THE LATIN KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM.
[Sidenote: Reign of Godfrey.]
[Sidenote: Daimbert, patriarch of Jerusalem.]
The reign of Godfrey fell short by five days even of the brief period
of a single year; but it sufficed not only for the discomfiture of
the Egyptian sultan, but for the foundation of a kingdom resting on
an elaborate system of carefully defined laws. His conflict with the
Fatimite caliph was followed by a conflict with Daimbert, bishop of Pisa,
the new Latin patriarch of Jerusalem. As legate of the pope Pascal II.,
(Urban had died a fortnight after the fall of the Holy City, in other
words, before he could hear of the victory of the crusaders,) Daimbert
had invested Godfrey and Bohemond with their feudal possessions, and
he lost no time in asserting the papal claim by demanding immediate
recognition as the lord of Jerusalem and Jaffa. In each of these cities a
quarter was at once assigned to him, and the whole was to pass into his
hands if Godfrey should die without children. Such was the compact made
by the Baron and Defender of the Holy Sepulchre; but it was not to pass
unchallenged.
[Sidenote: Assize of Jerusalem.]
We have seen Godfrey in the siege and conquest of Jerusalem wading with
exultation through a sea of human blood, seizing infants by their feet
and dashing them against the walls or whirling them over the battlements,
or aiding and abetting those who did so. But a few days or a few weeks
later this man was to be seen seated as an impartial judge among men
whom he, the king and sovereign, regarded as his equals, setting about
the grave task of compiling a code of laws on the only basis which can
serve as the foundation of true constitutional government,—the sanction,
namely, of the laws by the men who are to obey them. There was little
enough of freedom in the feudal system; and the system embodied in the
code popularly known as the Assize of Jerusalem was but a reflection of
the general body of law in force throughout Western Christendom. Still
the legislation of Godfrey and his successors is full of instruction,
not merely as showing with what success the system of one country may
be transferred to another, but even as throwing a clearer light on the
working of feudalism in Western Europe. The story went that the code thus
drawn up with the advice of the Latin pilgrims was deposited in the Holy
Sepulchre and was lost with the fall of the city. The tale lies open to
grave suspicion. The whole code would form no heavy weight for a beast
of burden, while it would be an object utterly valueless in the eyes
of the Mahomedan conquerors. It is of more importance to remark that
the traditions which this lost record was supposed to have preserved
continued to guide the Latin principalities of the East, until in A. D.
1369, having undergone a final revision, they became the laws of the
Latin kingdom of Cyprus.
[Sidenote: Judicial courts instituted by Godfrey.]
The legislation of this code on the relation of vassals to their
overlords, on the subject of wardship, of judicial combats, of
villenage and slavery, may have been more minute and definite than the
laws of Western Europe; but it laid down no new principles. A more
important feature is to be found in the judicial courts which owed
their institution to the first Latin king of Jerusalem. In the court
of the barons or peers the king himself was the president; in that of
the burgesses he was represented by the viscount, and it is in this
court that we find the popular element which was hereafter to give a
new character to the history of Europe. It consisted of a number of the
citizens chosen for their trustworthiness and their wisdom. Popular
election, indeed was wanting; but an assembly of burgesses sworn to
judge according to the laws in all the concerns of their equals was a
germ from which good fruit might have been looked for, if the seed had
been sown in fitting soil. Not less wise was the institution of a third
court which dealt with Syrian Christians through the Syrians themselves.
But although the legislative work of Godfrey and his successors was
not wholly in vain, it was an exotic which could live only with the
ascendency of the Latins. It was sown in blood, nursed amid storms, and
uprooted by the tempest which swept the Western Christians from Palestine.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1100. July 18. Baldwin I.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1100-1118.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1101. Death of Stephen of Chartres.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1105. Death of Raymond of Toulouse.]
The death of Godfrey raised in the patriarch Daimbert hopes which were
to be disappointed. The subjects of Godfrey had no mind to be governed
by a priest, and Tancred offered the throne to Bohemond. But Raymond
was now a captive, and popular favour inclined to Baldwin, Godfrey’s
brother, the lord of the Mesopotamian Edessa. Resigning his principality
to his kinsman of the same name, Baldwin hastened to Jerusalem, and was
there chosen king. At first Daimbert held aloof in sullen displeasure;
but his opposition was at length overcome, and the patriarch poured the
anointing oil over the sovereign. Baldwin reigned for eighteen years,
and long before those years had come to an end, the great chiefs of the
first crusade had all passed away. In his second year he was compelled to
resist an Egyptian invasion; but his army was defeated in a battle near
Ramlah, in which Stephen earl of Chartres was taken prisoner and slain.
He had been driven back from Europe by the reproaches of his wife Adela,
a daughter of the Norman conqueror of England, and in her judgment at
least he thus redeemed his fame. Four years later Raymond of Toulouse
died in old age on the sea-coast, having satisfied probably neither his
ambition nor his avarice. He had conquered Tortosa and there founded a
principality: but the possession of Tripolis which he had coveted was
reserved for his son Bertrand. Bertrand enjoyed his new fief for two
years only, and was succeeded by his son Pontius, to whom Tancred left
his widow as a bride.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1103. Sequel of the career of Bohemond.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1106.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1107.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1109.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1112. Death of Tancred.]
The return of Bohemond to Antioch was soon followed by his capture in a
petty expedition for the enlargement of his principality; but his place
was well filled by Tancred; and when after two years of imprisonment
Bohemond came back in spite of all the efforts of Alexios to get
possession of his person, he found himself master not only of Antioch
but of Laodicea and Apameia. In the open war which followed with the
Byzantine emperor, Bohemond was defeated by land, but with the aid of
the Pisans was victorious at sea. His thoughts were running probably on
another crusade when his help was invoked by Daimbert the patriarch of
Jerusalem, who took refuge at his court from what he chose to call the
tyranny of Baldwin. With the prelate, Bohemond sailed for Italy, leaving
Tancred to rule at Antioch. His name had gone before him, and Philip I.
the French king hastened to invite to his court the most redoubtable of
the champions of Christendom. Bohemond became the son-in-law of Philip,
and sailed again for the land of his old exploits with 5,000 horse and
40,000 foot. Once more he attacked Durazzo; but the bribes of Alexios
foiled his enterprise, and Bohemond was constrained to content himself
with a treaty which admitted him to the imperial presence as the peer of
the Byzantine sovereign. He went back to Italy and was making ready the
next year for his return to Antioch when death cut short his vehement and
stormy career. Tancred remained lord of his principality. He was still in
the prime of his manhood, and a disposition which, as compared with that
of his fellows, was generous and merciful, might promise a long time of
righteous government for his people. But before three years had passed
Tancred died childless, of a wound received in battle, and left his power
to his kinsman Roger.
[Sidenote: Effect of the crusades on the Byzantine empire.]
[Sidenote: Fresh swarms of pilgrims.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1101. Death of Hugh of Vermandois.]
The only man who had derived permanent benefit from these crusading
expeditions was the man to whom it might be supposed that they had caused
the greatest mischief and annoyance. It was of the first importance to
the safety of the Byzantine empire that the Turks should be drawn away
from the nearer countries of Bithynia and Phrygia. This great result
the crusade fully achieved. The capital of the Turkish sultan of Roum
was transferred from Nice to the remote and obscure city of Cogni
(Iconium, Ikonion;) the authority of the Greek emperor was re-established
over all the maritime regions of Asia Minor; and the existence of his
empire prolonged for nearly 350 years. But Alexios, with his crafty
and scheming temper to which incessant occupation in tasks serious or
trifling brought a sense of self-importance, was pre-eminently a man to
think more of annoyances than of grave disasters. For him accordingly
it was grief of spirit that Latin chiefs should fail to do him homage
for distant conquests, the possession of which could bring him no good;
and he had a standing ground of quarrel and complaint in the trouble
given or the alarm caused by the hosts of pilgrims which Europe poured
out upon the East as soon as the tidings were brought that Jerusalem was
in the hands of the Christians. It certainly cannot be said that the
pilgrims left Alexios much time for idleness. A rabble more disorderly
than that of Walter the Penniless followed the armies of Godfrey and his
confederates. These were Lombards headed by the archbishop of Milan; and
when Alexios insisted on their crossing the Bosporos before more should
come, they broke out into open war and attempted to storm the quarter of
Blachernai. These were followed by a better appointed force under the
count of Blois and the constable of the emperor of Germany, who spoke
with confidence of attacking Bagdad and destroying the caliphat. But the
dress of the Greek clergy in some Phrygian town excited their wrath.
Priests and others were massacred; and the sequel of the expedition was
as disastrous as that of the hordes cut off by Kilidje Arslan at the hill
of bones (p. 42). No better success attended the companies gathered under
the standards of the count of Nevers, the count of Poitiers, and Hugh of
Vermandois. With the last of these chiefs came hundreds of ladies who
looked for nothing less than a triumphal march from Constantinople to
Jerusalem: for almost all of these a journey of unspeakable misery came
to an end in the slave-markets of Bagdad and other great cities of the
East. The counts of Nevers and of Poitiers reached Antioch on foot with a
few followers: Hugh of Vermandois managed to escape to Tarsus, and there
he died.
[Sidenote: Death of the emperor Alexios.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1118.]
An endless series of wars, some of which were forced upon him while
others were mere blunders, was to occupy the life of Alexios to its
close. Throughout it may be said that successful dissimulation and
even successful treachery brought him greater delight than the most
decisive victory in the field. Some of his worst faults are recorded as
constituting his greatest merits in the turgid pages of his daughter
Anna: but she and her mother Irene were to learn, as he lay almost at
the last gasp, that they too could be sufferers by his astuteness. He
allowed his son John to frustrate at the last moment their most cherished
scheme, and his wife bade him farewell with the plain-spoken phrase, ‘You
die, as you have lived,—a hypocrite.’
[Sidenote: A. D. 1118-1131. Baldwin II. king of Jerusalem.]
While the days of Alexios were drawing to an end at Constantinople,
Baldwin king of Jerusalem was dying in Egypt, whither he had gone in
the hope of crippling the power of the Fatimite sultan. His body was
embalmed, brought back to Jerusalem, and laid in the sepulchre of
Godfrey. On the day of his funeral the great council met to elect his
successor. His brother Eustace was absent in Europe; and the crown was
offered to his kinsman, Baldwin du Bourg, who had been recommended
for the post by the first king, and whose claim was urged by Joceline
of Courtenay. In his gratitude Baldwin invested Joceline with the
principality of Edessa.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1115. Conquest of Sidon.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1124. Conquest of Tyre.]
It may be enough to say of this king that during his reign, as in that
of his predecessor, the limits of the Latin power were being gradually
extended, the new acquisitions being bestowed on princes who held them
as fiefs of the kingdom of Jerusalem. After a siege of six weeks Sidon
had fallen, in the days of the first Baldwin. In this blockade the Latins
were aided to good purpose by the fleet and army of the Norwegian Siward.
Nine years later the Venetian doge Michael came to worship at the Holy
Sepulchre, and offered the help of his fleet for the reduction of Ascalon
or Tyre. The choice fell upon Tyre, and the doge stipulated that one half
of that city should remain to himself in absolute sovereignty, while
the Venetians should also have a church, a street, and other privileges
in Jerusalem. The siege lasted five months, when the still great, and
once peerless, Phenician city was compelled to yield and become the seat
of a Christian archbishopric. But if the crusading dominions were thus
enlarged, it is perhaps of little use to speak of the greatest extent
reached by a kingdom almost as restless and as changeful as the sea.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1131-1144. Fulk, king of Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1144-1162. Baldwin III.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1145. Fall of Edessa.]
The third successor of Godfrey on the throne of Jerusalem was Fulk
of Anjou, whose lot on the whole was more tranquil than that of his
predecessors, although in attempting to aid Raymond count of Tripoli
against Zenghis, sultan of Aleppo, he was shut up in the castle of Barin
or Montferrat, and compelled to purchase his safety with gold. He was
succeeded by his son Baldwin, a boy thirteen years of age, who was soon
to see what the prowess of the West could do in a second crusade. The
feuds of the Christian princes of Antioch and Edessa gave to Zenghis an
opportunity of attacking the principalities of Joceline of Courtenay.
For eighteen days the inhabitants of Edessa awaited in terrible suspense
the result of a siege in which for them surrender meant death. The deeds
of Godfrey and his fellows on the fall of Jerusalem were still fresh in
the memory of their enemies, and the heralds of Zenghis were not slack
in teaching his men that conquest brought with it the right of pillage.
The Turks learnt the lesson in spirit as well as in letter; and on the
fall of Edessa the deeds of blood and cruelty showed that Moslems might
be apt pupils in the horrible school in which the Christians had attained
a standard of ideal excellence. The story told once needs not to be told
again. The murder of Zenghis awakened in Joceline of Edessa the hope
that the lost city might be recovered. The attempt issued in a second
disaster; and nothing remained but an appeal to the religious enthusiasm
of Western Christendom.