The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem

THE LATIN KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM The First Three Kings (1100-1143).—The theocracy, how ever, was not destined to be established. Godfrey had died without direct heirs. Dagobert had at first consented to the dying God frey's wish that his brother, Baldwin, in far Edessa, should be his successor ; but when Godfrey died he saw an opportunity too precious to be missed, and opposed Baldwin, counting on the sup port of Bohemund, to whom he sent an appeal for assistance'. But a party in Jerusalem, headed by the late "vicar" Arnulf, opposed itself to the hierarchical pretensions of Dagobert and the Norman influence by which they were backed ; and this party, representing the Lotharingian laity, carried the day. Baldwin was summoned from Edessa ; and when he arrived, towards the end of the year, he was crowned king by Dagobert himself. Thus was founded, on Christmas day I I oo, the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem; and thus was the possibility of a theocracy finally annihilated. A feudal kingdom of Frankish seigneurs was to be planted on the soil of Palestine, instead of a dominium temporale of the patriarch like that of the pope in central Italy. Nor were there great difficulties with the Church to hamper the growth of this kingdom. For two years, indeed, a struggle raged between Baldwin I. and Dagobert : Baldwin accused the patriarch of treachery, and attempted to force him to contribute to the defence of the kingdom. But in I102 the struggle ceased with the deposition of the patriarch and the victory of the king. The contention was renewed for a time by the patriarch Stephen in the reign of Baldwin II. The new strug gle was of short duration (1128-3o) and was soon ended by Stephen's death.

The establishment of a kingdom in Jerusalem in I I oo was a blow, not only to the Church but to the Normans of Antioch. At the end of 1o99 any contemporary observer must have believed that the capital of Latin Christianity in the East was destined to be Antioch. Antioch lay in one of the most fertile regions of the East ; Bohemund was almost, if not quite, the greatest genius of his generation ; and when he visited Jerusalem at the end of 1o99, he led an army of 25,000 men—and those men, at any rate in 'The genuineness of the letter (on which, by the way, depends the story of Godfrey's agreement with Dagobert) has been impeached by Prutz and Kugler, and doubted by Rohricht. It is accepted by von Sybel and Hagenmeyer.

large part, Normans. What could Godfrey avail against such a force? Yet the principality of Godfrey was destined to higher things than that of Bohemund. Jerusalem, like Rome, had the shadow of a mighty name to lend prestige to its ruler ; and as resi dence in Rome was one great reason of the strength of the mediae val papacy, so was residence in Jerusalem a reason for the ultimate supremacy of the Lotharingian kings. Jerusalem attracted the flow of pilgrims from the West as Antioch never could; and though the great majority of the pilgrims were only birds of passage, there were always many who stayed in the East. There was thus a steady immigration into the kingdom, to strengthen its armies and recruit with new blood the vigour of its inhabitants. Still more important, perhaps, was the fact that the ports of the kingdom attracted the Italian towns; and it was therefore to the kingdom that they lent the strength of their armies and the skill of their siege-artillery—in return, it is true, for concessions of privileges so considerable as to weaken the resources of the kingdom they helped to create. While Jerusalem possessed these advantages, Antioch was not without its defects. It had to meet—or perhaps it would be more true to say, it brought upon itself—the hostility of strong Mohammedan powers in the vicinity. As early as II oo Bohemund was captured in battle by Danishmend of Sivas; and it was his captivity, depriving the patriarch as it did of Norman assistance, which allowed the uncontested accession of Baldwin I. Again, in 1104, the Normans, while attempting to capture Harran, were badly defeated on the river Balikh, near Rakka ; and this defeat may be said to have been fatal to the chance of a great Norman principality'. But the hostility of Alexius, aided and abetted by the jealousy of Raymund of Toulouse, was almost equally fatal. Alexius claimed Antioch; was it not the old posses sion of his empire, and had not Bohemund done him homage? Raymund was ready to defend the claims of Alexius ; was not Bohemund a successful rival? Thus it came about that Alexius and Raymund became allies; and by the aid of Alexius Raymund established, from IIO2 onwards, the principality which, with the capture of Tripoli in 1109, became the principality of Tripoli, and barred the advance of Antioch to the south. Meanwhile the armies of Alexius not only prevented any further advance to the north west, but conquered the Cilician towns 0104). No wonder that Bohemund flung himself in revenge on the Eastern empire in II o8 —only, however, to meet with a humiliating defeat at Durazzo.

Expansion of the Kingdom.

Thus it was that Baldwin waxed while Bohemund waned. The growth of Baldwin's kingdom, as it was suggested above, owed more to the interests of Italian traders than it did to crusading zeal. In I i oo, indeed, it might appear that a new crusade from the West, which the capture of Antioch in 1098 had begun, and the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 had finally set ire motion, was destined to achieve great things for the nas cent kingdom. Thousands had joined this new crusade, which should deal the final blow to Mo hammedanism : among the rest came the first of the troubadours, William IX., count of Poitiers, to gather copy for his muse, and even some, like Stephen of Blois and Hugh of Vermandois, who had joined the first crusade, but had failed to reach Jerusalem. The new crusaders cherished high plans; they would free Bohemund and capture Baghdad. But each of the three sections of their army was routed in turn in Asia Minor by the princes of Sivas, Aleppo and Harran, in the middle of II o ; and only a few escaped to report the crushing disaster. Edward I. had thus no assistance to expect from the West, save that of the Italian towns. From an early date Italian ships had followed the the north always continued to be more populous than the south ; and the Latins maintained themselves in Antioch and Tripoli a century after the loss of Jerusalem. The land was richer in the north: it was protected by its connection with Cyprus and Armenia: it was more remote from Egypt—the basis of Mohammedan power from the reign of Saladin onwards.

crusaders. There were Genoese ships in St. Simeon's harbour in the spring of 1o98 and at Jaffa in 1099; in 1099 Dagobert, the arch bishop of Pisa, led a fleet from his city to the Holy Land; and in I Ioo there came to Jaffa a Venetian fleet of 200 sail, whose leaders promised Venetian assistance in return for freedom from tolls and a third of each town they helped to conquer. But it was the Geno ese who helped Baldwin I. most. The Venetians already enjoyed, since I o8o, a favoured position in Constantinople, and had the less reason to find a new emporium in the East ; while Pisa con nected itself, through Dagobert, with Antioch', rather than with Jerusalem, and was further, in I I I invested by Alexius with privileges, which made an outlet in the Holy Land no longer neces sary. But the Genoese, who had helped with provisions and siege tackle in the capture of Antioch and of Jerusalem, had both a stronger claim on the crusaders, and a greater interest in acquiring an eastern emporium. An alliance was accordingly struck in 1101 (Fulcher II. c. vii.) , by which the Genoese promised their assistance, in return for a third of all booty, a quarter in each town captured, and a grant of freedom from tolls. In this way Baldwin I. was able to take Arsuf and Caesarea in II °I and Acre in But Genoese aid was given to others beside Baldwin (it enabled Raymund to capture Byblus in '104, and his successor, William, to win Tripoli in I I09) ; while, on the other hand, Baldwin enjoyed other aid besides that of the Genoese. In I no, o, for example, he was enabled to capture Sidon by the aid of Sigurd of Norway, the Jorsalafari, who came to the Holy Land with a fleet of 55 ships, starting in 1107, and in a three years' "wandering," after the old Norse fashion, fighting the Moors in Spain, and fraternizing with the Normans in Sicily. At a later date, in the reign of Baldwin II., Venice also gave her aid to the kings of Jerusalem. Irritated by the concessions made by Alexius to the Pisans in III', and furious at the revocation of her own privileges by John Comnenus in I I 18, the republic naturally sought a new outlet in the Holy Land. A Venetian fleet of 120 sail came in 1123, and after aiding in the repulse of an attack, which the Egyptians had taken advantage of Baldwin II.'s captivity to deliver, they helped the regent Eustace to capture Tyre (I124), in return for considerable privileges— freedom from tolls throughout the kingdom, a quarter in Jerusa lem, baths and ovens in Acre, and in Tyre one-third of the city and its suburbs, with their own court of justice and their own church. After thus gaining a new footing in Tyre, the Venetians could afford to attack the islands of the Aegean as they returned, in revenge for the loss of their privileges in Constantinople ; but the hostility between Venice and the Eastern empire was soon after wards appeased, when John Comnenus restored the old privileges of the Venetians. The Venetians, however, maintained their posi tion in Palestine; and their quarters remained, along with those of the Genoese, as privileged commercial franchises in an otherwise feudal State.

In this way the kingdom of Jerusalem expanded until it came to embrace a territory stretching along the coast from Beirut (captured in I I to el-Arish on the confines of Egypt—a terri tory whose strength lay not in Judaea, like the ancient kingdom of David, but, somewhat paradoxically (though commercial motives explain the paradox), in Phoenicia and the land of the Philistines. With all its length, the territory had but little breadth : towards the north it was bounded by the amirate of Damascus; in the cen tre, it spread little, if at all, beyond the Jordan ; and it was only in the south that it had any real extension. Here there were two con siderable annexes. To the south of the Dead sea stretched a tongue of land, reaching to Aila, at the head of the eastern arm of the Red sea. This had been won by Baldwin I., by way of re venge for the attacks of the Egyptians on his kingdom ; and here, as early as 111 6, he had built the fort of Monreal, half way be 'Pisa naturally connected itself with Antioch, becafse Antioch was hostile to Constantinople, and Pisa cherished the same hostility, since Alexius I. had in io8o .given preferential treatment to Venice, the enemy of Pisa.

'This is the year in which the kingdom may be regarded as definitely founded. The period of conquest practically ends at this date, though isolated gains were afterwards made. The year 'no is additionally important by reason of the accession of Maudud al Mosul, which marks the beginning of a Muslim reaction.

tween Aila and the Dead sea. To the east of the Dead sea, again, lay a second strip of territory, in which the great fortress was Krak (Kerak) of the Desert, planted somewhere about I14o by the royal butler, Paganus, in the reign of Fulk of Jerusalem. These extensions in the south and east had also, it is easy to see, a com mercial motive. They gave the kingdom a connection of its own with the Red sea and its shipping ; and they enabled the Franks to control the routes of the caravans, especially the route from Damascus to Egypt and the Red sea. Thus, it would appear, the whole of the expansion of the Latin kingdom (which may be said to have attained its height in 1131, at the death of Baldwin II.) may be shown to have been dictated, at any rate in large part, by economic motives ; and thus, too, it would seem that two of the most powerful motives which sway the mind of man—the religious motive and the desire for gain—conspired to elevate the kingdom of Jerusalem (at once the country of Christ, and a natural centre of trade) to a position of supremacy in Latin Syria. During this process of growth the kingdom stood in rela tion to two sets of powers—the three Frankish principalities in northern Syria, and the Mohammedan powers both of the Eu phrates and the Nile—whose action affected its growth and character.

Of the three Frankish principalities, Edessa, founded in 1098 by Baldwin I. himself, was a natural fief of Jerusalem. Baldwin de Burgh, the future Baldwin II., ruled in Edessa as the vassal of Baldwin I. from Iwo to II1S; and thereafter the county was held in succession by the two Joscelins of Tell-bashir until the conquest of Edessa by Zengi in 1144. Lying to the east of the Euphrates, at once in close contact with the Armenians, and in near proximity to the great route of trade which came up the Euphrates to Rakka, and thence diverged to Antioch and Damas cus, the county of Edessa had an eventful if brief life. The county of Tripoli, the second of these principalities, had also come under the aegis of Jerusalem at an early date. Founded by Ray mund of Toulouse, between I102 and Ilos, with the favour of Alexius and the alliance of the Genoese, it did not acquire its capital of Tripoli till 1109. Even before the conquest of Tripoli, there had been dissensions between William, the nephew and successor of Raymund, and Bertrand, Raymund's eldest son, which it had needed the interference of Baldwin I. to compose; and it was only by the aid of the king that the town of Tripoli had been taken. At an early date, therefore, the county of Tripoli had already come under the influence of the kingdom. Meanwhile the principality of Antioch, ruled by Tancred, after the departure of Bohemund (1104-12 ), and then by Roger his kinsman (III 2 19), was, during the reign of Baldwin I., busily engaged in disputes both with its Christian neighbours at Edessa and Tripoli, and with the Mohammedan princes of Mardin and Mosul. On the death of Roger in II19, the principality came under the regency of Bald win II. of Jerusalem, until 1126, when Bohemund II. came of age. Bohemund had married a daughter of Baldwin; and on his death in 113o Baldwin II. once more became the guardian of Antioch. From this time, therefore, Antioch may be regarded as a dependency of Jerusalem; and thus the end of Baldwin's reign (113 I) may be said to mark the time when the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem stands complete, with its own boundaries stretching from Beirut in the north to el-Arish and Aila in the south, and with the three Frankish Powers of the north admitting its suzerainty.

Muslim Reaction.

The Latin power thus established and or ganized in Syria had to face in the north a number of Moham medan amirs, in the south the caliph of Egypt. The disunion be tween the Mohammedans of northern Syria and the Fatimites of Egypt, and the political disintegration of the former, were both favourable to the success of the Franks; but they had neverthe less to maintain their ground vigorously both in the north and the south against almost incessant attacks. The hostility of the de cadent caliphate of Cairo was the less dangerous ; and though Bald win I. had at the beginning of his reign to meet annual attacks from Egypt, by the end be had pushed his power to the Red sea, and in the very year of his death (I118) he had penetrated along the north coast of Egypt as far as Farama (Pelusium). The plan of conquering Egypt had indeed presented itself to the Franks from the first, as it continued to attract them to the end ; and it is significant that Godfrey himself, in 'Too, promised Jerusalem to the patriarch, "as soon as he should have conquered some other great city, and especially Cairo." But the real menace to the Latin kingdom lay in northern Syria; and here a power was eventually destined to rise, which outstripped the kings of Jeru salem in the race for Cairo, and then—with the northern and southern boundaries of Jerusalem in its control—was able to crush the kingdom as it were between the two jaws of a vice. Until 1127, however, the Mohammedans of northern Syria were disunited among themselves. The beginning of the 12th century was the age of the atabegs (regents or stadtholders). The atabegs formed a number of dynasties, which displaced the descendants of the Seljuk amirs in their various principalities. These dynasties were founded by emancipated mamelukes, who had held high office at court and in camp under powerful amirs, and who, on their death, first became stadtholders for their descendants, and then usurped the throne of their masters. There was an atabeg dynasty in Damascus founded by Tughtigin (1103-28) : there was another to the north-east, that of the Ortokids, represented by Sokman, who established himself at Kaifa in Diarbekr about and by his brother Ilghazi, who received Mardin from Sokman about I ro8, and added to it Aleppo in But the greatest of the atabegs were those of Mosul on the Tigris—Maudud, who died in I 1'3 ; Aksunkur, his successor; and finally, greatest of all, the atabeg Zengi, who ruled in Mosul from ' 127 onwards.

Before the accession of Zengi, there had been constant fighting, which had led, however, to no definite result between the various Mohammedan princes and the Franks of northern Syria. The con stant pressure of Tancred of Antioch and Baldwin de Burgh of Edessa led to a series of retaliations between IIIo and I115; Edessa was attacked in I I I I 11 I, 1 I I 2 and I 114 ; and in II1 3 Maudud of Mosul, who may be regarded as the first to begin the jihad, or counter-crusade, had even penetrated as far as the vicin ity of Acre and Jerusalem. But the dissensions of the Mohamme dans made their attacks unavailing; in I115, for instance, we find Antioch actually aided by Ilghazi and Tughtigin against Aksunkur of Mosul. Again, in the reign of Baldwin II., there was steady fighting in the north; Roger of Antioch was defeated by Ilghazi at Balat in 1119, and Baldwin II. himself was captured by Balak, the successor of Ilghazi, in 1123, but on the whole the Franks held the upper hand. Baldwin conquered part of the territory of Aleppo in 1121 and the following years, and extorted a tribute from Damascus (1126). But when Zengi established himself in Mosul in 1127, the tide gradually began to turn. He created for himself a great and united principality, comprising not only Mosul, but also Aleppo, Harran, Nisibin and other districts; and in 113o, Alice, the widow of Bohemund II., sought his alliance in order to maintain herself in power at Antioch. In the beginning of the reign of Fulk of Jerusalem (1131-43) the progress of Zengi was steady. He conquered in 1135 several fortresses in the east of the principality of Antioch, and in this year and the next pressed the count of Tripoli hard; while in 1137 he defeated Fulk at Barin, and forced the king to capitulate and surrender the town. If Fulk had been left alone to wage the struggle against Zengi, and if Zengi had enjoyed a clear field against the Franks, the fall of the kingdom of Jerusalem might have come far sooner than it did'. But there were two powers which aided Fulk, and impeded the progress of Zengi—the amirate of Damascus and the emperors of Constantinople. The position of Damascus is a position of crucial importance from 1130 to I154. Lying between Mosul and 'Ilghazi died in 1I22. His successor was Balak, who ruled from 1122 to 1124, and succeeded in capturing in 1123 Baldwin II. of Jerusalem. The union of Mardin and Aleppo under the sway of these two amirs, connecting as it did Mesopotamia with Syria, marks an important stage in the revival of Mohammedan power (Stevenson, Crusades in the East, p. Dog).

however, believes that Zengi was not animated by the idea of recovering Jerusalem. He thinks that his principal aim was simply the formation of a compact Mohammedan State, which was, indeed, in the issue destined to be the instrument of the jihad, but was not so intended by Zengi (op. cit. pp. 1 23-124) • Jerusalem, and important both strategically and from its position on the great route of commerce from the Euphrates to Egypt, Damascus became the arbiter of Syrian politics. During the greater part of the period between 1 13o and 1 154 the policy of Damascus was guided by the vizier Muin eddin Anar, who ruled on behalf of the descendants of the atabeg Tughtigin. He saw the importance of finding an ally against the ambition of Zengi, who had already attacked Damascus in 1130. The natural ally was Jerusalem. As early as 1133 the alliance of the two Powers had been concluded; and in 1140 the alliance was solemnly re newed between Fulk and the vizier. Henceforth this alliance was a dominant factor in politics. One of the great mistakes made by the Franks was the breach of the alliance in 1147—a breach which was widened by the attack directed against Damascus during the second crusade; and the conquest of Damascus by Nureddin in 1154 was ultimately fatal to the Latin kingdom, removing as it did the one possible ally of the Franks, and opening the way to Egypt for the atabegs of Mosul.

The Eastern Empire.—The alliance of the emperors of Con stantinople was of far more dubious value. We have already seen that it was the theory of the Eastern emperors—a theory which logically followed from the homage of the crusaders to Alexius that the conquests of the crusaders belonged to their empire, and were held by the crusading princes as fiefs. We have seen that the action of Bohemund at Antioch was the negation of this theory, and that Alexius in consequence helped Raymund to establish himself in Tripoli as a thorn in the side of Bohemund, and sent an army and a fleet which wrested from the Normans the towns of Cilicia (1104). The defeat of Bohemund at Durazzo in 1108 had resulted in a treaty, which made Antioch a fief of Alexius; but Tancred (who in 1107 had recovered Cilicia from the Greeks) refused to fulfil the terms of the treaty, and Alexius (who attempted—but in vain—to induce Baldwin I. to join an alliance against Tancred in 1112) was forced to leave Antioch independent. Thus, although Alexius had been able, in the wake of the crusad ing armies, to recover a large belt of land round the whole coast of Asia Minor—the interior remaining subject to the sultans of Konia (Iconium) and the princes of Sivas—he left the territories to the east of Cilicia in the hands of the Latins when he died in 1118. Not for 20 years after his death did the Eastern empire make any attempt to gain Cilicia or exact the homage of Antioch. But in 1137 Jchn Comnenus appeared, instigated by the oppor tunity of dissensions in Antioch, and received its long-denied homage, as well as that of Tripoli ; and in the following year he entered into hostilities with Zengi, without, however, achieving any considerable result. In 1142 he returned again, anxious to create a principality in Cilicia and Antioch for his younger son Manuel. The people of Antioch refused to submit; a projected visit to Jerusalem, during which John was to unite with Fulk in a great alliance against the Muslim, fell through ; and in the spring of 1143 the emperor died in Cilicia, with nothing accom plished. On the whole, the interference of the Comneni, if it checked Zengi for the moment in 1138, may be said to have ulti 'mately weakened and distracted the Franks, and to have helped to cause the loss of Edessa 0144), which marks the turning-point in the history of the kingdom of Jerusalem.