A History of the Crusades-Vol 2 (11 page)

The Fatimid vizier, al-Afdal, was eager to
avenge the disaster at Ascalon, two years before, and had fitted out an
expedition under the command of the Mameluk, Sa’ad ed-Daulah al-Qawasi. It
reached Ascalon in mid-May and advanced as far as Ramleh, hoping, perhaps, to
penetrate to Jerusalem while Baldwin was still occupied at Caesarea. Baldwin
hastened with his forces to Ramleh; whereupon Sa’ad fell back on Ascalon to
await reinforcements. After fortifying Ramleh, Baldwin set up his headquarters
at Jaffa, so as to be able to watch the Egyptians’ movements and at the same
time keep in touch with his maritime communications. Apart from a short visit
to Jerusalem for administrative purposes in July, he remained at Jaffa all
through the summer. At the end of August an intercepted letter told him that
new detachments had reached the Egyptians and that they were preparing to march
on Jerusalem.

1101: First
Battle of Ramleh

On 4 September Sa’ad moved his forces slowly up
to the outskirts of Ramleh. Two days later Baldwin held a council of war and
decided to attack at dawn, without waiting to be attacked. He had only two
hundred and sixty horsemen and nine hundred infantrymen; but they were well
armed and experienced; while the huge army of the Egyptians, which he estimated
at eleven thousand horsemen and twenty-one thousand infantry, was lightly armed
and untrained. He divided his troops into five corps, one under a knight called
Bervold, the second under Geldemar Carpenel, lord of Haifa, the third under
Hugh of Saint-Omer, who had succeeded Tancred as Prince of Galilee, and the
fourth and fifth under himself. Inspired by the presence of the True Cross, by
a stirring sermon delivered by Arnulf of Rohes, and by a special absolution
given by the Cardinal-Legate, the Franks marched out to Ramleh and at sunrise
fell on the Egyptians, near Ibelin, south-west of the town.

Bervold led the attack; but his troops were
mown down by the Egyptians and he himself slain. Geldemar Carpenel hurried to
his rescue, only to perish also with all his men. The Galilean corps followed;
but they made no effect on the Egyptian masses. After heavy losses Hugh of
Saint-Omer extricated his men and fled towards Jaffa, pursued by the Egyptian
left. It seemed that all was lost. But King Baldwin, after publicly confessing
his sins before the True Cross and then haranguing his company, mounted on his
brave Arab charger, Gazelle, galloped at the head of his knights into the heart
of the enemy. The Egyptians, confident of victory, were taken by surprise.
After a brief struggle their centre turned and fled; and the panic spread to
their right. Baldwin, forbidding his men to stop to pillage corpses or to sack
the enemy camp, chased them to the walls of Ascalon. Then he rallied his men
and retired to divide the spoils won on the battlefield.

Meanwhile Hugh of Saint-Omer had arrived at
Jaffa, to report that the battle was lost. The Queen and her court were waiting
there. Hearing of the disaster and believing that the King was dead, they sent
a messenger at once to the only man that they thought could help them now, to
Tancred at Antioch. Next morning an army came into sight. They thought that it
was the Egyptians; and great was their rejoicing when they discerned the
Frankish banners and recognized the King. A second messenger was dispatched to
Antioch, with the news that all was well; and Tancred, who had been prepared,
with some relish, to set out for the south, was told that he could stay at
home.

For the moment the danger was averted. The
Egyptians had suffered heavy losses and were not disposed to renew the campaign
that season. But the resources of Egypt were enormous. Al-Afdal had no
difficulty in equipping a second army that should continue the struggle next
year. In the meantime Baldwin received the visit of the princes that had
survived the Anatolian Crusades of 1101. Led by William of Aquitaine, Stephen
of Blois and Stephen of Burgundy and the Constable Conrad, and accompanied by
various barons from the Low Countries and by Ekkehard of Aura and Bishop
Manasses, most of whom had come by sea to Antioch, they reached the
neighbourhood of Beirut in the early spring of 1102. To ensure their safe
passage through enemy country Baldwin sent an escort to meet them there and to
convey them to Jerusalem. After celebrating Easter at the Holy Places the
leaders prepared to return home. William of Aquitaine safely embarked for Saint
Symeon at the end of April; but the ship in which Stephen of Blois and Stephen
of Burgundy, with several others, had taken their passage was driven ashore by
a storm off Jaffa. Before another ship could be found to accommodate them,
there was news that a fresh Moslem host was marching up from Egypt. Owing to
this fateful mishap they remained to assist in the coming struggle.

1102: Second
Battle of Ramleh

In mid-May 1102 the Egyptian army, consisting
of some twenty thousand Arabs and Sudanese, under the command of the Vizier’s
own son, Sharaf al-Ma’ali, assembled at Ascalon and moved up towards Ramleh.
Baldwin had made his preparations. An army of several thousand Christians
waited at Jaffa; and the Galilean garrisons were ready to send detachments when
required. But Baldwin’s scouts misled him. Believing the Egyptians to be a
small body of raiders he decided to destroy them himself without calling upon
his reserves. He had with him at Jerusalem his friends from the West, Stephen
of Blois, Stephen of Burgundy, the Constable Conrad, Hugh, Count of Lusignan
and various Belgian knights. He proposed to them to set out with his cavalry to
finish off the job. Stephen of Blois ventured to suggest that it was a rash
undertaking; a better reconnaissance would be desirable. But nobody even
listened to Stephen, remembering his cowardice at Antioch. He joined his
comrades without further complaint.

On 17 May King Baldwin set out with some five
hundred horsemen from Jerusalem. They rode gaily, with little order. When they
came out into the plain and suddenly saw before them the vast Egyptian army,
Baldwin realized his mistake. But there could be no turning back. They were
already seen, and the Egyptian light cavalry was riding up to cut off their
retreat. Their only chance was to charge headlong into the enemy. The
Egyptians, believing at first that this must be the vanguard of a greater army,
nearly gave up before the impact; but when they saw that no other force
followed, they rallied and closed in on the Franks. Baldwin’s ranks broke. A
few knights, led by Roger of Rozoy and Baldwin’s cousin, Hugh of Le Bourg, cut
their way through the Egyptian host and reached the safety of Jaffa. Many, such
as Gerard of Avesnes and Godfrey’s former chamberlain, Stabelon, were killed on
the field. But King Baldwin himself and his chief comrades made their way into
the little fortress of Ramleh, where they were surrounded by the Egyptian army.

Nightfall saved them from immediate attack. But
the defences of Ramleh were pitiable. Only one tower, built by Baldwin the
previous year, might possibly be held; and into that they crowded. In the
middle of the night an Arab came to the gate and asked to see the King. He was
admitted and revealed himself as the husband of the lady to whom Baldwin had
shown courtesy during his raid on Transjordan. In gratitude he warned the King
that the Egyptian assault would begin at dawn and that he must escape at once.
Baldwin took his advice. However much he may have regretted the desertion of
his comrades — and he was not a man with a highly developed sense of honour — he
saw that on his own preservation depended the preservation of the kingdom. With
a groom and three other companions he slipped out on horseback, through the
enemy lines, trusting his Gazelle to take him to safety. During the same night,
Lithard of Cambrai, Viscount of Jaffa, and Gothman of Brussels separately made
their escape. Gothman, though severely wounded, managed to reach Jerusalem,
where he brought tidings of the disaster but counselled resistance; for he
believed that Baldwin was still alive.

Early next morning the Egyptians stormed over
the walls of Ramleh, and piled faggots round the tower in which the knights had
taken refuge. Rather than perish in the flames, the Frankish chivalry charged
out at the enemy, with the Constable Conrad at their head. But there was no
escape. They were all hewn down on the spot or captured. Conrad’s bravery so
impressed the Egyptians that they spared his life. He and more than a hundred
of his companions were sent in captivity to Egypt. Of the other leaders Stephen
of Burgundy, Hugh of Lusignan and Geoffrey of Vendome were killed in the
battle, and with them died Stephen of Blois, who thus by his glorious death
redeemed his reputation. The Countess Adela could sleep content.

The Queen and the Court were once more at Jaffa.
There Roger of Rozoy and his fellow-fugitives told them of terrible defeat.
They feared that the King had fallen with all his knights, and they made plans
to flee by sea while there was still time. But on 20 May the Egyptian army came
up to the city walls and the Egyptian fleet approached over the southern
horizon. Their worst fears seemed realized when an Egyptian soldier brandished
before them a head that was recognized as the King’s, but which was, in fact,
that of Gerbod of Winthinc, who greatly resembled him. At that moment, as
though by a miracle, a little ship was seen sailing down from the north with
the King’s own standard at the mast-head.

1102: King
Baldwin at Jaffa

On his escape from Ramleh, Baldwin had made for
the coast, in an attempt to reach the army at Jaffa. But Egyptian troops were
scouring the countryside. For two nights and two days he wandered through the
foothills north of Ramleh, then hastened across the plain of Sharon to Arsuf.
He arrived there on the evening of the 19th, to the astonished delight of its
governor, Roger of Haifa. That same evening the troops of Galilee, eighty
picked knights, under Hugh of Saint-Omer, who had hurried south on the news of
the Egyptian advance, joined him at Arsuf. Next morning Hugh marched south with
his men, to try to break his way into Jaffa, while Baldwin persuaded an English
adventurer called Goderic to take him on his ship through the Egyptian
blockade. To cheer his court, Baldwin hoisted his standard. The Egyptians
noticed it, and at once sent ships to intercept him. But a strong north wind
was blowing, against which the Egyptians could not get under weigh, while it
carried Baldwin swiftly into harbour.

At once he set about reorganizing his forces.
Before the Egyptians had entirely closed in round the city he broke his way out
to meet Hugh of Galilee’s company and to take them within the walls. Next, he
sent up to Jerusalem to summon all the men that could be spared from there and
from Hebron. A local monk was found who was ready to take the message through
the enemy lines. He left Jaffa under darkness, but it took him three days to
reach Jerusalem. When he confirmed that the King was alive, there was great
rejoicing. A troop of some ninety knights and rather more mounted sergeants was
collected and was fortified by a piece of the True Cross. It hastened down to
Jaffa. The knights, better mounted and better armed, forced their way into the
town; but the sergeants were driven into the sea. They abandoned their horses
there and swam round into the harbour. Meanwhile, Baldwin wrote to Tancred and
to Baldwin of Edessa, to report his heavy losses and to ask for reinforcements.

Before the northern princes could set out,
unexpected help arrived. In the last days of May a fleet of two hundred ships,
mostly English, and filled with soldiers and pilgrims from England, France and
Germany, sailed in Jaffa roads, with the help of the wind, through the Egyptian
blockade. They provided Baldwin with the additional men that he needed. On 27
May he led his army out against the enemy. The details of the battle are
unknown. It seems that the Egyptians vainly tried to lure him on and then
encircle him, and that eventually a charge of the heavy Frankish cavalry broke
their ranks and sent them fleeing in panic. After a few hours the whole
Egyptian force was in headlong flight to Ascalon, and their camp, with all its
booty, was in Christian hands.

Baldwin and his kingdom had been saved by a
series of accidents, in which the Christians, not unnaturally, saw the hand of
God. Not least of these accidents was the incompetent strategy of the
Egyptians. A small detachment of their troops could have captured Jerusalem
immediately after the battle of Ramleh without seriously weakening the
encirclement of Jaffa. But the vizier al-Afdal was losing his grip. His son
Sharaf was weak and ill-obeyed. Rivalry between his various lieutenants
paralysed his movements. Next summer his father sent out a new expedition, by
sea and land. But while the fleet sailed up to Jaffa, the land forces refused
to advance beyond Ascalon, as its commander, the mameluk Taj al-Ajam, was
jealous of the admiral, the
qadi
Ibn Qadus. Taj al-Ajam was subsequently
imprisoned for his disloyalty; but the harm was done. The best opportunity for
the reconquest of Palestine was missed.

1101: Baldwin
and Daimbert

Tancred and Baldwin of Le Bourg, when they
heard of the plight of Jerusalem, made their arrangements to set out as soon as
possible for the south. With them came William of Aquitaine, who had been at
Antioch when King Baldwin’s letter arrived. They travelled all together up the
Orontes valley, past Homs, and down the upper Jordan, in such force that the
local Moslem authorities made no attempt to stop their passage. They reached
Judaea towards the end of September. Baldwin by now was no longer in urgent
need of their help; but their presence enabled him to attack the Egyptian army
at Ascalon. The skirmishes were favourable for the Christians; but they did not
venture to assault the fortress.

The meeting of the Frankish potentates was of
use to Baldwin for other reasons. Tancred had intended to give his help on his
own terms; but in fact he enabled Baldwin to solve his most difficult internal
problem. The Patriarch Daimbert had crowned Baldwin on Christmas Day, 1100; but
he had done so unwillingly, and Baldwin knew it. It was necessary for Baldwin
to control the Church, for the Church was well organized, and it was to the
Church, not to the lay authorities, that pious sympathizers from the West gave
donations and legacies. Daimbert’s elevation to the Patriarchate had been
doubtfully legal, and complaints had been laid at Rome. At last Pope Paschal
sent out a legate, Maurice, Cardinal-Bishop of Porto, to inquire into the
situation. He arrived in time for Easter, 1101; and at once Baldwin accused
Daimbert of treachery before him, showing him the letter that Daimbert had
written to Bohemond on Godfrey’s death, calling on Bohemond to oppose Baldwin’s
succession by force if need be. He moreover declared that Daimbert had tried to
assassinate him on his journey southward. However false that latter charge
might be, the letter was incontrovertible. Maurice forbade Daimbert to take
part in the Easter ceremonies, which he performed alone. Daimbert, fearful for
his future, sought out Baldwin and knelt in tears before him begging for
forgiveness. But Baldwin was adamant, till Daimbert murmured that he had three
hundred besants to spare. Baldwin always needed ready-money. He secretly
accepted the gift, then went to the legate to announce magnanimously that he
would forgive Daimbert. Maurice, a man of peace, was delighted to effect a
reconciliation.

After some months Baldwin again needed money,
and applied to Daimbert; who gave him two hundred marks, saying that that was
all that the Patriarchal coffers contained. But clerics belonging to Arnulf’s
party told the King that in fact Daimbert was concealing vast hoards. It
happened that a few days later the Patriarch gave a sumptuous banquet in honour
of the Legate, whose support he was assiduously cultivating. Baldwin burst in
upon them and harangued them on their luxurious living when the forces of
Christendom were starving. Daimbert angrily answered that the Church could use
its money as it pleased and that the King had no authority over it, while
Maurice anxiously tried to appease them both. But Baldwin could not be
silenced. His early training as a priest enabled him to quote canon law; and
his eloquence was such that Maurice was impressed. He induced Daimbert to
promise to pay for a regiment of horsemen. The sums, however, were never paid,
despite Baldwin’s incessant demands. In the autumn of 1101 an envoy came from
Prince Roger of Apulia with a gift of a thousand besants for the Patriarch. A
third was to be devoted to the Holy Sepulchre, a third to the Hospital and a
third to the King for his army. Daimbert rashly kept the whole for himself. But
the terms of the gift were known. When the King made complaint, the legate
could no longer support Daimbert, who was declared deprived of the Patriarchate.
He retired to Jaffa, where he spent the winter, and in March he went on to
Antioch. His old friend Tancred received him gladly and gave him the charge of
one of the richest churches in the city, that of St George. Baldwin meanwhile
kept the Patriarchate vacant, on the plea that Rome must be informed; and his
officials raided the Patriarchal treasury, where they found that Daimbert had
concealed twenty thousand besants. Maurice acted as locum tenens; but his
health had been shattered by these scandals. He died in the spring of 1102.

1102: The
Deposition of Daimbert

When Tancred came south in the autumn to rescue
Baldwin, he announced that his terms were the restitution of Daimbert; and Daimbert
accompanied him. Baldwin was most accommodating. But at that moment a new papal
legate arrived, Robert, Cardinal of Paris. The King therefore insisted that
matters must be regularized by the session of a Synod, under Robert’s
presidency. Tancred and Daimbert could not refuse. A council temporarily
reinstated the latter till a full investigation could be heard. Tancred
therefore joined his troops to the King’s for the campaign against Ascalon.
Soon afterwards the Synod was held in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The
legate presided, assisted by the visiting Bishops of Laon and Piacenza; and all
the Palestinian bishops and abbots attended, as well as the Bishop of Mamistra,
from Tancred’s territory. The accusations against Daimbert were made by the
prelates of Caesarea, Bethlehem and Ramleh, inspired by Arnulf of Rohes. They
declared that on his journey to Palestine in 1099 at the head of his Pisans, he
had attacked fellow-Christians in the Ionian Islands, that he had sought to
provoke a civil war between King Baldwin and Prince Bohemond, and that he had
kept for himself money given him for the welfare of pilgrims at the Hospital
and for the soldiers of Christ. The charges were undeniably true. The
Cardinal-Legate had no option but to declare Daimbert unworthy of his see and
to depose him. Tancred could not object to so canonical a procedure. He had to
admit defeat. Daimbert accompanied him back to Antioch and was re-established
in the Church of St George till he could find an opportunity to go to Rome. He
had shown himself a corrupt and miserly old man; and his departure was
unregretted in Palestine. His appointment as Legate had been the one great
error committed by Pope Urban II.

Arnulf of Rohes, who had been Baldwin’s willing
adjutant in the whole affair, was too wily to attempt to take Daimbert’s place.
Instead, when the legate asked for a candidate for the Patriarchate, the
Palestinian bishops suggested an aged priest from Therouannes, called Evremar.
Evremar, who had come East with the First Crusade, was known for his piety and
his charity. Though he was a compatriot of Arnulf’s he had taken no part in his
intrigues but was universally respected. The legate was delighted to consecrate
so blameless a cleric; and Baldwin was satisfied, knowing Evremar to be a
harmless old man who would never venture to take part in politics. Meanwhile
Arnulf could continue to make his own plans without hindrance.

Daimbert did not despair. When his protector
Bohemond went to Italy in 1105 he accompanied him and proceeded to Rome to lay
his grievance before the Pope. Paschal was cautious at first; but after some
delay he decided, probably under Bohemond’s fatal influence, to support him.
Baldwin was required to send to Rome to answer Daimbert’s charges. But the
King, probably because he knew that Bohemond had the Pope’s ear, took no
notice. Paschal therefore cancelled Daimbert’s deposition, which, he said, was
due to the interference of the civil power. Fortunately, the Pope’s folly was
amended by the hand of God. Daimbert, as he prepared to set out in triumph to
resume his patriarchal throne, fell seriously ill. He died at Messina on 15
June 110.

1112: Arnulf
elected Patriarch

The troubles of the patriarchate were not over.
Baldwin grew dissatisfied with Evremar. Probably he realized that the Church
was too important an organization to be allowed to remain in the hands of a
nonentity. He needed an efficient ally at its head. When Evremar had heard of
Daimbert’s official reinstatement, he set out himself for Rome. He arrived
there to find his rival dead, with his own complaints against the civil power.
But when the news of Daimbert’s death reached Palestine, Arnulf hurried to Rome
to act for the King there. Paschal now inclined towards Evremar; but he
understood that the case was more complicated than he had thought. He entrusted
it to the Archbishop of Arles, Gibelin of Sabran, an ecclesiastic of immense
age and vast experience. In the spring of 1108, Gibelin arrived in Palestine,
whither both Evremar and Arnulf had preceded him. He saw that Evremar was
unfitted for the position and that no one wished for his restitution. He
therefore declared the see vacant and held a synod to appoint a successor. To
his embarrassed delight, Baldwin proposed that he should be the candidate. He
accepted; and Evremar was consoled with the Archbishopric of Caesarea, which
had fortunately fallen vacant.

Gossip said that Arnulf had persuaded the King
to choose Gibelin because of his age. The Patriarchate would soon be vacant
again. And, indeed, Gibelin only lived for four more years: and on his death
Arnulf was, at last, elected without opposition to his throne.

Arnulf was, from Baldwin’s point of view, an
ideal Patriarch. In spite of trouble later on over the King’s remarriage, and
in spite of the hatred of many of his subordinates, he maintained his position.
He was undoubtedly corrupt. When his niece Emma made a satisfactory marriage
with Eustace Gamier, he endowed her with a valuable estate at Jericho which
belonged to the Holy Sepulchre. But he was active and efficient, and devoted to
the King. Thanks to him, the unworkable scheme envisaged by most of the
participants in the First Crusade, by which Jerusalem should be a theocracy,
with a monarch merely as a minister for defence, was finally and utterly
abandoned. He saw to it that the whole Church in Palestine shared his views,
even deposing the canons of the Holy Sepulchre whom Godfrey of Lorraine had
appointed, because he did not trust their loyalty. When the kingdom was
expanded by conquest, he fought hard to see that the civil and ecclesiastical
jurisdiction coincided, against the opposition of Pope Paschal, who, with his
disastrous predilection for the Norman princes of Antioch, defended the
historical but impracticable rights of the Antiochene see. Arnulf was not an
estimable person, but he was a valuable servant of the kingdom of Jerusalem.
Its great historian, William of Tyre, execrated his memory and besmirched his
name, unfairly, for he did much to consolidate the work of the First Crusade.

To Arnulf also, and to his master King Baldwin,
must be given the credit of the good relations that were established between
the Latin hierarchy and the native Christians. During his first tenure of the
Patriarchate in 1099, Arnulf had ejected the eastern sects from the Church of
the Holy Sepulchre and had despoiled them. But Daimbert was a worse enemy. His
policy was to banish all the native Christians not only from the Church itself
but from their monasteries and establishments in Jerusalem, whether they were
Orthodox, like the Greeks and the Georgians, or heretics, like the Armenians,
the Jacobites and the Nestorians. He also offended local propriety by
introducing women to serve in the Holy Places. Because of these enormities all
the lamps in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre went out on the eve of Easter,
1101, and the Sacred Fire would not descend from heaven to light them again
till the five dispossessed communities prayed together that the Franks might be
forgiven. Baldwin took heed of the lesson. He insisted that the wrongs of the
natives should be righted. The keys of the Sepulchre itself were restored to
the Greeks. Thenceforward he seems to have enjoyed the support of all the
Christians of Palestine. The higher clergy were all Franks, though there were
Greek canons at the Holy Sepulchre. The Orthodox natives accepted this; for
their own higher clergy had left the country in the troubled years just before
the Crusade. The Latin hierarchs were never liked; but local Orthodox
monasteries carried on without hindrance, and Orthodox pilgrims that visited
Palestine during the days of the Frankish kingdom found no cause for complaint
against the lay powers either on their own behalf or on behalf of their native
brothers. The heretic Churches seem to have been equally content. It was very
different from the position in the Frankish states of northern Syria, where
both Orthodox and heretic alike resented the Franks as oppressors.

1103: Siege of
Acre

The Egyptian defeat at Jaffa in 1102, and the
fiasco of the expedition in the spring of 1103 did not entirely exhaust al-Afdal’s
efforts. But it took him longer to raise another army. Baldwin used the respite
to strengthen his hold on the Palestinian sea-coast. Though he possessed the
towns on the coast from Jaffa up to Haifa, Moslem marauders haunted the roads
between them, in particular round the slopes of Mount Carmel. Even the road
from Jaffa to Jerusalem was unsafe, as the pilgrim Saewulf noted. From the
Egyptian-held ports of Tyre and Acre pirates would slip out to intercept
Christian merchantmen. In the late autumn of 1102 the ships that were
transporting home the pilgrims whose coming had saved Baldwin at Jaffa in May
were driven ashore by storms at various parts of the coast, some near Ascalon
and some between Tyre and Sidon. The passengers were either all slain or sold
in the slave-markets of Egypt. In the spring of 1103 Baldwin, who still had
some of the English ships to assist him, undertook the siege of Acre. The
garrison was about to surrender to him when twelve Fatimid galleys and a large
transport from Tyre and Sidon sailed into the port, laden with men and with
engines for firing Greek fire. Baldwin had to raise the siege. Later in the
summer Baldwin attempted to clear Mount Carmel of its robbers. He was only
partly successful; for in a skirmish he was severely wounded in the kidneys;
and for a while they despaired of his life. While he lay sick in Jerusalem
there was news of the double expedition of Taj al-Ajam and Ibn Qadus. But Taj
al-Ajam’s refusal to advance beyond Ascalon obliged Ibn Qadus to attempt the siege
of Jaffa alone. His efforts were half-hearted. As soon as Baldwin had recovered
sufficiently to lead an army down to the coast, the Egyptian fleet sailed away.