The Crusades by Malcolm Billings

Author:Malcolm Billings
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2017-10-13T04:00:00+00:00

7

Mamluks and Mongols

The Latin East that Frederick left behind was in many respects better placed than it had been since the shock of Saladin’s victory at Hattin in 1187. The kingdom had re-established its predominant position along the Mediterranean coast – trade was booming through the royal ports of Acre and Tyre – and some of the kingdom’s lost hinterland had been clawed back under Frederick’s treaty.

On the kingdom’s northern border the county of Tripoli had not altered dramatically in terms of size, but was under the control of the Prince of Antioch. His principality, however, had noticeably shrunk and, except for the isolated garrison of Jabala and some land around the Hospitaller castle of Marqab, the Christians held only the area around Antioch itself. By this time Antioch’s relationship with Christian Cilicia was well entrenched because of the Armenian royalty who had acquired the habit of choosing wives from among the ruling families of the Latin states; and the Hospitallers and the Teutonic knights held castles at strategic points in the foothills of the Taurus mountains and along the wide coastal plain. However, the position of the Latin empire of Constantinople was not far short of precarious. After 1204, settlers from the West who, before, might have helped to ease the chronic problems of manpower in Palestine and Syria were tempted to settle in the newly acquired empire. Some knights with land in Palestine actually left the Holy Land for bigger and better offers in newly conquered territories.

But, after an energetic beginning in which mainland and island territories were conquered and distributed as fiefs for the followers of the Fourth Crusade, the Latin empire began to run into trouble. The first emperor, Baldwin, lasted little more than a year, and from then on a succession of rulers was engaged in a constant armed struggle that required the Latins to fight on two fronts for most of the time they were in power. The ‘alternative’ emperor in Nicaea was constantly campaigning to regain Constantinople, and, from the Balkan territories, the Vlacho-Bulgarians took every opportunity to expand into Thrace as a preliminary to seizing the whole empire for themselves. By 1228 the barons of the empire had called in John of Brienne – a well-known troubleshooter – to act as regent for the heir, eleven-year-old Baldwin II. The new regent was not only a famous crusader in his own right – he had been King of Jerusalem during the Fifth Crusade – he was also Emperor Frederick II’s estranged father-in-law and, by leading an invasion of Frederick’s south Italian possessions on behalf of the Pope, had been responsible for Frederick’s hurried departure from Acre in 1229.

It is just as well for the Kingdom of Jerusalem that Frederick’s peace treaty with the Muslims held. The barons of Outremer, while accepting Frederick’s infant son as the legitimate heir, would have nothing to do with the German emperor’s lieutenant, Richard Filangieri, so the Kingdom of Jerusalem staggered along in a state of civil war.

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