Alice, Princess of Antioch, 1126-1136

Posted on May 25, 2017 by Ruth

Alice began her married life conventionally enough by bearing a daughter in the first two years. But her course of life was derailed when Bohemund II died in battle with the Danishmends (the same tribe that had taken his father prisoner in a yurt). They had only been married about four years, and they had only this one child, Constance.

The men around Alice wanted to appoint a male regent for the child Princess until she was old enough to be married to a man who could help reign. But Alice, having grown up watching Melisende being treated like a son, did not see any reason why she could not be a reigning Princess on her own.

Her father, King Baldwin II, saw two very good reasons why not: first, this was a very dangerous neighborhood. He had already chosen to import a seasoned warrior to rule with Melisende, even if his daughters considered Fulk an obnoxious, unnecessary addition. Second, he had an opportunity to exert influence over Antioch, making his kingship more real. He had known Bohemund in the old days; suddenly, Bohemund’s legacy came down to this baby girl, and only Constance’s grandfather could step in and protect her with a regent (right?). He must have known Alice well enough to feel sure that having her ruling would not mean extending his own influence in the least!

Alice attempted three coups, starting right away. She sent a secret message to the Turkish ruler of Aleppo, asking him to ally with her. Her toddler’s hand in marriage was held out as a reward. But Alice’s father had troops in the area; they caught the messenger and actually tortured him. Alice ordered the gates barred against King Baldwin’s entry, but the nobles of Antioch saw no good in defying the King of Jerusalem. They opened the gates, and Alice ran into the Citadel, the one that had originally held out against the Crusaders. King Baldwin sent Alice to live in her two dowry cities; almost certainly, baby Constance stayed in Antioch with her nurse and nanny staff. He appointed Sir Joscelin, now Count of Edessa, to rule Antioch as regent, but the arrangement didn’t last long.

King Baldwin II died in 1131. As Melisende became Queen on her own, Sir Joscelin also died. Alice saw her chance; she came back from her city of Latakia, and seized Antioch again. Joscelin II of Edessa and Pons of Tripoli were willing to ally with her against the new Queen and King in Jerusalem. When King Fulk, Melisende’s husband, tried to go to Antioch to take control, he had to sail from Jaffa since Tripoli would not let him pass by land. Only one minor battle was fought, and the rebel Counts submitted to the new King. Alice was again out of luck, sent back to Latakia.

Alice tried one more time when Constance was about 7. She started negotiating to have the Byzantine Emperor marry the little girl! Remember that first Bohemund had positioned Antioch as Constantinople’s determined rival and adversary. The nobles of Antioch, panicked, told Alice that they were getting a prince from Europe, Raymond of Poitiers, to come marry her—the widow, Alice. The Patriarch played along until Raymond arrived. Then the child was brought into the church and married off. Raymond, a son of the Duke of Aquitaine, was about 21, so it was assumed that he had time to wait for Constance to grow up. In the meanwhile, his legal marriage effectively blocked the very disappointed Alice.

Where was Alice’s maternal feeling all this time? She seems to have had little of it; perhaps her sisters would have said “oh that’s just Alice, you know how she is.” Perhaps it was a trauma response to her husband’s sudden death; perhaps it was a projection of hidden dislike for her husband. In any case, Constance was important as a descendant of Bohemund in a way that Alice, the mother, was not. Once Constance had her own household staff and Alice was sent away, they apparently had limited contact.

 

 

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Baldwin’s Feminist Daughters

Posted on May 24, 2017 by Ruth

I’ve described King Baldwin II as a family man, the fact that sets him apart from the other First Crusaders. Coming with the Boulogne brothers as a landless knight, he had inherited Edessa and immediately married Morphia, the heiress of Melitene. When Baldwin came back from his Mosul years as a hostage, their first daughter Melisende was about four years old. Morphia had two more daughters in Edessa, and one more in Jerusalem. Baldwin’s four girls became some of the most edgy women in medieval history.

Let’s start with the youngest, who was born in 1120. She was known as Ioveta (or Yvette) of Bethany, and she became a nun. That sounds dull enough, but wait, there’s more. When little Ioveta was three, she was sent to be a hostage in Shaizar, Syria in exchange for her father’s release after he lost a battle. She stayed there for two years! Can you imagine handing over a toddler as a hostage? When Ioveta was returned, her sisters must have doted on her; in spite of the fifteen years the four girls spanned, they were close all their lives. Melisende the oldest founded a convent at the Tomb of Lazarus in Bethany, and Ioveta became its abbess. She educated Melisende’s granddaughter, future Queen Sibylla, and she was at Melisende’s deathbed. And Ioveta is the most submissive, least interesting daughter.

Alice and Hodierna were born in Edessa around 1110 and 1112, the only two close in age. They would have been about eight and six when their father became King of Jerusalem. It seems likely that one reason Queen Morphia sent little Ioveta to be the hostage was that the older girls were already in marriage negotiations, which could take several years and were usually planned well in advance. It’s possible that her hostage years ruined Ioveta’s marriage prospects, leading to her vocation as a nun.

We know almost nothing about Queen Morphia, except that her family followed Greek Orthodox tradition while being Armenian, and she adopted Roman Catholicism on marriage. We can read in her biography that her husband loved her, since she was not set aside when she bore only girls. Historians of the time said that not only did he angrily reject suggestions of divorce, he delayed his coronation until Morphia could be crowned next to him. We don’t know what in her personality was so compelling, but we can see what she gave her daughters.

Morphia instilled in each one the will to rule on her own, although only Melisende could expect to inherit Jerusalem. Alice and Hodierna would be sent away to be Countesses or Princesses bearing heirs; but that’s not the way they viewed themselves. All of the older girls were willful and wanted to rule alone. They often conspired with each other, even willing to call in hits on the men who were ruining a sister’s life. They never conspired against each other. I think we can give Morphia credit for their strength because if nannies or tutors had shaped them, they would probably have had less loyalty to each other.

In 1126, Alice was married off first, because King Baldwin II was having a hard time choosing a husband for Melisende. Alice went to Antioch, where Bohemund II had just arrived, taking over for the regents who had ruled since his father’s death. Bohemund was 18, Alice about 16.  King Baldwin really hoped it would lead to Antioch’s being pulled into Jerusalem’s direct orbit and tax base.

The King of France was asked to choose a powerful vassal lord to go marry Melisende, and he chose 40 year old Fulk, Count of Anjou. Fulk had himself married young to produce heirs for Anjou, so he had a first family. His grown son Geoffrey had just married Empress Matilda, granddaughter of William the Conqueror. Geoffrey is considered the founder of the House of Plantagenet, one of England’s greatest dynasties. With two sons to rule Anjou for him, Fulk was free to leave, and the King of France may have wanted him to exit the dynastic power struggles of Europe. Melisende was about 24 and had been treated like a co-ruler with her father for a few years. They were married in 1129.

Hodierna wasn’t married off until 1137, when she became the Countess of Tripoli. Her husband was the son of the little 8 year old French Princess who had been sent to marry Tancred! How time flies when it’s all history to us.

And they all lived happily ever after in flowy dresses of silk. Well, the dresses of silk part is true…but their actual stories take some telling.

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Knights of Temple and Hospital, circa 1118

Posted on May 24, 2017 by Ruth

In the first year of King Baldwin II, a knight named Hugues (Hugh, Hugo) proposed the creation of a new monastic order. He had probably come to Jerusalem in 1114, on pilgrimage with the Count of Champagne. Hugues chose to stay and live out his life in the Holy City. He seems to have been part of a small band of unmarried knights from Champagne who all chose to stay.

A word about unmarried knights. It’s my impression that marriage and land went together. Heirs of land were obliged to marry as young as possible to produce more heirs. When a knight became the ruler of land, he was enabled to marry; we often see a knight gaining a title and marrying at the same time (as Baldwin II did). But knights without land often did not marry. The knight’s life expectancy was uncertain, and he had other opportunities for sex.

Unmarried knights were generally attached to a nobleman, the way Hugues and his friends had been followers of the Count of Champagne. Now, the small band of knights who stayed on were, in a sense, unemployed. Hugues’ Big Idea was to have the King create a monastic order for knights, which would give them jobs, a home, and a purpose. They were already poor; being monks made poverty respectable. Their new badge would show two men on one horse!

King Baldwin II granted them al-Aqsa Mosque as their living quarters; it was known as the Temple of Solomon, since it had been built on that foundation. The knights just called it The Temple. In a sense, they took on *policing* Jerusalem, especially with protecting foreign pilgrims in mind. Perhaps some of them had been robbed on arrival, so they knew the need.

In another part of the city, around the same time, another band of landless, unmarried knights gathered at the Order of St. John Hospital. This hospital had been established by merchants from Amalfi, Italy in 1023 when the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was rebuilt. It started as a hostel, but became an infirmary. Now, this small cluster of knights would have a foundation to support them, too, in their role of security guards to the pilgrims and monk-doctors.

Why was there suddenly this need for policing? It may be that when Baldwin I invited Syrian Christians to repopulate the city in 1115, the nature of city life changed dramatically. Underpopulated and barely functioning as an economy, Jerusalem had perhaps been fairly predictable. With new residents who had their boundaries and hierarchies to establish among themselves, crime may have skyrocketed.

Bernard of Clairvaux, the monk who was leading a reform movement at this time, publicly praised the monastic knight orders. Knights were usually wealthy; these knights voluntarily owned nothing and lived in austerity. Bernard’s praise led more knights to travel to the Holy Land and join up, and it also encouraged wealthy lay people to start leaving large donations to the orders. Both orders soon owned vast estates in France, although the individual knights supposedly owned nothing. In time, the Knights of the Temple (Knights Templars or just Templars) and the Knights of the Hospital became very wealthy, powerful organizations. The Hospital Order persists to this day as a sovereign entity on Malta.

But in the early years, we should picture them as they began: small groups of knights, often from the same region or families, who lived frugally in barracks near their stables. There’s no question that they were the embodiment of Cool in 1120. That’s why their orders grew so quickly: they were the hipsters of their day, and the lucky ones were able to say, “I was a Temple Knight before it went mainstream. Remember the old days when we slept in our stables? And only one horse for every two knights! That’s when it was best, now it’s sold out…”

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King Sigurd the Crusader, 1107-13

Posted on May 24, 2017 by Ruth

Norway decided to participate in the Crusade on its own schedule; it was at the outer rim of Christendom, so news arrived there slowly. Pilgrimages appealed to Scandinavians very much, since long voyages were part of their culture. At the time of the Pope’s call, King Magnus Barefoot was too busy conquering portions of Sweden, Scotland and Ireland to respond. But he died in 1103, leaving three sons to rule jointly. A group of scattered would-be Crusaders came back to Norway around this time, telling stories of the great lands to the south and the wonderful victories of the Crusade. There was a lot of popular enthusiasm in Oslo for mounting their own armed pilgrimage.

The three kings were all young, two teenagers and a little child. But they appear to have ruled harmoniously, perhaps because Magnus had left such a sprawling northern empire that there was room for all. Eystein, the oldest, seems always to have been an administrator at home. Sigurd, the second son, campaigned with his father as a teenager and was married to the Princess of Ireland. They decided that Sigurd was the obvious choice to lead a Crusade. It took some more time to build enough spare ships and recruit the men who would go.

Sigurd set out with sixty ships in 1107. They wintered over in England, with Henry I (son of William the Conqueror). In spring of 1108, they sailed south along France’s Atlantic coast, but it was slow going; they had to winter again in Santiago de Compostela. From this point on, the Norwegians began to run into fights. First, they battled pirates. Next, they passed along the coast of Portugal, fighting against apparent Arab holdings including Lisbon.

When the Norwegian ships entered the Mediterranean Sea, they were in the territory of the Taifa of Majorca, made up of the rich Balearic Islands. They fought several battles, though they considered the fortress at Majorca too tough to attack. Norwegian epics recount huge victories at the islands of Formentera, Ibiza, and Minorca.

The Norwegian stories tell how the Moors of Formentera hid with their booty in a cave that was halfway up a precipice. Sigurd attacked it by lowering two ships with ropes until they were level with the cave. The ships’ men attacked the cave with rocks, while more Norsemen climbed up to the cave from below. Then they set a bonfire in the cave’s mouth.

It’s not clear to me to whom the conquered islands and fortresses in Andalusia went. Perhaps Sigurd had found local Christians to set in power, or it may be that he considered it sufficient to kill and plunder. In 1109, the Norwegians arrived in Sicily, where Count Roger II, a boy of 12, welcomed them. At a feast, say the sagas, Sigurd proclaimed the Count to be a King, establishing the Kingdom of Sicily. (Of course, Roger was the young man who should have become the next King of Jerusalem, had King Baldwin I not divorced his mother.)

By 1110, they finally arrived in Jaffa or Acre and rode to Jerusalem.  In Old Norse, the city’s name was Jorsala, and the region was Jorsalaland. Sigurd’s nickname became Jorsalafarer (a step above his Barefoot father). King Baldwin welcomed Sigurd and honored him with feasts and an honorary trip to the Jordan River. Baldwin even gave Sigurd a splinter of the True Cross to take back to Oslo, with the condition that Sigurd should invest the city with its own Archbishop.

It happened that there was a siege the Norwegians could help with, so they joined the other Crusaders at Sidon. To the Norwegians, the whole thing was a walk in the park; they won every battle they started, and their participation quickly reduced Sidon to surrender. The grueling First Crusade experiences of near disaster seem to have skipped Sigurd entirely.

The Norwegians returned by way of Cyprus, where they spent some time, and then Constantinople. Sigurd made a point of waiting to arrive in Constantinople until the right sort of wind would make his ships look most impressive. They were welcomed by the Emperor, who held a sort of Olympic Games in their honor. A lot of Norsemen chose to stay on at this magical city, joining the Emperor’s special Varangian Guard. “Varangian” was the Greek name for Scandinavians or Rus. Unlike Byzantine conscripts, the Varangian Guard had a very high standard of loyalty to the Emperor as they applied the Norse custom of fealty.

Sigurd left his ships in the Mediterranean and traveled overland through Bulgaria, Hungary, and Germany. He arrived home to great fame. His Crusade is most notable for being so easy and successful. He left no impression on the Holy Land apart from the fall of Sidon. His story seems to come from a different book from the rest of the First Crusade hardships and disasters.

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death of King Baldwin I, 1118

Posted on May 10, 2017 by Ruth

In 1115, King Baldwin I sent a general invitation to Syrian Christians to come resettle in Jerusalem. The city’s economy was very thin, since the Crusaders had killed so many of the residents in their original assault. The ensuing years of wars and threats had not made it seem an inviting neighborhood, to say the least. The city’s tax base had collapsed. Now, it looked like the Fatimids had given up on recapture; they no longer set out with a field army every spring. The Muslims to the east and north were still very much occupied with their civil wars. Life could go back to something like normal.

In that cluster of years, it looked like Baldwin I had found a good solution to his childless state. With Arda in a convent, he had married a woman who already had children. She was the widowed Countess of Sicily, whose young son had just taken his own governing. In the marriage contract, her son Roger II of Sicily was established as Baldwin’s heir. If Baldwin I had died in 1115, Roger would have traveled to Jerusalem with fresh reserves of gold and silver, knights, and optimism.

However, as you know, Baldwin I believed that God was striking him down for his sin of bigamy so he annulled the contract and sent the Countess home after two years of marriage.

He didn’t die from that illness, but he died soon after, in 1118. He had an old battle wound from his first months as king, when a Turkish hunting party had speared him. He had lived for many years after, but apparently, sickness and internal injuries just caught up with him. He was probably about 60. The king was on campaign in Egypt, near El-Arish, when he died. He left instructions for his cook to bury his guts nearby, but to salt and spice his body thoroughly. The expedition carried him in this semi-mummified state back to Jerusalem. There, he was buried in state at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

The sudden death of Baldwin I created a dangerous power vacuum. Bohemund and Tancred had predeceased him, but there were always ambitious Normans around. Would Roger II of Sicily try to press his claim? He was bitterly angry at his mother’s being sent home in shame. Someone sent for the oldest brother Eustace of Boulogne, who reluctantly agreed to take up the duty if he must, but he was even older than Baldwin, and someone needed to take faster action. Not only was there danger from Norman rivals, there was also the very immediate danger that the king’s death signaled weakness to surrounding kingdoms. They had come to respect Baldwin I’s tenacity at survival and resistance.

Sir Joscelin of Tel Bashir, a follower of the younger Count Baldwin II, pressed for the Count to inherit from his cousin. After all, he had already been chosen to inherit Edessa, so in a way, he was already the legal heir. He was right there in Edessa, he was in good health, and he had a family. (Besides, then Sir Joscelin could become Count of Edessa.)

King Baldwin II was crowned on Easter Sunday in Jerusalem, with Morphia as Queen. Within days, the kingdom was invaded from the south by Fatimids, and from the east by Seljuk Turks! The new king and his allies scrambled as many knights onto the field as they could. Apparently, both invasions were more in the nature of probes. Had the city been easy to capture, they’d have fought. It’s also possible that both Muslim armies were dismayed by the presence of the other. They may have been racing to be the first one to invade, only to arrive simultaneously. As it happened, both invasion forces chose to leave.

 

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Life of Tancred, 1097-1112

Posted on May 7, 2017 by Ruth

Tancred was a young man of about 20 when Pope Urban preached the Crusade. His grandfather had conquered Sicily, so he was looking for a new frontier. The Crusade was perfect for him, since he already spoke some Arabic. He made his name first by rushing to help liberate Armenian towns in Cilicia, but at the same time, part of what made his name even then was his determination to own any town he helped to conquer—with resulting controversy.

Tancred really, really wanted to be King of Jerusalem. He believed he had been the first over the wall, and once he was in the urban fighting melee, he gave his banner to a group of frightened citizens on a rooftop. He believed it would protect them after he left, and they would be grateful to him, but someone slaughtered them anyway. Tancred was furious. “Prince of Galilee” definitely felt like a consolation prize, after that.

As the years went by, Tancred was always at the front of some battle; he was perhaps the hardest worker among them all, assiduously adding even small towns, overlooked ports, and hilltops, in addition to the big city prizes where he assisted. But every time a title was being handed out or territory redivided, he could set his clock by how a tribunal of other Crusaders (led by one of the Boulogne brothers) would put him in the wrong and give him the short straw. He was always the Best Man, never the Groom. Literally, too, he didn’t marry.

When Bohemund left him with an empty treasury, shrinking territory, and the joint regency of Antioch and Edessa, Tancred’s moment seemed to have come, but maybe not in the way he hoped. He was 29 and had vast tactical experience, but the tide seemed to be going out. What could he do? Tancred made a bold decision: he talked Antioch into supporting a deep round of taxation, and he drew in the largest army he could create, leaving Edessa practically defenseless. He used the taxes to hire mercenaries, too.

Tancred picked a soft target: the town of Artah, in Aleppo’s zone. He set up a half-hearted siege of Artah, to provoke Radwan into coming out. When the Aleppans came, Tancred pulled back as if fleeing. He chose his ground carefully, knowing that the Arabs and Turks preferred to fight on horseback with archery. He turned to battle where the ground was too broken and rocky for horses. The Aleppans could get no purchase in this setting and it was Radwan’s turn to flee. Tancred’s men occupied Artah, and now they had momentum. Town by town, hill by hill, they began to win back Antioch’s authority.

In 1106, little Cecilia of France (now about ten) arrived to marry Tancred. His titles had come and gone, so she’s recorded as Lady of Tarsus, not Princess of Galilee or Tiberias. But in practical terms, she was welcomed as the “Princess of Antioch”, without the formal title. Tancred was finally the real ruler of a small principality worth having: Antioch’s thick walls and Edessa’s rich farm fields, with authority expanding into Cilicia again. He refused to honor Bohemund’s humiliating Treaty of Devol, when the Emperor thoughtfully sent him a copy. He worked hard to make Antioch into a functioning small state.

Then, just when he was happy, in 1109 someone ransomed Count Baldwin II from Mosul. Tancred had to welcome Baldwin home, but he made it clear that “finders keepers, losers weepers” was going to be the rule. By the following year, the Edessans (who supported Baldwin II’s return to governance) and the Antiochans were drawing up lines for battle. This was just insane. Even more insane, the ruler of Mosul had released Baldwin II only after insisting on mutual vows of alliance, so Mosul sent archers against Tancred, too! The archbishop and King Baldwin I of Jerusalem used diplomacy to put Tancred back in his place.

Tancred apparently really liked Raymond of Toulouse’s grandson Pons, whose father Bertrand became the Count of Tripoli in 1109. In 1112, Tancred’s bride Cecilia was 15 and was probably deemed old enough to be a wife in fact. Tancred was 36 and ready to be a father, or so he thought. Then a typhoid epidemic came through, and Tancred became sick. He told Pons, who was about Cecilia’s age, to marry the widow, and he set aside land between Antioch and Tripoli to be her dowry. Almost certainly it was land he had recently conquered with his own heritage in mind. And then he died.

Tancred’s life seems more familiar than some of the others’ lives, because while he constantly strove for achievement, the outcome always fell short of expectations. It’s so human. After his death, a “Life of Tancred,” Gesta Tancredi, circulated in Europe. The Italian poet Tasso wrote a romanticized version, which Voltaire made into a play, which Rossini made into an opera, “Tancredi.”

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Bohemund in Glory and Shame, 1104-1111

Posted on May 7, 2017 by Ruth

Bohemund, son of the Norman who conquered Sicily, was described as a tiger by Anna Comnena, Alexios’s daughter. His ferocious assault on Albania in past years had advertised Norman strength, and when he set out as a leader in 1097, everyone expected him to be the star. His crafty mind had landed him the Princedom of the biggest city in the region, but ever since then, life had been rocky. He was still trying to get the mare’s-milk-whiskey smell out of his tunics when his expedition to Harran turned out so badly.

In Antioch, Bohemund explained to everyone that while he was in captivity, he frequently prayed to St. Leonard, and now that he was free, he was under oath to give a silver model of shackles to the Cathedral of the saint in France. He would recruit more Crusaders while in France and return in glory! Definitely, totally. To make sure he could travel and recruit in style, he emptied the treasuries of Antioch. He packed up the gold and silver in locked chests and just legally stole it. Tancred, the nephew who had been reluctant to welcome him back, was left with regency of both Edessa and Antioch, but without funds.

Bohemund was an enemy of the Byzantines by now; his un-neighborly actions had made it very clear to them that he ranked them with the Turks, or possibly lower. Unfortunately, he had to pass through a lot of Byzantine territory in order to get back to Italy and France. According to the Emperor’s daughter Anna, he sneaked through dangerous parts by lying in a coffin with a rotting dead chicken. No Byzantine guards wished to search that coffin! It was a clever ruse if he actually did this, but the fact that he had to sneak in such a shameful way was not his proudest resume point. (Also, now the laundress really could not salvage his tunic; Turk whiskey was bad enough, rotting chicken was just too much.)

In Italy, Bohemund was welcomed as a hero. Taranto and Apulia could bask in his conquering glory. Someone in his retinue wrote a history of the Crusading years, and Bohemund used some of the Antiochan gold to fund its copying and distribution. Naturally, it centered on each of Bohemund’s heroic acts as well as on the shameful, sneaking, lying actions of the Greeks, his new enemies.

Bohemund visited St. Leonard’s shrine as promised, and while in France, he also married a princess. You may recall that King Philip was having girl problems (bigamy) around this time and was under excommunication. As a result, he had two daughters to give away, an old one and a young one.

Bohemund’s bride was Constance, who was 28 and newly divorced. One perk of the feudal marriage system was that widows and divorcees who still brought dowries and estates did not lose market value. Constance had already given birth to a son who died, and she was still elegant and pretty. Her brother Louis would be king; it was a very good match.
Constance’s little half-sister Cecilia, on the other hand, was only about 8. Bohemund at 52 was clearly too old for Cecilia, but Tancred at 31 seemed appropriate. The point wasn’t that Cecilia was actually old enough to be married, but that her legal and financial affairs could be settled now. Tancred would be near 40 when she was actually old enough to have children, but they assumed he’d still be interested. She was probably sent to Antioch in a separate retinue, by ship. (Don’t worry, it will work out okay for Cecilia in the end.)

Bohemund and his wife raised a new army of foot soldiers and younger knights, and with Pope Paschal’s blessing, they set off eastward. Along the way, Bohemund II was born. Glory! But there’s a catch; Bohemund wasn’t going back to Antioch. His really burning grudge was against the Byzantines now, and he led his army straight across the Adriatic Sea to Christian Greece. Deus Vult!

His assault on Thessaly was such a disaster that the Emperor forced Bohemund into one of the most humiliating treaties of all time. It was signed at the fortress of Diabolis (now Devol) in Albania. (I love details like that: the Treaty of the Devil, right?) The Emperor kindly granted to Bohemund the right to remain Duke (not prince) of Antioch, but with the feudal ties all reorganized. He was now a vassal of Constantinople, and his city would have a Greek Orthodox patriarch, not Roman Catholic. On his death, Antioch would revert to the Empire, though his heirs could keep Edessa as vassals.

The only way to keep the treaty from being enforced was just not to return to Antioch. It was between him and Alexios, even if Alexios considered it binding on his heirs. Bohemund was now covered in shame. With Constance and their toddler, he drifted back to Apulia. His army’s survivors probably straggled home, too. In 1111, Bohemund died a natural death and was buried in Taranto. Constance stayed there, as regent of Taranto and Apulia, raising little Bohemund II.

The treaty was really a brilliant move for Alexios. Had it been enforceable, it would have achieved what he hoped originally: the return of rich Antioch to his tax base and the strengthening of Greek naval power along the north Mediterranean.

 

 

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Hostages and ransoms, 1103-1108

Posted on May 7, 2017 by Ruth

Keeping up with the Roupenians: “Baby Blues” [Morphia’s baby is due, but her husband is in Mosul. Her father just got killed, and now Arda has a divorce shocker! How will the family cope?]

By 1103, Count Baldwin II of Edessa, his lieutenant Joscelin of Tel Bashir, and other Crusaders had finally raised the sum of gold to buy Bohemund’s freedom. A tenth of the gold was levied from a local Muslim who wanted an alliance, so that’s interesting. Equally interesting, his own nephew Tancred didn’t contribute. Tancred clearly wanted to continue being regent of Antioch and resented it when his uncle Bohemund came home smelling like a yurt.

Bohemund probably learned a lot about life with the Danishmend Turks, but we’ll never know what it was. His first major action was to collect Count Baldwin II and Sir Joscelin and start getting revenge on the Turks. It worked out very badly: on the plains near Harran (another Abrahamic place name), they met a combined Turkish force and the Edessans become isolated and surrounded. Many Edessan knights and soldiers died, and both Count Baldwin II and Sir Joscelin were captured! Hostages, again!

What I find the most interesting about this hostage-taking is that Count Baldwin II spent the next four years in Mosul. He’s an interesting guy, all around. He was a knight who came with the Boulogne brothers; I presume got his knight training in a little “school” with Eustace, Godfrey, and Baldwin, since that was a common way to form friendships and feudal bonds even among children. He was a little younger, about 25 when he joined the Crusade. We know little about Baldwin’s past, but much about his adult lifetime.

Baldwin II married Morphia of Melitene, probably at the same time that he assumed the status of Count. Unlike most of the other Crusaders, he really turned into a family man. Morphia was pregnant when he was captured, and gave birth to a daughter, named Melisende. There’s a big gap between Melisende and the next baby, of course, but eventually they had four daughters. Four daughters is significant in many ways: it means they liked each other enough to have lots of sex, and it means that when no boys were born, Baldwin II didn’t try to have the marriage annulled and start over.

By contrast, in 1105 the older Baldwin I King of Jerusalem (former Count of Edessa) was tired of his Armenian wife Arda. She had no children, and perhaps he felt time was running out. He put her in a convent; I don’t think he had any valid excuses to annul or divorce. He married the widowed Countess of Sicily who brought gold and a thousand archers as her dowry. Later, he set her aside, too. It’s hard not to view his marital adventures with cynicism, so his cousin is a refreshing change.

The younger Baldwin II came from a monolingual French culture, unlike his age-peer Tancred who grew up in Arabic-fluent southern Italy. I like to think that Baldwin began learning basic Armenian in Edessa, to help with governing and then to talk to Morphia. There’s no doubt little Melisende spoke nothing but Armenian when her father came home from Mosul. Did he learn some Arabic or Turkish in Mosul? Four years is a long time to pass with nothing to do, and Baldwin seems to have been a very active man. He would have sought opportunities to observe the economy of Mosul, and perhaps he got some Arabic or Turkish martial arts training as well.

The older Crusaders never really adjusted to the Levant; they were intruders, always. Baldwin II, I think, really went native in a way they didn’t. He had no interest in his hometown of Bourg (sometimes spelled Bourcq), apart from bringing his sister out to marry one of the younger lords. He and Morphia eventually established the royal family of Jerusalem that we read about for the rest of the Crusades. He wasn’t royalty in Europe; but when he put down roots in Palestine, he became it. Baldwin II is my favorite First Crusader.

 

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Mt. Pilgrim and the Legacy of Raymond, 1101-5

Posted on May 6, 2017 by Ruth

Raymond of Toulouse had taken a vow not to return home. He had missed out on the prizes of Antioch and Jerusalem, but his army had taken some towns and forts in the vicinity of Tripoli. Among these early captures was the castle that later become known as the Krak des Chevaliers, one of the most famous Crusader fortresses. But in the early years, the governor of Tripoli placated him with assistance, staving off a direct assault.

Since the Fatimids had shown that they might be able to wipe out the Crusader Kingdom, Tripoli’s governor lost interest in pacifying the Crusaders. In 1101, Raymond had besieged and taken a nearby port, Tortosa, while Tripoli tried to defend it. Detente was over; they were now parties in a state of war.

Raymond could use Tortosa as a port and power base. He chose to dedicate the rest of his life to forcing Tripoli into submission. To that end, he built a castle on a nearby hill. It must have taken a full year to build this castle, 1102-1103, with blocks of stone being rolled up the hill in full view. Surely, the rulers of Tripoli could have attacked and stopped him, but apparently not. Without additional forces from Damascus or Aleppo, they could not overcome Raymond’s Provencal army that stood guard.

Raymond called the hill Mons Peregrinus, the Pilgrim Mountain. The new fort was named for him, using his personal surname of St-Gilles. It’s not clear if he lived in the fortress, or if he had a camp or house in a nearby town. Castles in Europe were primarily residential, while these Crusader fortresses were primarily defensive. It seems likely that Raymond and most of his men would prefer, though, to close a gate at night and feel secure. The fort is still in existence, but it has been ruined and rebuilt several times.

In 1105, Raymond of Toulouse died of battle wounds, leaving a complex legacy. Of first importance to our age, one of his clerks wrote an account of his role in the Crusade, a written record that we prize more than any citadel. Of first importance to his age, he left one heir who was directly on hand to take control of the fortress. This was his nephew William-Jordan, who was already a Crusader; but he also had two sons. Raymond had been married three times, with legitimacy issues in each case. His official heir was a child, Alfonso Jordan, but his oldest son Bertrand had been governing Toulouse. Bertrand set out immediately when he heard the news, and eventually he pushed out William-Jordan. When Tripoli fell in 1109, Bertrand became its first Count.

Bertrand oversaw the official burning of Tripoli’s library, too. Yes, somehow “our guys” did that too sometimes. They just had no excuse, as the nomads at least did.

Raymond left some lasting alliances and victories to his credit. In his personal rivalry with Bohemund, Raymond had chosen to side with the Byzantine Emperor. He was the only Crusader who remained on good terms with Alexios. King Baldwin could largely ignore the Emperor and focus on his border challenges, but Bohemund’s Antioch was really part of Cilicia, so he and the Emperor were always in each other’s faces. The Armenians kept flipping allegiance from Byzantium to Antioch and back, as Tancred or Bohemund created less or more threat. (At one point, Tancred led a full invasion into the towns he had first helped to liberate.) Greek ships helped Raymond capture Tortosa, near their port of Latakia, and Raymond helped smooth the way of the 1101 Faint-hearted Crusaders.

On the debit side, Raymond’s legacy included the loss of Ascalon and a few other port towns. He had been so eager for a truly important title that he got into stalemate struggles with Godfrey of Jerusalem. Godfrey wanted all nearby cities to be attached to Jerusalem in the feudal structure, so he refused to agree that Raymond could be Duke or Prince of Ascalon. It’s another of those points that might have altered history: had Raymond, a powerful and wealthy lord with a large contingent of surviving men, occupied Ascalon, he could have really secured the southern border. Without the title, he refused to lift a finger, and so Ascalon remained a Fatimid port, keeping the war frontier dangerously close to Jaffa and Jerusalem.

 

 

 

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The Crusade of the Faint-Hearted, 1101-1102

Posted on May 6, 2017 by Ruth

The entry before this one is dated May, 20, 2014, titled “Good cops and bad ones: Caesarea in 1101.” link

In 1101, the new Pope Paschal called for another wave of pilgrim fighters to go east. Some of them were fresh faces, including the Archbishop of Milan leading another disorganized crowd of poor men, but some were First Crusaders who had broken their vows. For this reason, it wasn’t called the Second Crusade by historians, rather the Crusade of the Faint-Hearted. The Second Crusade was still 45 years away.

Hugh of Vermandois, the French King’s brother, was one of the oath-breakers who now returned. Stephen of Blois, the deserter who had told the Emperor not to bother trying to rescue the Crusaders in Antioch, was another. His wife was the daughter of William the Conqueror; her brothers were now kings of England, and she couldn’t bear being married to a shamed oath-breaker.

William the Duke of Aquitaine came on this Crusade 1.2. He had skipped Crusade 1.0 because he did not yet have an heir; his son William was born the year Jerusalem was captured. His wife was Raymond of Toulouse’s niece and actually the rightful ruler, so while Raymond was gone, they captured Toulouse. Now, though, the Duke needed to raise money for Crusading, so he just mortgaged it back to Raymond’s son.

He was an incorrigible philanderer who, when he returned from the Holy Land, moved his mistress named Dangerosa (seriously) into the ducal palace, further humiliating the mother of his children (who had just seen her hometown/dowry tossed away for ready cash). He was also the first great troubadour whose work still survives. None of this matters for the Crusade, but he’s such a colorful character that he seems worth pointing out. In Crusade histories, we often run across people who are main characters in other stories.

The first tranche of new Crusaders fought their way across Turkey with the help of the Byzantine Emperor. They were trying to rescue Bohemund Prince of Antioch from a Danishmend-Turk yurt, but they didn’t succeed. The Turks united this time and won a grueling three-day battle, and the French prince Hugh died. Apparently, the entire Aquitainian army was killed,  leaving only the Duke and a few companions to continue to Jerusalem.

Raymond of Toulouse joined them, and more new crusading nobles arrived. They were able to do a little good, capturing another much-needed port. But once they had arrived in Jerusalem for Easter, it looked like the fighting was over. Relieved to have their vows checked off, their honor rescued, and still alive, they set sail for Europe. But the winds turned, and some of their ships came back to Jaffa (the lucky Duke of Aquitaine got home).

In Jaffa, the stranded nobles got bad news: their swords were definitely needed again. A large Fatimid army under al-Afdal’s son was on the march from Ascalon, and King Baldwin was panicking. So Stephen of Blois, Hugh of Lusignan (Raymond of Toulouse’s half-brother), the Count of Burgundy, and Conrad Constable of Germany took their knights and turned back into the desert, with King Baldwin’s small contingent of knights.

The last time Baldwin faced this scenario, he had ridden against a Fatimid army that outnumbered him about 5 to 1, but carrying the True Cross relic, he had narrowly survived and at last prevailed. Assuming that the Fatimid army this time was merely a raiding party, he set out to attack again, instead of waiting for reinforcements from Raymond or Tancred. But this time, King Baldwin had made a tragic mistake. His 200 knights were engulfed by a full-scale field army, and there were almost no survivors.

After the first onslaught and as darkness fell, those still living made it into a small desert fort, but it was impossible to survive when morning came. During the night, King Baldwin and five knights escaped out a back gate. All of the men left behind were killed in battle, with one exception. Conrad, Duke/Constable of Germany, fought so ferociously outside the little fort that no Fatimids could come near him and survive. At last they offered him generous surrender terms, awed by his courage and skill. He was taken to Egypt and released.

Meanwhile, King Baldwin had a harrowing experience: alone, he tried to escape. A few miles away, he hid in a thicket of reeds, but the Fatimids set it on fire. His horse Gazelle was very fast and by dint of several days’ hiding and riding, they evaded Fatimid patrols. Baldwin tried to get back to Jerusalem, but there were too many enemies. Turning north, he made it to the port city of Arsuf, where he (and Gazelle, surely) collapsed.

In Arsuf, Baldwin was met by his Crusader Count of Tiberias with a small contingent of knights. He heard that the Fatimids were now besieging Jaffa but had not assaulted Jerusalem. Instant, unexpected action might be decisive. English legend has it that Baldwin was given a lift to Jaffa by an English pirate called Godric, who stayed in the Holy Land long enough to reform into St. Godric.

Queen Arda had been left in Jaffa for safekeeping with a tiny reserve force. This was the second time she found herself in this position; the previous year, in the First Battle of Ramla, she had been told that the king was dead. She had been reluctant to surrender, and it paid off: the king turned up the next morning with a small force, reporting that somehow they had won. But it was too much to ask for a second miracle of the same kind. The Fatimid commander found a dead Crusader who looked like Baldwin and began parading the mutilated remains around, calling out that the king was dead. Queen Arda could see no option but to surrender.

Just in time, St. Godric’s boat came into Jaffa harbor from the unexpected north, bearing the king himself. Legend gives him a shining banner that could be seen from afar, and the reinforcements from Tiberias came with him, of course. Small as their forces were, they fought Jaffa free of besiegers and saved the queen.

Somehow, the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem still hung on. As long as the king survived and no cities were actually taken, the Fatimid expedition had been a loss. Baldwin’s escape was not honorable, but his sheer tenacity at surviving alone, with his eventual rescue of Jaffa, restored his honor.

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