A History of the Crusades-Vol 2 (23 page)

Toghtekin’s successor as atabeg of Damascus was
his son Taj al-Mulk Buri. Buri determined to rid himself of the Assassins. His
first step, in September 1129, was suddenly to have their protector, the vizier
al-Mazdaghani, murdered as he sat in council in the Rose Pavilion at Damascus.
At once riots, prepared by Buri, broke out in Damascus; and every Assassin
found there was slaughtered. Ismail, at Banyas, was alarmed. To save his
sectaries he opened negotiations with the Franks.

This was the occasion for which King Baldwin
had been waiting. On hearing of Toghtekin’s death he sent Hugh of Payens, Grand
Master of the Templars, to Europe, to recruit soldiers there, stating that
Damascus was his objective. When Ismail’s emissaries arrived, Frankish troops
set out to take over Banyas from the Assassins and to settle Ismail and his
sect within Frankish territory. There Ismail fell ill of dysentery, dying a few
months later; and his followers dispersed. Baldwin himself came to Banyas early
in November, with the whole army of Jerusalem, swelled by newly arrived men
from the West. He marched on without serious opposition and encamped at the
Wooden Bridge, some six miles south-west of Damascus. Buri drew up his army
opposite to them, with the city at its rear. For some days neither army moved.
Baldwin meanwhile sent detachments, mainly composed of the new-comers, under
William of Bures, to collect food and material before he should venture to
close in round the city. But William was unable to control his men, who were
more interested in securing booty for themselves than in systematically
gathering supplies. Buri learnt of this. Early one morning in late November his
Turcoman cavalry fell on William twenty miles south of the Frankish camp. The
Franks fought well but were overwhelmed. Only William himself and forty-five
comrades survived to tell the news to the King.

Baldwin decided to march at once against the
enemy while they were celebrating their victory, and gave the order to advance.
But at that moment rain began to fall in torrents. The plain became a sea of
mud, with deep rivers cutting across the roads. In such conditions an attack
was impossible. Bitterly disappointed, the King abandoned all idea of
continuing the siege. The Frankish army retreated slowly in perfect order back
to Banyas and into Palestine, where it dispersed.

1127: Quarrel
between Bohemond II and Joscelin

Events in the north made the disappointment
particularly cruel. Baldwin had hoped that Bohemond II and Joscelin would
profit by the chaos in Aleppo to take possession at last of the great Moslem
city. But, though each in turn successfully raided its territory during the
autumn of 1127, they would not co-operate. Each was jealous of the other.
Joscelin had obtained by a truce with il-Bursuqi districts that had been held
for a while by Antioch. Worse still, Joscelin’s second wife, Roger of Antioch’s
sister Maria, had been promised as her dowry the town of Azaz. Bohemond
considered that Roger had only been a regent in his name and had no right to
give away Antiochene territory. He denounced the agreement. Joscelin thereupon
led his troops, aided by Turkish mercenaries, to raid Antiochene villages near
his borders. An interdict hurled by the Patriarch Bernard against the whole
county of Edessa did not deter him. News of the quarrel was brought to King
Baldwin, who was furious. He hurried north, early in 1128, and forced the two
princes to make peace with each other. Fortunately, Joscelin, who was the more
truculent, fell suddenly ill and saw his illness as a punishment from heaven.
He agreed to restore to Bohemond the booty that he had taken, and apparently
abandoned his claim to Azaz. But it was too late. As at Damascus the following
year, a golden opportunity was missed and would never recur. For Islam had
found a new and greater champion.

During the last months of 1126 the Abbasid
Caliph al-Mustarshid, who succeeded the amiable poet al-Mustazhir in 1118,
thought to utilize the family quarrels of the Seldjuk Sultans to free himself
of their control. The Sultan, Mahmud, in whose dominions Baghdad lay, was
obliged to interrupt his hunting to send an army there; and he placed it under
his captain, Imad ad-Din Zengi. Zengi, whose father Aqsonqor had been governor
of Aleppo before the period of the Crusades, had already made a name in wars
against the Franks. After a brief campaign he routed the Caliph’s forces at
Wasit and reduced the Caliph to obedience. His tactful behaviour after the
victory pleased al-Mustarshid; and when on il-Bursuqi’s death it was necessary
to appoint a new atabeg for Mosul, Mahmud, who had first thought of naming the
Bedouin leader Dubais, agreed with the Caliph that Zengi was a better
candidate. The Sultan’s youthful son Alp Arslan was installed as governor of
Mosul with Zengi as his atabeg. Zengi spent the winter of 1127 at Mosul
organizing his government there. In the spring of 1128 he marched on to Aleppo,
claiming it as part of il-Bursuqi’s dominions. The citizens of Aleppo, tired of
the anarchy through which they had passed, received him gladly. He made his
solemn entry there on 28 June.

Zengi saw himself as the champion of Islam
against the Franks. But he was unwilling to strike until he was ready. He made
a truce with Joscelin, to last for two years, while he consolidated his power
in Syria. The emirs of Shaizar and Homs hastened to acknowledge his suzerainty.
He had no fears of the former. The latter was induced to assist him on a
campaign against the Damascene possession of Hama, with the promise of its
reversion. But as soon as Hama was conquered, Zengi seized it for himself and
imprisoned Khirkan of Homs, though he was unable to secure Homs itself. Buri of
Damascus, who had promised to join him in a Holy War against the Christians,
was too fully occupied by his war against Jerusalem to make any active protest.
By the end of 1130 Zengi was unquestioned master of Syria as far south as Homs.

1130: Death of
Bohemond II

That same year the Franks suffered a great
disaster. It was the ambition of Bohemond II to restore to his principality all
the lands that it had ever contained. In Cilicia Antiochene power had declined.
Tarsus and Adana were still in Frankish hands; they formed, it seems, the dower
of Roger’s widow Cecilia, King Baldwin’s sister; and a Frankish garrison
remained at Mamistra. But farther inland Anazarbus had fallen into the
possession of the Armenian prince, Thoros the Roupenian, who had established
his capital at Sis, close by. Thoros died in 1129 and his son Constantine a few
months later, in the course of a palace intrigue. The next prince was the
brother of Thoros, Leo I. Bohemond thought that the moment had come to recover
Anazarbus. In February 1130 he marched with a small force up the river Jihan
towards his objective. Leo was alarmed and appealed for help to the Danishmend
emir, Ghazi, whose lands now reached the Taurus mountains. Bohemond knew
nothing of this alliance. As he progressed carelessly up the river, meeting
only light resistance from the Armenians, the Danishmend Turks fell on him and
massacred the whole of his army. It was said that had they recognized the
Prince himself, they would have saved him for the ransom that he would bring.
As it was, his head was brought to the Danishmend emir, who had it embalmed and
sent it as a gift to the Caliph.

It was due to Byzantine intervention that the
Turks did not follow up their victory; and Anazarbus remained in Armenian hands.
But Bohemond’s death was a disaster for Antioch. Bohemond had succeeded to
Antioch by hereditary right. Sentiment demanded that his rights should pass to
his heir. But his marriage with Alice had produced only one child, a daughter
two years old, called Constance. Without waiting for her father the King to
appoint a regent, according to his right as overlord, Alice at once assumed the
regency. But she was ambitious. It was soon rumoured in Antioch that she wished
to rule not as a regent but as a reigning sovereign. Constance was to be
immured in a convent or, as soon as might be, married off to some ignoble
husband. The unnatural mother lost popularity in the principality, where
already many men felt that in such times a warrior was needed as regent. When
she heard that the King was already on his way from Jerusalem, Alice saw power
slipping from her grasp, and took a desperate step. A messenger leading a
splendid horse splendidly caparisoned was sent to Aleppo, to the atabeg Zengi,
to whom she announced that she was ready to pay homage if he would guarantee
her possession of Antioch.

On the news of Bohemond’s death King Baldwin
hastened northward with his son-in-law Fulk, to take over the custody of its
heiress and to nominate the regent. As he approached the city his troops
captured Alice’s envoy to Zengi. The King at once had
him hanged.
When he appeared before Antioch he found that his daughter had shut the gates
in his face. He summoned Joscelin to his aid and encamped before the city.
Within, Alice had won temporary support by a lavish distribution of money from
the princely treasury to the soldiers and people. It is possible that with her
Armenian blood she was popular amongst the native Christians. But the Frankish
nobility would not support a woman against their sovereign. After a few days a
Norman knight, William of Aversa, and a monk, Peter the Latin, opened the Gate
of the Duke to Joscelin and the Gate of Saint Paul to Fulk. Next day the King
entered. Alice barricaded herself in a tower, and only emerged when the
notables of the city guaranteed her life. There was a painful interview between
Baldwin and his daughter, who knelt in terrified shame before him. The King
wished to avoid a scandal; and doubtless his father’s heart was touched. He
forgave her; but he removed her from the regency and banished her to Lattakieh
and Jabala, the lands that had been settled on her by Bohemond II as her dower.
He himself assumed the regency and made all the lords of Antioch take an oath
to him and to his granddaughter jointly. Then, after charging Joscelin with the
guardianship of Antioch and its child-princess, he returned to Jerusalem in the
summer of 1130.

1131: Deaths of
Baldwin II and Joscelin I

It was his last journey. A long life of endless
activity only interrupted by two miserable periods of captivity had worn him
out. In 1131 his health began to fail. When August came he was clearly dying.
At his wish he was moved from the Palace at Jerusalem to the Patriarch’s
residence, attached to the buildings of the Holy Sepulchre, that he might die
as near as possible to Calvary. As the end approached he summoned the nobles of
the realm to his room, and with them his daughter Melisende and her husband
Fulk and their little one-year-old son, called Baldwin after him. He gave Fulk
and Melisende his blessing and bade all present to accept them as their
sovereigns. Then he himself assumed the robe of a monk and was admitted a canon
of the Holy Sepulchre. The ceremony was barely done before he died, on Friday,
21 August 1131. He was buried in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, amid
mourning worthy of a great king.

His cousin and old comrade, Joscelin of Edessa,
did not long survive him. About the time of Baldwin’s death he went to besiege
a small castle north-east of Aleppo; and while he was inspecting his lines a
mine that his men had laid collapsed beneath him. He was horribly wounded, and
there was no hope of his recovery. As he lay dying, news came that the
Danishmend emir, Ghazi, had marched against the town of Kaisun, the great
fortress where Joscelin had recently installed the Jacobite Patriarch of
Antioch. Kaisun was hard pressed by the Turks; and Joscelin ordered his son to
go to its rescue. But the younger Joscelin replied that the army of Edessa was
too small to be of use. Thereupon the aged Count hoisted himself from his bed
and was carried in a litter at the head of his army to fight the Turks. The
news of his coming startled Ghazi, who had thought him already dead.
Disquieted, he raised the siege of Kaisun. A messenger rode hurriedly to tell
Joscelin; who had his litter laid on the ground that he might thank God. The
effort and the emotion were too much for him; and he died there by the
roadside.

With Baldwin and with Joscelin dead, the old
generation of pioneer Crusaders was ended. In the years to come we find a new
pattern of conflict between the Crusaders of the second generation, men and
women like Joscelin II, like the Princess Alice, or like the house of Tripoli,
ready to fit themselves into the eastern way of life and seeking only to hold
what they possessed, and the new-comers from the West, aggressive, unadapted
and uncomprehending, like Fulk, like Raymond of Poitiers, or like the fatal
Reynald of Chatillon.

CHAPTER II

THE SECOND
GENERATION

‘
They have begotten
strange children.’
HOSEA V, 7

On 14 September 1131, three weeks after King
Baldwin II had been laid to rest in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the same
church witnessed the coronation of King Fulk and Queen Melisende. The
succession of the new sovereign was celebrated with joyful festivities.

But while the barons of the Kingdom of
Jerusalem accepted King Fulk without demur, the Frankish princes of the north
were less ready to admit him as overlord. Baldwin I and Baldwin II had acted as
suzerains of all the Frankish states because they had had the power and
personality to do so. But the juridical position was by no means clear. In the
case of Edessa Joscelin I had, like Baldwin II before him, paid homage to his
predecessor when his predecessor became King of Jerusalem and personally
bequeathed him the fief. Did the arrangement make Joscelin’s heirs the vassals
of Baldwin II’s? At Tripoli Count Bertrand had submitted to Baldwin I’s
suzerainty in order to protect himself against Tancred’s aggression; but his
son Pons had already tried to repudiate Baldwin If s rights and had only
recognized them because he was not strong enough to defy the King’s forces. At
Antioch Bohemond I had considered himself a sovereign prince; and Tancred,
though he had only been regent, not prince, refused to regard himself as the
King’s vassal except for his principality of Galilee. Though Roger and Bohemond
II had recognized Baldwin II as overlord, it could be argued that they had been
wrong to do so. The position was complicated by the rights that the Byzantine
Emperor legitimately claimed over Antioch and Edessa, through the treaty made
between the Princes and the Emperor at Constantinople during the First Crusade,
and over Tripoli because of the homage paid by Count Bertrand to the Emperor.