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9. The Barons' Crusaders in the Holy Land
- University of Pennsylvania Press
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9 The Barons' Crusaders in the Holy Land THE EXPEDITION TO AID CoNSTANTINOPLE that Gregory IX supported so vigorously met with little success. The Holy Land crusade he tried to divert presents a different picture. The Holy Land crusaders, as we have seen, rejected the pope's appeal to crusade in Latin Greece or to commute or redeem their vows. Although they did not fight those the pope wanted them to fight, their expedition was nevertheless another consequence of his initial crusade appeal. When we study the course of the campaign we see that even though all rejected Gregory's diversion attempt, their common religious identity did not work to unite them. Instead, their expedition was marked by divisions over leadership, strategy , and tactics. Another kind of division, too, marks this expedition: a division not among the crusaders, but one they were able to recognize and affirm among the Muslims they attacked. In the face of military losses, Thibaut of Champagne turned to diplomacy. Rather than seeing all Muslims as equal threats, he forged alliances with some princes against others. Such a policy was unpopular with the papal legate, but it was upheld by Richard of Cornwall when he arrived at Acre a few weeks after Thibaut's departure. The point on which there thus seems to have been the most, although not complete, crusader unity was the decision to differentiate among non-Christians and the refusal to see all as equal threats to the faith. By making distinctions Gregory did not support, the crusaders' expedition achieved stunning territorial success. The success ofthe Barons' Crusade not only confounded Gregory's advice to campaign in Constantinople, it also continues to confound many modern historians, who find themselves at a loss to explain how an expedition lacking the ingredients they consider crucial to success nonetheless achieved it. They have assumed that a successful Holy Land crusade would have strong European support, a powerful leader who The Barons' Crusaders in the Holy Land 159 could unite the fighting forces, good relations with the kingdom of Jerusalem, prowess on the battlefield, and an initial grasp of Near Eastern politics and diplomacy.1 The Barons' Crusade had none of these. It had little backing from the two great pan-European powers, the pope and the emperor. Gregory opposed the campaign, while Frederick II's support was lukewarm at best. Frederick thought his truce with Egypt offered better security to the kingdom of Jerusalem than an expedition ofFrench and English barons could. When he learned that the crusaders planned to depart for Syria in 1238, a full year before the truce expired, he demanded that they postpone their journey. If they agreed to the delay, he hinted that he might be willing to assume command of the expedition. If they did not, he would withhold all aid and refuse them permission to pass through his lands. The barons acceded to Frederick's demand, but when the time came to leave in 1239, he informed them he would not be accompanying them after all-his conflict with Gregory IX would not allow it. In the end, he offered the crusaders the use ofhis ports in southern Italy, but little more.2 What the Barons' Crusade lacked in support on the home front, it did not make up for in other respects. Far from having a leader who could rally the troops, the crusade had as its commanderThibaut ofChampagne , a divisive figure who proved incapable of maintaining discipline during the campaign. Far from cooperating with the authorities in the kingdom of Jerusalem, whom they were ostensibly trying to aid, the crusaders quarreled with them ceaselessly. Far from besting the Muslim forces on the battlefield, the crusade was a military disaster. And far from laying the groundwork for the campaign with preliminary diplomacy , the crusaders seem to have contacted no local Muslim leaders before they arrived.3 Faced with these circumstances that should lead to catastrophe, Sidney Painter explains the results of the campaign as a miracle visited upon fools.4 Similarly, Michel Balard sees the territorial gains won by the crusade as the work of a "lucky diplomat;' Thibaut of Champagne.5 Rene Grousset, more damningly, sees the expedition as emblematic of a new "romantic" conception of crusading on the part of French knights in the thirteenth century, a shift away from the "colonial realism" of the previous generation. These paragons of chivalry, with no notion of diplomacy or colonial governance, bungled their way to success through luck...