A History of the Crusades-Vol 2 (55 page)

Guy’s behaviour had shocked both the soldiery
who believed him to be a coward and the barons who knew him to be weak. On his
return to Jerusalem he quarrelled with the King. Baldwin felt that the air of
Tyre would be kinder to him than the windy heights of Jerusalem. He asked his
brother-in-law to make an exchange of the two cities. Guy received the request
rudely; whereupon Baldwin with an access of angry energy summoned his chief
vassals and on their advice deposed Guy from the regency. Instead, on 23 March
1183, he proclaimed as his heir his nephew Baldwin, Sibylla’s son by her first
marriage, a child of six years, and tried to persuade his sister to have her
marriage annulled. Meanwhile, though he could not move without help, and could
no longer sign his name, he resumed the government himself. Guy’s response was
to retire to his county of Ascalon and Jaffa and there throw off his allegiance
to the Crown. Baldwin seized Jaffa, which he put under the direct authority of
the Crown, but Guy defied him in Ascalon. In vain the Patriarch Heraclius and
the Grand Masters of the Temple and the Hospital interceded for the rebel. The
King lost his temper with them and banished them from the Court. He had
summoned them to order them to preach the Crusade in western Europe, but some
months passed before they would now consent to go.

The council of barons on whose advice the King
deposed Guy was composed of Bohemond of Antioch, Raymond of Tripoli, the Lord
of Caesarea, and the two Ibelins. The Lord of Oultrejourdain was not present.
The time had come for the marriage to take place between the Princess Isabella,
now aged eleven, and Humphrey of Toron, aged about seventeen. Reynald
determined that the ceremony should be celebrated with all the pomp at his
disposal at his castle of Kerak, to which the bridegroom was heir. During the
month of November guests began to arrive at the castle. Many of them, such as
the bride’s mother, Queen Maria Comnena, were Reynald’s personal enemies; but
they came in a last attempt to heal the breach between the warring factions. With
the guests arrived entertainers, dancers, jugglers and musicians from all over
the Christian East. Suddenly the festivities were interrupted by the terrible
news that Saladin was approaching with his army.

1183: The
Marriage at Kerak

The destruction of Kerak and its godless lord
ranked high among Saladin’s ambitions. So long as Reynald held his great castle
he could intercept all the traffic that tried to pass between Syria and Egypt;
and experience had shown that no treaty could restrain him. On 20 November
Saladin was joined by reinforcements from Egypt and encamped before the walls.
The farmers and shepherds of the countryside, Christian Syrians, drove their
flocks for safety within the town, and many took refuge in the courtyards of
the castle. Saladin at once attacked the lower town and forced an entrance.
Reynald was only able to escape back into the castle owing to the heroism of
one of his knights, who single-handed defended the bridge over the fosse
between the town and the citadel till it could be destroyed behind him. With a
fine show of bravura the wedding-ceremonies were continued in the castle. While
rocks were hurled at its walls, the singing and dancing went on within. The
Lady Stephanie, mother of the bridegroom, herself prepared dishes from the
bridal feast which she sent out to Saladin. He in return asked in which tower
the young pair were housed and gave orders that it should not be bombarded by
his siege-engines. But otherwise he did not relax his efforts. His nine great
mangonels were in continuous action, and his workmen almost filled up the
fosse.

Messengers had hurried to Jerusalem to beg the
King for help. He summoned the royal army which he put under the command of
Count Raymond; but he insisted on coming himself in his litter with his men.
They hastened down past Jericho and up the road by Mount Nebo. On his approach
Saladin, whose engines had made little effect on the strong walls of the
fortress, lifted the siege and on 4 December moved back towards Damascus. The
King was carried in triumph into Kerak; and the wedding-guests were free to go
home. Their experience had not ended their discord, from which the young bride
suffered the most. Her mother-in-law, no doubt at Reynald’s request, forbade
her to see her mother; and her mother, deep in party intrigues that were dear
to her Greek blood, regarded her as half a traitor. Only her husband was kind
to her. Humphrey of Toron was a youth of extraordinary beauty and great
learning, more fitted in his tastes to be a girl than a man. But he was gentle
and considerate to his child-wife; and she loved him.

Next autumn Saladin once again marched against
Kerak, with an army to which his Ortoqid vassals sent contingents. Once again
the huge fortifications were too much for him. He could not lure the defenders
out to fight on the slopes below the town; and once again, when an army from
Jerusalem approached, he retired into his own territory, only leaving a
detachment to raid Galilee and to pillage the country as far south as Nablus.
Saladin himself returned to Damascus. There was still much to be done in the
reorganization of his Empire. The time had not quite come for the elimination
of the Christians.

In Jerusalem the leper-King kept the reins of
the government in his decaying hands. Guy still held Ascalon, refusing to admit
royal officers into the town. But his friends the Patriarch and the Grand
Masters were away in Europe, trying vainly to impress the Emperor Frederick and
King Louis and King Henry with the perils awaiting the Christian East. The
western potentates received them with honour and discussed plans for a great
Crusade. But they each made excuses why they could not themselves participate.
All that came of the mission was that a few individual knights took the Cross.

1185: King Baldwin
IV’s Will

In the autumn of 1184 Guy once again infuriated
his brother-in-law. Ever since the Christian capture of Ascalon the Bedouin of
the district had been allowed, on the payment of a small tribute to the King,
to move as they pleased to pasture their flocks. Guy, annoyed because the
tribute went to the King and not to himself, fell on them one day and massacred
them and annexed their flocks.

Baldwin was now bedridden and was never to rise
again. He saw how fatal had been the influence of his mother and her friends,
and sent for his cousin Raymond of Tripoli to take over the administration.
Meanwhile he prepared for his death. Before an assembly of the barons, early in
1185, he announced his will. His little nephew was to succeed to the throne. At
the express wish of the assembly Guy was not to have the regency, which was to
go to Raymond of Tripoli, who was to hold Beirut as payment for his services.
But Raymond refused the personal guardianship of the little King, lest the boy,
who seemed delicate, should die young and he be accused of hastening his death.
In view of the boy’s health the barons further swore that, should he die before
he reached the age of ten, Count Raymond should keep the regency till the four
great rulers of the West, the Pope, the Western Emperor and the Kings of France
and England, should arbitrate between the claims of the Princesses Sibylla and
Isabella. Meanwhile, in a last attempt to bring the factions together, the
personal guardianship of the boy was given to his great-uncle, Joscelin of
Courtenay, who now began to profess a cordial friendship towards Raymond.

All the assembled barons swore to carry out the
King’s wishes. Among them was the Patriarch Heraclius, just back from the West,
with the Grand Master of the Hospital, Roger of Les Moulins. The Grand Master
of the Temple, Arnold of Toroga, had died during the journey. As his successor
the Order had elected, after a stormy debate, Raymond’s old enemy Gerard of
Ridfort. Gerard also gave his assent to the King’s will. The child was taken to
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and there, held in Balian of Ibelin’s arms, he
was crowned by the Patriarch.

A few weeks later, in March 1185, King Baldwin
IV was released by death from the agonies of his long disease. He was only
twenty-four. Of all the Kings of Jerusalem he was the most unhappy. His ability
was undoubted and his courage was superb. But from his sickbed he was powerless
to control the intrigues around him and too often had yielded to the nagging
influence of his evil mother and his foolish sister. At least he was spared the
final humiliations that were to come to the kingdom.

1185: Saladin s
Illness

When the King’s pathetic corpse had been buried
in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Raymond as regent summoned the barons once
more to ask them what policy he should follow. The winter rains had failed and
there was a threat of famine. The only Crusader to come eastward was the old
Marquis William of Montferrat, grandfather of the child-King; and he, after
satisfying himself that all was well with his grandchild, settled down quietly
in a fief in Galilee. His son Conrad, the King’s uncle, set out to follow him
but stopped on the way at Constantinople, where his brother Rainier had
perished a few years before. There he offered his help to Rainier’s avenger,
the Emperor Isaac Angelus, whose sister he married. He forgot about his nephew
and Palestine. It was clear to all the barons assembled in Jerusalem that till
a large new Crusade could come the starving country could not face a war. They
approved of Raymond’s suggestion that a four-years’ truce should be sought from
Saladin.

Saladin on his side was willing. There had been
a quarrel amongst his relatives in Egypt that needed a settlement; and he had
heard that Izz ed-Din of Mosul was restive once more. The treaty was signed.
Commerce was renewed between the Frankish states and their neighbours; and a
flow of com from the east saved the Christians from starvation.

In April 1185 Saladin marched northward,
crossing the Euphrates at Birejik on the 15th. There he was joined by Kukburi
of Harran and by envoys from Izz ed-Din’s vassals, the lords of Jezireh and
Irbil. Izz ed-Din sent embassies to the Seldjuk rulers of Konya and of
Persarmenia. The latter sent some troops to his aid; the former sent a
threatening message to Saladin, but took no action. In June Saladin was before
Mosul, refusing all Izz ed-Din’s offers of peace, even when the Prince’s aged
mother came herself to plead with him. But Mosul was still too formidable a
fortress. His troops began to sicken in the summer heat. When in August the
Seldjuk Sultan of Persarmenia, Soqman II, suddenly died, Saladin moved
northward to capture the Sultan’s vassal cities of Diarbekir and Mayyafaraqin
and to rest his men in the cooler air of the uplands. There he fell ill himself
and rode, almost dying, to his friend Kukburi’s castle at Harran. His brother,
al-Adil, now governor of Aleppo, hastened to come with the best doctors of the
East; but they could do nothing. Believing his end to be near and knowing that
all his kinsmen were plotting for the inheritance, he made his emirs swear
allegiance to his sons. Then, unexpectedly he began to mend. By January 1186 he
was out of danger. At the end of February he received an embassy from Izz ed-Din
and agreed to make peace. In a treaty signed by the ambassadors on 3 March Izz
ed-Din became Saladin’s vassal and was confirmed in his own possessions; but
the lands across the Tigris south of Mosul, including Arbil and Shahrzur were
put under emirs appointed by Saladin and owing him direct allegiance. Their
presence guaranteed Izz ed-Din’s loyalty. Saladin himself was then at Homs,
where Nasr ed-Din, Shirkuh’s son and his own son-in-law, was emir. Nasr ed-Din
had plotted for the throne of Syria during Saladin’s illness. No one therefore
was surprised when he was found dead in his bed on 5 March, after celebrating
the Feast of Victims. The victim’s child, Shirkuh II, a boy of twelve, was
given the succession to Homs. Saladin confiscated much of his money, but the
boy aptly quoted a passage from the Koran threatening torment to those that
despoiled orphans and had it restored to him. In April Saladin was back in
Damascus. His empire now stretched securely to the borders of Persia.

The truce between the Christians and the
Moslems was bringing back some prosperity to Palestine. Trade between the
interior and the ports of Acre and Tyre was eagerly renewed, to the advantage
of merchants of both religions. If peace could be maintained till some great
Crusade could arrive from the West, then there might still be a future for the
Kingdom. But fate was once more unkind to the Christians. About the end of
August 1186 King Baldwin V died at Acre, not yet nine years old.

1186: Sibylla
proclaimed Queen

The Regent Raymond and the Seneschal Joscelin
were present at the death-bed. Professing himself anxious to work in with
Raymond, Joscelin persuaded him to go to Tiberias and to invite the barons of
the realm to meet him there, in security from the plots of the Patriarch, in
order that the terms of Baldwin IV’s will should be carried out. He himself
would convey the little corpse to Jerusalem for burial. Raymond fell into the
trap and went off in good faith. As soon as he was gone Joscelin sent troops
that he could trust to occupy Tyre and Beirut and remained himself in Acre,
where he proclaimed Sibylla as Queen. He dispatched the royal body to Jerusalem
in charge of the Templars. His messengers summoned Sibylla and Guy from Ascalon
to attend the funeral; and Reynald of Chatillon hurried to join them from
Kerak.

Raymond discovered that he had been tricked. He
rode down to Nablus, to Balian of Ibelin’s castle, and, as lawful Regent of the
realm, summoned the High Court of the barons. All his supporters hurried to
join him. With Balian and his wife, Queen Maria, were her daughter Isabella
with Humphrey of Toron, Baldwin of Ramleh, Walter of Caesarea, Reynald of
Sidon, and all the tenants-in-chief of the Crown, with the exception of Reynald
of Chatillon. There they received an invitation from Sibylla to attend her
coronation. They replied by sending two Cistercian monks as envoys to
Jerusalem, to remind the conspirators of the oath sworn to King Baldwin IV and
to forbid any action to be taken till the Court had held its deliberations.