EACH PIECE OF NEWS that arrived in Europe from the Holy Land inspired new waves of despair that passed through all levels of society. The Christian army was destroyed at the Horns of Hattin. Galilee had fallen. Muslims held the city of Christ’s birth. Jerusalem had been taken, and the church that held the Holy Sepulcher was desecrated. The True Cross, the most sacred relic ever held in Christian hands, was being defiled by the Antichrist. The king of the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem was in a Muslim dungeon.
Many great nobles were missing. Those known to be dead were mourned for a time, but heirs were there to take their places. The source of greatest concern was those who might have been taken captive. The ransoms asked for their release could mean that all of the people on their lands might be taxed to the point of starvation. The news that had come was bad, but for those on the vast estates of the missing nobles, the news that had not yet arrived might be worse.
The fears of ransoms did not bother the Templars, whose Rule forbade them, but they did have the additional strain of having to scrape together all possible funds, and to put forth extra efforts in recruiting, just to assure the continued existence of their order. As for the highest secular and church authorities, they did not know what might be expected of them, nor could they make plans, because all they had was unconfirmed rumors, not official reports.
The rumors were turned into fact by the arrival of Archbishop Josias of Tyre at the Sicilian court in the summer of 1187. Now that King William II had authoritative reports on the full extent of the disaster, he was thunderstruck. Along with the catastrophe to the Holy Land he could see a more personal catastrophe coming for his own kingdom. If the Muslims were to gain control of all the port cities at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, they would cause nothing but trouble for an island kingdom in that sea. William put on the sackcloth garment of a penitent and went into a secluded retreat for four days of prayer. On the fifth day he began sending letters to all the courts of Europe to urge their participation in a Crusade of rescue, to which he would contribute troops and a fleet of ships. He recalled Sicilian fighting ships engaged in an expedition against the Greek islands, ordering that they be refitted and supplied, then sail to help save what was left of the Holy Land.
Archbishop Josias proceeded to Rome to inform the pope, to find that the bad news had just been delivered by messengers from Genoa. The frail, elderly Pope Urban III, already a sick man, was in no condition to withstand such a shock. Traumatized into the blackest depression, he died on October 20. His successor, who took the papal name of Gregory VIII, sent a call to Crusade to every Christian monarch, reminding them that the loss of Jerusalem and of the True Cross was the direct result of their having ignored the papal entreaties of the past, preferring their petty wars at home to a war for God and the Savior. Now they could make up for those past sins by taking up the Cross to go on Crusade. The total remission of sins and the eternal bliss of God’s heaven would be the reward for every Crusader. The pope declared a day of total fasting on every Friday for the next five years, with no meat to be eaten on Wednesdays or Saturdays. To emphasize the dedication of the leaders of the Church, he added that he and all of the cardinals, and all of their relatives, would also fast every Monday.
Gregory VIII never knew the results of his efforts, because he died after only two months on the Throne of Peter. Perhaps because of the panic at the loss of Jerusalem, it took less than forty-eight hours to elect a successor, who chose the papal name of Clement III. Taking a more personal and direct approach than his predecessor, Clement III sent Archbishop Josias of Tyre to preach the Crusade to Henry II of England and to Philip Augustus of France, while the pope himself undertook a direct appeal to Frederick I, the Holy Roman Emperor, known familiarly as Frederick Barbarossa.
Josias of Tyre found the English and French kings at one of those rare times when they were together, this time discussing truce terms at Gisors. The fall of Jerusalem had already been recounted to them in detail in letters from the patriarch of Antioch, and Henry’s son Richard, count of Poitou, had already taken the Crusader vow. Both kings agreed to join in the Crusade personally, with plans that even included such details as their agreement that the English would wear white crosses, the French crosses would be red, with green for the Flemish.
Henry II of England imposed a “Saladin Tithe” of 10 percent on all of his subjects. The Knights Templar, experienced tax gatherers, were asked to aid in the collection of the crusading tithe, but they were angered and embarrassed when their Templar brother Gilbert of Hoxton was caught generously helping himself to the collected funds. Henry apparently didn’t hold that individual crime against the whole Templar order, because he ignored a complaint against the Knights Templar brought to him by the archbishop of Canterbury.
The archbishop had received a letter from an angry Conrad of Montferrat at Tyre. It seems that the Templars still had some of the money given to them by Henry of England as part of his penance for the murder of the archbishop’s predecessor, Thomas à Becket. Conrad had demanded that those funds be turned over to him to be used for the defense of Tyre, but Grand Master de Ridfort had refused to part with a penny, and would not budge. Conrad wanted the archbishop of Canterbury and King Henry to order the Templars to give him that money. Henry declined to interfere, perhaps because de Ridfort’s reaction was exactly what his own would have been.
Plans for a Crusade from England seemed to be moving ahead, but Prince Richard’s personality slowed things down. He hated defiance of his position, and Crusade or no Crusade, he felt compelled to punish some of the fractious subjects in his county of Poitou who were challenging his authority. Then, with his own subjects beaten into a contrite state, he decided to go on a punitive expedition against the count of Toulouse. That angered Philip Augustus, who attacked King Henry’s territory at Berry. That action provoked Henry, who attacked the French territory of King Philip Augustus. Richard, whose qualities did not include even a shred of love or respect for his father, didn’t hesitate to enter into an alliance with Philip Augustus against King Henry. The enthralling religious brotherhood invoked by the archbishop of Tyre at Gisors had dissolved into internecine warfare.
Frederick I took the Crusader vow in March 1188 and agreed to put together the largest Christian army ever to go to the Holy Land, but such a tremendous effort would take time, and time was what the citizens of the beleaguered cities of Tyre, Tripoli, and Antioch were afraid they did not have.
Saladin had kept his promise to renew his war against the Christians. While Frederick I was on his knees making his sacred vow of Crusade, Saladin embarked upon another invasion of the Holy Land. He made a move at the Hospitallers’ strongest castle at Krak des Chevaliers, then decided to pass it by. He repeated that decision after an unsuccessful assault on the Templars’ strongest castle at Tortosa, choosing instead to gather up easier locations first, taking the coastal cities of Jabala and Lattakieh, between Tyre and Antioch.
In July, in response to an appeal from Queen Sibylla, the sultan decided to release King Guy, probably for political reasons. The Christians appeared united behind Conrad at Tyre, and Saladin now knew that the divisions in leadership fomented by Guy of Lusignan and Grand Master de Ridfort had contributed substantially to the events leading to his victory at the Horns of Hattin. Sending the Christian monarch back might split the Christians again. King Guy willingly took an oath to never again take up arms against any Muslim, and to sail across the sea away from the Holy Land. Saladin agreed to free ten additional nobles with him, including Guy’s brother Amalric, who was the constable of the kingdom. Once free, they ran for Tripoli, where Queen Sibylla had found shelter with young Count Bohemond, who had inherited the title upon the recent death of Guy’s old enemy, Count Raymond of Tripoli. Grand Master de Ridfort came up from Tyre to meet with King Guy, and while there decided to go further north to inspect the Templar castles at Tortosa and on the little offshore island of Ruad. King Guy, probably for want of something to occupy his time, went with him. On the journey, they had lots of time to discuss how to reestablish Guy’s rule of the kingdom in the face of the arrogant stance of Conrad at Tyre, whose followers encouraged him to conduct himself as the head of a sovereign state.
They were not, however, able to make any effective plans to stop Saladin, who was now helping himself to the tattered remains of the Christian kingdom. All of the castles of the military orders were seriously undermanned and now were major objectives. Saladin took the Hospitaller castle at Sahyun, then moved all the way north to capture the Templar castles of Baghras and Darbsaq, which had guarded the passage through the Armanus mountains between Armenia and Antioch. Moving south, he took the castle of Safed, which the Templars had thought was impregnable.
He did not forget an objective that was almost as emotional to Saladin as Jerusalem itself, the castle of the hated Reynald of Chatillon across the Jordan at Kerak. The knights and soldiers there had assisted Reynald in all of his illicit raids on Muslims, and it was to Kerak that Reynald had brought his Muslim prisoners to sell to slave dealers. For his own personal satisfaction Kerak must fall, so Saladin sent his brother al-Adil with a Muslim army to lay siege to the massive castle, perched on a high mountain shelf.
Catapults were impractical for Kerak, so the plan was to starve the Christians out. It took months, but it worked. As the Christians began to run out of food, they ate all of their horses, and then consumed all the birds, dogs, and cats in the city. Some of them pushed their women and children out of the gates to avoid having to feed them, not caring that the Arabs in the mountains would gather them up for sale into slavery. Some of the captive women told stories of cannibalism in the castle. When the Christians finally surrendered toward the end of 1188, the conquering Muslims could not find the tiniest scrap of food in the extensive fortress. When they took the nearby castle of Montreal a few weeks later, all of the land on both sides of the Jordan River belonged to Saladin.
Back in Tripoli, Saladin’s political scheme seemed to be working. The party of Lusignan was rebuilding. Joscelin of Courtenay decided to leave Tyre to join King Guy, accompanied by his own followers. Others of the local knights, offended by the ever-increasing arrogance of Conrad of Montferrat, decided to join their king. The young count of Tripoli was happy to have the experienced fighters in his city and welcomed them all. Grand Master de Ridfort assured the king that when the time came for him to make his move, he would have the full support of the Knights Templar. That time was near, but first King Guy had to be formally released from his oath. It was no problem to find a priest who agreed that an oath to an infidel, given under duress, was not valid. Guy also added, perhaps with a smile, that he had fulfilled his oath when he had traveled “over the sea” with Grand Master de Ridfort to the Templar castle two miles offshore on the island of Ruad.
Guy assembled his growing band of knights and men-at-arms and led them to Tyre, but Conrad would not let them into the city. He informed Guy that he should no longer consider himself to be the king of Jerusalem. Who would rule the Holy Land would be decided according to the stated wish of Baldwin IV, who had specified in his will that the king should be picked by the pope and by the rulers of England, France, and Germany. There was nothing he could do, so Guy led his disappointed friends back to Tripoli.
When news came to Tripoli in March 1189 that Saladin had moved back to his new capital at Damascus, Guy decided to try again and led a larger group of followers on a second march to Tyre. As they moved down the road, a Pisan fleet of fifty-two ships arrived at Tyre in response to the pope’s call to Crusade. The Pisan leader, Archbishop Ubaldo, went into Tyre to visit Conrad and was offended at his reception by the man who insisted upon being obeyed as the ruler of the Holy Land. As the Pisans discussed what course to take, King Guy provided a solution by showing up at Tyre. The archbishop was much happier with his respectful reception by King Guy, who suddenly had a sizable fleet to assist in his plans, although as yet he didn’t have a plan. The ships and soldiers sent by King William II of Sicily arrived, and it seemed to them to be the proper thing to do to report to the king. Guy now had troops and a strong navy. His power was growing, but he had no desire to lay siege to the Christian city of Tyre.
By August 1189 he had made up his mind. He ordered all of his followers, and the fleets of Pisa and Sicily, to follow him to Acre. He would besiege a Muslim city and start to rebuild the Christian kingdom. It was an audacious move, probably foolish, and the only time in all the two centuries of the Crusades that a besieging army was less than half the size of the army inside the city, but it was exactly the kind of bold move that was called for. Conrad had established a fine reputation for leadership, but had shown no inclination to do anything more than hold on to Tyre. Now King Guy had given the Christians a rallying point. When the news got back to Europe, Guy’s reputation, which was lying in tatters in the dirt, would begin to rise again. We don’t know how he might have been encouraged in his decision by Grand Master de Ridfort, who was a champion of daring and foolish actions, but we do know that de Ridfort kept his promise of full support. He proudly led a large body of his Knights Templar to the siege of Acre.
Conrad of Montferrat did not like what happened over the next few weeks. Independent groups of Crusaders were arriving from Europe. They had come to fight, not to sit, and went right to King Guy on the field before Acre, not to the inert city of Tyre. A Danish fleet arrived, then a group of French and Flemish knights commanded by the highest lords of the nobility. Louis of Thuringia, who had decided not to take the slow landward march with Frederick I, brought a group of Germans. The archbishop of Ravenna brought a contingent of Italians. King Guy’s army was growing fast, and no one was paying much attention to Conrad of Montferrat. Finally, in fear that some major event might occur of which he would not be a part, Conrad took troops of his own to join the siege of Acre. He made it clear that he was not under the command of Guy of Lusignan, but he was seething inside that all of the newly arrived Crusaders were looking for guidance to King Guy of Jerusalem, and not to the hero who had preserved the kingdom.
Saladin could not ignore this Christian buildup. He sent an army to make the first Muslim attack on the besieging Christians in September, but by now the Christian force was strong enough to hold them off. Three weeks later, excessively proud of their accomplishment in having held back a small Muslim army, the Crusaders decided to attack the Muslims, but by now Saladin himself had arrived with substantial reinforcements. The Knights Templar under Grand Master de Ridfort took their position in the Christian left wing. The fight went back and forth, but was essentially a draw. The Christians ultimately decided to fall back to the safety of their own defenses, except for one man.
The Templar grand master, with his growing madness now in full flower, refused to leave the battlefield until there was a complete Christian victory. All alone, he brandished his sword and shouted out his challenge to the entire Muslim army. The Muslims watched him for a few minutes in amazed amusement, then easily made him their prisoner. Saladin didn’t waste his time on conversation or even on comment. He simply ordered the grand master’s immediate execution. There are those who feel that the death of Gerard de Ridfort made a significant contribution to the turnaround in the Christian fortunes, and especially in the conduct of the king, who for the first time in his entire reign was without the advice of his wild-eyed counselor.
Historically, the importance of Gerard de Ridfort is that his actions gave a tarnish to the Knights Templar that they could never polish away and inspired the accusation that they had been responsible for the loss of the Holy City. This taint was preserved in the annals of other religious orders, and over a hundred years later would be used as evidence against them.
For now, King Guy had held against the Muslims and was the beneficiary of constant reinforcements from Europe. Word had reached Conrad that his cousin Frederick Barbarossa was on his way with an army of a hundred thousand men. Frederick would want to fight, so he would probably back King Guy in his siege of Acre. It appeared obvious that Guy was not going to go away, so prudence suggested the wisdom of making a deal. Conrad agreed to recognize King Guy as the rightful king of Jerusalem. In exchange, Guy agreed to Conrad’s right to hold Tyre as well as Sidon and Beirut, once they were retaken from Saladin by the German Crusade.
Through the coming year of 1190, new Crusaders continued to arrive at Acre. The most important was the dashing young Count Henry of Champagne. He was a grandson of Eleanor of Aquitaine, which made him the kinsman of both Richard of England and Philip Augustus of France. He was to play a leading role in the unfolding events in the Holy Land. A month after Count Henry came Duke Frederick of Swabia, son of Frederick Barbarossa, leading a ragged remnant of the mighty army his father had called together for his own German Crusade. The tale he had to tell was full of tragedy.
In May 1189, three months before King Guy made his move at Acre, Frederick Barbarossa had set out on his own Crusade. He decided not to wait for Henry of England or Philip of France, nor to seek any alliance with them. He had no need for an alliance with anyone, because he alone commanded the largest army ever to go on Crusade. His hundred thousand followers comprised a larger army than Henry and Philip together could muster. On the march, the army was strung out for miles and took days to pass a given point.
The size of the army created logistical problems beyond any that the German leaders had ever experienced. Even limiting the troops to just two meals a day would require a million and a half meals each week, for week after week. It was impossible to carry such enormous supplies, so Frederick had sent envoys ahead to arrange to purchase food in Hungary and Byzantium. The march across Hungary was in good order and disciplined, as a result of the cooperation of King Bela. The food supplies were waiting at prearranged locations and were paid for promptly out of the closely guarded treasure that Frederick was taking with him to cover his crusading expenses.
The emperor was pleased with the uneventful six-week march across Hungary, but his mood changed when his army crossed the Danube River. Riding day after day deeper into Byzantine territory, he had plenty of time to reminisce about the events that had given him a lifelong suspicion of the Greeks at Constantinople.
Over forty years earlier, in 1147, as the duke of Swabia, Frederick had answered St. Bernard’s call to Crusade and had ridden east with his uncle, King Conrad. He remembered their problems at the Byzantine court, but no memory was as vivid as that of the humiliating massacre of 80 percent of the German army when they had stopped to relieve their burning thirst at the little Bathys River. He was one of the few who had managed to break out and ride back to Nicaea with King Conrad. He had gone with his uncle to Jerusalem and then had taken part in the Christian shame in the retreat from the unsuccessful siege of Damascus. He was one who was totally dedicated to Bernard’s position that the German disaster had resulted from Byzantine treachery.
Now the flaming color of his hair that had caused the Italians to call him Barba rossa, or Red Beard, was mostly gray. He was much older and, he hoped, much wiser. He had political reasons, too, to be wary of the Greeks, for Frederick’s son Henry had married Constance, the heiress to William II and his kingdom of Sicily. Ever since the Norman Robert Guiscard had taken Sicily from the Greeks just before the First Crusade, there had been incessant hostility between the Sicilian monarchy and the Byzantines. Even now their ships were attacking each other in the Greek islands. When Constance came into her inheritance, the island kingdom would be governed by her husband Henry, who would also become the next German emperor. Frederick could not predict whether he would be received at Constantinople as a crusading knight or as an enemy.
The Byzantine emperor Isaac Angelus certainly did not feel good about a German army in his empire. He had enough problems with his own people and didn’t need outsiders stirring things up. A relative, Isaac Comnenus, had led a successful revolution on Cyprus, taking away that wealthy colony. The Serbs and Bulgarians, always resentful at having lost their independence to the Greeks, were in open revolt, and the Germans were marching right through lands being held by the rebellious Serbians. As the Serbs picked off the German stragglers, Frederick decided that they had been bribed to do so by the Greeks. He met with the Serbian leaders, explained his mission, and gave them rich gifts to permit a peaceful passage of his army. When Isaac Angelus heard that news, he decided that the Germans were supporting his own rebellious subjects.
The conflict came out in the open when Frederick sent a party of envoys to Constantinople to purchase food and to arrange for ships to take the army across to Asia. Isaac Angelus seized the envoys as his prisoners and put them in chains, informing Frederick that they were now hostages to guarantee his compliant behavior. Frederick had not held his throne for thirty-five years without learning how to deal with threats. He seized a Greek city and informed Isaac Angelus that the Germans now held the entire population of the town as hostages. He also told him that dispatches had gone to Henry in Germany asking him to assemble a Sicilian fleet to attack Constantinople from the sea. The choice for the Byzantine emperor was simple: Release his German prisoners and provide transportation for Frederick’s army, or go to war.
The prospect of fighting a hundred thousand well-armed, fully equipped German soldiers on one side and a fleet of warships on the other was not very appealing. The Byzantine emperor counseled, raged, fumed, threatened, and boasted for a few weeks, and then collapsed. The German envoys were released, transportation was provided across the Dardanelles, and a supply of food was sold to the Germans. Now Frederick Barbarossa could get on with his Crusade, but the year was drawing on and he decided to winter his weary army on the Greek side. This kept the Byzantines in a nervous state, hoping the conflict between the two emperors would not break out again.
Frederick’s winter of delay brought even more nervousness to King Guy and the Christians camped before Acre. They all anticipated the arrival of the great German army coming to their rescue, and would have preferred that Frederick keep moving. The news that he had parked his army for the winter was disheartening, because by now the Egyptian navy had managed to break the Christian blockade and was bringing supplies to the city. The Christians did not have the power to take Acre by storm, and Saladin could call on his whole Muslim empire for reinforcements. They had no idea how long they could hold out, even with the occasional boost of small parties of Christians arriving from Europe. The Knights Templar were being reinforced with men recruited by their preceptories in Europe, but they had not yet agreed on a successor to their fallen Grand Master de Ridfort. In the interim, they sent for Gilbert Erail, the Templar officer who had narrowly lost the grand master election to Gerard de Ridfort. It was with a great feeling of relief that Guy welcomed the news brought by a Christian ship in March 1190 that at last the Germans were crossing into Anatolia.
Saladin had received the same news. He responded by sending letters to the Muslim potentates in the north, urging them to make every effort to impede the march of the German Crusade and to remove or destroy all of the food supplies ahead of them. Saladin knew that every day lost by the German army would mean the fast dwindling of their stocks of food.
As Frederick entered the territory of the Seljuk Turks his army was in totally hostile country. The Turks hung around the German column as it moved. Stragglers were killed, and foraging parties sent out to look for food were wiped out. Any German who wandered away from the main column, for whatever reason, was a dead man. It was now the month of May, and the heat and the water shortage were beginning to claim their victims. Finding the occasional spring might be helpful, but couldn’t do much for tens of thousands of thirsty men and horses. By June they reached the bleak Taurus mountains and crossed the high passes into Armenia, heading for the coastal plain and the city of Seleucia, just off the coast on the Calycadnus River. Coming out of the mountains, Frederic decided to lead the way with knights of his personal bodyguard.
History remembers what happened then, but not how it happened. With no enemy in view on the plain, Frederick left his bodyguard for a few minutes to go to the river. We do not know if the emperor slipped, or if his horse slipped. We don’t know if he cried out. All we know is that when his bodyguard reached the water, the emperor was on the river bottom, held there by his heavy armor. By the time his men could drag him out to the riverbank, Frederick Barbarossa was dead.
The news flew back along the German column. For many of these men, Frederick had been their ruler for their entire lives. They couldn’t imagine life under another emperor. Many of them, including barons and princes, went to Armenian ports and arranged for ships to take them home. They were not here because of any religious zeal, but because the venerable Kaiser Friedrich had ordered them to follow him. His second son, Duke Frederick of Swabia, took command of the disintegrating army. Remembering his father’s desire to be buried next to Christ’s own tomb at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the duke had his father’s body preserved in a cask of vinegar to carry along with his dejected troops.
The emperor’s death, coupled with the heat and thirst and hunger, demoralized the army to the point that any enforcement of discipline was hopeless. Wandering off to search for food and water, the men were easy prey for the swarms of mounted Turkish archers. Losses grew greater as they passed through the Amanus mountains to the territory of Antioch. Most of them hung together in self-protection, but once within the secure walls of Antioch the last shreds of discipline and organization in the shrunken army disappeared. The chroniclers do not tell us how they felt about song, but do recount that they went crazy over wine and women. What was left of the proud, disciplined army of Emperor Frederick I decomposed into a drunken rabble that kept every prostitute in the city working overtime.
No one had awaited their coming with more eagerness than Conrad of Montferrat, who was a cousin of Frederick and so of the Duke of Swabia. He hurried to Antioch to urge that the German Crusade come quickly to his city of Tyre. The duke was willing, but not his army. Many of them simply refused to go any farther, and no threats could budge them. As the duke’s army came apart, so did his father’s body, as attendants reported that the vinegar wasn’t working. The emperor’s body was rotting into pieces. Duke Frederick ordered that the remains be buried in the Cathedral of Antioch, but had some of the bones wrapped to take along, so that at least a relic of Frederick Barbarossa could rest by the Holy Sepulcher, assuming of course that Jerusalem could be retaken from Saladin. If that could actually happen, it was now clear that it would not be accomplished by the pitiful remnant of the German Crusade.
Duke Frederick led his bedraggled force to Acre, which they reached in October, now reduced to just five thousand of the hundred thousand soldiers who had started out. Later in the month an English contingent arrived, led by the archbishop of Canterbury. His troops were welcome, but not as welcome as his news of the progress of Richard of England and his Crusade. Richard’s help had been promised to King Guy over a year ago, when Henry II had died and Richard had become the king of England. The delay had been maddening to the Christians before Acre, but now they learned that Richard and Philip Augustus had gathered their crusading armies and at last were on their way. The Knights Templar were delighted to learn that Richard was also bringing a contingent of English Templars with him.
Unfortunately for King Guy, there was an unwelcome visitor that fall, in the form of an epidemic. Among its victims were all of Guy’s royal family, including his wife, Queen Sibylla, and their two daughters. Guy was king of Jerusalem only on the basis of his marriage to Queen Sibylla. Now there was a question as to whether he had any authority at all. No one put forth more effort to make certain that everyone understood Guy’s precarious position than Conrad of Montferrat, whose hopes of becoming the king of Jerusalem were suddenly alive again. The rightful rulers were now Queen Sibylla’s younger sister Isabella and her husband, Humphrey of Toron. Only Guy’s friends the Knights Templar stood with him, and they made certain that everyone understood that Conrad had no legal right to the throne of Jerusalem.
They were right, of course, but Conrad had a plan to solve that problem. If Isabella’s marriage to Humphrey of Toron was annulled, she could marry Conrad. Then Conrad would have an undisputable legal right to the crown. The local barons favored the plan because they didn’t like Humphrey of Toron. They had not forgotten how he had left them hanging to run to Jerusalem and kneel before King Guy. In their opinion, he was too pretty to be a real man, and his well-known homosexual proclivities meant that he was not likely to produce an heir.
Humphrey hated anything resembling a confrontation. He quickly promised the warrior barons who called on him that he would not interfere with their plan. Isabella flatly refused. Homosexual he might be, but Humphrey was always kind to her, with a completely courteous and generous nature. Also, he was nearer her own age. She had no desire to be mated with a domineering, pompous man easily old enough to be her father. The barons turned to Isabella’s mother, who wanted very much to be the mother-in-law of a king. She testified before the church leaders that Isabella had had no choice in this marriage. After all, she had been only eleven years old at the time of her marriage. Knowing Humphrey’s sexual preferences, she stated that the marriage had probably never been consummated, even though several years had gone by. The archbishop of Canterbury was asked to declare the annulment and perform the marriage, but he objected on the grounds that Conrad already had a wife in Constantinople. He would not extend the blessings of the Church to a clearly bigamous, adulterous union.
Undismayed, Conrad and his supporters approached the archbishop of Pisa. The religious arguments presented to him were that Conrad would be so grateful to the archbishop and to Pisa that he would grant very important trading privileges to the Pisan merchants. That would enhance the archbishop’s standing at home because rich profits would flow to those merchants, whose numbers included members of the archbishop’s own family. The archbishop decided that God wanted Conrad to be king of Jerusalem and agreed to effect the annulment. The wedding was arranged for a couple of weeks later, and upon the announcement the archbishop of Canterbury thundered out his condemnation and excommunication of Conrad and his supporters. That didn’t bother anyone, because the current epidemic claimed the life of the English archbishop a few days later. King Guy vented his own anger by flinging down his gauntlet to challenge Conrad to trial by combat to let God decide the issue. Conrad, who had clearly emerged victorious, saw no reason to risk that victory and ignored the challenge. The marriage went forward.
Now Guy of Lusignan, who had no solid support except the Knights Templar and the tiny contingent of English Crusaders, was down to his last shred of hope. His family, the le Bruns of Lusignan, were important vassals and good friends of King Richard of England. He could only hold his peace and pray for the safe arrival of the man who would prove to be the most colorful and most legendary Crusader of them all.