A History of the Crusades-Vol 3

A HISTORY OF

THE CRUSADES

VOLUME III

THE KINGDOM OF ACRE

and the Later Crusades

BY

STEVEN RUNCIMAN

CAMBRIDGE

UNIVERSITY PRESS

Published by the Press Syndicate of the
University of Cambridge

The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street,
Cambridge CB2 IRP

40 West 20th Street, New York, NY
10011-4211, USA

10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne
3166, Australia

© Cambridge University Press 1951

First published in hardback 1951

First published in paperback by Cambridge
University Press 1987

Reprinted 1951, 1953, 1954, 1957, 1962,
1968, 1975, 1980, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1993, 1995

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress catalog card number:
75-10236

Volume I: ISBN 0 521 06161 x hardback

ISBN 0 521 34770 x paperback

Volume II: ISBN 0 521 06162 8 hardback

ISBN 0 521 34771 8 paperback

Volume III: ISBN 0 521 06163 6 hardback

ISBN 0 521 34772 6 paperback

Set of three volumes: ISBN 0 521 20554 9
hardback

ISBN 0 521 35997 x paperback

Paperback editions for sale in USA only

To

KATHARINE FARRER

CONTENTS

List
of
Plates

List
of
Maps

Preface

BOOK I

THE THIRD CRUSADE

I           The
Conscience of the West

II         Acre

III        Coeur-de-Lion

IV        The
Second Kingdom

BOOK II

MISGUIDED CRUSADES

I           The
Crusade against Christians

II         The
Fifth Crusade

III        The
Emperor Frederick

IV        Legalized
Anarchy

BOOK III

THE MONGOLS AND THE MAMELUKS

I           The
Coming of the Mongols

II         Saint
Louis

III        The
Mongols in Syria

IV        Sultan
Baibars

BOOK IV

THE END OF OUTREMER

I           The
Commerce of Outremer

II         Architecture
and the Arts in Outremer

III        The
Fall of Acre

BOOK V

EPILOGUE

I           The
Last Crusades

II         The
Summing-Up

Appendix

II         Intellectual
Life in Outremer

III        Genealogical
Trees

1. The Royal Houses of
Jerusalem and Cyprus and the House of Ibelin

2. The Princely House of
Antioch

3. The House of Embriaco

4. The Royal House of Armenia
(Cilicia)

5. The Ayubite House

6. The House of Jenghiz Khan

LIST OF PLATES

I           The
Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and his sons, Henry VI, King of the Romans, and
Frederick, Duke of Swabia (From the Fulda manuscript of the
Historia
Welforum)

II         Constantinople
from the Asiatic Coast (From
Beauties of the Bosphorus,
London, n.d.)

III        View
of Tyre (David Roberts, 1839)

IV        Sidon
(From
Syria Illustrated,
by Bartlett, Allom, etc., Vol. III, London,
1838)

V          The
Ilkhan Hulagu (From British Museum MS. Add. 18803)

VI        Krak
des Chevaliers, from the air (Photograph supplied by Institut Francais d’Archeologie,
Beirut)

VII      The
Choir of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1681 (From Corneille le Bruyn,
Voyage
in the Levant,
London, 17oz)

VIII     The
Cathedral of Tortosa (From
Les Monuments des Croises,
by C. Enlart, pub.
Geuthner, Paris, 1926-7)

IX        Mosaic
panel of Christ in Glory, from the vault of the Latin chapel of Calvary (From
W. Harvey,
Church of the Holy Sepulchre,
Oxford, 1933)

X          The
Church of St Andrew at Acre in 1681 (From
Voyage in the Levant)

XI        The
Temptation (From the Psalter called ‘of Queen Melisende’, British Museum MS.
Egerton 1139)

XII      Transfiguration
(From the same)

XIII     Virgin
and Child, Enthroned (From the same)

XIV     Plan of
Acre (From Marino Sanudo,
Secreta Fidelium Crucis,
Bodleian MS. Tanner
190)

XV       Mameluk
Emirs about the end of the thirteenth century (From D. S. Rice,
Le
Baptistere de Saint Louis,
pub. Les Editions du Chene, Paris, 1951)

LIST OF MAPS

1          Environs
of Acre in 1189

2          The
Nile Delta at the time of the Fifth Crusade and the Crusade of St Louis

3          The
Mongol Empire under Jenghiz Khan and his successors

4          Acre
in 1291

5          Outremer
in the thirteenth century

PREFACE

This volume is intended to cover the history of Outremer
and the Holy Wars from the revival of the Frankish kingdom at the time of the
Third Crusade till its collapse a century later, with an epilogue on the last manifestations
of the Crusading spirit. It is a story with several interwoven themes. The
decline of Outremer, with its petty but complex tragedies, was periodically
interrupted by great Crusades, all of which, after the Third, closed in
diversion or disaster. In Europe, though it was still usual for every potentate
to pay lip-service to the Crusading movement, not even the fervent piety of
Saint Louis could arrest its decline, while the growing enmity between Eastern
and Western Christendom reached its climax in the greatest tragedy of the
Middle Ages, the destruction of Byzantine civilization in the name of Christ.
In the Moslem world the constant stimulus of the Holy War resulted in the
replacement of the kindly and cultured Ayubites by the more efficient and less
sympathetic Mameluks, whose Sultans were to eliminate Frankish Syria. Finally,
there was the arbitrary irruption of the Mongols, whose coming seemed at first
likely to rescue Eastern Christendom but whose influence in the end, through
the mishandling and misunderstanding of their potential allies, was only
destructive in its effects. The whole tale is one of faith and folly, courage
and greed, hope and disillusion.

I have included short chapters on the commerce and the arts
of Outremer. The treatment is necessarily perfunctory; for neither the
commercial nor the artistic history of a colonial state such as Outremer can be
detached from the general history of medieval trade and civilization. I have
therefore tried to confine myself within limits that are strictly relevant to
the understanding of Outremer.

The history of the Crusades is a large subject with undefined
frontiers; and the treatment that I have given to it represents my own personal
choice. If readers consider that the emphasis that I have given to its various
aspects is wrong, I can only plead that an author must write his book in his
own way. It is beside the point for critics to complain that he has not written
the book that they would have written had they undertaken the theme. But I hope
that I have not entirely omitted anything that is essential to its
comprehension.

The large debts that I owe to many scholars, dead and
living, are, I think, apparent in my footnotes. Sir George Hill’s great history
of Cyprus and Professor Atiya’s meticulous history of the Later Crusades are
both essential for the study of the period; and students must be permanently
grateful to Professor Claude Cahen for the learned information contained in his
works. I must mention with regret the death of M. Grousset, whose broad vision
and lively writing did much to elucidate the politics of Outremer and the
Asiatic background. I have again been largely dependent on the work of American
scholars, such as the late Professor La Monte, and Mr P. A. Throop.

Once again I must thank my friends in the Near East, who
have helped me during my travels there, in particular the Iraq Petroleum
Company; and the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press for their kindness.

STEVEN RUNCIMAN

LONDON
1954

BOOK I

THE THIRD CRUSADE

CHAPTER I

THE CONSCIENCE OF THE WEST

‘The kings of the earth, and
all the inhabitants of the world, would not have believed that the adversary
and the enemy should have entered into the gates of Jerusalem.’
LAMENTATIONS IV, 12

Bad news travels fast. The battle of
Hattin had hardly been fought and lost before messengers hurried westward to
inform the princes of Europe; and they were soon followed by others telling of
the fall of Jerusalem. Western Christendom learned of the disasters with
consternation. In spite of all the appeals that had come from the kingdom of
Jerusalem in recent years, no one in the West, except perhaps at the Papal
Court, had realized the urgency of the danger. The knights and pilgrims that
had journeyed eastward had found in the Frankish states a life more luxurious
and gay than any that they had known at home. They heard tales of military
prowess; they saw commerce flourishing. They could not comprehend how
precarious was all this prosperity. Now, suddenly, they heard that it was all
ended. The Christian army had been destroyed; the Holy Cross, most sacred of
the relics of Christendom, was in the hands of the infidel; and Jerusalem
itself was taken. In the spare of a few months the whole edifice of the
Frankish East had collapsed; and if anything was to be rescued from the ruins,
help must be sent, and sent quickly.

The refugees who had survived the disaster
were crowded together behind the walls of Tyre, their courage maintained by the
ruthless energy of Conrad of Montferrat. The lucky chance of his arrival had
saved the city from surrendering; and one by one the lords that had escaped
from Saladin’s clutches joined him there, gratefully accepting his leadership.
But they all knew that without assistance from the West their chances of holding
Tyre were small and their chances of recovering lost land were none. In the
lull that followed Saladin’s first attack on Tyre, when he passed on to conquer
Northern Syria, they had sent the most revered of their colleagues, Josias,
Archbishop of the city, to tell the Pope and the kings of the West in person
how desperate was their need. About the same time the survivors amongst the
Military Orders wrote round to impress upon their western brothers the same
anxious story.

The Archbishop set sail from Tyre in the
late summer of 1187 and arrived after a swift voyage at the court of King
William II of Sicily. He found the King deeply distressed by rumours of the
disaster. When he learned of its full extent William dressed himself in
sackcloth and went into a retreat for four days. Then he wrote to his
fellow-monarchs to urge them to join a Crusade and himself prepared to send as
soon as possible an expedition to the East. He had a war with Byzantium on his
hands. In 1185 his troops had attempted to capture Thessalonica and had been
heavily defeated; but his fleet was still cruising in Cypriot waters, giving
help to the usurper lord of Cyprus, Isaac Comnenus, in his revolt against the
Emperor Isaac Angelus. Peace was hastily made with the Emperor; and the Sicilian
admiral, Margaritus of Brindisi, was summoned home to refit his ships and sail
with three hundred knights to Tripoli. Meanwhile Archbishop Josias, escorted by
a Sicilian embassy, made his way to Rome.

1187: The Archbishop of Tyre’s Mission

There, too, the gravity of his news was
understood; for the Genoese had already sent a report to the Papal Court. The
old Pope, Urban III, was a sick man, and the shock was too much for him. He
died of grief on 20 October. But his successor, Gregory VIII, at once sent out
a circular letter to all the faithful of the West. He told the serious story of
the loss of the Holy Land and of the Holy Cross. He reminded his readers that
the loss of Edessa forty years before should have been a warning. Great
exertions were needed now. Let everyone repent from his sins and lay up
treasure in heaven by taking the Cross. He promised a plenary indulgence to all
Crusaders. They should enjoy eternal life in heaven, and in the meantime their
goods on earth would be under the protection of the Holy See. He finished his
letter by ordaining a fast on every Friday for five years to come and
abstinence from meat on Wednesdays and Saturdays. His own kinsfolk and those of
his Cardinals would fast on Mondays also. Other messages sent from Rome
enjoined a truce for seven years on all the princes of Christendom; and it was
reported that the Cardinals had all sworn to be among the first to take the
Cross. As mendicant preachers they would lead the Christian armies to
Palestine.