Only 300 knights and some 2,000 foot-soldiers chose to remain in the Holy Land after the capture of Jerusalem in 1099. These men represented roughly six per cent of the knights and only four per cent of the other troops that are believed to have set out in 1096. From among the remaining nobleman, the leaders of the crusade elected Godfrey de Bouillon as the man to command those willing to stay in the Near East. Although the idea of crowning Godfrey king was mooted, according to legend, he refused with words to the effect that it would be inappropriate for any man to wear a crown of gold where Christ had worn a crown of thorns. He chose to call himself ‘Protector of the Holy Sepulchre’ instead.
Regardless of his title, his task remained the same: to ensure that the vast effort and tremendous sacrifices of the First Crusade had not been in vain. He and his men had to devise a means of establishing lasting Christian control of Jerusalem. In other words, they had to create a viable and sustainable state that was militarily defensible against myriad enemies and economically robust enough to rebuild and restore neglected and damaged holy shrines and shattered infrastructure in anticipation of thousands of pilgrims. Such a state needed ports, agricultural land, a sound tax base and a powerful army. These goals required expansion beyond Jerusalem and the narrow corridor to the port of Jaffa that the men of the First Crusade had secured. In short, Godfrey needed to expand the territory he controlled to fulfil his mission of ‘Protector of the Holy Sepulchre’. Yet the men remaining with him were too few to defend even what they had.
The situation, however, was not as desperate as it seemed. While only 300 knights and 2,000 fighting men of the crusading host remained with Godfrey, he could call upon the support of a native population that was overwhelmingly Christian.17 These inhabitants had greeted the crusaders as liberators. Godfrey understood it was essential to retain their loyalty and harness their talents and energy.
The history of the crusader states shows that the Latin rulers proved extraordinarily adept at doing exactly that. The native Christians were not only free of the tax burdens and humiliations imposed by Muslim rule but also had opportunities to advance and prosper in the expanding crusader states. They played important roles in the administration and military and engaged successfully in trade, industry and agriculture. Over the years, many native Christians obtained wealth and power, while even those less prominent benefitted from the economic boom that Latin control of the Levant triggered. Yet, in 1100, all that was in the future, and the records are silent on what Godfrey did in his one year of rule to gain the support of the native population.
One fact, however, should be neither overlooked nor underestimated: Godfrey’s crusaders were mostly, if not exclusively, male. Of the roughly 2,300 men who chose to settle in the Holy Land, some may have chosen a life of clerical celibacy, but it is safe to assume the majority did not. Rather, they decided to ‘settle’, that is, to take up permanent residency and follow peaceful pursuits.
To foster and encourage this, Godfrey introduced feudalism. As feudal overlord, he gave land to men in exchange for military service (i.e. enfeoffed them). Notably, the majority of the bestowed holdings were not knights’ but sergeants’ fiefs. The men given land to till were not required to render knight’s service with horse, lance and sword in wartime but rather to fight on foot as ‘sergeants’ armed with a pike or bow. In short, the commoners who had fought their way to Jerusalem beside the noble and knightly crusaders were recognized as brothers-in-arms and grated land to hold in their own right, a striking privilege in the medieval world. As fief-holders they were free men and referred to consistently as ‘burghers’.
Whether knights or sergeants, holding a fief entailed working the land, and agriculture in the twelfth century was a family business. In short, these men needed wives. Some may have left wives behind in Europe whom they sent for, but most of the men who chose to remain in the Holy Land were bachelors or widowers. Since the local population was Christian, there was no religious or legal barrier to marriage with a native woman.
Marrying a local woman had advantages. First, it embedded the crusader in an existing family network with brothers-in-law, cousins, uncles, nephews, et al., who might contribute to making the fief viable. Also, the native population was familiar with the region’s climate, crops, predators and other hazards. Intermarriage with the local population thus enabled settlers to adjust more rapidly to the unfamiliar environment in which they found themselves. The archaeological record demonstrates that settlers generally chose to locate close to the native population, often sharing churches, wells, mills, bakeries and other communal institutions. Furthermore, legal records prove that the settlers did not displace the existing population but built around or beside existing communities, presumably bringing land under cultivation that had lain fallow due to centuries of creeping depopulation under Muslim rule.18
This integration and intermarriage process had just started when Godfrey died on 18 July 1100, barely a year after the crusaders captured Jerusalem. He had not married and left no offspring. This fact encouraged the papal legate, Daibert, to advocate the establishment of a church-state controlled directly by the pope through his representative (namely Daibert). The knights and burghers in the Holy Land at the time of Godfrey’s death preferred a secular state and turned to Godfrey’s brothers.
According to feudal practice, Godfrey’s older brother should have taken precedence. This was Eustace, Count of Boulogne, a man who had taken part in the First Crusade. Eustace, however, had returned to France, so eyes turned towards Godfrey’s younger brother Baldwin, who was still in the Near East.
Baldwin of Boulogne had been born in France in c.1065, the youngest and third son of Eustace II, Count of Boulogne. He took the cross along with his elder brothers Eustace and Godfrey and set out on the First Crusade with the main body of troops in 1096. However, in 1098 when the First Crusade reached northern Syria, he and his immediate entourage of sixty knights separated from the main body to aid the Armenian city of Edessa.
Some 200 miles northeast of Antioch, Edessa was an ancient and wealthy city that still rivalled Antioch and Aleppo in importance. In 1098 it was controlled by a Greek Christian warlord, Thoros, who was the most recent strongman in a long line of short-lived warlords. His predecessors had all come to power by murder or popular acclaim, only to lose favour rapidly and be murdered or flee. Fearing this fate if he could not fight off the ever-present Turkish threat, Thoros sought help from the most recent military force to arrive on the scene: the crusaders. Thoros, perhaps understandably, conflated crusaders with Frankish/Norman mercenaries and invited the effective commander Baldwin of Boulogne to fight his battles for him.
Baldwin, whose wife had recently died on the crusade, accepted Thoros’ invitation. He withdrew from the First Crusade and made his way to Edessa, accompanied by sixty knights. Baldwin was not, however, a mercenary. He rejected material gifts such as gold, silver and horses in a bid for something more important: lasting power and control. When Thoros refused, Baldwin threatened to leave, and the people insisted Thoros give way. Thoros formally adopted Baldwin in a ceremony using Armenian relics and customs. Unfortunately for Thoros, this proved insufficient to placate an unruly population. Within a month of Baldwin’s adoption, the mob turned on Thoros, murdering him, his wife and his children mercilessly. Once Thoros was dead, the citizens jubilantly proclaimed his ‘son’ (Baldwin) doux, a Greek title that usually implied subordination to the emperor in Constantinople.
Although Baldwin of Boulougne benefitted from Thoros’ murder, there is no evidence he was behind it. The fact that he was neither well-connected with local elites nor (yet) conversant with Armenian politics speaks against his complicity. Furthermore, despite the title awarded him, Baldwin of Boulogne was no vassal of Constantinople. Yet he was not a conqueror in control of invaded territory either. He still had only sixty knights and owed his elevation to the local, predominantly Armenian population.
From the point of view of the Edessans, they had not helped establish a Frankish, Latin or crusader state at all; they had (as so often in the past) simply replaced one warlord with another. Furthermore, Baldwin’s career would have been as short-lived and forgettable as that of the previous half-dozen rulers of Edessa had he not proved astonishingly adept at building alliances with surrounding warlords, nobles and elites. That process started with the simple method of leaving the Armenian administration of the city undisturbed and adopting Armenian symbols and rituals. He also, notably, rapidly married into the Armenian aristocracy. His wife was a Roupenian princess named Arda.
As soon as Baldwin started to exert his authority, the very citizens who had ‘elected’ him decided to depose him – just as they had rid themselves of all his predecessors. Fortunately for him, one of the conspirators warned him of what was afoot, and Baldwin struck first. He arrested his opponents, threw them in a dungeon, extracted ransom payments from them and released them – without noses, hands and feet or blinded in the case of the ringleaders. Far from provoking outrage or rebellion, the Armenian Church and population welcomed his behaviour and viewed it as the restoration of law and order. They believed they had finally found a truly strong strongman. They probably also hoped he would prove capable of ending the petty wars and general lawlessness that characterised the region since the defeat of the Byzantine army at Manzikert.
At this juncture, Baldwin was called to Jerusalem to take up his elder brother’s burden. Baldwin did not hesitate and had no inhibitions about wearing a crown. He was duly crowned king of Jerusalem in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. Notably absent was his wife, Arda. She had not joined him on his journey overland through Muslim territory to Jerusalem. Instead, she followed him (slowly) by sea, not reaching Jaffa until September 1101. Here, news came to her that King Baldwin had been killed at a battle near Ramla confronting an invading Egyptian army. Yet, she did not panic. Instead, she sent for help from Tancred, one of the most dynamic crusader nobles still in the Holy Land, who was then in Antioch.
The news of Baldwin’s death proved premature. In fact, he had just won a spectacular victory over the Egyptians, but his reception of his wife in the aftermath was less than euphoric. According to one account, he discovered or alleged that she had been raped by pirates on her journey south. Therefore, he ordered her into the convent of St Anne’s. Most historians consider this account fabricated and believe Baldwin’s reasons for setting her aside were more prosaic and political. Namely, her Armenian connections were of little value in Jerusalem, and Baldwin already had his eye on a more advantageous alliance. Whatever the reason, Arda was sent to a convent and then later allowed to retire to Constantinople, while Baldwin set about finding a more ‘appropriate’ wife.
Perhaps this took longer than he expected, or he was too busy to go courting. He defeated invading armies in 1102 and 1105 and expanded his kingdom with the capture of Haifa (1101), Arsuf (1101), Caesarea (1101), Tortosa (1102), Jubail (1102), Acre (1104), Beirut (1110) and Sidon (1110). In addition, Tripoli fell to forces under the Count of Toulouse, paving the way for establishing the County of Tripoli, the third of the crusader states. Nevertheless, in 1112, with the consent and encouragement of Arnulf, the new patriarch of Jerusalem, Baldwin sought the hand of Adelaide, the dowager queen of Sicily. This was a cynical move since his marriage to Arda had never been formally dissolved.
Adelaide was the widow of Roger I of Sicily, who had died in 1101. She had acted as regent for her son Roger II until he came of age in 1112. Adelaide was now in her late 30s and unemployed. She had a substantial dower and could bring needed financial resources to her new husband. Yet the greatest attraction of this alliance lay in the powerful Sicilian fleet, which would be of great use to the kingdom. Meanwhile, Adelaide’s son, Roger II, had his own reasons for the alliance. He insisted that should the union between his mother and Baldwin of Jerusalem prove childless, he, Roger, be recognised as king of Jerusalem. Baldwin agreed.
Adelaide arrived in Jerusalem in August 1113 with a large dowry in gold and allegedly 1,000 fighting men, including a company of Saracen (Muslim) archers. Yet, there is no mention of her being crowned queen. Three years later, the money had run out, and Adelaide was still not pregnant. As she was nearing an age when she would be unable to conceive, the prospect of Roger II of Sicily becoming king of Jerusalem became ever more likely. This did not sit well with the barons of Jerusalem. They suddenly remembered that Baldwin already had a wife, Arda, who was alive and well and living in Constantinople. They attacked the patriarch who had married Baldwin to Adelaide and accused him before the pope of various crimes, including concubinage and simony. Patriarch Arnulf managed to clear himself of all charges except officiating at a patently bigamous marriage. He was allowed to retain his office on the condition that he put an end to the king’s marriage to Adelaide.
Having dismissed Arda with no cause, Baldwin appears to have had as little difficulty agreeing to dismiss Adelaide. He agreed to recall Arda, and a Church synod in Acre duly annulled his marriage with Adelaide. Understandably indignant, Adelaide left the kingdom in 1117, but she left a legacy; her son and his successors were very slow to forgive the insult to their former queen. In the succeeding seven decades, they remained aloof from the struggles of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and did not aid or support it until Saladin had almost completely overrun the kingdom.
Roughly a year later, on 2 April 1118, Baldwin I died childless. He had been married three times; in all cases, the marriages appear to have been purely political. Neither Arda nor Adelaide had been crowned queen. They had not left any particular mark on the kingdom other than the hostility of Sicily. That was about to change.
As Baldwin I left no direct heirs, the High Court of Jerusalem elected his successor. The choice fell on the same man Baldwin I had chosen to succeed him in Edessa, his cousin, Baldwin de Bourcq. This Baldwin had also taken part in the First Crusade. On succeeding his cousin in Edessa, he had extended Frankish power beyond the city of Edessa into the surrounding region, a significant challenge given that various rival warlords, Christian and Muslim, held castles at strategic points. Like his predecessor, he had too few Frankish troops to impose his rule and depended on the goodwill of the ruling class and the loyalty of Armenian soldiers. Strikingly, he never faced a rebellion in Edessa, only in outlying areas.
Baldwin of Bourcq succeeded largely by adopting the same tactics as his predecessor and cousin, Baldwin of Boulogne. He, too, had promptly married an Armenian wife, Morphia. She was the daughter of one of the strongest warlords, Gabriel of Melitene. Other Franks in his entourage, significantly his cousin Jocelyn de Courtenay, also married into the local aristocracy. Equally important, Baldwin continued to depend mainly on local Armenian elites to administer his territory. While a few discontents fled to Constantinople and complained, most local warlords preferred to submit (nominally) to the Franks rather than risk seeing one of their Armenian rivals win greater power and authority. Those willing to recognise Frankish suzerainty were richly rewarded with new lands, titles and revenues, while the Frankish leaders with Armenian wives became increasingly integrated into local society, honouring local saints and adopting local symbols, titles and customs.
Then, after eighteen years of ruling and integrating into Armenian Edessa, Baldwin was asked to accept the crown of Jerusalem. Like his cousin before him, he rushed overland to secure control of the kingdom. Unlike his cousin and predecessor, however, he delayed his coronation for almost eighteen months until his wife could join him. Baldwin and Morphia were crowned jointly on Christmas Day 1119 in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. Jerusalem finally had a queen.
Strikingly, Morphia, like Arda, had over time become a political liability rather than an asset. Not only was she Armenian, but Turks had overrun her father’s lands, so he could no longer offer Baldwin political support or military aid. As the couple had been married for eighteen years, her dowry had long since been spent, which meant she brought no new financial resources to the kingdom. Most damning of all, after eighteen years of marriage, she had failed to produce a male heir. Instead, she had given her husband four daughters. Yet there was no hint of divorce or separation, and the chroniclers agree that her husband was devoted to her.
And she to him. On 18 April 1123, Baldwin II was captured at Balak in Edessa after coming to the aid of his cousin Joscelyn. Morphia took charge of the negotiations for his ransom and relief, but she also attempted a daring rescue. She hired Armenian mercenaries, who disguised themselves as Turkish traders and penetrated the fortress where Baldwin was held prisoner. They killed the garrison and briefly took control of the fortress, enabling some prisoners to escape before the Turks regrouped and regained control. Baldwin was not among those who got away. Morphia now made the excruciating decision to agree to ransom terms that included the surrender of her 6-year-old daughter Iveta as a hostage to secure her husband’s release. On 24 August 1124, Baldwin was set free, and Iveta was turned over to his former captors.
Baldwin was anything but broken. He almost immediately laid siege to Aleppo, where the hostages were held. Although this enterprise soon had to be abandoned, Baldwin defeated a large Turkish army at the Battle of Azaz the following year. Nor had he forgotten his daughter Iveta. Contemporary sources agree he secured her release either with the final payment of his ransom or with an extra payment.
Meanwhile, Baldwin elevated the status of his eldest daughter Melisende to heir apparent. This meant that she, with the consent of the High Court, would inherit the kingdom. There is no indication this was opposed by the Church, barons or burghers. The right of women to inherit was already well established across most of Western Europe by this time.
However, even as a ruling queen, her primary duty was to secure the succession by giving birth to an heir, while the duty of leading the feudal host and carrying on offensive warfare would fall to her husband. Therefore, finding the right husband was a public rather than merely a family concern. Just as the council of nobles from the First Crusade had elected the first king and the High Court had chosen both Baldwin I and Baldwin II, the High Court of Jerusalem asserted its right to approve the husband of an heiress to the kingdom. The High Court had the final word on who would be the king-consort of a ruling queen.
The High Court’s choice fell on Fulk, Count of Anjou. Fulk was a 40-year-old widower with grown children. He had been on pilgrimage to Jerusalem from 1119 to 1120. In June 1128, Fulk’s eldest son Geoffrey married Empress Mathilda, the daughter of Henry I of England. Fulk agreed to renounce Anjou in favour of his son Geoffrey to go to Jerusalem and marry Melisende. The marriage took place on 2 June 1129. Sadly, Morphia did not live to see her eldest daughter wed; she died of unknown causes in 1127.
From Melisende’s marriage onwards, Baldwin II treated Fulk and Melisende as joint heirs to his kingdom. Both were frequently called upon to witness charters. Fulk also accompanied Baldwin on his military campaigns, such as the siege of Damascus in November-December 1129. In 1130, Melisende gave birth to a son, thereby fulfilling her primary duty and securing the dynasty, or so it seemed. In August 1131, Baldwin returned from Antioch in ill health. Recognising he was dying, he reiterated that his heirs were Melisende and Fulk. He then took monastic vows at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and retired from public life. He died on 21 August 1131. Melisende was 26 years old.
Whatever her father’s intentions, almost as soon as she and Fulk were crowned, Melisende was sidelined and ignored by her husband. He no longer included her on official documents, and tensions evidently grew between the king and queen and between the king and the High Court. Historians speculate that Fulk aroused opposition because he was – or was perceived to be – favouring Angevins over local barons in royal patronage. Problems came to a head in 1134 when one of the leading noblemen of the realm, Hugh of Jaffa, rose up in rebellion. Hugh of Jaffa was Melisende’s second cousin and, as such, a natural focal point for any faction opposed to the newcomer, Fulk.19
The king attempted to discredit his rival and wife simultaneously by accusing Hugh of Jaffa of an affair with Queen Melisende. Had it succeeded, the tactic would have cast doubt on the legitimacy of his son by Melisende and paved the way to bar him from the throne. Perhaps, this is why contemporaries feared Fulk intended to disinherit the heirs of Baldwin II entirely in favour of a son by his first marriage.
Whatever Fulk had intended, his tactic backfired dramatically. Melisende’s behaviour had been too irreproachable for the accusations of adultery to stick. And the barons and bishops of Jerusalem saw through Fulk’s transparent powerplay and unanimously sided with their queen. Yet, Jaffa also overplayed his hand by seeking assistance from neighbouring Muslim lords to help him defend himself against the king. This was viewed as treason by many of Jaffa’s vassals, who abruptly abandoned his cause. King Fulk was able to arrest Jaffa and put him on trial before the High Court. Yet, although Jaffa was found guilty of treason, he was sentenced to a mere three years of exile. The mild sentence underlines the fact that Jaffa still enjoyed considerable support among the feudal elite in the kingdom.
Before he could leave, however, he was struck down by an assassin. Suspicion immediately fell on the king, who was believed to be the assassin’s paymaster despite his denials. This turned opinion even more heavily against Fulk and, remarkably, in favour of Melisende.
The most reliable mediaeval historian of Outremer, William Archbishop of Tyre, writing only fifty years after these events, described the situation as follows:
‘All who had informed against the count [of Jaffa] and thereby incited the king to wrath fell under the displeasure of Queen Melisende … It was not safe for these informers to come into her presence; in fact, it was deemed prudent to keep away even from public gatherings. Even the king found that no place was entirely safe among the kindred and partisans of the queen. At length, through mediation … her wrath was appeased. … But from that day forward, the king became so uxorious that, whereas he had formerly aroused her wrath, he now calmed it, and not even in unimportant cases did he take any measures without her knowledge and assistance.’20
The reconciliation between Fulk and Melisende was sufficient to produce a second child, another son, Amalric. In terms of political power, Melisende now witnessed all official documents, and from 1138 onwards, her firstborn son Baldwin III was also included on charters. This amounted to a complete victory for Melisende. Strikingly, her behaviour is consistently praised, even by clerical chroniclers such as the Archbishop of Tyre. In short, the clergy and the barons of Outremer approved of a woman asserting her authority – as long as it was based on legitimate rights.
In 1143, King Fulk died in a hunting accident. At the time, his eldest son, Baldwin, was only 13 years of age and below the minimum age for male inheritance, which in the Kingdom of Jerusalem was 15. Yet his death did not result in an interruption because Melisende had always been a reigning queen rather than a queen consort. Therefore, her rule continued uninterrupted by her husband’s demise. Nevertheless, a coronation ceremony was held in which Melisende was re-crowned alongside her son Baldwin, who became Baldwin III. When Baldwin III turned 15 two years later, nothing changed in the kingdom’s government – at least, not at first.
While all was well in Jerusalem, the County of Edessa had fallen to Islam’s powerful and resurgent armies led by the powerful Seljuk ruler, Imad al-Din Zengi of Mosul. Antioch was threatened and Europe was aroused. In 1147, a new crusade set out from the West that has gone down in history as the Second Crusade, led by the Holy Roman Emperor Conrad III and King Louis VII of France. The latter was accompanied by his wife, Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine.
Poor leadership resulted in the bulk of the crusading host being eliminated during the long overland march. Only the leading elements of the French host and some independent contingents from England and Scandinavia that had opted to travel by sea reached the Holy Land. At a council of war, in which the leaders of the crusade and the barons of Outremer discussed what might be accomplished with the troops available, the decision was made to attack Damascus.
In retrospect, the strategy appears ill-conceived. The forces available to the Christians were insufficient to surround the city, leaving it open to relief. Furthermore, the sultan of Damascus and the Kingdom of Jerusalem had concluded a truce and were technically at peace. The campaign rapidly turned into a farce, with the Christians scuttling back to Jerusalem after five days outside Damascus. They fled before mere rumours of an advancing relief army under the dreaded Sultan Zengi.
Inevitably, everyone was at pains to blame someone else for the disaster. Western accounts of the shameful affair are full of unfounded accusations of ‘bad advice’ and ‘treachery’ by the nobles of Outremer. Yet, Queen Melisende can hardly be blamed when she opposed the attack on Damascus in the first place and (as a woman) was not present at the siege. Likewise, Baldwin III, an untried youth of 19, played no role in the fiasco. It is far more likely that the entire attack on Damascus was incited by the crusaders, who consistently failed to appreciate the wisdom of tactical truces with Muslim enemies. The reluctance on the Franks’ part to break a perfectly good truce was transformed retroactively into sabotage of the campaign.
Yet the campaign may have made Baldwin long for real power. Thereafter, Baldwin began to chaff, perhaps understandably, at being constantly under the tutelage of his mother. In 1152, at 22, Baldwin III insisted on being crowned again – this time without his mother. The patriarch of Jerusalem refused. So, Baldwin turned to his barons. He summoned the High Court and demanded the kingdom be divided into two. Although such an act weakened the kingdom, the High Court agreed. One can only speculate that the court was too divided between Baldwin and Melisende’s adherents to adjudicate an alternative solution.
No sooner had this nominal division been implemented than Baldwin swept down from his base in the north with an army. Taking Melisende’s supporters by surprise, he defeated them handily. Within weeks, Melisende found herself barricaded in the Tower of David in Jerusalem along with her 16-year-old younger son and some loyal vassals. The king proceeded to lay siege to the Tower of David, and accounts say the fighting was fierce for several days. Eventually, however, unnamed mediators managed to end this absurd state of affairs before the real enemy could take advantage of the situation. Melisende agreed to retire to Nablus,’ a large and powerful royal domain, but she had not abdicated.
Within a very short space of time, Melisende was again active in the affairs of the realm. As the lord of Nablus, she took part in sessions of the High Court. More significantly, she mediated between the crown and the commune of Pisa. She was also instrumental in securing, through a mixture of military action and negotiations, the recovery of the fortress of al-Hablis from the Muslims. In short, while she had acceded to her adult son pride of place, she remained – in retirement – an influential figure in the kingdom.
In late December 1160, she suffered what appears to have been a severe stroke. Bedridden, she was nursed by two of her sisters until her death on 11 September 1161.
Having pushed his mother from centre stage, Baldwin III embarked on an ambitious policy to expand his kingdom. His first target was the last remaining Muslim enclave on the coast of the Levant, Ascalon. Baldwin’s army laid siege to Ascalon for eight months, accepting its surrender in August 1153. They spared the population, who were allowed to withdraw with their portable possessions. Yet Baldwin suffered two setbacks when he lost the border fortress of Ba’albek to the Sultan Nur al-Din in 1155 and when the latter surprised his field army near Jacob’s Ford in 1157. The latter skirmish resulted in the capture of a number of Frankish noblemen and several Templar officers.
Possibly these defeats, or genuine horror at the rapacious behaviour of the new Prince of Antioch, Reynaud de Châtillon, led Baldwin to make overtures to the Byzantine Emperor Manuel Comnenus I. Baldwin sought greater cooperation between the two Christian states in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the powerful Comnenus Emperor Manuel I was receptive. For the first time since the Byzantine Emperor had failed to aid the crusaders in the liberation of Antioch, an era of cooperation between Constantinople and Jerusalem dawned. This was symbolised and sanctified by the marriage of Baldwin III, now 27 years old, to a niece of Manuel I, Theodora Comnena. In addition, Manuel married Maria, the daughter of the late Prince of Antioch, Raymond of Poitiers.
Theodora departed Constantinople in the summer of 1158 and arrived with a dowry of 100,000 gold pieces and an additional 24,000 gold byzants to defray the costs of her entourage and wardrobe. Although she was only 12 years old, she was reputedly a great beauty. Since Baldwin III was 28, he evidently felt he had time to wait for her to grow up before getting down to the business of founding a dynasty. Meanwhile, Manuel I sent an army to help Baldwin fight Sultan Nur ad-Din. In return, Baldwin pledged to bring the current Prince of Antioch (the infamous Reynaud de Châtillon) to heel and induce him to acknowledge Byzantine suzerainty over Antioch. Châtillon indeed submitted to the emperor, and shortly afterwards he was captured by Nur ad-Din and disappeared into captivity for the next fifteen years.
Alongside these military and diplomatic undertakings, Baldwin presided over a period of prosperity and massive public building. In 1149, the modernised and expanded church of the Holy Sepulchre was re-consecrated. In addition, a royal palace was built south of the Tower of David and numerous other projects across the kingdom were undertaken, such as the construction of a huge church on the site of the Annunciation. The Kingdom of Jerusalem enjoyed a period of agricultural, industrial and trade expansion. Irrigation projects enabled the cultivation of marginalised land. Roads connected the more remote rural areas to markets. Sugar plantations and factories were multiplying across the fertile plains, and industries such as glass and silk manufacturing were taking root and flourishing.
Yet Baldwin had made one serious miscalculation; he did not have as much time as he had assumed. In early 1163, while visiting Antioch, he suddenly became ill. Despite allegations of poison, there was no plausible candidate for the assassin nor motive for an assassination; certainly, no one attempted to exploit the situation. Knowing he was dying, Baldwin asked to be carried back to Jerusalem but did not make it. He died in Beirut on 10 February. He was just 33 years old, and his 18-year-old bride had not yet given him an heir.
Baldwin’s most obvious successor was his younger brother Amalric, Count of Jaffa. Amalric was in the prime of life at 26 and was a vigorous and competent fighting man, just what the High Court wanted for its king. Amalric would have been proclaimed king immediately if Jerusalem had been a traditional hereditary monarchy. But Jerusalem’s kings were elected by the High Court, and the High Court had a problem with Amalric, or rather, his wife.
Amalric was married to Agnes de Courtenay, the daughter of Joscelyn II of Edessa, the Count who had lost the county to the Muslims in 1146 and died in a Saracen prison six years later. Agnes’ brother still titled himself ‘Count of Edessa’, but the county no longer existed, making the title nominal and its holder impoverished. Agnes had been married to Reynald of Marash, who had been killed in battle in 1149. She was next betrothed to Hugh d’Ibelin, but the marriage had not been celebrated before he fell into Saracen hands. While he was still trying to raise his ransom, Agnes married Hugh’s feudal lord, the Count of Jaffa, Amalric of Jerusalem.
Later chronicles concocted a story of abduction that is not mentioned in any serious history. Nor is there any evidence of bad blood between Hugh and Amalric, which surely would have been the case had Hugh’s intended bride been taken from him by force. A far more reasonable explanation of what happened is that Agnes preferred a wealthy and present bridegroom over one in captivity, who would soon be impoverished by ransom payments. Amalric may even have agreed to contribute to that ransom to appease any anger on Hugh’s part at the loss of his bride.
In any case, by the time of Baldwin III’s death, Agnes was Amalric’s wife and the mother of his two children, Sibylla (then aged 3 or 4) and Baldwin (who was not yet 2). The High Court flatly refused to recognise Amalric as king unless he set Agnes aside. This was an astonishing demand, given that Amalric was otherwise an ideal candidate and unquestionably the closest legitimate relative of the dead king. The fact that the High Court prevailed conclusively demonstrates its power at this juncture and provides irrefutable evidence that it was not a mere rubber stamp for hereditary succession.
What is unclear, however, are the reasons for the court’s objection to Agnes. Officially, it was discovered that Amalric and Agnes were related within the prohibited degrees. This is not credible as many marriages of more closely related couples were recognised, provided they obtained a dispensation from the pope or his representative. Historians speculate that the lords of Jerusalem feared Agnes would favour her impoverished relatives and clients from Edessa over the locals. Yet, the Edessans had already been welcomed to the Court of Jerusalem on at least two previous occasions. Others suggested that the lords of Jerusalem feared a powerful woman. This is equally ridiculous, given how loyal these very lords had been to Melisende. Accounts bitterly hostile to Agnes claim she had a sullied reputation and was not deemed virtuous enough to wear the crown of Jerusalem, which sounds like the usual slander trotted out to discredit any inconvenient woman. The most likely explanation is that, in canonical law, betrothals were treated as the equivalent of marriage. If so, Agnes’ relationship with Amalric was bigamous due to her pre-contract with Hugh d’Ibelin, which a papal dispensation could not rectify. This later interpretation appears corroborated by the fact that Agnes was said to ‘return’ to Hugh after Amalric set her aside. The fact that Baldwin I’s marriage with Adelaide of Sicily had also been dissolved because of bigamy set a precedent that was probably followed here.
Strikingly, Amalric showed neither scruples nor reluctance about choosing the crown over his wife. He set Agnes aside in less than a week and was crowned king only eight days after his brother’s death. The only concession he wrung from the High Court was that his two children by Agnes be deemed legitimate. They were promptly removed from their mother’s keeping and provided with nurses and tutors selected by the crown.
Meanwhile, the dowager Queen Theodora retired to Acre, which had been ceded to her as a very generous dower. Acre was the busiest port in the entire kingdom, although not yet as important as it would be in the following century. (By the mid-thirteenth century, contemporary sources claimed that the taxes generated in Acre alone exceeded the royal income of all of England.) In short, 18-year-old Theodora did not lack money. Furthermore, she was not obligated to marry and could rule in her domain indefinitely. In fact, it suited the crown better if she did not remarry since marriage would have put the military and material resources of Acre into the hands of her husband. For this reason, Theodora needed the king’s permission to remarry since the crown reserved the right to veto any marriage that would transform the prospective bridegroom into one of the most powerful lords of the kingdom.
For four years, Theodora appears to have been content, but in 1166, she was visited in Acre by an uncle, Andronicus Comnenus, who has been described as an adventurer. Allegedly, ‘[h]is early life had been a series of political and amorous scandals, but in 1166, the emperor had appointed him governor of Cilicia’.21 His nature had not, however, fundamentally changed, and he soon incurred imperial wrath by seducing Princess Philippa of Antioch, Manuel I’s sister-in-law. Fleeing Antioch, Andronicus visited Acre, where he promptly seduced Theodora. The emperor decided it was time to teach Andronicus a lesson, so he ordered his agents to seize and blind Andronicus.
Somehow, Theodora got wind of the emperor’s plans and warned Andronicus. He, in turn, persuaded her to elope with him to Damascus. The arrival of the emperor of Constantinople’s cousin in the company of the dowager queen of Jerusalem was a delight to the entire Islamic world. They now had a source of endless gossip and a new justification for disparaging, ridiculing and belittling the morals of Christian women. But there was no going back. Andronicus and Theodora had burned their bridges. In Damascus, Theodora gave birth to a son, Alexis, and a daughter Irene, but she died there before reaching the age of 28 in 1182.
Aside from some embarrassment, her elopement had no negative consequences for the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Acre and its rich revenues simply reverted to the crown.
When King Amalric ascended the throne in 1163, he already had two small children and was in no particular hurry to remarry. It was three years before Amalric began negotiations with Constantinople for a new bride. At the time he was actively pursuing a policy of cooperation with the Byzantines in an effort to expand the influence and control of both Christian states into Egypt. Jerusalem’s Egyptian policy, conceived and carried out in alliance with Muslim factions inside Egypt, was complex and fluctuating; a detailed analysis is beyond the scope of this work.22 Suffice it to say that Amalric’s ambitions in Egypt were strictly geopolitical, without religious, racial or ideological overtones. Furthermore, in five incursions into Egypt, Amalric acted with the passive or active support of Constantinople. It is against this background that his second marriage must be considered.
After two years at the Imperial Court, Amalric’s ambassadors returned to Jerusalem with a bride selected in consultation with Emperor Manuel I. The girl chosen (for reasons we know not) was Maria Comnena, the granddaughter of Emperor Manuel’s brother, John the Protasebastos. Since no account refers to her beauty, historians generally assume she was not particularly attractive – although it is difficult to picture ambassadors spending two years selecting an unattractive bride for their king. There is also no reference to her age but given Theodora’s age at the time of her marriage to Baldwin III and considering that Maria came from the next generation down, she was probably most likely also 12, the minimum age for consent.
In August 1167, Maria arrived in Tyre in grand style, accompanied by a sizeable imperial entourage and was met with due pomp by the king of Jerusalem. She was crowned and anointed queen prior to her marriage, both ceremonies taking place in Tyre and presided over by the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Unsurprisingly for a child, there is no evidence that Maria exercised exceptional influence in the kingdom during her early years as queen-consort.
However, it was after his marriage to Maria that Amalric undertook a trip to Constantinople in which Byzantine sources allege he paid homage to the emperor as his liege. It was also during Maria’s tenure as queen-consort that the magnificent Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem was completed. Distinctive elements of the Byzantine style are particularly noticeable in this architectural monument, believed to have been built partly by craftsmen from Constantinople. Lastly, Maria gave birth to one infant girl who died young and to a second daughter in 1172, Isabella, who survived. Throughout Amalric’s reign, the Kingdom of Jerusalem enjoyed widespread economic prosperity and booming trade.
Then, unexpectedly, Amalric died of dysentery while returning from an unsuccessful siege against the city of Banyas. It was 1174, and he was only 38 years old. Yet again, the High Court had to decide the succession. It had two possible candidates: Amalric’s 13-year-old son Baldwin, from his first marriage to Agnes, or his 2-year-old daughter Isabella by Maria. Baldwin’s legitimacy was besmirched by the annulment of his parent’s wedding, and his candidacy was further weakened by the fact that he was suffering from an illness that proved to be leprosy. Isabella’s bloodlines were impeccable, and her ties to Constantinople in this period were particularly valuable. Yet, at age 2, ten years would pass before she could marry and give Jerusalem a king-consort capable of leading the feudal armies. In the meantime, a foreign princess (Maria Comnena) would have been regent. That did not sit well with the barons of Jerusalem, so they decided to take their chances with Baldwin. For the two years until Baldwin reached maturity at 15, his nearest male relative, the Count of Tripoli (rather than his disgraced mother Agnes), was named his regent. Not one source suggests that Maria, later so scurrilously accused of ‘intrigue’, made any effort to influence much less contravene the High Court’s decision.
At 19, Maria retired to her dower, the powerful barony of Nablus. Note that Nablus had been Melisende’s dower as well. It was located on the border with the Sultanate of Damascus and owed eighty-five knights to the feudal levee. As such, it was one of the most critical baronies in the realm, more powerful than, for example, Transjordan or Acre, although it was less wealthy than the latter. Maria’s conditions of retirement were identical to Theodora’s. No one could compel her to marry; if she did not, she commanded the resources and men of Nablus unimpeded. If she wished to remarry, however, she would need the king’s consent.
Notably, during the Count of Flanders’ sojourn in the Holy Land in 1177, he travelled to Nablus to seek out the dowager queen of Jerusalem. The reasons for this visit are obscure, yet appear connected to the impending campaign against Egypt, then planned by Baldwin IV. Flanders probably sought Maria Comnena’s opinion about probable Byzantine reactions to his demands and intentions regarding that expedition. The fact that he would seek out the dowager queen strongly suggests that Maria was viewed as capable of providing advice and insight. This indicates she was perceived as intelligent and reasonable.
Her choice of a second husband bears out such an assessment. Rather than eloping with a man old enough to be her father and ending her days as a virtual prisoner in Damascus as her cousin Theodora had, Maria selected the highly respected younger brother of one of Jerusalem’s leading barons, Balian d’Ibelin. She did so with the king’s explicit consent at roughly the same time as Baldwin IV’s spectacular victory over Saladin at the Battle of Montgisard in November 1177. The king’s consent may have been given as a reward for Ibelin’s exceptional contribution to that victory. Certainly, this marriage elevated the younger Ibelin to a position of significant power since he thereby gained control of the revenues and knights of Nablus.23 Maria’s choice proved wise, and she continued to play an indirect role in the fate of the kingdom almost until she died in 1217. (Details are provided below and in the full biography of Maria.)
When Baldwin IV ascended the throne, he had already lost the use of his right arm. Although he could ride extraordinarily well and bore no marks of disfigurement at that time, it soon became apparent he was suffering from leprosy. The Latin East followed the Byzantine tradition of treating leprosy not as a sign of sin but as an indication of divine grace. It was called the ‘Holy Disease’, and legends abounded about Christ taking the form of a leper. Thus, Baldwin IV was not isolated or ostracised; he ruled with his subjects’ full consent – and with the active and undivided support of his vassals – for as long as he was physically able.
However, it was equally clear that he could not marry and beget heirs of his body. Thus, his full sister Sibylla and half-sister Isabella became his heirs apparent, and finding suitable husbands for them became one of the High Court’s primary concerns. It was the issue of succession, not support for Baldwin IV himself, which ultimately divided and weakened the kingdom.
Meanwhile, in the absence of a queen consort, Baldwin’s mother, Agnes de Courtenay, became the first lady of the land. One can well imagine Agnes’ satisfaction in returning to the court. She had been discarded by her husband, denied a crown and separated from her two children thirteen years earlier. Now she was back with a vengeance.
Hostile chronicles allege scandalous sexual behaviour to the queen mother. She was accused of carrying on affairs with both Heraclius, the Archbishop of Caesarea and with the French adventurer Aimery de Lusignan, the younger son of Hugh VIII, Lord de la Marche. While such allegations are probably fabricated, she was married four times (Reynald de Marash, Amalric of Jerusalem, Hugh d’Ibelin and Reynald de Sidon) and never demonstrated any inclination towards modesty, chastity or piety.
A more serious criticism of Agnes is that she misused her influence on her son for personal and dynastic enrichment rather than the benefit of the kingdom, something that will be discussed in more detail in the chapter on political power. Suffice it to say that had Baldwin IV favoured other advisors over his mother, he might have left his kingdom in competent hands at his death. Instead, on Agnes’ advice, he allowed his sister Sibylla to marry the unpopular and incompetent Guy de Lusignan. As a result, his significant accomplishments have been overshadowed by the collapse of his kingdom little more than two years after his death.
Yet to Baldwin’s great credit, despite the ravages of leprosy and the rise of a powerful opponent in the form of Saladin, he was a surprisingly strong king. Saladin had seized power first in Cairo and then in Damascus the same year King Amalric died. Saladin then spent years fighting his Muslim rivals in Aleppo and Mosul while beating the drum of jihad either from conviction or, as a usurper and a Kurd, to rally his disgruntled and divided subjects around him.
If one includes the two sieges of Kerak (1183 and 1184) and the siege of Beirut (1182), Saladin invaded the Kingdom of Jerusalem no less than six times during Baldwin IV’s reign. All his incursions were effectively repelled. Indeed, the so-called ‘Leper King’ Baldwin IV dramatically destroyed Saladin’s army in 1177 at the Battle of Montgisard, soundly defeated the sultan’s army at the Battle of Le Fobelet in 1182, broke the three sieges mentioned earlier and suffered only two significant setbacks. The first was at the Battle on the Litani/Marj Ayun (1179), where he allowed his army to become dispersed following the rout of Saladin’s advance guard. The second, in the same year, was the destruction of a new castle Baldwin IV had attempted to build on disputed border lands near Jacob’s Ford.
Baldwin commanded his forces from horseback in the early years of his reign, starting with raids into Saracen territory shortly after obtaining his majority in 1176, again at Montgisard in 1177, and fatefully at Marj Ayun in 1179, where he was unhorsed and unable to remount because, by then, the paralysis had spread to both arms. After that, however, his physical condition deteriorated. He was forced to command his armies from a litter at Le Fobelet in 1182, and in the following year, he temporarily surrendered command of his army to his brother-in-law Guy de Lusignan. The latter’s performance was so disastrous that Baldwin dismissed him and resumed the burden of governance and command. He had himself dragged in a litter to the edge of the Dead Sea to lift Saladin’s siege of Kerak, and the sultan retreated at the mere approach of the ‘Leper King’.
In the last year of his life and reign, Baldwin tried frantically to reverse the disastrous decision he had made by allowing his sister Sibylla to marry Guy de Lusignan. He sought a pretext to prevent Lusignan’s ascension to the throne of Jerusalem. Baldwin first crowned his nephew, Sibylla’s son by her first husband William de Montferrat, co-king as Baldwin V and the barons swore oaths of fealty to the little boy. He next asked the Church to find grounds for the annulment of Sibylla’s marriage to Guy. When that failed due to Sibylla’s intransigence and clerical reluctance, Baldwin IV and the High Court took the more radical step of offering the crown of Jerusalem to a completely new dynasty. A delegation composed of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and the Masters of both the Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller offered the keys to the Tower of David (symbol of secular power) and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (sacred power) to the Holy Roman Emperor, the king of France and the king of England, one after another. Yet none of these monarchs were willing to abdicate their power in the West for the honour of ruling in the Holy Land. Nor did they send their sons or other candidates to the East. The delegation returned only with promises of funds and men, not a new king.
In the end, Baldwin could do no more than make his barons swear that if Baldwin V died before he could sire an heir, the barons would seek the advice of the Holy Roman Emperor, the kings of England and France and the pope in deciding who should succeed Baldwin V. It was an unsatisfactory solution. Given the acute threat posed by Saladin’s repeated aggression, Jerusalem needed a vigorous and competent king, not a lengthy and politically fraught appeal to Western powers with conflicting interests and little understanding of the situation in Outremer. Unfortunately, Baldwin IV could achieve no more.
In April 1185, Baldwin IV died, leaving his 8-year-old co-king Baldwin V the sole ruler of Jerusalem. The able and experienced Raymond of Tripoli was elected by the High Court to assume the duties of regent, just as he had for Baldwin IV eleven years earlier. Tripoli’s first act as regent was to sign a four-year truce with Saladin to give the kingdom breathing space and his young king time to grow up. But Baldwin V was not well. He died sixteen months later, in August 1186. Baldwin IV’s worst nightmare was about to come true.
By the rules of primogeniture, Baldwin V’s successor was his mother, Princess Sibylla. However, the Kingdom of Jerusalem did not strictly follow the laws of primogeniture, instead endowing the High Court with the authority to select a suitable successor to a dead monarch from various candidates. In this case, the barons had already sworn to seek the advice of the pope, the Holy Roman Emperor and the kings of England and France before crowning a successor.
Sibylla was in no doubt about her unpopularity or the reason for it. The barons had never approved of Lusignan; he had been foisted on them by the queen mother, abetted by her protégé, the patriarch. Furthermore, the barons had forced Baldwin IV to rescind his appointment of Guy de Lusignan to the regency three years earlier. Finally, her brother’s attempts to force an annulment of her marriage received widespread backing among the barons. In short, the majority of the High Court vehemently opposed her husband, Guy de Lusignan, and were unlikely to elect him king.
However, Sibylla was the heir apparent and had the support of her mother and husband’s kin, namely the titular Count of Edessa, Joscelyn de Courtenay, who now enjoyed the Lordship of Toron he had inherited from his sister, the queen mother, and likewise the support of the constable, Guy’s older brother, Aimery de Lusignan. Also in Sibylla’s camp was the Patriarch of Jerusalem, a man who owed his appointment to her mother. In addition, she enjoyed the fickle support of the unscrupulous baron Reynald de Châtillon. Finally, she obtained the backing of the Master of the Knights Templar, a Flemish knight by the name of Gerard de Ridefort, who was a bitter enemy of the Count of Tripoli for entirely personal reasons. There may have been a scattering of lesser knights who likewise favoured the succession of Sibylla, but if they existed, their names are unknown.
Most of the barons and bishops remained staunchly opposed to Sibylla and her despised husband, Guy de Lusignan. They had, of course, sworn to seek the advice of the pope et al before selecting a new monarch, but this was not a practical solution given the acute threat from Saladin. At a minimum, it entailed a lengthy interregnum during which the advice of the Western powerbrokers was sought and required the election of a regent until a candidate had been selected. In short, the need to discuss the situation was urgent, and the acting regent, the Count of Tripoli, summoned the High Court to Nablus for deliberations.
There was nothing nefarious about such a summons. Tripoli had been legally appointed regent of the kingdom, and no new monarch had been crowned and anointed. It was his duty to summon the High Court. There was no single location where the High Court met. It had met in Acre and Nablus in the past, both lordships being part of the royal domain no less than Jerusalem itself. Other factors influencing the venue were a strong and hostile Templar presence in Jerusalem and the friendly protection offered by the Dowager Queen Maria and her second husband in Nablus.
Whatever the reasons, the High Court met in Nablus to discuss the succession. Anticipating that she would not be selected, Sibylla persuaded her supporters to crown her without the consent of the High Court. This was a blatant usurpation of the throne, and both Sibylla and her supporters knew it. Furthermore, Sibylla only managed to convince her followers to undertake such illegal action by promising to divorce Guy and marry again. However, the accoutrements required for a coronation were locked in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Masters of the Temple and the Hospital each had a key to the chest containing them. When the Master of the Hospital realised what Sibylla and her supporters planned, he refused to open the chest. A scuffle ensued in which the Templar Master and Châtillon intimidated and nearly overpowered the Hospitaller, who – in desperation – threw the key out of a window. This, of course, only delayed things by a few moments. The key was found, and a hasty coronation ceremony was staged.
No sooner was Sibylla crowned and anointed than she declared that her new husband would be the same as her old husband: Guy de Lusignan. This betrayal of her supporters was too much for even the patriarch to stomach. He refused to crown Guy de Lusignan, and Sibylla crowned him herself. The legitimacy of such a coronation was dubious at best.
The word of Sibylla’s coup rapidly reached Nablus, where the High Court hastily agreed that the best course of action was to crown Baldwin’s other sister, Isabella, as the legitimate queen. Since the Templars controlled Jerusalem, the barons planned to hold the coronation in Bethlehem, the site of Baldwin I and Baldwin II’s coronations.
The idea of two rival queens in a kingdom surrounded by enemies is often ridiculed as foolish or even treasonous, yet it was by no means unreasonable. The barons and bishops opposing Sibylla outnumbered her supporters significantly and commanded the bulk of the feudal troops. Furthermore, since she had deceived her followers by first promising to set Guy aside and then crowning him, it is unclear how many of Sibylla’s initial supporters were still with her. With the wisdom of hindsight, regardless of how dangerous it might have been to split the kingdom into warring factions, it would not have been worse than what Sibylla and Guy did – namely lose the entire kingdom to Saladin in less than one year.
The High Court’s plans to crown a counter-queen to challenge the usurper Sibylla collapsed when Isabella’s husband Toron slipped out of Nablus in the dark of night to go to Jerusalem and swear homage to Sibylla and Guy. This act made the coronation of Isabella impossible, as she needed a king-consort, and her husband had just disqualified himself. Until she rid herself of Toron, Isabella could not wear the crown. So, most of the barons and bishops of Jerusalem reluctantly caved in and came to terms with the situation. They paid homage to Guy de Lusignan, who made it as difficult for them as possible by gloating and exalting in his new status.
Two barons flatly refused to accept the patently illegitimate king: the Baron of Ramla and Mirabel and erstwhile suitor for Sibylla’s hand, Baldwin d’Ibelin, and Raymond, Count of Tripoli, the former regent. Instead of doing homage to Guy de Lusignan, Ramla demonstratively left the kingdom to seek his fortune in Antioch, where he was reputedly well-received. The Count of Tripoli, on the other hand, simply refused to recognise Guy as Jerusalem’s king. As the County of Tripoli was an independent political entity and not legally subordinate to Jerusalem, this position was perfectly legitimate. However, Tripoli also held the principality of Galilee by right of his wife. This was a component and strategically vital part of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Tripoli’s refusal to do homage to Guy for his wife’s barony put him on a collision course with Lusignan and earned him the sobriquet of traitor in some accounts.
The salient point, however, is that by alienating and offending these two powerful noblemen, Sibylla and her husband had put the kingdom at risk. To be sure, Ramla’s feudal levees were commanded by his younger brother, Balian of Nablus, who thereby commanded the third largest contingent of troops in the feudal levee. However, Tripoli controlled many more, roughly one-quarter of the knights in the combined armies of Jerusalem and Tripoli. Even more dangerously, his wife’s barony of Galilee sat on the kingdom’s eastern border, straddling the Jordan River. If it were lost, the kingdom would become indefensible. Sibylla had usurped a crown and made her kingdom more vulnerable than ever in the process.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, in his hubris over his coronation, Guy de Lusignan was not content to let Tripoli withdraw to his lands and stew in his dissatisfaction. Instead, Guy declared his intent to bring Tripoli to heel and summoned the feudal army, intending to attack Galilee and force Tripoli into submission. Tripoli responded by concluding a defensive pact with none other than Sultan Saladin. In doing so, Tripoli put himself in the wrong, yet it is important to remember that he was the injured party. Not only was the constitution of Jerusalem on his side concerning Guy’s legitimacy, but Tripoli was also being threatened.
Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed, and Guy was persuaded not to attack. Balian d’Ibelin offered to mediate and eventually succeeded, but not before Saladin had taken advantage of the situation to carry out a ‘reconnaissance in force’ through Galilee into the province of Acre. This was the prelude to a full-scale invasion and retaliation for attacks by Reynald de Châtillon against Saracen convoys that were in blatant violation of a truce King Guy had just signed with Saladin.
Châtillon notoriously denied that King Guy could commit him to any truce, claiming complete independence from the king of Jerusalem as absolute lord in his barony of Transjordan. Châtillon’s stand revealed either the reason why he had supported Sibylla in the first place (he considered Guy so insignificant he could ignore him at will) or that he was one of Sibylla’s supporters who had expected her to replace Guy with a more competent new husband and now viewed Guy as illegitimate.
Whatever Châtillon’s motives for his attacks, Saladin’s counter-incursion provoked a response from the Templars and Hospitallers. On 2 May 1187, at the Springs of Cresson, a small force of roughly 110 knights clashed with a Saracen army, allegedly 6,000 strong, that wiped out the Franks. Shaken by the sight of Christian heads spiked on the lances of the withdrawing Saracens, Tripoli agreed to reconcile with Lusignan. Tripoli knelt before Lusignan in homage, and King Guy raised him, embraced him and gave him the kiss of peace.
It was not a moment too soon. Just over a month later, Saladin was back again, this time with his entire army. It was his seventh and largest invasion. Guy called up the feudal army, denuding the cities and castles of their defenders. Notably, all the barons of Jerusalem followed the king’s summons, including erstwhile rebels and insubordinate barons such as Tripoli and Châtillon. While the army of Jerusalem gathered at the Springs of Sephorie, Saladin seized the city of Tiberias in Galilee, which was defended by its feudal lord, Lady Eschiva, Tripoli’s wife. She sent word to her feudal overlord, King Guy, requesting relief.
As was customary, King Guy called a council of war to seek the advice of his barons. Tripoli advised caution, arguing it was a trap and the Frankish army should stay where it was and force the Saracens to come to them. Such a policy, however, contradicted the traditions of the kingdom; for nearly a century, it had been most successful when on the offensive. Furthermore, Guy had been heavily criticised by the barons of Jerusalem for not going on the offensive in 1183. The decision to advance towards Saladin was, therefore, not inherently foolish. In his detailed analysis of the battle, historian John France suggests that the army’s initial advance to the springs at Turan was strategically sound. France argues that at Turan, ‘Guy would have been in an unassailable position … and from there he could threaten to advance and oblige Saladin to keep his forces on the edge of the plateau in readiness. This was a game that Saladin’s army could not play indefinitely’.24
Guy’s mistake was in continuing across the arid plain against the advice of his barons, who nevertheless followed him. France quotes a letter from Saladin to the Caliph in Baghdad in which he says: ‘Satan incited Guy to do what ran counter to his purpose’. Namely, he took his army away from the water at Turan. Before the army of Jerusalem could reach the springs of Hattin, it had been surrounded. The Christian forces were forced to camp for the night on the arid plateau without water, mocked by the surrounding Saracens who poured their surplus water on the earth. The Saracens also lit fires upwind of the army of Jerusalem so that the smoke aggravated Frankish thirst. The following day, on 4 July 1187, battle began. After a day-long struggle, the feudal army of Jerusalem was all but obliterated. Only three barons fought their way off the field with a few hundred knights and an estimated 3,000 infantry. These were Raymond de Tripoli, Reginald de Sidon and Balian d’Ibelin. Joscelyn of Edessa also escaped capture, but it is unclear if he took part in the battle or had remained behind in Acre. The rest, including King Guy, were either dead or captured by the enemy.
And Queen Sibylla, who had brought this disaster to the kingdom by refusing to divorce Guy at her brother’s or her own followers’ urging? Sibylla was in Jerusalem. Yet when the sultan demanded the city’s surrender, it was a delegation of burghers, not Sibylla, who offered defiance. Rather than rallying the defenders of the holiest city in Christendom, Sibylla begged to be allowed to join her husband in captivity. That is: the reigning queen of Jerusalem begged to be allowed to desert her kingdom and her subjects to place herself in the hands of her enemies for the sole purpose of being near her husband, who had just led her kingdom to a disastrous defeat.
Saladin naturally obliged. Sibylla was allowed out of Jerusalem to join her husband in captivity in Saracen-held Nablus while his armies swept over the rest of her kingdom. Without defenders, city after city offered terms to spare the citizens rape and slaughter. The few cities that showed defiance – Jaffa and Beirut – were overrun, and the inhabitants were mercilessly put to the sword or dragged away into slavery. By the end of September 1187, only the island city of Tyre and isolated castles such as Kerak and Crak des Chevaliers held out, along with Jerusalem itself. The latter was flooded with tens of thousands of refugees who had fled before the Saracens from other inland cities and the surrounding countryside. After a spirited defence in which non-combatants outnumbered fighting men by fifty to one, the Holy City fell to Saladin. The Kingdom of Jerusalem effectively ceased to exist.
The shock allegedly killed Pope Urban III and set in motion a new crusade that has gone down in history as the Third. This crusade was led by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, King Philip II of France and King Richard I of England. Yet before the cumbersome process of finding the finances, volunteers and ships for this great expedition to the east was complete, Saladin released King Guy from captivity on the basis of an oath to never take up arms against Muslims again. It was 1188, and the moment Guy de Lusignan was released, he went to Antioch and raised an army of roughly 700 knights and an unknown number of other volunteers. With this force at his back, Guy resumed the fight against the Muslims in blatant violation of his oath to Saladin. Sibylla rode at his side.
Guy’s immediate destination was Tyre, the only city in his wife’s former kingdom still in Christian hands. To Guy and Sibylla’s surprise, their reception in Tyre was frigid. The nobleman in command of the defences of Tyre was a certain Conrad de Montferrat, the brother of Sibylla’s first husband, William de Montferrat. Conrad kept the city gates closed and bluntly told Guy de Lusignan that he had lost his crown when he lost his kingdom; Sibylla did not rate even a mention.
So, Guy continued down the coast until he came to Acre. The inhabitants of Acre, who had surrendered to Saladin in 1187, had been allowed to withdraw with their moveable goods. When Guy and his small army arrived in 1189, Acre was garrisoned by Egyptian troops devoted to Saladin. Guy’s decision to lay siege to Acre proved nearly as senseless and costly as his insistence on leaving the springs of Turan to advance towards Hattin. The siege of Acre swallowed tens of thousands of Christian lives in the next two years, including the Patriarch of Jerusalem, 6 archbishops, 12 bishops, 40 counts and 500 barons. As much as seventy-five per cent of the men who took part in the siege, most of them crusaders who arrived from the West ahead of the armies led by the crowned leaders, perished. Most fell victim to disease and malnutrition, even starvation, but many died in the near-constant skirmishing and occasional assaults. Militarily, this siege was senseless. In terms of immobility, filth and misery it was reminiscent of the trench warfare of WWI. Yet, in one way, it proved poetically just; this brainchild of Guy de Lusignan killed his last remnant of royal legitimacy, Queen Sibylla.
In October 1190, while living in a tent in the squalid siege camp before Acre, Queen Sibylla died of fever. So ended the life of one of Jerusalem’s most powerful queens. Like Melisende, she ruled in her own right, not as a consort, and throughout her reign was in a position to influence the course of events directly. Had she married the mastermind behind the rout of Saladin at Montgisard, Baldwin of Ramla, for example, Saladin might have been trapped at Turan rather than obliterating the army of Jerusalem at Hattin.
Sibylla had power, and she could be ruthless in exploiting it, as her usurpation of the throne in 1186 demonstrates. Yet she used her power only to elevate her husband and then to slavishly submit to him thereafter. To her last breath, Sibylla appears to have loved Guy de Lusignan more than she loved her kingdom, her subjects or her life. While such love is romantic and admirable in Victorian literature, it is misplaced and ridiculous in a ruling queen. Fortunately for the Kingdom of Jerusalem, her sister was made of much sterner stuff.