A History of the Crusades-Vol 2 (13 page)

A similar attempt to establish a protectorate
over Baalbek with the help of the governor, the eunuch al-Taj Gumushtekin, had
failed in the spring of 1110. Toghtekin heard of the plot and replaced
Gumushtekin by his own son Taj al-Mulk Buri.

Baldwin’s main preoccupation had been to secure
for his kingdom an adequate coast-line. But he was also concerned to give it
suitable land frontiers and at the same time to take full advantage of its
proximity to the great Arab trade-routes from Iraq and Arabia to the
Mediterranean and to Egypt. When Tancred had left Palestine for Antioch,
Baldwin entrusted the principality of Galilee, which retained the grandiloquent
name that Tancred had given it, to his former neighbour in France, Hugh of
Saint-Omer; and Hugh had been encouraged in an aggressive policy against the
Moslems. His first action was to construct in the mountains, over the road between
Tyre and Banyas and Damascus, a castle called Toron, the Tibnin of to-day.
Then, in order the better to conduct raids in the rich lands east of the Sea of
Galilee, he built another castle on the hills south-west of the lake, called by
the Arabs al-Al. These two fortresses were completed by the autumn of 1105; but
the second had a short life in Christian hands. Toghtekin of Damascus could not
allow such a threat to his territory. At the end of the year, when Hugh was
returning to al-Al, heavily laden after a successful raid, the Damascene army
fell on him. He was mortally wounded in the battle and his men scattered.
Toghtekin was then able without difficulty to take over the castle. Hugh’s
brother, Gerard of Saint-Omer, who was seriously ill at the time, did not long
survive Hugh. Baldwin therefore gave the fief of Galilee to a French knight,
Gervase of Basoches.

Guerrilla warfare continued. In 1106 the
Tyrians made a raid against Toron, to coincide with a Damascene raid against
Tiberias. Neither raid was successful; and on Baldwin’s approach, the
Damascenes sent to his camp to arrange for a short armistice. His gracious and
munificent reception of their envoys did much to enhance his reputation among
the Moslems. But the truce was brief. In the spring of 1108 Toghtekin again
raided Galilee and in a battle outside Tiberias managed to capture Gervase of
Basoches, together with most of his staff. He then sent to Baldwin to say that
the price for their liberation was the three cities of Tiberias, Acre and Haifa.
When Baldwin refused the offer, Gervase was put to death, and his scalp, with
its white locks waving, was carried on a pole before the victorious Moslem
army.
Baldwin then gave back the title of Prince of Galilee to
Tancred, but probably administered the principality from Jerusalem. In 1113,
after Tancred’s death, when Baldwin of Edessa banished Joscelin of Courtenay
from his county, the exile was compensated by the King with Galilee.

1108: Truce with
Damascus

At the end of 1108 Baldwin and Toghtekin, both
of whose main interests lay elsewhere, made a ten years’ truce, dividing the
revenues of the districts of Sawad and Ajlun, that is to say, northern
Transjordan, between them. A third was to go to Baldwin, a third to Toghtekin
and a third was to remain with the local authorities. The reasons for the truce
were probably commercial. Raids were ruining the carrying trade that went
through the country; and all parties would benefit by its resumption. The truce
was purely local. It did not keep Toghtekin from coming to the help of the
Moslem coastal cities, nor did it restrain Baldwin from his attempt to turn
Baalbek into a vassal-city. But Arab historians remarked with gratitude that
owing to it Baldwin did not invade Damascene land when Toghetin’s defeat by
William-Jordan at Arqa would have offered a useful opportunity. The desire for
a truce may have arisen on Baldwin’s side as a result of Gervase’s defeat and
the consequent danger of raids from Transjordan into Galilee, and on the
Moslems’ after two recent raids, one conducted by a newly arrived pilgrim to
Palestine, Robert of Normandy’s son, William Cliton, on a wealthy Arab princess
who was journeying with all her belongings from Arabia to Damascus, and the
other on a merchant caravan bound from Damascus to Egypt. On the first occasion
the Franks obtained four thousand camels, and on the second all the merchandise
of the caravan, whose survivors were slaughtered later by the Bedouin. The
treaty was broken in 1113, when Baldwin invaded Damascene territory.

From 1111, after his failure before Tyre,
Baldwin was for a time occupied by affairs in northern Syria. He had already
made it clear, at Tripoli in 1109, that he intended to be master of all the
Frankish East; and events at Antioch and Edessa enabled him to reassert his
claim. He could also once more turn his attention to the aggrandizement of his
personal domain. He had always been aware that Palestine was open to invasion
and infiltration from the south-east, through the Negeb, and that the command
of the country between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Akaba was necessary in
order to cut off Egypt from the eastern Moslem world. In 1107 Toghtekin had
sent a Damascene army into Edom, at the invitation of the local Bedouin, to
establish a base from which Judaea could be raided. The Idumaean wilderness
contained several Greek monasteries; and one of the monks, a certain Theodore,
urged Baldwin to intervene. Baldwin marched down close to the Turkish
encampment in the Wadi Musa, near Petra; but he wished to avoid a battle.
Theodore therefore offered to go as though a fugitive to Toghtekin’s general,
to warn him that a huge Frankish army was at hand. The Turks were alarmed and
retreated at full speed back to Damascus. Baldwin then punished the Bedouin by
smoking them out of the caverns in which they lived and carrying off their
flocks. When he returned northward, he took with him many of the native
Christians, who feared reprisals from the Bedouin.

Baldwin returned to the Idumaean country in
1115. He decided that it must be permanently occupied. Coming down from Hebron
round the base of the Dead Sea and across the Wadi al-Araba, the stark valley
that runs from the Dead Sea towards the Gulf of Akaba, he arrived at one of the
few fertile spots in that bleak region, Shobak, on a wooded range between the
depression and the Arabian desert. There, almost a hundred miles from the
nearest Frankish settlement, he constructed a great castle, in which he left a
garrison, well stocked with arms, and to which he gave the name of The Royal
Mountain, Le Krak de Montreal. Next year, at the head of his army and with a
long train of mules bearing provisions, he plunged farther into unknown Arabia.
He revisited Montreal and marched on southward, till at last his weary men
reached the shores of the Red Sea, at Akaba. There they bathed their horses in
the sea and caught the fishes for which those waters are renowned. The local
inhabitants, terrified, took to their boats and fled. Baldwin occupied the
town, called by the Franks Aila or Elyn, and fortified it with a citadel. He
then sailed across to the little island, the Jesirat Far’un, called by the
Franks Graye, where he built a second castle. Garrisons were left in both
strongholds. Thanks to them, the Franks now dominated the roads between Damascus
and Arabia and Egypt. They could raid the caravans at their ease, and made it
difficult for any Moslem army to reach Egypt from the East.

1118: Baldwin
invades Egypt

On his return from the shores of the Red Sea,
Baldwin marched again against Tyre, but contented himself with setting up a
strict blockade of the city from the land. To that end he built a castle at
Scandelion, where the coast road begins to climb up the side of the cliff to
the pass known as the Ladder of Tyre. Sidon already controlled the approach to
Tyre from the north and the castle of Toron from the east. Scandelion completed
its encirclement.

Encouraged by his achievements, Baldwin
embarked in 1118 on a bolder expedition. Fatimid armies from Ascalon had twice
lately conducted successful raids into his territory. In 1113, when he was
engaged against the Turks in the north, they had advanced as far as the walls
of Jerusalem, pillaging as they came; and in 1115 they almost succeeded in
surprising Jaffa. Baldwin’s answer now was to invade Egypt itself. Early in
March, after careful negotiations with the sheikhs of the desert tribes, he led
a small army of two hundred and sixteen horsemen and four hundred
foot-soldiers, well supplied with provisions, from Hebron across the Sinai
peninsula, to the Mediterranean coast at Farama, well within the Egyptian
frontier, close to the mouth of the Pelusian branch of the Nile. He prepared to
take the city by assault, but the garrison had fled in panic. He marched on to
the Nile itself; and his men were agape to see the famous river. But there a
mortal illness struck him down. He retired back dying towards Palestine.

By his unwearying campaigns and his use of
every opportunity King Baldwin had raised his inheritance to be a consolidated
state comprising the whole historic province of Palestine. With only Tyre and
Ascalon still out of his grasp, he controlled the country from Beirut in the
north to Beersheba in the south, with the Jordan as his eastern frontier and
with outposts in the far south-east to command the approaches from Arabia. His
fellow-Christians in the Frankish East acknowledged his hegemony; and he had
won the respect of his Moslem neighbours. His work had ensured that the kingdom
of Jerusalem would not easily be destroyed.

Of the internal administration of his kingdom
we have very little evidence. Broadly speaking, it was feudal. But Baldwin kept
most of the country in his own hands, appointing viscounts as his deputies.
Even the greatest of the fiefs, the principality of Galilee, was for some years
without its lord. The fiefs were not yet considered to be hereditary. When Hugh
of Saint-Omer was killed, it was thought that his brother Gerard would have
succeeded to his principality had his health permitted, but his right was not
absolute. Baldwin himself evolved a rough constitution for the kingdom. He
himself governed through a household that was increasing in size; and his
feudatories had their own. To Baldwin were due the arrangements with the
Italians in the seaports, who were not obliged to assist on military campaigns,
but had to take part in the naval defence of their localities.

Baldwin had made it clear that he intended to
control the Church. Once he was sure of its support he treated it generously,
freely endowing it with lands conquered from the infidel. His generosity was to
some degree mistaken; for the Church was free of the obligation to provide
soldiers. On the other hand he expected it to provide him with money.

Frequent incidents showed that Baldwin was
popular with the native Christians. Ever since the episode at Easter, 1101, he
had been careful to have regard for their susceptibilities. At his courts they
were allowed to use their own languages and to follow their own customs; and
the Church was not allowed to interfere with their religious practices. In the
last years of his reign he encouraged the immigration of Christians, heretic as
well as Orthodox, from the neighbouring countries under Moslem rule. He needed
an industrious peasant population to occupy the lands left empty in Judaea by
the departure of the Moslems. He favoured marriage between the Franks and the
natives, for which he himself had set an example. Very few of the barons took
local brides; but the practice became common among the poorer Frankish soldiers
and settlers. Their cross-bred children were to provide the kingdom later with
most of its soldiers.

Baldwin and the
Eastern Peoples

Baldwin showed similar affability towards the
Moslems and Jews that consented to become his subjects. A few mosques and
synagogues were permitted. In the law courts Moslems might swear on the Koran
and Jews on the Torah; and infidel litigants could rely on obtaining justice.
Intermarriage with Moslems was allowed. In 1114 the Patriarch Arnulf was
severely scolded by Pope Paschal for having performed a marriage ceremony
between a Christian and a Moslem lady.

Therein Pope Paschal showed once again his
misunderstanding of the East. For if the Franks were to survive there, they
must not remain an alien minority but must become part of the local world.
Baldwin’s chaplain, Fulcher of Chartres, in a lyrical chapter in his History,
remarked on the miraculous work of God in turning Occidentals into Orientals.
That eastern and western races should blend seemed to him admirable; he saw it
as a step towards the union of nations. Throughout the existence of the
Crusading states we find the same story. Wise Frankish statesmen in the East
followed Baldwin’s tradition, adopting local customs and forming local
friendships and alliances, while newcomers from the West brought with them
chauvinistic ideas that were disastrous for the country.

The King had already offended the Pope, when
his conquests along the Syrian coasts had brought into his power towns, notably
Sidon and Beirut, whose churches historically belonged to the Patriarch of
Antioch. The proper administration of the kingdom demanded that they should be
transferred to the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Jerusalem; and Baldwin
thereupon transferred them. The Patriarch of Antioch, Bernard, protested to the
Pope against such an uncanonical act. Paschal had in 1110 informed Jerusalem
that in view of changed circumstances the historic position could be ignored.
In 1112, with his habitual weakness, he veered round and supported the claims
of Antioch. Baldwin blandly ignored the Pope’s new decision. In spite of a
petulant reproof from Paschal, the bishoprics remained under the Patriarchate
of Jerusalem.