further north and appease the mercantile interests in Acre, a Damascus alliance was desirable. To acquire lands west of the Jordan and recover Jerusalem, a deal with al-Nasir of Kerak had to be struck.76
The new ascendancy of al-Salih Ayyub in Egypt inclined a nervous Damascus and the shifty but nimble al- Nasir to reach agreement with Theobald, who launched a brief military foray into Galilee to press his case for a treaty. The details of this and subsequent negotiations remain obscure, victims of highly partisan reporting at the time and later. It appears that Theobald, despite the lack of military success, negotiated a superficially advantageous treaty with al-Salih Isma ‘il of Damascus. Beaufort, the area behind Sidon, much of Galilee, including Tiberias and Saphet, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and, possibly, most of the rest of southern Palestine were assigned to the Franks. Much of this agreement could only be implemented by a parallel treaty that was reached with al-Nasir of Kerak, who was actually occupying Jerusalem and the surrounding region. On completing the treaty with Damascus, Theobald again marched south and possibly visited Jerusalem, manoeuvres which may have persuaded al-Salih Ayyub of Egypt to release some of the Gaza prisoners in August 1240. Without any prospect of further gains, nervous of possible competition for leadership from the impending arrival of Richard of Cornwall and with relations with Damascus fraying, in September 1240 Theobald left Acre for the west, in a hurry, some said.77 He left behind a precarious but viable model of territorial recovery, an imperialist garrison in a restored Jerusalem, the resentment of local barons and the duke of Burgundy, supported by a Champenois garrison, still bivouacked at Ascalon.
A few weeks later, Richard of Cornwall, with a well-equipped fleet, reached Acre. Richard’s crusade marked his coming of age on the international stage as befitted his wealth from Cornish tin and dynastic contacts of birth and marriage. It also provided an opportunity for his distinguished powers of self-publicity. The generally favourable reception of his exploits in the east, trumpeted by sympathetic chroniclers, rested on his own estimation circulated by newsletter on his return to Europe in July 1241, in which he lauded his treaty with Egypt, implicitly denigrating the achievements of Count Theobald.78 In fact, Richard’s brief stay in Outremer from October 1240 to May 1241 remained largely barren of significant results.
Richard possessed some distinct advantages; deep pockets, a close-knit entourage and, remarkably, the approval of both the pope and the emperor. Supported by papal subsidies, Richard had nonetheless kept Frederick informed of his progress and may even have received some sort of imperial accreditation. Although potentially a source of friction with anti-imperialists in Outremer, this imperial connection offered some hope of a compromise in the debilitating political infighting. In the summer of 1241 it was suggested by the baronial faction that Richard’s brother-in-law, Simon of Montfort, be appointed imperial lieutenant.79 More immediately, Richard faced the same choice as Theobald, whether to shore up the Damascus treaty, as supported by the Templars, or ally with Egypt, the Hospitallers’ choice. Again, in the footsteps of Theobald, Richard’s force of about 800 knights, later possibly joined by the contingent of Simon of Montfort (William of Forz’s expedition probably arriving too late to play a part in Richard’s campaign) marched south to Jaffa in November 1240. There he opened negotiations with Egyptian ambassadors before proceeding to join the duke of Burgundy at Ascalon. While the diplomacy continued, Richard supervised the reconstruction of a new fortress in the citadel at Ascalon, building on foundations laid half a century earlier by his uncle Richard I.80 On completion, the new fortress was handed over to Walter Pennenpie, the imperial agent in Jerusalem.81 This represented a balancing act, on the one hand signalling Richard’s acceptance of imperial authority, on the other pursuing what most local barons wanted, a deal with Egypt. Like his uncle, Earl Richard presumably hoped that the re-establishment of a powerful stronghold on the southern Palestinian coast would encourage Egypt to agree terms. If so, the tactic worked. On 8 February a treaty was settled with al-Salih Ayyub. This ostensibly confirmed the territorial settlement of the previous year between Count Theobald, Damascus and Kerak, giving the Franks control of Palestine west of the Jordan, including Galilee but excluding Samaria and Hebron. In fact, Sultan al-Salih Ayyub had no control over the lands he granted to the Christians. His agreement to the treaty asserted a nominal lordship as part of a longer contest to regain his former lands in northern Syria to which the Franks were merely spectators. More important for Richard’s western reputation than notional territorial gains, the treaty secured the release of the remaining prisoners from the battle of Gaza. Richard used the truce to order the interment of the remains of thirty-three nobles and 500 other troops that lay still unburied on that battlefield.82 A pensioner of the pope, a friend of the emperor, this act of charity made him a hero to the French. It did nothing at all to reshape the destiny of Outremer, as the treaty with Egypt was entirely dependent on the good will of al-Nasir of Kerak and the acquiescence of the emir of Damascus.
His gestures and building complete, after the customary tour of the Holy Places, Richard departed, sailing from Acre on 3 May 1241. One unimpressed observer remarked: ‘Thus all these men did almost nothing in the Holy Land that was of any use.’83 Despite restoring the kingdom to its greatest extent since Hattin and consolidating a fortified frontier, the crusades of 1239–41 appeared wholly insignificant compared with the great events that were soon to engulf the region, the displacement of the Khwarazmians and the advent of the Mongols. The crusades failed to resolve, hardly address even, the debilitating internal tensions of Outremer. During a period of intense Ayyubid instability, the crusaders appeared by turns bystanders and puppets, manipulated according to the changing ambitions of competing Muslim princes. Yet in organization and awareness of the modest, incremental possibilities of all campaigns except the most massive of western invasion, the crusades of Theobald and Richard confirmed a pattern in western aid. Gregory IX’s scheme for a permanent garrison sponsored by western money became a reality a decade later, forming a vital element in the final defence of the Holy Land. More ambiguously, the experience of the 1239–41 crusades revealed a new professionalism in how the business of the cross could be organized at the same time as showing how its success could so easily be compromised by this very professionalism. The increased distinction between crusade enthusiasm that could be expressed by donations not service and crusade campaigning that depended on complex systems of military recruitment and funding reduced the uniqueness of such enterprises, if not in ambition then in organization. As crusading became ever more firmly a matter for state governments, this at once offered greater prospects of achievement and greater vulnerability to those governments’ distractions, one of the central paradoxes of Holy Land crusading in the later thirteenth century and beyond. Only where a ruler made the Holy Land his main policy could this tension hope to be resolved. In all the thirteenth century, this applied to one monarch alone.
24
Louis IX and the Fall of Mainland Outremer 1244–91
In the eyes of western Christendom, Louis IX’s crusade of 1248–50 was one of the great events of the thirteenth century. This unsuccessful attempt by a major western European power to conquer Egypt hastened the collapse of Ayyubid rule, triggering the elevation of a military elite of professional Turkish slave warriors, the mamluks, to political power in their place. The defeat of the most professionally organized and carefully funded of all the eastern crusades reduced Christian strategy in the Near East to piecemeal treaties amid increasingly desperate attempts to shore up the rump of the Frankish kingdom in Palestine. Fresh political configurations in the region were recognized by attempts to establish contacts with the advancing Mongols that opened further the west’s window on previously fabulous lands beyond the Caspian Sea. The knowing self-importance of Louis and his crusaders contrasted cruelly with their insignificance in the scheme of Asian affairs. Louis’s attack on Egypt promised a wholesale reversal of generations of Christian failure. Its fate exposed the remains of mainland Outremer to new forces over which the Franks held no influence. Ironically, precisely from the total defeat of such high ambitions flowed the luminous reputation that Louis and his crusade earned in a sorrowful but admiring west.
PREPARATIONS
In 1244, the uneasy and confused Palestinian settlement left by the 1239–41 crusades was rudely swept away. Previously, prospects for the Franks had appeared brighter than at any time since the 1170s.1 In 1243, a new treaty with Damascus promised to entrench Frankish security in Syria. Yet a year later, the Franks were unexpectedly faced by the irruption into Palestine of the Khwarazmians, allies of Sultan al-Salih Ayyub of Egypt. Turkish freebooters originally from the steppes of central Asia, they had been driven west by the Mongol advance in the 1220s. Surviving as a mercenary band in northern Iraq, they had formed an alliance with al-Salih
