A History of the Crusades-Vol 2 (52 page)

Aleppo still refused to open its gates to
Saladin; so he attacked and captured the fortresses between the city and the Euphrates,
Biza’a and Menbij, then laid siege to Azaz, the great fortress that commanded
the road to the north. There, once again, he nearly perished at the hands of
one of the Assassins, who entered the tent where he was resting. Only the cap
of mail that he wore under his turban saved him. Azaz capitulated on 21 June.
On 24 June he appeared again before Aleppo. But now he agreed to come to terms.
As-Salih and the Ortoqid princes of Hisn Kaifa and Mardin who had supported him
agreed to cede to Saladin all the land that he had conquered; and they and
Saladin swore solemnly to keep the peace. When the treaty had been signed on 29
July, as-Salih’s little sister came out to visit Saladin’s camp. He asked her
kindly what gift she would like; and she answered: ‘The Castle of Azaz.’
Saladin thereupon gave it back to her brother.

Though Aleppo was still unconquered, as-Salih
and his cousins were cowed. Saladin could turn to deal with the Assassins and
the Franks. He entered the Nosairi mountains to lay siege to Masyaf, the chief
Assassin stronghold. Sheikh Sinan was away; and as he hurried home, Saladin’s
soldiers could have captured him had not some mysterious power restrained them.
There was magic about. Saladin himself was troubled by terrible dreams. One
night he woke suddenly to find on his bed some hot cakes of a type that only
the Assassins baked, and with them a poisoned dagger and a piece of paper on
which a threatening verse was written. Saladin believed that the Old Man of the
Mountains had himself been in the tent. His nerves gave way. He sent a
messenger to Sinan asking to be forgiven for his sins and promising, in return
for a safe-conduct, henceforward to leave the Assassins undisturbed. The Old
Man pardoned him, and the treaty between them was kept.

With the Franks no such treaty could be made.
There had been a truce in 1175, when Saladin, in order to be able to deal with
Saif ed-Din, had released the Christian prisoners in his possession.
But
next year the Franks broke the truce. While Saladin was besieging Aleppo,
Raymond of Tripoli invaded the Beqa’a from the Buqaia, while the royal army
under Humphrey of Toron and the fifteen-year old King came up from the south.
Raymond seems to have suffered a slight defeat at the hands of Ibn al-Muqaddam,
now governor of Baalbek; but the Christians made a junction and severely
defeated Saladin’s brother Turan Shah and the militia of Damascus. They retired
again as soon as Saladin approached from the north. He did not follow after
them. He was anxious to return to Egypt. Leaving Turan Shah in command of a
strong army in Syria, he once more slipped through Oultrejourdain and arrived
at Cairo at the end of September.

1176: Sibylla s
first Marriage

For a year there was a respite from fighting,
for which both sides were thankful. While Saladin reorganized Egypt and rebuilt
and refortified Cairo, the government at Jerusalem faced its main internal
problem. In 1177 King Baldwin came of age, at sixteen, and Raymond gave up the
regency. But the King’s leprosy was growing worse; he surely could not live for
many years. To provide for the succession the Princess Sibylla must be married.
In 1175, probably at the suggestion of Louis VII of France, Baldwin had invited
William Long-Sword, eldest son of the Marquis of Montferrat, to come to
Palestine and accept Sibylla’s hand. It was a good choice. William was
well-connected. His father was the richest prince in northern Italy. He was
cousin both of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and of King Louis. He himself,
though no longer young, was gallant and handsome enough to please the gay
Princess. He landed at Sidon in October 1176. On his marriage to Sibylla a few
days later he was given the county of Ascalon and Jaffa and generally accepted
as heir to the throne. But the hopes based on his vigour and his high
connections were vain. Early in 1177 he fell ill of malaria. His illness
dragged on for some months; and in June he died. His widow gave birth to a son
in the late summer, an heir to the kingdom but one that made a regency inevitable.
The King’s envoys scoured Europe once more to find a second husband for the
Princess.

His envoys also scoured Europe to find allies
against Saladin; for the lull in the war would certainly not last long. But the
princes of the West were fully occupied in their own affairs; and even
Constantinople could not provide the same help as before. The year 1176 was a
turning-point in the history of Byzantium. The Seldjuk Sultan, Kilij Arslan II,
had grown restive against the Emperor. While Nur ed-Din lived he had been kept
under control; for Nur ed-Din had intervened in Anatolia in 1173, to prevent
the Seldjuks from swallowing the lands of the Danishmends. Nur ed-Din’s general
Abdalmassih, his brother Qutb ed-Din’s former minister at Mosul, restored
Caesarea-Mazacha to the Danishmend Dhu’l-Nun and himself remained with a
garrison in Sivas. Kilij Arslan’s brother Shahinshah was at the same time
confirmed in the possession of Ankara, where the Emperor had installed him some
years before. But Nur ed-Din’s death removed this restraint on Kilij Arslan. By
the end of 1174 Abdalmassih was back in Mosul, Dhu’l-Nun and Shahinshah were in
exile at Constantinople, and Kilij Arslan was in possession of their lands. He
then turned against Byzantium. In the summer of 1176 Manuel determined to deal
once and for all with the Turks. Some slight successes the previous summer had
encouraged him to write to the Pope to announce that the time was propitious
for a new Crusade. Now he would make the road across Anatolia safe for ever. While
an army under his cousin Andronicus Vatatses was sent through Paphlagonia to
restore Dhu’l Nun to his territory, Manuel himself led the great Imperial army,
swelled by all the reinforcements that he could muster, against the Sultan’s
capital at Konya. Kilij Arslan, hearing of the expedition, sent to ask for
peace. But Manuel no longer had faith in his word.

1176: Battle of
Myriocephalum

Early in September the Paphlagonian expedition
came to disaster before the walls of Niksar. The head of Vatatses was sent as a
trophy to the Sultan. A few days later Manuel’s army moved out of the Meander
valley, past the fortress that he had built at Sublaeum the year before, and
round the top of the Lake of Egridir into the hills that led up toward the
great range of the Sultan Dagh. Heavy wagons containing siege-machinery and
provender slowed its progress; and the Turks had devastated the land through
which it must travel. The road led through a pass called Tzibritze by the
Greeks, with the ruined fort of Myriocephalum standing at the far end. There
the Turkish army was gathered visible on the bare hill-side. Manuel’s more
experienced generals warned him not to take his lumbering army through the
difficult passage in face of the enemy; but the younger princes trusted in their
prowess and were eager for glory. They persuaded him to march on. The Sultan
had gathered troops from all his allies and vassals. His army was as large as
Manuel’s, less well-armed but more mobile. On 17 September 1176 the vanguard
forced its way through the pass. The Turks yielded before them, to swing round
into the hills and charge down the slopes into the pass as the main Imperial
army pressed along the narrow road. The Emperor’s brother-in-law, Baldwin of
Antioch, at the head of a cavalry regiment, counter-charged up the hill into
the enemy; but he and all his men were killed. The soldiers in the valley saw
his defeat. They were so tightly packed together that they could scarcely move
their hands. Brave leadership might still have saved the day. But Manuel’s
courage deserted him. He was the first to panic and fled back out of the pass.
The whole army now tried to follow him. But in the chaos the transport wagons
blocked the road. Few of the soldiers could escape. The Turks, waving the head
of Vatatses before them, massacred as they pleased till darkness fell. Then the
Sultan sent a herald to the Emperor as he tried to rally his troops in the
plain, and offered him peace on condition that he retired at once and
dismantled his two new fortresses of Sublaeum and Dorylaeum. Manuel gratefully
accepted the terms. His unconquered vanguard came back safely through the pass,
and joined up with the pathetic remnant that Manuel now led home-wards,
harassed by Turks who could not understand Kilij Arslan’s forbearance. It is
probable that the Sultan did not comprehend the completeness of his victory.
His main interest was now in the East. He was not at the moment interested in
expanding westward. All that he wanted there was security.

Manuel, however, was well aware of the
significance of the disaster, which he himself compared to that of Manzikert,
just over a century before. The great war-machine that his grandfather and
father had built up had suddenly been destroyed. It would take many years to
rebuild it; and indeed it was never rebuilt. There were troops enough left to
defend the frontiers and even to win a few petty victories in the next three
years. But nevermore would the Emperor be able to march into Syria and dictate
his will at Antioch. Nor was there anything left of his great prestige which
had in the past deterred Nur ed-Din at the height of his power from pressing
too far against Christendom. For the Franks the disaster at Myriocephalum was
almost as fateful as for Byzantium. Despite all the mutual mistrust and
misunderstanding, they knew that the existence of the mighty Empire was an
ultimate safeguard against the triumph of Islam. At the moment, when the ruler
of northern Syria was the weak boy as-Salih, they did not notice the importance
of the battle. But when William of Tyre visited Constantinople three years
later and learnt fully what had happened, he realized the dangers ahead.

1177:
Philip
of Flanders in Palestine

Though Manuel’s army had perished, his fleet
was still strong, and he was ready to use it against Saladin. Once again, in
1177, he promised to send it in support of a Frankish attack against Egypt.
During that summer there had been rumours of a new Crusade from the West; both
Louis VII and Henry II of England were said to have taken the Cross. But only
one western potentate appeared in Palestine. In September, while King Baldwin
was recovering from a bad attack of malaria, Philip, Count of Flanders, landed
with a considerable following at Acre. He was the son of Count Thierry and of
Sibylla of Anjou; and the Franks, remembering his father’s four Crusades and
his mother’s pious love of the Holy Land, hoped great things of him. The news
of his coming brought four high-born ambassadors from the Emperor, offering
money for an Egyptian expedition; and on their heels a Byzantine fleet of
seventy well-fitted men-of-war arrived off Acre. King Baldwin, too ill to fight
himself, hastened to offer him the regency if he would lead an expedition into
Egypt. But Philip hesitated and prevaricated. He had come, he said first,
merely for the pilgrimage, next that he could not assume such responsibilities
alone; and when the King suggested that Reynald of Chatillon should be joint
leader, he criticized Reynald’s character. It was pointed out to him that the
Byzantine fleet was there ready to co-operate. He merely asked why he should
oblige the Greeks. At last he revealed that his only object in coming to
Palestine had been to marry off his two cousins, the Princesses Sibylla and
Isabella, to the two young sons of his favourite vassal, Robert of Bethune.
This was more than the barons of Jerusalem could bear. ‘We thought you had come
to fight for the Cross and you merely talk of marriages’, cried Baldwin of
Ibelin when the Count made his demand before the Court. Thwarted and furious,
Philip prepared to depart again. The wrangling had shocked the Emperor’s
ambassadors. It was clear that there was going to be no expedition to Egypt.
They waited about a month, then disgustedly sailed away with the fleet, to give
warning to their master of the incurable frivolity of the Franks.

The Count of Flanders left Jerusalem for
Tripoli at the end of October. Perhaps his conscience now troubled him, for he
agreed to accompany Count Raymond on an expedition against Hama; and King
Baldwin provided troops from the kingdom to reinforce him. While a small
contingent raided the territory of Homs, only to fall into an ambush and lose
all the booty that it had collected, the two Counts laid siege to Hama, whose
governor was seriously ill. But when troops came up from Damascus, they
retired, having achieved nothing. From Tripoli Count Philip moved on to
Antioch, and there agreed to help Prince Bohemond attack the town of Harenc.
Harenc had belonged to as-Salih’s former minister Gumushtekin; but he had
quarrelled with his master, who had put him to death. His vassals at Harenc had
therefore revolted against as-Salih, but on the Franks’ approach their mutiny
ended. Bohemond and Philip half-heartedly laid siege to the town. Their mining
operations were unsuccessful; and as-Salih was able to send a detachment
through their lines to reinforce the garrison. When as-Salih sent envoys to
point out to them that Saladin, the real enemy both of Aleppo and Antioch, was
back in Syria, they agreed to raise the siege. Philip of Flanders returned to
Jerusalem for Easter, then took a ship from Lattakieh for Constantinople.

1177:
Saladin
s Defeat at Montgisard

Saladin had crossed the frontier from Egypt on
18 November. His intelligence service was always excellent. He knew that the
Franco-Byzantine alliance had collapsed and that the Count of Flanders was away
in the north. He decided on a sudden counterattack up the coast into Palestine.
The Templars summoned all the available knights of the Order to defend Gaza;
but the Egyptian army marched straight on to Ascalon. The old Constable
Humphrey of Toron was seriously ill, and the King had only recently risen from
a sickbed. With the troops that he could muster, five hundred knights in all,
and with the Bishop of Bethlehem bearing the True Cross, Baldwin hurried to
Ascalon and entered the fortress just before the enemy came up. He had summoned
every man of arms in the kingdom to join him there; but the first levies were
intercepted by Saladin and taken prisoner. Leaving a small force to contain the
King in Ascalon, Saladin marched on towards Jerusalem. For once, Saladin was
over-confident. There was no enemy left between him and the Christian capital;
so he loosened the discipline of his troops and allowed them to wander round
the countryside pillaging. With the courage of despair, Baldwin managed to send
a message to the Templars telling them to abandon Gaza and join him. When they
came near he broke out of Ascalon and rode with all his men up the coast to
Ibelin and then swung inland. On 25 November the Egyptian army was crossing a
ravine near the castle of Montgisard, a few miles south-east of Ramleh, when
suddenly the Frankish knights fell on it coming from the north. It was a
complete surprise. Some of Saladin’s troops were absent foraging; and he had no
time to regroup the remainder. Many of them fled before the first shock.
Saladin himself was only saved by his personal Mameluke Guard. The regiments
that held their ground were almost annihilated. Among the Christians the King
was in the forefront. The bravery of the Ibelin brothers, Baldwin and Balian,
and of Raymond’s stepsons, Hugh and William of Galilee, helped on the victory;
and Saint George himself was seen fighting by their side.

Within a few hours the Egyptian army was in
full flight home-wards, abandoning all the booty and the prisoners that it had
taken. The soldiers even threw away their weapons in order to flee the quicker.
Saladin managed to restore some measure of order; but the crossing of the Sinai
desert was painful, with Bedouins harassing the almost defenceless fugitives.
From the Egyptian frontier Saladin sent messengers on dromedaries to Cairo to
assure any would-be rebels that he was still alive; and his return to Cairo was
announced by pigeon-post all over Egypt. But his prestige had suffered
terribly.

It had been a great victory and it had saved
the kingdom for the moment. But it had not in the long run changed the
situation. The resources of Egypt are limitless; whereas the Franks were still
short of men. Had it been possible for King Baldwin to pursue the enemy into
Egypt or to make a swift attack upon Damascus, he might have crushed Saladin’s
power, but without help from outside he could not risk his own small army on an
offensive. Instead, he decided to erect strong fortifications along the
Damascene frontier, where the loss of Banyas had upset the defensive system of
the kingdom. While Humphrey of Toron fortified the hill of Hunin, on the road
from Banyas to Toron, the King set about building a castle on the upper Jordan
between Lake Huleh and the Sea of Galilee, to command the ford by which Jacob
had wrestled with the angel, a ford known also as the Ford of Sorrows. The land
on either side was inhabited by Moslem peasants and herdsmen, some owing
allegiance to Damascus, some to the Christians. They passed to and fro freely
across the frontier, which was marked only by a great oak tree; and the Franks
had undertaken never to fortify the crossing. Baldwin had wished to abide by the
treaty and build a castle elsewhere; but the Templars overruled him. The local
Moslems complained of the breach of faith to Saladin, who offered Baldwin first
60,000, then 100,000 gold pieces to give up the work. On the King’s refusal, he
vowed to take action himself.

1179: Death of
Humphrey of Toron

After his disaster at Montgisard he had
remained for several months in Egypt, till he was sure that everything was well
under control. In the late spring of 1178 he returned to Syria and spent the
rest of the year at Damascus. The only warfare of the year consisted of a few
raids and counter-raids. Farther north there was peace between Antioch and
Aleppo, and an alliance between Antioch and Armenia, whose renegade Prince Mleh
had been overthrown soon after Nur ed-Din’s death by his nephew Roupen III.
Roupen was a friend of the Franks, whom he had assisted at the ineffectual
siege of Harenc. Bohemond III also sought the friendship of the Emperor, and in
1177 married as his second wife a relative of Manuel’s, called Theodora.

In the spring of 1179, when the seasonal
movement of flocks began, King Baldwin set out to round up the sheep that would
be passing towards Banyas from the plains of Damascus. Saladin sent his nephew
Faruk-Shah to see what was happening. He was to inform his uncle by pigeon-post
of the direction taken by the Franks. On 10 April Faruk-Shah suddenly came upon
the enemy in a narrow valley in the forest of Banyas. The King was taken by
surprise. He was only able to extricate his army owing to the heroism of the
old Constable, Humphrey of Toron, who held up the Moslems with his bodyguard
till the royal army had escaped. Humphrey was mortally wounded; he died at his
new castle at Hunin on 22 April. Even the Moslems paid tribute to his
character. His death was a terrible blow to the kingdom; for he had been its
one universally respected elder statesman.

Saladin followed up the victory by laying siege
to the castle at Jacob’s Ford. But the defence was so vigorous that he retired
after a few days to encamp before Banyas. From there he sent raiders into
Galilee and through the Lebanon to destroy the harvests between Sidon and
Beirut. King Baldwin gathered together the forces of the kingdom and summoned
Raymond of Tripoli to join him. They marched up through Tiberias and Safed to
Toron. There they learnt that Faruk-Shah and a party of raiders were coming
back from the coast laden with booty. They moved north to intercept them in the
valley of Marj Ayun, the Valley of Springs, between the Litani river and the
upper Jordan. But Saladin had noticed from an observation post on a hill north
of Banyas that the flocks on the opposite side of the Jordan were scattering in
panic. He realized that the Frankish army was passing by and set out in
pursuit. On 10 June 1179, while the royal army routed Faruk-Shah at Marj Ayun,
Count Raymond and the Templars moved on a little ahead towards the Jordan. By
the entrance of the valley they came on Saladin’s army. The Templars joined
battle at once; but Saladin’s counter-attack drove them back in confusion on
Baldwin’s troops. These, too, were forced back; and before long the whole
Christian army was in flight. The King and Count Raymond were able with part of
their men to cross the Litani and shelter at the great castle of Beaufort, high
above the western bank. All the men left beyond the river were massacred or
later rounded up. Some of the fugitives did not stop at Beaufort but made
straight for the coast. On the way they met Reynald of Sidon with his local
troops. They told him that he was too late; so he turned back, though had he
advanced to the Litani he might have saved many other fugitives.

Amongst Saladin’s prisoners were Odo of
Saint-Amand, Grand Master of the Temple, whose rashness had been the prime
cause of the rout, Baldwin of Ibelin and Hugh of Galilee. Hugh was soon
ransomed by his mother, the Countess of Tripoli, for 55,000 Tyrian dinars. For
Baldwin of Ibelin Saladin demanded 150,000 dinars, a King’s ransom, so highly
did he rate Baldwin’s importance. After a few months Baldwin was released on
the return of a thousand Moslem prisoners and on his promise to find the money.
It was proposed to exchange Odo for an important Moslem prisoner; but the Grand
Master was too proud to admit that anyone could be of equal value to him. He
remained in a dungeon at Damascus till his death the following year.

1180: Two Years
’
Truce

Saladin did not follow up his victory by an
invasion of Palestine, perhaps because he had heard of the arrival there of a
great company of knights from France, led by Henry II of Champagne, Peter of
Courtenay and Philip, Bishop of Beauvais. Instead, he attacked Baldwin’s castle
at Jacob’s Ford. After a siege of five days, from 24 to 29 August, he succeeded
in mining the walls and forcing an entrance. The defenders were put to death
and the castle rased to the ground. The French visitors would not go out to try
to save the castle but soon returned home. Once more the Crusaders from the
West had been utterly ineffectual.

After the Egyptian fleet had carried out a
successful raid in October on the shipping in the very port of Acre, and after
a great Moslem foray into Galilee early in the new year, King Baldwin sent to
ask Saladin for a truce. Saladin agreed. There had been a terrible drought
throughout the winter and early spring; and the whole of Syria was faced with
famine. No one desired raids that might damage the meagre harvests. And Saladin
had probably decided that the conquest of Aleppo should precede the conquest of
Jerusalem. A two-years’ truce was fixed by a treaty signed by representatives
of Baldwin and of Saladin in May 1180. Tripoli was excluded from the truce; but
after the Egyptian navy had raided the port of Tortosa and Saladin had been
checked in a raid on the Buqaia, he made a similar treaty with Raymond. In the
autumn he marched northwards to the Euphrates, where the Ortoqid prince, Nur
ed-Din of Hisn Kaifa, who had become his ally, had quarrelled with Kilij Arslan
the Seldjuk. Nur ed-Din had married the Sultan’s daughter, but neglected her in
favour of a dancing-girl. On 2 October 1180 Saladin held a congress near
Samosata; the Ortoqid princes were there and envoys from Kilij Arslan, from
Saif ed-din of Mosul and from Roupen of Armenia. They solemnly swore to keep
peace with one another for two years to come.

King Baldwin spent the respite in an attempt to
build up a Christian front against Islam. William of Tyre, Archbishop since
1175, went to Rome to a Lateran council in 1179 and on his way back visited
Constantinople during the last days of the year. The Emperor Manuel was as
courteous and friendly as ever; but William could see that he was a dying man.
He had never recovered from the shock of the battle of Myriocephalum. But he
still showed great interest in Syria. William stayed there for seven months. He
was present at the great ceremonies when Manuel’s daughter Maria, a spinster of
twenty-eight, married Rainier of Montferrat, Sibylla’s brother-in-law, and
Manuel’s son, Alexius, aged ten, married the Princess Agnes of France, aged
nine. He returned with Imperial envoys as far as Antioch. The Armenian Prince
Roupen was eager to strengthen his alliance with the Franks. Early in 1181 he
came on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and there he married the Lady Isabella of
Toron, the daughter of Stephanie of Oultrejourdain. Even the Syrian Jacobites
proclaimed their loyalty to the united Christian cause when their Patriarch,
the historian Michael, visited Jerusalem and had a long interview with the
King.

1180: Sibylla
and Baldwin of Ibelin

There were hopes, too, of an ally from the
Farther East. Since 1150 a letter purporting to be written by that great
potentate Prester John to the Emperor Manuel had been circulating through
western Europe. Though it was almost certainly the forgery of a German bishop, its
account of the Priest-King’s wealth and piety was too good not to be believed.
In 1177 the Pope sent his doctor Philip with a message asking for information
and for aid. It seems that Philip ended his journey in Abyssinia; but it had no
concrete result.

But still no powerful knight came from the
West, not even to accept the offer of the hand of Princess Sibylla and the
succession to the throne. Frederick of Tyre, when he was in Rome, had sent to
Hugh III of Burgundy, of the royal Capetian line, to beg him to accept the
candidature. Hugh agreed at first, but preferred to remain in France.
Meanwhile, Sibylla herself had fallen in love with Baldwin of Ibelin. The
family of Ibelin, though its origins had been modest, was now in the forefront
of the Palestinian nobility. On the death of Balian the Old, the founder of the
family, Ibelin itself was given to the Hospitallers; but Ramleh passed to his
eldest son Hugh, and on Hugh’s death to his brother Baldwin, who had married
but repudiated, on the convenient excuse of kinship, the heiress of Beisan. The
youngest brother, Balian, was now the husband of Queen Maria Comnena, and lord
of her dower-town of Nablus. Baldwin and Balian were the most influential of
all the local nobles; and despite his undistinguished pedigree Baldwin’s
marriage to Sibylla would have been popular throughout the land. Before any
betrothal was arranged, Baldwin was captured at Marj Ayun. Sibylla wrote to him
to his jail to assure him of her love. But when he was released she told him coldly
that she could not contemplate marriage while he still owed a vast ransom. Her
argument was reasonable, if discouraging; so Baldwin, not knowing how to raise
the money, journeyed to Constantinople and begged it from the Emperor. Manuel,
with his love of generous gestures, paid it all. Baldwin came back triumphant
to Palestine in the early spring of 1180, only to find Sibylla betrothed to
another man.