Chapter 12: The March of Folly
“The wise inherit honor, but fools get only shame.”
– Proverbs 3:35
Bernard of Clairvaux, the man upon whose prestige the entire endeavor had been built, was devastated by the crusade's failure. Not usually given to self-doubt, he was now forced to confront the question of why God had allowed such an unmitigated disaster. Why would a sincere effort to restore the fortunes of Christendom be defeated so thoroughly? The unavoidable answer was that moral decline had rendered the west unworthy of success.
In the Muslim world, the crusade unsurprisingly provoked the opposite response. A great swell of confidence was overcoming the usual divisions within Syria. Nūr al-Dīn, in many ways Bernard's Islamic counterpart, was making good use of his triumph to beat the drum of jihad. Only if Islam was united – under his benevolent leadership, of course – would the phenomenal victories continue. A burst of activity followed. Islamic schools were founded, mosques were built, and Shi'ite Muslims were ruthlessly persecuted. Nūr al-Dīn would be both the great conqueror and purifier of the faith.
At first it seemed as if the Christian states would simply unravel by themselves. As Nūr al-Dīn consolidated his control over Syria, the kingdom of Jerusalem devolved into chaos. Relations between the nominal king – Baldwin III – and his mother the regent – Queen Melisende – became so bad that Melisende’s son actually raised an army and besieged his mother in Jerusalem. The only positive was that the civil war was mercifully short since Melisende was taken by surprise and surrendered after only a few weeks.
An even worse development for the Christians was brewing in Antioch. Prince Raymond, who had been the cause of such tension in the marriage of King Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine, was killed by Nūr al-Dīn in 1149, along with most of Antioch's army. This left the second greatest crusader state without a leader at a particularly dangerous time. A successor would have to be carefully chosen, but Raymond's widow, Constance, was in no mood for politics. She was determined to marry for love.
Reynald of Châtillon
Her choice was Reynald of Châtillon, a dashing, bombastic, and completely reckless French baron. Born into a family that could claim descent from Roman senators, Reynald never lacked for confidence. Unfortunately, this was not – aside from a nose for opportunism – matched by any particular skill. By the time he had reached his early twenties he had managed to lose the better part of his inheritance, so had joined the Second Crusade in hopes of better prospects in Outremer. After the crusade had ended, he had further tarnished his reputation by staying in the East as a mercenary, a tacit admission that he had nothing to go back to in France.
The romance of the noble Constance and the disreputable Reynald scandalized all of Outremer. All attempts to dissuade her, however, fell on deaf ears and they married in 1153.92 Reynald wasted no time in confirming everyone's low opinion of his abilities.
Since most of the principality's army had been killed by Nūr al-Dīn, Antioch now depended on Byzantine protection for its survival. Even Raymond, the previous prince, had eventually realized how crucial maintaining good relations with the empire was. But just off the coast of Antioch lay the imperial island of Cyprus; wealthy, weak, and far too tantalizingly close for Reynald to resist. In 1156 he invaded, indulging himself in a three-week-long spree of murder, rape and carnage across the Christian island. When the furious emperor responded by marching on Antioch, Reynald caved completely, appearing outside the imperial tent, weeping and groveling for his life.
Fortunately for Reynald, the emperor viewed him as more of a nuisance than a legitimate threat, and was willing to offer him surprisingly mild terms. The city would be turned over immediately to imperial troops, but Reynald could continue to rule as a vassal of the emperor. To underscore this new arrangement, the disgraced prince was obliged to lead the emperor's horse on foot as his new master officially took control of the city. He may have forfeited his principality's independence, but he had managed to save his own skin.
As it turned out, this new understanding actually significantly improved Antioch's position. Since the city was once again under imperial control, the emperor immediately took steps to ensure its continued safety. Before returning to Constantinople, he marched on Aleppo, forcing Nūr al-Dīn to agree to a truce and respect all Christian borders. All Reynald had to do to safeguard Antioch's future was to abide by the terms of the truce.
Not surprisingly, even this proved too difficult for the wild Reynald. Several trade routes passed close by Antioch, and the sight of unmolested caravans plodding on their way was enough to tempt him into attacking. On the way back from his first raid he was ambushed and captured by a local emir. He was sent in chains to Aleppo where he stayed for the next sixteen years in captivity since, in a rare display of crusader common sense, no one was particularly interested in paying his ransom.
Almaric I
With Reynald gone, the tide changed abruptly. Young Baldwin III, despite his rocky start, turned out to be an active king who greatly strengthened the kingdom. He even managed to pry the coastal city of Ascalon out of Egyptian hands, finally completing the Christian conquest of Palestine. When he died after a short illness, he was succeeded by his younger brother Amalric who proved to be an even better king. Without a troublemaker in Antioch undercutting his authority, Amalric had the rare fortune of ruling over a relatively united Outremer. The same could not be said of his Islamic enemies.
Nūr al-Dīn was having trouble imposing his authority on the fractious emirs of Syria, and had postponed his great attack until he had crushed the last independent Muslim threat. The other great Islamic state, the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt, was in even worse shape. Rival viziers, each attempting to control the caliph, had started a civil war, plunging the state into chaos.
In an attempt to exploit the disintegrating conditions, Nūr al-Dīn had sent a loyal Kurdish general named Shirkuh to seize control of Egypt. In response, the desperate caliph had appealed to Jerusalem for help.
This was a peerless opportunity and Amalric knew it. The Egyptians were nearly frantic.93 They had already agreed to pay a tribute of four hundred thousand gold coins to Jerusalem, and additional concessions would undoubtedly follow.
The campaign was a model of order and good planning. Amalric led a crusader force to Alexandria, easily capturing the city. The crusading banner was raised over the famous Lighthouse, and the great cathedral was cleaned and refurbished. For the first time since the Islamic invasion had begun half a millennium before, all five of the great Christian cities – Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria – were under Christian control.
King Amalric continued on to Cairo, where he easily disbursed the disorganized enemy forces and garrisoned soldiers in the city to protect it from future attacks from Nūr al-Dīn. The grateful caliph agreed to pay Jerusalem an annual tribute for the cost of maintaining its protection. After a few weeks of celebration, Amalric returned to the Levant a hero. In two short battles he had accomplished more than any crusader king before him. Egypt, that great thorn in the crusader flank, was now for all intents and purposes, a Christian protectorate.
Amalric was feted throughout the East. As soon as he got back to Jerusalem an offer of a marital alliance arrived from the Byzantine emperor. A few months later Amalric was part of the imperial family, and a formal treaty had been concluded.
The heady success convinced Amalric that he should try for more. Why settle for Egypt as a protectorate when he could rule it outright? Assembling his barons, the king announced that he would be leading a joint Byzantine-Crusader army south to Cairo. The news threw the council into an uproar. The horrified Templars pointed out that Egypt was currently allied with them, and the last time they had attacked an ally it had only made Nūr al-Dīn stronger. They were risking a repeat of the Damascus nightmare.
The Hospitallers, who had struck up a heated rivalry with their brother monks, disagreed, and urged Amalric to attack at o
nce before the emperor arrived. If the crusaders waited for the imperial army to show up, they would have to split the rewards with them. Why wait for help against an enemy that had so recently demonstrated its weakness?
In the end, Amalric's greed overcame his caution. In October of 1168, the king marched out of Jerusalem at the head of a magnificent army. The only thing that spoiled the moment was the refusal of the Templars to participate, since, as they had explained in stinging fashion, their mandate was to defend the Holy Land not weaken it by attacking allies.
Predictably, the invasion pushed the reluctant Egyptians straight into the arms of Nūr al-Dīn. As soon as news of the crusader force reached Cairo, the Caliph sent messengers to the atabeg, offering to recognize his overlordship if he would help them. Nūr al-Dīn agreed at once, sending – with rich irony – the army of Damascus to protect Egypt.
Amalric arrived in Egypt first, and immediately captured a minor city, putting the inhabitants to the sword. He then sailed the fleet up the Nile towards Cairo where the panicked Caliph offered to pay him two million gold coins to go away. The attempted bribe only confirmed Amalric in his opinion of Fatimid weakness, and he dismissively turned it down.
As the crusaders neared Cairo, however, everything started to go wrong. The Damascene army, led by Nūr al-Dīn's general Shirkuh arrived, and easily entered the city. Amalric, who was having trouble with both the heat and advancing up the Nile, was forced to retreat. A few uncomfortable weeks spent in a makeshift camp, staring at what was now a well-fortified Cairo, was enough to quench any hope of taking Egypt. Amalric gave the order to retreat, and the humiliated army slunk back to Jerusalem. The king had accomplished exactly what the Templars had warned him he would. Jerusalem had lost an ally, and Nūr al-Dīn had gained one.
It must have been especially galling for the man who had so recently been hailed as a military genius to now face the knowing glances of the many Templars who thronged Jerusalem. The blow to his pride was too much, and he stubbornly refused to give up. The next year he tried again, this time with Byzantine help but with even worse results. The joint army besieged the port city of Damietta at the mouth of the Nile, but was plagued by heavy rains that spoiled the food reserves. As famine swept the camp, Byzantines and crusaders started blaming each other, and the imperial army abruptly withdrew in protest. Amalric had no choice but to retreat as well.
In 1174 he launched a third invasion, but almost immediately fell ill with dysentery. He rallied on the way back to Jerusalem, but was overcome with a fever when he reached the capital. After lingering a few days in agony, he died, leaving the immense potential of his early reign unfulfilled.
It was more than luck that had deserted Amalric. His ill-advised invasion of Egypt had unwittingly transformed the Caliphate from a weak and crumbling ally to a powerful enemy. Nūr al-Dīn's general Shirkuh had easily made himself vizier by assassinating all of his rivals. Although he died only two months later, his place was taken by his even more ambitious nephew al-Malik al-Nasir Salah al-Din, better known to history as Saladin.
Chapter 13: Saladin
“God has reserved the recovery of (Jerusalem) for the house of (my family), in order to unite all hearts in appreciation of its members.”
– Saladin
There was nothing in Saladin's past to suggest any particular military genius or political gifts, and in fact he owed his promotion to the fact that he was young and without obvious allies in Egypt. The caliph had resented the way Shirkuh had dominated him, and had intended to secure a much weaker candidate. Once in power, however, Saladin moved with alarming speed. Cairo's defenses were immediately strengthened, and the Red Sea ports were secured to guard against crusader invasions. Within a year he had deposed the Fatimid Caliph and consolidated all power in his hands.
When Amalric had returned to Egypt with the Byzantines, Saladin had easily withstood their attack, and demolished several crusader strongholds on Egypt's borders. His successes had unnerved Nūr al-Dīn who had no wish to see a rival Muslim state establish itself. Suspecting that his vassal was of dubious loyalty, Nūr al-Dīn had ordered Saladin to join him in an attack on the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Saladin's refusal, although couched in polite language, confirmed the atabeg's suspicions. Nūr al-Dīn immediately raised an army to invade Egypt, but luck was on Saladin's side. Nūr al-Dīn died of a sudden fever before he could set out, leaving a flock of mediocre family members behind to engage in a civil war over the inheritance.
Saladin took full advantage of the chaos. Like Nūr al-Dīn before him, he believed that only a purified, united Islam could drive the Christians out of the Middle East. Jerusalem may have looked weak – Amalric had been succeeded by his thirteen-year-old son Baldwin IV – but Saladin was astute enough to realize that any invasion would be politically premature. All of Outremer was either allied with or under the protection of Byzantium. Any advance against a Christian city would result in an imperial response. The Muslim cause would be much better served by putting its own house in order first.
This Saladin proceeded to do with unnerving speed. Jerusalem was bought off with a four-year truce, and a quick invasion of Syria crushed the forces of Nūr al-Dīn's sons. The work of mopping up the remaining emirs took longer, but by the end of the campaigning season he had been crowned Sultan of Egypt and Syria.
While Saladin was occupied in Syria, his concern about Byzantine support to the crusaders resolved itself. In 1176, the emperor Manuel Comnenus was ambushed while crossing a narrow mountain pass in Anatolia. His army, supposedly so large that it covered ten miles, was badly mauled, and only with great difficulty was the emperor able to extricate himself.
Although Manuel still had enough strength to defend his own territory, he could no longer go on the offensive. The old imperial dream of recovering Anatolia from the Turks was permanently abandoned. Byzantium was now on the defensive, neatly removed as a political force in Syria or the Levant.
Little help could be expected from Europe either. The pope and the German emperor were at war in northern Italy,94 while relations between France and England were equally bad. Engrossed in their own struggles, the nobility of Europe had neither time nor interest in the East. Outremer was on its own.
The Leper King
The new ruler of Jerusalem wasn’t well. When Baldwin IV was only a child, his tutor had made a horrifying discovery. The prince and his playmates had devised a game to see who could endure the most pain by driving their fingernails into each other's arms. As the other boys squealed in agony, Baldwin stood impassively. At first this was taken as an impressive display of stoicism, but it soon became clear that the young prince couldn't feel anything at all. Baldwin IV was a leper.
By the time he became king at the ripe age of thirteen, the knowledge that there was something dreadfully wrong with him had already doomed Baldwin IV's reign. He was smart, hard working, and serious, but because there was no possibility of children, the royal court dissolved into factions, each trying to control him and position themselves for the next reign. Even worse for the kingdom was the unwelcome return of Reynald of Châtillon who had finally been ransomed by the Byzantines and was inexplicably now seen as an important voice of experience. The kingdom had never been weaker, and Saladin, well informed about the crusader's difficulties, chose this time to launch an invasion from Egypt.
If the sultan was overly casual in his preparations it was because he had good cause to feel confident. Not only were his enemies divided, but they were also being led by a virtual corpse. By the time Baldwin IV was sixteen the disease had already opened sores all over his body, rendering him unable to mount his horse without help. He also faced the same crippling issue that plagued all the crusader states: a severe shortage of manpower. Despite the news that a huge army – perhaps twenty thousand strong – was marching north, Baldwin could only muster a few hundred knights for the defense of his kingdom.
Even in the face of these odds, however, Baldwin IV soldiered on. He ordered the True
Cross, Jerusalem's holiest relic, to be carried in procession before the army. After attending a church service dedicated to prayers for victory, the heavily bandaged king was helped onto his horse and rode toward the coast to confront the armies of Islam.
The determined attempt caught Saladin completely off guard. Believing that the king wouldn't dare attack him with so few men, the sultan had allowed his army to spread out looking for food and plunder. At Montgisard, in what is now central Israel, Baldwin managed to surprise them, leading an immediate cavalry charge into the center of the Muslim ranks. The disorganized Egyptians were slaughtered, and Saladin himself only avoided capture by fleeing on the back of a camel.
The stunning victory was a glimpse at what might have been. Not only had Baldwin's determination seen it through, but he had also been in the thick of the fighting, despite being barely able to hold his sword.95 For one moment, at least, it was possible to believe that the armies of the cross could hold back the forces of Islam.
Baldwin himself was under no illusion of his own strength. Neither gallantry nor inspired leadership could hide the fact that he was dying, and when he returned to Jerusalem he attempted to abdicate. Writing to Louis VII, he asked him to name a successor, arguing that "a hand so weak as mine should not hold power when fear of Arab aggression daily presses upon the Holy City..."
The request was ignored – the French king had his own problems – and Baldwin was forced to remain on the throne. Each passing day robbed him of strength, and within five years he could no longer see, walk, or use his hands. Conscious of his responsibilities, however, he refused to give in to despair. His repeated attempts at abdication had failed because no one could agree on a single candidate as his successor, so it would be up to him to name one.
In Distant Lands Page 15
