The Crusader States

by Malcolm Barber

  The embassy that set off from the kingdom in the autumn of 1127 therefore had a double aim: to find a suitable husband for Melisende and ‘to invite powerful men (potentes) to come to besiege the city of Damascus’.160 The leaders were William of Bures, prince of Galilee, the constable, who had taken over the governance of the kingdom in 1123 when Eustace Grenier had died, and Guy Brisbarre, a member of a family that had apparently only recently settled in the East but that had quickly risen to prominence, for his brother, Walter, was lord of Beirut.161 They were accompanied by Hugh of Payns, described as ‘master of the Temple’ in the confirmation of Venetian privileges of May 1125, who took with him five companions.162

  After taking the advice of his barons, the king had decided to offer the marriage to Fulk V, count of Anjou. Fulk's western connections were both extensive and significant, especially with England and Flanders, and their importance to the crusader states is reflected in the inclusion of a detailed genealogy in William of Tyre's chronicle.163 Fulk himself was well known in the kingdom, having visited on pilgrimage in 1120, when he had paid for the maintenance of 100 knights for a year.164 While he was in the East, Fulk had been attracted by the work of Hugh of Payns and his companions and had become the first western ruler to be associated with them. When he returned to Anjou he gave them an annual grant of 30 livres angevines, an example followed by other lords. These links would have been maintained during the 1120s, and Fulk must have known in advance that when the embassy arrived a formal offer would be made.165

  Indeed, it seems to have been part of a comprehensive settlement, closely tied to the political situation in western Francia. Once again Charles the Good, count of Flanders, had an important role, although this time in death rather than life. Charles had no heirs, and when he was assassinated in March 1127, there was inevitably a struggle for power in one of the richest fiefs in Francia. For Henry I of England, it was essential that he prevent William Clito, son of his older brother, Robert Curthose, from gaining power in the county and forming an alliance not only with Louis VI of France, but also with the count of Anjou; it was to counter this that he proposed to Fulk that his daughter, Matilda, widow of Emperor Henry V and the king's only legitimate heir, should marry Geoffrey, Fulk's young son. Henry had already persuaded his barons to accept the succession of Matilda in January of that year, so this plan opened up the prospect that, if Henry died without a legitimate male heir, Geoffrey would become ruler of Anjou, Normandy and England.166 Since Fulk's wife, Eremburge, did not die until late 1126, the offer from Jerusalem could not have preceded these events, but it certainly complemented the agreement between Henry and Fulk, which may itself have provided a model for female succession in a world with few such precedents.167 William of Bures and Hugh of Payns were certainly at Le Mans on Ascension Day (31 May) 1128, when Fulk took the Cross, and would also have been present during the celebrations surrounding the marriage of Geoffrey and Matilda just over two weeks later, on 17 June.168 The interlocking nature of these agreements is underscored by the presence of a papal legate, Gerald, bishop of Angoulême, and by the papal commendation of Fulk to Baldwin in a letter of 29 May.169

  Baldwin and the barons of Jerusalem knew, of course, that Fulk needed guarantees, so William of Bures had been instructed to promise that the count would be married to Melisende within fifty days of his arrival in the kingdom and that, in the words of William of Tyre, this would be ‘with the expectation of the kingdom after the king's death’.170 When Fulk arrived in the spring of 1129, the marriage took place before Whitsun (2 June) and Fulk and Melisende were endowed with Tyre and Acre, the two most valuable ports in the kingdom.171 Meanwhile, Hugh of Payns and his companions had spent 1128 recruiting men for the Damascus campaign and gaining publicity, grants and men for the Templars, culminating in their recognition as a religious order of the Church at the council of Troyes in January 1129. At the council, presided over by Matthew of Albano, the papal legate, and heavily influenced by Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, they received a Latin Rule of seventy-one clauses. For such a small organisation, this was a huge step, showing the value of creating and sustaining networks of support for the crusader states in the West in the manner developed after the council of Nablus in 1120. Between them, the Templars persuaded ‘many bands of noblemen’ to take the Cross, not only from the areas that had provided major support for the First Crusade, such as Normandy, Flanders and Provence, but also from Champagne and the British Isles.172

  The Christians were therefore able to assemble a formidable army for the assault on Damascus. All the other major princes in the crusader states were present, including Bohemond of Antioch, Pons of Tripoli and Joscelin of Edessa. Fulk himself had brought a large contingent of knights and foot soldiers, and was accompanied by important Angevin lords such as Hugh of Amboise, a veteran of the First Crusade.173 The expedition was given additional impetus in early November, when the Assassins handed over the city of Banyas to the Franks. Banyas was on the main route to Damascus and was an excellent acquisition, as it had a good water supply and had been refortified by Bahram, the Isma'ili leader in Syria, after it had been ceded to him in 1126 by Tughtigin, who was concerned to conciliate a force that he feared might gain as much power in Damascus as it had in Aleppo. But when Tughtigin died in February 1128, Böri, Taj al-Muluk, his son and successor, attacked the Assassins, killing Bahram, and in September 1129 induced a popular uprising against members of the sect in Damascus, during which many of them were massacred. According to Ibn al-Qalanisi, who hated ‘the Batinis’ as he called them, their new leader, Isma'il al-'Ajami, realised he was in great danger and ‘slunk away from Bnys into the Frankish territories in the utmost abasement and wretchedness’.174

  Ibn al-Qalanisi says that this news ‘stirred up in them [the Franks] a covetous desire for Damascus and its provinces’, but it is evident that it simply strengthened a project already long planned. Initially, the Franks established a base at Banyas, before moving to a position near Darayya, about 6 miles to the south-west of Damascus. For his part, Taj al-Muluk drew in Turcoman reinforcements who, according to Ibn al-Qalanisi, were inspired by the obligation of holy war against the infidel, although at the same time he took care to promise them ‘such an amount of money and grain as moved them to hasten to answer his summons’.175 William of Bures was sent out to the south to the region of Hauran to forage for the army, but it appears that he lost control of his forces, which broke up into small groups, each intent on gaining plunder for itself. Taj al-Muluk quickly took advantage, killing and dispersing both the foragers and the knights detailed to guard them. The main forces, now fired up by a desire for revenge, immediately ran into a heavy storm and fog, which made the roads impassable, and, although they tried to struggle on, they soon realised that it was a hopeless task. An enterprise that, says William of Tyre, had so frightened the enemy now disintegrated, to the extent that the Franks regarded a safe return as ‘an immense victory’.176 Even so, the campaign may not have been entirely fruitless, for Michael the Syrian says that, in return for peace and the Frankish retreat, Taj al-Muluk agreed to pay a lump sum of 20,000 dinars and an annual tribute.177

  William dates the retreat to 6 December, although the army must have set out in mid-November. In any case it was very late in the year to begin such a major operation, especially one expected to take some time, since nobody could have imagined that Damascus would fall easily. Given the fragmented nature of the reinforcements from the West, the late start was probably to enable as many groups as possible to arrive. Ibn al-Qalanisi makes no mention of the storm, but this is perhaps because a victory gained by the bravery of the Muslim forces was more glorious than a retreat induced by the weather.178 As a resident of Damascus, he certainly saw it as a very significant victory: ‘So the hearts of the Muslims were relieved from terror, and restored to security after fear, and all men felt assured that after this disaster it was scarcely possible for the infidels to assemble in full force, so many of their knights had perished, such
numbers of their men were destroyed, and so much of their baggage lost.’179

  CHAPTER 7

  The Second Generation

  THERE was no contemporary chronicler present to record the death of Baldwin II in Jerusalem on 21 August 1131. However, according to William of Tyre, he had fallen ill after returning yet again from Antioch, where the death of Bohemond II in Cilicia early in 1130 had obliged him to intervene to prevent a coup by Alice, the king's second daughter and widow of Bohemond. Realising that his illness was probably fatal, he had himself carried to the patriarch's palace, to which he summoned Fulk, Melisende and their new son, Baldwin, who must have been less than eighteen months old at this time. William says that, in the presence of the patriarch and the prelates and some of the nobles, he commended the kingdom to them. He then took monastic vows in case he should live. He did not and was buried at Golgotha with his two predecessors, ‘with the magnificence worthy of a king’.1 On 14 September, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Fulk and Melisende were crowned in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, the first monarchs for whom this had been done.2

  Baldwin's death was appropriately pious for the secular guardian of the most important shrines in Christendom. William was only an infant at the time and could not possibly have remembered him, but he must have talked to his own elderly contemporaries in the late 1160s, since he reported that Baldwin was said to have been tall and striking in appearance, with a ruddy complexion, a long beard and thin, fair hair streaked with white, a description that must reflect his looks in the years immediately before his death. William was almost certainly telling the truth when he declared that ‘up to the present day’ Baldwin was venerated as a man of ‘surpassing faith and distinguished service’, a verdict in keeping with the archbishop's insistence on the greatness of the first generation of settlers. Even before he became king, he had developed a hard layer of skin on his hands and knees from constant kneeling in prayer and from religious devotions, while his selfless conduct in defending Antioch, even though it was not his own patrimony, was testimony to his integrity.3 Matthew of Edessa, who, unlike William, was a contemporary, described him as ‘a valiant man and a warrior, exemplary in conduct, an enemy of sin, and by nature humble and modest’.4

  His actions substantiate their opinions. His concern for the moral well-being of the kingdom is strikingly illustrated by his promotion of the council of Nablus in concert with the patriarch, while his strategic sense can be seen in his frequent attempts to bring pressure on Aleppo and Damascus, the two great Muslim cities most capable of inflicting decisive damage on the crusader states. In 1129, had he not been thwarted by the weather, he stood a real chance of actually taking Damascus in a campaign as significant as the more famous failure of the siege of 1148. In the coastal lands, the capture of Tyre, although it took place while he was in captivity, had been an integral part of his plans. At the same time he had recognised the potential of the Templars both as defenders of the crusader states and as providers of links with the West that he was so keen to promote. His initiative in inviting the Cistercians to the kingdom and his endowment of the Premonstratensians are further evidence of his recognition of the need to strengthen the network of western support. In his last years, with the marriage of Melisende to Fulk in 1129, he fulfilled the most basic duty of all medieval kings by providing for the succession of a vigorous adult leader.

  Nevertheless, there is always another way of looking at events. Bernard of Blois, famous as an ascetic and founder of what is described as a priory at Jubin on the Black Mountain in the Amanus range, north of Antioch, and fearless in his denunciation of sin, whether committed by Muslims or Christians, railed at Baldwin for what he described as ‘certain enormities in his way of life’, a criticism for which Bernard's biographer, Gerard of Nazareth, says ‘many praised him’.5 Writers as different as Matthew of Edessa and Galbert of Bruges saw Baldwin as avaricious and grasping; for the former, often the mouthpiece for Armenian grievances against Frankish oppression, despite his qualities, he had ‘an intolerable love for money’.6 As ever more discreet, Fulcher of Chartres appears to imply that Baldwin's captivity was a punishment for sin when he embarks on a series of reflections on the difference between the perfection of the heavenly ruler and the inadequacies of earthly kings. Fulcher comments that ‘perhaps he was no king whom we had lost by accident, but He who recently won the victory is not only King in Jerusalem but over all the Earth’. How, he goes on, can one be a king when one is assailed by vices? He had, he says, reached his sixty-fifth year, but had never seen a king imprisoned in this way, although only God knew if it signified anything.7

  Moreover, his reign was not without internal tensions. His preoccupation with Antioch's affairs seems to have caused resentment among the Jerusalem nobility and there may have been a faction (perhaps derived from the supporters of Eustace of Boulogne in 1118) who would like to have seen him replaced.8 The manner of his accession had left open the possibility of a later challenge, and it is noticeable that his chancery took care to draft his charters in ways that justified his rule. Three charters issued in 1119 and 1120 in the early years of the reign emphasise both the dynastic and institutional continuity of his rule and his military prowess as shown in his victory in Antioch in 1119.9

  For a brief period he was also in direct conflict with the patriarch of Jerusalem, for when Warmund died in July 1128, he was replaced by Stephen of La Ferté, former abbot of Saint-Jean-en-Vallée in Chartres, who had renounced his position and emigrated to Jerusalem a short time before. Stephen was a well-educated man of wide experience in both secular and ecclesiastical affairs, as well as being a member of the extended Montlhéry family, related to the king through a common maternal grandmother. He had seemed an appropriate choice. He appears to have been responsible for the creation of the see of Sebaste, an important suffragan of Caesarea, as it was the burial place of John the Baptist and therefore a key site.10 However, perhaps because of these qualities, he was not content with the status quo and revived a controversy that had seemingly been put to rest with the death of Daibert in 1105, when he claimed that both Jaffa and, once Ascalon had been captured, Jerusalem itself belonged to the patriarchate.11 The consequence was ‘deep hostility’ between the king and the patriarch, only ended by Stephen's premature death in June 1130, accompanied as was usual in such circumstances by rumours of poisoning.12

  Whatever the king's alleged defects, the Muslims had seen him as a formidable enemy and ultimately this was what really mattered in Syria and Palestine. Ibn al-Qalanisi, the Arab chronicler who knew him best, saw him as a much superior ruler to his successor. ‘After him there was none left amongst them possessed of sound judgment and capacity to govern. His place was taken after him by the new Count-King, the Comte d'Anjou, who came to them by sea from their country, but he was not sound in his judgment nor was he successful in his administration, so that by the loss of Baldwin they were thrown into confusion and discordance.’13 There was, indeed, confusion and discordance, for Fulk was faced by two serious challenges in quick succession, firstly in 1132 in Antioch where Princess Alice took the opportunity to try again to seize power, and then in 1134 in the kingdom of Jerusalem itself in the form of an armed revolt by the leading barons of the kingdom, Hugh of Le Puiset, count of Jaffa, and Romanus of Le Puy, former lord of Transjordan. In both cases the alliance of the disaffected parties with Muslim powers gave the opposition a more dangerous dimension beyond that of internal quarrels.

  During the last months of his life, Baldwin had once again been troubled by events in the principality of Antioch. He had evidently hoped that the arrival of Bohemond II and his marriage to his second daughter, Alice, in 1126 would stabilise the government and provide the principality with the military leadership it had lacked since the death of Roger of Salerno in 1119. In William of Tyre's view, Bohemond had made a promising start: in 1127, he had begun a campaign to regain control of the Jabal as-Summaq to the south, and had retaken Kafartab, lost two years be
fore to al-Bursuqi.14 William had some justification for his optimism: the death of Tughtigin in February 1128 had been preceded by the murder of al-Bursuqi by the Assassins in Mosul at the end of 1126.15 According to Ibn al-Athir, ‘Syria lay open to them [the Franks] on all sides, lacking a man to undertake to fight for his people.’16 Bohemond was less successful along the Aleppan frontier, partly because of rivalry with Joscelin of Edessa in 1127, and partly because, the next year, the sultan granted Aleppo to ‘Imad al-Din Zengi, atabeg of Mosul, whose military skills and ambitions far exceeded those of his predecessors in the city.17 Nevertheless, Bohemond did appear to have excellent prospects until, in February 1130, he was killed while fighting in Cilicia, provoking a fresh crisis in the north.18

  In William of Tyre's presentation, the key figure in this crisis was Princess Alice, whose character and motives he consistently shows in an unfavourable light. Her attempts to gain power between 1130 and 1135 were the result of her ‘malice’ and were steadfastly opposed first by Baldwin and then by Fulk. In 1130, she closed the gates of the city to her father and even sent for help from Zengi, but eventually submitted and was obliged to retire to her dower lands of Latakia and Jabala. Joscelin of Edessa was left in temporary control until a marriage could be arranged for Constance, Alice's infant daughter.19 However, the deaths of Baldwin and Joscelin within weeks of each other in 1131 seemed to offer her another opportunity and Alice again took over Antioch, this time in concert with Pons of Tripoli and Joscelin II, ‘the Younger’, of Edessa, together with William, lord of the important castles of Saone and Zardana. William of Tyre says that this provoked an appeal to Fulk from what he describes as ‘the barons of that region’.20