CHAPTER IV

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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.

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