Read The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land Online
Authors: Thomas Asbridge
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #History, #bought-and-paid-for, #Religion
In this first wave of attack, Baybars struck with speed and efficiency. His methods and achievements revealed the Mamluks’ grasp of siegecraft and their overwhelming numerical and technological supremacy. The sultan had also indicated an ability to employ stealth so as to prevent his Latin quarry from preparing for an attack. In future campaigns Baybars took extreme steps to maintain this element of surprise. Always suspicious of enemy spies and scouts, he used messengers to deliver sealed orders to his generals, containing details of the next target that were only to be read once on the march. Most crucially of all, the sultan had shown that, in the case of Caesarea and Arsuf, his intention was destruction, not occupation. All along the Mediterranean coast his policy would be to wipe the Latin ports from the face of the Holy Land, closing, one by one, the doorways that linked Outremer with the West.
Breaking the Franks
Baybars renewed his attacks in spring 1266. One army of around 15,000 troops was sent north under Qalawun to ravage the county of Tripoli, where it swept up a number of minor fortresses, all of which were razed. Later that summer, a second Mamluk force was dispatched, this time to punish the Armenian Christians of Cilicia for their alliance with the Mongols. The Muslim host invaded in August 1266 and proceeded to lay waste to a succession of Armenian settlements. This unrelenting campaign left Hethum’s Cilician kingdom in a severely weakened state.
Meanwhile, the sultan led the bulk of his forces on a series of scouring raids up the coast, enacting a devastating scorched-earth strategy around the likes of Acre, Tyre and Sidon. The Mamluk host then turned inland to attack the major Templar fortress of Safad in Galilee, the last Latin bulwark in the Palestinian interior. According to Baybars’ chancellor, this castle was targeted because ‘it was a lump in Syria’s throat, and an obstacle to breathing in Islam’s chest’. The siege began on 13 June 1266 with a mixture of bombardment and sapping, and though the Templars put up strong resistance, they were eventually forced to sue for terms on 23 July. Conditions of surrender were agreed that supposedly allowed the Franks safe conduct to the coast, but these were never realised. Whether through blunt deceit or, as most Muslim sources suggest, because the Templars were found still to be armed as they marched from Safad, Baybars ordered the garrison’s execution. Some 1,500 Christians were duly led to a nearby hill–the site upon which the Templars traditionally themselves had executed Muslim captives–and the entire party was beheaded. One sole surviving Frank was spared and sent to Acre to relate the news of these events, and thus inspire fear.
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In the aftermath of this massacre, Baybars refortified Safad with great care and at considerable expense, and garrisoned the fortress with Muslim troops. In addition to the strengthening of battlements, two mosques were also built within its confines. This established the second arm of the sultan’s strategy: the retention of major inland strongholds to act as centres of Mamluk administration and military domination. In the months that followed, he overran a series of other castles and settlements in Palestine, including Ramla. By the end of the summer, Galilee and the Palestinian interior were under Mamluk control.
Having suffered two years of unmitigated defeat, the Latins of Outremer were left in total disarray, unsure of how to react to this seemingly unstoppable enemy. In October 1266 Hugh of Lusignan bravely tried to lead a raiding party of about 1,200 men into Galilee, but around half of this force was butchered by the Muslim force now stationed at Safad. From this point onwards the Franks began clamouring to secure terms of peace with the Mamluks, no matter how punitive. In some cases, Baybars was happy to neutralise and isolate potential opponents while the work of conquest and destruction progressed elsewhere. In 1267, for example, the master of the Hospitallers agreed a humiliating ten-year treaty covering the castles of Krak des Chevaliers and Marqab, agreeing to forsake the tribute monies traditionally extracted from local Muslims and acknowledging Baybars’ right to annul the treaty whenever he wished. However, when the Franks of Acre desperately tried to negotiate a truce in March that same year, Baybars flatly refused and, in May, made another destructive incursion into the city’s environs, terrorising the population and burning the harvest. According to one Latin chronicler, the Mamluks ‘killed more than 500 of the common people’ taken prisoner in the fields, and then ‘sliced all the hair off their heads, to below their ears’. These scalps were then supposedly hung from a ‘cord around the great tower at Safad’. This story is not confirmed in any Muslim source, but it indicates clearly the level of horror either experienced or imagined by the Christians during Baybars’ dreadful assaults.
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The fate of Antioch
Baybars’ assiduous preparations in the early 1260s had borne considerable fruit. The outposts of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem were being picked off virtually at will and the power of Cilician Armenia had been all but broken. Even so, the Mamluks had yet to conquer one of Outremer’s great cities–to crush a crusader state and drive home the message that the days of Latin dominion in the Levant were ending. In 1268, with the Ilkhanid Mongols still showing no sign of launching a new invasion, the sultan decided that the time for such a statement was ripe. As his target, he chose the territory of Bohemond VI, lord of Tripoli and Antioch–the Frankish prince who had collaborated with the Mongols in 1260.
With his sights firmly set on the north, Baybars marched out of Egypt that spring. He briefly paused at Jaffa. The truce agreed with John of Ibelin had elapsed (and John himself had died in 1266) and the sultan brusquely refused to renew terms of peace. The port promptly fell to his attack in half a day, and was demolished. After this short interruption, Baybars led his armies into the county of Tripoli, marching up the coast in early May, leaving a trail of desolation behind them. Contemporary Muslim testimony described how ‘the churches [were] razed from the face of the earth…the dead were piled up on the shore like islands of corpses’.
Bohemond VI was ensconced in Tripoli, readying himself to resist a siege, but the Mamluks bypassed the city. Baybars’ target was Antioch. Advancing north via Apamea, he arrived outside the ancient city on 15 May 1268. Antioch’s power as a crusader state had long since waned, but its great walls still stood, holding a population numbered in the tens of thousands. The sultan appears at first to have encouraged the Antiochenes to negotiate terms of capitulation, but they brazenly refused, choosing to rely upon the same walls that had held back the First Crusaders for eight months and had later repelled numerous Muslim warlords, from Il-ghazi to Saladin. This was to prove a foolish and fatal error. The Mamluk host surrounded the city on 18 May and, within a day, Baybars’ troops broke in near the citadel on Mount Silpius. A bloody and savage massacre followed, echoing that enacted by the Franks at the moment of their own conquest, almost exactly 170 years earlier. In retribution for their stubborn refusal to submit, the sultan locked the city gates so that none could escape.
Glorying in the triumphant horror of this moment, Baybars wrote to Bohemond VI to describe Antioch’s sack. In mocking terms he congratulated the Frankish ruler for not having been in the city, ‘for otherwise you would be dead or a prisoner’, and described how, if present, ‘you would have seen your knights prostrate beneath the horses’ hooves…flames running through your palaces, your dead burned in this world, before going down to the fires of the next’. The city’s fall brought the Mamluks a huge amount of plunder–it was said to have taken two days simply to divide the loot–but, once they had picked it clean, Baybars’ men left Antioch in a state of utter ruination; one from which it would not recover for centuries. The few remaining Templar outposts to the north were immediately abandoned, while the Antiochene patriarch was permitted to linger in his castle at Cursat (just to the south) for a few more years, but only as a Mamluk subject. The principality of Antioch–once Outremer’s great northern bastion–had been overwhelmed, reduced to a tiny, isolated enclave at the port of Latakia. Only the imperilled husks of two crusader states now remained: the county of Tripoli and the kingdom of Jerusalem.
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In three years of hardened campaigning, Sultan Baybars had demonstrated the unrivalled strength of the Mamluk military machine, laid bare his own hunger for conquest and for the prosecution of
jihad
, and exposed the wretched weakness of the Franks. In 1269 he allowed his victorious armies to pause for breath, and, that same summer, permitted himself the luxury of performing the
Hajj
, although even then he travelled in secret so as not to leave the sultanate unduly vulnerable to any threat, external or internal. With this affirmation of his Islamic faith completed, Baybars returned to Syria and began touring his dominions through the autumn. At this moment, he seems to have been absolutely confident of his ability finally to eliminate the last vestiges of Latin settlement and to resist any renewed threat of Mongol invasion.
But by then, tidings of Outremer’s devastation and the emergence of the terrible Mamluk scourge of the Levant had reached the West. Old champions and new were taking up the cross, eyes set to the East, for one last chance to reclaim the Holy Land.
By the end of the 1260s, little remained of the once mighty crusader settlements of Outremer. The Franks were confined now to a coastal strip running north from the Templars’ Pilgrims’ Castle (south of Haifa), through the likes of Acre, Tyre, Tripoli and Marqab, to the outpost at Latakia. Only a handful of inland castles still stood, including the headquarters of the Teutonic Order at Montfort and the redoubtable Hospitaller fortress, Krak des Chevaliers. Internal rivalry among the Latins was rife, with various claimants contesting the Jerusalemite throne, the Italian merchants of Venice and Genoa fighting over trading rights and even the Military Orders embroiled in petty politics. Centralised authority had devolved to such an extent that each Frankish city functioned as an independent polity. The shock of Antioch’s conquest in 1268 did nothing to arrest this spiralling descent into disunity and decay.
Sultan Baybars, meanwhile, had achieved major victories against the Christians, manifestly affirming his commitment to
jihad
. His pitiless approach to holy war had reduced the crusader states to a position of almost prone vulnerability. But the sultan had to be mindful of the continued threat posed by the Mongols. The problems that, for years, had left them paralysed in Mesopotamia, Asia Minor and Russia–including protracted dynastic upheavals and the open hostility between the Golden Horde and the Ilkhanate of Persia–now were starting to diminish. A forceful new Ilkhan, Abaqa, had come to power in 1265 and immediately initiated attempts to secure an anti-Mamluk alliance with western Europe. Another destructive Ilkhanid assault on Islam threatened. Yet, in spring 1270, even as Baybars looked to deal with this northern menace, news reached him in Damascus that the French were preparing again to mount a crusade from the West. Remembering only too well the havoc caused in Egypt by the last Latin invasion in 1249, the sultan immediately returned to Cairo to brace Muslim defences.
KING LOUIS’ SECOND CRUSADE
Back in Rome, Pope Clement IV was deeply alarmed by the vicious Mamluk campaigning that began in 1265. Recognising that the war for the Holy Land was being lost, in August 1266 Clement started to formulate plans for a relatively small but swiftly deployed crusade. He recruited a band of troops, mostly from the Low Countries–instructing them to depart no later than April 1267–and opened coalition talks with Abaqa and the Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII. In late summer 1266, however, King Louis IX of France caught wind of this expedition. A veteran of the holy war, now in his early fifties and ever more stringent in his religious devotions, Louis sensed a chance to lay the troubled memories of Mansourah to rest. That September he privately informed the pope of his wish to join the crusade. In some respects, Louis’ enrolment–publicly confirmed by a crusading vow on 25 March 1267–was a boon, for it promised to result in a far larger and more potent campaign. With this in mind, Clement postponed the smaller endeavour that he had originally envisaged. Somewhat ironically, this delay (the result of Louis’ enthusiasm) left Baybars free to crush Antioch in 1268.
Just as he had done in the 1240s, Louis made careful financial and logistical preparations for his second crusade. Recruitment was not as buoyant for this campaign–the king’s old comrade-in-arms John of Joinville was one who did not enlist. But given the setbacks endured by previous expeditions, and the concerns expressed in some quarters about the papacy’s apparent abuse of the crusading ideal, the number of participants was surprisingly substantial. The most notable figure to take the cross was the future King Edward I of England, then known as the Lord Edward. Fresh from winning the civil war that had threatened the reign of his embattled father King Henry III, Edward committed to the crusade in June 1268 and, putting aside any animosity with France, later agreed to coordinate his expedition with that of King Louis.
In November 1268, however, Clement IV died, and because of divisions with the Church over Rome’s dealings with the ambitious and, by some accounts, untrustworthy Charles of Anjou (Louis IX’s surviving brother and now the king of Sicily), no papal successor was appointed until 1271. During this interregnum, the sense of urgency that Clement had sought to instil in the crusaders quickly dissipated. With momentum lost, the departure was delayed until summer 1270. In the interim, renewed attempts were made to contact the Mongol Ilkhan Abaqa, and in March 1270 Charles of Anjou also took the cross.
After Louis finally embarked from Aigues-Mortes in July 1270, his second crusade proved to be a pathetic anticlimax. For reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained, but may well have been related to the machinations of his scheming brother Charles, Louis detoured from his declared route to Palestine. Instead, he sailed to Tunis (in modern Tunisia), which was then ruled by an independent Muslim warlord, Abu Abdallah. The French king arrived in North Africa seemingly expecting Abu Abdallah to convert to Christianity and collaborate in an attack on Mamluk Egypt. When he failed to do so, plans for a direct assault on Tunis were laid–but the attack never came. In the midsummer heat, disease took hold in the crusader camp and, in early August, Louis himself fell ill. Over the course of three weeks his strength ebbed. On 25 August 1270, the pious crusader monarch Louis IX died, his final act a fruitless campaign far from the Holy Land. Legend has it that his last whispered words were ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem’. The king’s dreams of recovering that sacred city had come to nothing, but his earnest devotion was unmistakeable. In 1297 Louis was canonised as a saint.
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In the wake of Louis’ demise, efforts were made in mid-November to sail on to the Levant, but when a large portion of the fleet sank in a heavy storm, most Franks returned to Europe. Only Charles of Anjou gained from the whole affair, securing a treaty with Abu Abdallah that brought Sicily rich tribute payments. Edward of England, alone of the leading crusaders, refused to be turned from his purpose and insisted on continuing his journey to the Near East with a small fleet of thirteen ships.
TIGHTENING THE NOOSE
Some six months earlier, in May 1270, Baybars had returned to Cairo to prepare Egypt for King Louis’ expected invasion. He took this threat seriously, putting the Nile region on high alert, and later demolished the battlements at Ascalon and filled its harbour with rocks and timber to render it unusable. But that autumn, news of the French king’s death reached Cairo, bringing relief and leaving the sultan free to ready the Mamluk army for another campaign.
The impregnable fortress
In early 1271, Baybars marched north to target the remaining Latin outposts in the southern reaches of the Ansariyah range–once the border zone between Antioch and Tripoli. This area was dominated by a supposedly impregnable Hospitaller castle: Krak des Chevaliers. Since the crusades began, no Muslim commander had ever made a serious attempt to invest this fortress, perched on a steep-sloped ridge, dominating the surrounding region. Significantly strengthened by an extensive building programme earlier in the thirteenth century, Krak’s defences now stood as a perfect expression of cutting-edge Frankish castle technology. Yet even in the face of this seemingly insurmountable challenge, Baybars was not to be deterred. Arriving in force with an array of ballistic weaponry, he laid siege to the stronghold on 21 February.
Krak could only be approached along the ridge from the south, and this was where the Hospitallers had positioned their sturdiest battlements: double walls, lined with hefty rounded towers; an inner moat, leading on to an angled glacis (sloping stone wall) to prevent sapping. Nonetheless, the Mamluks concentrated their bombardment in this sector and, after more than a month, the barrage eventually told, causing a section of the southern outer walls to collapse. This was not the end of the affair, because the Hospitallers were able to retreat to the inner ward–a compact citadel that was virtually indestructible. Realising that overcoming this keep would probably cost many Muslim troops their lives and would certainly result in structural damage to the castle itself, Baybars switched tactics. In early April he had a forged letter presented to the Latin garrison commander. This missive, purportedly from the Hospitaller master, instructed the knights to seek terms and surrender. It is not certain whether they really were duped by the sultan’s ruse, or merely seized upon this opportunity to capitulate with a modicum of honour. In any case, the Hospitallers submitted on 8 April 1271 and were granted safe passage to Tripoli. After this famous triumph, Baybars was said to have declared proudly that ‘these troops of mine are incapable of besieging any fort and leaving it [unconquered]’. Carefully repaired, Krak des Chevaliers became a Mamluk command centre in northern Syria.
Fresh from his unprecedented success, the sultan amassed troops for a decisive assault on Tripoli. In May, Muslims swarmed over a number of outlying forts and, in a confident mood, Baybars again wrote to Bohemond VI, this time warning the count of Tripoli that chains had been readied for his incarceration. The sultan ordered the main advance on 16 May, but at that same moment he received a report of Lord Edward’s arrival with a crusader host at Acre. Unsure of the precise level of threat posed to Palestine, Baybars called off the Tripolitan invasion and readily acceded to Bohemond’s pleas for truce, agreeing a ten-year peace.
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The Lord Edward of England
Travelling via Damascus, the sultan moved into northern Palestine, ready to counter an attack from Acre by Edward’s crusaders. It soon became clear, however, that the English prince had arrived with only a limited contingent of troops. Finding himself free to act, Baybars promptly laid siege to the castle of Montfort–the headquarters of the Teutonic Order, in the hills east of Acre. Once again, victory soon followed. After three weeks of heavy bombardment and sapping, the fortress surrendered on 12 June and, in this case, was then demolished.
In July 1271, Edward mounted a short-lived incursion into Muslim territory east of Acre, but soon turned back when his soldiers fell ill, unaccustomed to the heat and the local food. This type of fleeting foray caused the sultan little concern. His main worry was the possibility of an alliance between the English crusaders and the Ilkhanid Mongols. In fact, Christian sources make it clear that, upon his arrival in the Levant, Edward immediately dispatched envoys to Abaqa, but it seems that no reply was forthcoming. Even so, that autumn–whether by coincidence or design–the Mongols and Latins managed to launch offensives that were roughly simultaneous. In October, Ilkhanid troops marched into northern Syria and ravaged the region around Harim. Meanwhile, in late November Edward mounted a second punitive raid into the area south-east of Caesarea. Neither attack was made in force, however, nor was any real determination shown, and, rather than lead in person, Abaqa sent one of his field commanders. Baybars was forced to redeploy a few
mamluk
divisions, but easily quelled these two minor incursions.
With such limited resources at his disposal, there was little more that Edward could do. When fighting in the West he had proved himself to be a skilled general and a cold-blooded campaigner–qualities that would come to the fore during his reign as king of England–but Edward was given no real opportunity to exercise these talents in Palestine. Even so, the English crusade did benefit Outremer: halting the attack on Tripoli and prompting Baybars to re-evaluate his strategic priorities. The recent Ilkhanid offensive may have been repelled, but it seemed to presage a new era of Mongol aggression and highlighted the potential perils of an alliance between Abaqa and the Franks. With all this in mind, the sultan decided to buy security in Palestine, agreeing a ten-year truce with the kingdom of Jerusalem on 21 April 1272. The deal brought the Latins minor territorial concessions and a pledge of pilgrim access to Nazareth. Baybars was willing to use negotiation to neutralise the kingdom of Jerusalem, but he had already decided to employ more violent means to deal with the lingering and unpredictable threat posed by the Lord Edward.
At some point during the preceding months, the sultan had hired an Assassin to murder the English crusader. Through a slow and painstaking deception, this Muslim gained entry into Acre–claiming to seek baptism–and then inveigled himself into Edward’s service. One evening in May he caught the crusader off guard in his chambers, and attacked him suddenly with a dagger. Reacting instinctively, Edward deflected the blow and the blade inflicted only a minor injury, perhaps to his hip. The assailant was cudgelled to death and, fearing that poison might have been involved, the English prince was immediately given an antidote. This may have been an unnecessary measure; in any case, after a few weeks’ convalescence, Edward was returned to health. Having survived his brush with death, he left the Near East in late September 1272.
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Shifting focus
With treaties in place binding the Franks to peace in Palestine and Tripoli, Baybars turned his attention to the Mongols. In late 1272 Abaqa launched another, more concerted, offensive that was driven back only after a series of hard-fought engagements in which Qalawun distinguished himself. The sultan now resolved to deal directly with the Ilkhanid problem. Rather than await further invasions, he decided to take the fight to his enemy–returning to Egypt, he began to lay plans for the most ambitious campaign of his career.
In 1273 Baybars endured two distractions. For years, his disreputable
sufi
confidant Khadir al-Mirani had been a cause of irritation and suspicion for the sultan’s leading emirs. Khadir acquired a well-earned reputation for rampant sexual deviancy and rapacious adultery; he was also given to desecrating the sacred sites of other religions–causing significant damage to the likes of the Holy Sepulchre. In May 1273, the emirs finally pinned him down on irrefutable charges of embezzlement and forced the sultan to recognise his soothsayer’s crimes at a tribunal convened in Cairo. A death penalty was prescribed, but this soon was commuted to imprisonment when Khadir prophesied that his own death would be immediately followed by that of Baybars. In July that same year, the sultan also moved against the Assassins. The Isma‘ili Order had maintained a weakening presence on the western flanks of the Ansariyah range through the thirteenth century. Despite having called upon their services in 1272, Baybars now judged their continued independence to be unacceptable. Mamluk forces were thus detailed to seize possession of the Assassins’ remaining fortresses, including Masyaf, and from this point onwards the remnants of the Order were controlled by the sultanate.