‘And the Egyptians will I give over into the hand of a cruel lord; and a fierce king shall rule over them.’ ISAIAH XIX, 4
Rukn ad-Din Baibars Bundukdari was now approaching his fiftieth year. He was a Kipchak Turk by birth, a huge man with a brown skin, blue eyes and a loud resonant voice. When he came first to Syria as a young slave, he was offered for sale to the emir of Hama, who examined him and thought him too coarse a lout. But a Mameluk emir, Bundukdar, noticed him in the market and sensed his intelligence. He was bought for the Sultan’s Mameluk Guard. Thenceforward he had risen rapidly, and since his victory over the Franks in 1244 he had been marked as the ablest of the Mameluk soldiers. He now showed that he was a statesman of the highest calibre, unimpeded by any scruple of honour, gratitude or mercy.
His first task was to establish himself as Sultan. In Egypt he was accepted without demur, but at Damascus another Mameluk emir, Sinjar al-Halabi, seized the power. Sinjar was popular in Damascus; and the simultaneous attack of the Mongols on Aleppo threatened Baibars’s control of Syria. But the Ayubite princes of Horns and Hama defeated the Mongols, while Baibars marched on Damascus and routed Sinjar’s troops outside the city on 17 January 1261. The citizens of Damascus fought on for Sinjar, but their resistance was stamped out. Baibars went on to deal with the Ayubites. The Prince of Kerak was induced by pleasant promises to put himself into the Sultan’s power and was quietly eliminated. Al-Ashraf of Horns was allowed to retain his city till his death in 1263, when it was annexed. It was only at Hama that a branch of the family was able to last on, closely supervised, for another three generations. Baibars also wished to give his government a religious sanction. Some Bedouins brought to Cairo a dark-skinned man called Ahmet whom they declared to be the uncle of the late Caliph. Baibars pretended to verify his genealogy and saluted him as Caliph and religious leader of Islam, but deprived him of any material power. Ahmet, who was renamed al-Hakim, was soon sent to recover Baghdad from the Mongols. When he was killed during his attempt, to which Baibars gave very little support, a son of his was raised to the nominal Caliphate. This shadowy line of doubtful Abbasids was preserved in Cairo so long as the rule of the Mameluks lasted.
1263: Baibars in Palestine
The Sultan’s next task was to punish the Christians who had helped the Mongols. His particular resentment was reserved for King Hethoum of Armenia and Prince Bohemond of Antioch. In the late autumn of 1261 he sent an army to take control of Aleppo, whose Mameluk governor had been insubordinate, and to carry out extensive raids in Antiochene territory. Further raids were made next summer, and the port of Saint Symeon was sacked. Antioch itself was threatened; but Hethoum appealed to Hulagu and arrived with a force of Mongols and Armenians in time to save it. The Mongol power in north-east Syria was still strong enough to deter Baibars; so he had recourse to diplomacy. The Khan Berke of the Golden Horde had by now come out openly as a Moslem and was ready to ally himself with Baibars. One of the two Seldjuk Sultans of Anatolia, Kaikaus, who had been deprived of his lands by an alliance between the Mongols, the Byzantines and his own brother Kilij Arslan, had fled to Berke’s Court and had been sent back with aid from the Golden Horde and from Baibars, while a Turcoman chief called Karaman, now established south-east of Konya, could be used to put permanent pressure on the Armenians.
The Franks of Acre had hoped that their friendliness to the Mameluks at the time of the Ain Jalud campaign would preserve them from hostile attentions. But when John of Jaffa and John of Beirut went to his camp late in 1261 to attempt to negotiate for the return of Frankish prisoners made during recent years and for the fulfilment of a promise made by Sultan Aibek to restore Zirin in Galilee, or else pay an indemnity for it, Baibars, though he seems to have liked John of Jaffa, refused to listen to them and instead sent off all the prisoners to labour-camps. In February 1263, John of Jaffa paid a second visit to the Sultan, who was then encamped by Mount Thabor, and obtained the promise of a truce and an exchange of prisoners. But neither the Temple nor the Hospital would then agree to give up the Moslems in their possession, as they were all trained craftsmen and of material value to the Orders. Baibars himself was shocked by such mercenary greed. He broke off negotiations and marched into Frankish territory. After sacking Nazareth and destroying the Church of the Virgin he made a sudden swoop on Acre, on 4 April 1263. There was severe fighting outside the walls, in which the Seneschal, Geoffrey of Sargines, was badly wounded. But Baibars was not yet ready to besiege the city. He retired after sacking the suburbs. It was suspected that he had arranged to have the co-operation of Philip of Montfort and the Genoese from Tyre, but at the last moment their Christian consciences held them back.
Raids and counter-raids continued on the frontier. The Frankish towns in the maritime plain were constantly threatened. As early as April 1261, Balian of Ibelin, lord of Arsuf, leased his lordship to the Hospital, knowing that he could not afford its defence. Early in 1264 the Temple and the Hospital consented to unite forces to capture the little fortress of Lizon, the ancient Megiddo, and a few months later they made a joint raid down to Ascalon, while in the autumn the French troops, paid for by Saint Louis, penetrated very profitably as far as the suburbs of Beisan. But in return the Moslems so ravaged the Frankish countryside south of Carmel that life was no longer safe there.
At the beginning of 1265 Baibars set out from Egypt at the head of a formidable army. The Mongols had shown signs of aggression in northern Syria that winter; and his first intention was to counter-attack. But he learned that his troops in the north had held them. He could therefore use his army to attack the Franks in the south. After feigning to amuse himself with a great hunting expedition in the hills behind Arsuf, he suddenly appeared before Caesarea. The town fell at once, on 27 February, but the citadel held out for a week. The garrison capitulated on 5 March and was allowed to go free; but the town and castle alike were razed to the ground. A few days later his troops appeared at Haifa. Those of the inhabitants that were warned in time fled to boats in the anchorage, abandoning both the town and the citadel, which were destroyed; and the inhabitants that had remained there were massacred. Baibars himself meanwhile attacked the great Templar castle at Athlit. The village outside the walls was burned, but the castle itself resisted him successfully. On 21 March he gave up its siege and marched on Arsuf. The Hospitallers had garrisoned and provisioned it well. There were 270 knights within the castle, who fought with superb courage. But the lower town fell on 26 April, after its walls had been broken down by the Sultan’s siege-engines; and three days later the commander of the citadel, who had lost a third of his knights, capitulated in return for a promise that the survivors should go free. Baibars broke his word and took them all into captivity. The loss of the two great fortresses horrified the Franks, and inspired the Templar troubadour, Ricaut Bonomel, to write a bitter poem complaining that Christ seemed now to be pleased by the humiliation of the Christians.
1265: Death of Hulagu
It was now the turn of Acre. But the regent, Hugh of Antioch, who had been in Cyprus, had already hurried across the sea with the men that he could raise in the island. When Baibars moved north again from Arsuf he found that Hugh had landed at Acre on 25 April. The Egyptian army returned home, after leaving troops to control the newly conquered territory. The frontier now was within sight of Acre itself. Baibars hastened to write news of his victories to Manfred, King of Sicily, with whom the Egyptian Court kept up the friendship forged with his father Frederick II.
It had been a good year for Baibars. On 8 February 1265, Hulagu died in Azerbaijan. His brother Kubilai had given him the title of Ilkhan and the hereditary government of the Mongol possessions in south-western Asia; and, though his difficulties with the Golden Horde and with the Mongols of Turkestan, who also were converts to Islam, had kept him from resuming a serious offensive against the Mameluks, yet he was still formidable enough to deter the Mameluks from attacking his allies. In July 1264 he held his last Kuriltay at his encampment near Tabriz. His vassals were all present, including King David of Georgia, King Hethoum of Armenia and Prince Bohemond of Antioch. Hethoum and Bohemond were both in disgrace with Hulagu for having, the previous year, kidnapped Euthymius, the Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, on whose installation Hulagu had insisted in 1260, and carried him off to Armenia. The Latin Opizon had then been introduced into Antioch. To Hulagu the alliance of the Byzantines was important as a means for keeping the Turks of Anatolia in control. He was negotiating for a lady of the imperial family of Constantinople to be added to the number of his wives; and when the Emperor Michael selected for the honour his bastard daughter, Maria, she was escorted to Tabriz by the Patriarch Euthymius, who found refuge at Constantinople and who returned to the east no doubt at Hulagu’s express invitation. But the Mongols remained broad-minded and would not allow sectarian quarrels amongst the Christians to interfere with their general policy. It seems that Bohemond was able to excuse himself and that Euthymius was not received back in Antioch.
Hulagu’s death inevitably weakened the Mongols at a critical moment. The influence of his widow, Dokuz Khatun, secured the succession for his favourite son, Abaga, who was governor of Turkestan. But it was not till June, four months after his father’s death, that Abaga was formally installed as Ilkhan; and several more months passed before the redistribution of fiefs and governorships was completed. Dokuz Khatun herself died during the summer, deeply mourned by the Christians. Meanwhile Abaga was continually threatened by his cousins of the Golden Horde, who actually invaded his territory next spring. It was impossible for the Mongol government to intervene for the time being in western Syria. Baibars, to whose diplomacy the Ilkhan’s troubles with his northern neighbours were mainly due, could resume his campaigns against the Christians without fear of interference.
1266: Baibars conquers Galilee
In the early summer of 1266, while Abaga’s armies were occupied in beating off the Khan Berke’s invasion of Persia, two Mameluk armies set out from Egypt. One, under the Sultan himself, appeared before Acre on 1 June. But the regiment maintained there by Saint Louis had recently been reinforced from France. Finding the city so strongly garrisoned, Baibars turned aside to make a demonstration before the Teutonic fortress of Montfort, then marched suddenly on Safed, from whose huge castle the Templars dominated the Galilean uplands. The fortifications had been entirely reconstructed some twenty-five years before, and the garrison was numerous, though many of the soldiers were native Christians or half-breeds. The Sultan’s first assault, on 7 July, was beaten back, nor was he more successful with his next attempts, on 13 and 19 July. He then announced through heralds that he offered a complete amnesty to any of the native soldiers that would surrender to him. It is doubtful how many of them would have trusted his word; but the Templar knights at once grew suspicious. There were recriminations, which came to blows; and the Syrians began to desert. The Templars soon found it impossible to hold the castle. At the end of the month they sent a Syrian sergeant whom they believed to be loyal down to Baibars’s camp to offer surrender. The Syrian, whose name was Leo, returned with the promise that the garrison should be allowed to retire without hurt to Acre. But when the Templars handed over the castle to Baibars on these terms, he had them all decapitated. Whether Leo had been a conscious traitor was uncertain; but his prompt conversion to Islam was evidence against him.
The capture of Safed gave Baibars control of Galilee. He next attacked Toron, which fell to him with hardly a struggle. From Toron he sent a troop to destroy the Christian village of Qara, between Homs and Damascus, which he suspected of being in touch with the Franks. The adult inhabitants were massacred and the children enslaved. When the Christians from Acre sent a deputation to ask to be allowed to bury the dead, he roughly refused, saying that if they wished for martyrs’ corpses they would find them at home. To carry out his threat he marched down to the coast and slaughtered every Christian that fell into his hands. But, once again, he did not venture to attack Acre itself, where the Regent Hugh had just arrived from Cyprus. When the Mameluks retired in the autumn, Hugh assembled the knights of the Orders and the French regiment under Geoffrey of Sargines and made a counter-raid through Galilee. But on 28 October the vanguard was ambushed by the garrison of Safed, while local Arabs attacked the Frankish camp. Hugh was obliged to retire with heavy losses.
1266: The Mameluks ravage Cilicia
While Baibars campaigned in Galilee, the second Mameluk army, under the ablest of his emirs, Qalawun, assembled at Horns. After a lightning raid towards Tripoli, during which he captured the forts of Qulaiat and Halba and the town of Arqa, which controlled the approach to Tripoli from the Buqaia, Qalawun hurried northward to join with the army of al-Mansur of Hama. Their combined troops then marched to Aleppo and turned westward into Cilicia. King Hethoum had expected a Mameluk attack. In 1263, on the news of Hulagu’s death, he had attempted to come to terms with Baibars. The Egyptian navy depended for its shipbuilding on wood from southern Anatolia and the Lebanon. Hethoum and his son-in-law Bohemond controlled these forests and hoped to use their control as a bargaining point. But the attempted blockade only made Baibars the more determined on war. In the spring of 1266, knowing that a Mameluk attack was imminent, Hethoum set out for the Court of the Ilkhan at Tabriz. While he was there, pleading for Mongol help, the storm burst on Cilicia. The Armenian army, led by Hethoum’s two sons, Leo and Thoros, waited by the Syrian Gates, with the Templars at Baghras guarding its flanks; but the Mameluks turned northward to cross the Amanus mountains near Sarventikar. The Armenians hastened to intercept them as they descended into the Cilician plain. A decisive battle took place on 24 August. The Armenians were outnumbered and were routed. Of their two princes Thoros was slain and Leo taken prisoner. The victorious Moslems swept through Cilicia. While Qalawun and his Mameluks sacked Ayas, Adana and Tarsus, al-Mansur led his army past Mamistra to the Armenian capital at Sis, where he plundered the palace, burned down the cathedral and slaughtered some thousands of the inhabitants. At the end of September the victors retired to Aleppo with nearly forty thousand captives and great caravans of booty. King Hethoum hurried back from the Ilkhan’s Court, with a small company of Mongols, to find his heir a captive, his capital in ruins and his whole country devastated. The Cilician kingdom never recovered from the disaster. It was no longer able to play more than a passive part in the politics of Asia.
After eliminating the Armenians, Baibars sent troops in the autumn of 1266 to attack Antioch. But his generals were sated with loot and were unenthusiastic. Bribes from Bohemond and the Commune induced them to abandon the attempt.
Baibars was furious at his deputies’ weakness. He himself allowed the Franks no respite. In May 1267, he appeared once more before Acre. By displaying banners that he had captured from the Templars and the Hospitallers he was able to approach right up to the walls before the ruse was discovered. But his assault on the walls was repulsed, and he contented himself with ravaging the countryside. The headless bodies were left in the gardens round Acre till the citizens ventured out to bury them. When the Franks sent ambassadors to ask for a truce he received them at Safed, where the whole castle was encircled with the skulls of murdered Christian prisoners.
Life at Acre was not made easier by a renewal of the war between the Venetians and the Genoese for the control of the harbour. On 16 August 1267, the Genoese admiral Luccheto Grimaldi forced his way into the port with twenty-eight galleys, after capturing the Tower of Flies, which stood at the end of the breakwater. But after twelve days he took fifteen of his ships to Tyre for repairs. During his absence a Venetian fleet of twenty-six galleys appeared and attacked the remaining Genoese. Five Genoese ships were lost in the battle. The others fought their way through to Tyre.
Early in 1268 Baibars set out once more from Egypt. The only Christian possessions south of Acre itself were the Templar castle of Athlit and the lawyer John of Ibelin’s town of Jaffa. John, who had always been treated with respect by the Moslems, died in the spring of 1266. His son Guy had not the same prestige. He had hoped that the Sultan would honour the truce that his father had made. In consequence, when the Egyptian army appeared before the town on 7 March, it was in no state to defend itself. After twelve hours of fighting it fell into the Sultan’s hands. Many of the inhabitants were slaughtered, but the garrison was allowed to retire unharmed to Acre. The castle was destroyed, and its wood and marble were sent to Cairo for the great new mosque that Baibars was building there.
1268: The Fall of Antioch
The Sultan’s next objective was the castle of Beaufort, which the Temple had recently taken over from Julian of Sidon. After ten days of heavy bombardment the garrison surrendered on 15 April. The women and children were sent free to Tyre, but the men were all kept as slaves. The castle itself was repaired by Baibars and strongly garrisoned. On 1 May the Mameluk army appeared suddenly outside Tripoli, but, finding it well garrisoned, turned equally suddenly towards the north. The Templars from Tortosa and Safita sent hastily to beg the Sultan that their territory might be spared. Baibars respected their wishes and marched swiftly down the Orontes valley. On 14 May he was before Antioch. There he divided his forces into three parts. One army went to capture Saint Symeon, thus cutting off Antioch from the sea. The second army moved up to the Syrian Gates, to prevent any help reaching the city from Cilicia. The main force, under Baibars himself, drew closely round the city.
Prince Bohemond was at Tripoli; and Antioch was under the command of its Constable, Simon Mansel, whose wife was an Armenian, related to Bohemond’s Princess. Its walls were in good repair, but the garrison was hardly large enough to man their long extent. The Constable had rashly led out some troops to try to dispute the investment of the city, and had been captured by the Mameluks. He was ordered by his captors to arrange for the capitulation of the garrison; but his lieutenants within the walls refused to listen to him. The first assault on the city took place next day. It was beaten back, and negotiations were opened once again, with no greater success. On 18 May the Mameluk army made a general attack on all sections of the walls. After fierce fighting a breach was made where the defences ran up the slope of Mount Silpius; and the Moslems poured into the city.
Even the Moslem chroniclers were shocked by the carnage that followed. By order of the Sultan’s emirs, the city gates were closed, that none of the inhabitants might escape. Those that were found in the streets were slaughtered at once. Others, cowering in their houses, were spared only to end their days in captivity. Several thousands of the citizens had fled with their families to the shelter of the huge citadel on the mountain top. Their lives were spared, but their persons were divided amongst the emirs. On 19 May the Sultan ordered the collection and distribution of the booty. Though its prosperity had been declining for some decades Antioch had long been the richest of the Frankish cities, and its accumulated treasures were stupendous. There were great mounds of gold and silver ornaments, and coins were so plentiful that they were handed out in bowlfuls. The number of captives was enormous. There was not a soldier in the Sultan’s army that did not acquire a slave, and the surplus was such that the price of a boy fell to twelve dirhems and a girl to only five. A few of the richer citizens were allowed to ransom themselves. Simon Mansel was set free and retired to Armenia. But many of the leading dignitaries of the government and of the Church were killed or were never heard of again.
The principality of Antioch, the first of the states that the Franks founded in Outremer, had lasted for 171 years. Its destruction was a terrible blow to Christian prestige, and it brought the rapid decline of Christianity in northern Syria. The Franks were gone, and the native Christians fared little better. It was their punishment for their support, not of the Franks but of those more dangerous foes to Islam, the Mongols. The city itself never recovered. It had already lost its commercial importance, for, with the frontier between the Mongol and Mameluk Empires running along the Euphrates, trade from Iraq and the Far East no longer came through Aleppo but kept to Mongol territory and debouched to the sea at Ayas in Cilicia. The Moslem conquerors had therefore no interest in repopulating Antioch. Its importance now was only as a frontier fortress. Many of the houses within its great walls were not rebuilt. The hierarchs of the local churches moved to more lively centres. It was not long before the headquarters both of the Orthodox and of the Jacobite churches in Syria were established at Damascus.
1268: Hugh, King of Cyprus and Jerusalem
With Armenia weakened and Antioch destroyed, the Templars decided that it was impossible to hold their castles in the Amanus mountains. Baghras and the lesser castle of La Roche de Russole were abandoned without a struggle. All that was left of the Principality was the city of Lattakieh which had been restored to Bohemond by the Mongols and was now an isolated enclave, and the Castle of Qusair, whose lord had made friends with the Moslems of the neighbourhood and was allowed to remain on there for seven more years as vassal to the Sultan.
After his triumph at Antioch Baibars rested awhile. There were signs that the Mongols were ready to play a more active role, and there were rumours that Saint Louis was preparing a great Crusade. When the Regent Hugh sent to ask for a truce, the Sultan replied with an embassy to Acre to offer a temporary cessation of hostilities. Hugh had hoped for some concessions and tried to threaten the ambassador, Muhi ad-Din, by showing his troops in battle-array; but Muhi ad-Din merely replied that the whole army was not so numerous as the host of Christian captives at Cairo. Prince Bohemond asked to be included in the truce. He was offended when the Sultan’s reply addressed him merely as Count, because he had lost his principality; but he gladly accepted the respite offered to him. There were minor Mameluk raids into Christian lands in the spring of 1269, but on the whole the truce was observed for a year.
Meanwhile the Franks tried to set their house in order. In December 1267, King Hugh II of Cyprus died at the age of fourteen, and the Regent Hugh of Antioch-Lusignan succeeded to the throne as Hugh III. He was crowned on Christmas Day. His accession gave him a surer authority over his vassals, for there was no danger now that his government would abruptly end when his ward came of age. But he was unable to overcome their claim that they were not obliged to serve in his army outside the limits of the kingdom. Whenever he wished to take troops to the mainland he was dependent on men from the royal estates and on volunteers. On 29 October 1268, Conradin of Hohenstaufen was beheaded at Naples by the orders of Charles of Anjou, from whom he had vainly tried to wrest back his Italian inheritance. His death meant the extinction of the elder line of the royal house of Jerusalem, which descended from Queen Maria, La Marquise. Next in the line came the house of Cyprus, descended from Maria’s half-sister, Alice of Champagne. King Hugh III’s claim to be heir had been tacitly acknowledged by his appointment as regent, when his cousin, Hugh of Brienne, whose hereditary rights were legally better than his own, had been passed over. Hugh of Brienne had gone to seek his fortune in the Frankish duchy of Athens, whose heiress he married. He did not now challenge his cousin. But before King Hugh could receive his second crown there was another competitor to be considered. Queen Maria’s second half-sister, Melisende of Lusignan, had married as his second wife Prince Bohemond IV of Antioch, and their daughter Maria was still alive. While Hugh could claim to be descended from an earlier marriage of Queen Isabella than Maria, Maria was one generation closer to Queen Isabella. She appeared before the High Court, maintaining that the succession should be decided by the degree of kinship with Queen Isabella, who was the common ancestress of Conradin, Hugh and herself. A granddaughter, she argued, took precedence over a great-grandson. Hugh replied that his grandmother, Queen Alice, had been accepted as regent because she was the next heir, and that her son, King Henry of Cyprus, had been accepted as regent on her death, and after Henry his widow and then Hugh himself as guardians of the young Hugh II. He now represented Alice’s line. Maria countered by saying that there had been a mistake; her mother, Melisende, should have succeeded Alice as regent. After some argument, in which Maria was upheld by the Templars, the lawyers of Outremer supported Hugh’s claims. Had they refused, they would have been forced to admit that they had been previously in error. Public opinion was on their side; for the vigorous young King of Cyprus was obviously a more desirable candidate than a middle-aged spinster. Maria would not accept the verdict. She issued a formal protest on the day of Hugh’s coronation, then bustled off to Italy to lay her case before the Papal Curia. She arrived at Rome during an interregnum; but Gregory X, who was elected in 1271, showed her sympathy and allowed her to bring up the question at the Council of Lyons in 1274. Representatives from Acre appeared and argued that the High Court of Jerusalem alone had jurisdiction over the succession to the kingdom, and the matter was dropped. Before he died in 1276, Gregory arranged for Maria to sell her claim to Charles of Anjou. The transaction was completed in March 1277. The Princess received a thousand gold pounds and an annuity of four thousand pounds tournois. The annuity was confirmed by Charles II of Naples; but it is doubtful how much money Maria, who was still living in 1307, actually received.
1269: Hugh’s Coronation
Hugh was crowned on 24 September 1269, by the Bishop of Lydda, acting for the Patriarch. His first task was to try to restore some unity to his new kingdom. Already before his coronation he managed to compose the old quarrel between Philip of Montfort and the government at Acre. Philip’s pride had been humbled by the loss of Toron; he was no longer so anxious to play a lone hand. When Hugh proposed that his own sister, Margaret of Antioch-Lusignan, the loveliest girl of her generation, should marry Philip’s elder son, John, Philip was glad to accept the offer. Hugh was thus able to go to Tyre to be crowned in its cathedral, which had been since the fall of Jerusalem the traditional crowning-place of the Kings. Soon afterwards Philip’s younger son, Humphrey, married Eschiva of Ibelin, younger daughter of John II of Beirut. This reconciliation between the Montforts and the Ibelins was easier as the older generation of Ibelins was extinct. John of Beirut had died in 1264, John of Jaffa in 1266 and John of Arsuf in 1268. After Baibars’s recent campaigns the only Ibelin fief left on the mainland, and, indeed, the only lay fief in the kingdom other than Tyre, was Beirut, which had passed to John’s elder daughter, Isabella. She had been married as a child to the child-king of Cyprus, Hugh II, who died before the marriage was consummated. Hugh III hoped to use her as an eligible heiress to attract some distinguished knight to the East. In Cyprus the Ibelins were still the most powerful family. The King soon afterwards won their loyalty by marrying another Isabella of Ibelin, daughter of the Constable Guy.
Though he managed to make peace between his few remaining lay vassals, it was less easy to secure the co-operation of the Military Orders, the Commune of Acre, or the Italians. Venice and Genoa were not going to give up their quarrels at any monarch’s bidding. The Templars and the Teutonic Knights resented Hugh’s reconciliation with Philip of Montfort. The Commune of Acre was equally jealous of any favour shown to Tyre and disliked to see the end of the absentee monarchy under which their own power had increased. Nor could Hugh call in his Cypriot vassals to enhance his authority. His attempt to make his rule effective was doomed to failure.
Foreign affairs were hardly more encouraging. The shadow of Charles of Anjou lay darkly across the Mediterranean world. Great hopes had been built in the East on Saint Louis’s forthcoming Crusade; but in 1270 Charles diverted it to suit his own interests. Louis’s death at Tunis that year released Charles from the one altruistic influence that he respected. He was on friendly terms with the Sultan Baibars, but he was personally hostile to King Hugh, against whom he encouraged the claims of Hugh of Brienne to the throne of Cyprus and of Maria of Antioch to that of Jerusalem. It was, indeed, fortunate for Outremer that Charles’s main ambitions were directed against Byzantium; for it was clear that any Crusade that he assisted would be turned to suit his own selfish ends.
1269: The Crusade of the Infants of Aragon
The Crusading spirit was not, however, entirely dead in Europe. On 1 September 1269, King James I of Aragon sailed from Barcelona with a powerful squadron to rescue the East. Unfortunately it ran almost at once into a storm, which caused such havoc that the King and the greater part of his fleet returned home. Only a small squadron, under the King’s two bastards, the Infants Fernando Sanchez and Pedro Fernandez, continued the journey. They arrived at Acre at the end of December, eager to fight the infidel. Early in December Baibars broke his truce with Hugh and appeared with three thousand men in the fields before Acre, leaving others concealed in the hills. The Infants wished to hurry out at once to attack the enemy; and it needed all the tact of the Military Knights to restrain them. An ambush was suspected. Moreover the Christians’ numbers were depleted, as the French regiment, which the Seneschal Geoffrey of Sargines had commanded till his death that spring, had gone with its new commander, Oliver of Termes, and the new Seneschal, Robert of Creseques, on a raid beyond Montfort. These raiders caught sight of the Moslem forces as they were returning. Oliver of Termes wished to slip unobserved through the orchards back into Acre; but the Seneschal Robert insisted on attacking the enemy. The Frenchmen fell straight into the ambush laid for them by Baibars. Very few of them survived. When the troops inside Acre clamoured to go to their rescue, the Infants of Aragon, who had learned their lesson, restrained them. Soon afterwards they returned to Aragon, having achieved nothing.
Though help from the West was inadequate, there was still hope from the East. The Ilkhan of Persia, Abaga, like his father Hulagu, was an eclectic Shamanist with strong Christian sympathies. The death of his Christian stepmother, Dokuz Khatun, had robbed her co-religionists of every sect of their chief friend; but they found a new protector in the Byzantine Princess Maria. She had arrived at the Ilkhan’s Court to find Hulagu dead, but was married at once to Abaga, who soon conceived a deep respect for her; and all his subjects, to whom she was known as Despina Khatun, revered her for her goodness and her sagacity. News of the Ilkhan’s good-will induced the King of Aragon, in conjunction with Pope Clement IV, to send James Alaric of Perpignan on a mission to him in 1267, to announce the forthcoming Crusade of the Aragonese and of King Louis and to suggest a military alliance. But Abaga, who was fully occupied by his war against the Golden Horde, would only make vague promises. His inability to do more was shown by his failure to rescue Antioch from the Mameluks next year. He was soon faced with a new war, with his cousins of the House of Jagatai, who invaded his eastern dominions in 1270 and were only driven back after a tremendous battle near Herat. For the next two years Abaga’s main task was to reopen communications with his uncle and overlord, the Great Khan Kubilai in China. But in 1270, after his victory at Herat, he wrote to King Louis undertaking to grant military aid as soon as the Crusade appeared in Palestine. King Louis went instead to Tunis, where the Mongols could not help him. The only practical assistance that the Ilkhan was able to give to the Christians was to provide Hethoum of Armenia with a distinguished Mameluk captive, Shams ad-Din Sonqor al-Ashkar, the Red Falcon, whom the Mongols had captured at Aleppo. In return for his release Baibars agreed to free Hethoum’s heir, Leo, and to make a truce with Hethoum on condition that the Armenians ceded the fortresses of the Amanus, Darbsaq, Behesni, and Raban. The treaty was signed in August 1268. Early next year Leo, who had been permitted to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, returned to Armenia. His father at once abdicated in his favour and retired to a monastery, where he died the following year. Leo’s title as King was confirmed by Abaga, to whom he went personally to pay homage.
1270: Murder of Philip of Montfort
Throughout the summer of 1270 Baibars remained quiet, fearing that he might have to defend Egypt against the King of France. But, in order to weaken the Franks, he arranged for the assassination of their one leading baron, Philip of Montfort. The Assassins of Syria were grateful to the Sultan, whose conquests freed them from the necessity of paying tribute to the Hospital, and they strongly resented the Frankish negotiations with the Mongols, who had destroyed their headquarters in Persia. On Baibars’s request they sent one of their fanatics to Tyre. There, pretending to be a Christian convert, he penetrated on Sunday, 17 August 1270, into a chapel where Philip and his son John were praying, and suddenly fell upon them. Before help could arrive Philip was mortally wounded, surviving just long enough to learn that his murderer was captured and his heir was safe. His death was a heavy blow to Outremer; for John, though he remained devoted to King Hugh, his brother-in-law, lacked his father’s experience and prestige.
King Louis’s death before Tunis greatly relieved the Sultan, who had been ready to march to the assistance of the Tunisian emir. He knew that he had nothing to fear from Charles of Anjou. In 1271 he marched again into Frankish territory. In February he appeared before Safita, the White Castle of the Templars. After a spirited defence the small garrison was advised by the Grand Master to surrender. The survivors were allowed to retire to Tortosa. The Sultan then marched on the huge Hospitaller fortress of Krak des Chevaliers, Qalat al-Hosn. He arrived there on 3 March. Next day contingents joined him from the Assassins, as well as al-Mansur of Hama and his army. Heavy rain for some days prevented him from bringing up his siege-engines; but on 15 March, after a brief but heavy bombardment, the Moslems forced an entry into the gate-tower of the outer enceinte. A fortnight later they broke their way into the inner enceinte, slaughtering the knights that they met there and taking the native soldiers prisoner. Many of the defenders held out for ten more days in the great tower at the south of the enceinte. On 8 April they capitulated and were sent under a safe-conduct to Tripoli. The capture of Krak, which had defied even Saladin, gave Baibars control of the approaches to Tripoli. He followed it up with the capture of Akkar, the Hospitaller castle on the south of the Buqaia, which fell on 1 May, after a fortnight’s siege.
Prince Bohemond was at Tripoli. Fearful that it was to share the fate of his other capital, Antioch, he sent to Baibars to beg for a truce. The Sultan mocked at his lack of courage, and demanded that he should pay all the expenses of the recent Mameluk campaign. Bohemond had enough spirit left to refuse the insulting terms. Baibars had meanwhile made an unsuccessful attack on the little fort of Maraclea, built on a rock off the coast between Buluniyas and Tortosa. Its lord, Bartholomew, had gone to seek help from the Mongol Court. Baibars was so furious at his failure that he tried to induce the Assassins to murder Bartholomew on his journey.
At the end of May Baibars suddenly offered Bohemond a truce for ten years, with no other terms than the retention of his recent conquests. On its acceptance he set out to return to Egypt, pausing only to besiege the Teutonic fortress of Montfort, which surrendered on 12 June, after one week’s siege. There were now no inland castles left to the Franks. About the same time he sent a squadron of seventeen ships to attack Cyprus, having heard that King Hugh had left the island for Acre. His fleet appeared unexpectedly off Limassol, but owing to bad seamanship eleven ships ran aground and the crews fell into the hands of the Cypriots.
1271: Arrival of Edward of England
The Sultan’s forbearance towards Bohemond was due to the arrival of a new Crusade. Henry III of England had long ago taken the Cross, but he was now an old man, worn out by civil wars. In his stead, he encouraged his son and heir, Prince Edward, to set out for the East. Edward was in his early thirties, an able, vigorous and cold-blooded man who had already shown his gifts as a statesman in dealing with his father’s rebels. He decided on his Crusade after he heard of the fall of Antioch; but he planned it carefully and methodically. Unfortunately, though many of the English nobles had agreed to accompany him, one by one they made their excuses. It was with only about a thousand men that the Prince eventually left England in the summer of 1271, together with his wife, Eleanor of Castile. His brother Edmund of Lancaster, one time candidate for the Sicilian throne, followed him with reinforcements a few months later. He was also accompanied by a small contingent of Bretons, under their Count, and one from the Low Countries, under Tedaldo Visconti, Archdeacon of Liege. Edward’s intention had been to join King Louis at Tunis and sail on with him to the Holy Land, but he arrived in Africa to find the King dead and the French troops about to return home. He wintered in Sicily with King Charles, whose first wife had been his aunt, and sailed on next spring to Cyprus and then to Acre, where he landed on 9 May 1271. He was joined there soon afterwards by King Hugh and Prince Bohemond.
Edward was horrified by the state of affairs in Outremer. He knew that his own army was small, but he hoped to unite the Christians of the East into a formidable body and then to use the help of the Mongols in making an effective attack on Baibars. His first shock was to find that the Venetians maintained a flourishing trade with the Sultan, supplying him with all the timber and metal that he needed for his armaments, while the Genoese were doing their best to force their way into this profitable business and already controlled the slave-trade of Egypt. But when he reproved the merchants for thus endangering the future of the Christian East they showed him the licences that they had received from the High Court at Acre for this purpose. He could do nothing to stop them. Next, he hoped that the whole chivalry of Cyprus would follow its King to the mainland. But, though some feudatories had come, they insisted that they were volunteers; and when King Hugh demanded that they should stay in Syria as long as he was there, their spokesman, his wife’s cousin, James of Ibelin, declared firmly that they were only obliged to serve in the defence of the island. He arrogantly added that the King could not count it as a precedent that Cypriot nobles had gone to fight on the mainland, for they had done so more often at the bidding of the Ibelins than at any King’s bidding. But he hinted that if Hugh had made his request more tactfully it might have been granted. The argument was carried on till 1273, when, in a rare spirit of compromise, the Cypriots agreed to spend four months on the mainland, if the King or his heir in person were present with the army. It was by then too late for Edward’s purpose.
1272: Truce between Edward and Baibars
The English Prince was not much more successful with the Mongols. As soon as he arrived at Acre he sent an embassy to the Ilkhan, consisting of three Englishmen, Reginald Russell, Godfrey Welles and John Parker. Abaga, whose main armies were fighting in Turkestan, agreed to send what aid he could. In the meantime Edward contented himself with a few minor raids just across the frontier. In mid-October 1271, Abaga fulfilled his promise by detaching ten thousand horsemen from his garrisons in Anatolia. They swept down past Aintab into Syria, defeating the Turcoman troops that protected Aleppo. The Mameluk garrisons of Aleppo fled before them to Hama. They continued their course past Aleppo to Maarrat an-Numan and Apamea. There was panic amongst the local Moslems. But Baibars, who was at Damascus, was not unduly alarmed. He had a large army with him, and he summoned reinforcements from Egypt. When he began to move northwards, on 12 November, the Mongols turned back. They were not strong enough to face the full Mameluk army, and their Turkish vassals in Anatolia were restive. They retired behind the Euphrates, laden with booty.
While Baibars was distracted by the Mongols, Edward led the Franks across Mount Carmel to raid the Plain of Sharon. But his troops were too few for him even to attempt to storm the little Mameluk fortress of Qaqun which guarded the road across the hills. A more effective Mongol invasion and a larger Crusade were needed if any territory was to be reconquered.
By the spring of 1272 Prince Edward realized that he was wasting his time. All that he could do without greater man-power and more allies was to arrange a truce that would preserve Outremer for the time being. Baibars on his side was ready for a truce. The pathetic remnant of the Frankish kingdom lay at his mercy so long as he was not hampered by external complications. His army’s first task was to ward off the Mongols, who must further be restrained by diplomatic action in Anatolia and on the Steppes. Till he felt secure on that front it was not worth while to make the effort necessary for the reduction of the last Frankish fortresses. In the meantime he must prevent intervention from the West, and for that purpose he must maintain good relations with Charles of Anjou, the only potentate who might have brought effective help to Acre. But Charles’s main ambition was the conquest of Constantinople. Syria was for the moment of secondary interest to him. He already had vague thoughts of adding Outremer to his Empire. He therefore wished to preserve its existence but to do nothing that would enhance the power of King Hugh, whom he hoped some day to displace. He was willing to mediate between Baibars and Edward. On 22 May 1272, a peace was signed at Caesarea between the Sultan and the government of Acre. The kingdom was guaranteed for ten years and ten months the possession of its present lands, which consisted mainly of the narrow coastal plain from Acre to Sidon, together with the right to use without hindrance the pilgrim-road to Nazareth. The county of Tripoli was safeguarded by the truce of 1271.
Prince Edward was known to wish to come back to the East at the head of a greater Crusade. So, despite the truce, Baibars decided to eliminate him. On 16 June 1272, an Assassin disguised as a native Christian penetrated into the Prince’s chamber and stabbed him with a poisoned dagger. The wound was not fatal, but Edward was seriously ill for some months. The Sultan hastened to dissociate himself from the deed by sending his congratulations on the Prince’s escape. As soon as he had recovered, Edward prepared to sail for home. Most of his comrades had already left. His father was dying. His own health was bad; and there was nothing more that he could do. He embarked from Acre on 22 September 1272, and returned to England to find himself its king.
1272-4: Gregory X collects Reports on the Crusades
The Archdeacon of Liege, who had accompanied Edward to Palestine, had left the previous winter on the unexpected news that he had been elected Pope. As Gregory X he never lost his interest in Palestine; and he made it his chief task to see how the Crusading spirit could be revived. His appeals for men to take the Cross and fight in the East were circulated throughout Europe, as far as Finland and Iceland. It is possible that they even reached Greenland and the coast of North America. But there was no response. Meanwhile he collected reports that would explain the hostility of public opinion. These reports were tactful. None of them touched on the essential trouble, that the Crusade itself had become debased. Now that spiritual rewards had been promised to men who would fight against the Greeks, the Albigensians and the Hohenstaufen, the Holy War had merely become an instrument of a narrow and aggressive Papal policy; and even loyal supporters of the Papacy saw no reason for making an uncomfortable journey to the East when there were so many opportunities of gaining holy merit in less exacting campaigns.
Though the reports sent in to the Pope were discreet in their criticism of Papal policy, they were frank enough in pointing out the faults of the Church. Four of these reports deserve consideration. First, the Collectio de Scandalis Ecclesiae, probably written by a Franciscan, Gilbert of Tournay, while it mentioned the harm done to the Crusades by the quarrels of the kings and nobles, made its main themes the corruption of the clergy and the abuse of indulgences. While prelates spent their money on fine horses and pet monkeys, their agents raised money by the wholesale redemption of Crusading vows. None of the clergy would contribute to the taxes levied to pay for the Crusades, though Saint Louis, to their rage, had refused them exemption. Meanwhile the general public was taxed again and again for Crusades that never took place.
The report sent in by Bruno, Bishop of Olmutz, took a different line. Bruno also spoke of scandals in the Church; but he was a politician. There must, he said, be peace in Europe and a general reform; but this could only be achieved by a strong Emperor. He implied that his master, King Ottocar of Bohemia, was the proper candidate for the post. Crusades in the East, he maintained, were now pointless and outmoded. Crusades should be directed against the heathens on the eastern frontiers of the Empire. The Teutonic Knights were mishandling this work by their greed and lust for power; but were it properly directed by a suitable potentate, it would provide financial as well as religious advantages.
William of Tripoli, a Dominican living at Acre, submitted a more disinterested and constructive memoir. He had little hopes for a Holy War in the East conducted from Europe, but he was impressed by prophecies that the end of Islam was near at hand and believed that the Mongols would be its destroyers. The time had come for missionary activity. As a member of a preaching Order he had faith in the power of sermons. It was his conviction that the East would be won by missions, not by the sword. In this opinion he was supported by a far greater thinker, Roger Bacon.
1274: The Council of Lyons
The fullest report came from another Dominican, the ex-Master-General of the Order, Humbert of Romans. His Opus Tripartitum was written in anticipation of a General Council, which should discuss the Crusade, the Greek Schism and Church reform. He had no faith in the possibility of converting the Moslems, though the conversion of the Jews was divinely promised and that of the East European pagans should be feasible. He held that another Crusade in the Orient was essential. He mentioned the vices that kept men from sailing eastward, their laziness, their avarice and their cowardice. He deplored the love of the homeland that kept them from travelling and the feminine influences that tried to anchor them at home. Worst of all, few now believed in the spiritual merit that was promised to the Crusader. This incredulity which Humbert sadly reports was certainly widespread. Numerous popular poems made it their theme; and there were many among the troubadours who frankly declared that God had no more use for the Crusades. Humbert’s suggestions for combating it and rousing fresh enthusiasm were not very helpful. It was useless to go on maintaining that defeats and humiliations were good for the soul, as Saint Louis believed. It was too late to try to persuade men that the Crusade was the best penance for their sins. The reform of the clergy, which Humbert strenuously advocated, might be of some help. But as a practical guide for the reform of public sentiment, Humbert’s advice was of little value. In consequence his recommendations for the running of the Crusade were premature. There should be a programme of prayers, fasts and ceremonies; history must be studied; there should be a panel of godly and experienced counsellors; and there ought to be a permanent standing army of Crusaders. As for finance, Humbert hinted that Papal methods of extortion had not always been popular. He believed that if the Church were to sell some of its vast treasure and superfluous ornaments, it would have a good psychological as well as material result. But the princes as well as the Church must play their part.
Armed with all this advice, which cannot much have reassured him, Gregory X summoned a Council to meet at Lyons. Its sessions opened in May 1274. There was good attendance from the East, led by Paul of Segni, Bishop of Tripoli. William of Beaujeu, newly elected Grand Master of the Temple, was there. But the pressing invitations sent to the kings of Christendom were ignored. Philip III of France declined to attend, and even Edward I, on whom Gregory specially relied, pleaded business at home. Only James I of Aragon appeared, a garrulous old man whose first attempt at an Eastern Crusade had come to nothing but who was genuinely eager in a swashbuckling way to set out on another adventure, but who was soon bored by the discussions and hurried back to the arms of his mistress, the Lady Berengaria. Delegates from the Byzantine Emperor Michael promised the submission of the Church of Constantinople; for Michael was terrified of the ambition of Charles of Anjou. But it was a promise that could not be fulfilled; the Emperor’s subjects would have none of it. The abortive Union of the Churches was the only success of the Council. Nothing of any value was achieved for the reform of the Church; and while everyone was ready to talk about the Crusades no one came forward with the offers of practical help that would be necessary to launch it.
Nevertheless Gregory persevered, seeking to make the rulers of Europe carry out the pious resolutions passed by the Council. In 1275 Philip III took the Cross. Later that year Rudolph of Hapsburg followed his example, in return for the promise of a coronation by the Pope at Rome. In the meantime Gregory tried to prepare the Holy Land for the arrival of the Crusade. He ordered that fortresses should be repaired and more and better mercenaries sent out. From his personal experience in the East it seems that he had concluded that there was nothing to be hoped from King Hugh’s government. He therefore was sympathetic to the claims of Maria of Antioch and encouraged her to sell those claims to Charles of Anjou, whom he wished to take a more active interest in Outremer, not only for its own welfare but also to divert him from his Byzantine ambitions. But all Pope Gregory’s plans came to nothing. When he died, on 10 January 1276, no Crusade had left for the East, and none was likely to leave.
1275: The Regency at Tripoli
King Hugh in Cyprus had a more realistic vision. He neither expected nor desired a Crusade, but merely wished to preserve the truce with Baibars. Yet the truce did little to ease his position. In 1273 he lost control of his chief mainland fief, Beirut. Its lordship had passed on John II of Ibelin’s death to his elder daughter, Isabella, Dowager-Queen of Cyprus, who had been left a virgin-widow in 1267. Her virginity was of short duration. Her notorious lack of chastity and, in particular, her liaison with Julian of Sidon, provoked a Papal Bull, which strongly urged her to remarry. In 1272 she gave herself and her lordship to an Englishman, Hamo L’Estrange, or the Foreigner, who seems to have been one of Prince Edward’s companions. He distrusted King Hugh, and on his deathbed next year he put his wife and her fief under the protection of Baibars. When Hugh tried to carry off the widow to Cyprus, to remarry her to a candidate of his choice, the Sultan at once cited the pact that Hamo had made and demanded her return. The High Court gave the King no support. He was obliged to send Isabella back to Beirut, where a Mameluk guard was installed to protect her. It was only long after Baibars’s death that Hugh resumed control of the fief. Isabella married two more husbands before her death, in about 1282, when Beirut passed to her sister Eschiva, the wife of Humphrey of Montfort, who was a loyal friend of the King.
Hugh’s next rebuff was over the county of Tripoli. Bohemond VI, last Prince of Antioch, died in 1275, leaving a son, Bohemond, aged about fourteen, and a younger daughter, Lucia. King Hugh, as the next adult heir of the House of Antioch, claimed the regency of Tripoli. But the Princess-Dowager, Sibylla of Armenia, at once assumed the office, as the custom of the family entitled her to do. When Hugh arrived at Tripoli to maintain his claim, he found that the young Bohemond VII had been sent to the Court of his uncle, King Leo III of Armenia, and that the city was administered in Sibylla’s name by Bartholomew, Bishop of Tortosa, who seems to have belonged to the great Antiochene family of Mansel. No one in Tripoli supported Hugh, for Bishop Bartholomew was for the moment highly popular. He was a bitter enemy of the Bishop of Tripoli, Paul of Segni, Bohemond VI’s maternal uncle, and of all the Romans that he and Lucienne had installed in the county. With the support of the local nobility, Sibylla and Bartholomew put some of the Romans to death and exiled others. Unfortunately, Bishop Paul had the support of the Temple, whose Master he had met at the Council of Lyons. When Bohemond VII came from Armenia in 1277 to take over the government, he was faced by the implacable hostility of the Order.
It was only further north, at Lattakieh, that Hugh’s prestige won a minor victory. Lattakieh was all that remained of the Principality of Antioch, and Baibars did not consider it to be covered by his treaties with Tripoli or with Acre. His armies were closing round it, when its citizens made a direct appeal to King Hugh. He was able to negotiate a truce with the Sultan, who called off his troops in return for an annual tribute of twenty thousand dinars and the release of twenty Moslem prisoners.
It was not long before Hugh’s difficulties extended to Acre itself. The Commune of Acre had always resented his direct rule, while the Order of the Temple, which had disliked his reconciliation with the Montforts and had opposed his accession to the throne, grew steadily more unfriendly to him. The Hospital, on whose good-will he might have counted, had declined in importance after the loss of its headquarters at Krak. Its only remaining great castle was Marqab, on its high hill overlooking Buluniyas. Already in 1268 the Grand Master, Hugh of Revel, wrote that the Order could now only maintain 300 knights in Outremer, instead of 10,000 as in the old days. But the Temple still possessed its headquarters at Tortosa, as well as Sidon and the huge castle of Athlit, while its banking connections with the whole Levantine world increased its strength. Thomas Berard, who was Grand Master from 1256 to 1273, had in his earlier days been loyal to the Cypriot regents, and, although he had grown to dislike Hugh, he had never openly challenged him. But his successor, William of Beaujeu, was of a different calibre. He was related to the Royal House of France and was proud, ambitious and energetic. When he was elected he was in Apulia, in the territory of his cousin Charles of Anjou. He came to the East two years later, determined to further Charles’s projects and opposed, therefore, from the outset to King Hugh.
1276: King Hugh retires to Cyprus
In October 1276, the Order of the Temple purchased a village called La Fauconnerie, a few miles south of Acre, from its landlord, Thomas of Saint-Bertin, and deliberately omitted to secure the King’s consent to the transaction. Hugh’s complaints were ignored. In his exasperation with the Orders, with the Commune and with the merchant-colonies, he determined to leave the thankless kingdom. He suddenly packed up his belongings and retired to Tyre, intending to sail from there to Cyprus. He left Acre without appointing a bailli. The Templars and the Venetians, who were their close allies, were delighted. But the Patriarch, Thomas of Lentino, the Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights, as well as the Commune and the Genoese, were shocked, and sent delegates to Tyre to beg him at least to appoint a deputy. He was too angry at first to listen to them, but at last, probably on the pleading of John of Montfort, he nominated as bailli Balian of Ibelin, son of John of Arsuf, and he appointed judges for the Courts of the kingdom. Immediately afterwards he embarked for Cyprus, by night, taking leave of no one. From Cyprus he wrote to the Pope to justify his action.
Balian had a difficult task. There were riots in the streets of Acre between Moslem merchants from Bethlehem, under the Templars’ protection, and Nestorian merchants from Mosul, whose patrons were the Hospitallers. Hostilities flared up again between the Venetians and the Genoese. It was only with the help of the Patriarch and of the Hospital that any government was maintained.
In 1277 Maria of Antioch completed the sale of her rights to Charles of Anjou. Charles at once assumed the title of King of Jerusalem and sent out Roger of San Severino, Count of Marsico, with an armed force, to be his bailli at Acre. Thanks to the help of the Temple and the Venetians, Roger was able to land at Acre, where he produced credentials signed by Charles, by Maria and by the Pope, John XXI. Balian of Ibelin was acutely embarrassed. He had no instructions from King Hugh, and he knew that the Templars and the Venetians were ready to take up arms on behalf of Roger, while neither the Patriarch nor the Hospital would promise to intervene. To avoid bloodshed he delivered the citadel to the Angevin. Roger hoisted Charles’s banner and proclaimed him King of Jerusalem and Sicily, and then ordered the barons of the kingdom to do homage to himself as the King’s bailli. The barons hesitated, less for love of Hugh than for dislike of an admission that the throne could be transferred without a decision of the High Court. To preserve some legality they sent delegates to Cyprus to ask if Hugh would release them from their allegiance to him. Hugh refused to give an answer. At last Roger, who was firmly in the saddle, threatened to confiscate the estates of anyone who did not pay him homage, but he allowed time for one more appeal to Hugh. It was equally fruitless; so the barons submitted to Roger. Soon afterwards Bohemond VII acknowledged him as lawful bailli. Roger appointed various Frenchmen from Charles’s Court as his chief officers. Odo Poilechien became Seneschal, Richard of Neublans Constable and James Vidal Marshal.
1277: Baibars invades Anatolia
These arrangements were very much to the liking of Baibars. He could trust Charles’s representative neither to provoke a new Crusade nor to intrigue with the Mongols. With this sense of security he was ready to allow Outremer a few more years of existence. In the meantime he could take the offensive against the Ilkhan. Abaga was conscious of the danger and was eager to build up an alliance with the West. In 1273 he sent a letter to Acre, addressed to Edward of England, asking when his next Crusade would take place. It was conveyed to Europe by a Dominican, David, who was chaplain to the Patriarch, Thomas of Lentino. Edward sent a cordial answer, but regretted that neither he nor the Pope had decided when there could be another expedition to the East. Mongol envoys appeared next year at the Council of Lyons, and two of them received Catholic baptism from the Cardinal of Ostia, the future Innocent V. The replies that they received from the Pope and his Curia were again friendly but vague. In the autumn of 1276 the Ilkhan tried again. Two Georgians, the brothers John and James Vaseli, landed in Italy to visit the Pope, with orders to go on to the Courts of France and England. They bore a personal letter from Abaga to Edward I, in which he apologized that his help had not been more effective in 1271. None of this diplomatic activity produced any result. King Edward sincerely hoped to go on another Crusade, but neither he nor Philip III of France was ready yet to do so. The Papal Curia was under the sinister influence of Charles of Anjou, who disliked the Mongols as the friends of his enemies, the Byzantines and the Genoese, and whose whole policy was based on an entente with Baibars. The Popes optimistically hoped to welcome the Mongols into the fold of the Church but would not realize that the promise of rewards in Heaven were an insufficient inducement for the Ilkhan. Even the pleas of Leo III of Armenia, who was at the same time the Ilkhan’s faithful vassal and in communion with Rome, could not produce any practical help from the Papacy.
Baibars was able to pursue his schemes without the threat of Western intervention. In the spring of 1275 he led a raid in person into Cilicia, in which he sacked the cities of the plain, but was unable to penetrate to Sis. Two years later he decided to invade Anatolia. The Seldjuk Sultan was now a child, Kaikhosrau III. His minister, Suleiman the Pervana, or Keeper of the Seals, was the chief power in the land but was quite unable to control the local emirates that were arising, of which the most important was the Karamanian. The Ilkhan maintained a loose protectorate over the Sultanate, enforced by the presence of a considerable Mongol garrison. On 18 April 1277, this garrison was routed by the Mameluks at Albistan. Five days later Baibars entered Caesarea-Mazacha. The Sultan’s minister, Suleiman, and the Karamanian emir both hastened to congratulate the victor; but Abaga was roused and himself led a Mongol army by forced marches into Anatolia. Baibars did not wait for its arrival, but retired to Syria. Abaga quickly recovered control of the Seldjuk Sultanate. The treacherous Suleiman was captured and executed; and rumour said that his flesh was served in a stew at the Ilkhan’s next state banquet.
Baibars did not long survive his Anatolian adventure. Various stories were told of his death. According to some chroniclers he died as a result of wounds received in the recent campaign; according to others he drank too much kumiz, the fermented mare’s milk loved by the Turks and the Mongols. But the dominant rumour was that he had prepared poisoned kumiz for the Ayubite Prince of Kerak, al-Qahir, son of an-Nasir Dawud, who was with his army and who had offended him, and then carelessly drank from the same cup before it was cleaned. He died on 1 July 1277.
His death removed the greatest enemy to Christendom since Saladin. When Baibars became Sultan the Frankish dominions stretched along the coast from Gaza to Cilicia, with great inland fortresses to protect them from the East. In a reign of seventeen years he had restricted the Franks to a few cities along the coast, Acre, Tyre, Sidon, Tripoli, Jebail and Tortosa, with the isolated town of Lattakieh and the castles of Athlit and Marqab. He did not survive to see their entire elimination, but he had made it inevitable. Personally he had few of the qualities that won Saladin respect even from his foes. He was cruel, disloyal and treacherous, rough in his manners and harsh in his speech. His subjects could not love him, but they gave him their admiration, with reason, for he was a brilliant soldier, a subtle politician and a wise administrator, swift and secret in his decisions and clear-sighted in his aims. Despite his slave origins he was a patron of the arts and an active builder, who did much to beautify his cities and to reconstruct his fortresses. As a man he was evil, but as a ruler he was amongst the greatest of his time.