by Robert Payne
He presented himself as an innocent spectator who had stumbled on a revolt. The emperor offered to leave Antioch for the sake of the Christian peace, and when that news spread, the revolt abated,
A few days later the emperor’s army returned with him to Cilicia. Spurned by the Crusaders, John Comnenus washed his hands of them.
The man who was most pleased by the departure of the Byzantine army was Zengi, who was engrossed in a plan to seize Damascus, which was then under the government of an old Turk called Unur. Damascus was in great danger, and Unur had no hesitation in calling for help from the king of Jerusalem. Unur offered twenty thousand bezants a month, the restoration of the fortress at Banyas to the Christians, and a firm alliance against Zengi. Fulk set out for Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, only to find part of Zengi’s army parading on the farther shore. Fulk moved his army toward Damascus; and Zengi pulled out, and set up his headquarters at Baalbek. By moving toward Damascus, Fulk had shown that he could be relied upon to help Unur, who was properly grateful. The alliance between Unur and Fulk was based on a common interest and on similar habits of mind. William of Tyre describes him as “a man of much wisdom and a lover of our people.” Actually, at heart Unur detested the Christians, yet he was one of the few Muslim leaders who had an understanding of them and could deal with them in a civilized manner.
Fulk invited Unur to attend his court at Acre. It was the first time that a Muslim ruler had been invited to attend the court of a king of Jerusalem. There were festivities, ceremonious exchanges of gifts, and endless diplomatic conversations. In Tiberias, there were more festivities. In Jerusalem a rather simple-minded Templar approached Unur and said, “Would you like to see God as a child?” “Yes, certainly,” Unur replied. Then the Templar led the vizier to a painting of the Virgin Mary with the Christ child on her lap. “Here,” said the Templar, “is God as a child.” Unur said nothing; there was wisdom in his silence.
The alliance between Damascus and the Kingdom of Jerusalem continued into the reign of Fulk’s successor. The battles with Zengi continued, but they were more like sustained skirmishes than real battles; and sometimes the Egyptians tested the strength of the kingdom. Once an Egyptian raiding party reached the Plain of Sharon but was forced back. Under Fulk the kingdom in alliance with Damascus seemed to be as secure as it had ever been. Fulk had learned the hard lesson that to survive at all the Crusaders must be more malleable in their attitude to the Muslims, more understanding, and more strenuous in their effort to penetrate the Muslim mind.
IV
THE KINGS BORN IN THE HOLY LAND
The Young King
Baldwin III
IN the autumn of 1142, King Fulk and Queen Melisende went on holiday to Acre, accompanied by the court. The king had a good deal of business to do in the palace, and soon the queen, bored by the ceremonial life at court and anxious to see more of her husband, suggested that they should visit a place called the Springs of the Oxen, where according to the ancient legend Adam found the oxen which enabled him to plow the earth. So they went off in a long cavalcade, the servants being sent ahead to prepare the way and to arrange for the festivities that would take place when they reached the springs. Everyone was in good spirits; it was a fine sunlit day and the plain of Acre had never looked lovelier.
It was not a hunting party; it was simply a ride into the country. But it became a hunting party when one of the servants riding ahead startled a hare lying in a furrow. Suddenly, all were chasing after the hare. The king, accompanied by his escort, dug his spurs into his horse, and with his lance at the ready he pursued the hare with wild excitement and at breakneck speed. Suddenly his horse stumbled and fell, and he was thrown head foremost over the horse’s head. His saddle fell on him and crushed his skull. There was nothing to be done for him. He lingered on for three days without regaining consciousness.
The dying king was brought to Acre, where huge crowds gave expression to their grief. He died on November 10, 1142, at the age of fifty-three. A few days later King Fulk was buried in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He left two children: Baldwin, who was thirteen, and Amaury, who was seven.
Baldwin was crowned on Christmas day in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the boy-king standing beside his mother, who was crowned at the same time to emphasize her position as regent and controlling power of the kingdom. The princes and nobility of the kingdom were all present at the long and complicated ceremony, which was conducted by William, Patriarch of Jerusalem. Afterward there was a coronation feast.
The boy-king looked the part to perfection. William of Tyre, who was about the same age and knew him well, could find few faults in him. The boy-king had inherited his father’s vigor and his mother’s beauty. Unlike his father, who could never remember names, Baldwin III remembered the names of his lowliest servants and of everyone he met. He had a passion for books and rode a horse magnificently. He talked easily and well, possessed a sharp wit, permitted himself and others great freedom of speech, and never refused an audience. As a youth he had many mistresses but after his marriage he remained faithful to his wife. He drank little. “Excess,” he liked to say, “was the touchstone for the worst crimes.”
He was the first king of Jerusalem to be born in the Holy Land. His three predecessors came from the West, and brought with them certain Western prejudices and clerkly habits of mind. Although devout, he was more interested in history than in theology, and he had studied the history of the kingdom minutely. His roots were in Jerusalem; he was the son of the Judaean wilderness and the lush coastal plains. When he was daring, it was in a peculiarly straightforward, Jerusalem-like way, and when he was obstinate—he needed to be very obstinate indeed to wrest the power from his mother—then, too, he was so in a straightforward, Jerusalem-like way. He was never cunning, and this was to his advantage. They said of him that he came to the throne at exactly the right time and with exactly the right qualities and if wit, courage, intelligence, kindness, and physical beauty could have saved the kingdom, he would have saved it. But it was during his reign that there could be seen for the first time the fatal flaws that would bring about the destruction of the kingdom.
Societies decay and renew themselves continually, provided they have reasonably stable frontiers and that there exists an essential unity of purpose. Corrupt ministers and treacherous soldiers can attempt to destroy a society from within, but as long as the frontiers are held and the unity of purpose remains, the society, even though it is given a deathblow, can be resurrected. But conquest and consequent assimilation can destroy a kingdom utterly. Frontiers, therefore, are of paramount importance: they are lines drawn on a map, but they are also spiritual, enclosing arms, angelic guardians. In the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the frontiers were continually shifting. The essential unity had been in jeopardy from the beginning, from the time Bohemond took Antioch for himself, and Baldwin took Edessa. Contending principalities were ruinous, for they wasted the energy of the people. In a country where the Arabs possessed an excellent intelligence system, every dispute between the princes was quickly known to the kingdom’s enemies.
The danger came from northern Syria, where the cold and calculating Prince Zengi was attempting to build up a large kingdom of his own. A bitter feud had broken out between Raymond, Prince of Antioch, and Joscelin of Courtenay, Count of Edessa. Zengi heard about the dispute and took full advantage of it. Joscelin had removed his army from Edessa, leaving the city virtually defenseless. Zengi brought up his own army, surrounded the city, and attacked it with mangonels. The defenders, though there was scarcely a trained soldier among them, fought well, and the siege was much longer than Zengi had intended. He therefore vowed that all the Franks remaining in the city would be killed without mercy. He had a very large force, having summoned troops from all over the East to besiege the city. His aim was to smother the city by sheer numbers. Food was running out; but the defenders fought on behind their massive walls. Messengers were sent to Antioch and Jerusalem to appeal for aid. The p
rince of Antioch refused aid, while Queen Melisende, acting as regent, sent a strong force which arrived too late to do any good. Edessa’s fortress wall was mined, and Zengi’s troops poured in. All the Franks were killed, but the native Christians were spared.
The loss of Edessa and the butchery of the Franks sent shock waves through the kingdom. Edessa was the northeastern anchor of the kingdom, forming a salient into enemy territory, so heavily fortified that it was believed to be impregnable. Now it was lost, and except for a very brief occupation by a Christian force a few years later, it was lost forever.
The shock waves reached Europe. The pope and the king of Jerusalem sent out appeals for help. Similar appeals had been issued often before, but this time they were more insistent, more demanding. The fall of Edessa would bring about the Second Crusade. For the first time, kings would come from Europe to the Holy Land. They would find themselves confronting someone even more crafty and cunning than Zengi—his son Nur ed-Din, who would succeed him when Zengi fell to an assassin’s knife.
Meanwhile, the boy-king Baldwin III was leading a charmed life. He was genuinely loved by the people and they loved him in return. There are men who seem to be fortunate from birth, and he was one of them. In his first campaign to reclaim Val Moysis, a Crusader castle built by Baldwin II in 1127, that had been taken by Turks and local tribesmen, who had massacred the entire Crusader garrison, Baldwin Ill’s success was crowned by the fact that he had not lost a single one of his soldiers.
But his second campaign was a disaster. It began strangely and ended in horror. A certain Altuntash, an Armenian nobleman converted to Islam, arrived in Jerusalem with a small retinue, declaring that he had come from Bosra, a town in the Hauran some forty-five miles east of Tiberias. Altuntash was the governor of Bosra. He was a tall, imposing man with a gift for easy argument and a congenial personality. He told a convincing story about his quarrel with Unur, an official whose power exceeded that of the king of Damascus. He offered to surrender Bosra to the Christians if a suitable compensation could be paid to him. In addition he offered the town of Salkhad. Queen Melisende offered to present his request to the nobles; a general conference was held, and it was unanimously agreed that this extension of Christian power into the Hauran would be acceptable to God. Suitable compensation was provided; heralds were sent out to raise an army; the boy-king marched out of Jerusalem at the head of his troops with the now-bejeweled True Cross, the most precious object in the kingdom, held high in the hands of Robert, Archbishop of Nazareth. Altuntash was also in their company.
Although the royal councillors had discussed Altuntash’s offer at great length, it appears that no one paid more than passing attention to the difficulties of the enterprise. The Hauran was a plain of volcanic ash, unexplored by the Crusaders. Even more important was the fact that the area was under the control of Damascus, and Baldwin II had signed a treaty with the king of Damascus. It was a treaty of alliance and temporary peace, which according to the custom of the time, meant a ten-year truce. By invading the Hauran, Baldwin III was breaking a solemn treaty. In a rather off-hand way the secretary of the royal court of Jerusalem wrote to Unur, explaining the king’s intention, and Unur not unexpectedly wrote back that he would do everything he could to prevent the threatened invasion. Since Unur was the vizier to the king of Damascus and the chief power in the state, it might have been better if Queen Melisende had arrested Altuntash and sent him back to Bosra. Unur had shown himself to be friendly to the Christians and nothing was to be gained by making him an enemy.
Nevertheless, the army marched to Tiberias and set up camp on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Then it set out across the waterless plain, where there had recently been a plague of locusts. Nothing grew there; the inhabitants lived in subterranean caves; and the Turks, enraged by what they regarded as the duplicity and treachery of the Christians, were already massing their armies.
Everything went wrong. There were continual skirmishes with the enemy. One day, when they were surrounded on the march, they became aware that the enemy was about to attack. Toward evening, the king ordered his men to raise their tents as though there was no enemy in sight. All night they kept a close watch. During the night more Turks came to join the solid ring formed around the Christian camp. The king held a council of war. Some spoke of retreating, others of advancing, while still others thought they could neither retreat nor advance, but must inevitably be destroyed by the enemy where they stood. Unwisely the king ordered the advance. Faith sustained them. The outnumbered Christians hurled themselves against the enemy, hacked their way through the ring, and although they were utterly exhausted and could only keep a snail’s pace, they marched on to Bosra.
They were entering the terrible wasteland called Trachonitis, said to derive from the word tracones, meaning “underground caves.” Suffering from thirst, they came upon deep wells, let down the buckets, and were not altogether surprised when the ropes were cut by men hidden in subterranean caverns. The dangling ropes were omens of disasters to come. After four days of thirst and constant skirmishes, they came in sight of Bosra, found water issuing from rocks, and rested in preparation for entering the city the following day, believing that they had earned this triumph by virtue of all the hardships they had sustained.
At midnight a messenger came through the lines to the king’s tent. The letter he brought was read to the nobles and the king’s councillors. It said that the wife of Altuntash had already surrendered the city to Unur, who had brought up a powerful army and expelled all the Christians living there. The towers and the citadel were manned by Turkish forces. A much larger army than the one they had confronted in the wasteland of Tracho-nitis was now about to be thrown against them.
The medieval mind genuinely believed in miracles and wonders. It was not, therefore, surprising to discover that the king’s councillors, believing in the jeweled Cross, thought that if the whole army was lost, then at least the boy-king should be saved and brought safely back to Jerusalem by the simple expedient of giving him the Cross and the fastest horse in the kingdom. How he would find his way, or what would happen if he was captured by the enemy, were not matters that concerned them, for they believed that as king and Cross-bearer, he was under the protection of Christ. The king rejected their advice, saying that he scorned to save his own life while his consecrated soldiers were likely to perish.
The likelihood of disaster was very real, for Nur ed-Din, a master strategist, was now in Bosra planning the destruction of the Christian army. The king ordered a retreat, and soon Nur ed-Din’s forces were all around him. The Christians fought their way through one encirclement after another. The king gave orders that no one should be left behind; the wounded and the sick, even the dead, must be taken along. Those who could not fight must draw their swords, so that the enemy would believe they were capable of fighting. The plains were covered with thistles and brambles inflammable as tinder in that fierce summer. The Turks set fire to the brambles; the Christians were about to be engulfed in the flames when the Archbishop of Nazareth at last raised the jeweled Cross. At that moment the wind changed direction, and now it was the Turks who were in danger of being suffocated and burned. Everyone in the army had a smoke-blackened face.
The nobles thought of suing for peace and even sent an envoy to Unur to ask on what terms he would let them go free. The envoy was killed before he reached Bosra. The Christian army continued to fight its way back to the Sea of Galilee amid daily skirmishes, dust storms, and such broiling heat that the knights had to be prevented from throwing away their coats of mail. Halfway to the Galilee they encountered an unknown knight mounted on a white horse, wearing a breastplate and gauntlets reaching to his elbow, and carrying a scarlet banner. He led them by the shortest routes to water and good campsites. He spoke to no one; he was never seen in the camp. Every morning he was seen riding the white horse and every evening he brought them to a place where they could pitch their tents. He seemed to be an angel of the Lord sent down to lead
them to safety. Was he an angel? Was he an apparition? William of Tyre made inquiries among the survivors of theexpedition and all of them said they saw him, but never knew his name or where he had come from. No one doubted that without his help they would have been destroyed by the Turks, who followed them even when they reached the Decapolis. At last they entered Gadara on the shores of the lake, and on the following day they were in Tiberias.
There the army disbanded, the knights and the foot soldiers returning to their own homes. The king returned to Jerusalem with the jeweled Cross and the archbishop of Nazareth returned to Nazareth. In due course Altuntash, the cause of all this misery, made his way to Damascus in the hope that all would be forgiven him. He was arrested when he entered the city, and thrown into prison. Instead of putting him on trial for treacherous dealings with the Frankish enemy, the officials put him on trial on a lesser charge. Once, during a quarrel, he had put out the eyes of his brother, who now demanded that Altuntash should suffer the appropriate punishment. The family quarrel taking precedence over his treacheries, he was blinded. According to the historian Ibn al-Qalanisi, no further punishment was demanded of him, and he lived out the rest of his life as a private citizen in Damascus.
The Second
Crusade
THE adventure that came to be known as the Second Crusade was another folly. It failed in its undertakings and by its failure added to the prestige of Islam; it came at the wrong time, for the wrong motives, and was led by the wrong people. But it began with high hopes, intense excitement, and a sense of destiny. It was led by two kings. Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany were princes in the grand tradition, possessing gifts of command and organization and a highly developed sense of the operations of government in their own countries. Once they were outside their own countries, their understanding failed them.
