A History of the Crusades-Vol 3 (38 page)

King Henry of Cyprus died on 18 January
1253. As his son, Hugh II, was only a few months old, Queen Plaisance claimed
the regency of Cyprus and the titular regency of Jerusalem. The High Courts of
Cyprus confirmed her position there, but the mainland barons required her
attendance in person before they would recognize her. John of Ibelin, lord of
Arsuf, remained meanwhile as
bailli,
and Plaisance contemplated marrying
his youthful son Balian. In fact, King Louis continued to administer the
government.

1252: Frankish Alliance with the Assassins

There was no hope of a new Crusade from
Europe. Henry III of England, who had taken the Cross with many of his subjects
in the spring of 1250, induced the Pope to allow him to postpone any
expedition. Louis’s brothers refused to send help from France. There public
opinion was indignant but disillusioned. When news first arrived of the
disaster at Mansourah, a hysterical mass-movement of peasants and labourers,
who called themselves the Pastouraux and were led by a mysterious ‘Master of
Hungary’, swept through the country, holding meetings to denounce the Pope and
his clergy and vowing themselves to rescue the Christian King. The Queen-Regent
Blanche gave them her approval at first; but they became so disorderly that
they had to be suppressed. The French nobles contented themselves with bitter
comments against a Pope who preferred to preach a Crusade against the Christian
Imperialists rather than to send help to those who were struggling against the
infidel. Blanche went so far as to confiscate the property of any Royal vassal
who responded to the appeal of Innocent IV for a Crusade against King Conrad in
1251. But neither she nor her advisers ventured to send reinforcements to the
East.

In his search for foreign allies, King
Louis entered into the friendliest relations with the Assassins. Immediately
after the disaster at Damietta, their chief in Syria had sent to Acre to demand
to be paid for their neutrality, but was deterred by the firm answer that the
King gave to his envoys in the presence of the Grand Masters of the Orders. The
sect had particularly asked to be released from the obligation of paying a
tribute to the Hospital. Its next embassy was far humbler. It brought handsome
gifts for the King, with the request for a close alliance. Louis, who had
learned of the hostility of the Ismailian Assassins towards the orthodox Sunni
Moslems, encouraged their advances and sent Yves the Breton to arrange a
treaty. Yves was fascinated by the library kept by the sect at Masyad. He found
there an apocryphal sermon addressed by Christ to Saint Peter, who, the
sectaries told him, was the reincarnation of Abel, Noah and Abraham. A pact of mutual
defence was signed.

Louis’s main diplomatic ambition, however,
was to secure the friendship of the Assassin’s fiercest enemy, the Mongols.
Early in 1253 a report reached Acre that one of the Mongol princes, Sartaq, son
of Batu, had been converted to Christianity. Louis hastened to send two
Dominicans, William of Rubruck and Bartholomew of Cremona, to urge the Prince
to come to the aid of his fellow-Christians in Syria. But it was not within the
power of a junior Mongol prince to conclude so momentous an alliance. While the
Dominicans journeyed further into Asia to the Court of the Great Khan himself,
King Louis was obliged to leave Outremer. His mother, the Queen-Regent Blanche,
had died in November 1252; and her death was quickly followed by disorders. The
King of England began to make trouble, in spite of an oath to go on the
Crusade; nor would he support his bishops whom the Pope had charged to preach
the Crusade. Civil war broke out over the inheritance to the county of
Flanders, and all the great vassals of France were growing restive. Louis’s
first duty was to his own kingdom. Reluctantly he prepared to go home. He set
sail from Acre on 24 April 1254. His boat was nearly wrecked off the coast of
Cyprus; but the Queen promised a silver ship to the shrine of Saint Nicholas at
Varangeville, and the storm abated. A few days later the Queen’s presence of
mind saved the boat from destruction by fire. In July the royal party landed at
Hyeres, in the territory of the King’s brother, Charles of Anjou.

1254: Effects of Louis’s Departure

Saint Louis’s Crusade had involved the
Christian East in a terrible military catastrophe, and, though his four years’
sojourn at Acre did much to repair the damage, the loss of man-power could
never quite be recovered. He had the noblest character of all the great
Crusaders; but it might have been better for Outremer had he never left France.
And his failure struck deeper. He had been a good and God-fearing man, and yet
God had led him into disaster. In earlier days the misadventures of the
Crusaders could be explained as due punishment for their crimes and their
vices, but so facile a theory was now no longer tenable. Was it possible that
the whole movement was frowned upon by God?

Though the French King’s coming to the
East had been unfortunate, his departure brought the risk of immediate harm. He
left behind him as his representative Geoffrey of Sargines, who was given the
official post of Seneschal to the kingdom. The
bailli
was now John of
Ibelin, Count of Jaffa, who succeeded his cousin John of Arsuf in the office in
1254 but returned it to him in 1256. It is possible that John of Arsuf was
absent in Cyprus during these years, advising Queen Plaisance, who continued as
legal regent of both kingdoms. The death of Conrad of Germany in Italy in May
1254, gave the title of King of Jerusalem to his two-year-old son Conradin, whose
nominal rights were scrupulously remembered by the lawyers of Outremer. Just
before his departure King Louis had arranged a truce with Damascus, to last
from 21 February 1254, for two years, six months and forty days. An-Nasir Yusuf
of Damascus was well aware now of the Mongol peril and had no wish for war with
the Franks. Aibek of Egypt equally wished to avoid a large war, and in 1255
made a ten years’ truce with the Franks. But he expressly excluded Jaffa from
the truce, as he hoped to secure it as a port for his Palestinian province.
There were raids and counter-raids across the frontier. In January 1256,
Geoffrey of Sargines and John of Jaffa captured a huge caravan of beasts. When
the Mameluk governor of Jerusalem led an expedition in March to punish the
raiders, he was defeated and killed. Aibek, who had been having difficulties
with his generals, including Baibars, made a new treaty with Damascus, again on
the Caliph’s mediation, and retro-ceded Palestine; but both Moslem powers
renewed their truces with the Franks, to last ten years and to cover the
territory of Jaffa.

1256: The War of Saint Sabas

This forbearance shown by Cairo and
Damascus, dictated to them by their growing fear of the Mongols, saved the
Franks from the deserved results of a civil war that began soon after King
Louis’s departure. The most active elements now in the cities of Outremer were
the various Italian merchants. The three great republics of Genoa, Venice and
Pisa, with their colonies in every Levantine seaport, dominated Mediterranean
trade. Apart from the banking enterprises of the Templars, their commerce
provided for Outremer most of its revenues and was almost as beneficial to the
Moslem princes, whose periodical willingness to sign a truce was largely
induced by the fear of interrupting this source of profit. But the republics
were bitter rivals. Trouble between Pisa and Genoa had delayed Louis’s
embarkation from Cyprus in 1249. In 1250, after the murder of a Genoese
merchant by a Venetian, there was fighting in the streets of Acre. When Louis
had left for Europe trouble broke out again. The Venetian and Genoese quarters
in Acre were separated by the hill of Montjoie, which belonged to the Genoese
except for its highest spur, crowned by the ancient monastery of Saint Sabas.
Both colonies claimed the monastery; and one morning early in 1256, while
lawyers still disputed the case, the Genoese took possession of it and, on the
Venetians protesting, rushed armed men down the hill into the Venetian quarter.
The Pisans, with whom they had some pre-concerted arrangement, hurried to join
them; and the Venetians, taken by surprise, saw their houses sacked, together
with their ships that were tied up at the quay. It was only with difficulty
that they drove the invaders out again. The monastery and many of their ships
were lost to them.

At that moment, Philip of Montfort, lord
of Toron and Tyre, who had long contested the title of the Venetians to certain
villages near Tyre, thought it opportune to turn them out of the third of Tyre
that was theirs by the treaty made when Tyre was captured in 1124, and of their
possessions in the suburbs. With the Genoese dispute on their hands, they could
not prevent him; but when the government of Genoa, which did not wish to start
a war with Venice, offered to mediate, they were too angry to accept the offer.
The Venetian Consul at Acre, Marco Giustiniani, was a skilful diplomat. Philip’s
high-handed action shocked his Ibelin cousins, who were all sticklers for legal
correctitude. The
bailli,
John of Arsuf, suspected that the Montforts
intended to declare Tyre independent of the government at Acre. Though he had
been on cold terms with the Venetians, chiefly because of their chilly attitude
towards Louis’s Crusade, he was won by Giustiniani over to their side. John of
Jaffa was already on bad terms with the Genoese, one of whom had tried to
assassinate him. The Fraternities of Acre, alarmed lest Philip should make Tyre
a successful commercial rival to their own city, added their sympathy and help
to Giustiniani, who next persuaded the Pisans that the Genoese were selfish and
untrustworthy allies and secured their support. The Marseillais merchants, who
were always jealous of the Genoese, also joined him; whereat the Catalan
merchants, who were jealous of the Marseillais, took the other part. The Temple
and the Teutonic Knights supported the Venetians, and the Hospital the Genoese.
Further north, the Embriaco family, who reigned at Jebail, remembered its
Genoese origin. Its head, Henry, defying the specific prohibition of his
suzerain, Bohemond VI of Antioch Tripoli, with whom he had quarrelled, sent
troops to help the Genoese in Acre. Bohemond himself tried to maintain
neutrality, but his sympathies were with the Venetians and his feud with the
Embriaco clan forced him into the conflict. His sister, the Queen-Regent
Plaisance, could do nothing. The only man in Outremer that she could trust was
Geoffrey of Sargines; and he, as a stranger, had little influence and no
material power. The civil war began to involve the whole society of Outremer.
It was no longer a case of the native barons combining against an alien master,
as in the days of Frederick II. Petty family disputes exacerbated the struggle.
Philip of Montfort’s mother and Henry of Jebail’s wife had been born Ibelins.
Bohemond VI’s grandmother had been an Embriaco. But ties of kinship meant
nothing now.

The Venetian government had been swift to take
action. As soon as the Genoese learned that the Pisans had deserted them, they
overran the Pisan quarter in Acre, which gave them command of the inner port.
But they barely had time to stretch a chain across the entrance before a large
fleet under the Venetian admiral Lorenzo Tiepolo sailed up. His ships burst
through the chain and landed men on the quay. There was a bloodthirsty battle
in the streets. The Genoese were at last driven back into their quarter,
protected by the Hospitallers’ quarter just to the north. The monastery of
Saint Sabas was occupied by the Venetians, but they could not dislodge the
Genoese or the Hospitallers from their own buildings.

1258: Queen Plaisance at Acre

In February 1258, Plaisance made an
attempt to assert her authority. She crossed from Cyprus with her five-year-old
son, King Hugh, to Tripoli to her brother Bohemond, who escorted her to Acre.
The High Court of the kingdom was summoned; and Bohemond asked it to confirm
the claim of the King of Cyprus, as next heir after the absentee Conradin, to
be recognized as depository of the royal power, and of his mother and guardian
as regent. But Bohemond’s hope that his sister’s authority and presence would
still the civil war was disappointed. As soon as the Ibelins admitted Hugh’s
and Plaisance’s claims, always excepting the rights of King Conradin, and the
Templars and Teutonic Knights concurred, the Hospitallers at once declared that
nothing could be decided in Conradin’s absence, using the argument that had
been overruled in 1243. The royal family were thus drawn into the civil war,
the Venetian party supporting Plaisance and her son, and, by the cynical irony
of history, Genoa, the Hospital and Philip of Montfort, all of them in the past
bitter opponents of Frederick II, becoming the advocates of the Hohenstaufen. A
majority vote acknowledged Plaisance as regent. John of Arsuf formally resigned
his office of
bailli
into her hands and was reappointed by her. She then
returned with her brother to Tripoli and thence to Cyprus, after instructing
her
bailli
to act sternly against the rebels.

The Patriarch of Jerusalem was James
Pantaleon, the son of a shoemaker of Troyes. He had been appointed in December
1255, and only reached Acre in the summer of 1260, when the civil war had
begun. Though he had recently shown great ability in dealing with the heathen
in Baltic lands, the situation in Outremer was beyond him. He correctly gave
his support to Queen Plaisance, and appealed to the Pope to take action in Italy.
Pope Alexander IV summoned delegates from the three republics to his court at
Viterbo and ordered an immediate armistice. Two Venetian and two Pisan
plenipotentiaries were to go to Syria on a Genoese ship, and two Genoese on a
Venetian ship, and the whole affair was to be settled. The envoys set out in
July 1258, only to hear on the journey that they were too late. The Republic of
Genoa had already sent out a fleet under the admiral Rosso della Turca, which
arrived off Tyre in June and there joined the Genoese squadrons in the Levant.
On 23 June the combined fleet of some forty-eight galleys set sail from Tyre,
while a regiment of Philip of Montfort’s soldiers marched down the coast. The
Venetians and their Pisan allies had about thirty-eight galleys, under Tiepolo.
The decisive battle took place off Acre on 24 June. Tiepolo proved himself the
better tactician. After a fierce struggle the Genoese lost twenty-four ships
and 1700 men and retired in disorder. Only a sudden breeze from the south
enabled the survivors to return safely to Tyre. Meanwhile the militia of Acre
halted Philip’s advance, and the Genoese quarter within the city was overrun.
As a result of their defeat the Genoese decided to abandon Acre altogether and
establish their headquarters at Tyre.