A History of the Crusades-Vol 2 (9 page)

The victory not only re-established Raymond’s
reputation; it also ensured the survival of his Lebanese dominion. The Moslems
never again dared to take the offensive against him. But his forces were too
small for him to capture Tripoli itself, with its great fortifications on the
peninsula of al-Mina. After exacting a heavy tribute in money and horses, he
returned to Tortosa, to plan his next campaign.

After spending the following months in
establishing himself in the neighbourhood of Tortosa, he set out in the spring
of 1103 to conquer the Buqaia, a necessary move if he wished to isolate Tripoli
and himself expand towards the Orontes. His attempt to surprise the fortress of
Tuban, at the north-eastern entrance to the valley, failed; but undaunted, he
settled down to besiege Qalat al-Hosn, the tremendous castle that dominated the
whole plain, which his troops had occupied for a week in 1099. These castles
belonged to Janah ad-Daulah of Homs, who could not afford to lose them. He
prepared an army for their rescue. But, as he came out of the great mosque of
Homs, after praying for victory, he was murdered by three Assassins. His death
caused disorder in his city. Raymond at once raised the siege of Qalat al-Hosn
and marched eastward to profit by it. Public opinion attributed the murder to
agents of Ridwan, who had never forgiven Janah for having attacked him three
years before, when he was engaged against the Franks of Antioch. But Janah’s
widow, who was Ridwan’s mother, terrified by Raymond’s approach, sent to Aleppo
to offer Ridwan the city. Janah’s counsellors did not support her, but instead
summoned Duqaq of Damascus to their rescue. Duqaq hastened up in person from
the south with his atabeg Toghtekin and took over the government, which he
entrusted to Toghtekin. Raymond was not in a position to fight against him, and
withdrew to the coast.

When he returned to Tortosa he learnt that a
Genoese squadron of forty vessels had put into Lattakieh. He at once hired its
help for an attack on Tripoli. The attack failed; so the allies moved southward
and captured the port of Jebail, or Gibelet, the Byblos of the ancients. The
Genoese were rewarded with one-third of the town. But Raymond was determined to
conquer Tripoli itself. During the last months of 1103 he set up a camp in the
suburbs of the city and began to construct a huge castle on a ridge, some three
miles inland. Shortly before, to please the Byzantines, he had tried to divert
Tancred from Lattakieh. In return they provided him from Cyprus with materials
and with skilled masons. By the spring of 1104 it was completed and Raymond was
in residence. He called it Mount Pilgrim; but to the Arabs it was known as
Qalat Sanjil, the castle of Saint-Gilles.

1103: Death of
Raymond

Tripoli was now in a state of permanent siege,
but it remained inviolate. Raymond controlled the land approaches, but he
lacked permanent sea-power. With their great hoards of wealth the Banu Ammar
could still maintain a large merchant-fleet and bring in provisions to the city
from the Egyptian ports to the south. But Raymond’s castle menaced their
freedom. In the late summer they made a sortie and burnt the suburbs up to its
walls; and Raymond himself was injured by a burning roof which fell on him.
Early next spring Fakhr al-Mulk was induced to arrange a truce with the
Christians, by which he abandoned the suburbs to them. The negotiations were
hardly concluded, when Raymond, who had never fully recovered from his bums six
months before, fell mortally ill. He died at Mount Pilgrim on 28 February 1105.
The gallant adventures of his later years had quite restored his fame. He was
mourned as a great Christian knight who had preferred the hardships of the Holy
War to all the pleasures of his native land.

This tribute was deserved. For Raymond, unlike
his fellow-Crusaders now settled in the East, who were of small account in
their home-countries, had possessed a rich heritage in Europe. Though he had
sworn never to return to it, yet he had kept some control over its government.
His death created a problem of succession in Toulouse as well as in the
Lebanon. He had left Toulouse under the rule of his eldest son, Bertrand. But
Bertrand’s right to inherit the county was questioned, probably because he was
a bastard. Of Raymond’s children by the Countess Elvira all had died save one
small boy, Alfonso-Jordan, born a few months ago in the castle of Mount
Pilgrim. It was clear that an infant could not take over the government of a
precarious military state in the Lebanon; while his very existence was probably
not yet known at Toulouse. Bertrand continued to govern his father’s European
lands; and in the East Raymond’s soldiers chose as Raymond’s successor,
probably in conformity with Raymond’s own last wishes, his cousin,
William-Jordan, Count of Cerdagne. William-Jordan, whose maternal grandmother
had been Raymond’s maternal aunt, had only recently arrived in the East. He
regarded himself as regent for his baby cousin and refrained from taking any
title from his eastern territory. But, so long as Alfonso-Jordan lived, neither
William-Jordan nor Bertrand could be secure in his government.

William-Jordan continued his predecessor’s
policy, pressing on the blockade and preserving the alliance with Byzantium. At
the Emperor’s request, the governor of Cyprus, Eumathius Philocales, sent him
an ambassador to receive his homage and in return to make him valuable
presents. As a result of William-Jordan’s compliance, regular supplies were
sent from Cyprus to the Franks before Tripoli, and Byzantine troops
occasionally helped in the blockade of the city. While provender flowed into
the Frankish camp, Tripoli itself was now threatened with starvation. No food
could reach it by land. There were ships from the Fatimid ports and even from
Tancred’s territory that ran the blockade; but they could not bring enough for
its large population. Prices for foodstuffs rose fantastically; a pound of
dates cost a gold piece. Everyone that could escape from the city emigrated.
Within the walls there was misery and disease, which Fakhr al-Mulk tried to
alleviate by distributing food, paid for by special taxes, among the soldiers
and the sick. Certain city notables fled to the Frankish camp; and two of them
revealed to the besiegers the paths by which goods were still smuggled into the
city. Fakhr al-Mulk offered William-Jordan vast sums of money for the persons
of these traitors. When the Count refused to give them up, they were found
murdered in the Christian camp.

1108: Fakhr
al-Mulk visits the Caliph

Fakhr al-Mulk did not know where to turn for
help. If he applied to the Fatimids, they would insist on the annexation of his
state. He was, for some reason, on bad terms with Toghtekin of Homs, his most
natural ally, who had taken over the government of Damascus on Duqaq’s death in
1104, and who himself kept up constant warfare with William-Jordan. Distant
allies seemed the safest; so in 1105 he sent an urgent appeal to Mardin, to
Soqman the Ortoqid. Soqman, who was not unwilling to re-enter the arena of the
Syrian coast, set out with a large army across the desert. But when he reached
Palmyra he suddenly died, and his generals hurried back to the Jezireh to
dispute about the succession.
Thanks to his wealth and his diplomacy
Fakhr maintained himself in Tripoli, amid increasing misery, throughout 1106
and 1107. His relations with Toghtekin improved; and Toghtekin’s diversions
against the Franks, as when he recaptured Rafaniya from them in 1105, were of
assistance to him. But the Franks were now firmly established on the Lebanese
coast; and no neighbouring Moslem power seemed prepared or able to eject them.
In the spring of 1108 Fakhr al-Mulk, in his despair, decided personally to beg
for help from the head of his religion, the Caliph of Baghdad, and from its
greatest potentate, the Seldjuk Sultan Mohammed.

Leaving the government of Tripoli in the hands
of his cousin, Abu’l Manaqib ibn Ammar, and giving all his soldiers six months’
pay in advance, Fakhr set out from Tripoli in March. He had already informed
Toghtekin of his intentions, and it seems that he obtained permission from
William-Jordan to pass through Frankish-held territory. He took a bodyguard of
five hundred men, and numerous costly gifts for the Sultan. When he arrived at
Damascus, Toghtekin received him with every mark of respect, and the leading
Damascene emirs showered gifts on him though, as a precaution, he lodged
outside the city walls. When he continued his journey, Toghtekin’s own son, Taj
al-Mulk Buri, joined his escort. As he approached Baghdad he was honoured with
every flattering attention. The Sultan sent his own barge to transport him
across the Euphrates, and he lay on the cushion usually honoured by the Sultan’s
body. Though he had never assumed a title higher than that of
qadi
, he
entered Baghdad with the ceremony accorded to a sovereign prince. Both the
Caliph and the Sultan showed him brotherly affection and praised him for his
services to the Faith. But when it came to the discussion of business, the
emptiness of these compliments was revealed. The Sultan promised him that a
great Seldjuk army would come to relieve Tripoli; but first there were a few
little tasks to be completed nearer Baghdad. For instance, the emir of Mosul,
Jawali, must be reduced to a more obedient state of mind. Fakhr understood that
in fact Mohammed had no desire to intervene. After spending four luxurious and
fruitless months at the Sultan’s Court, he began his homeward journey, only to
find that now he had no home.

Abu’l Manaqib and the notables of Tripoli were
realists. They saw that only one Moslem power was in a position to help them,
the Fatimids who still had some command of the seas. They invited the Egyptian
vizier, al-Afdal, to send a governor to take over the city. In response,
al-Afdal appointed Sharaf ad-Daulah, who arrived in Tripoli in the summer of
1108, laden with supplies of com for the populace. He had no difficulty in
assuming control. All the partisans of Fakhr al-Mulk were arrested and shipped
off to Egypt. Fakhr had reached Damascus before he heard of the revolution. He
still possessed Jabala, to the north of Tortosa, and he made his way thither.
But his rule in Jabala was of short duration. In May 1109 Tancred of Antioch
appeared in full force before the city. Fakhr at once capitulated on the
understanding that he should hold the town as a fief from Tancred. But Tancred
broke his word. Fakhr was forced to leave, and made his way without molestation
into retirement in Damascus. He spent the rest of his life as Toghtekin’s
pensioner.

1108: Bertrand
of Toulouse leaves for the East

Though Fakhr al-Mulk lost Tripoli, the
Egyptians could not hold it; nor did William-Jordan win it. On Raymond’s death,
the barons of Toulouse had accepted Bertrand’s succession, because he had
already governed them for nearly ten years and because they were not aware that
Raymond had left a legitimate son. But when they learnt of the existence of the
young Alfonso-Jordan, they sent out to the East to ask him to take over his
rightful inheritance. The Countess Elvira cannot be blamed for preferring for
her son the rich lands of southern France to a precarious lordship in the East.
She arrived with him at Toulouse in the course of 1108.

Their coming obliged Bertrand to consider his
future. It is probable that a family compact was arranged by which Bertrand
gave up any claims that he might have to his father’s lands in Europe, and in
return Alfonso-Jordan, in order to be well rid of him from Toulouse, abandoned
in his favour his inheritance in the Lebanon. Bertrand set out for the East in
the summer of 1108. He was determined to round off his future principality by
the conquest of Tripoli; and he probably anticipated that he might have some
difficulty with William-Jordan. To achieve his aims he brought with him an army
of four thousand cavalry and infantry and a flotilla of forty galleys, provided
by the ports of Provence. His young son, Pons, travelled with him. His first
visit was to Genoa, from whom he hoped to obtain the naval help needed for the
reduction of Tripoli. William-Jordan had also tried to arrange an alliance with
the Genoese; but his embassy found Bertrand already accepted as the Republic’s
ally. Genoa had promised to aid Bertrand to take over his father’s conquests in
the East and to crown them with the capture of Tripoli, in which they would be
given the favoured commercial position. When Bertrand sailed on eastward in the
autumn, a Genoese squadron sailed with him.

Next, Bertrand planned to visit Constantinople,
to secure the support of his father’s friend, the Emperor. Storms obliged his
fleet to put into the Gulf of Volo, to the harbour of Almyro, where his men
made an excellent impression by abstaining from the usual Western habit of
pillaging the countryside. Consequently, when he arrived at Constantinople,
Alexius was prejudiced in his favour and received him as a son. Bertrand was
given many valuable presents and the promise of imperial favours to come. In
return he swore allegiance to the Emperor.

From Constantinople Bertrand and his allies
sailed to Saint Symeon, the port of Antioch, and sent an envoy to Tancred to
ask for an interview. Tancred at once came down to see him. But their
conversation did not go smoothly. Bertrand arrogantly demanded that Tancred
should hand over to him the portions of the city of Antioch that his father
once had held. Tancred replied that he would consider this if Bertrand would
assist him in the campaign on which he was about to embark against Mamistra and
the Byzantine cities of Cilicia. To Bertrand, who had just sworn an oath of
allegiance to Alexius and who counted on Byzantine subsidies, the proposition
was unacceptable; but he offered instead to conquer for Tancred the town of
Jabala, in which Fakhr al-Mulk had taken refuge. Tancred insisted on
co-operation in the Cilician expedition; and when Bertrand categorically
refused because of his oath to the Emperor, Tancred ordered him to leave his
principality and forbade his subjects to sell him supplies. Bertrand was
obliged to move on down the coast, and sailed into Tortosa harbour.