by Robert Payne
Peter of Montague had written the letters at a particularly bad time. It was a period of stalemate. The loss of Caesarea had disheartened many of the Crusaders; some knights had been withdrawn from Damietta and sent to stiffen the resistance at Chastel Pèlerin, which remained unconquered. But the army at Damietta could not afford the loss of a single man. Yet throughout this time knights were continually abandoning the battlefield and returning home to manage their own affairs. They were free agents; they could not be compelled to stay; like King Andrew of Hungary they could simply leave.
The stalemate, the diminishing number of knights, and the presence of Pelagius all contributed to making life intolerable for the Christian army. And Frederick II deeply affected the atmosphere of the times: his repeated promises that he was about to come to the East finally wore people down. They lost hope. The pope also lost hope. Frederick had been crowned by the pope in Rome in November and had promised to embark on a new Crusade in the spring, but he was still busy suppressing uprisings in Germany. He would come in his own good time.
Little known, and not yet perceived as a great and towering force, was the Mongol leader Genghis Khan, who swept into Azerbaijan in that same year. There he destroyed an army led by King George of Georgia, thereby reducing the military power of the Christian state to zero. Eventually, the Mongols would ally themselves with the Christians, but that was yet to come.
At this time, if Cardinal Pelagius had ordered an attack on Cairo after Damietta and Tanis had been captured, he might have won a great victory, for al-Kamil was in a mood of despair. The longer the stalemate continued, the more eagerly did al-Kamil prepare his defenses, recruit more soldiers, and build more ships. The cardinal raged against the inertia and drunkenness of his own soldiers, but could do nothing. There were frequent skirmishes, small towns changed hands, the Christians learned to maneuver among the canals, and a number of strange, prophetical books appeared. These books, perhaps manufactured in the feverish court of Frederick II, were full of prophecies about a great king coming from the West and meeting another great king from the East, who was perhaps King David, the son or nephew of Prester John, the mysterious Christian emperor believed to be lurking in central Asia or Ethiopia. These apocalyptic prophecies, based on Revelation, were too precise to be ignored. Letters from King David also appeared, promising succor to the Christians. In the light of these letters and prophecies the cardinal saw himself as the forerunner of the kings of the East and West.
Toward the end of July 1221, the cardinal decided to throw his whole force against the sultan. Reinforcements had arrived from Genoa and Apulia. Matthew, Count of Apulia, the viceroy ruling over Frederick II’s territories in southern Italy, came with eight galleys. Hundreds of pilgrims had also arrived, and they could be used as laborers and water-carriers. King John of Brienne, who disputed the cardinal’s generalship and who had returned to Acre, was summoned to take command of the army. He did so reluctantly, quarreling with the cardinal to the very end. By July 20 the Christians were in Sharimshah, a city halfway between Damietta and Mansourah, which had been abandoned by the enemy: the sultan had given orders that his own palace in Sharimshah should be destroyed. The cardinal believed that the way was now open for the march on Cairo.
He could not have been more mistaken. Al-Kamil, too, had received reinforcements. A vast army of Nubians and the army of Syria had joined his own forces. He did not really need them. He had a weapon denied to the Christians. He opened the sluices, and the Christians found themselves floundering in water up to their knees. Stores, baggage, horse-drawn carts, tents, and animals floated away in the night, while the enemy attempted to break up the army and send it into deeper water. Meanwhile the fighting went on. The Crusaders had sport with some of the untrained Nubians and made them “jump like frogs”; the Templars and Hospitallers attacked them on horseback and killed many of them. But it was all to no avail. The waters rose, food gave out, the road to Damietta was blocked, and soon the cardinal was forced to ask for terms of surrender.
Al-Kamil’s terms were surprisingly lenient. In exchange for Damietta, he offered an eight-year truce and the return of the True Cross and all Christian prisoners. The army would be allowed to go free, and since most of its stores and provisions were lost, the sultan offered to feed them. While the agreement was being worked out, hostages were exchanged. King John of Brienne was entertained at a huge feast. Quite suddenly the Crusaders and the Muslims were at peace.
The Crusaders left Egypt, having accomplished nothing in their long months of fighting. Oliver of Paderborn attributed the defeat to mutiny, luxury, and ambition. There were other reasons: the cardinal’s blundering, an uncertain knowledge of the topography, belief in high places in the validity of prophecies and letters from the mysterious King David. The True Cross, promised by al-Kamil, was never received: no one could find it.
According to Oliver of Paderborn the treaty concluded with al-Kamil contained the words, “This treaty will be observed unless the crowned king who is coming should wish to change it.” Al-Kamil appears to have accepted these words with good grace. He was in secret communication with Frederick II and knew what manner of man he was. They had much in common, the sultan of Egypt and the fiery Holy Roman emperor. They had taken each other’s measure, and together, very briefly, they would establish a new direction in the wars between the Muslims and the Crusaders.
IX
FREDERICK, EMPEROR OF THE ROMANS, EVER GLORIOUS
The Stupor
of the World
IT was Matthew Paris, the English historian, who gave Frederick II the appellation of Stupor Mundi. It fitted him so well that ever since then he has been called by this name, as if it were one of his legal titles. It was how he saw himself: the man who stupefied the world by his conquests and by his far-reaching intelligence and imagination; the viceroy on earth of both Alexander the Great and Christ himself. There was no end to his ambitions. He defied emperors and popes and acted as though he alone knew the art of kingship. Matthew Paris called him Stupor Mundi et immutator mirabilis—Stupor of the world and marvelous changer of things. Actually, he changed very little and the Hohenstaufen dynasty collapsed with his death.
Yet in a sense what Matthew Paris claimed for Frederick II was true. He was a new kind of man; he saw the world in a new way. He was a man of the Renaissance long before the Renaissance came into existence. His imagination was precise and jewel-like; and while there was no limit to his ambitions, there was also no limit to his belief in the perfectibility of man and in man’s power to understand the world around him. He could say that he alone among the European kings and emperors conquered Jerusalem without the use of military force; he alone would claim that it was due to his own presence in the Holy Land.
Frederick II, Emperor of the Romans, King of Sicily and Apulia, and King of Jerusalem, was a short, nearsighted, beardless man, with red-gold curly hair, and without natural grace except when he was riding on horseback. He liked to say that he ruled firmly in order to bring order to the world, but in fact he ruled chaotically, relying on sudden impulses and sudden changes of mood rather than on his formidable intelligence. He was cold, cruel, selfish, and unrelenting in his pursuit of those he regarded as his enemies. Although he claimed to be the viceroy of Christ, charged to bring heaven to earth, he had very little religious feeling and no regard whatsoever for the pope.
Frederick II puzzled and amazed his contemporaries, largely because of the strange electric excitement which accompanied him wherever he went. He seemed to be in rebellion against the world, against all constituted authority. Though he acquired all his crowns legitimately, by direct descent from an emperor and a king, he acted throughout his life with the cunning of a pretender or the malice of a usurper. He was uncomfortable to be with. He liked to say that his whole life was devoted to the quest for inner and outer peace, but no one could have been more noisy, more raucous, more desirous of trumpet music.
On July 25, 1215, Frederick was crowned at Ai
x-la-Chapelle in the presence of most of the nobility of Germany. He was twenty-one years old, already a seasoned warrior. He sat on the throne of Charlemagne; his grandfather, Frederick Barbarossa, had been crowned on the same throne. He swore to defend the empire and the Church in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, to love justice and hate iniquity, to judge the rich and the poor equally; and when the long and exhausting ceremony came to an end, he announced from the throne that he intended to lead Christendom on a new Crusade to rescue the Holy Sepulchre from the infidels. No one had expected him to say this. The knights acclaimed him with enthusiasm; he asked them all to join him, and if he had set out for the Holy Land at that moment they would have followed him. All through the following day, at the orders of the young emperor, the nobility listened endlessly to Crusade sermons.
Wearing a red cross sewn onto the shoulder of his imperial robes, Frederick resembled a Crusader-emperor to perfection. His call to arms was a political act of the first magnitude: it excited the Germans, intimidated the pope, who had also called for a Crusade, and it placed him in a position of extraordinary authority. At that moment he seemed to be the destined leader of Europe.
But there was something about Frederick that made the pope wary. He realized that if Frederick led a Crusade, he would inevitably attempt to carve out for himself an empire in the East; at the very least he would want to be King of Jerusalem.
Still, in November 1220, Frederick, following the tradition set by Charlemagne, was crowned again, by the pope at St. Peter’s. He was anointed, received into the brotherhood of the Canons of St. Peter, and given a sword which he brandished three times, thus becoming a miles beati Petri, a soldier of the blessed Peter. By becoming a soldier of the pope, he was sworn to defend the pope and the Church. It remained that he should become a miles Christi, a soldier of Christ.
Once again he announced that he would lead a Crusade. He even gave a date when the Crusaders would set sail: August 1221. Whether he had any real intention of keeping his promise is unclear. He was a man who enjoyed making vast plans for the future, but he was also a man who lived from day to day. There were problems in Sicily (in those days this meant most of southern Italy together with the island of Sicily), which was in a state of chaos because of a large Saracenic colony. The trouble was stamped out, and the Saracenic prisoners were transferred to fortified camps in Apulia, where they tilled the land and could sometimes be called upon to serve in Frederick’s army. It was during this period that he began to learn Arabic and to study science and philosophy, astronomy, astrology, and the physical sciences. He was preparing himself for the day when he would speak with Saracenic princes on equal terms and in their own language. He was also behaving more and more like the king of a Saracen country, with his vast harem and his oriental panoply. He was treated like a divinity by his court.
In March 1223, an extraordinary conference was held at Ferentino to discuss once more the question of the Crusade. Present at this conference were the pope, Honorius III, who was angry with Frederick for delaying the Crusade, the masters of the temple and the Hospital, Hermann of Salza, who was the grand master of the Teutonic Knights, John of Brienne, King of Jerusalem, Ralph, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and Pelagius, the papal legate who had commanded the Christian army in Egypt. It was as though the pope had decided to gather together the corporate leadership of the Christian army in the Holy Land in order to discuss the ultimate Crusade. But gradually, as they talked and argued, it became obvious to all that there was no possibility of raising enough money and enough troops for another two years. But out of these debates one new idea emerged: Frederick should marry Isabelle, the daughter of John of Brienne and heiress through her mother to the throne of Jerusalem. It was an idea that pleased Frederick, for it meant that he would become king of Jerusalem without any more effort than was needed to attend a marriage ceremony. The pope was pleased with the idea because it bound Frederick to the Holy Land, and John of Brienne was pleased because his daughter would become an empress while continuing to be queen of Jerusalem.
Isabelle was fourteen. Frederick was thirty. They were first married by proxy in the Church of the Holy Cross at Acre. A certain Bishop James of Patti represented Frederick. There followed in the cathedral at Tyre the solemn coronation of the young queen, and for fifteen days there was feasting and celebration. Then at last she was placed on an imperial galley bound for Brindisi, with a guard of honor consisting of many notables of the kingdom. At Brindisi the emperor married the newly crowned queen of Jerusalem. Within a few days of their wedding, he announced that the title of King of Jerusalem was rightfully his and that John of Brienne was henceforth merely his subject. He issued grants in the name of “Ysabella, my beloved wife, empress of the Romans, queen of Jerusalem and Sicily.” In this way he ruled the Kingdom of Jerusalem from afar.
From this marriage Isabelle gained very little personal happiness. On their wedding night he seduced one of her ladies-in-waiting. Frederick kept Isabelle at a distance; she was merely the instrument by which he obtained his new kingdom. In 1228, when she was seventeen, she gave birth to a son, who was called Conrad. She died a few days later.
Although the pope refused to recognize Frederick as King of Jerusalem, and continued to address John of Brienne by that title, the barons of Jerusalem believed that there was need for a strong, high-minded king. They believed that Frederick would bring power and authority to the Holy Land. If they had known him well, they might have thought otherwise.
Frederick was a Christian only because in the West it was probably not possible for anyone in his time not to be caught up in the vast stream of Christianity; Frederick’s greater sympathies lay with Islam. He surrounded himself with Saracenic attendants and eunuchs, his harem was full of Saracenic women, and even his habits of mind were authoritarian in a peculiarly Saracenic way. The caliphs of Islam were learned men with a passion for knowledge and scientific invention; they were extremely sophisticated, and at home in the physical world. Frederick resembled them in his flair for the decisive act, and in his self-glorification.
Because he was believed to be so powerful, it puzzled the barons that he had not entered the Holy Land earlier. They had been waiting for him for a very long time. Nor were the barons in any way dismayed by his claim to be the lawful king of Jerusalem. By law and by tradition, the crown of Jerusalem passed, in the absence of male heirs, through the female line. The husband of the queen became king. So it had happened for Guy of Lusignan, Conrad of Montferrat, and Henry of Champagne. But the law expressly stated that the king must appear in his kingdom within a year and a day of inheriting the title. The marriage in Brindisi took place on November 9, 1225. Frederick therefore had until November 10, 1226, to set foot on the Holy Land. It was totally characteristic of him that he should delay his arrival, thereby defying the orders of the pope and the laws of Jerusalem.
One of the principal reasons Frederick continually delayed his Crusade can be found in his secret correspondence with the sultan of Egypt. Embassies were exchanged; trade treaties were signed; the sultan and the emperor exchanged presents. All this came to the attention of the pope, who quite naturally wondered how the peace-loving emperor could make war on a friendly sultan.
Frederick continued to promise that he would lead the Crusade. At last, in the early summer of 1227, it became clear that he intended to carry out his promise. From England, Sicily, Apulia, Lombardy, and farther Germany, the crusading army could be seen converging on Brindisi. The German army was commanded by the Landgrave Louis of Thuringia and Duke Henry of Lemburg. Forty thousand English knights and soldiers arrived under the bishops of Exeter and Winchester. This formidable army reached Brindisi and found that Frederick had made only a very slight effort to welcome it. Food supplies were low, lodgings for the knights were inadequate, there was scarcely any sanitary facility to be seen on the campsites for the soldiers, and there was only a handful of ships in the harbor. There had been cloudless skies all through the summer, the he
at was terrible, and the land was parched. Then the plague came, killing thousands, and both the emperor and Louis of Thuringia caught the fever. Soon the plague was being carried through Italy by troops who, having deserted the Crusade, were desperately attempting to reach their own lands.
Frederick could say that he was not responsible for the summer heat or for the plague, but in the eyes of the pope the plague was God’s punishment on him. Although weak with fever, Frederick superintended the embarkation of some of his troops, believing that it was better that they should leave the plague-ridden city than die of the fever, and he sailed for the Holy Land. When he was two days out from Brindisi, Louis of Thuringia died of the plague. Terrified, Frederick put into the port of Otranto, buried his friend, and rushed off to the baths of Pozzuoli on the advice of his physicians, who counseled a moderate diet and frequent bathing in the springs.
Pope Gregory IX was an old man, crusty, handsome, strong-minded, with a great liking for the panoply of the Church and an even greater liking for power. Learning that Frederick had abandoned the Crusade and was now wallowing in the baths at Pozzuoli, he was incensed. There had been too many postponements, too many delays, and now, it seemed, Frederick had played the devil’s game. In a state of fury the pope charged him with crimes he had not committed: he had deliberately chosen Brindisi as the staging ground for the Crusade, knowing how ill-favored the place was; he had had secret communications with the Saracens; he had never intended to go to the Holy Land. These were offenses that warranted excommunication. And without further ado the pope excommunicated the emperor.
