he was poisoned a few months later. Bohemond was furious but could do little. The Pope had confirmed his excommunication and had warned the Templars to have nothing to do with him. The Hospitallers openly sided with the heretic Armenians. When the young Queen, Philip’s widow, fled broken-heartedly to their protection at Seleucia, they handed the whole town over to the regent Constantine, to avoid the shame of surrendering her in person. Bohemond summoned Kaikobad to his aid, and the Seldjuks invaded Cilicia. Constantine then urged Bohemond to call them off by telling him to come to Cilicia and receive his son back, then arranged for the regent of Aleppo, Toghril, to advance on Antioch. When Bohemond was already in Cilicia he was told that his son was dead, and he had to hurry back to defend his capital from Toghril. Meanwhile the unhappy young Queen Isabella was forced to marry Constantine’s son Hethoum. For many years she refused to live with him, but in the end she relented. She and Hethoum were crowned together in 1226. Constantine, for all his nationalism, now thought it wise to reconcile Armenia with the Papacy. Loyal messages were sent in the name of the young couple to the Pope and to the Emperor Frederick.
It was well for the Christians of the north that their two chief Moslem neighbours, the Seldjuks and the Ayubites of Aleppo and Mosul, were continuously fighting together; for the eight years’ truce guaranteed by al-Kamil did not apply to them. Further south John of Brienne made eager use of it to rest his weary kingdom and in particular to restore the trade with the Moslem interior that provided its main source of revenue. In the autumn of 1222 he decided to visit the West. He wished to consult the Pope about future aid for his kingdom; and he must find a husband for his daughter, the young Queen. She was only aged eleven, but he was now in his seventies. The succession must be secured. After appointing Odo of Montbeliard as viceroy he embarked from Acre with Pelagius, who had just finished a legatine tour in Cyprus, with the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Ralph of Merencourt and with the Grand Master of the Hospital. The Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, Hermann of Salza, was already at Rome. The party landed at Brindisi at the end of October.
John went straight to Rome, where he claimed that in future any territory conquered by a Crusade must be given to the kingdom of Jerusalem. Pelagius may have demurred, but the Pope agreed with John, and the Emperor sent to say that he also approved. John then went on to France to visit once more his old friend King Philip Augustus. Meanwhile Hermann of Salza put forward the suggestion that Queen Yolanda should marry the Emperor Frederick himself, whose Empress had died four months before. It would be a splendid match. John was flattered by the idea, but hesitated till Hermann promised him that he should retain the regency till his death. The Pope was enthusiastic. If Frederick were Consort of Jerusalem he would surely no longer prevaricate and postpone his Crusade. When John arrived at Paris the negotiations were almost complete. King Philip was not pleased with the news and reproached John. It had been hitherto the King of France who was asked to find a husband for the heiress of Outremer. John himself had been nominated by Philip. But, for old time’s sake, Philip welcomed John kindly, and John was present when Philip died at Mantes, on 14 July 1223. In his will Philip left to John the sum of 50,000 marks for the benefit of the kingdom of Jerusalem, with similar legacies to the Hospital and the Temple. John attended the King’s funeral and the coronation of his son, Louis VIII, then went on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella in Spain. He stayed some months in Castile, where he married King Ferdinand III’s sister, Berengaria, and returned to Italy some time in 1224.
1225: Marriage of Frederick and Yolanda
In August next year Count Henry of Malta arrived at Acre with fourteen imperial galleys, to fetch the young Queen, now aged fourteen, to Italy for her wedding. On board was James, Archbishop-elect of Capua, who as soon as he landed, married Yolanda as Frederick’s proxy in the Church of the Holy Cross. She was then taken to Tyre and there, being now held to be of age, she was crowned Queen of Jerusalem by the Patriarch Ralph, in the presence of all the nobility of Outremer. There was rejoicing for a fortnight; then the Queen embarked, accompanied by the Archbishop of Tyre, Simon of Maugastel, and by her cousin, Balian of Sidon. She paused for a few days in Cyprus, to see her aunt, Queen Alice. When the time came to part, both Queens and all their ladies were in tears; and they heard Yolanda murmur a sad farewell to the sweet land of Syria, which she would never see again.
The Emperor, with King John, awaited his bride at Brindisi. She was welcomed with imperial pomp, and a second marriage ceremony took place on 9 November 1225, in the Cathedral at Brindisi.
Frederick was in his thirty-first year. He was a handsome man, not tall but well-built, though already inclined to fatness. His hair, the red hair of the Hohenstaufen, was receding slightly. His features were regular, with a full, rather sensual mouth and an expression that seemed kindly till you noticed his cold green eyes, whose piercing glance disguised their short-sightedness. His intellectual brilliance was obvious. He was fluent in six languages, French, German, Italian, Latin, Greek and Arabic. He was well versed in philosophy, in the sciences, in medicine and natural history, and well informed about other countries. His conversation, when he chose, was fascinating. But, for all his brilliance, he was not likeable. He was cruel, selfish, and sly, unreliable as a friend and unforgiving as an enemy. His indulgence in erotic pleasures of every sort shocked even the easy standards of Outremer. He loved to outrage contemporaries by scandalous comments on religion and morals. In fact he was not irreligious; but his Christianity was rather that of some Byzantine Emperor. He considered himself to be God’s anointed viceroy on earth. He knew himself to be a competent student of theology; he was not going to submit to the dictation of any bishop were it even the Bishop of Rome. He saw no harm in taking an interest in other religions, especially Islam, with which he had been in touch all his life. He would not consider the Greeks to be schismatic because they rejected the authority of the Pope. Yet no ruler persecuted more savagely such Christian heretics as the Cathars and their kin. To the average Westerner he was almost incomprehensible. Though he was by blood half-German, half-Norman, he was essentially a Sicilian by upbringing, the child of an island that was half-Greek and half-Arab. As a ruler in Constantinople or in Cairo he would have been eminent but not eccentric. As King of Germany and Western Emperor he was a terrifying marvel. And yet, for all his understanding of the East in general, he never understood Outremer.
1225: The Fate of John of Brienne
He showed his calibre on the morrow of his wedding. He left Brindisi with the Empress without warning his father-in-law, and when the old King hurried after him, he received him coldly. An open quarrel followed when John learned from his weeping daughter that her husband had seduced one of her cousins. Frederick then coldly announced that he had never promised that John should continue as regent. There was no written agreement, and the King had no legal claim once his daughter was married. John found himself shorn of his position, and Frederick’s soldiers even took from him the sum of money that King Philip had bequeathed to him for Jerusalem. He fled in despair to the Papal Court. Pope Honorius, who was obstinately loth to think ill of his former pupil, was once again disillusioned and shocked; but he could do nothing for John except give him the government of the Tuscan patrimony. But the old warrior’s career was not ended. He had already been suggested for the throne of England. In 1228 the Latin Empire of Constantinople was in need of a regent for the child-Emperor Baldwin II. John, though nearly eighty, gladly took on the job. Baldwin was married to his four-year-old daughter Maria; and John saw to it carefully that he himself was given the title of Emperor to bear till his death in 1237.
The Empress-Queen Yolanda was less fortunate than her father. Frederick sent her to the harem that he kept at Palermo; and there she lived in seclusion, pining for the bright life of Outremer. On 25 April 1228 she gave birth to a son, Conrad, and having done her duty, she died six days later. She was not yet seventeen.
Frederick had promised the Pope first that he would marry his bride in Syria, but at his request, made through King John and the Master of the Teutonic Knights he was granted two years’ delay. On 25 July 1225, he met two Papal Legates at San Germano, and took an oath that he would start out for the East in August 1227, that he would send a thousand knights at once, and that he would deposit 100,000 ounces of gold at Rome, to be forfeit to the Church should he break his vow. Had advice from Outremer been taken, the Emperor’s departure would have been postponed till 1229, when the truce with al-Kamil would end.
The promised knights were sent in the convoy that was to bring back the future Empress. Frederick himself used his two years of grace in an attempt to establish his rule in northern Italy and so link up his German and south Italian lands. The determined enmity of the Lombard League thwarted him; and he was only able to secure a working compromise with the Lombards by wooing the Papacy with a fresh demonstration of enthusiasm for the Crusade. But his old tutor, Pope Honorius, died in March 1227. The new Pope, Gregory IX, was cast in a grimmer mould. He was a cousin of Innocent III, and like Innocent was a man with a clear legalistic mind and a proud unyielding faith in the divine authority of the Papacy. Stern and ascetic himself, he disliked Frederick as a man, and he saw that there could be no truce between the Caesaropapism desired by the Emperor and his own conception of his authority. Policy as well as piety demanded that Frederick should depart for the East.
1228: Frederick embarks for the East
Frederick seemed ready to go. A party of English and French Crusaders under the Bishops of Exeter and Winchester had already sailed for the East. Throughout the summer of 1227 the Emperor mustered a great army in Apulia. An epidemic of malaria enfeebled the army; but several thousand soldiers sailed from Brindisi in August, under Henry IV, Duke of Limburg. Frederick joined the army a few days later, and embarked on 8 September. They had hardly weighed anchor before one of his companions, Louis, Landgrave of Thuringia, fell desperately ill. Their ship put in at Otranto, where the Landgrave died and Frederick himself took the sickness. He left the fleet, which he sent off to Acre under the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Gerold of Lausanne, and went to recover his health at the spa of Pozzuoli. An envoy was despatched to Pope Gregory at Anagni to explain the unavoidable delay. But Gregory was unconvinced by the tale. The Emperor, he thought, was prevaricating again. He excommunicated him at once, and repeated the sentence solemnly at St Peter’s in November. Frederick, after issuing a dignified manifesto to the princes of Europe denouncing Papal pretensions, went on with his preparations for the Crusade. Though the Pope warned him that he could not lawfully set out for the Holy War while he was under the ban of the Church, he gathered a small company and embarked from Brindisi on 28 June 1228. The delay had, however, altered his status; for the Empress Yolanda was dead. Frederick was no longer King and the Queen’s husband, but guardian of the infant King Conrad, his son. The barons of the kingdom would be entitled, if they so chose, to refuse him the regency.
It was not with unmixed pleasure that the rulers of the Frankish East awaited the Emperor’s coming. Bohemond of Antioch and Tripoli was the least disquieted; for he acknowledged no overlord except, perhaps, the Latin Emperor at Constantinople. But Frederick could claim a suzerain’s rights over Cyprus; for it was from the Emperor Henry VI that King Amalric had obtained his crown; and, until the death of the Empress, which was not known in the East until about the time of his arrival, he was certainly King of Jerusalem. He had already intervened in the affairs of the kingdom of Jerusalem. In 1226 he sent out Thomas of Aquino, Count of Acerra, to replace Odo of Montbeliard as regent; and Thomas showed a vigour and decision in his dealings with the High Court that was not quite to the barons’ liking.
In Cyprus the official regent for the child King, Henry I, was his mother, Alice of Jerusalem. She had entrusted the government to her uncle Philip of Ibelin, the second son of Queen Maria Comnena. The relations between the Queen and her bailli were not happy. She complained that her wishes were always disregarded; and an open breach came in 1223 when Philip refused to allow the Orthodox clergy to be robbed of their tithes for the benefit of the Latins, as Cardinal Pelagius had recommended at a Council held at Limassol. The Queen had agreed with the Cardinal; and when she failed to have her way, she retired in a rage to Tripoli, where she married Prince Bohemond’s eldest surviving son, the future Bohemond V. In 1225, when it was certain that the Emperor seriously intended to come to the East, Philip ordered the coronation of the eight-year-old King Henry, so that at least when Henry came of age at fifteen a regency could not be prolonged on the ground that he was not yet crowned. Queen Alice, though in voluntary exile, still regarded herself as regent. Her attempt to appoint her new husband as bailli came to nothing because none of the barons would accept him. She then offered it to one of the leading barons, Amalric Barlais, who, though he had opposed Bohemond’s candidature, accepted for himself, largely because he hated the Ibelins. But the barons, with one dissentient, declared that a bailli could only be appointed with the consent of the High Court, which demanded that Philip should continue in his post. After an open quarrel with Ibelin adherents, Barlais retired to Tripoli to await the coming of Frederick, while one of his friends, Gavin of Chenichy, went to join the Emperor in Italy. Philip of Ibelin died in 1227; and the High Court invited his elder brother John, lord of Beirut, to take his place as bailli. Queen Alice appears to have confirmed his appointment.
1228: Frederick lands in Cyprus
John of Ibelin was now the greatest person in Outremer. He was the nearest male relative in the East both of the King of Cyprus and of the Empress-Queen Yolanda. He was rich; he owned the city of Beirut, and his wife was heiress of Arsuf. His personal qualities won him general respect. His birth, wealth and integrity had made him for some decades already the accepted leader of the baronage of Outremer. Half Levantine-French and half-Greek, he understood the East and its peoples and he was equally versed in the history and the laws of the Frankish kingdom. The Emperor Frederick at once sensed him to be the chief danger to his policy. Frederick too understood the East and its peoples, from his training in Sicily. His dealings with the Moslems were of a sort that the established barons of Outremer could follow with sympathy, But Frederick’s conception of monarchy was not theirs. The King of Jerusalem was by tradition a king bound by a constitution, little more than president of the High Court and commander-in-chief. But Frederick saw himself as an autocrat in the Roman-Byzantine manner, the repository of power and law, God’s supreme viceroy on earth, with all the advantages that hereditary right could give him thrown in. The Emperor of the Romans was not going to be controlled by a few petty Frankish barons.
Barlais and his party were already in touch with Frederick before he arrived off Limassol on 21 July 1228. On their advice he at once summoned John of Ibelin to come with his sons and the young King of Cyprus to meet him. John’s friends warned him of Frederick’s reputation for perfidy; but John was courageous and correct. He would not refuse an invitation from the suzerain of Cyprus. On his arrival with his sons and the King, Frederick received him with honour, calling him uncle and offering him rich gifts. He was told to lay aside the mourning that he wore for his brother Philip, and to attend a feast given in his honour. But at the feast Frederick’s soldiers crept in and stood behind each of the guests, with their swords drawn. Then Frederick demanded of John that he surrender his fief of Beirut and hand over all the revenues of Cyprus that had come in since the death of King Hugh. John replied that Beirut had been given to him by his sister Queen Isabella, and he would defend his right to it before the High Court of the kingdom of Jerusalem. As for the revenues, both Philip and he had given them, as was right, to the Regent, Queen Alice. Frederick broke into open threats, but John stood firm. He would not have it said, he declared, that he refused to aid the Emperor on his Crusade, but even should he be slain for it he would not break the laws of the land. Frederick, who had only three or four thousand troops with him, dared not risk an open breach. He demanded that twenty nobles, including John’s two sons, should be left with him as hostages, that the King should remain with him and that John should come with him to Palestine. In return John and the Cypriot nobles recognized, as was correct, Frederick as suzerain of Cyprus, but not as Regent, — for Queen Alice was the lawful Regent — and as Regent but not as King of Jerusalem; for they knew now that Yolanda was dead and the King was her infant son, Conrad.
1228: Frederick at Acre
The Emperor had meanwhile summoned the leading potentates of Outremer to Cyprus. In August, Balian, Lord of Sidon, arrived with a contingent of troops from the mainland, and soon afterwards Guy Embriaco of Jebail, who disliked the Ibelins, and from whom, like Leopold VI of Austria a few years previously, Frederick borrowed a large sum of money. With these reinforcements the Emperor marched on Nicosia. On the way there he was joined by Bohemond IV of Antioch. John of Ibelin cautiously retired to the castle that the Greeks called the Twin Peaks, Didymi, and the Franks Dieu d’Amour and today we call Saint Hilarion. He had already sent the ladies and the children of his household there, with ample stores of provisions. Feudal law laid down that, during a regency, the barons could not be ejected from castles entrusted to them by the late monarch. Frederick did not attempt now to flout the law. He was anxious to move on to Palestine. Balian of Sidon, who was John’s nephew, seems to have acted as mediator. It was arranged that the King should pay homage to the Emperor, and that all the Cypriots should swear fealty to him as overlord. Though Alice alone was recognized as Regent, Frederick would appoint baillis to govern the country, and John should come to Palestine, to defend his right to Beirut before the High Court. All the hostages would be released. On these terms, after oaths had been sworn to preserve the peace, the Emperor sailed from Famagusta on 3 September, accompanied by the King, the Ibelins and most of the barons of Cyprus. Amalric Barlais was left as bailli, aided by Gavin of Chenichy and his other friends.
Frederick had also suggested that Bohemond should pay him homage for Tripoli and Antioch. Bohemond at once feigned a nervous breakdown and slipped off secretly home, where he made a remarkable recovery.
When the Emperor and his companions arrived at Acre, John of Ibelin hurried at once to Beirut, to be sure that it could resist an attack from the Emperor. He then returned to Acre, to defend himself before the High Court. But Frederick did not hasten to take action. News had reached Palestine that the Pope had excommunicated him again, for setting out for the Crusade before he had obtained absolution from his previous excommunication. There was some doubt therefore whether oaths of fealty sworn to him held good; and many pious folk, including the Patriarch Gerold, refused to co-operate with him. The Templars and the Hospitallers would have nothing to do with an excommunicate. He could only rely on the Teutonic Knights, whose Master, Hermann of Salza, was his friend. His own army was not large. Of the troops that had gone out with the Duke of Limburg in 1227, many had already returned home, from impatience or from fear of offending the Church. A few more had sailed East with the Patriarch a month later; and Frederick had sent out in the spring of 1228 five hundred knights under his loyal servant, the Marshal Richard Filangieri. Even with the whole army of Outremer he could not muster an impressive force capable of striking a decisive blow against the Moslems. To add to his disquiet word came from Italy that his lieutenant, Duke Reynald of Spoleto, had failed in an attack on the March of Ancona, and that the Pope was massing forces to invade his own kingdom. Frederick could not afford to embark on a large campaign in the East. His Crusade should be a crusade of diplomacy.
1228: Ayubite Family Quarrels
Fortunately for the Emperor, the Sultan al-Kamil held similar views. The alliance of the three Ayubite brothers, al-Kamil, al-Mu’azzam of Syria and al-Ashraf of the Jezireh had not long survived their triumph over the Fifth Crusade. Al-Mu’azzam had always been jealous of al-Kamil, and now he rightly suspected that al-Kamil and al-Ashraf were planning to divide his lands. To the east of the Ayubites, the great Khwarismian Empire of Jelal ad-Din was reaching its apogee. Jelal ad-Din had driven off a Mongol invasion and now ruled from Azerbaijan to the Indus, dominating the Caliph at Baghdad. Though the presence of the Mongols in his rear kept him from adventuring too far into the West, he was a potential danger to the Ayubites; and when al-Mu’azzam, to spite his brothers, called on him for help and in 1226 recognized his suzerainty, al-Kamil was genuinely frightened. Al-Ashraf was on the defensive, enduring a siege in his capital of Akhlat. The Mongols at this moment were busy in China, and an appeal to them, were it indeed a wise idea, would go unheeded. So, in the autumn of 1226, al-Kamil had sent one of his most trusted emirs, Fakhr ad-Din ibn as-Shaikh, to Sicily, to ask help from the Emperor Frederick. Frederick was sympathetic but made no promises. He was then still contemplating an active Crusade. But, to keep the negotiations open, he sent Thomas of Acerra, who was already in Palestine, together with the Bishop of Palermo, to Cairo, with gifts and friendly messages for the Sultan. Al-Kamil suggested, as he had done during the Fifth Crusade, that he was ready to restore Jerusalem to the Christians. Unfortunately, it belonged to his brother al-Mu’azzam; and when the Bishop of Palermo went to Damascus to clinch the arrangement, al-Mu’azzam angrily replied that he was no pacifist; he still used his sword. Meanwhile Fakhr ad-Din revisited Sicily, where he became an intimate friend of the Emperor and received knighthood from him. Frederick’s departure for the East, so eagerly pressed by the Pope, was equally urged by the Sultan.
But, before Frederick set out, the situation was altered. Al-Mu’azzam died on 11 November 1227, leaving his dominions to a youth of twenty-one, his son an-Nasir Dawud. As the new ruler was weak and inexperienced, al-Kamil at once prepared to annex his territory. He marched into Palestine and captured Jerusalem and Nablus. An-Nasir appealed to his uncle al-Ashraf, who hastened to his rescue, announcing that he had come to see that the Franks did not take advantage of the situation to annex Palestine. Al-Kamil was loudly making the same claim, which sounded plausible, as Frederick was now on his way to the East. Eventually the two brothers met at Tel-Ajul, near Gaza, and decided to divide their nephew’s lands between them, still protesting that they were acting altruistically in the interests of Islam. An-Nasir was encamped at Beisan, where al-Ashraf planned to capture him. But the boy heard of the plot and fled to Damascus. His uncles’ armies followed him and laid siege to the city about the end of the year 1228.
Under these circumstances al-Kamil regretted Frederick’s coming. He had every prospect of obtaining Palestine permanently for himself; for the Khwarismians showed no sign of coming to an-Nasir’s help. But the presence of a Crusading army at Acre meant that he could not concentrate all his forces on the siege of Damascus. Frederick was not entirely to be trusted; he might decide to intervene on an-Nasir’s behalf. When Frederick sent Thomas of Acerra and Balian of Sidon to al-Kamil to announce his arrival, al-Kamil told Fakhr ad-Din to visit the Emperor once more, to open negotiations and keep them open as long as possible, till Damascus should fall or Frederick go home. There followed several months of bargaining, in an atmosphere partly of mutual bluff and partly of mutual admiration. Neither Emperor nor Sultan was fanatically devoted to his religion. Each was interested in the other’s way of life. Neither was prepared to go to war if it could be avoided; but each had, for the sake of his prestige with his own people, to drive as hard a bargain as possible. Frederick was pressed for time and his army not large enough for a major campaign; but al-Kamil was alarmed by any show of force while Damascus was still untaken, and he was ready to make concessions to the Christians if it would help him to pursue his greater policy, which was to reunite and dominate the Ayubite world. But the concessions must not go too far. When Frederick demanded the retrocession of all Palestine, Fakhr ad-Din, on al-Kamil’s instructions, told him that his master could not afford to offend Moslem opinion to such a degree.
At the end of November 1228, the Emperor tried to hasten matters by a military display. He assembled all the troops that would follow him and marched down the coast to Jaffa, which he proceeded to refortify. At the same moment an-Nasir, who was not yet closely invested in Damascus, led an army to Nablus, to intercept his uncle’s supply lines. But al-Kamil refused to be bluffed. He broke off negotiations, saying that Frederick’s men had pillaged Moslem villages, and only resumed them again when Frederick paid out compensation to the victims.
1229: Recovery of Jerusalem
In the end Frederick proved the better bargainer. When February came an-Nasir was still unscathed in Damascus, and Jelal ad-Din the Khwarismian was turning his attention westward again. Frederick had completed the fortifications of Jaffa, and, on Fakhr ad-Din’s advice, he sent Thomas of Acerra and Balian of Sidon once more to al-Kamil. On 11 February they brought back the Sultan’s final terms. Frederick agreed to them, and a week later, on the 18th, he signed a peace treaty, together with al-Kamil’s representatives, Fakhr ad-Din and Salah ad-Din of Arbela. The Grand Master of the Teutonic Order and the Bishops of Exeter and Winchester were witnesses. By this treaty the kingdom of Jerusalem was to receive Jerusalem itself and Bethlehem, with a corridor running through Lydda to the sea at Jaffa, Nazareth and western Galilee, including Montfort and Toron, and the remaining Moslem districts round Sidon. But in Jerusalem itself the Temple area, with the Dome of the Rock and the Mosque al-Aqsa, was to remain in Moslem hands, and Moslems were to be allowed the right of entry and freedom of worship. Frederick might rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, but the concession was made to him personally. All prisoners on both sides were to be released. The peace was to last ten years by the Christian calendar and ten years and five months by the Moslem. But it did not apply to Bohemond’s principality of Antioch-Tripoli.
Thus, without striking a blow, the excommunicate Emperor won back the Holy Places for Christendom. But seldom has a treaty met with such immediate and universal disapproval. The Moslem world was horrified. At Damascus an-Nasir, not without relish, ordered public mourning for the betrayal of Islam. Even al-Kamil’s own imams abused him to his face; and his lame reply that he had only ceded ruined houses and churches, while the Moslem shrines were intact and saved for the Faith, was little consolation; nor did his comment that the Moslems were still strategic masters of the province seem an adequate excuse. The Christians, on the other hand, were well aware of the strategic position. The more intransigent of them lamented that Jerusalem had not been won back by the sword, and were disgusted that the infidel should retain their shrines; and all of them remembered the negotiations of the Fifth Crusade, when al-Kamil’s offer of all Palestine was rejected because the strategists pointed out that without Oultrejourdain Jerusalem could not be held. How then could it be held when only one narrow strip of land connected it with the coast? There was none of the rejoicing that Frederick had expected. No one suggested that excommunication should be lifted from the man who had done such a great service to Christendom. The Patriarch Gerold proclaimed his displeasure and hurled an interdict against the Holy City if it should receive the Emperor. The Templars, furious at the Temple remaining with the Moslems, made their protest. Neither they nor the Hospitallers would have dealings with the enemy of the Pope. The local barons, already resentful of Frederick’s absolutism, were alarmed by the impracticability of the new frontier; and their dislike of the Emperor was enhanced when he announced that he would go up to Jerusalem and be crowned King. For, in fact, he was not their King, but only the regent and father of the King.
1229: Frederick at Jerusalem
On Saturday, 17 March 1229, Frederick made his ceremonious entry into Jerusalem. His German and Italian troops escorted him, but very few of the local baronage. Of the Military Orders only the Teutonic Knights were represented; and of the clergy there were only Frederick’s Sicilian Bishops and his English friends, Peter of Winchester and William of Exeter. The Emperor was met at the gate by the Qadi Shams ad-Din of Nablus, who handed him the keys of the city in the name of the Sultan. The short procession then passed through empty streets to the old building of the Hospital, where Frederick took up his residence. There was no sign of enthusiasm. The Moslems had deserted the city except for their shrines. The native Christians held aloof, fearing with reason that a Latin restoration would do them no good. Frederick’s own companions were embarrassed by his excommunication; and when it was known that the Archbishop of Caesarea was on his way with orders from the Patriarch to put the city under an interdict, there was constraint and hesitation at the Court. Next morning, Sunday the 18th, Frederick went to attend Mass in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Not a priest was there, only his own soldiery and the Teutonic Knights. Undeterred, he had a royal crown laid on the altar of Calvary, then took it up himself and placed it on his head. Thereupon the Master of the Teutonic Knights read out, first in German, then in French, an encomium of the Emperor-King, describing his achievements and justifying his policy. The Court then moved back to the Hospital; and Frederick held a council to discuss the defence of Jerusalem. The Grand Master of the Hospital and the Preceptor of the Temple, who at a discreet distance had followed the Emperor to Jerusalem, consented to be present, along with the English bishops and Hermann of Salza. Frederick ordered that the Tower of David and the Gate of St Stephen were to be repaired at once, and he handed over the royal residence attached to the Tower of David to the Teutonic Order. Except from the Teutons he met with little co-operation.
It was with relief that Frederick turned aside from his work to visit the Moslem shrines. The Sultan had tactfully ordered the Muezzin at al-Aqsa not to make the call to prayer while the Christian sovereign was in the city. But Frederick protested. The Moslems must not change their customs because of him. Besides, he said, he had come to Jerusalem in order to hear the Muezzins’ call through the night. As he entered the holy area of the Haram as-Sharif he noticed a Christian cleric following behind. He at once himself rudely ejected him, and gave orders that any Christian priest that crossed its threshold without permission from the Moslems should be put to death. As he walked round the Dome of the Rock he noticed the inscription that Saladin had erected in mosaic round the cupola, to record the building’s purification from the polytheists. ‘Who asked the Emperor with a smile, ‘might the polytheists be?’ He remarked on the gratings over the windows and was told that they were put up to keep out the sparrows. ‘God has now sent you the pigs’, he said, using the vulgar Moslem term for the Christians. It was noted that he had Moslems in his suite, amongst them his teacher of philosophy, an Arab from Sicily.
The Moslems were interested by the Emperor but not deeply impressed. His appearance disappointed them. They said that he would not be worth two hundred dirhems in the slave-market, with his smooth red face and his myopic eyes. They were disquieted by his remarks against his own faith. They could respect an honest Christian; but a Frank who disparaged Christianity and paid crude compliments to Islam roused their suspicions. It may be that they had heard the remark universally attributed to him that Moses, Christ and Mahomet were all three impostors. In any case he seemed a man without religion. The enlightened Fakhr ad-Din, with whom he had often discussed philosophy in the palace at Acre, fell victim to his fascination; and the Sultan al-Kamil, whose speculative outlook was akin to his own, regarded him with affectionate admiration, particularly when Fakhr ad-Din reported his confidence that he would never have insisted on the cession of Jerusalem had not his whole prestige been at stake. But pious Moslems and pious Christians alike looked askance at the whole episode. Obvious cynicism never wins the hearts of the people.
1229: End of Frederick’s Crusade
On Monday the 19th, Peter of Caesarea arrived, to hurl the Patriarch’s interdict on Jerusalem. In his rage at the insult, Frederick at once abandoned further work on the defence of the city and, gathering together all his men, hastened down to Jaffa. He paused for a day there, then moved up the coast to Acre, where he arrived on the 23rd. He found Acre seething with discontent. The barons could not forgive him for flouting the constitution; though only Regent he had made a treaty without their consent and had crowned himself King. There were riots between local men at arms and the Emperor’s garrison. The Genoese and Venetian colonists resented favours shown to the Pisans, whose mother-city was one of Frederick’s few constant allies in Italy. The Emperor’s return only intensified the bitterness in the atmosphere.
On the following morning Frederick summoned representatives of all the realm to meet him and gave them an account of his actions. His words were met with angry disapproval. He then had recourse to force. He threw a cordon of police round the Patriarch’s palace and round the headquarters of the Templars; and he put guards at the city gates so that no one unauthorized could leave or enter the city. It was rumoured that he intended to confiscate the great Templar fortress at Athlit, but he learned that it was too strongly garrisoned. He contemplated kidnapping John of Ibelin and the Grand Master of the Temple and sending them to Apulia; but they each kept themselves well guarded, and he did not attempt the venture. But meanwhile he received serious news from Italy, where his father-in-law, John of Brienne, had invaded his states at the head of a Papal army. He could not defer his departure from the East much longer. Without more troops than he possessed in Syria he could not crush his opponents. So he compromised. He announced his forthcoming departure and appointed as baillis for the kingdom Balian of Sidon and Gamier the German. Balian was known for his moderate views and his mother was an Ibelin. Gamier, despite his German origin, had been a lieutenant of King John of Brienne. Odo of Montbeliard was left as Constable of the kingdom, in charge of the army.
These appointments in fact represented a defeat for the Emperor. He knew that he had lost and, to avoid humiliating scenes, he planned to embark on 1 May at sunrise, when no one would be about. But the secret was not kept. As he and his suite passed down the Street of the Butchers to the harbour, the people crowded out of the doors and pelted him with entrails and dung. John of Ibelin and Odo of Montbeliard heard the riot and rode up to restore order. But when they bade a courteous good-bye to the Emperor on his galley, he answered with muttered curses.
From Acre Frederick sailed to Limassol. He remained some ten days in Cyprus, where he confirmed that the baillis should be Amalric Barlais and his four friends, Gavin of Chenichy, Amalric of Beisan, Hugh of Jebail and William of Rivet. He entrusted the King’s person to them. At the same time he arranged a marriage between the young King and Alice of Montferrat, whose father was one of his staunch supporters in Italy. On 10 June 1229, he landed at Brindisi.
1229: Precarious Position of Jerusalem
Of all the great Crusaders the Emperor Frederick II is the most disappointing. He was a man of great brilliance, who knew the mentality of the Moslems and could appreciate the intricacies of their diplomacy; and he saw that there must be some understanding between them and the Christians, if Frankish Outremer was to endure. But he failed to comprehend the nature of Frankish Outremer. The experience and achievements of his Norman ancestors and his own temperament and conception of Empire led him to seek to build a centralized autocracy. He found it too hard a task in Europe, outside of his Italian lands. In Cyprus he might have achieved it, had he chosen his instruments better. But in the diminished kingdom of Jerusalem the experiment was bound to fail. The kingdom was little more than a group of towns and castles, strung precariously together without a defensible frontier. A centralized government was no longer possible. The local authorities, wearisome though their mutual quarrels and jealousies might be, had to be trusted with the government under a tactful and respected leader. These authorities were the lay barons and the Military Orders. Frederick alienated the lay barons by trampling upon the rights and traditions of which they were proud. The Military Orders were even more important, for they alone, now that lay knights preferred to seek their fortunes in Frankish Greece, could provide recruits to fight and settle in the East. But they, though their masters sat on the King’s council and though they might obey him as commander-in-chief on the battlefield, owed allegiance only to the Pope. They could not be expected to aid a ruler whom the Pope had excommunicated and branded as an enemy to Christendom. Only the Teutonic Knights, whose Order was the least important of the three, were prepared, because of their master’s friendship with the Emperor, to defy the Papal ban. It was remarkable that with so few assets and with such hatred roused against him Frederick was able to win a diplomatic success as startling as the recovery of Jerusalem itself.
In fact the recovery of Jerusalem was of little profit to the kingdom. Owing to Frederick’s hurried departure it remained an open city. It was impossible to police the road up from the coast; and Moslem bandits continually robbed and even killed the pilgrims. A few weeks after Frederick had left the country fanatical Moslem imams in Hebron and Nablus organized a raid on Jerusalem itself. The Christians of all rites fled for safety to the Tower of David, while the governor, Reynald of Haifa, sent to Acre for help. The arrival of the two baillis, Balian of Sidon and Garnier, with an army, obliged the raiders to retire. The Moslem rulers repudiated any connection with the raid; and when a larger garrison was left in the city and some minor fortifications were built, there was a little more security. The Patriarch lifted his interdict and came to reside there for part of the year. But the situation was precarious. The Sultan could have recaptured Jerusalem at any time that he chose. In Galilee, where the castles of Montfort and Toron were rebuilt, the Christian hold was stronger. But, with the Moslems in Safed and Banyas, there was no guarantee of permanence.
Frederick’s main legacy, both in Cyprus and in the kingdom of Jerusalem, was a bitter civil war. In Cyprus it started at once. The five baillis there had been instructed to exile all the friends of the Ibelins from the island. They had agreed also to pay a sum of 10,000 marks to Frederick, and the castles, still garrisoned by Imperial troops, were not to be handed over to them till they paid a first instalment. They raised the money by levying heavy taxes and by confiscating the property of the Ibelin party. It chanced that one of John of Beirut’s most devoted supporters, the historian poet Philip of Novara, was in the island, and the baillis offered him a safe-conduct to come to Nicosia and discuss some sort of truce between themselves and the Ibelins. But when Philip arrived they changed their minds and arrested him. After an angry scene in front of the boy-King, who knew Philip well but was unable to intervene, the baillis granted him bail; and he fled to the House of the Hospital, wisely, for armed men broke into his own house that night. He sent off an appeal, written in doggerel, to John of Ibelin at Acre, to come and rescue him and save the property of all his friends. John at once fitted out an expedition at his own expense and managed to force a landing at Gastria, north of Famagusta. He then moved cautiously to Nicosia, where he met the baillis’ army. It was much larger than his own, but less enthusiastic. After some parleys the Ibelins gave battle on 14 July. A spirited attack by John’s knights, led by his son Balian, combined with a sortie from the Hospital organized by Philip of Novara, decided the day. The baillis fled with their troops to the three castles of Dieu d’Amour, Kantara and Kyrenia. John followed and laid siege to all three. Kyrenia was soon captured, but Dieu d’Amour, where Barlais had taken the young King and his sisters, and Kantara were almost impregnable. They only surrendered in the summer of 1230, from starvation. John’s peace terms were generous. Of the five baillis, Gavin of Chenichy had been killed at Kantara, and William of Rivet, who was his half-brother, had fled from Kyrenia to seek help in Cilicia and had died there. The other three were unpunished, to the annoyance of many of John’s friends. John would not even allow Philip of Novara to make a satirical poem about them. A messenger was sent in the King’s name to the potentates of Europe to justify the steps that had been taken against the Emperor. John himself took over the government, till King Henry should come of age in 1232.
1229: Queen Alice claims the Throne of Jerusalem
Meanwhile the kingdom of Jerusalem was peacefully governed by Balian of Sidon and Garnier the German. In the autumn of 1229 Queen Alice of Cyprus had come to Acre to put in a claim to the crown. The regency of Cyprus, which she still nominally held, offered nothing but trouble. She had divorced young Bohemond of Antioch on the grounds of consanguinity; for they were cousins in the third degree. Now she declared that, though the Emperor’s son Conrad was legally King of Jerusalem, he had forfeited his right by failing to come to his kingdom. The High Court should therefore hand the Crown on to the next legitimate heir, which was herself. The Court rejected her claim. Conrad was a minor and his presence therefore not essential; but it was agreed to send an embassy to Italy to ask that Conrad be sent out within a year to the East in order that homage might be paid to him in person. Frederick replied that he would do what he thought best.
On 23 July 1230, Frederick made his peace with the Pope by the Treaty of San Germano. He had been on the whole victorious in Italy, and he was ready now to make concessions over the control of the Church in Sicily in order to be absolved from his excommunication. His reconciliation with the Papacy strengthened his hand in the East. The Patriarch Gerold was told to lift the interdict from Jerusalem, and was reproved for having laid it without reference to Rome. The Military Orders no longer felt obliged to stand aloof; and the barons could no longer count on ecclesiastical support. The Emperor waited his time. In the autumn of 1231, telling the Pope that he must send out an army for the defence of Jerusalem, he collected some 600 knights, 100 sergeants, 700 armed infantrymen and 3000 marines, and dispatched them under his Marshal, the Neapolitan Richard Filangieri, in thirty-two galleys. Filangieri was given the title of Imperial Legate.
John of Ibelin was at Acre when an agent of his, who had come from Italy in a ship belonging to the Teutonic Knights, warned him of the approaching armada. He guessed that its first objective would be Cyprus and hastened to collect all his men from Beirut, leaving only a small garrison in the castle, and set sail for Cyprus. When the Imperial fleet arrived off the coast of Cyprus Filangieri learned that John was with King Henry at Kiti and Balian of Ibelin held Limassol. He sent an ambassador to see the King with a message from Frederick telling him to banish the Ibelins and confiscate their lands. Henry replied that John was his uncle and that in any case he would not dispossess his own vassals. Barlais, who was present and spoke up for Frederick, would have been lynched by the crowd had John not rescued him.
1231: Commune set up at Acre
On his ambassador’s return Filangieri sailed straight for Beirut. The town, which was ungarrisoned, was handed over to him by its timorous bishop; and he began to lay siege to the castle. Leaving it closely invested, he occupied Sidon and Tyre and appeared at Acre. There he summoned a meeting of the High Court and showed it letters from Frederick appointing him as bailli. The barons confirmed the appointment, whereupon Filangieri proclaimed the forfeiture of the Ibelin lands. At this all the barons protested. Estates could not be confiscated unless the High Court to decided, after the owner had had the chance of defending his case. Filangieri haughtily replied that he was the Emperor’s bailli and would carry out the Emperor’s instructions. So gross a violation of the constitution shocked even such moderates as Balian of Sidon and Odo of Montbeliard, who hitherto had been ready to support the Emperor. The whole of the baronage moved over to John of Ibelin’s party. The merchants of Acre, with whom John was popular and who resented Filangieri’s high-handed methods, added their support. Most of them, together with a few of the nobles, belonged to a religious fraternity dedicated to St Andrew. Using that as a basis they set up a commune to represent the whole of the local bourgeoisie, under twelve consuls, and they invited John of Ibelin to be their first mayor. But Filangieri was formidable. He had a good army, mainly of Lombards, that he had brought with him. The Teutonic Knights and the Pisan community were his faithful friends. The Patriarch and the Hospital and the Temple held aloof. They none of them cared for Frederick, but since his reconciliation with the Pope they were uncertain where their duty lay.
When news of the attack on Beirut reached Cyprus, John of Ibelin begged King Henry to come with the island’s forces to its rescue. The young King agreed and ordered the whole army of the kingdom to set sail. Meanwhile John heard of his election as Mayor of Acre. Though it was risky to leave Cyprus unguarded, John believed that the mainland must first be saved; and, as a precaution, Barlais and his friends were obliged to accompany the expedition. John had hoped to leave Cyprus at Christmas 1231; but, owing to stormy weather, it was not till 25 February that the army could sail from Famagusta. The ships made a swift passage through a great rain-storm and anchored off the little port of Puy du Connetable, just south of Tripoli. There Barlais and his friends, eighty knights in all, secretly landed and went to Tripoli, leaving their equipment behind. Filangieri sent a ship to take them to Beirut. John followed them ashore with most of his men while the Cypriot fleet sailed southward but ran into bad weather off Botrun. A few ships were wrecked and others damaged, and much material lost. When John passed through Jebail, some of the infantry deserted. At last he reached Beirut and fought his way into the castle. Thence he appealed to the barons to rescue him. Many came, led by his nephew, John of Caesarea. But Balian of Sidon still hoped for a compromise. He hurried to Beirut with his former co-bailli, Gamier, with the Patriarch and the Grand Masters of the Hospital and the Temple. But Filangieri refused to consider terms that would leave the Ibelins in possession of their lands, and the negotiators would agree to nothing less.
Having reinforced his garrison at Beirut, John moved to Tyre where he was well received and won many recruits, particularly from the Genoese. He also sent an embassy under his son Balian to Tripoli to arrange for the marriage of King Henry’s younger sister Isabella with Bohemond’s second son, Henry. But Bohemond had not much faith in the Ibelin cause and treated the embassy with scant courtesy. Filangieri, however, was nervous. He had made his headquarters at Tyre, leaving the command at Beirut to his brother Lothair. He now ordered Lothair to raise the siege and join him at Tyre.
In the meantime Barlais, reinforced by Lombard troops, crossed back to Cyprus and began to overrun the island. One by one the castles fell to him, except for Dieu d’Amour, where the King’s sisters took refuge, and Buffavento, the most impregnable of all, to which the lady Eschiva of Montbeliard, King Henry’s cousin and Odo’s niece, fled disguised as a monk, with ample provisions, and which she held for the King. Her first husband, Walter of Montaigu, had been killed by Barlais’s men at the battle of Nicosia, and she had recently married Balian of Ibelin; but as they were cousins the marriage had been kept secret. Balian heard of the invasion when he was at Tripoli from two Genoese sea-captains, who offered help but whose ships were impounded by Bohemond.
1232: Battle of Casal Imbert
At the end of April the Genoese agreed, in return for concessions in Cyprus, to aid the Ibelins in an attack on Filangieri at Tyre. The army moved northwards to Casal Imbert, some twelve miles away. But there John met the Patriarch of Antioch, Albert of Rezzato, who had recently been appointed Papal Legate in the East and had come south to mediate. He had just visited Tyre and heard Filangieri’s new terms. John said correctly that they must be given to the High Court, and he rode back to Acre with the Patriarch, taking an escort that seriously depleted his army. Late in the night of 2 May Filangieri, who knew of John’s departure and had perhaps even arranged it with the Patriarch, came out with all his forces from Tyre and fell upon the unsuspecting and ill-guarded Ibelin camp. Anselm of Brie, who was in command with the young Ibelin lords, fought with supreme bravery; but the camp was captured. The young King of Cyprus was hurried half-dressed to the safety of Acre. The other survivors took refuge on a hill-top.
Filangieri did not attempt to follow up his victory, but retired with all his booty to Tyre, leaving a contingent to guard the pass of the Ladder of Tyre. John of Ibelin, hearing of the disaster, hastened up from Acre and rescued his sons, but when he tried to catch up with the heavily laden enemy he was held at the pass. He returned to Acre. Meanwhile Filangieri crossed to Cyprus with reinforcements for Barlais. John thereupon confiscated all the ships in the harbour of Acre, while King Henry offered fiefs in Cyprus to local knights and even to Syrian merchants if they would join him, and arranged that the Genoese should give help in return for freedom from tolls and the right to have their own quarters and courts in Nicosia, Famagusta and Paphos. Money was short; but John of Caesarea and the younger John of Ibelin, Philip’s son, sold property in Caesarea and Acre to the Templars and the Hospitallers and loaned the 31,000 besants that they raised to the King.
Thus equipped, John and King Henry set sail from Acre on 30 May. They called at Sidon to pick up Balian of Ibelin, on his way from his embassy at Tripoli, and crossed to Famagusta. Filangieri’s Lombards were in the town, with over 2000 horsemen, while the Ibelins had only 233. Nevertheless John risked landing his main troops after dark on a rocky islet, just to the south of the harbour. It was unguarded as no one thought that horses could be put ashore there. Then a small detachment in boats forced its way into the harbour, with such loud cries that the Lombards thought a great army to be upon them. They fired their own ships and hastily left the town. In the morning, when the Ibelin army crossed the rocks to the mainland, Famagusta was deserted.
John stayed there long enough for the King to fulfil his promise to the Genoese by signing a treaty with them which allotted them a quarter. Then the army set out for Nicosia. The Lombards had made themselves unpopular on the island by brutal behaviour, and they feared that the peasants would rise against them. As they retired before the Ibelins they burnt all the granaries where the new harvest had just been stored. They decided not to hold Nicosia but moved along the road that goes over the hills to Kyrenia, where they would be in touch with Filangieri himself, who was besieging Dieu d’Amour, and where they would have their rear protected by Kyrenia, which they held. The garrison of Dieu d’Amour was known to be starving and on the point of surrender. If Filangieri could hold his enemies till the castle was in his power, together with the King’s two sisters who were within it, he would be in a strong position for bargaining with the King.
The Ibelins moved slowly to Nicosia, suffering from lack of food; but in Nicosia itself they found large stores, overlooked by the Lombards. John was so suspicious of this that he would not camp within the city but led his army on at once on is June towards Kyrenia, intending to camp at Agridi, just below the pass. Fearing an attack at any moment it marched in battle array. John’s son Balian should have led the vanguard, but he had been excommunicated for marrying his cousin Eschiva, the gallant lady who watched the whole campaign from her eyrie at Buffavento, and his father would not allow him a high command. The first company was therefore commanded by his brother Hugh, with Anselm of Brie. John’s third son, Baldwin, commanded the second company, John of Caesarea the third, and John of Ibelin himself the rearguard, with his other sons and the King. They were a small army, so short of horses that the knights’ squires had to fight on foot. To the Lombards, looking down from the top of the pass, where the track from Dieu d’Amour joins the road, they seemed contemptible. The order was given to attack them without delay.
1232: Battle of Agridi
The first troop of Lombard horses came thundering down the hill under the command of Walter, Count of Manupello. It passed along the flank of the Ibelin army but could not break its lines, and then it was carried on by the momentum of the charge into the plain below. John forbade his men to pursue them; and the Lombards did not venture to turn and ride up the steep slope, but galloped on eastward, never stopping till they reached Gastria. The second Lombard troop, under Walter’s brother Berard, charged straight into the lines commanded by Hugh of Ibelin and Anselm of Brie. But the rough rocky hillside was difficult for the horses. Many stumbled and threw their riders, who were too heavily armed to regain their feet. The Ibelin knights fought mainly on foot, and though outnumbered soon mastered the enemy. Berard of Manupello was killed by Anselm himself. Filangieri, waiting at the head of the pass, had intended to come down to Berard’s rescue; but suddenly Balian of Ibelin appeared with a handful of knights, who had ridden up from the rear of the Ibelin army by a mountainous track to the west of the road, and charged into Filangieri’s camp. Here again the Lombards had the superiority in numbers, and Balian was hard pressed. His father refused to detach troops for his assistance; but soon Filangieri lost his nerve, finding that Manupello’s divisions were not returning, and led his men off in disorder down to Kyrenia.
Dieu d’Amour was relieved, its besiegers fleeing south-westward into the plain, where, when darkness fell, they were surprised and captured by Philip of Novara. Walter of Manupello reached Gastria, but the Templars, who held the castle, refused to admit him, and he was captured, hiding in the fosse, by John, son of Philip of Ibelin. Meanwhile John of Beirut marched on to besiege Filangieri in Kyrenia.
The siege of Kyrenia lasted for ten months. The Ibelins lacked ships at first, whereas Filangieri had a squadron that kept in touch with Tyre. It was not until the Genoese could be induced to help once more that it was possible to blockade the fortress from the sea. Before the blockade was complete, Filangieri fled with Amalric Barlais, Amalric of Beisan and Hugh of Jebail, going first to Armenia to try, vainly, to secure aid from King Hethoum, then to Tyre, and eventually to Italy, to report to the Emperor. The Lombards in Kyrenia, under Philip Chenart, put up a vigorous defence. In the course of the fighting the young Ibelin lords were all of them wounded, and the staunch warrior, Anselm of Brie, whom John of Beirut nicknamed his ‘red lion’, was struck by an iron shaft and died after six months of agony. Amongst the refugees within Kyrenia was Alice of Montferrat, the Italian princess whom Frederick had chosen to be the bride of King Henry. She had been married by proxy and it is doubtful if she had ever seen her husband, having arrived in Cyprus escorted by the imperialists after the King had joined the Ibelins. During the siege she was taken ill and died; and the fighting was interrupted while her corpse, dressed as became a Queen, was ceremoniously handed over and borne to Nicosia for a royal burial by the husband who had never known her living.
Kyrenia surrendered in April 123 3. The defenders, with their personal belongings, were allowed to retire to Tyre, and the prisoners captured by the Ibelins were exchanged for those held by Filangieri at Tyre. Cyprus was now wholly restored to the rule of Henry and his Ibelin cousins. The King’s loyal vassals were rewarded, and loans that they had made were repaid. The island entered into an era of peace, marred only by the attempts of the Latin Church hierarchy, in spite of the opposition of the lay barons, to suppress any of the Greek clergy who would not admit their authority or who would not conform with their usages. The more obstinately disobedient of the Greek monks were even burnt at the stake.
1233: Maugastel appointed Bailli
Though Cyprus was pacified, Filangieri still held Tyre on the mainland, and, Frederick was still legal ruler of Jerusalem for his young son. When Frederick learned, possibly from Filangieri himself, of the failure of his policy, he sent letters to Acre, by the hand of the Bishop of Sidon, who had been visiting Rome, cancelling Filangieri’s appointment as bailli and appointing in his stead a Syrian noble, Philip of Maugastel. If he had hoped to appease the barons by naming a local lord, he was disappointed; for Maugastel was an effeminate young man whose intimacy with Filangieri had given rise to scandal. And Filangieri was left in possession of Tyre. Kyrenia had not yet been captured when the news of the appointment reached John of Beirut. He at once hurried across to Acre. There Balian of Sidon and Odo of Montbeliard had been prepared to accept Maugastel, and had arranged that oaths should be taken to him in the Church of the Holy Cross, but John of Caesarea rose when the ceremony opened and declared the proceedings illegal. The Emperor could not cancel by his own whim arrangements made before the High Court. An angry dispute began; and John sounded the tocsin of the Commune of Acre, summoning its members to his aid. A furious crowd rushed into the church. It was only John’s personal intervention that saved Balian and Odo from death at its hands, while Maugastel fled in terror to Tyre. John was re-elected mayor of the Commune and became in fact the ruler of the kingdom, except for Tyre, which Filangieri ruled in the Emperor’s name, and Jerusalem itself, which seems to have been under a direct representative of the Emperor. It is probable that Balian of Sidon remained nominalbailli, but in fact the High Court accepted John’s leadership till some new legal arrangement should be made. Two envoys, Philip of Troyes and Henry of Nazareth, were sent to Rome to explain the barons’ and the Commune’s actions; but Hermann of Salza, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, who was there, saw that they were not given a fair hearing. The Pope was still" on good terms with Frederick and was anxious to restore his authority in the East. In 1233 he sent the Archbishop of Ravenna as his Legate to Acre, but the Archbishop only recommended that Filangieri’s authority should be obeyed; which was unacceptable. The barons in return sent a jurist, Geoffrey Le Tor, to Rome. Pope Gregory was beginning to quarrel with the Emperor again, but was determined to act correctly. In February 1236, he wrote to Frederick and to the barons, saying that Filangieri must be accepted asbailli, but that Odo of Montbeliard should assist him till September, when Bohemond of Antioch should be appointed bailli. As Frederick and Conrad were legal rulers, the barons had acted wrongly, but all should be forgiven except the Ibelins, who must stand trial before the High Court. The Commune of Acre must be dissolved.
These terms were unacceptable to the barons and the Commune, who ignored them. At this juncture John of Ibelin died, as the result of a riding accident. The Old Lord of Beirut, as his contemporaries called him, had been the dominant figure of the Frankish East. Of his high personal qualities no one could have any doubt. He was courageous, honourable and correct, and his blameless character did much to strengthen the barons’ cause. But for him Frederick might well have succeeded in establishing an autocracy in both Cyprus and the Syrian kingdom; and, though the barons’ government tended to be haphazard, it is hard to see how autocratic rule would have been an improvement. Frederick himself was too far away to control it; and he was a bad judge of men. Absolutist government in the hands of a man such as Richard Filangieri would have soon brought disaster. The better solution was what the Pope himself recommended, the union of the mainland government with Cyprus. But the legalism of the barons which made them oppose the autocracy of Frederick would not allow them to have any king other than their lawful sovereign, his son Conrad. Union with Cyprus must wait till it should be authorized by the hand of God. The barons’ attitude was consistent and correct. But in the meantime it legalized anarchy.