The Dream And The Tomb: A History Of The Crusades

by Robert Payne

  Such is the condition of our land, and such is the peril that overwhelms us! God will declare what shall become of us. But for God’s sake be moved to pity us with all your heart. Pray God to grant us as much aid as possible. . . .

  Hugh of Revel’s letter is a classic of its kind, at once a desperate plea for help and an acknowledgment that help was beyond hoping for—and that if it came, it would probably come too late.

  When Hugh of Revel complained that the West had lost interest in the affairs of the Holy Land, he was speaking in relative terms. In the autumn of 1269, there came the Crusade of King James I of Aragon, who sailed out of Barcelona with a powerful fleet. It had scarcely left the harbor when it was scattered in a storm. The king abandoned the enterprise but sent his two sons with a much smaller fleet. The two sons reached Acre at a time when Baibars was once more attacking the city. The small Spanish army, thirsting to attack the Mamelukes, was prevented from fighting because it was felt the soldiers were untrained and less useful in the field than in the garrison. In a few weeks the Spaniards returned to Spain in disgust.

  The English also sent their Crusaders under the command of Prince Edward, son of Henry III and heir to the throne. He left England in the summer of 1271, with only a thousand men. Like the Spaniards he wanted action, and he took part in a daring raid into the Plain of Sharon. He was the first Englishman to send an embassy to the Mongols: Reginald Russell, Godfrey Welles, and John Parker went to the court of the Ilkhan to seek aid, which was promptly forthcoming. A Mongol army swept out of Anatolia and captured Aleppo. Baibars, with a huge army, set out from Damascus to give battle to the Mongols, who withdrew wisely. But the Mongol alliance had been strengthened and there was hope that they would return at a suitable time.

  Prince Edward was handsome, restless, fond of jousting, capable of compromise, yet utterly merciless against declared enemies. When he became King Edward I, he attacked Scotland so implacably that he became known as the “Hammer of the Scots.” But in Palestine he was kindly and efficient, and like King Hugh III he attempted to unite the Crusaders, who were so often at each other’s throats. Baibars, who saw him as another Philip of Montfort, a man with the power to dominate and unite, ordered his assassination. An Assassin, disguised as a Christian pilgrim, stabbed him with a poisoned dagger. He had a strong constitution and recovered from the wound; but at about this time he heard that his father, King Henry III, was dying. He returned to England to be crowned. In England, he continued to give long-range support to the Christian alliance with the Mongols.

  Baibars continued his depradations. He conquered the Templar fortress called Safita and went on to conquer Krak des Chevaliers, which even Saladin had found impregnable. He invaded Anatolia, brushed against the forces of the Ilkhan, and retired to Syria. Fortunately, and to the satisfaction of the Christians, he died of poison in the summer of 1277, having accidentally drunk from a poison cup he had prepared for someone else. But he was succeeded by his chief general, Qalawun, who was equally determined to sweep the Christians out of the Holy Land. It would be easier, now that Baibars had conquered so many places.

  In the last days of the kingdom a madness descended on the Crusaders. Knowing that they must unite against the overwhelming force of the Mamelukes, they fought each other instead, and contrived to weaken each other with conspiracies and treacheries, thus playing into the hands of their enemies. The kingdom was being destroyed from within long before it was destroyed by the enemy. Blindly and voluptuously, the little princes who retained title to the seaports on the Palestinian coast hurled themselves on one another without any purpose except private vengeance.

  In January 1282, Guy II Embriaco, Lord of Jebail, outfitted three ships to transport a small army consisting of twenty-five knights and four hundred foot soldiers to Tripoli. He hoped to take Tripoli by surprise and to capture Bohemond VII, who had succeeded his father Bohemond VI in 1274, and put him to death. He left Jebail at night and reached Tripoli before dawn, anchoring his ships near the house of the Templars and coming ashore in the darkness. With all his men, who were mostly Genoese, he entered the house of the Templars. He had his agents there, including the Templar commander Reddecoeur, but for some reason the commander was absent. Perhaps Reddecoeur no longer wanted to take part in the plot, or perhaps there was a simple misunderstanding about the time they would meet. Guy II Embriaco panicked, hastily left the house of the Templars, and took refuge with his knights in the house of the Hospitallers.

  Dawn came up. The alarm bells were rung. Bohemond VII was informed about the strange behavior of these visitors from Jebail, who had taken possession of one of the towers of the house of the Hospitallers and threatened to sell their lives dearly. All of Tripoli now gathered at the foot of the tower, clamoring for the death of the invaders. The commander of the Hospitallers offered to act as mediator. Before the tower could be stormed, an agreement was reached that Guy’s life and the lives of all his knights would be spared if they surrendered. Guy would serve a five-year sentence of imprisonment, and at the end of that period all his possessions would be restored to him.

  Guy might have known that this was only a ruse to make him descend from the tower, for Bohemond VII had given orders that the Genoese should have their eyes put out. Guy and his brothers John and Baldwin, and his cousin William, were kept in prison for six weeks while Bohemond considered the various forms of punishment suitable for such an occasion. Then they were taken to Nephin, where they were set down in a ditch. A wall was constructed around them, the ditch was filled with earth, and they were left to die of hunger.

  John of Montfort, Lord of Tyre, an ally of the lord of Jebail, marched with all his knights to Jebail, hoping to protect the city from the vengeance of Bohemond. He found that the city had already been captured and the fires of victory were burning on the battlemented walls. He returned to Tyre in disgust, realizing that his city might fall to Bohemond before it fell to the Mamelukes.

  The Pisans in Acre were overjoyed when they learned the fate of the Genoese expedition to Tripoli. They celebrated with music, dancing, and fireworks. It pleased them especially that Guy II Embriaco had been buried alive; and their pleasure was a sign of the corruption of spirit that affected all these coastal princedoms. None was immune. The Hospitallers hated the Templars, who were also hated by Bohemond VII and by the king of Cyprus and Jerusalem.

  Vast triumphs and absolute disaster were close companions in those times. To the north and east, a new power was entering the scene. A huge Mongol army, numbering a hundred thousand men, was preparing, in alliance with King Leo of Armenia and the Hospitallers, to do battle with the Mamelukes. Qalawun commanded the Mamelukes, Mangu Timur commanded the Mongols, and Leo commanded the Armenians. The battle of Hims, which took place on October 30, 1281, was one of the bloodiest ever known. A quarter of a million men took part in it. When the advantage seemed to be going in the direction of the Christian-Mongol forces, Mangu Timur was wounded. He panicked, and gave orders for a retreat. Qalawun’s army had suffered too much to be able to follow the Mongols beyond the Euphrates, so there was neither victory nor defeat. Leo distinguished himself during the long and difficult retreat to Armenia. The Mongols could fight another time and choose their own battlefield.

  On the night of March 30, 1282, Charles of Anjou received the greatest shock of his life. The Sicilians, exasperated by the behavior of the French army of occupation, rose up and massacred every Frenchman they could lay their hands on. The Sicilian Vespers came as an inevitable result of Charles’s depradations, arrogance, and incompetence. With this uprising, his dreams of a Mediterranean empire, with himself as emperor of Byzantium and king of Jerusalem, crumbled. Charles would no longer play any role in Crusader affairs.

  Meanwhile, Qalawun continued to ravage the Christian outposts in the Holy Land, capturing the great Hospitaller castle at Marqab, but was not yet ready for the final assault on Acre. He watched from a distance while the kings of Jerusalem succeeded one another. King Hugh III die
d. His eldest son, John, a graceful and delicate boy of seventeen, followed him. John died a year later, and his younger brother Henry was crowned at Tyre on August 15, 1286. His coronation was attended by elaborate festivities. Henry was fourteen, handsome, gracious, very brave, and an epileptic. In less than five years he would see the downfall of his kingdom in the ruins of Acre.

  * The Orontes, called al-’Asi, “the rebel,” by the Arabs, because it flows from south to north.

  * He is referring to the long-drawn and bitterly fought Welsh wars of King Henry III.

  The End of

  the Kingdom

  THERE were men who said Acre was one of the oldest cities of the earth, or at least as old as any city on the Palestinian coast. It appears on the conquest list of Thutmose III, which was drawn up about 1500 B.C. It is mentioned in the Amarna tablets of the heretical Pharaoh Akhenaton. In the third century B.C. Ptolemy II Philadelphus founded it afresh and gave it his name—Acre or Akka became Ptolomeis. In the ninth century A.D. Ahmed ibn-Tulun, the Governor of Egypt, conquered Syria and decided to fortify the city with a great seawall. The Franks conquered it and changed its name to Saint-Jean d’Acre. It grew and flourished under the Franks until toward the end of the thirteenth century it was, after Constantinople, the richest city in the region, with huge towers and walls dominating the landward approaches, an inner and outer harbor, a large customs house where the customs officers sat on carpets and dipped their pens in inkwells of ebony and gold. There were squares and open spaces in the city, shaded from the sun by huge painted cloths stretching from wall to wall. Workmen and artisans lived in the center of the city, and here, too, were the shops and the marketplaces. There were thirty-eight churches, and when, on Sunday, all the church bells rang, they could be heard for more than a mile out to sea.

  Acre was a mercantile town, trading with all the countries of Europe and with Egypt and the East. Lombards, Pisans, Genoese, Venetians, and Germans had their own warehouses and what corresponded to chambers of commerce. They were continually quarreling with one another, so that it became the custom to erect barricades in the narrow streets at the first sign of fighting. It was said that there were 14,000 prostitutes to serve a population of perhaps 120,000, of whom half were Muslims. Since the Muslims lived in the city, there was very little about the government and the military which was not quickly known in Damascus and Cairo. Acre lived off its traders; it had few factories, but more warehouses than anyone could count. Furs from Russia, turquoises from Persia, silks from China, rubies from India could be bought in the enormous marketplaces. The popes thundered against the vice and luxury of the great seaport but could do nothing to change it. Acre lived according to its own momentum.

  In theory, the city was ruled by Henry II of Lusignan, King of Cyprus and Jerusalem. In fact it was ruled by a multitude of rulers, most of them exiles from the lost Kingdom of Jerusalem. The papal legate, the grand master of the Temple, the grand master of the Hospitallers, the grand master of the Teutonic Knights, and various princes who had taken refuge in Acre when their lands and estates passed into the hands of the Saracens—all had something to do with the government of the city, which was divided into twenty-seven districts, each one largely self-governing. In such a city, government works awkwardly. There were too many rulers and too many things that could go wrong.

  In a situation so complex and so difficult, it was disastrous when foreigners came into the city. They upset the balance of forces, and massacred Muslims, thus giving the sultan a ready-made pretext to attack the city and destroy it stone by stone.

  Pope Nicholas IV received an urgent appeal for more soldiers. He was able to enroll a few hundred peasants and unemployed laborers under the banner of the Cross. They came from Lombardy and Tuscany, and were shipped off to Acre in Venetian vessels under the command of Nicholas Tiepolo, the son of the reigning doge. The papal treasury provided three thousand gold pieces to pay for the expedition. Five galleys owned and outfitted by King James of Aragon accompanied the new Crusaders, who arrived in Acre toward the end of August, 1290.

  It was the season of festivities; there had been a superb harvest in the Galilee; Damascus merchants were once more sending their produce to the marketplaces of Acre. The prince of Tyre, the brother of the king of Cyprus, was in residence in the royal palace, and he received Nicholas Tiepolo with all the honor due his rank. There was always the fear that Sultan Qalawun would attack, but the relations between the Franks and Egypt seemed to be improving. Suddenly, in that peaceful summer, there were signs that there might not be any more summers.

  A few days after they arrived at Acre, the Tuscans and Lombards went on a rampage. Apparently they had not been paid, they were unruly after the long sea voyage, and they had no understanding of the habits and customs of a Levantine city. Acre flaunted its wealth; they had none, or so little that it scarcely counted. They thought they had come to fight the Saracens, and there were Saracens all around them. Bernard, Bishop of Tripoli, had been placed in charge of them by the pope, but had no control over them. Debauched, drunken, without roots in the country, seeing themselves as foreigners in a strange land, despised by the people of Acre, and without any resources of their own, they raced through the streets in murderous fury, killing every Muslim they encountered. They killed men, women, and children indiscriminately, but they had a special hatred for bearded Muslim merchants. They swept through the marketplace in the center of the city and out into the suburbs. Since many Christians wore beards, they too were killed. The riot started so quickly that the police, the soldiers, and the knights were taken by surprise. Some Muslims were dragged to safety in the castle, others found refuge in private houses. The Lombards and Tuscans were rounded up, but many escaped. It was as though a hurricane had appeared out of a cloudless sky and killed about a thousand people in the city.

  The government, knowing that the news of the massacre would soon reach Egypt, immediately offered its apologies to Qalawun. But Qalawun was in no mood to listen to apologies. He sent his representatives to Acre to demand that all the men responsible for the outrage should be handed over to him for punishment, which meant execution. The city councillors met and debated the sultan’s demand at some length. The grand master of the Temple suggested that the matter could be settled very easily by sending all the prisoners in the city jails to Egypt. This was a characteristic Templar solution. The idea of a general scouring of the prisons was abandoned; no better ideas were advanced; and the councillors announced that the massacre was at least partly the fault of the Muslims and they hoped the sultan would accept their apologies and forget the matter.

  The sultan did not forget. Incensed by the massacre, and also by the high-handed attitude of the councillors, he resolved to destroy Acre. He summoned his jurists and asked them for advice. He had signed a treaty with the king of Cyprus. Could he break it, and on what grounds? One jurist advised him that he had the power to break or maintain the treaty at his pleasure, but he was more impressed by the argument that the treaty had been broken by the Christians, who had failed to obey the clause by which all Muslims within Acre were under the protection of the civil government and every offense against them must be punished by the Christian magistrates. This had not been done, and accordingly a state of war existed between Egypt and the Latin Kingdom.

  Qalawun was so delighted with the latter argument that he issued an immediate order for a vast number of trees at Baalbek and in the region between Caesarea and Athlit to be cut down for making siege engines. The Christians quickly learned that the trees were being cut down and began to raid the places where the woodcutters were at work. When winter came, the work of the woodcutters was made difficult by both the intense cold and the raids of the knights.

  The master of the Temple had for some time traditionally enjoyed a secret correspondence with Qalawun. This correspondence was now coming to an end. Qalawun wrote to the master saying that he had come to an irrevocable decision: Acre must be destroyed, it was useless to hope he woul
d receive envoys, his mind was made up. The Master, William of Beaujeu tried one last, desperate appeal.

  Qalawun relented. He offered to spare Acre for a ransom of one Venetian sequin from each inhabitant of Acre. Sequins were gold coins, worth about ten dollars, and the ransom therefore amounted to about $600,000. This was a huge sum for the time, but not beyond the ability of the citizens to raise. William of Beaujeu summoned a meeting of the citizens at the Church of St. Cross to listen to the demand for ransom. Instead of agreeing to pay the ransom, they laughed in his face, hurled abuse at him, accused him of being a traitor for having secret correspondence with the enemy, and would have killed him if he had not escaped in time.

  The councillors of Acre decided to send one more embassy to Cairo. When they reached Qalawun’s court, he refused to see them. They were either murdered on the spot or thrown into prison. Nothing more was ever heard of them.

  At the end of the year, Qalawun sent messages to all the Arab states, proclaiming that, as a result of innumerable violations of the treaty by the Christians, he was resolved to destroy Acre. In a letter to King Hethum of Armenia, he wrote that he had sworn on the Koran that not one single Christian would be left alive in that accursed city.

  The Christians, too, were sending out proclamations and appeals. Letters were sent to the pope, to friendly kings, to the Templars and Hospitallers in the West, and to the king of Cyprus, urgently demanding aid. In Acre the Patriarch Nicholas, John of Grailly, and an extraordinary knight called Otto of Grandson formed a military command, and at once gave orders to repair all the towers and battlements, which had recently been strengthened by King Henry of Cyprus. The city was in a good state of defense. It could hold off a large army almost indefinitely, if there was good leadership, because it could be provisioned and supplied by sea. Able men were in command of some sectors of the wall, but there were others commanded by men who were cowardly and without resolution.