The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land (16 page)

With that the Franks began advancing at speed, taking the fight to the Egyptians, arrayed in five or six divisions. Baldwin, astride his fleet-footed mount fittingly named Gazelle, led a reserve force, ready to attack once the shape of the fracas became clear. Riding close to his king throughout, Fulcher of Chartres later evoked the chaotic horror of the battle that followed, writing that ‘the number of the foe was so great and they swarmed over us so quickly that hardly anyone could see or recognise anyone else’. The Latin vanguard was soon decimated, with Geldemar Carpinel among the slain, and the whole army was quickly encircled.

With the Christians on the brink of defeat, Baldwin committed his reserve, riding alongside the True Cross. At the force of his attack rank upon rank of Fatimid troops buckled. Fulcher watched as the king himself skewered a leading Egyptian emir in the belly with his lance, and a large portion of the Muslim force turned in flight. It was probably in this shock assault that Sa‘ad al-Daulah was killed. One Latin contemporary believed that victory was assured by a miracle associated with the True Cross in which a Muslim commander was choked to death just as he was about to attack the bishop carrying the relic. This story seems to have circulated through the army, and certainly contributed to the burgeoning cult surrounding the Cross, but in reality the whole encounter was close run and inconclusive. Fulcher testified that the field was cloaked with weapons, armour and the bodies of both Muslim and Christian dead, estimating the enemy’s losses at 5,000, but conceding that eighty Frankish knights and a larger number of infantry were killed. And while Baldwin was able to retain control of the plain and of the run-down sections of the Fatimid force that had routed in the direction of Ascalon, terrified survivors of the Latin vanguard were, at the same time, streaming back towards Jaffa, hotly pursued by Muslim troops who believed they had carried the day.

So great was the confusion that two Frankish escapees from the battle actually declared a defeat upon reaching Jaffa, ‘saying that the king and all his men were dead’. With about 500 Fatimid troops riding on the port, Baldwin’s traumatised queen (then residing in Jaffa) quickly dispatched a messenger north to Antioch by ship, begging Tancred to bring aid. Luckily for the Franks, the people of Jaffa rejected any notion of an immediate surrender, and the very next day King Baldwin, having camped at the battlefield as a statement of victory, arrived on the coast. At first sight, the remaining Fatimid soldiers outside Jaffa thought the approaching army was their own and happily rode out in greeting; realising their mistake and the grave reversal of fortune that must have occurred, they fled. A second messenger was immediately sent north to declare the king alive and victorious.
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Through a mixture of strategic resolution and good fortune, Baldwin had prevailed against the odds, but any sense of triumph or security was to be short-lived. Egypt’s abundant wealth meant that al-Afdal had the resources to mount a second invasion of Palestine almost immediately. With the coming of spring in 1102 and the start of the new fighting season, another Fatimid army gathered at Ascalon, this time under the command of al-Afdal’s son, Sharaf al-Ma‘ali. In May the Egyptians marched once again on Ramla, skirmishing with the fifteen knights guarding its small fortified tower and raiding the nearby Church of St George at Lydda.

Baldwin I was, at this point, at Jaffa, seeing off the last members of the ill-fated 1101 crusade who had recently celebrated Easter in Jerusalem. William of Aquitaine managed to take ship to the West, but Stephen of Blois, Count Stephen of Burgundy and many others were less fortunate: having set sail, they encountered unfavourable winds and were forced to turn back. They were beside the king, therefore, when rumours of this latest Egyptian offensive arrived around 17 May. Baldwin now made the most calamitous decision of his life. Believing that the news from Ramla heralded the presence of a small Fatimid expeditionary force rather than a full-scale field army, he rashly elected to prosecute a speedy retaliatory attack. In the company of his own household and a clutch of crusaders–including the two Stephens, Hugh of Lusignan and Conrad, constable of Germany–he rode from Jaffa, seemingly brimful with confidence. His force contained a mere 200 knights and no infantry.

Once on the plains of Ramla the full might of the Egyptian army came into view and Baldwin realised the terrible reality of his miscalculation. Facing thousands of Muslim troops (one estimate put them at 20,000), the Franks now had no hope of victory and precious little chance of survival. Sharaf al-Ma‘ali rushed to engage the king’s tiny force the moment it was spotted. Baldwin attempted to mount a valiant charge, but the odds were hopeless; quickly surrounded, the carnage began. Within minutes the bulk of his force had been slain. Among the dead were the First Crusader Stabelo, once Godfrey of Bouillon’s chamberlain, and the 1101 crusader Gerbod of Windeke. Amid the confusion, another veteran of the First Crusade, Roger of Rozoy, managed to break through with a small group of men and race back towards Jaffa. Meanwhile, with the enemy closing in for the kill, Baldwin beat a fighting retreat to Ramla with a handful of survivors, taking meagre sanctuary in its fortified tower.

That evening, Baldwin found himself in a desperate predicament. Knowing full well that dawn would bring a crushing Fatimid assault and certain death or capture, he made what must have been a tortured decision: to abandon his army and seek escape under cover of night. In the company of five of his most faithful and fearsome retainers he stole out of the encircled fort, probably in some form of disguise and via a small postern gate, but he was soon challenged by Muslim troops. In the darkness a bloody, chaotic mêlée began. According to one contemporary, a Frankish knight named Robert ‘went to the front with drawn sword, mowing down the [enemy] to right and left’ but he momentarily lost hold of his weapon and was quickly overwhelmed. As another two of his companions fell, Baldwin fled, borne away astride his swift horse, Gazelle. He now had with him a single surviving follower, Hugh of Brulis (of whom there is no further record).

The Egyptians quickly launched a frantic hunt for the fugitive monarch. Sensing that he was only moments away from capture, the king sought sanctuary and concealment in an overgrown thicket of canes, but his pursuers set light to the undergrowth. Baldwin barely managed to escape, suffering minor burns in the process. He spent the next two days on the run, in fear of his life. Bewildered, short of food and water, he first tried to find a way through the wild Judean foothills to Jerusalem, but retreated at the sight of numerous Fatimid patrols combing the area. On 19 May 1102 he turned north-west to the coast and eventually found his way to Arsuf and a modicum of safety. Throughout this period Baldwin must have been plagued by feelings of humiliation and doubt; he had no way of knowing what fate had befallen his abandoned comrades at Ramla, nor whether Jaffa or even the Holy City might have capitulated in his absence. It is testament to the physical and psychological trauma of the preceding days that, once at Arsuf, his first concern was to eat, drink and sleep. As one Latin contemporary observed, ‘this was required by the human side of his nature’.

The next day brought better fortune. Hugh of Falchenberg, lord of Tiberias, arrived at Arsuf with eighty knights, having heard of the Egyptian assault. Commandeering an English pirate ship anchored nearby, the king sailed south towards Jaffa, while Hugh marched south along the coastline. Baldwin found Jaffa in a parlous state, besieged on land by Sharaf al-Ma‘ali’s forces and at sea by an Egyptian fleet of thirty vessels, come north from Ascalon. Boldly flying his royal banner from his own ship to bring heart to Jaffa’s garrison, the king narrowly evaded the Fatimid flotilla to reach the harbour. Once on land, the news he encountered was grim indeed.

Jaffa had come close to capitulation. Unsure of the king’s whereabouts and the fate of his army at Ramla, and surrounded on all sides, the port’s populace were already in desperate straits. But then Sharaf al-Ma‘ali employed a devious tactic. In life, Gerbod of Windeke had apparently borne a passing resemblance to the king. The Muslims now mutilated his corpse, cutting off his head and legs and, having dressed these grisly remains in the purple of royalty, paraded them before Jaffa’s walls, declaiming Baldwin’s death and demanding immediate surrender. Many, including the queen, who once again found herself ensconced in Jaffa, were taken in by this ruse, and began planning to flee the port by ship. It was at this very moment that Baldwin’s ship appeared from the north. The king’s timely arrival buoyed morale and seems to have shaken Sharaf’s resolve. The bulk of the Fatimid army now retreated some distance towards Ascalon, apparently to prepare siege machinery for a full-scale assault, but this gave the Franks an invaluable breathing space within which to regroup.

Baldwin had arrived in time to save Jaffa, but he was too late to intervene in the events at Ramla. On the morning after his escape, Muslim troops stormed Ramla’s town walls and moved in to surround the fortified tower which now held the remnants of Baldwin’s force. The Fatimids began an intense assault siege of this rudimentary structure, undermining its walls and setting fires to smoke out its occupants. By 19 May the trapped Franks were in a hopeless predicament; abandoned by the king, confronting defeat, they chose, in the words of one Latin contemporary, ‘to be destroyed while defending honourably [rather] than to choke and die a wretched death’. Charging from the tower, they mounted a suicidal last stand and were promptly butchered almost to a man. One of the few to survive was Conrad of Germany, who fought with such ferocity, cutting down any who came within sword length, that in the end he was left standing, ringed by the dead and dying. Awestruck, the Fatimid troops offered him the chance to surrender on the promise that he would be spared and taken as a captive to Egypt. Conrad left behind him many who were less fortunate, among them Stephen of Blois, whose death at Ramla finally put to rest the shame of his cowardice at Antioch four years earlier.

The disaster at Ramla proved to be the low point in Frankish fortunes that year. At the start of June 1102 Baldwin rallied troops from across the kingdom, including a contingent from Jerusalem bearing the True Cross. His forces were also boosted by the arrival of a sizeable pilgrim fleet. Now in command of a full field army, Baldwin launched an immediate counter-attack on the ill-prepared Egyptians. Sharaf’s indecisive generalship had already sewn the seeds of discontent among the Fatimids; in the face of this sudden Frankish assault, they were soon routed. The number of Muslim fatalities was limited and the pickings after the battle were rather paltry–some camels and asses–but the ‘crusader’ kingdom had, nonetheless, been saved.
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Between Egypt and Damascus

In these fragile, formative years the Latins of Jerusalem were extremely fortunate that no alliance existed between Shi‘ite Egypt and the great Sunni Syrian power of Damascus. Had Baldwin faced such a combined threat in 1101 or 1102, the meagre resources of his kingdom might have been overwhelmed. As it was, Duqaq of Damascus pursued a subdued policy of détente with Frankish Palestine for the remainder of his life. Stung by the memory of defeat at the Dog River, content to allow the Christians to block Fatimid ambitions in the Holy Land, Duqaq maintained a stance of neutrality. But with his premature death in 1104 at the age of just twenty-one, Damascus was to adopt a new policy.

After a brief but ugly contest, Duqaq’s leading lieutenant, the
Atabeg
*
Tughtegin, took control of the city. As husband to Duqaq’s scheming widowed mother, Safwat, he had long waited in the wings; indeed, it was even rumoured that Duqaq’s untimely demise had been the result of poisoning organised by Tughtegin himself. Now, the
atabeg
’s gift for devious political intrigue and his casual, at times chillingly capricious, attitude to brutality propelled him into power. In 1105 the
atabeg
accepted a renewed overture for military cooperation from Egypt. Fortunately for the Franks, however, this unprecedented Sunni–Shi‘ite coalition had its limits. Perhaps still harbouring doubts about his new allies, Tughtegin stopped short of organising a full-scale Damascene invasion of Palestine. Instead, he contributed a force of 1,500 archers when al-Afdal sent a third army, under another of his sons, north to Ascalon in the summer of 1105.

With an Egyptian fleet also harrying Jaffa, Baldwin I recognised that the port would soon be besieged and his realm once again destabilised. Stealing the initiative, he summoned the patriarch of Jerusalem and the True Cross and moved to engage the Fatimid army head-on near Ramla. On this occasion he commanded around 500 knights and 2,000 infantry, but even so they must have been significantly outnumbered. For the third time in four years, however, Egyptian martial indiscipline allowed Baldwin to rout his enemy and secure a narrow victory. The casualties on both sides were roughly equal, but the encounter nonetheless had a ruinous effect on Fatimid morale. The Muslim ruler of Ascalon was slain in the battle; Baldwin ordered the emir’s decapitation and then had his severed head taken to Jaffa and brandished before the Egyptian fleet to encourage their hasty departure.

Egypt continued to threaten Frankish Palestine, but al-Afdal launched no further large-scale offensives and certainly never achieved significant success. For the moment Damascus had been partially neutralised. Tughtegin adopted a more nuanced, predominantly non-aggressive approach to his dealings with Jerusalem. He was certainly not averse to defending Damascene interests with force when he considered them to be under threat, and he also prosecuted frequent punitive raids into Christian territory. But at the same time he agreed a succession of limited-term pacts with Baldwin, primarily directed at easing the path of mutually beneficial trade between Syria and Palestine.