A History of the Crusades-Vol 2 (8 page)

The Treaty of Devol is of interest because it
reveals the solution that Alexius now contemplated for the Crusader question.
He was prepared to allow frontier districts and even Antioch itself to pass
into the autonomous control of a Latin prince, so long as the prince was bound
to him by ties of vassalage according to the Latin custom, and so long as
Byzantium kept indirect control through the Church. Alexius, moreover, felt
himself to be responsible for the welfare of the eastern Christians, and even
wished to safeguard the rights of his unsatisfactory Armenian vassals, the
Roupenians. The treaty remained a paper agreement. But it broke Bohemond; who
never dared show himself again in the East. He retired humble and discredited
to his lands in Apulia, and died there in 1111, an obscure Italian princeling,
leaving two infant sons by his French marriage to inherit his rights to
Antioch. He had been a gallant soldier, a bold and wily general and a hero to
his followers; and his personality had outshone all his colleagues’ on the
First Crusade. But the vastness of his unscrupulous ambition was his downfall.
The time had not yet come for the Crusaders to destroy the bulwark of eastern
Christendom.

As Alexius well realized, the Treaty of Devol
required the co-operation of Tancred; and Tancred, who was not sorry to see his
uncle eliminated from eastern affairs, had no intention of becoming the Emperor’s
vassal. His ambition was less extensive than Bohemond’s, but it was for the
creation of a strong independent principality. His prospects were unhopeful.
Bohemond had left him with few men and quite without ready money. Nevertheless
he decided to take the offensive. A forced loan from the wealthy merchants of
Antioch replenished his funds and enabled him to hire local mercenaries; and he
summoned all the knights and cavalrymen that could be spared from Edessa and
Turbessel as well as from Antiochene territory. In the spring of 1105 he
marched out to recover Artah. Ridwan of Aleppo had been preparing to go to the
assistance of the Banu Ammar in their struggle against the Franks farther to
the south; but on the news of Tancred’s advance he turned to defend Artah. The
two armies met on 20 April, at the village of Tizin near Artah, on a desolate
plain strewn with boulders. Alarmed by the size of the Turkish host, Tancred
suggested a parley with Ridwan, who would have agreed, had not his cavalry
commander, Sabawa, persuaded him to attack without delay. The terrain prevented
the Turks from using their usual tactics. When their first cavalry onrush was
driven back by the Franks they retired to lure the enemy on; but they were
unable to re-form their ranks for a second charge, and meanwhile their infantry
was cut down by the Frankish knights. At the failure of their plans they
panicked. Ridwan and his bodyguard rode off in flight to Aleppo, and most of
his cavalry followed. The remainder and the foot-soldiers were butchered on the
battle-field.

The victory enabled Tancred to reoccupy all the
territory lost in the previous year. The Seldjuk garrison abandoned Artah to
him, while his troops pursued the fugitives to the walls of Aleppo and
plundered many of the civilian population as they fled in terror from the city.
Ridwan sued for peace. He agreed to give up all his territory in the Orontes
valley and to pay a regular tribute to Tancred. By the end of 1105 Tancred’s
dominion stretched once more as far south as Albara and Maarat an-Numan.

1106: The
Capture of Apamea

In February 1106 the emir of Apamea, Khalaf ibn
Mula’ib, who had been not unfriendly to the Franks, was assassinated by
fanatics from Aleppo. The murderers then quarrelled with their chief ally
within the town, Abu’l Fath, who had assumed its government, and now asked for
help from Ridwan. Tancred, invited by the local Armenians, judged it opportune
to intervene. He marched south and began to besiege the town. But Abu’l Fath
restored order; and the emirs of Shaizar and Hama promised help. Tancred was
obliged to retire after three weeks, giving as his excuse that he must succour
the garrison at Lattakieh, which, after an eighteen months’ blockade by the Byzantines,
was faced with famine. He revictualled it and returned to Antioch. A few months
later one of Khalaf’s sons, Musbih ibn Mula’ib, who had escaped his father’s
fate, appeared at Antioch with a hundred followers and persuaded Tancred to
attack Apamea once again. With Musbih’s help he reinvested the town, digging a
ditch all round to prevent ingress or egress. None of the neighbouring emirs
came to Abu’l Fath’s assistance; and after a few weeks, on 14 September 1106,
the Moslems capitulated on the condition that their lives should be spared.
Tancred agreed to their terms and entered the town; whereupon, to please
Musbih, he put Abu’l Fath and three of his companions to death. The other
Apamean notables were taken to Antioch, where they remained till Ridwan
arranged for their ransom. A Frankish governor was installed at Apamea; while
Musbih was enfeoffed with an estate near by. Soon afterwards the Franks
reoccupied Kafartab. It was put into the charge of a knight called Theophilus,
who soon made himself the terror of the Moslems of Shaizar.

With his eastern and southern frontiers thus
secured, Tancred could turn against the foe that he hated the most, Byzantium.
In the summer of 1107, when Bohemond’s attack on the European provinces was
imminent, Alexius was obliged to remove troops from the Syrian frontier in
order to face what was a more serious menace. Cantacuzenus was recalled with
many of his men from Lattakieh, and Monastras from Cilicia, which was put under
the control of the Armenian prince of Lampron, the Sbarabied Oshin. In the
winter of 1108, or early in 1109, soon after Bohemond’s humiliation in Epirus,
Tancred invaded Cilicia. The Emperor’s judgment of men had failed him. Oshin
came of high lineage and had been famed in his youth for his courage; but now
he had become luxurious and lazy. The key to Cilicia was the fortress of
Mamistra, on the river Jihan. When Tancred’s forces advanced by land over the
Amanus range and by water up the river to besiege the town, Oshin did nothing
to stop them. Mamistra fell after a short siege; and it seems that during the
next months Tancred re-established his rule over Adana and Tarsus, though
western Cilicia remained in imperial hands. Oshin himself retired to his lands
in the Taurus.

Lattakieh had already been reconquered.
Hitherto the Normans had been hampered by lack of sea-power. But the Byzantine
navy was now concentrated far away in the Adriatic; and Tancred was able to
purchase the aid of a Pisan squadron. The price that Pisa demanded was a street
in Antioch, and a quarter in Lattakieh, with a church and a godown. Petzeas,
who had succeeded Cantacuzenus as Byzantine commander there, was powerless to
offer resistance. Lattakieh was finally incorporated into the Antiochene
principality in the spring of 1108. Next year Tancred extended his dominion
farther to the south, taking Jabala, Buluniyas and the castle of Marqab from
the dissolving dominions of the Banu Ammar.

1109: Tancred at
the Height of his Power

Thus, when Bohemond surrendered to the Emperor and
signed away his independence, Tancred was reaching the height of his power and
was in no way disposed to obey the imperial decree. From the Taurus to the
Jezireh and central Syria his was the chief authority. He was ruler of Antioch
and Edessa, only their regent, it is true; but Prince Bohemond now lived
discredited in Italy and would never return to the East, and Count Baldwin
languished in Turkish captivity, from which Tancred would make no effort to
rescue him. The Prince of Aleppo was his virtual vassal and none of the
neighbouring emirs would venture to attack him. And he had triumphantly defied
the heir of the Caesars at Constantinople. When the Emperor’s ambassadors came
to Antioch to remind him of his uncle’s engagements, he dismissed them with arrogance.
He was, as he said, Ninus the great Assyrian, a giant whom no man could resist.

But arrogance has its limitations. For all his
brilliance, Tancred was distrusted and disliked. It was by his own Crusading
colleagues that his power was challenged and checked.

CHAPTER IV

TOULOUSE AND
TRIPOLI

‘
The glory of
Lebanon shall come unto thee.’
ISAIAH LX, 13

Of all the princes that set out in 1096 for the
First Crusade, Raymond, Count of Toulouse, had been the wealthiest and the most
distinguished, the man whom many expected to be named as leader of the
movement. Five years later he was among the least considered of the Crusaders.
His troubles were of his own making. Though he was no greedier and no more
ambitious than most of his colleagues, his vanity made his faults too clearly
visible. His policy of loyalty to the Emperor Alexius was genuinely based on a sense
of honour and a far-sighted statesmanship, but to his fellow-Franks it seemed a
treacherous ruse, and it won him small advantage; for the Emperor soon
discovered him to be an incompetent friend. His followers respected his piety;
but he had no authority over them. They had forced his hand over the march to
Jerusalem during the First Crusade; and the disasters of 1101 showed how little
fitted he was to direct an expedition. His lowest humiliation had come when he
was taken prisoner by his young colleague Tancred. Though Tancred’s action,
breaking the rules of hospitality and honour, outraged public opinion, Raymond
only obtained release on signing away any claims to northern Syria and
incidentally destroying the basis of his agreement with the Emperor. But he had
the virtue of tenacity. He had vowed to remain in the East. He would keep his
vow and would still carve for himself a principality.

The Banu Ammar
of Tripoli

There was one area that must be conquered by
the Christians if their establishments in the East were to survive. A band of
Moslem emirates separated the Franks of Antioch and Edessa from their brothers
in Jerusalem. Of these emirates the most considerable was that of the Banu
Ammar of Tripoli. The head of the family, the
qadi
Fakhr al-Mulk Abu Ali,
was a man of peace. Though his army was small he ruled a wealthy district, and
by a skilful if inconsistent attitude of appeasement towards all his neighbours
he maintained a precarious independence, relying in the last resort upon the
strength of his fortress-capital, on the peninsula of al-Mina. He had shown
considerable friendliness towards the Franks whenever they approached his
dominions. He had re-victualled the First Crusade, and he did not oppose its
leaders when they besieged his city of Arqa. He had given Baldwin of Boulogne
useful help during his perilous journey to assume the crown of Jerusalem. But
when the Crusaders receded into the distance he had quietly taken over the
cities of Tortosa and Maraclea which they had occupied. He thus controlled the
whole coast-road from Lattakieh and Jabala to the Fatimid dependency of Beirut.

The alternative route from northern Syria to
Palestine ran up the valley of the Orontes, past the Munqidhite city of
Shaizar, past Hama, which owed allegiance to Ridwan, and Homs, where Ridwan’s
stepfather, Janah ad-Daulah reigned. There it divided. One branch, followed by
Raymond on the First Crusade, forked through the Buqaia to Tripoli and the
coast; the other went straight on, past the Damascene dependency of Baalbek, to
the head-waters of the Jordan.

Raymond, whose ambitions were never modest,
contemplated the establishment of a principality that would command both the
coast-road and the Orontes, with its capital at Homs, the city that the Franks
called La Chamelle. But his first objective, determined probably by the
presence of Genoese ships that might help him, would be the cities of the
coast. On his release by Tancred, in the last days of 1101, he set out from
Antioch together with the surviving princes of the Crusades of 1101, Stephen of
Blois, William of Aquitaine, Welf of Bavaria and their comrades, who were
anxious to complete their pilgrimage to Jerusalem. At Lattakieh he was reunited
with his wife and with his troops, and with them he marched on to Tortosa. The
Genoese flotilla on whose help he counted anchored off the coast as he reached
the city walls. Before this double menace, the governor made little resistance.
About the middle of February Raymond entered Tortosa, together with his
fellow-travellers, who agreed without discussion that it should be his. They
supposed that he would then accompany them on to Jerusalem. On his refusal they
were angry and, according to Fulcher of Chartres, spoke blasphemous words
against him. But Raymond had decided that Tortosa should be the nucleus of his
dominion. So they took their leave of him and journeyed on to the south.

Raymond had made no secret of his plans; and
the Moslem world was alarmed. Fakhr al-Mulk sent to warn the emirs of Homs and
Duqaq of Damascus. But when Raymond appeared before the walls of Tripoli, it
was seen that his army numbered little more than three hundred men. The Moslems
thought that now was the moment to destroy him. Duqaq hastily provided two
thousand horsemen, and Janah ad-Daulah as many more; and the whole army of the
Banu Ammar was collected. In all the Moslem host outnumbered Raymond’s by
twenty to one as it converged on him on the plain outside the city.

1102: Raymond’s
Victory before Tripoli

Raymond’s deeds were poorly reported by the
Crusader historians. It is from the Arab Ibn al-Athir that we learn of the
extraordinary battle that ensued. Raymond placed a hundred of his men to oppose
the Damascenes, a hundred to oppose the Banu Ammar, fifty to oppose the men of
Homs, and the remaining fifty to be his own bodyguard. The Homs soldiers began
the attack; but when it failed they suddenly panicked; and the panic spread
among the troops of Damascus. The Tripolitans were enjoying greater success,
when Raymond, finding his other foes in flight, swung his whole army against
them. The sudden shock was too much for them; and they too turned and fled. The
Frankish cavalry then swept over the battlefield, slaughtering all the Moslems
that could not escape. The Arab historian estimated that seven thousand of his
co-religionists perished.