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CHAPTER XII .

THE CRUSADE OF 1101

With the capture of Jerusalem on July 15, 1099, the crusaders had gained their principal objective, and their victory over the Egyptians at Ascalon four weeks later removed for the moment the most immediate threat against the Christian holdings. The official report of the campaign written by Daimbert and others from Latakia in September, was triumphant in tone and justly so. The Christian position was far from secure, however, and this the magnates recognized as they set about organizing the new state. Most of the important seaports, upon which their control of Syria and Palestine ultimately depended, had yet to be taken, and recent acquisitions inland needed to be consolidated. For the tasks at hand there was not enough manpower: some westerners had elected to stay on in the Levant but most of them, homesick and pilgrims at heart rather than colonizers, turned homeward as soon as their vows were fulfilled and as transportation became available. Within a few months Godfrey's army had shrunk until he could count on no more than a few hundred knights and one or two thousand footmen. In 1100, when Baldwin became king, Fulcher of Chartres believed, not unreasonably, that there were not enough Christians left to defend Jerusalem from the Saracens “if only they dared attack us”.

Long before this rapid demobilization the leaders of the crusade had felt the need for reinforcements. Their letters home as they moved into enemy territory had punctuated stirring accounts of victories with pleas for prayers, subsidies, and recruits. These requests they continued to send westward by letter and word of mouth as pilgrims returned after the taking of Jerusalem. Even earlier than the princes, Urban II had understood that the hot flame of enthusiasm he had kindled on the plain outside Clermont would not insure the permanent conquest of the Holy Land. After the departure of the hosts in 1096 he had continued to urge, by letter and by voice, the Jerusalem way. He had thus enlisted the aid of the maritime cities of Italy, without whose ships Jerusalem could not have been taken or held, and he had tried as well to raise additional armies. In his last councils, at Bari (October 1098) and Rome (April 1099), Urban introduced crusading business, and it is possible that he considered seriously the invitation to come out with fresh recruits and assume command of the crusade he had launched.

It was Urban’s tragedy that he died on July 29 without learning of the victory at Jerusalem a fortnight earlier. His work went on without a break, however. New armies were recruited in Europe and marched out bravely toward the Holy Land. Fulcher of Chartres referred to the movement as a second crusade and so it was, though modern usage has preferred the less accurate designation of Crusade of 1101. Whatever it be called, the expedition was an utter failure which drew sharp criticism from historians of the time and scant attention from those of later centuries. But there is some value in describing that failure in order to make clear the difficulties inherent in the overland approach to Jerusalem.

Urban’s successor was Rainerius of Blera, who was enthroned as Paschal II on August 14, 1099. As a young monk — whether of Cluny or Vallombrosa is uncertain — Rainerius had favorably impressed Gregory VII. Called to Rome, Rainerius had advanced rapidly in the papal curia, being named cardinal-priest of St. Clement's. He had enjoyed Urban’s favor too, serving as his legate in Spain, and it was reported that Urban had suggested Rainerius as his successor. With his background, it was inevitable that Paschal should continue the crusading policy of Urban and should use the techniques that had already proved successful.

Paschal must have heard of the crusaders’ crowning success soon after his elevation, but it was late in 1099 before Daimbert’s report was brought to him by Robert of Flanders. Paschal’s reply, dated April 28, 1100, accredited to the crusaders a new legate, cardinal-bishop Maurice of Porto, and urged that the Christian forces stay on in the east to complete their task. Several months earlier, as he learned from returning pilgrims something of the precarious situation in the Holy Land, the pope had addressed a letter to the clergy of Gaul, directing them to preach a new crusade. All soldiers should be asked to enlist, with a promise of the privileges instituted by Urban, but special pressure was to be used on all who had failed to make good crusading vows taken earlier. In spite of the threat of excommunication, this latter group seems to have been quite large. It included laggards who had never left home, faint-hearted pilgrims who had deserted in Italy or elsewhere along the road and, most odious of all, the “rope-dancers” who had fled the siege of Antioch. Letters from the east had been particularly insistent that the slackers be returned to combat; for the sake of discipline and morale Paschal was forced to stress their case, though he hoped also to attract a large number of new volunteers.

In retrospect his task appears less difficult than Urban’s had been in 1095. True, Paschal could count on little help from the monarchs of western Europe. His attitude toward Henry IV was as stern as had been that of his predecessors. Philip I of France was sunk in sloth and at odds with the papacy because of his matrimonial ventures. In England William Rufus was as cynically realistic as he had been in 1095; when Henry I succeeded him in August 1100, it was without regard for the claims of Robert of Normandy and in apparent contradiction of the latter’s crusading privileges. The Spanish monarchs had Saracens enough along their own frontier. Paschal, who knew something of the unending demands of the reconquista, released from their crusading vows knights from Castile and Leon, sent home others who had already started for Jerusalem, and made plain to Alfonso VI that his task was in Spain. But these handicaps were not prohibitive. The First Crusade had succeeded, as Guibert of Nogent observed, without benefit of kings; what was needed now was not so much ambitious monarchs, with their interests rooted in Europe, as a supply of soldiers and colonists willing to serve under experienced leaders in the Levant. And to attract such recruits Paschal had a signal advantage in the manifest success of Urban’s expedition. References in contemporary sources — chronicles and charters, sermons and songs — show how widely the news of the capture of Jerusalem spread; that news moved many to follow the heroes whose names were soon to be legendary in Europe. Some of the recruits were repeaters, largely from northern France, but for the most part they came from regions moved only lightly by the excitement of 1095-1096: from Aquitaine and Burgundy, from Germany and Lombardy.

In that last region there was little left for the new pope to do. A center of opposition to the reform papacy, Lombardy had contributed few troops to the First Crusade, but sentiment had changed as the movement had prospered. A few months before his death Urban II wrote to Anselm of Buis, a staunch supporter who had recently been installed as archbishop at Milan, asking him to lead his people on crusade. This plea was seconded by letters from the Holy Land circulated in Lombardy by the Genoese late in 1099. Anselm accepted the invitation, named a suffragan to act in his stead, and levied on the income of his clergy to help defray expenses. The archbishop’s preaching won over men of all ranks, who took the cross singing “Ultreja, ultreja”. At least two bishops went, William of Pavia and Guido of Tortona, and many clergy. There were women too, and children, and the chroniclers — not Italian —were to accuse the Lombard host of poor discipline and lack of stamina in battle. The lay leaders were of respectable rather than exalted rank: count Albert of Biandrate, with his brother Guido and his nephew Otto Altaspata; Hugh of Montebello; and count Albert of Parma. This last Albert has been identified as a brother of the anti-pope Guibert, who died just as the crusaders marched off in September of 1100, and Albert’s enlistment has been cited as a posthumous token of Urban’s victory.

It was in France that Paschal II made his chief effort and had his chief success, though it is impossible of course to say how much that owed to the formal campaign of the church, how much to an aroused public opinion. In response to Paschal’s encyclical letter archbishop Manasses II of Rheims wrote to bishop Lambert of Arras, repeating the pope’s call for soldiers and adding the picas of Godfrey and Arnulf from Jerusalem. Presumably Manasses wrote also to his other bishops. Perhaps other Gallic metropolitans did likewise: our information in the case of Rheims results from a chance survival of a bishop’s correspondence. At any rate when Hugh of Die, archbishop of Lyons, convoked a synod at Anse in the spring or summer of 1100 four archbishops and nine bishops joined him in promulgating Paschal’s crusading decree. Hugh had served both Gregory VII and Urban II as legate in France, but Paschal had decided to use Italians rather than natives in that office so Hugh took the cross, later obtaining the pope’s permission to make the pilgrimage and an appointment as legate in Asia.

Soon after the meeting at Anse, Paschal’s new legates, the cardinals John of St. Anastasia and Benedict of St. Eudoxia, arrived in France. They held a council at Valence toward the end of September and, passing through Limoges, came to Poitiers where they convoked another council on November 18, fifth anniversary of the opening of Clermont. At Poitiers certainly, and apparently at the other cities, the legates preached the crusade, “violently exciting the people that they should quickly aid the faithful in God’s war”. As at Clermont, the response was immediate and enthusiastic: nobles, clergy, and simple folk “assumed the sign of Christ’s cross”.

The most powerful layman to enlist at Poitiers was William IX, duke of Aquitaine and count of Poitou. He had resisted Urban’s call in 1095, staying in France to prey on the lands of his crusading neighbor, Raymond of Toulouse. William, a light-hearted young man who has since become famous as the first of the troubadours, had been in trouble with the church, and now incurred further displeasure by his belligerent defense of his suzerain Philip I before the legates at Poitiers, so that some have thought that his vow was in expiation of his violence at the council. But there is evidence to show that he had tried to raise funds for a crusade by mortgaging his duchy to William Rufus before the latter’s death on August 2, and it seems probable that the duke was moved more by reports of glorious deeds done in the east than by ecclesiastical strictures.

William was able to muster a large army from his own and neighboring territories. Among the leaders were count Geoffrey of Vendôme, Herbert, viscount of Thouars, and his brother Geoffrey, Hugh of Lusignan (a half-brother of Raymond of Toulouse who apparently bore no bitter grudge against William), and many clergy including bishops Reginald of Périgueux and William of Auvergne. The clergy added a not unneeded touch of respectability, for while some crusaders set out with their wives, William IX left his spouse to manage his estates and took with him a bevy of damsels.

Save in the case of a few princes there is no information concerning the circumstances under which men vowed to go to Jerusalem. One would suppose that French preachers, local or itinerant, repeated the pope’s message as others had done in 1096. For example, two of the most celebrated pulpit orators of the day — Robert of Arbrissel and Raoul Ardent — were at Poitiers and the latter is supposed to have gone to the east with his patron William IX; it would have been strange if such men had not helped speed the new call. Enthusiasm was aroused in many places by the display of relics brought back from Outremer, and everywhere by the tales of the returning veterans.

In northern France, whence many volunteers had gone oat in 1096, there were quite a few deserters who now reenlisted, though the inordinate attention they received from the chroniclers stemmed from their rank and notoriety rather than from their great number. Best known of the group were Stephen of Blois and Hugh of Vermandois. Clerical threats were strongly reinforced by popular indignation over their supposed cowardice and, in the case of Stephen — if we may believe the report of a gossipy monk who certainly was no eyewitness — by complaints uttered by his spirited wife during their most intimate marital relations. Another defaulter from Antioch, Guy Trousseau of Montlhéry, was represented by two kinsmen: Guy II (“the Red”), count of Rochefort and seneschal to Philip I; and Miles of Bray, viscount of Troyes, probably second of that name and grandson of Guy I. Other nobles from the region, with no stigma of desertion, included Odo Arpin, viscount of Bourges, Hugh Bardulf II of Broyes, Baldwin of Grandpré, Dodo of Clermont, and Walbert, seneschal of Laon. There were three bishops in the host: William of Paris, Ingelrand of Laon, and Hugh of Soissons; William had attended the synod at Anse, the other two that at Poitiers.

The response in eastern France was equally enthusiastic. William II, count of Nevers, Auxerre, and Tonnerre, enlisted; the contingent he raised from his territories, while not so numerous as that from Aquitaine, was to act as a separate army. Volunteers from neighboring Burgundy, on the other hand, joined with Stephen of Blois’s forces. The two most important leaders were Odo, duke of Burgundy, and Stephen, count of Burgundy and Macon. Unfortunately the chroniclers have confused these two persons so that it is usually impossible to determine which is referred to, but charters of the time show that both were among the crusaders who left in 1101. Duke Odo was a veteran of the Spanish wars against the Moslems and a sometime benefactor of Molesme and Cîteaux, but he had recently incurred papal displeasure by infringing on the lands of Cluny in spite of the complaints of his sainted uncle, abbot Hugh. Excommunicated by the legates at Valence, Odo had made retribution and had taken the cross. Count Stephen had been ruling for his elder brother Reginald, who had gone out to Jerusalem; another brother, archbishop Hugh of Besançon, accompanied Stephen in 1101.

In Germany, as in Italy, the favorable reaction to crusading propaganda was in some degree a measure of the increased prestige of the papacy. As Ekkehard of Aura noted, it was the strife between emperor and pope that had kept the Germans aloof during the First Crusade. Germany was now enjoying a respite from civil war, and at the death of Guibert in 1100 there was for a time some hope that the papal schism might be healed. At any rate, Henry IV interposed no objections to enlistments in Germany (he was to propose a pilgrimage himself two years later), and some of his adherents were among those who now took the cross. One small band was led by Conrad, called Henry’s constable but otherwise unidentified. There was a second and much larger army. Chroniclers speak of recruits from all the duchies, but most of the persons actually named were from Bavaria and its marches. The ranking layman was Welf IV of Bavaria. The old duke had fought first for Henry IV, then on the papal side, but had latterly made his peace with the emperor and now had determined to go to Jerusalem in expiation of his sins. He was accompanied by Ida of Austria, widow of Leopold II and mother of the ruling margrave, Leopold III; by count Frederick of Bogen and the burgrave Henry of Regensburg; and by one Bernhard, sometimes identified as count of Scheyern. Among the many clergy attached to the army were archbishop Thiemo of Salzburg, bishop Ulrich of Passau, abbot Giselbert of Admont, and, fortunately for us, the historian Ekkehard of Aura.

Welf’s army was accounted large by contemporaries. So for that matter were the forces raised at the same time in other lands.

The medieval man had many virtues, but accuracy in statistics was not one of them. No scholar today accepts the huge figures cited by the chroniclers. Some have made ingenious attempts to scale such numbers down to a more reasonable estimate, but this author is skeptical of the utility of such an exercise, at least in the case of the armies of 1101. Not only are the grand totals fantastically large; even in dealing with small groups where one might expect some semblance of accuracy the chroniclers too often use symbolic numbers such as 700. Albert of Aix says that Conrad’s band numbered 2,000 and that of William of Nevers 15,000. The absence of other important magnates in either force would suggest, as Albert is saying, that these groups were smaller than the other armies, but there is no reason to suppose that the sizes varied in proportion to his figures. Indirect evidence in the sources — rather than the numbers cited — and the population of the several areas drawn from seem to indicate that the Lombard and Aquitanian armies were the two largest to set out. Ekkehard thought that the total forces were almost as great as those of 1096, Guibert of Nogent that they were quite as large. A rough comparison of the status of the leaders in each case makes either estimate sound reasonable; unfortunately we do not know how many went out in 1096. On one point the sources were in complete agreement — that in each of the bands in 1101 there were too many noncombatants. In spite of the advice of experienced crusaders and contrary to papal decree, the fighting men were accompanied by many women of varying degrees of honesty and by children. The clergy who went along may have served a more useful military purpose, but they were too numerous.

On the whole the crusaders seem to have been adequately provided with funds; at least they were able to purchase supplies wherever a normal market existed and they still had rich treasures when defeated in Asia Minor. Financing was done partly by the individual pilgrim, partly by aid from the wealthy leaders. Other prelates probably followed the practice of Anselm of Milan and Hugh of Lyons in exacting a subsidy from their clergy. For most laymen it was a matter of raising money from their estates. William IX, balked in his plan to borrow from William Rufus, was said to have given up his questionable title to Toulouse in return for a lump sum. Odo Arpin sold his vicomté of Bourges to Philip I for an alleged sum of 60,000 solidi in one of the first permanent accretions to the royal domain. The cartularies, which are the richest mine for this sort of information, show how large a part the monasteries played in financing this crusade, as men sold or hypothecated, under terms that seem not disadvantageous to the abbey, a field or vineyard here, an allod or meadow there. The charters tell too of pious donations made on the eve of departure and they sometimes add a bit of precise detail to enliven the dry narrative of the chronicles.

There is no record to show that Paschal had a general plan for the crusade. There was some effort to coordinate the movements of the several armies and for that he may have been responsible. As in 1096 there was no single layman to command the hosts; there was not even the unity furnished by Adhémar of Le Puy, for Hugh of Lyons, Paschal’s legate to Asia, seems to have reached Jerusalem without traveling with any of the large bands. But the various leaders operated according to a plan based on that of the First Crusade, whether by papal direction or by common knowledge of what had happened before. They knew something of the intentions of each other and in some instances planned a rendez­vous along the route through eastern Europe; all expected to gather in Constantinople before beginning the trek across Asia Minor.

The Lombards, first to muster, were first to leave, departing from Milan on September 13, 1100. They marched northeastward, crossing Carinthia with permission of the duke, Henry of Eppenstein, and passed peacefully through Hungary, probably down the Sava to join Godfrey’s earlier path at Belgrade. On entering Bulgaria, the Lombards sent messengers to Alexius, requesting market privileges as they traversed his realm, and this, subject to good behavior, the emperor granted. He specified as open markets the following towns: Roussa (Keshan), Panidos, Demotika (Didy-moteikhon), Philippopolis (Plovdiv), Adrianople (Edirne), Rodosto (Twkirdagh), Selymbria (Silivri), and a place called “Natura”. The crusaders wintered in Bulgaria; in spite of their agreement with Alexius they began to pillage. They seized cattle and fowl without paying for them — a not unusual practice for soldiers whether in friendly or enemy territory — and they compounded their felony by eating the meat in Lent and on fast days. They turned then to graver crimes, violating Greek shrines and committing sordid atrocities. These disorders were at least in part the work of camp-followers and without the sanction of the Lombard leaders; when Alexius learned of the misdeeds, he ordered the Lombards to proceed to Constantinople directly, and the leaders obeyed.

The army arrived at the capital late in February or early in March and by imperial command pitched camp outside the city on the Arm of St. George. There they remained for two months, awaiting reinforcements from Germany and France. Again the Lombards began to pillage and Alexius attempted, as he had in 1096-1097, to move his guests across the strait where they might stay in safety at Civetot (Cibotus) or “Rufinel” until joined by the other bands. When the Italians refused to move, Alexius cut off their market privileges and after three days of hunger they armed themselves and attacked the imperial palace of Blachernae, where they killed a young kinsman of the emperor and a pet lion—an act that was responsible for Ordericus Vitalis’s quaint belief that Alexius had a bodyguard of lions. Embarrassed by this violence, Anselm, Albert of Biandrate, and other leaders rounded up the rioters — who included knights as well as common folk — and got them back to camp. The leaders then went to Alexius and, having cleared themselves of guilt by an oath, attempted to assuage his wrath. The emperor still insisted on ferrying the crusaders across the strait and resorted to his usual practice of reinforcing his requests with rich gifts, which only Anselm refused. Eventually concord was reached, partly through the good offices of Raymond of St. Gilles, count of Toulouse.

Count Raymond had left the Holy Land in August 1099 after the capture of Jerusalem and the subsequent victory at Ascalon. His Provençal troops were anxious to return to their homes, and Raymond himself was far from happy over the installation of Godfrey as Advocate of the Holy Sepulcher. He had come to Constantinople from Latakia in the summer of 1100 and was now a firm ally of the emperor. Indeed, as preceding chapters have indicated, Raymond had always favored a close association with Alexius. A more recent bond between them was their dislike of Bohemond, who had thwarted them both.

Thus it was that amid mutual promises of peace, Alexius restored to the crusaders the right of buying supplies and a few days after Easter (April 21) the army crossed the Bosporus and camped at Nicomedia. There they were joined by the German band led by Conrad, who had brought his troops through Greek lands without serious trouble and, after a favorable reception by Alexius, had crossed into Asia Minor. Much larger reinforcements arrived from France, the forces led by Stephen of Blois and those from Burgundy. Apparently they had left home early in the spring, but of their march to Constantinople we know nothing. At the request of the crusaders, Alexius gave them Raymond of Toulouse and the Greek general Tsitas as advisers and a force of mounted native auxiliaries known as Turcopoles—estimated at five hundred—to serve as guides. The European reinforcements came in May, and early in June the host moved out.

Stephen of Blois and other men of experience proposed to follow the familiar route along which they had marched in 1097. The Lombards had other ideas. At Constantinople they had learned of the capture of Bohemond the previous summer by Malik-Ghazi ibn-Danishmend, the Turkish emir of Sebastia (Sivas), who now held him at Pontic Neocaesarea (Niksar). They were determined to invade Pontus or, as they called it, “Khorassan”, to release Bohemond and perhaps conquer that land. Stephen, Raymond, and Alexius tried to dissuade the Lombards from this foolish diversion, but in vain; rather than split the host, in which the Italians constituted the most numerous force, the French magnates finally acquiesced.

The crusaders left Nicomedia early in June with Raymond and the Turcopoles in the van. Provisions were plentiful, discipline lax. On June 23 they came through the mountains to attack Ankara. After almost wiping out the Turkish garrison they restored the town to the Greeks in accordance with the oath which Alexius usually exacted from western princes. Turning northeastward, the crusaders came to Gangra (Chankiri); they found the fortifications too strong to storm and had to content themselves with burning the crops in the neighborhood. From this point on, the westerners were constantly harassed by the soldiers of Kilij Arslan, the Selchukid sultan of Rum.

When the Turks began to cut off stragglers, the Christian leaders set a vanguard of Franks and a rear guard of Lombards. The latter broke under a sudden attack and permitted the mounted Turkish archers to slaughter many of the road-weary pilgrims. The rear guard then became the post of honor with the several leaders rotating in command there. First the Burgundians, then Raymond’s Provençals and Turcopoles, performed more creditably in that assignment than had the Italians, and by tightening up their line of march the crusaders were able to go forward without ex­cessive losses.

It is impossible to reconstruct from the sources the exact route followed. From Gangra the direct way to Neocesarea went eastward across the Halys river and through Amasya. But Albert reports that after the crusaders had passed several towns and castles which he could not identify, Raymond was bribed by the Turks to lead them astray and that thereafter the way led through wilderness and desert. The Christians now began to suffer from shortages of food. There was no lack of money but they found no markets, and only those wealthy persons who had brought provisions by cart from Nicomedia or Civetot had plenty. Lesser folk had to forage, a difficult way of life, what with the rough country and the even rougher Turks. By Albert’s account the army had gone far north of the road to Neocesarea — at least he shows one large body of footmen searching for food in the vicinity of Kastamonu. Intent on gathering young barley (in the grain but not yet ripe in July) and crabapples, the Christians were trapped in a valley and burned to death in a great brush tire.

The news of this slaughter frightened the crusaders; having been a fortnight on the match from Gangra they turned back to the road toward Neocesarea. After crossing the Halys they came to a town inhabited by Greek Christians. These the westerners alleged­ly slew in a senseless massacre. Six days after the ambush below Kastamonu the army debouched from the mountains of Paphlagonia and camped on a plain below. Here for the first time they met the main Turkish army, comprising troops of Malik-Ghazi of Sebastia, Ridvan of Aleppo, and Karaja of Harran. It had been the internal dissension among the Selchukid sultans and the local emirs that had made possible the success of the First Crusade; now the cooperation between the Moslem princes of Anatolia was the undoing of the Christians.

Albert of Aix’s detailed account of the fighting thereafter has an epic quality that may derive from a source more literary than the tales of survivors that he cites; his details are suspect, but the general picture receives some corroboration from Anna Comnena. The battle lasted several days during the early part of August. On the first day the Turkish horsemen surrounded the camp, yelling horribly after their fashion and shooting at the Christians with their bows of horn and bone. By holding together compactly the crusaders repulsed this assault. Next day a very large foraging party under the German Conrad and his nephew Bruno attacked and seized a Turkish stronghold in the neighborhood of Mersivan (Merzifon), taking what victuals and plunder they found, but they were trapped during their return to camp and lost all their spoils and many men. On the morrow both armies rested; Albert says it was Sunday and on may marvel at this curious observance of the Truce of God. On Monday the archbishop of Milan preached to the whole crusading host, exhibiting a relic of St. Ambrose and the “Holy Lance” which Raymond had brought along, and exhorting the multitude to confess. The army was then ordered in five “battles”: the Burgundians, Raymond and his troops, the Germans, the western Franks, and the Lombards. The Lombards, placed in the van, were driven back after heavy fighting and so in sequence were the Germans, Burgundians, and French. Toward dusk Raymond took refuge on a crag whence he in turn was rescued by Stephen and Conrad.

The Christians had sustained heavy losses and the day had certainly gone to the Turks, but the latter had suffered too and the issue was still in balance as each force settled in camp for the night. Then panic struck among the crusaders. According to Albert it was Raymond who began the flight; Anna Comnena says the other leaders first sought from Raymond and Tsitas the location of some imperial stronghold whither they could flee. Regardless of who ran first, the flight became general as the horsemen rode off leaving behind their women and children and the infantry. The nonchalance with which the knights deserted their ladies in this and subsequent battles (without serious chiding from the chroniclers) is a sad commentary on the practices, as opposed to the theories, of chivalry.

The Turks, learning during the night of the stampede, swarmed into the crusaders’ camp at dawn. There was a wild scene of rape and carnage. Some of the handsomer women and youths were saved for the slave market and the rest were killed. Then the tents were looted. After these important preliminaries the Turks went in pursuit of the broken army. The footmen they cut down like ripe grain. One small band held together and fought its way to Byzantine territory, but most of the Christians perished in the battle or the rout. Albert lists a number of knights killed: Baldwin of Grandpré, Dodo of Clermont, Walbert of Laon, Eraldus and Enguerrand of Châlons-sur-Marne, Arnulf, and Walter of Châtillon. These were all from northern France; presumably the other contingents suffered equally.

Many of the magnates escaped, however. Raymond fled northward to the Black Sea port of Bafra and thence to Sinope where he embarked for Constantinople. Stephen of Burgundy, Stephen of Blois, Guy of Rochefort, Hugh Bardulf, Anselm, the bishops of Laon and Soissons, and others made their way to Sinope. With such followers as they could round up, they then returned overland to Constantinople. There they were received in kindly fashion by Alexius, who tried to make good their losses by his gifts and an offer to support them until they could continue their pilgrimage. The archbishop of Milan, worn out by the campaign, died on September 30 and was buried at Constantinople.

Most of the western sources, written in an atmosphere unfriendly toward the Greeks, accuse Alexius of complicity in the defeat near Mersivan. This charge will be examined later in the context of similar disasters to the other armies of 1101. Here it is appropriate to note that Albert, like other authors, links Raymond with the basileus in his alleged act of perfidy. But Albert is not consistent. He shows the emperor and Raymond opposing the Lombards in their mad diversion toward Pontus, and Raymond fighting valiantly against the Turks even after his alleged agree­ment with them. His flight was no more disgraceful than that of the other magnates, yet Albert shows the emperor upbraiding Raymond for having deserted his companions. There is no real evidence of a plot on the part of the emperor or his Provençal ally. The crusaders were defeated because of their own willful stupidity.

Meanwhile other crusading forces had passed through Constantinople. That led by William of Nevers poses a peculiar problem. Among the chroniclers it is only Albert of Aix who treats the Nivernais as a separate army, and for want of substantiating evidence some scholars have supposed that they went out with either the Burgundians or the Poitevins, But most of the chroniclers tend to confuse the various contingents, sometimes to the extent of joining them all into one huge force; even Ekkehard knew little about the armies after they entered Asia Minor. Albert’s account on the contrary is circumstantial and consistent enough to warrant some credence.

A charter to Molesme indicates that William of Nevers was preparing to set out for Jerusalem on January 30, 1101, and he probably left soon after. He led his troops down through Italy to Brindisi and crossed to Avlona. The way then was by Thessalonica, the same that Bohemond had followed in 1096. William’s army maintained excellent discipline and received decent treatment from the natives. The emperor received the crusaders with kind­ness, giving them a camp site on the Arm of St. George, but after three days insisted that they cross the strait. On the Asiatic shore they camped for a fortnight while William was in daily attendance upon Alexius.

By Albert’s chronology, the Nivernais had arrived toward the middle of June —about the 14th by Hagenmeyer’s reckoning. At that time the German and Poitevin bands had already begun to assemble at Constantinople, and it would have been natural for William to have joined forces with them. Instead, shortly after June 24, he led his troops to Civetot and then hurried on in an attempt to overtake the Lombard-Frankish army. By the time he reached Ankara William had found that effort hopeless and after a day's stop turned south toward Iconium (Konya), where he might await reinforcements. While on this leg of the journey his army was attacked by Turks, perhaps local troops rather than (as Albert says) the victors from Mersivan. After a running fight of three days the Nivernais arrived in mid-August at Iconium, where they found the citadel so strongly garrisoned by Turks that attempts to storm the wall failed. The army moved on to Heraclea (Ereghli, east of Iconium) which the enemy had deserted after destroying all sources of water supply. When the Christians had been weakened by several days of thirst, the Turks surrounded them and attacked in force. After a vain defense the Frankish cavalry broke and fled, leaving the infantry and noncombatants to be slain or captured. As at Mersivan, many women were carried off as slaves. William, with his brother and a standard-bearer, William of Modena, led a small group of knights in flight southwest-ward to Ermenek. There he hired some imperial Turcopoles to guide the party to Antioch, but the guides proved faithless, robbing the pilgrims and leaving them naked and afoot in the wilderness.

Eventually the unhappy pilgrims found their way to Antioch, where Tancred was ruling in Bohemond’s stead. Tancred made good part of their losses and entertained William at his court for a while. The count stayed on at Antioch through the winter, gathering other fugitives who like himself wished to go on to Jerusalem in the spring. By that time their number had been swell­ed by the remnants of a third defeated army.

The Aquitanians under William IX had left home in the second week in Lent, March 12-19, and marched overland, apparent­ly through northern Italy and Carinthia. Somewhere along the route they joined the main Bavarian army led by Welf IV, which had set out about April 1, and the combined forces went together peacefully through Hungary. In Bulgaria, which they entered early in May, the westerners were greeted by friendly messengers from Alexius, but they were also dogged by his mounted mercenaries, Pechenegs and Kumans. Ekkehard of Aura, travelling with a German group in the wake of Well’s army, complained of attacks by these soldiers; this was no more than retribution for the misdeeds of those crusaders who had preceded him. The Poitevins, an “unrestrained and incorrigible people”, got into a fight with some Bulgarians and injured their leader, Guzh. Accordingly, when the crusaders reached Adrianople and wished to enter, they found the long bridge leading into the city blocked by Guzh and his troops. The Poitevins attacked, firing the suburbs and attempting to push across the bridge. Ralph of Saintonge, a relative of William’s, was killed, Ardouin of St Medard and others were captured. But Guzh was taken by the Poitevins and after some parley peace was restored and prisoners were exchanged.

Relations between the crusaders and the Byzantines seem to have been improved by the blood-letting. Guzh allowed the westerners to enter Adrianople and buy supplies, and he furnished an escort which led them to Constantinople without further difficulty.

The main army reached the capital about the beginning of June and was augmented during the next fortnight by the daily arrival of new troops. Alexius received the princes as “sons” and showered them with gifts, but he also exacted from them an oath of fealty similar to that sworn by the crusaders in 1097. Several of the chroniclers picture William IX as a haughty young duke who refused to take the oath and offered gratuitous insults to the emperor, but there is no evidence of any disorders. Alexius distributed money among the lesser folk and made markets available to all, but he also hurried the pilgrims across the straits. The stay in the environs of Constantinople dragged on for five weeks while the pilgrims purchased supplies for the journey and the leaders met in daily council with Alexius. It was probably during this long halt that William of Nevers passed through the capital and his failure to unite with the Poitevins and Bavarians can perhaps be explained by their inordinate delay.

Nor was William’s the only band to go on alone. During their long halt the Germans — probably the rank and file rather than the princes — became suspicious of Alexius. They had heard no news of the Lombards, but they suspected — wrongly — that the Greek had forced the crusaders into enemy territory before the arrival of reinforcements; now the Germans began to fear that Alexius was preparing to betray them to the Turks. The pilgrims were seized with panic. Some sold their horses and bought passage on ships bound for the Holy Land. When warned that Alexius could destroy them at sea as well as on land, many who had already boarded ship debarked and refitted themselves, at great loss, for the overland trip. Ekkehard describes, with evident emo­tion, the terrible confusion as the German army, already less numerous than the Aquitanian, split into two groups. He himself, after much wavering, elected to go by sea with a sizeable party and arrived safely at Jaffa after a voyage of six weeks.

The more important German leaders and a majority of their followers chose to march on with the French. The combined forces left about the middle of July, having accepted from Alexius a band of Turcopole guides. According to Ekkehard, who now is dependent like Albert on reports from survivors, the army then turned away from the southeasterly road through Rum and marched east toward Pontus. This was what William of Nevers had done shortly before and like him William IX and Welf were perhaps hoping to join the Lombards. Albert mentions no such deviation from the main military road to Syria. He shows the crusaders marching by way of Nicomedia and Nicaea, and thence to Philomelium (Akshehir), which they destroyed. The early part of the journey was pleasant enough, but after entering enemy territory the Christians began to suffer. The provisions they brought from the coast ran short; the Turks burned the ripe grain and ruined cisterns, wells, and springs. Squadrons of Turkish cavalry punished them in harassing attacks without risking a pitched battle. Passing Iconium, the crusaders destroyed Salamia (Ismil), then headed for Heraclea, early in September.

Near that city they came to a river where they hoped to slake their thirst. But Kilij Arslan and his allies lay in ambush among the growth along the other bank and just as the Christians drew near the water the Turks loosed a volley of arrows and charged. Caught by surprise and weakened by hunger and thirst, the crusaders could not stand up to the fierce assault. After a desperate stand in the marshy land along the river (where their heavy equipment must have been a hindrance) the army dissolved. Some crusaders tried vainly to hide in the marsh grass, some escaped by following the stream up to its source, and others fled into the mountains. Most of the Christians were cither killed or enslaved.

Among the many women reported to have been carried off into captivity were Corba, wife of Geoffrey Burel, and Ida of Austria. Albert was not certain whether Ida had been captured or killed, but others came to believe that she had lived on in the harem of a Moslem prince to whom she bore a famous son, Zengi. This is an early instance of what was to become a conventional literary theme; it is matched in interest — and lack of credibility — by the legend of Thiemo of Salzburg. The archbishop was carried off by a Turkish emir and being a metal worker of sorts, he was commanded to repair a certain “Mohammedan idol”. When the idol began to speak blasphemously, Thiemo broke it and for this he was martyred.

As in the previous defeats, an undue proportion of those who escaped were leaders, perhaps because of their superior horses. The bishop of Auvergne, however, walked out. Welf got away by shedding arms and armor and riding through the mountains. Two of his counts, Bernhard and Henry of Regensburg, made their way to the coast. William IX fled with a single squire and reached Longiniada, the port for Tarsus, then ruled by Bernard the Stranger. Bernard treated them well. After a few days Tancred, learning of William’s misfortunes, sent an escort of knights to conduct him to Antioch, where the duke was lavishly entertained. Less certain is the case of Hugh of Vermandois. He was wounded in the knee by an arrow, but escaped to Tarsus, where he died on October 18 and was buried in the church of St. Paul. The chroniclers tell of his reenlistment in France and of his death, but nothing of his activities on crusade. The context suggests that he was with William IX at Heraclea, but the record is none too clear.

With the disaster at Heraclea the military significance of the Crusade of 1101 vanishes. Remnants of the several bands continu­ed their way to Jerusalem but in effect the crusade had become a pilgrimage. Ekkehard saw some of the survivors at Rhodes, Paphos, Jaffa and other ports. But for the magnates, with such followers as they could muster, Antioch served as a new rendezvous. During the autumn and winter, stragglers who had fled overland from the defeats in southern Asia Minor were joined by those fugitives from the first army who had returned to Constantinople and had come on from there by ship to St. Simeon. By the end of February 1102 the newly formed band, which included Albert of Biandrate, Conrad, Stephen of Blois, Stephen of Burgundy, William of Aquitaine, Welf, Raymond of Toulouse, and a number of prelates, was ready to depart.

Raymond’s welcome had been less than cordial. Landing at Longiniada, he had been seized by Bernard the Stranger and delivered to Tancred at Antioch. The charge was that Raymond had betrayed his comrades to the Turks; the real reason lay in the feud between Raymond and Bohemond, and the anxiety with which Tancred viewed Raymond’s arrival with a band of warriors and the backing of Alexius. The crusading princes interceded for Raymond as they had earlier at Constantinople, and the Latin patriarch, Bernard, added his pleas. Tancred then released his prisoner, first exacting from Raymond a solemn oath that he would not attack any territories between Antioch and Acre.

The crusaders, thanking Tancred for his kindness, marched southward with Raymond in their band. With the aid of a Genoese fleet they attacked Tortosa and after a short siege captured the city. Anxious to get on to Jerusalem, the pilgrims gave the city into the custody of Raymond, who remained there. If Albert’s description of the oath is accurate, this constituted an early breach of the agreement; perhaps the chronicler was wrong in believing that Tancred’s interest extended so far south as Acre. At any rate, Tortosa was to be the base for further operations on count Raymond’s part, leading ultimately to the foundation of the county of Tripoli.

Duke Welf of Bavaria had avoided the siege, going to Jerusalem in the company of Reginald of Burgundy, the brother of count Ste­phen who had come out earlier. Reginald died on the journey, but Welf performed his devotions at the Holy Sepulcher. He then began the voyage home but died on the island of Cyprus and was buried at Paphos.

The other crusaders, leaving Tortosa, went by way of Arqah, Tripoli, and Jubail. Near Beirut they were met by king Baldwin, who had waited there for eighteen days to escort them through a dangerous pass at the Dog river. This service was at the request of the pilgrims themselves; it was a measure of their failure that instead of bringing substantial aid to Baldwin they should now be dependent on his small army. After a joyous meeting the com­bined forces went on to Jaffa. They reached that port on March 23 to find that some crusaders had already arrived by ship. They stayed a week at Jaffa, celebrating Palm Sunday there on the 30th.

Next day they went on to Jerusalem, where they spent Holy Week in prayer and fasting. They were joined by two belated com­rades, Conrad and bishop Ingelrand of Laon, and on Easter all united in celebrating the resurrection of the Lord. While offering thanks for their own safe arrival, the pilgrims persuaded Baldwin to negotiate with Alexius for better treatment of those who might follow in their steps.

Thus the pilgrims had released themselves from their vows and few felt any obligation to stay on. Soon after Easter the group began to break up, as individuals sought some way to return home. A number of them secured passage at Jaffa. William IX sailed from that port cither for Europe, as seems more likely, or for Antioch where Albert says he was with Tancred in September. In either event he had arrived at Poitiers by October 29, 1102. Some were less fortunate, being held back by adverse winds. These rejoined Baldwin and during an Egyptian counter-attack in May they were drawn willy-nilly into the defense of the realm.

Baldwin, relying on faulty intelligence, underestimated the strength of the Egyptians as they marched from Ascalon toward Ramla. Without waiting for the considerable force available at Jaffa, he decided to attack with the small body of knights who were with him at Jerusalem. Among them were some survivors of the recent crusading armies: Stephen of Blois, Stephen of Burgundy, Hugh of Lusignan, Geoffrey of Vendôme, Conrad, and others. Stephen of Blois advised caution but his sound advice was flouted now as it had been earlier by the Lombards; his flight from Antioch had stamped him as a coward whose counsel was overly timid.

When Baldwin discovered the size of the Egyptian army it was too late to retreat. He and his knights charged impetuously and with some momentary success. But against tremendous odds they could do little more. Those who survived the first onslaught fled, some to Jaffa, Baldwin and others to Ramla. This was on May 17. That night Baldwin escaped and two days later reached Arsuf. The remnants of his band sought refuge in a tower in Ramla. The Egyptians broke into the city and attempted to fire the tower. After enduring heat and smoke for two days the Christians sallied forth to sell their lives as dearly as possible. After a desperate melée they were overwhelmed. Most of the knights were killed — Hugh of Lusignan, Miles of Bray, Geoffrey of Vendôme, and Stephen of Blois, whose death did something to brighten a tarnish­ed reputation.

A few were carried off into Egypt as captives. Among these were Conrad, whose prowess had impressed the enemy, and Odo Arpin. They were kept at Cairo for three years and then released through the intercession of Alexius. Both returned to Europe. Conrad to serve his emperor again and Odo Arpin to enter Cluny in gratitude for his deliverance. From various bits of evidence we learn of the eventual return to Europe of other pilgrims: William of Nevers, who later refused to go on the Second Crusade in 1147; Hugh Bardulf; and a number of prelates — Hugh of Lyons and the bishops of Soissons and Laon. The only person of importance whom we know to have remained in the east was Ioscelin of Courtenay, later to become count of Edessa.

Judged by any standards, the Crusade of 1101 had been a failure. Of the thousands who had marched eastward only a few hundreds reached Jerusalem; still fewer stayed on to give Baldwin the help he had hoped for. Their one achievement was the capture of Tortosa; their one battle for Baldwin, that at Ramla, was a defeat. Chroniclers found this failure an unpleasant contrast to the marvelous success of the First Crusade, and they believed that the destruction of the armies of 1101 was God’s punishment for their manifest sins: their pride, their atrocities against fellow Christians, their wantonness. God’s agent, though an evil one, was the emperor Alexius.

Friction between the Latins and Greeks, rooted in ethnic and cultural differences, had been in evidence during the First Crusade. The antagonism had been sharpened in 1101, largely through the undisciplined actions of the crusaders and Alexius’s precautionary moves. Most of the western writers who describe the Crusade of 1101 accuse the basileus, either directly or indirectly, of betraying the armies of that year to the Turks. Those authors, writing at some remove from the events, were infected by the growing hostility to Alexius, the result partly of Bohemond’s propaganda in the west in 1106, partly of an earlier incident de­scribed by Albert of Aix. When the pilgrims at Jerusalem in April 1102 had asked Baldwin to negotiate with the emperor, the king had complied. He sent an embassy to Constantinople and in the conversations which followed Alexius cleared himself by oath of all charges and promised to deal kindly with future pilgrims. Among Baldwin’s ambassadors was a bishop whom Albert calls Manasses of “Barzenona”; his name first appears as one of the Italian prelates who survived the battle at Mersivan and reached Antioch early in 1102. Manasses was commissioned to exonerate Alexius before Paschal II on his return to Europe, but he became piqued over an imagined affront and at the Council of Benevento later in the year impeached rather than defended the emperor. The charges, Albert reports, were spread throughout Gaul.

Some of the sources that repeat those charges contain details so fanciful that they deserve no credence. Ekkehard, the only western author who was an eyewitness, knew of rumors of treachery but had no evidence. Albert of Aix repeats the charges in several places but tends to disprove them by other statements. He and other authors show that Alexius and Raymond, far from sending the first army off on a wild goose chase into Pontus, had pleaded with the leaders to go directly to Syria. These statements are corroborated by the emperor’s evident interests. His negotiations with the princes and the oaths he secured from them at considerable expanse show clearly that he expected to profit by their fighting as he had by the victories of the earlier crusaders. He was not the man to destroy potential allies out of spite because of their disorders and insults, and certainly he was not the man to send them out to rescue his archenemy Bohemond.

The failure of the crusade can be explained without making a traitor of Alexius. The crusaders had planned to meet at Constantinople, but the several armies missed the rendezvous by a very narrow margin of time; this was partly the result of their own behavior, partly a matter of chance. Separately they fell before a temporary alliance of Moslem princes; together they might have fought their way through to Syria. Perhaps they would not have been able to do so. Their leadership was poor, their knowledge of the enemy’s territory and tactics slight. For any army so long a march through a rugged and skillfully defended area is a prodigious task that requires good organization, a sound system of logistics, and a bit of luck. The crusaders of 1101 had no organiza­tion, no system, no luck, and so they set a pattern of failure that was to be followed by those of 1147 and 1190. Of more immediate importance was their failure to reinforce the Latin kingdom. The newly established states of the crusaders were forced, therefore, to rely largely on their own resources for both defense and administration. These resources were very limited, and herein lies the major problem of the ensuing years.

XII

THE FOUNDATION OF THE LATIN STATES

1099-1118

After the capture of the city of Jerusalem on July 15, 1099, most of the crusaders felt that their work was done. They remained long enough to establish a government to protect the Holy Sepulcher and to repel a Moslem attack from Ascalon on August 12. Then the majority set out for their homes in Europe, marching back to northern Syria in order to embark in Byzantine ships. As we have seen in the preceding chapter, the crusaders of 1101-1102 did the same thing in their turn, and so we must now consider the situation which these crusaders were leaving behind in Palestine and Syria.

About three thousand Frankish fighting men, in addition to the clergy and other noncombatants, remained in and about Jerusalem, a larger number in and about Antioch, and a small band at Edessa (Urfa). Antioch was three hundred and ten miles to the north of Jerusalem, across hostile territory; Edessa was one hundred and sixty miles northeast of Antioch, and forty-five east of the Euphrates. There were thus three isolated groups of western European invaders left in a foreign land. It was an ancient land whose Semitic inhabitants had seen many changes of fortune in the past, and whose upper classes were superior to the Franks in manners, breeding, and education.

The region in which these newcomers had chosen to find their homes is essentially a narrow strip between the Mediterranean Sea and the Syrian desert. First there is a coastal plain of sandy wastes interspersed with cultivable areas. At places this narrows to nothing as at Dog river pass near Beirut where a road is cut into the face of the cliffs fronting the sea. This coastal area contains a number of seaports such as Latakia, Tripoli, Beirut, Sidon, Tyre, and Acre which since time immemorial have exported both caravan goods and local manufactures to the west. Back of the coastal plain is a series of mountain ranges running north and south. They vary in elevation up to five thousand feet in northern Syria, to eleven thousand feet in the Lebanon, and to nearly four thousand feet in Palestine. There is a valley running north and south between these ranges with its high point at Baalbek, Northward flows the Orontes until it breaks through the mountains at Antioch to reach the sea. Southward runs the Jordan until it reaches the depression of the Dead Sea 1,292 feet below sea level, about twenty miles east of Jerusalem,

From November to March moisture-laden winds from the Mediterranean bring rains to the western slopes of the mountains. This causes the land to bloom in the spring. Although much water runs off, more so now than in medieval times owing to deforestation and overgrazing by sheep and goats, some of it soaks into the underlying limestone strata. This water accounts for the springs and streams, some of which continue to flow in the dry season when the winds blow in from the desert. Consequently irrigation has ever been important in Syria and Palestine, and the land has always had a significant agricultural as well as commercial population. This is true even on the eastern side of the mountains where the occasional streams eventually lose themselves in the desert. Here nourished in fertile areas are located cities famous since ancient times for manufactures and the caravan trade. Such are Aleppo, Hamah, Homs, and Damascus. These cities were never conquered by the crusaders.

With the exception of the county of Edessa the Frankish conquests were to hug the coast, dependent upon sea communications with Europe and reaching back into the highlands only for an average distance of fifty miles. Under these circumstances the enemy was seldom more than a day’s ride away. Therefore the Frankish states had to be garrison states, and their history is in large part military. Let us first examine the Moslem lands surrounding the Franks in 1099, and then the Latin Christian states themselves.

Southwest of Jerusalem, across the Sinai peninsula, lies Egypt. At the end of the eleventh century it was one of the wealthiest countries of the world with a dense though not warlike population. Its ships dominated the coasts of Palestine and Syria northward to the Byzantine sphere of control around Cyprus. In Ascalon, Palestine, it had an advanced base only forty miles from Jerusalem. As preceding chapters have made clear, Egypt was technically ruled by the Fatimid caliph of Cairo, al-Mustali, but was actually governed by a capable vizier, al-Malik al-Afdal. This caliphate championed the Shiite school of Moslem belief, and represented a challenge to the older Sunnite caliphate of the Abbasid dynasty in Baghdad. In the latter part of the eleventh century the caliphs of Cairo had lost control of Syria and most of Palestine to the warlike Selchukid (Arabic, Saljuq) sultans who had begun to dominate the Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad in 1055. Consequently the Moslems were badly divided by the religious and political rivalries of the two caliphates when the crusaders arrived.

Between Jerusalem and Antioch Syrian affairs were in great confusion. The two most powerful centers of authority were Damascus and Aleppo, east of the mountain ranges and facing the Syrian desert. In 1099 they were governed by two Selchukid princes, brothers and rivals, Ridvan of Aleppo and Dukak of Damascus. Their father, Tutush, governor of Syria, had aspired to succeed his own brother, the Selchukid sultan Malik-Shah, who died in 1092. Tutush was killed in battle with his nephew, the sultan Berkyaruk, son of Malik-Shah, in 1095. Berkyaruk was thereafter much more concerned with the rivalry of his brother Muhammad in Iraq and Iran than with affairs in Syria and Palestine. Ridvan seized Aleppo and aspired to rule all of Syria, but Dukak seized Damascus. Selchukid affairs in Syria were therefore, aside from Fatimid hostility, hopelessly muddled when the crusaders arrived in 1097, a fact of great importance to the invaders. After the Franks had come, Ridvan and Dukak continued to be primarily jealous of each other, and of any real authority to be exerted by the sultan in Baghdad. They were not disposed to attack the crusaders unless the latter threatened them.

The rest of Syria, the region of the coast and the mountains, went its own way after the death of Tutush. The wealthy seaport towns were generally ruled by ex-Fatimid governors who had repudiated Fatimid political but not religious authority, and who would call upon Egypt for naval aid when necessary. In the mountains were the Nusairi Shiite sect in the north; the neo-Ismailite Shiite Batinites (the so-called “Assassins”) in the direction of Aleppo; the Maronites, Syriac-Monothelite Christians, in Mount Lebanon, and the Druzes, a Shiite sect, around Mount Hermon. All three Shiite groups hated one another and also the Sunnite Moslems, but hated Christians more. Shaizar, between Damascus and Aleppo, defended by an immensely strong fortress, contained a considerable Christian population, but was ruled by an Arab family, the Banu-Munqidh. Other than the Shiite sects and the Maronites the rural peoples were generally Syrians who had gone over the Sunnite Islam and to the Arabic language. They hated the Turks who had recently conquered them. The towns of Syria contained important Christian elements, Jacobite, Nestorian, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian, which grew larger the farther north one went. These native Christians were disposed to cooperate with the Franks against the Turks.

North of Antioch in the Taurus mountains and their southern foothills lay a series of Armenian principalities. The Armenians had moved into this region from their ancient homeland in Greater Armenia around Lake Van in the late eleventh century as a result of both Byzantine and Turkish pressure. Consequently their princes were disposed to welcome the Franks as allies. One of them, however, Toros of Edessa, had been displaced in 1098 in favor of Baldwin of Boulogne. This was described in an earlier chapter. Baldwin thus became count of Edessa, and his was the first of the Latin states in the east. Moreover, he had subsequently strengthened his position by marrying Arda, the daughter of an Armenian noble; and he had conquered Samosata on the Euphrates, about thirty miles northwest of Edessa, and Saruj, about the same distance southwest of his capital. Having consolidated his position Baldwin remained in his principality and did not rejoin the army of crusaders marching south.

North of the Taurus range was the Anatolian plateau. In the western part the Byzantine emperor, Alexius Comnenus, was ex­panding his territories at the expense of the Selchukid sultan, Kilij Arslan of Iconium (Konya), who had been greatly weakened by the progress of the crusaders through his realm in 1097. Eastern Anatolia was held by a powerful Turkish prince, Malik-Ghazi ibn-Danishmend, the emir of Sebastia (Sivas). South of the Armenian principalities lay the crusader states of Antioch and Edessa. East and southeast of Edessa lay Iraq, the main center of Selchukid power. In its capital, Baghdad, resided the impotent Abbasid caliph, al-Mustazhir, and his real master, the Selchukid sultan. In 1099 the latter was Berkyaruk, more concerned with the rivalry of his brother and eventual successor, Muhammad, than with Syria and Palestine, as we have seen.

Antioch was at first clearly the strongest of the Frankish states. It extended northward into Cilicia, eastward to the frontiers of Edessa and Aleppo, and southward a vague distance into the no man’s land of central Syria. The population was largely Christian — Jacobite, Nestorian, Armenian, and Greek Orthodox. In fact this area had been nominally Byzantine territory as late as 1085. The city of Antioch still retained some of its ancient commercial importance. It was also powerfully fortified. A major source of the new state’s strength lay in its ruler, Bohemond, one of the ablest of the crusader princes. Many of the Franks had remained there with him. But Bohemond was also a source of weakness. He was the son of the Norman adventurer Robert Guiscard, who had wrested much of south Italy from the Byzantines. Robert and his son had been bold enough to make, in Albania, a major attack upon the Byzantine empire itself in 1081-1085. Bohemond was like his father ambitious and crafty. Like most of the Latin princes he had sworn an oath at Constantinople in 1097 to return Antioch, when captured, to the emperor Alexius Comnenus. But, as we already know, he had seized possession of Antioch for himself in 1098-1099 after it had been captured. Very plainly Bohemond had embarked upon the crusade in order to secure a dominion for himself rather than to recover the Holy Sepulcher for the church.

Bohemond’s usurpation naturally made Alexius an enemy of the Franks in Antioch. It also prevented Alexius from aiding in the capture of Jerusalem and ruined whatever chance there may have been for a rapprochement of the Latin and Greek churches based upon a common crusade to the Holy Sepulcher, as seems to have been a part of pope Urban’s plan in starting the First Crusade. Bohemond’s ambition had also offended Raymond of St. Gilles, count of Toulouse, whom Urban had consulted before preaching the crusade in 1095, and who had hoped to be regarded as its secular leader under the papal legate, bishop Adhémar of Le Puy.

Let us now examine Bohemond's problem after he had seized possession of Antioch. He was faced by a hostile Byzantium. Three of his logical maritime outlets, Latakia, Valania, and Maraclea, had been turned over to Byzantine officers by count Raymond of Toulouse when the latter continued with the crusade to Jerusalem in 1099. Byzantium now controlled Bohemond’s coastal waters, as well as the island of Cyprus to the west. The emperor Alexius, learning of Bohemond’s usurpation of Antioch and violation of the oath made at Constantinople, protested at once, and was rebuffed. Alexius dispatched an army to seize Cilicia and from there to operate against Antioch. It took only Marash, the Cilician Armenians preferring the Franks to the Greeks. But in 1099 a Byzantine fleet occupied the ports of Corycus (Korgos) and Seleucia (Silifke) on the Cilician coast, basing a squadron at Seleucia to harry Bohemond’s sea communications. Possession of Cyprus and these ports gave the Byzantines several strategically located naval bases.

During this time Bohemond had begun the siege of the important port of Latakia. Suddenly, late in the summer of 1099, a great Pisan fleet of one hundred and twenty ships arrived. Though sent to take part in the crusade against the Moslems and very probably to get commercial concessions in captured Syrian and Palestinian ports, this fleet, on the way out, had engaged in hos­tilities against the Byzantines. It had seized Corfu and wintered there, and had fought a punitive Byzantine naval squadron near Rhodes in the spring of 1099. The dominating personality in this fleet, archbishop Daimbert of Pisa, was accordingly in a receptive frame of mind when Bohemond accused the Greeks in Latakia of being enemies of the crusaders, although Bohemond was more properly an enemy of the Greeks. The upshot was that Daimbert joined Bohemond in the siege of Latakia. At this junc­ture, in September, there arrived three of the principal chieftains of the First Crusade. Raymond of St Gilles, Robert, duke of Normandy, and Robert, count of Flanders, leading their troops home from the conquest of Jerusalem. The three princes vigorously protested against this attack upon fellow Christians. This is excellent evidence that they were still strongly motivated by pope Urban’s original plans for reconciliation with the Greek church, as well as by their oaths to Alexius. They won over Daimbert and forced Bohemond to desist. Raymond must have had another motive; he must have also desired to embarrass his old rival Bohemond. Robert of Normandy, Robert of Flanders, and most of Raymond’s Provençal army now returned home, by way of Constantinople, in ships furnished by the Byzantines. Raymond himself wintered at Latakia among the Greeks, and went on to visit Alexius at Constantinople the next year.

Bohemond meanwhile was in an uneasy position. He realized that he did not have the support of the other Latins in his war with the Byzantines. He had violated his oath to Alexius and the intent of Urban’s crusade, and had not even fulfilled his vow to go to Jerusalem. But Bohemond was resourceful. He invited Baldwin of Edessa, who likewise had not fulfilled his vow, and archbishop Daimbert to accompany him to Jerusalem to celebrate Christmas at the Holy Sepulcher. As a result the three leaders arrived with a large force, principally Bohemond’s, at Jerusalem, December 21, 1099.

Now let us examine the situation at Jerusalem when Bohemond, Baldwin, and Daimbert arrived. The dominating influence there was Godfrey of Bouillon, duke of Lower Lorraine, who now held the title of Advocate of the Holy Sepulcher. Godfrey’s greatest immediate problem was the safety of the city and the surrounding area. After the battle of Ascalon, disagreements between Godfrey and the other leaders and his unwillingness to permit any advantage to Raymond of St. Gilles prevented further cooperation. There were two unfortunate consequences. First, Ascalon did not surrender and, indeed, was only captured with great labor a half century later. Second, there followed an almost wholesale exodus of crusaders led, as we have seen, by count Raymond and the two Roberts. The chronicler Albert of Aix writes that about twenty thousand left with them. Of the leaders only Godfrey and Tancred, a nephew of Bohemond, remained. Godfrey begged the departing princes to send him aid when they returned home. Albert reports that Godfrey had about three thousand men that fall (1099). Next spring it was estimated that Godfrey had only two hundred knights and a thousand footmen. William of Tyre writes that men who had originally decided to stay deserted their holdings and went back to Europe.

The little state of Jerusalem was thus left an island in the sea of Islam. It consisted of Godfrey’s own domain in southern Palestine and of a semi-independent barony begun by Tancred around Tiberias. Godfrey’s domain chiefly comprised the port of Jaffa and the inland towns of Lydda, Ramla, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem. At first it consisted of little more than these towns. The peasants of the countryside, largely Arabs, were hostile and given to ambushing the unwary on the highways. The towns were depopulated, short of food, and subject to plundering by the Arabs at night. The nearest possible source of help was Tancred, seventy-five miles to the north, and Tancred’s resources were even more insignificant than those of Godfrey. Godfrey had no sea power. Saracen squadrons from Sidon, Tyre, Acre, Caesarea, Ascalon, and Egypt scoured his coast and threatened traffic into Jaffa.

What saved the tiny state was al-Afdal’s failure to renew a prompt and vigorous offensive.

Godfrey’s first step in providing for the defense of the country was to attempt to gain control of the Palestinian seaports. Thus he could make safe the entry of pilgrims and supplies from Europe, could deprive the Saracens of bases for raids by sea and land, and could gain control of the commerce of the hinterland. An attempt to gain the surrender of Ascalon after the battle near there, August 12, was foiled by the rivalry of Raymond, who disliked the selection of Godfrey as Advocate of the Holy Sepulcher at Jerusalem and who wanted the surrender of Ascalon for himself. Albert of Aix relates that a few days later an attempt to gain Arsuf, forty miles to the north, was spoiled by the obstinacy of Raymond. Godfrey was so infuriated that he wanted to attack St. Gilles, and was only dissuaded by Robert of Flanders. Godfrey tried again to take Arsuf that fall, but failed because of approaching winter and the lack of men and ships. The next spring he suc­ceeded, with the aid of Daimbert’s Pisan fleet, in compelling Arsuf to pay tribute. Meanwhile in January he strongly fortified Jaffa with the help of Daimbert’s men. This, and the presence of the Pisan fleet, so alarmed the Saracen governors of Ascalon, Caesarea, and Acre that they also agreed to pay tribute. Soon after, the shaikhs of the Transjordan, seeing that the new state might prove to be more than transitory, made treaties with Godfrey. Their merchants gained the right to come to Jerusalem and Jaffa. Likewise the merchants of Ascalon could come to Jerusalem, and those of Jerusalem to Ascalon. This is interesting evidence of how soon commercial activity brought the two sides together. But Godfrey ordered the death penalty for any Moslem who came in by sea. He wanted the Saracens of Palestine and the Trans-Jordan to be economically and politically dependent upon him, and not upon Egypt.

Godfrey set up a feudal system on the western European model to defend Palestine. Albert of Aix writes that on the fourth day after the arrival of Godfrey’s brother and successor, Baldwin I, every knight and important man was called in to account for his arms, revenues, and fiefs (beneficia), including his fief in money revenues from the cities. Then the oath of fealty was exacted. The principal fiefs were in land. The greatest territorial vassal was Tancred. This prince, immediately after the fall of Jerusalem, had taken about eighty knights and had begun to carve out a domain in northern Palestine, the future principality of Tiberias. Within a year Tancred controlled Nablus, Tiberias, Baisan, and Haifa. His domain served as a march over against Damascus. In the west Godfrey promised Arsuf as a fief to Robert of Apulia. In the south, according to Albert of Aix, he gave a large fief called St. Abraham, centering around Hebron, to Gerard of Avesnes. This all agrees with the statement in one manuscript of the chronicle of Baldric of Dol that Godfrey's own domain extended north to Nablus, south to St. Abraham, and eastward to the Jordan and Dead Sea. It included the city of Jerusalem and the port of Jaffa. Stevenson has remarked that the countryside lent itself to the establishment of manorial holdings, that the natives, accustomed to foreign masters, lived in small villages whose headmen were easy to coerce.

Godfrey's position in the realm was therefore seriously challenged when Bohemond of Antioch, Baldwin of Edessa, and archbishop Daimbert of Pisa came to Jerusalem. Bohemond had a considerable army and Daimbert a badly needed fleet at his disposal, Godfrey was very weak by land and sea, and had just given up a heart­breaking siege of Arsuf when these guests arrived.

Daimbert and Bohemond immediately reopened the question of the patriarchate of Jerusalem. Arnulf of Chocques, chaplain of duke Robert of Normandy, had been chosen patriarch on August 1 by the influence of the princes favorable to Godfrey. This was over the objections of those of the clergy who felt that the patriarch should be the ranking official in a state dedicated to the Holy Sepulcher, and that there should be a lay advocate or defender as his assistant. Arnulf was instead willing to be the assistant of the lay advocate, Godfrey. Daimbert and Bohemond now insisted that Arnulf, as yet unconfirmed by the pope, step down and that Daimbert be chosen in his place. Daimbert apparently acted on his own responsibility, for Krey has shown that he does not seem to have been sent out by the pope either as a legate or as a prospective patriarch. Behind Daimbert were two compelling arguments, the Pisan fleet and the military forces of Bohemond. As a result Arnulf was ousted and Daimbert installed. Bohemond and Godfrey became vassals of the new patriarch. As Yewdale has pointed out, Bohemond in doing homage to the patriarch of Jerusalem hoped that he had secured a title to Antioch which would be acceptable to the Latin world. Up to this time he had felt his position compromised by his violation of his oath to restore Antioch to the emperor Alexius. Having secured a title at the price of acquiring an absentee sovereign who would trouble him not at all, Bohemond departed for Antioch after Christmas. Baldwin of Edessa left at the same time. There is no record that he defended Godfrey’s position against Bohemond and Daimbert. Probably he was not strong enough to oppose Bohemond. Nor is there any record that he did homage to Daimbert. He had nothing to gain by doing so. Arnulf was given what consolation he could find in the important position of archdeacon of the Holy Sepulcher. Godfrey was left to deal with his new suzerain. Daimbert was an able and ambitious man. He had dominated the affairs of Pisa as if it were, in the words of Moeller, “a sort of episcopal republic”, and at a time when Pisa was extending its influence in Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, and even Valencia. He stood high in the counsels of pope Urban, who had elevated him to the rank of archbishop in 1092, and had used him as a legate in Castile and Sardinia. Daimbert had accompanied Urban to the Council of Clermont in 1095 and on the great speaking tour that followed the next winter and spring. They were both supporters of the Cluniac reform movement in the church, which sought to free the latter from domination by the feudal princes. Such a man, though he seems, as we have noticed, to have been neither papal legate nor patriarch-designate, would play no modest role in Jerusalem. He at once demanded possession of the city of Jerusalem with its citadel, of the Tower of David and of the port of Jaffa, the essential link with Europe. Godfrey, weak in resources and probably conscious of the need of church support from the west, reluctantly made formal cession of a fourth part of the port of Jaffa, February 2, 1100, and of the city of Jerusalem itself on Easter Sunday, April 1. Title was vested in the church of the Holy Sepulcher, to which as well as to the patriarch the Advocate of the Holy Sepulcher swore homage. But on the latter occasion Godfrey inserted the provision that he would retain physical possession of Jaffa and Jerusalem until such time as he could conquer one or two other cities, Babylon (the Frankish term for Cairo or, more precisely, its suburb Fustat) being suggested according to Wil­liam of Tyre.

We may conclude that Daimbert, confident that he represented official church views but lacking direct papal authority, on his own initiative took the position that the crusade had been an ecclesiastical enterprise, that its conquests were church conquests, and that the patriarch of Jerusalem was the trustee and ruler for the church of the Holy Sepulcher, in which title to Jerusalem was vested. He considered that Bohemond and Godfrey were merely lay vassals and defenders. Bohemond was out of the way in the outer province of Antioch, and Godfrey might be got out of the way elsewhere, in Cairo, for example. Such were the ambitious views of Daimbert. In his letter to the Christians of Germany in April 1100, the patriarch spoke of his difficulties in defending the Holy Land, and did not even mention Godfrey. But Daimbert’s whole position, at first so favorable, changed rapidly with the homeward departure of the Pisan fleet after Easter, the death of Godfrey, and the arrival of Godfrey’s brother Baldwin of Edessa in the fall of 1100.

Godfrey died July 18, 1100, after falling ill while helping Tancred in the region east of Tiberias. What this famous but little understood man would have accomplished, had he lived, no one can say. He faced appalling difficulties in his one year as advocate, and he faced them with singular courage and pertinacity. His followers, huddling in the ruins of Jerusalem, were few, their communications with the outside world precarious, and their morale at the breaking point. The imperious Daimbert presented a special problem. He had to be humored because he represented both naval strength and prevailing ecclesiastical opinion. But Godfrey had enough of both personal ambition and practical military common sense not to yield actual control of Jerusalem. Tenacious, shrewd, and tactful, rather than the pious zealot of later legend, he managed to avoid a break with the patriarch. He held together the tiny state. His reputation rests upon a solid foundation of achievement.

When Godfrey died the patriarch Daimbert had his great opportunity to make Jerusalem a church-state. He should have gone to Jerusalem at once. But suspecting no danger he remained with Tancred, who was undertaking the siege of Haifa, until about July 25. Meanwhile a group of Lotharingian knights, hitherto obscure, seized the Tower of David, the citadel of Jerusalem, and summoned Godfrey’s brother, count Baldwin I of Edessa. Their leader was Warner of Gray, a cousin of Baldwin. High in their counsels was archdeacon Arnulf, bitter against Daimbert and from this time on the firm ally of Baldwin. Daimbert, when he realized his peril, sent an appeal to Bohemond of Antioch, his nominal vassal, to stop Baldwin, by force if necessary. The message never reached Bohemond. That redoubtable prince was captured in the middle of August by the Turkish chieftain, Malik-Ghazi ibn-Danishmend of Sebastia, in an ambush on the road to Melitene (Malatya). Meanwhile Daimbert remained with Tancred. He promised the latter the fief of Haifa when Tancred became suspicious that Godfrey had promised it to another, Galdemar Carpinel. Daimbert and Tancred, both ambitious men, must each have had hopes of becoming the dominant figure in Jerusalem. Certainly victory would have made them rivals. But for the time they cooperated. Meanwhile Tancred was tied down by the siege of Haifa, where he had the indispensable but temporary help of a Venetian blockading squadron. At the same time the little group of Lorrainers remained in control in Jerusalem.

When Haifa was taken in August Tancred delayed a little, establishing himself there. During the next month he was sud­denly called to Latakia by cardinal Maurice of Porto, newly arrived as papal legate. Maurice, and the commanders of the Genoese fleet that had brought him, invited Tancred, about September 25, to assume the regency of Antioch in the emergency created by the capture of Bohemond. But Tancred, rather than trying to seize Antioch, whose authorities after all had not invited him, hurried back to Palestine where he had more pressing business. This time he went to the gates of Jerusalem and demanded entrance. He was refused because he would not swear allegiance to Baldwin.

Tancred considered Baldwin a dangerous enemy, for Baldwin had once quarreled with Tancred over possession of Tarsus, in Cilicia, in 1097, and had compelled the latter to yield. Enraged, Tancred now withdrew to Jaffa where he besieged the small Lotharingian garrison. He was so engaged when Baldwin appeared in Palestine.

Count Baldwin of Edessa, upon being informed of his brother's death “grieved a little, but rejoiced more over the prospect of his inheritance”, according to Fulcher of Chartres, his chaplain and biographer. He named as his successor in Edessa his kinsman, Baldwin of Le Bourg. He then levied heavily upon Edessa for his expenses, and departed on October 2 with nearly two hundred knights and seven hundred footmen. He went by way of Antioch. Here, according to Albert of Aix, he was offered the regency, but declined. No doubt he felt that Jerusalem would offer him more possibilities of prestige and of material support from Europe than would either Antioch or Edessa. He turned south, and after fighting his way through a dangerous ambush at Dog river near Beirut, reached his new dominion, in the vicinity of Haifa, about October 30.

Baldwin, who had the qualities of statesmanship, arrived determined to conciliate Tancred if possible. He did not try to enter Haifa, wishing to avoid trouble with Tancred, whose garrison held the place. Tancred, hearing of Baldwin's approach, dropped the siege of Jaffa, fifty-four miles to the south, and hastened by a circuitous route to the security of his own domains around Tiberias. Baldwin reached Jerusalem about November 9, and was welcomed by his Lotharingian friends. Patriarch Daimbert, who had come back to the city late in August, too late to take advantage of Godfrey's death, remained in seclusion. Baldwin did not bother him. Instead, as we have seen, he called in Godfrey’s vassals to an accounting on the fourth day, and received from them an oath of loyalty. Then on November 15, before the week was out, feeling it necessary to overawe the Arabs of the south and east who might be tempted to harass the tiny state, he took one hundred and fifty knights and five hundred footmen and departed on a campaign to the south. He first made a demonstration before Ascalon and then, boldly marching cast into the region of the Dead Sea, terrorized the natives of that area. He returned to Jerusalem on December 21. Baldwin then constrained patriarch Daimbert, who had had time for reflection, to crown him king four days later, December 25, 1100. But Daimbert succeeded in salvaging some of his prestige. He crowned Baldwin in Bethlehem, not in the capital, Jerusalem. This was because Baldwin was to be regarded not as king of Jerusalem but of something else, as king of Asia, or king of Babylon (Cairo) and Asia, for example. Daimbert clung to his technical position as suzerain-lord of Jerusalem. As Kühn says, Daimbert regarded Baldwin as a resident of the patriarch's domain, and expected him like Godfrey to go out and conquer one of his own.

All during the winter of 1100-1101 Tancred remained sullenly aloof in his fief around Tiberias. He did not intend to recognize Baldwin. The latter gently but persistently sought to bring Tancred to terms. Twice Baldwin sent Tancred a formal summons to his court, but was ignored. The third time Tancred, who had sworn no oath to Baldwin, agreed to meet the latter on opposite banks of an-Nahr al-Nauja, a little stream between Jaffa and Arsuf. At this meeting, February 22, nothing was decided except that Baldwin and Tancred were to meet again in fifteen days. By then, early in March, Tancred had been offered the regency of Antioch by a delegation from that city. Antioch needed a strong leader during the captivity of Bohemond in the hands of Malik-Ghazi. The Franks of Antioch were unable to get any help from Bohemond’s princeps militia, Baldwin of Le Bourg. The latter, now count of Edessa, was himself then obtaining help from Antioch following a defeat by Sokman ibn-Artuk of Mardin at Saruj early in 1101. Tancred decided to accept the offer. He agreed with king Baldwin on March 8 to give up his fiefs in northern Palestine, with the right of resuming them in fifteen months. This was obviously based upon the calculation that Bohemond might be ransomed within that time. The next day Tancred left for Antioch with all his knights and about five hundred footmen. He never came back to recover these lands.

Baldwin, having settled with Tancred, now turned upon his other rival, the patriarch Daimbert. By this time, in the spring of 1101, Baldwin had captured two cities, Arsuf and Caesarea, putting Daimbert in a logical position to demand that Baldwin vacate the patriarch's domain, the area of Jerusalem and Jaffa. Baldwin forestalled this by a vicious attack upon Daimbert, accusing the latter of attempting a conspiracy with Bohemond against his life, and of high living while the state needed money for defense. Baldwin, aided by archdeacon Arnulf, made Daimbert’s life so miserable that the latter retired to Jaffa in the fall of that year, and to the protection of Tancred at Antioch the next spring,

But Daimbert clung tenaciously to the plan of making Jerusalem a church-state. He returned in the fall of 1102 with Tancred and Baldwin II of Edessa who brought military support to Baldwin of Jerusalem following a defeat of the latter by the Egyptians earlier in that year. As a result Daimbert was briefly restored to his office. Possibly, as Hansen says, they felt that the quarrel at Jerusalem would impair the necessary good relations with the church in the west. Tancred, as far as he was concerned, had private reasons for resentment against king Baldwin. But Daimbert’s restoration was subject, at Baldwin’s insistence, to an immediate inquiry by a local synod. This court, presided over by cardinal Robert of Paris, a new papal legate, and packed by the king’s friends, promptly decreed Daimbert’s removal, October 8, 1102. It thereupon elected Evremar of Chocques, a fellow townsman of Arnulf, and Tancred had to accept this situation.

Daimbert returned to Antioch with Tancred, and in 1104 to Italy with Bohemond. In 1107 he was declared the official holder of the patriarchal office by pope Paschal II, but he died that year at Messina on the way back. There is no evidence that Paschal restored or indeed had ever recognized Daimbert as feudal suzerain of the Holy Land. Hansen, indicating that Paschal was heavily involved with the emperor Henry V in the celebrated contest over the lay investiture of bishops, believes that the pope told Daimbert to return and arrange a modus vivendi with Baldwin. La Monte, speaking of subsequent papal policy, goes so far as to suggest that the papacy accepted the situation at Jerusalem, not wishing to exalt a potential rival in the strategic patriarchate of Jerusalem. Certainly after Daimbert’s death the papacy allowed king Baldwin a free hand with the patriarchate. It permitted Evremar to be locally deposed in 1108, a victim of Arnulf’s intrigues. It thereafter recognized the patriarchs of Jerusalem who were Baldwin’s nominees — Gibelin of Arles (1108-1112) and Arnulf himself (1112-1118). With Daimbert’s eviction in 1102 died any chance to make Jerusalem a church-state ruled by the patriarch as suzerain-lord and defended by a lay advocate. Feudal monarchy had won. Yet there was deference for ecclesiastical feeling for a long time. Baldwin usually used some oblique formula such as “Ego Balduinus, regnum Ierosolimitanorum dispositione Dei optinens” in his official documents, as in 1114, rather than the “Dei gratia Latinorum rex” of his successors.

While Baldwin was contending with Tancred and Daimbert for the domination of the Holy Land, he was facing a precarious military situation. This was especially true during his first winter, 1100-1101, until the arrival of a Genoese squadron at Jaffa in April relieved the situation. Baldwin’s chaplain, Fulcher of Chartres, says that in the beginning the king had scarcely three hundred knights and as many footmen to garrison Jerusalem, Ramla, Jaffa, and Haifa. There were so few men that they dared not lay ambushes for enemy marauders. The contemporary writer of the Gesta Francorum Ierusalem expugnantium reports that Baldwin’s power extended scarcely twelve miles from the capital city. Land communication with Antioch was through hostile ter­ritory. Sea communication was also precarious, Fulcher also states that the Saracen corsairs were so numerous that pilgrim ships could only slip into Jaffa, the port of Jerusalem, by ones, twos, threes, or fours. He adds that while a few of the new arrivals would stay in the Holy Land the others would return home, and that for that reason the kingdom was always weak in manpower. A typical instance of this occurred in the spring of 1102, and was described in the preceding chapter. A number of the knights of the Crusade of 1101 joined the king against an Egyptian attack at Ramla. Many were killed in the ensuing disaster and almost all the survivors returned to Europe. Thus the hope of permanent reinforcements offered by the Crusade of 1101 proved vain.

One of Baldwin’s most pressing problems, therefore, was the organization of a military system. His first step was to swear in Godfrey's vassals, holders of fiefs in money and in land. An indication of the nature of the first is given by Albert of Aix who states that Gerard, a knight of the king’s household, held a part of the revenues of Jaffa for his services. The great land fiefs were: Tiberias, given to Hugh of Falkenberg when Tancred left for Antioch in 1101; Haifa, given to Galdemar Carpinel at the same time; St. Abraham, given to Hugh of Robecque; and Caesarea and Sidon, given after capture to Eustace Gamier. There is no record that Baldwin granted out Montreal (ash-Shaubak) as a fief when it was established in 1115. In general he held more of the land in his own domain than did the later kings of Jerusalem.

King Baldwin had other resources. He had paid garrisons in Jerusalem and Jaffa, his capital and chief port. To pay these men he demanded a share of the patriarch’s Easter pilgrim receipts in 1101. Albert of Aix relates that in 1108 two hundred knights and five hundred footmen of the garrison of Jerusalem captured a large caravan beyond the Jordan to provide money for their pay. The annual influx of pilgrims provided a welcome though temporary source of manpower. La Monte sees in Baldwin’s appeal to patriarch Evremar in 1102 a request for sergeanty service. He adds that on unusual occasions, such as the determined attack upon Acre in 1104, Baldwin called for a levy en masse from the kingdom. There is no record that Baldwin used Moslem troops in his own service although Albert of Aix writes that queen Adelaide brought some over from Sicily in 1113. Baldwin never had a navy. He had to depend upon naval agreements with squadrons from Europe, usually Genoese, Pisan, or Venetian, in return for commercial concessions. The famed military orders of the Knights Hospitaller and Knights Templar came after his time. On occasion, we shall find, Baldwin campaigned in alliance with Moslems.

The king's greatest problem, after consolidating his power at home, was to conquer the seaports along his coast. He started with two, Jaffa and Haifa. Ascalon, Arsuf, Caesarea, Acre, Tyre, Sidon, and Beirut were all in the hands of Saracen emirs dependent upon al-Afgal, vizir of Egypt, for support. In Saracen hands these cities could serve as bases for hostile operations on sea or land, and choke both communications with Europe and the export trade of the hinterland. Therefore it was vital for Baldwin to capture these ports. Godfrey had tried to make a start, as we have seen, but failed, partly owing to the rivalry with count Raymond and partly owing to lack of sea power.

Arsuf and Caesarea were the first to fall to Baldwin. He took them in the spring of 1101 with the help of a Genoese fleet. By agreement he gave the Genoese a third of the spoils, and perpetual rights to a street (as a market place) in each town. Acre was besieged in 1103, bat not taken until 1104 when Baldwin had the aid of another Genoese fleet.

The offensive against the coast towns was halted during the years 1105-1108. In 1104 Shams-al-Muluk Dukak, ruler of Damascus, died. Zahir-ad-Din Tughtigin, a very able man who as atabeg (regent or tutor) for Dukak had been the power behind the scenes, now assumed full control as atabeg for Dukak’s infant son Tutush. King Baldwin interfered by sheltering a disappointed heir, Ertash (Bektash). As a result the government of Damascus, hitherto unfriendly to the Fatimid regime in Cairo, now became a partner in opposition to Baldwin. The effect of this new alignment was soon apparent. Al-Afdal, vizier in Cairo, made a last serious effort to overthrow the Latin state of Jerusalem in 1105. He gathered a large army, to which Tughtigin contributed thirteen hundred cavalry, and seat it to the plain of Ramla. Here Baldwin met and defeated it, August 27, but otherwise only held his own in that year. During the next three years pressure by Tughtigin in the north and al-Afdal in the south prevented Baldwin from making any conquests, although he attacked Sidon in 1106 and 1108 when he had the necessary help of fleets from the west. Soon after the latter event Baldwin and Tughtigin made a truce that lasted four years. Apparently it applied strictly to their own territories, for they fought elsewhere, around Tripoli in 1109 and Edessa in 1110

King Baldwin played a leading role in the capture of Tripoli in 1109. But since Tripoli became the capital of one of the four Latin states in the east, this event will be discussed later. Baldwin continued his offensive. He took Beirut in May 1110, with the help of a Genoese squadron. He secured Sidon at last, in December of that year, with the aid of a fleet of Norwegian crusaders and adventurers under the youthful king Sigurd (1103-1130), “Jorsalfar” or Jerusalem-farer, son of Magnus Barefoot. This force had been four years in preparation and three years en route, wintering in England, Spain, and Sicily, fighting Moors and being entertained by friends as it went along. King Baldwin made an attempt to obtain Ascalon by conspiracy in 1111. He plotted with Shams-al-Khilafah, a governor traitorous to al-Afdal of Cairo, and even succeeded in introducing three hundred men into the city as guards for Shams-al-Khilafah. But at that juncture Baldwin was called north to help Tancred against the Selchukids of Iraq, and when he returned found that his confederate had been overthrown and his men killed. It would have been a very great advantage to the state of Jerusalem if this intrigue had succeeded for Ascalon remained an Egyptian advanced base until it fell in 1153. King Baldwin I made a most determined effort to take Tyre by siege in the winter of 1111-1112. But a skillful and bitter defense, aided by operations by Tughtigin of Damascus in the rear, forced Baldwin to desist in April 1112. Tyre was not to be taken until 1124, by Baldwin II.

By 1112 the efforts of Baldwin I to reduce the coast towns were over. He had all but Ascalon and Tyre, and although they were important he could get along without them. In the remaining years of his life he was busy in the larger cause of the defense and unity of all the Frankish states, and later in extending his own domains in the south.

Let us now examine the history of the Latin states in the north, starting with Antioch. We have observed that this principality was founded by Bohemond early in 1099, and that it came into the hands of Tancred as regent in March 1101, after Bohemond’s capture by Malik-Ghazi of Sebastia the summer before. Tancred’s first act was to expel the partisans of Baldwin of Le Bourg, Bohemond's princeps militia. Le Bourg, kinsman of Baldwin of Jerusalem, had been the latter’s successor as count of Edessa since October 1100. Tancred thus made himself more secure in Antioch but he embittered relations with a powerful neighbor whom he should have had as a friend and ally. Nevertheless, he did have a friend and ally in the new Latin patriarch, Bernard of Valence, whom Bohemond had appointed to replace the Greek, John the Oxite.

Tancred immediately began to extend his power. First, by the end of 1101 he recovered the Cilician cities of Mamistra (Misis), Adana, and Tarsus which he had helped to conquer for Bohemond in 1097 and which the latter had let slip to the Byzantines. Second, he took Latakia from the Greeks in the spring of 1103, after a siege of a year and a half. Third, he intervened in the affairs of Baldwin of Jerusalem. As a result of a disastrous defeat administered to king Baldwin near Ramla by the Egyptians in the spring of 1102 Tancred and Baldwin of Le Bourg appeared in the southern realm with large supporting forces in September. Tancred used this occasion to insist upon the restoration of patriarch Daimbert, but with only momentary success, as we have seen.

One project which the regent Tancred did not push was the ransoming of his uncle, Bohemond. Albert of Aix relates that Bo­hemond was released from Turkish captivity in the following way. Tancred’s pressure upon the Byzantines led the emperor Alexius to desire Bohemond as a hostage and to make a bid for his possession. This led to jealousies between Bohemond’s captor, Malik-Ghazi, and Kilij Arslan, sultan of Iconium. The wily Bohemond offered Malik-Ghazi favorable terms, including an alliance against Kilij Arslan and Alexius in return for freedom. Bohemond’s friends then raised the necessary funds for his ransom. They included the Latin patriarch, Bernard of Antioch, the Armenian lord, Kogh Vasil of Kesoun, and Baldwin of Le Bourg of Edessa, Tancred’s rival. Tancred contributed nothing although he did not hinder collections. Bohemond, freed, promptly went to Antioch and assumed complete authority, in May 1103. Radulf of Caen says that Bohemond left Tancred with scarcely two small towns. It was a bitter humiliation for the proud and ambitious young Norman.

Bohemond was in an excellent position after his release. His territory had been strengthened by Tancred’s conquests of the valuable port of Latakia and of the Cilician cities. Baldwin of Edessa and the Armenian Kogh Vasil were his friends. Bohemond had embroiled his enemies, the emperor Alexius and Kilij Arslan, with Malik-Ghazi. In Iraq the Selchukid Turks were weak at the center of their power. Berkyaruk and Muhammad, sons of the late great sultan Malik-Shah (d. 1092), were still quarreling over their vast inheritance. Bohemond’s immediate neighbor Ridvan, lord of Aleppo, was jealous of his independence and suspicious of the Selchukids of Iraq. Ridvan cared nothing for Moslem solidarity, but instead had a leaning toward the Assassins.

Ridvan’s peculiar attitude did not prevent the Franks from seriously threatening him. Successes by Bohemond and Baldwin of Le Bourg in 1103 apparently alarmed Ridvan’s nominal over­lord, the Selchukid sultan Muhammad. In January 1104, the latter had been allotted Syria and northern Iraq as a share in a division of his paternal inheritance. Certainly two powerful Mesopotamian emirs, Shams-ad-Daulah Chokurmish of Mosul and Sokman ibn-Artuk of Mardin, were moved to act. They composed their differences, gathered a large force, and advanced upon Edessa in the spring of 1104. Baldwin of Le Bourg called for help. Bo­hemond, accompanied by Tancred, united with Le Bourg’s chief vassal, Joscelin of Tell Bashir, and marched to the aid of Baldwin. The four leaders then moved to attack Harran, a strategic stronghold twenty-three miles south of Edessa. This move created a diversion in favor of Edessa, for it brought down the Turkish army.

Chokurmish and Sokman employed the old ruse of pretended flight which the Parthians had used against Crassus and the Romans at the same place in 53 BC, and with the same decisive result. The Turks retreated south for three days, causing the Franks to separate into two bodies, which were successively annihilated May 7, 1104. Baldwin of Le Bourg and Joscelin were captured. Bohemond and Tancred escaped with difficulty to Edessa with a handful of followers.

The Frankish defeat at Harran had far-reaching results. As in the time of Crassus it put a limit to Latin conquests eastward. It ended forever any chance the Franks might have had to penetrate Iraq. It ruined Bohemond’s hope of building up a major power around Antioch. It saved Aleppo and the Moslem position in north Syria by preventing Antioch and Edessa from using the strategic location of Harran to cut off contact with the east.

The immediate results of the battle of Harran were several. Tancred became regent of Edessa. Bohemond, his uncle and patron, though shaken was now without question the dominant Latin prince in the north. Thus out of general disaster the two Normans snatched some personal gain. The return of Baldwin of Le Bourg would have disturbed this situation. Consequently Bohemond and Tancred seem to have neglected the matter of Baldwin's ransom, although the subject was broached both by the Turks and by king Baldwin in Jerusalem. As a result Le Bourg endured a captivity of four years. On the other hand Chokurmish and Sokman profited little from their victory. They conquered nothing although the former tried to take Edessa. Their chief gain was two valuable prisoners, Joscelin who was held by Sokman and Le Bourg who was kidnapped from Sokman’s tent by Chokurmish. Ridvan of Aleppo, who had done nothing, profited greatly. With almost no fighting he won back from Antioch the barrier fortresses of al-Fuah, Sarmin, Maarrat-Misrin, and Artah, whose people admitted his men, and Latmin, Kafartab, Maarrat-an-Numan, and Albara, whose garrisons fled. Of these Artah, the gateway to Antioch, was particularly valuable. Likewise, according to Anna Comnena, the Byzantine admiral Cantacuzenus seized Latakia, though not the citadel, and al-Ullaiqah, al-Marqab, and Jabala to the south. The Greek general Monastras occupied Tarsus, the adjacent port of Longiniada (not now extant), and Adana and Mamistra, being welcomed by the Armenian population. The Byzantines already held the island of Cyprus with its naval bases off the Syrian coast, and from them were helping Bohemond’s enemy, Raymond of St. Gilles, establish himself around Tripoli to the south of Antioch, as we shall see.

Bohemond’s position was therefore rendered desperate by pressure on all sides from the Byzantines and Aleppo. With many of his troops lost at Harran, his home garrisons demoralized, Edessa weak, and now himself in debt for his ransom of 1103 and unable to secure more men, Bohemond was at the end of his resources. He might remain and face defeat or decay, or he might return to Europe and embark upon a bold new venture. He chose the latter course. He appointed Tancred his regent in the east, and sailed for Italy, arriving in January 1105.

Bohemond’s plan was nothing less than to make a frontal attack on the Byzantine empire through Albania, as his father, Robert Guiscard, with Bohemond as second-in-command, had done in 1081-1085. Bohemond’s experience convinced him that he might succeed, particularly if he could channel the mounting anti-Byzantine prejudices of the west into support of his venture. These prejudices were born of the friction and misunderstanding engendered by the passage of the hungry and ill-disciplined forces of the First Crusade through the Byzantine empire, and by the disaster of the Crusade of 1101, which Alexius was widely suspected of sabotaging. The wily Norman, therefore, decided to promote a new “crusade”, directed not against the Moslems but against the Byzantines. Its real purpose was not to protect the Holy Sepulcher, but to increase the power of Bohemond. To start a crusade he would have to have the sanction of pope Paschal II. He saw the pope in 1105. As a result Paschal appointed bishop Bruno of Segni as legate to preach a new crusade.

Although the reports of the Council of Poitiers where the crusade was formally launched in 1106 mention the “way to Jerusalem” rather than Byzantium, it seems likely that Paschal succumbed to the anti-Byzantinism of the day and fell in with Bohemond’s plans. At any rate there is no record that the pope denounced Bohemond’s purpose when it became publicly apparent. Indeed, in his relations with the Norman, Paschal does not emerge as a strong character.

The prince of Antioch made a triumphal tour of Italy and France in 1105-1106, everywhere greeted as a hero of the First Crusade, and everywhere calling for volunteers for his new venture. As bases for propaganda against Alexius he carried in his train a pretender to the Byzantine throne, and circulated copies of the anonymous Gesta Francorum et aliorum Ierosolimitanorum, a pro-Norman chronicle of the First Crusade, which Bohemond had brought over from Antioch and into which he seems to have had inserted a passage saying that Alexius had promised Antioch to him.

By the fall of 1107 Bohemond was able to sail from Apulia to Albania with 34.000 men. He took Avlona and laid siege to Dyrrachium (Durazzo). Alexius however was ready for Bohemond. He blockaded him by land and sea and forced the proud Norman to ask for terms in September 1108. The treaty required Bohemond to take an oath of vassalage for Antioch in western style, and to return to Italy. Bohemond, a broken and discredited man, never went back to Antioch. He spent the few remaining years of his life in Apulia, dying there in 1111.

Bohemond's death ended the career of one of the boldest and most ambitious men of the time. He saw in the First Crusade an opportunity to establish himself as a powerful prince. He did succeed in founding a principality at Antioch, but it was much less than he had expected. His seizure of this city in 1098, his denunciations of the Byzantines, and his wars against them wrecked whatever chance the crusading movement may have had to realize the apparent hope of pope Urban, a new understanding between Latin and Greek Christendom.

Let us now return to Tancred when Bohemond left him as re­gent of Antioch in 1104. He had now to rebuild his power. He appointed as his governor at Edessa his kinsman, Richard of Salerno (also known as Richard of the Principate). Thus Edessa became for a time a dependency of Antioch although king Baldwin in Jerusalem had originally given it to Baldwin of Le Bourg. Tancred attacked Ridvan of Aleppo in the spring of 1105. He took the key fortress of Artah, completely shattering an army Ridvan led to its relief, and then scoured the country, capturing Tall Aghdi and Sarmin, and threatening Aleppo itself. Ridvan was dismayed. He seems to have made a submission to Tancred for he gave no more trouble for five years. In 1106 Tancred took the powerful fortress of Apamea. He could now threaten the important emirate of Hamah, to the south of Aleppo. He also gained prestige by marrying Cecilia, a natural daughter of king Philip I of France, a bride sent him by Bohemond.

The young regent of Antioch set out to regain what had been lost to the Byzantines in 1104. He attacked Mamistra, the key to Cilicia, in the year 1107, when Bohemond was attacking Dyrrachium. Apparently he took it late in 1107 or early in 1108, and then moved south to recapture Latakia, the chief port of his principality. By the spring of 1108 Tancred had regained nearly all that Bohemond had lost, and he was overlord of Edessa in addition. It is true that Bohemond in the treaty of Deabolis in 1108 had recognized Alexius as suzerain lord of Antioch, but Tancred treated the emperor’s claims with contempt. Bohemond was partly responsible for Tancred’s success, as his attack in Albania drew off Byzantine troops toward the west.

If Tancred, regent of Antioch and overlord of Edessa, felt in 1108 that he was at the height of good fortune after his Cilician victories, he was due to be widely disillusioned by the loss of Edessa. It is at this point necessary to review the history of Edessa up to 1108. We have seen that Baldwin of Boulogne became its ruler in 1098. When he took over Jerusalem in 1100 he gave Edessa to his kinsman, Baldwin of Le Bourg. The latter immediately strengthened his position in Edessa in several ways. He married an Armenian princess, Morfia, daughter of the wealthy Gabriel (Armenian, Khoril) of Melitene. He received Basil, patriarch of the Armenian Church, with great honor, probably in 1103. Thus he sought the favor of his Armenian subjects. He chose as his chief vassal his kinsman Joscelin of Courtenay, recently arrived from France. He gave Joscelin the great fief of Tell Bashir, lying between the Euphrates and the borders of Antioch. Finally, in 1103 he helped procure the ransom of Bohemond of Antioch, with whom he could cooperate, in place of Tancred, with whom he could not. We have seen that the immediate results were the attacks upon Ridvan of Aleppo in 1103, and the Harran campaign of 1104, which led to the capture of Baldwin and Joscelin by the Turks. Then followed the short regency of Tancred in Edessa, the departure of Bohemond for Europe, the second regency of Tancred in Antioch, and Tancred’s bestowal of Edessa upon his cousin, Richard of Salerno, all in the year 1104.

Richard lacked ability. He did not hold in check the tyranny and greed of his Frankish followers. He rapidly lost the loyalty of his Armenian subjects. Stevenson is doubtless correct in saying that the authority of the Franks was confined to the garrison towns. As a result the territory of Edessa was open to invasion. Chokurmish of Mosul raided the countryside in 1105 and Kilij Arslan of Iconium did the same in 1106 and 1107. Therefore Richard’s rule of Edessa (1104-1108) was a period of great weakness for this exposed northern state.

While Richard governed Edessa, Baldwin of Le Bourg experienced changing fortunes in captivity. Shortly after his capture in 1104 by Sokman of Mardin he was kidnapped by Chokurmish of Mosul. He fell into the hands of Chavli Saqaveh when the latter conquered Mosul, probably late in 1107. The growth of Chavli’s power soon aroused the jealousy of the Selchukid sultan Muhammad, son of the great conqueror Malik-Shah. Muhammad commissioned Sharaf-ad-Din Maudud, of whom we shall hear later, to take Mosul from Chavli, Chavli now did an astonishing thing. He offered Le Bourg liberty in return for an alliance against Maudud, in addition to a ransom. Baldwin accepted, and was released, probably in the summer of 1108. He went to Antioch and demanded of Tancred the return of Edessa. According to Matthew of Edessa, Baldwin was refused because he would not accept it as a fief from Tancred. Tancred’s selfishness blinded him to the fact that he and Baldwin of Le Bourg, by taking the side of the rebel Chavli, could deal the Selchukid power a dangerous blow. Le Bourg at once turned for support to the Armenian prince Kogh Vasil of Kesoun, who feared Tancred, and to Chavli. Border fighting developed, with Tancred holding his own. Shortly afterwards Tancred and Le Bourg were reconciled, largely through ecclesiastical interven­tion according to Ibn-al-Athir. Edessa was then restored to count Baldwin, September 18, 1108. Thus Tancred, earlier in the year at the pinnacle of power, not only lost the suzerainty of Edessa but embittered its rightful lord, Baldwin of Le Bourg.

Then began a strange double civil war between Tancred and Ridvan of Aleppo on one side and Le Bourg and Chavli on the other. Chavli, who had left the defense of Mosul in the hands of his wife, appeared in the district of Rahba, east of Aleppo, in order to recruit allies. His capture of the stronghold of Balis alarmed Ridvan, lord of Aleppo. Ridvan called upon Tancred, with whom he apparently had had a truce since 1105, for aid. He pictured the plight of the Franks in Syria if Chavli should seize Aleppo. Tancred came, perhaps moved in part by resentment against Chavli for freeing Baldwin of Le Bourg. Chavli now became alarmed. He called upon Le Bourg and Joscelin for help. They responded, bitter against Tancred. In the battle which ensued Tancred scattered his enemies near Tell Bashir in the early fall of 1108. He besieged Le Bourg in Duluk for a short while, but was driven off by threatening moves made by Chavli.

Thus ended the civil war of 1108. The Franks might have des­troyed the power of the Turks in the region around Edessa while the latter were fighting among themselves. They could even have had the help of one of the Turkish factions. Such an opportunity was not to come again soon, for Maudud, a very able man, established himself in Mosul in September and the renegade Chavli succeeded in making his peace with the sultan Muhammad. On the other hand the Turks had lost an opportunity. If they had been united, they could have attacked the Franks when the latter were divided. The whole episode is illuminating because it shows how quickly the Frankish and Moslem princes could forget rivalries and become allies when private diplomatic and military considera­tions so warranted.

The capture of the city of Tripoli by the Franks, one of the key events of the period, occurred during the next year, 1109. This became the capital of the Latin county of the same name. The origin of this state is intimately connected with the name of Raymond of St. Gilles, count of Toulouse. Raymond, it will be recalled, had, come out on the First Crusade having sworn to devote his life to the cause. But the establishment of his rival Godfrey as ruler of Jerusalem and the homesickness of his Provençal troops had forced Raymond to leave Jerusalem in August 1099. He marched his men to Latakia where most of them embarked for Europe, as we have seen. Raymond, now a leader without an army, went on to Constantinople the next year to seek whatever aid he could get from the emperor Alexius. The bond between them was dislike of Bohemond of Antioch, who had thwarted them both.

About the beginning of 1102 Raymond returned by sea to Syria. In the year 1101 he had assumed the leadership, with the approval of the emperor Alexius, of a host of crusaders, principally Lombards, who had reached Constantinople fired by enthusiasm generated by the success of the First Crusade. It was now Raymond’s hope that he might appear in Syria and Palestine with this new army at his back and dictate a settlement more in accord with his conception of the original purposes of the crusade. It was Alexius’s hope that Raymond would reopen Anatolia to Byzantine occupation, and would reduce Antioch to a dependency of Byzantium.

As we saw in the preceding chapter, however, the crusaders of 1101 were virtually exterminated by Kilij Arslan of Iconium and Malik-Ghazi of Sebastia (Sivas). If Raymond of St. Gilles had arrived in Syria in 1101 with a large and victorious army, it is presumable that the Byzantines would have recovered the Anatolian provinces in his wake, that he might have been able to restore Antioch to them, and that the Greeks would thereafter have played a much more important and friendly role in the history of the Latin states. It is also presumable that Raymond, who had been consulted by pope Urban in 1095 in planning the First Crusade, and who thought that he more truly represented its original purposes than did the other princes, would have had a large influence upon the disposition of affairs in general in Syria and Palestine. Grousset goes further and suggests that Raymond and his large army might have conquered Aleppo and Damascus and made possible the establishment of a Latin power much stronger and more stable than Edessa and the three coastal states that did result from the efforts of the Franks. However in the Crusade of 1101 not only were the hopes of Alexius and Raymond defeated, but when Raymond returned to Syria in 1102 he was virtually without a following. The old count endured the humiliation of arrest and delivery into the hands of the youthful Tancred, regent of Antioch for Bohemond, then a prisoner of Malik-Ghazi. Tancred compelled Raymond to swear to make no conquests between Antioch and Acre, and released him. Observance of this oath would have virtually excluded St. Gilles from any acquisitions on the coast of Syria and Palestine.

The count of Toulouse now proceeded to do just what Tancred had feared. He started the conquest of an area south of Antioch in Tancred’s natural sphere of expansion. By now his hopes had to be reduced to the immediate business of getting a foothold in Syria. Raymond had passed through this area twice in 1099, and had become familiar with it. Grousset suggests that it reminded him of his native Midi. Raymond began by capturing the port of Tortosa in 1102, and used it as a base for further operations. Then he laid siege to Hisn al-Akrad (Castle of the Kurds, later Krak des Chevaliers), which he had taken and abandoned in 1099. He gave up this siege when the assassination of Janah-ad-Daulah of Homs in May 1103 seemed to offer an excellent opportunity to seize that rich and powerful emirate. However, Homs delivered itself to Dukak of Damascus and Raymond retired. Then in 1103 the count of Toulouse found his objective at last. He established a permanent camp on a hill outside the important port of Tripoli, living off the hinterland with a few hundred followers and blockading the city by land. Gradually he transformed this camp into a fortress, Mons Peregrinus (Pilgrim Mountain), with the help of workmen and materials sent by Alexius’s officials in Cyprus. In 1104 Raymond with Genoese naval aid captured the port of Jubail, twenty miles to the south. The Genoese admiral, Hugh Embriaco, received Jubail and established a hereditary fief around it. But on February 28, 1105, count Raymond died, his ambition to conquer Tripoli still unrealized. Disappointed in his hopes to carry through the plans of pope Urban, Raymond had remained to play out the role of a petty conqueror. His monument was to be the county of Tripoli, the smallest of the four Latin states.

Raymond’s successor in Syria was his cousin, William Jordan, count of Cerdagne. For four more years William, with slender resources, kept up the land blockade of Tripoli from Pilgrim Mountain. Then in the beginning of March 1109, there arrived from France Raymond’s son, Bertram of St Gilles, to claim his paternal inheritance. Bertram had left France with an army of four thou­sand men convoyed in a fleet largely Genoese. On the way out he had come to an understanding with the emperor Alexius, a step consistent with the policy of his father. On the other hand he incurred the enmity of Tancred by stopping at St. Simeon and lay­ing claim to that part of Antioch originally held by his father in 1098. Tancred stiffly ordered Bertram to leave the principality of Antioch.

Bertram then sailed with his forces to Tortosa, a port controlled by William Jordan. He immediately claimed a part of his father’s estate. William, the defender and possessor for four years, rebuffed him. But William, fearing his cousin’s large forces, appealed to Bertram’s enemy, Tancred, offering to become a vassal in return for protection. Tancred, eager for power and desirous of checking St. Gilles, accepted the proposal and prepared to join William Jordan.

Count Bertram, fearing Tancred’s intervention, hastened to Tripoli and laid siege to it by land and sea. He hoped to settle the matter by seizing the great prize before William and Tancred could act. William's small garrison in the stronghold of Pilgrim Mountain looked on helplessly.

The young count of St. Gilles had another resource. He sent word to king Baldwin of Jerusalem, Tancred's rival of other days, offering to become a vassal in return for help. Baldwin accepted. He welcomed the opportunity to extend his power northwards and to forestall Tancred. He was glad to help reduce another Saracen port and he could hope for an alliance with the Genoese fleet for further attacks upon coastal towns. But to Baldwin, who had the qualities of statesmanship, there was still a greater opportunity. He saw then the possibility of ironing out differences among all the Franks and of uniting their energies as crusaders under the leadership of the regime at Jerusalem.

For these reasons king Baldwin formally summoned Tancred to meet him at Tripoli to give satisfaction to the complaints of Bertram, and also to those of Baldwin of Edessa and Joscelin of Tell Bashir. But Tancred owed no allegiance to king Baldwin. Therefore Baldwin summoned him in the high name of the church of Jerusalem, a formula which reminds us of the stand originally taken by the ecclesiastics and others regarding the proper regime to be established in the holy city. Soon two coalitions faced each other outside Tripoli. On one side were king Baldwin, Bertram, Baldwin of Le Bourg, and Joscelin. On the other were Tancred and William Jordan with a smaller following. Under the circumstances Tancred proved conciliatory. King Baldwin achieved the great personal triumph of sitting in judgment and hearing the complaints of Le Bourg versus Tancred and of Bertram versus William Jordan.

A number of compromises were worked out. First, Tancred gave up his claims in Edessa and recognized the restoration of Baldwin of Le Bourg, kinsman of king Baldwin. In return king Baldwin granted Tancred the fiefs of Tiberias, Nazareth, Haifa, and the Templum Domini (now the shrine Qubbat as-Sakhrah) in Jerusalem. Tancred formally became Baldwin’s vassal for these fiefs. This meant that, if Bohemond returned to Antioch, Tancred could expect to resume the place in the state of Jerusalem that he had left in not. It was provided that meanwhile he could enjoy the revenues from these fiefs. Tancred did not become Baldwin’s vassal for Antioch. Second, it was agreed that William Jordan should keep Arqah and apparently Tortosa. William became a vassal of Tancred. Thus the northern part of the territory of Tripoli was to be under Tancred’s influence. Third, Bertram was to get the remainder of his father’s inheritance, that is, the area around Tripoli and Tripoli itself when it should fall. He became a vassal of king Baldwin. It was a great day for Baldwin I. Edessa and Tripoli were thereafter dependent upon him, while Tancred of Antioch could expect to control only the northern part of Tripoli. The prestige of king Baldwin had never been so high. Tancred, thwarted and disappointed, marched off, and besieged and captured the ports of Valania and Jabala in May and July, 1109. He thus forestalled Baldwin I and Bertram by extending his rule about a third of the way south from Latakia toward Tripoli.

The city of Tripoli surrendered July 12, 1109. It was divided between Bertram, who received two-thirds, and the Genoese, who received one-third in return for their naval help. In addition Bertram inherited the holdings of William Jordan, who was killed a little before the fall of Tripoli. Thus Bertram extended his possessions as far north as Tancred’s territory. This deprived Tancred of the influence he had expected to have as the suzerain of William Jordan. A year or two later Tancred seized Tortosa from Bertram. Beyond this, king Baldwin was the beneficiary of the Tripolitan campaign, for the county of Tripoli remained a fief of the south­ern kingdom. Its history may be treated with that of the latter.

For a number of years after the Franks took Tripoli the history of all four Latin states tended to ran in the same channel. This was because the Turks of Iraq, aroused by the fall of Tripoli, were now disposed to unite and take the offensive. Therefore, the Latin states had to stand together. The jihad of the Turks was authorized by the Selchukid sultan Muhammad. There soon emerged as its moving spirit a devoted Moslem, Sharaf-ad-Din Maudud, lord of Mosul since 1108, and a worthy forerunner of Imad-ad-Din Zengi, Nur-ad-Din, and Saladin. Maudud acted as Muhammad’s commander-in-chief. It was his mission to lead the Selchukids of Iraq in a series of dangerous attacks upon the Franks.

Maudud’s first campaign was in 1110. He ravaged the lands of Edessa in the spring. Baldwin of Le Bourg called for help. Baldwin of Jerusalem, after finishing the siege of Beirut, May 13, appeared in the north in the early summer. Bertram of Tripoli and two Armenian princes, Kogh Vasil of Kesoun and abu-l-Gharib (West Armenian, Ablgharib) of Bira (Birejik), also came. Tancred did not respond. He resented Le Bourg’s possession of Edessa. King Baldwin, wishing to preserve the unity attained the year before at Tripoli, summoned Tancred to join the rest of the Franks, and if he had grievances, to present them. It was apparently a direct appeal, not a feudal summons, for Antioch was not a fief of Jerusalem. Its sanction was both crusader sentiment and the power of the coalition, which Albert of Aix says disposed of twenty-five thousand men. Tancred came, reluctantly, went through the forms of reconciliation with Le Bourg, and soon withdrew. The other allies, not daring to remain long absent from their lands, prepared to go home also. They provisioned and garrisoned the city of Edessa, evacuated the agrarian population, and crossed the Euphrates. Maudud, now joined by Tughtigin of Damascus, appeared and killed five thousand Armenians before they could cross. He then devastated the whole countryside of Edessa on his way back to Iraq. The county of Edessa, especially the part east of the Euphrates, never recovered from this blow. Nor was this all. The Franks of Edessa now in their weakness became suspicious, vengeful, and cruelly extortionate, and were hated by the people they had originally been welcomed to defend.

The Turks made a second effort in 1111. An offensive by Tancred caused individuals from Aleppo, rather than the weak and suspicious Ridvan, to clamor for aid from both the sultan and the caliph in Baghdad. As a result Maudud assembled a new coalition of Iraqian princes, invaded the county of Edessa, and then in August marched south to join Ridvan in a war against Tancred. Rut Ridvan shut the gates of Aleppo. He feared the greed of the Mesopotamia emirs more than that of Tancred. He cared nothing for the holy war or Moslem unity, for as we have said he sympathized with the esoteric and heretical sect of Assassins. Accord­ingly Ridvan’s would-be deliverers ravaged his lands for seven­teen days, doubtless confirming him in his suspicions of them.

Maudud and his Iraqian allies marched farther south, early in September, to join Tughtigin of Damascus, who desired an attack upon Tripoli. Tripoli was the natural maritime outlet for Damascus. But Maudud’s Mesopotamian allies, tired of the long campaign, balked at this and went home. Only the zealous Maudud remained with Tughtigin.

Meantime Tancred had taken alarm. He called for help, although he had been unwilling to help others the year before. Baldwin of Jerusalem came, abandoning the promising intrigue to gain Ascalon. Count Baldwin of Edessa and his vassal Joscelin of Tell Bashir, Bertram of Tripoli, and a number of Armenian princes also gathered at the meeting place, Chastel-Rouge, thirty miles south of Antioch up the Orontes valley. There was a little skirmishing near Shaizar, and then both sides warily withdrew and went home. One may conclude in regard to the whole campaign of 1111 that the splendid prospects of the Turks were ruined by internal dissensions, and that the policy of unity and cooperation sponsored by king Baldwin in 1109 and 1110 was brilliantly justified. However it is a matter of irony that the selfish Tancred was the principal beneficiary of this solidarity, and that king Baldwin, who was re­sponsible for it, lost a promising opportunity to gain Ascalon.

In the years 1111-1112 Bertram and especially king Baldwin made another contribution to the cause of Latin unity. The emperor Alexius, following the death of Bohemond in Italy in 1111, again demanded Antioch of Tancred, in accordance with Bohemond’s treaty of 1108. Tancred rebuffed him. Alexius then sent an envoy, Butumites, to bribe Bertram and king Baldwin into an alliance against Tancred. Bertram dallied with the idea but Baldwin’s refusal was decisive for them both. Such a scheme was hardly consistent with Baldwin’s policy of Frankish unity and cooperation. For Bertram it meant dropping his father’s historic quarrel with the Normans of Antioch and ceasing the intrigues with Alexius.

As a result the courts of Antioch and Tripoli became friendly. Ibn-al-Qalanisi writes that when Bertram died, probably a little before February 3, 1112, the guardians of his young son Pons sent the latter to Antioch for training as a knight. He also states that Pons was given four fiefs by Tancred —Tortosa, Safitha (later Chastel-Blanc), Hisn al-Akrad, and Maraclea. After Tancred died (probably December 12, 1112), Pons was also given Tancred’s young wife, Cecilia of France. This was by wish of Tancred, ac­cording to William of Tyre. Thus ended the old quarrel begun at Antioch in 1098 by Raymond of St. Gilles and Bohemond. This policy of friendship was continued by Tancred’s successor in the regency of Antioch, Roger of Salerno, son of Richard of the Principate, former regent of Edessa,

Tancred’s death ended the career of the youngest of the leaders of the original crusading expedition. He was certainly one of the ablest, ranking immediately below Bohemond and Baldwin I. The young Norman was perhaps more than Bohemond the real founder of the principality of Antioch. He rather than his uncle, who was usually an absentee, established the state upon a permanent foundation. A restless fighter, Tancred extended his conquests as long as he lived. Usually he fought Moslems but he was unscrupulous enough to fight fellow Christians, whether Byzantines, Armenians, or even the Franks of Edessa, if he saw a chance to gain an advantage. He was more concerned with the immediate expansion of his own power than with the larger interests of the Latin states. Yet on the whole the career of Tancred belongs on the credit side of the Latin ledger. He built up the principality of Antioch into a powerful military state that considerably outlasted the southern kingdom of Jerusalem.

Maudud’s third campaign against the Franks was in 1112. This time he came alone. He harassed the city of Edessa from April to June, and nearly captured it by corrupting some of the Armenian guards. When this failed he returned home. The pro-Turkish plots of some Armenians inside Edessa, notably in 1108 and 1112, led Baldwin to take vigorous counter-measures, including a mass deportation to Samosata in 1113, rescinded in 1114. Baldwin’s poverty after the constant Turkish devastations east of the Euphrates, contrasted with the prosperity of Joscelin at Tell Bashir, led him in 1113 to imprison his chief vassal briefly, strip him of his fief, and expel him. Joscelin was welcomed at Jerusalem by Baldwin I and given the fief of Galilee.

The Selchukids attacked the Franks again in 1113. This time Maudud passed by Edessa and straightway joined Tughtigin of Damascus, who had been suffering from raids from the Franks of Jerusalem. The combined Turkish army boldly took position south of Lake Tiberias, east of the Jordan, across from the village of as-Sinnabrah. King Baldwin summoned what was probably his maximum strength, seven hundred knights and four thousand footmen according to Albert of Aix, and marched north. At the same time he called upon Roger of Antioch and Pons of Tripoli for help. Baldwin, always aggressive and usually shrewd, this time blundered into the enemy at as-Sinnabrah, June 28. He lost twelve hundred infantry and thirty knights, and himself barely escaped. The next day Roger and Pons arrived at Tiberias, and reproached their senior colleague for his rashness.

But the end was not yet. The Frankish force, inferior in numbers, took refuge on a hill west of Tiberias where though safe they suffered from lack of sufficient water. Ibn-al-Athir writes that the Franks were immobilized here for twenty-six days. For two months Turkish raiding parties roamed the kingdom to the environs of Jaffa and Jerusalem itself. The Arab peasantry assisted the Turks in the plundering and devastation. However the towns, except Nablus and Baisan, held out behind their walls. As the summer wore on the Frankish army, which stayed around Tiberias, grew by accretion of pilgrims from Europe until it numbered about sixteen thousand men according to Albert of Aix. At the same time Maudud’s Iraqian allies became more and more insistent upon returning home, and eventually did so. Maudud dismissed his own men, and himself went to Damascus with Tughtigin, September 5. He intended to prepare for a campaign the next year.

Maudud’s invasion of the kingdom in 1113 was strikingly like that of Saladin in 1187. In each case the Moslems entered via the Tiberias gateway, and caused the kingdom to muster its full strength which the invaders then disastrously defeated. Both times the Franks were marooned on a hill short of water. But there were three differences. King Baldwin’s troops were not entirely without water, he received reinforcements, and he was astute and had the respect of his colleagues in spite of his error. King Guy in 1187 would enjoy none of these advantages.

The danger to the Franks implicit in the existence of the able and energetic Maudud ended with the murder of that prince, October 2, 1113. He was struck down in the presence of Tughtigin, probably by a member of the fanatical sect of Assassins. It is hard to escape the conclusion that Tughtigin, jealous of his autonomy and annoyed at the continued presence in his capital of the sultan’s generalissimo, was involved. For the Franks the results were wholly fortunate. First, the murder removed a most powerful, persistent, and capable adversary. Second, Tughtigin, though he posed as innocent, became suspect in the court of sultan Muhammad at Baghdad. As a result Tughtigin was driven to making a permanent truce with king Baldwin in 1114, and even roan alliance with the Frankish princes in 1115. Thus the circumstances of Maudud’s death bred suspicions among the Turks and destroyed much of the unity it had been his life work to create.

Maudud’s death did not, however, cause sultan Muhammad to abandon the holy war. He named Aksungur al-Bursuki to be Maudud’s successor as governor of Mosul and leader in the war. Aksungur made a futile attack upon Edessa, in May of 1114. A more positive achievement was the acceptance of an offer of loyalty from the widow of the Armenian prince Kogh Vasil (d. 1112). Her husband had suffered from aggression by Tancred in 1112. By her action Marash, Kesoun, and Raban, all northwest of Edessa, were included in the Turkish sphere of influence.

However, Aksungur permitted himself to be badly defeated by a Mesopotamian rival, U-Ghazi ibn-Artuk of Mardin, probably late in 1114. As a result Il-Ghazi, fearing the vengeance of the sultan, made an alliance with Tughtigin of Damascus. According to Ibn-al-Athir the two princes even made an agreement with Roger of Antioch. A wide breach was opened in the ranks of the Turks. A second result of Aksungur’s defeat was his replacement as Muhammad’s generalissimo by Bursuk ibn-Bursuk of Hamadan. Bursuk was ordered to punish Il-Ghazi and Tughtigin as well as carry on the holy war against the Franks.

In the spring of 1115 Bursuk gathered a large army of Iraqian contingents, threatened Edessa briefly, and then moved on, intending to make Aleppo his base of operations. But the eunuch Lulu, atabeg in that city for the child Alp Arslan, son of Ridvan (d. 1113), was as unwilling to open his gates to the army of the sultan as had been Ridvan in 1113. Lulu called upon and Tughtigin for aid, and they in turn called upon Roger of Antioch. As a result the troops of these strange allies took position in two camps, one Turkish and one Frankish, near Apamea, to watch Bursuk. Roger in turn called upon the other Frankish princes for support. King Baldwin, Pons of Tripoli, and Baldwin II of Edessa all gathered at Apamea by August. The stage was now set for a great battle between the sultan’s army under the command of Bursuk, and the coalition of Latin princes and Turkish rebels. But there was no battle, the Latin-Turkish allies being very cautious. After eight days Bursuk slyly retreated into the desert and his enemies scattered to their homes. The whole affair is excellent evidence that the Franks and Syrian Turks though given to fighting each other could close ranks against others from outside Syria.

Bursuk’s withdrawal was a ruse, however. He slipped back to capture Kafartab, a mountain fortress of Roger’s, and to menace the lands of Antioch and Aleppo. Roger took the field and succeeded in ambushing Bursuk at Danith half way between Apamea and Aleppo, September 14. The rout was complete and appalling. Bursuk himself escaped but the Franks slaughtered three thousand male camp followers, enslaved the women, and committed the children and old men to the flames. The prisoners who remained, other than those held for ransom, were sent to Tughtigin, Il-Ghazi, and Lulu. It took the Franks two or three days to divide the spoils, which were worth three hundred thousand bezants according to Fulcher of Chartres.

The battle of Danith made a deep impression upon the Moslems. According to Grousset, Roger, as “Sirojal” (Sire Roger), became a legendary figure among them something like Richard the Lion-hearted after the Third Crusade. Tughtigin of Damascus broke with his dangerous ally at once and made his peace with sultan Muhammad the next spring. Nor do we hear more of Il-Ghazi as an ally of Roger. This catastrophe broke the offensive spirit of the Selchukids for some time. Maudud was dead and there was none to take his place. The Frankish states now, until Roger’s defeat by Il-Ghazi at Darb Sarmada in 1119, enjoyed more security than they had ever known before.

The safety enjoyed by the Latin states permitted them to go their separate ways. They could unite in danger but not in victory, Pons of Tripoli, possibly in the summer of 1116, began to plunder the Biqa valley, the country around Baalbek. As a result he was badly defeated by Tughtigin of Damascus and Aksungur al-Bursuki of Rahba. The latter, probably to regain the laurels lost in 1114, had come down to cooperate with Tughtigin in a holy war of their own. The two years following Danith were spent by Baldwin II of Edessa in a war upon the neighboring Armenian principalities. It will be remembered that one at least, Kesoun, antagonized by Tancred’s brutality, had sympathized with Aksungur in 1114. Baldwin acquired the territory of Dgha Vasil, son of Kogh Yasil, by torturing Dgha Vasil; that of abu-l-Gharib of Bira after a year-long siege of the latter’s capital; and that of Pakrad of Cyrrhus and Constantine of Gargar also by violence. Baldwin of Le Bourg thus rounded out his territories in the Euphrates valley to the west and north, and in a measure recovered the strength he had lost in 1110. His county was secure when he left it in 1118 to become king of Jerusalem.

Roger of Antioch, strange as it may seem, apparently was not actively aggressive for two years after his great victory. Probably his chief concern was Aleppo. As long as the weak and incompetent Lulu was alive Roger seems to have been satisfied. But when Lulu was murdered in 1117 there began a confused struggle for the control of the city. It was Roger’s role to combine with each successive faction dominant in Aleppo to keep out powerful candidates such as Il-Ghazi of Mardin, active probably in 1118 or early 1119. This able prince purchased an expensive truce from Roger, made plans with Tughtigin, went home, proclaimed a holy war, and raised a large army. He then returned to defeat and kill Roger at Darb Sarmada near al-Atharib, west of Aleppo, June 28, 1119. This disaster, called the “field of blood”, will be discussed more fully in the following chapter. But the Franks of the north lost in 1119 much of the security that they had gained in 1115. They now faced a powerful and active prince in Aleppo, where there had always been a weak ruler. But this is beyond the limits of our story. In 1118 the results of Danith still stood. Roger’s brief role of Antioch was, states Cahen, “the moment of greatest prestige in its history”.

Let us now turn and see what king Baldwin of Jerusalem was able to do with his own dominions after the lapse of the Turkish peril in 1115. In the fall of that year he built in the Transjordan the castle of ash-Shaubak, or Krak de Montreal, as it was called in his honor. This was on a commanding height south of the Dead Sea eighty-five miles from Jerusalem and eighty miles north of the Red Sea. Its fine strategic position enabled the Franks not only to protect the kingdom in that quarter, but to levy tribute upon the Moslem caravans passing between Damascus and Egypt and also between Damascus and the holy cities of Medina and Mecca.

The next year Baldwin extended his influence still farther south by leading a military force to Ailah (Elat) at the head of the gulf now called Aqaba, on the Red Sea. This town, one hundred and fifty miles south of Jerusalem, became the southernmost point in his kingdom. According to Albert of Aix, Baldwin now visited the Greek monastery of Mount Sinai, which is ninety miles to the southwest, but made no claim upon the territory in this area.

Late in 1116 Baldwin put away his queen, Adelaide of Sicily. He had put aside Arda, his Armenian queen, in 1113, in order to marry Adelaide. He wanted to secure a rich dowry and the friendship of Adelaide’s son, count Roger II of Sicily. It was agreed that Roger should inherit the kingdom if the royal pair should be childless. It is presumable that this political marriage had the approval of Baldwin’s close friend and adviser, patriarch Arnulf. Arnulf, a royal partisan during the patriarchates of Daimbert (1099-1102), Evremar(11o2-11o8), and Gibelin(118-1112), and privy to the removal of the first two, became patriarch in 1112. But there was enough of clerical opposition to his policy of subordinating the church to the interests of a strong monarchy, and of personal opposition to Arnulf himself, to secure his deposition in a papal legatine court in 1115. Arnulf promptly went to Rome and was reinstated in 1116. At this time he agreed to urge Baldwin to give up his bigamous union with Adelaide. King Baldwin, becoming very sick late in 1116, and still childless, fell in with this idea. It is probable, as Kuhn suggests, that both Baldwin and Arnulf felt that the little kingdom could not be safely left to an absentee king, for Roger’s most important interests would be in Sicily. Therefore with Arnulf’s connivance the marriage with Adelaide was annulled. Although Baldwin, when he died two years later, left the kingdom to a resident sovereign, he had forfeited permanently the friendship of the wealthy Sicilian court. The affair of Adelaide is also significant because it shows the close support given the throne, even the strong influence upon royal policy, by the patriarchate under Arnulf. But it was an influence exerted for a strong monarchy, not an independent church.

In the spring of 1118 Baldwin led a small reconnoitering expedition into Egypt for the first time. He plundered Pelusium (al-Farama), south-east of modern Port Said, late in March. He then pushed on to Tinnis on one of the mouths of the Nile. Here he became fatally ill. He attempted to return to Jerusalem but died at al-Arish, sixty miles southwest of Ascalon, April 2, 1118. He was succeeded by Baldwin of Le Bourg, whose formal consecration as king of Jerusalem took place on April 14 of that year. As a result another Latin state, the county of Edessa, also changed hands, for Baldwin of Le Bourg gave it to Joscelin of Courtenay in 1119. In the year 1118 there died several others identified with the early history of the Latin states, namely pope Paschal II, Adelaide of Sicily, patriarch Arnulf, and emperor Alexius Comnenus.

The reign of Alexius Comnenus, whose death occurred in August, four months after that of Baldwin I, had been advantageous to his empire and not inimical to the Franks. He had reorganized and strengthened the administration and had restored the security and prosperity of his people, while protecting his frontiers against the usual attacks in the Balkans, the pseudo-crusade of the avaricious and vindictive Norman, Bohemond, and the menacing raids of the Turks in Anatolia. He had preserved his realm against the threat implicit in the presence of large western armies, too often composed of ambitious and unprincipled leaders with bigoted and undisciplined followers, only too willing to blame all their hardships and misfortunes on the Greeks, whom they regarded as wily profiteers, as schismatics, and eventually as treacherous renegades. However accurate these accusations might be against certain of Alexius’ successors, they had no basis in his own conduct, but ori­ginated chiefly in the shrewd propaganda attempt of his enemy Bohemond to cast a cloak of justification over his own marauding.

Alexius had profited from the First Crusade and from his maritime strength by recovering the Anatolian littoral, but this territorial gain was partially offset by the loss of Cilicia — acquired only in 1099, lost in 1101, and retaken in 1104 — definitively in 1108 to Tancred, and by the suppression of his nominal Armenian vassals by the counts of Edessa between 1097 (Tell Bashir) and 1117 (Gargar and Cyrrhus), with Gabriel of Melitene overwhelmed by the Turks in 1103. By 1118 no portion of the crusading arena was under Greek control, and none under that of Armenians except in the Taurus mountains north of Cilicia, where Toros (1100-1129) —son of Constantine, son of Roupen — still held Partzapert and Vahka, and Hetoum, son of Oshin, ruled at Lampron. The population of Cilicia, and of that part of the county of Edessa which lay west of the Euphrates, remained largely Armenian, with a mutually antagonistic admixture of Orthodox Greeks and Syrian Jacobites, all of whom had quickly learned to detest their Frankish overlords.

The year 1118 therefore marks the end of an era. This is particularly true because of the death of Baldwin I of Jerusalem. He was the last of the original leaders of the First Crusade, with the exception of Robert of Normandy, who died in 1134, after many years as a prisoner of king Henry I of England. Godfrey, Raymond, Bohemond, and Tancred, all of whom had elected to stay in the east as builders of states, had passed. Of these Baldwin was probably the ablest. He was certainly the most successful as a prince. He founded the first Latin state in the east, the county of Edessa. He was virtually the founder and was for eighteen years the ruler of another, Jerusalem, which he transformed from an ecclesiastical state into a monarchy. He even had a hand in the capture of the city of Tripoli and in the establishment of the fourth and last state, the county of Tripoli.

With small means Baldwin accomplished much. He founded the county of Edessa with a mere handful of knights. As Godfrey’s successor at Jerusalem he took over a weak state torn by factionalism and surrounded by enemies. He left it united and powerful. He found it in economic ruin. He revived and maintained commerce with the people he had come to fight, the Moslems. When he arrived he controlled but one port, Jaffa. When he died he ruled all but two along his coast, Tyre and Ascalon. He never had a fleet, yet he found Italian naval help for coastal conquests and for the protection of the vital sea routes to the west. Baldwin rarely had more troops than a modern battalion or regiment. Yet he was able to protect his small state, leave it secure and aggressive, aid the Latin states in the north, and extend his own dominions, He was a conqueror to the day of his death. His powerful enemies al-Afdal of Egypt and Tughtigin of Damascus early gave up any notion of conquering him. As a king he had very scanty revenues. He relied upon customs duties, upon contributions from pilgrims, upon raids and tribute, and upon the economic prosperity he revived in his kingdom. He fostered this prosperity by conciliating and protecting the natives, both Christian and Moslem, who formed the bulk of the wealth-producing population of his “Latin” kingdom. He induced the Christian peasants of the Transjordan and adjacent districts to migrate to his kingdom and replace the hostile Arabs, in lieu of the potential colonists lost in the disastrous crusade of 1101.

King Baldwin had become the leader of the Franks in the Levant although he had no real means with which to coerce the three other Latin princes. It is true that he was suzerain of Tripoli, and had granted Edessa to its lord, yet their feudal rulers could have defied him if they had wished. Baldwin was statesman enough to know that the Franks would stand or fall together. He had sufficient moral authority to unite and lead them, even the reluctant Tancred, against the Turkish peril in the north. When Baldwin died his kingdom was first in dignity, power, and leadership among the Latin states in the east. All, even the exposed county of Edessa, were secure. King Baldwin's passing marks the end of the formative period of these states. It was now the turn of others to maintain what had been won.

CHAPTER XIII

THE FOUNDATION OF THE LATIN STATES : 1099-1118