The bane of Palestine

Through the tumult of the early 1240s, one Ayyubid rose to prominence: al-Salih Ayyub, al-Kamil’s eldest son. By 1244 al-Salih had secured his position in Egypt, but, in so doing, lost Damascus to his uncle Ismail. With a view to reasserting his authority over Syria, al-Salih–like other Ayyubid rulers before him–looked to harness the feral brutality of the Khwarizmians, who were now under the command of their chief, Berke Khan. In response to al-Salih’s summons, Berke led his mercenary horde of around 10,000 ravening troops into Palestine in early summer 1244. Seemingly acting of their own volition, the Khwarizmians proceeded to launch an unexpected attack on Jerusalem. At their approach thousands of Christians streamed out of the city, hoping to reach safety at the coast, leaving behind a small garrison of defenders. The refugees suffered terribly as they hurried west. Falling prey to Muslim raiders and bandits in the Judean hills and then being picked off by Khwarizmian outriders on the plains near Ramla, barely 300 reached Jaffa.

The situation back at the Holy City was worse still. The remaining Franks put up some resistance, but they were hopelessly outnumbered and outclassed. On 11 July 1244 Berke Khan’s men broke into Jerusalem and went on the rampage. According to one Latin chronicler, the Khwarizmians ‘found Christians who had refused to leave with the others in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. These they disembowelled before the Sepulchre of Our Lord, and they beheaded the priests who were vested and singing mass at the altars.’ Having ripped down the marble structure enclosing the Sepulchre itself, they proceeded to vandalise and loot the tombs of the great Frankish kings of Palestine–the likes of Godfrey of Bouillon and Baldwin I. It was said that ‘they committed far more acts of shame, filth and destruction against Jesus Christ and the Holy Places and Christendom than all the unbelievers who had been in the land had ever done in peace or war’. With the work of destruction and desecration complete, Berke Khan led his forces to rendezvous near Gaza (in southern Palestine) with an army of around 5,000 warriors from Egypt.²⁷

The shock of these atrocities goaded the Franks into action. Securing an alliance with Ismail of Damascus and another Muslim dissident, the emir of Homs, they marched south to confront the Egyptian–Khwarizmian coalition. Pooling the resources of the Frankish nobility and the Military Orders, the Christians managed to muster around two thousand knights and perhaps a further 10,000 infantrymen. This host–the largest field army amassed in the East since the Third Crusade–represented the Latin kingdom’s full fighting manpower. Yet, even joined with its Muslim allies, it barely exceeded that of the enemy. There was considerable debate over the best strategy to employ. The emir of Homs, who had fought and bested the Khwarizmians before, counselled patient caution and the establishment of a well-defended camp, suggesting that Berke Khan’s men would soon bore of any delay and disperse. However, the eager and overconfident Latins rejected this sage advice. On 18 October 1244 they launched an attack and battle was joined on the sandy plains near the village of La Forbie (north-east of Gaza).

For the Franks and their allies, the mêlée that followed was an unmitigated disaster. Lacking any clear numerical advantage, they had to rely upon closely coordinated action and a dose of luck–but they benefited from neither. To begin with, the Latins and the soldiers from Homs seem to have fought well, holding their ground. But in the face of an unrelenting Khwarizmian assault, the Damascene troops lost their nerve and fled. With their battle formation broken, the Franco-Syrian allies quickly became surrounded, and, though they bravely struggled on even as casualties mounted, the day ended in defeat. The losses sustained at La Forbie were appalling: of the 2,000 troops from Homs, 1,720 were killed or captured; only 36 Templar knights escaped out of 348; the Teutonic Order lost all but three knights from a force of 440. The master of the Templars was captured; his Hospitaller counterpart was slain. This was a calamity to match that endured at Hattin in 1187–a crushing blow that shattered Outremer’s remaining military strength. In the months that followed, half a century’s worth of gradual territorial recuperation would be all but erased.

In a state of dread, the few Frankish survivors regrouped at Acre that autumn, ‘weeping, shouting and crying as they went, so that it was grief to hear them’. Sending warnings to Cyprus and Antioch, they dispatched Bishop Galeran of Beirut ‘to take solemn messages to the pope and to the kings of France and England [and to emphasise] that if swift decisions were not taken about the Holy Land, it would soon be completely lost’.²⁸ The grievous setbacks of 1244 that produced this heartfelt appeal mirrored those that five decades earlier had sparked the Third Crusade. But in that time the foundations of Christian holy war had begun to shift: customs and practices had changed; enthusiasms had waned or been refocused. Amid this new thirteenth-century reality, one obvious question must have gnawed at the minds of the Levantine Franks: would the Latin West once again mount a mighty crusade to save the Holy Land?

21

A SAINT AT WAR

Bishop Galeran of Beirut reached the West in 1245, bearing tidings of La Forbie and the Frankish army’s destruction. In late June he attended a Church council convened by the new Pope Innocent IV at Lyons (south-eastern France), the papal court having fled Italy because of the conflict with Emperor Frederick II of Germany. Parlous as Outremer’s predicament was, the pope and his prelates judged other issues to be more pressing: namely, their own survival. Frederick’s excommunication was reconfirmed and, this time, he was officially deposed of his crown rights to Germany and Sicily–a move that prompted the outbreak of open warfare between the papacy and the Hohenstaufen Empire. Innocent IV was also concerned with directing resources to the Latin Empire of Romania, which was edging ever more certainly towards collapse. The pope agreed to proclaim a new crusade to the Near East, appointing the French cardinal-bishop Odo of Châteauroux as papal legate to the campaign, but it was evident that the Levantine cause was a relatively low priority.

Bishop Galeran’s prospects of securing support from the great monarchs of Latin Europe also seemed dismal. Emperor Frederick obviously was in no position to leave the West. Henry III of England was preoccupied with the business of bringing his over-mighty nobles to heel, and even sought to ban Galeran from preaching the cross on English soil. Only one king would stand out in this sea of preoccupation and indifference, responding to Outremer’s call, a sovereign devoted to the war for the Holy Land–Louis IX of France, a man who would be canonised by the Roman Church as a saint.

KING LOUIS IX OF FRANCE

In 1244 King Louis was some thirty years old, tall, slight of frame, pale-skinned and fair-haired. By ancestry, his royal blood was infused with the crusading impulse, born as he was of an unbroken line–stretching back to Louis VII and Philip II–of Capetian kings who had waged the holy war. King Louis IX also inherited a French realm that had been transformed from its position of weakness in the early twelfth century. The long-lived Philip II had proved to be a gifted bureaucrat, and his forty-three-year reign saw huge improvements in governmental regulation and financial administration. Success, likewise, was achieved in the struggle with England, culminating in the conquest of Normandy and vast tracts of Angevin territory in western France.