The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land (63 page)

It was in this bustling capital that James of Vitry made his home after 1216, as the new Latin bishop. He found Acre to be a veritable den of iniquity–what he called ‘a second Babylon’, a ‘horrible city…full of countless disgraceful acts and evil deeds’, and people ‘utterly devoted to the pleasures of flesh’. James was bewildered by the port’s cosmopolitan character. Old French was still the main language of commerce, but along Acre’s heaving streets a plethora of other western tongues–Provençal, English, Italian and German–mingled with Levantine languages, some spoken by visitors, others by eastern Christian and Jewish residents.

Acre was the most important meeting place between East and West in the thirteenth century. This was largely a function of the city’s new role as the Mediterranean’s leading entrepôt–the warehouse of the Levant, to which goods drawn from across Outremer, the Near East and beyond were brought before being shipped to the West. Acre also became a portal for the gradually increasing volume of return trade passing from Europe to the Orient.

An assortment of different goods passed through the city. Raw materials such as silk, cotton and linen fibres came in bales from local production centres in Palestine and the likes of Muslim-held Aleppo, while finished products, like silk clothing manufactured in Antioch, were also traded. Many commodities were both used in Acre itself and exported to more distant markets: sugar cane from Palestinian plantations; wine from Lower Galilee, Latakia and Antioch; dates from the Jordan valley. Soda ashes–produced by burning plantstuffs grown in areas of high saline concentration (like coastal regions) to give alkaline ashes–were used in dying textiles and soap making; they were also essential for glass production, and the glass manufactured locally made use of the excellent-quality sand found in the Belus River.

One marked development in the thirteenth century was the increase in commercial traffic heading from west to east. It became increasingly common for Latin merchants to travel into Muslim territory, trading woollen goods (especially those from Flanders) and saffron (the only western spice to find a market in the Orient) to the likes of Damascus, before returning to Acre with a new cargo of silks, precious and semi-precious stones.

In a normal year, Acre witnessed two periods of intense activity–just before Easter and at the end of summer–when the bulk of ships arrived from the West, bearing hordes of traders and travellers. At these times, the docks were awash with money-changers and touts offering to lead new arrivals to find accommodation or on guided tours of the city. The port already had a long history of functioning as the main point of arrival for Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land, but, with access to Jerusalem and other sacred sites curtailed after the Third Crusade, Acre emerged as a pilgrimage destination in its own right. The city possessed some seventy churches, shrines and hospitals to service the needs of these visitors, and a lively trade in locally produced devotional objects, including painted icons, sprang up. Acre also became the most important centre of book production in the Latin East, with a scriptorium employing some of the finest manuscript artists of the medieval period copying works of history and literature for a wealthy cosmopolitan clientele.
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Sustained by this range of commercial activity, Acre was one of the focal points of life in the Latin East. The city’s history also stands as testament to the fact that international trade was the central pillar propping up Outremer through the thirteenth century.

Even as the forces of trade and commerce continued to shape life in Outremer, western Europe was preparing to mount another major offensive in the war for the Holy Land, timed to coincide with the end of the latest truce with the Ayyubids in 1217–the campaign conceived and announced by Pope Innocent III before his death, known as the Fifth Crusade. By far and away the most powerful recruit for this expedition was Frederick II of Germany (the grandson of Frederick Barbarossa, the Third Crusader). Born in 1194 as heir to the Hohenstaufen dynasty, Frederick held claims to the mighty German Empire and the opulent kingdom of Sicily. But the precipitous death of his father Henry VI in 1197 left the infant prince somewhat in limbo, and Frederick grew up in Sicily, while other candidates contested the German succession.

Frederick was elevated to the Sicilian throne when he reached his majority in 1208. Judging the young monarch to be a trustworthy and pliable pawn, Innocent III decided to back Frederick’s candidacy as crown ruler of Germany and he was proclaimed as the new king in 1211. His royal status was later reinforced by a crowning ceremony in Aachen (the traditional seat of power) in 1215. At this point Frederick II made two pledges: he took the crusading vow; and he promised not to exercise joint rule of Germany and Sicily, granting the latter to his own infant son Henry (VII). By this means, Pope Innocent believed that he had secured invaluable support for the holy war and safeguarded Rome from the dreaded threat of Hohenstaufen encirclement. The pope died still thinking that this deal would hold, but events would prove that he was sorely mistaken. It soon became clear that Frederick II had every intention of creating a unified Hohenstaufen realm–indeed, he aspired to rule a grand and expansive Christian empire, the strength and scale of which would surpass anything yet witnessed in the Middle Ages. His astounding career would cast a long shadow over the crusading movement.
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In 1216, with Innocent III dead and his successor Honorius III in power, Frederick began angling for his own advantage. His initial goal was to secure the imperial title–something that would require papal involvement in his coronation–without having to cede control of Sicily. To persuade Honorius of this arrangement’s dubious merits, Frederick used his crusading vow as leverage, making it clear that he would only embark on the campaign once anointed as Hohenstaufen emperor. Delicate and prolonged negotiations followed, leaving the tantalising, and potentially disruptive, prospect of Frederick’s involvement hanging over the Fifth Crusade.

THE FIFTH CRUSADE

While Frederick II and Pope Honorius haggled over terms, the first contingents of crusade troops from Austria and Hungary began to arrive in Palestine. In 1217 the Latins prosecuted three inconclusive forays into Ayyubid territory, but these early feints were mere precursors to the main expedition. With the arrival in summer 1217 of Frisian and German crusaders–among them the German preacher and scholar Oliver of Paderborn–the stage was set for a full attack. John of Brienne (now claiming the title of king of Jerusalem), the Military Orders, the Frankish barons of the Levant and James of Vitry, bishop of Acre, all joined the endeavour. By 1218 the Fifth Crusade was ready to set its sights on a new target.

The campaign’s stated aim was still the recapture of Jerusalem from the Ayyubid Sultan al-Adil, but the Franks elected not to march against Muslim Palestine. Instead, in the words of James of Vitry: ‘We planned to proceed to Egypt, which is a fertile land and the richest in the East, from which the Saracens draw the power and wealth to enable them to hold our land, and, after we have captured that land, we can easily recover the whole kingdom of Jerusalem.’ This strategy echoed the plans formulated by Richard the Lionheart in the early 1190s, and, according to some of its leaders, the Fourth Crusade had also intended to strike against the Nile region before the expedition was rerouted to Constantinople. In fact, an Egyptian offensive probably had featured from the start in Pope Innocent III’s conception of this new crusade.
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The Christians’ primary objective was the city of Damietta, about one hundred miles north of Cairo–an outpost that Oliver of Paderborn described as ‘the key to all Egypt’. The crusaders arrived by ship on the North African coast in May 1218, landing on the west side of a major branch of the Nile Delta, where it ran into the Mediterranean Sea. The heavily fortified city of Damietta lay a short distance inland, between the east bank of the Nile and a large inland body of saltwater known as Lake Mansallah. According to Oliver, the metropolis was protected by three lines of battlements, with a broad and deep moat situated beyond the first wall and a circuit of twenty-eight towers reinforcing the second.

Having elected John of Brienne as leader, the crusaders established a camp on the west bank of the river, opposite the city. Meanwhile, al-Adil’s son al-Kamil, the emir of Egypt, marched north from Cairo and positioned his forces to watch over Damietta on the east side of the Nile. The first challenge confronting the Franks was to gain free access to the river. Their way was blocked by a sturdy chain, running between the city and a fortified island, known as the Tower of the Chain, in the mid-stream of the Nile. This chain prevented any ships from sailing upriver (and the section of the Nile between the tower and the west bank had become so silted up that it was impassable). Through the summer the crusaders made a number of fruitless attempts to capture this outpost, using fireships and bombardment. Eventually, the resourceful Oliver of Paderborn fashioned an ingenious waterborne siege tower out of two ships, with drawbridges controlled by a pulley system–what he described as ‘a work of wood the likes of which had never before been wrought upon the sea’–and the Franks used this floating fortress to prosecute a successful attack on 24 August 1218. Cutting the chain, the crusaders assumed control of the river.

The Nile Delta

The Franks appeared to have the upper hand that summer. Their move to attack Egypt had taken al-Adil by surprise. It also coincided with a distracting, if ultimately ineffective, attempt by Saladin’s exiled son al-Afdal to seize control of Aleppo with the aid of the Anatolian Seljuqs. Having spent the summer stabilising Syria, al-Adil was just marching into Egypt when he fell ill and died on 31 August. When the crusaders heard of his passing, they thought the shock of their recent success at the tower had killed him, and Oliver happily concluded that the late sultan would be ‘buried in Hell’. Al-Adil had been a great champion of the Ayyubid cause, but although his demise weakened Islam, it did not prompt a collapse of Muslim resistance. Al-Kamil was well placed to step into the void left by his father–the only question was whether al-Kamil’s brothers, al-Mu‘azzam in Damascus and al-Ashraf in the Jazira, would lend him their full support. If not, al-Kamil might have to decide where his priorities lay: in resisting the crusaders; or in securing his supremacy over the Ayyubid realm.
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Cardinal Pelagius

From a position of strength in late summer 1218, the Fifth Crusade quickly lost momentum. In large part this was due to a new feature of the campaign. Thanks to the administrative and financial reforms introduced by Pope Innocent III, the expedition was relatively well funded and closely supported by an extensive fleet. This meant that crusaders were able to return to Europe without too much difficulty, even as new troop contingents arrived from the West to replace them. On the face of it, this practice seemed sensible because it allowed for the campaign to be rejuvenated by injections of fresh manpower. In reality, however, it had a detrimental effect upon the morale of those Franks who remained on the front line and hindered the development of the bonds of trust and familiarity between crusaders that had proved so essential to earlier expeditions.

The coming and going of Latin contingents also brought changes in leadership and associated shifts in strategic thinking. As the summer of 1218 drew to a close, a large number of Germans and Frisians sailed for home. At the same time, the Spanish churchman Pelagius, cardinal-bishop of Albano, arrived in the crusader camp along with forces from France, England and Italy. Pelagius–a forceful and stubborn character–came to the siege of Damietta as the papal legate, hoping to realise Innocent III’s ambition for a Church-led crusade. Some modern historians have given the cardinal a withering press, one scholar declaring that he was ‘hopelessly shortsighted [and] uncommonly pigheaded’. It also has been suggested that he immediately assumed overall command of the Fifth Crusade. Neither view is entirely accurate. In fact, Pelagius’ authority and influence grew only gradually and, to begin with at least, he cooperated effectively with other prominent figures like John of Brienne. The cardinal’s ecclesiastical leadership also helped to engender a renewed sense of religious devotion within the army, raising spirits and morale. This would prove to be an important factor amid the trials to come.

In the months that followed Pelagius’ arrival, the Latins faced a challenge confronted by many crusader armies before them: a winter siege. Huddled on the west bank of the Nile, across from Damietta, they endured manifold torments. On the night of 29 November rough seas caused waves to break over the land and flood the Frankish camp, so that crusaders woke to find fish in their tents. Poor diet led to the outbreak of scurvy. Oliver of Paderborn described how ‘corrupt flesh covered the gums and teeth’ of those afflicted, ‘taking away the power of chewing [and causing] a horrible blackness [to darken] the shins’, while James of Vitry recalled seeing crusaders suffering from this wasting disease slip into a deathly coma, ‘like those falling asleep’. All of the Christians were said to have been sick of the sight of sand, wishing only to behold fields of grass. Of course, the populace of Damietta were also suffering, as was al-Kamil in his encampment to the south. In early 1219 he was forced to return to Cairo to head off a coup, but the welcome arrival of his brother al-Mu‘azzam averted the danger and al-Kamil was able to return to the siege before the Franks could take any meaningful advantage.
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Deadlock

The first eight months of 1219 passed in stalemate. The crusaders were sufficiently entrenched on their side of the Nile to be safe from attack, but they lacked manpower and resources either to overcome Damietta’s defences or to drive al-Kamil from the field. The Latins’ position worsened when a further wave of troops returned to the West in May. Throughout much of this period, hopes were high for the imminent arrival of Frederick II. All of the crusaders, including Pelagius, were waiting for the Hohenstaufen ruler to appear at the head of a vast, indomitable army–one that would trample all Ayyubid resistance under foot. The problem was that Frederick was still in Europe, wrangling with Rome over the coronation, and news eventually reached Egypt that he would not be joining the campaign until March 1220 at the earliest. James of Vitry recalled the mood in the army when he wrote: ‘The majority of our men were in the grip of despair.’
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This period witnessed one of the strangest ever visitors to a crusading theatre of war. In summer 1219 the revered living saint Francis of Assisi–advocate of the mendicant principles of extreme poverty and ecstatic evangelism–arrived in the Christian camp. He had made his way to Egypt in the tattered rags of a holy man, believing that he could bring peace to the world (and success for the crusade) by converting the Muslims to Christianity. Crossing the lines of conflict under terms of parley, St Francis implored the bewildered Egyptian troops to lead him to al-Kamil. Taking him for a mad but harmless beggar, they agreed. In the bizarre audience that followed, al-Kamil politely refused Francis’ offer to demonstrate the power of the Christian God by walking through fire, and the saint eventually went home empty-handed.

In spite of this remarkable sideshow, the siege ground on and the late summer brought further troubling developments. The relative success of the Egyptian harvest had always been closely linked to minor fluctuations in the annual Nile flood. That year the river failed to break its banks in many areas and this caused huge increases in the price of grain and food shortages. By September al-Kamil had recognised that Damietta’s exhausted garrison was on the brink of collapse and, therefore, he offered the crusaders terms of truce. In exchange for an end to the siege he promised to return Jerusalem and most of Palestine to the Franks, and may also have pledged to hand back the True Cross. The castles of Kerak and Montreal in Transjordan were to remain in Ayyubid hands, but as compensation the Muslims would pay a handsome annual tribute.

This extraordinary proposition confirmed that the Ayyubids’ real priorities lay in Egypt and Syria, rather than Palestine. The proposal also seemed set to bring the Holy Land back under Christian control, breathing new life into the kingdom of Jerusalem and all Outremer. Yet, at this critical juncture, the first clear sign of dissension among the expedition’s leaders appeared. John of Brienne and the Teutonic Order expressed vocal support for the pact, as did many crusaders. But in the end, the views of Cardinal Pelagius–endorsed by the Templars, Hospitallers and Venetians–prevailed, and al-Kamil’s offer was declined. Legitimate concerns were expressed about the defensive viability of a Frankish kingdom shorn of its Transjordanian fortresses–although, realistically, Kerak and Montreal were just as crucial to al-Kamil’s hopes of maintaining secure lines of communication between Egypt and Damascus. The Venetians may also have been more interested in the commercial potential of Damietta than in Jerusalem’s recovery. But the key consideration behind Pelagius’ decision was the earnest belief that Frederick II’s eventual arrival would facilitate even greater and more decisive gains.