BALDWIN I., KING OF JERUSALEM.
In strange contrast with Godfrey was his brother Baldwin, the Prince of
Edessa, whom the necessities of the infant kingdom, rather than his own
merits, now called to the vacant throne. Baldwin had already shown
himself as unscrupulous as he was alert, and as covetous as he was bold.
With undoubted adroitness and courage, he had acquired and held his
principality of Edessa. Here he reigned with Oriental pomp, wore long
robes and flowing beard, sat cross-legged on rugs, and compelled all
suppliants for his favor to approach with the salaam of profoundest
homage. This ostentation was apparently more from policy among a people
familiar with such customs than from love of display or any despotic
instinct.
Dagobert, the papal legate, opposed the suggestion of Baldwin’s kingship
of Jerusalem, and claimed that honor for himself. He might have obtained
it had not Garnier, the agent of Baldwin, seized upon the tower of David
and the other fortresses in the name of his absent master. The baffled
prelate called upon Bohemond, now Prince of Antioch, to come and avenge
this insult offered to the Holy Father in the person of his legate; but
the Turks, by capturing Bohemond, interfered with this plan. The
activity shown by the common enemy decided the popular voice for Baldwin
as king. The dangers which threatened forbade that the government of
Jerusalem should be left in the hands of a priest untrained in war. The
soldier seemed pointed out by Providence for the kingship, although the
hand of the Pope was stretched out to anoint another.
Baldwin, learning of the death of Godfrey, immediately turned over the
government of Edessa to his cousin, Baldwin du Bourg, and with fourteen
hundred men marched for Jerusalem. On the way he gave new proof of his
puissance by first outwitting and then utterly routing vastly superior
numbers, with which the emirs of Damascus and Emesa endeavored to block
his way. Pausing at the sacred city only long enough to assure himself
of the applause of the entire population, he gave another exhibition of
his merit of the crown before wearing it. With a sudden swoop he
devastated the enemy’s country from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea,
and, laden with booty, demanded and received from the hands of the
unwilling prelate the crown and blessing in the name of the Pope.
Quickly following the coronation services at Bethlehem, he captured
Arsuf and Cæsarea. An Egyptian army had advanced as far as Ramleh, but
Baldwin, with a white kerchief tied to his lance’s point as his
oriflamme, led his braves again and again through this host, until they
were routed, leaving five thousand dead on the field. Amid the shrieks
of the dying the king caught the subdued cry of a woman. She was the
wife of a Moslem, who had accompanied her husband to the war, and had
been taken with the pains of childbirth. By the conqueror’s order she
was tenderly cared for, placed upon the rug from his own tent, covered
with his own mantle, and later conducted with her new-born babe to the
arms of her husband. His compassion soon received its reward. The
rallying Mussulmans surrounded his band not only with swords, but with
fire, having ignited the long, dried grass. With difficulty the king
escaped to Ramleh, which the enemy completely invested. During the
night, while anticipating the fateful assault of the morrow, he was
secretly approached by a Moslem officer. This man proved to be the
husband of the woman whom Baldwin had befriended. Led by his gratitude,
he had put his own life in jeopardy in order to reveal to his benefactor
a secret path to safety. The Moslem assault carried the town; they put
to death all Christians found within it. In Jerusalem the great bell
tolled, while the people crowded the churches or marched in procession,
mourning the supposed death of their king, when suddenly came the news
of Baldwin’s safety. In the rhetoric of the chronicle, it was “like the
morning star out of the night’s blackness.”
The capture of Ramleh by the enemy endangered Jaffa, the real port of
Jerusalem, at which the kingdom was in touch with Europe. Baldwin made
his way in disguise to Arsuf. Embarking with Godric, an English pirate,
he sailed straight through the Egyptian galleys that guarded the harbor
of Jaffa. In June, 1102, with forces augmented from an English fleet
under Harding, he assailed the enemy. The Patriarch of Jerusalem carried
the wood of the True Cross. With the cry, “Christus regnat! Vincet!
Imperat!” which subsequently appeared as the legend on the gold coins of
France, the besieged became the victors. But the joy of the triumph when
the king returned to Jerusalem was marred by the memory of the many
slain; Stephen of Blois and Stephen of Burgundy, with a great number of
the bravest knights, had fallen.
The Greek emperor, Alexius, while sending congratulation to the
Christians, could not repress his jealousy of their victories. He
prepared to assail Antioch; he negotiated with the captors of Bohemond
for his ransom, that he might secure from his gratitude the title to the
city which that chieftain held. Bohemond, however, ransomed himself by
pledges to the emir who held him, and, after having endured a captivity
of four years, defended his city in battles by sea and land from the
treachery of the Greeks. At the same time, with other chieftains, he
carried arms into Mesopotamia. At Charan he barely escaped in company
with Tancred, while their companions, Josselin de Courtenay and Baldwin
du Bourg, were dungeoned at Mosul.
In view of his exhausted resources, Bohemond attempted a vast and
romantic scheme for their recuperation. Having floated a report of his
death, he concealed himself in a coffin and passed through the watchful
fleet of the Greeks, who cursed his imagined corpse. Arriving in Italy,
he secured a new commission from the Pope. In France he so ingratiated
himself with King Philip I. as to secure that monarch’s daughter, the
Princess Constance, to wife. He then raised a new army of crusaders. In
Spain and Italy he augmented this force, and embarking at Bari, he
attempted to take a bitter retaliation on the empire of the Greeks. His
expedition against Durazzo failed of success. Bohemond, at the moment
when his ambition was at the point of its extremest satisfaction,
returned to die in his own Italian dominion of Taranto.
The kingdom of Jerusalem was reduced to all sorts of expedients to raise
the means of its support and extension. King Baldwin recouped his
treasury by marriage with Adela, widow of Count Roger of Sicily. Her
vast wealth was heralded by the vessel in which she sailed, whose mast
was incased in gold and whose hold was laden with gems and coin. A
thousand trained warriors followed, at her expense. Either the drain
upon her purse or the incompatibility of her relations with the king led
her to leave him after three years and return to Italy.
With the assistance of Genoese fleets, Ptolemaïs was captured. The
mutual jealousies between the Turks and the Egyptians enabled the
Christians to secure the southern coast of Palestine. Raymond having
died before the walls of Tripoli, his son Bertrand captured that city,
which from that time became the titular possession of his family. An
immense library of Persian, Arabic, and Egyptian manuscripts was by the
illiterate Christians given to the flames. Biblus and Beirut also fell
before the standard of the cross. With the aid of a fleet and ten
thousand men, under Sigur of Norway, Sidon was quickly acquired.
But in the midst of these triumphs came an irreparable loss. Tancred,
the ideal of knighthood, died (December 12, 1112). His genius and sword
had conquered widely in northern Syria. His memory has been embalmed,
while his real virtues, which needed no untruthful praises, have been
exaggerated in poetry and romance since Chaucer sang of him as “a very
parfite, gentil knight.”
The loss of Tancred was felt especially in the north, where the
Christians soon after met a fearful defeat at Mount Tabor. In extremity
they made alliance with the Saracens of Damascus and Mesopotamia, under
the Sultan of Bagdad.
The jealousy among the Moslems giving him seeming security from attack
on the north, King Baldwin planned the invasion of Egypt. He crossed the
desert and appeared within three days’ journey of Cairo. While returning
from a raid, laden with spoil and flushed with the anticipation of soon
adding the land of the Nile to his possessions, the king fell sick.
Nominating Baldwin du Bourg for his successor, he died at the edge of
the desert (1118). His body was brought, in obedience to his dying
request, and deposited beside that of Godfrey, near to the Holy
Sepulchre.