Jerusalem, the City of Herod and Saladin

by Walter Besant; Edward Henry Palmer

Henry VIII.

At the death of King Baldwin the personal unpopularity of his brother among the barons caused at first some hesitation as to his election, but this was overruled by the influence of the clergy, and Amaury was duly crowned in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He was at the time of his succession to the crown twenty-seven years of age. He had been named by his brother first Count of Jaffa, and afterwards, when the place was taken, Count of Ascalon. He was a man somewhat above the middle height; like his brother he had an aquiline nose, brown hair falling back from his forehead, and would have been as handsome as Baldwin but for his premature corpulence. He was inordinately fat, in spite of extreme temperance in eating and drinking. As for his faults, they were many. He was morose and taciturn, rarely speaking to any one, and never showing any desire to cultivate friendships; he was avaricious, always trying to accumulate treasure, a habit which he defended, honestly enough, on the ground that it was the duty of a king to provide for emergencies, a duty which he was the first King of Jerusalem to recognise. At the same time, he was always ready with his money in cases of necessity. He seldom laughed, and when he did, he seemed to laugh all over, in a manner as undignified as it was ungraceful. He had, too, a slight impediment in his speech, which prevented him from speaking freely, and was probably the main cause of his taciturnity. He was unchaste, and made no secret of his incontinence. He was a violent enemy of what his biographer calls the liberty of the Church—in other words, he insisted on the property of the Church bearing the burden of taxation equally with all other property. He had little education, but loved reading, especially the reading of history, and was fond of asking questions on curious and recondite questions. Thus, he once startled William of Tyre by asking him if there was any proof, apart from revelation, of the doctrine of a future world. The priest proved to him, by the Socratic method, he says, that there was; but he confesses that he was greatly exercised in spirit at the king’s asking such a question. He was well versed in all questions of law, and in military matters was generally a prudent leader, and always patient of fatigue and suffering. “Being so fat,” we are told, “the rigours of cold and heat did not trouble him”—a very odd result of corpulence. He obeyed all the ordinances of the Church, and showed his magnanimity by never taking the least notice of things said in his disfavour, when they were reported to him. He loved not dice or gambling, and had, indeed, but one sport of which he was really fond, that of falconry. Evidently a gloomy kind of prince, with his mind overwhelmed by all sorts of doubts and questions of morality and religion, perplexed by the cares and anxieties of his position, void of enthusiasm for the crown which he wore, but resolute to do the best he could for his kingdom; more prudent and far-seeing than any who had preceded him, but without the dash and vigour of his ancestors, slow of thought, and consequently liable to ill-success for want of promptness, a man something like our William III., who had a few who admired and respected him, but who, to the many, was unpopular and distasteful.

He had married Agnes, the daughter of Jocelyn the younger, by whom he had three children, Baldwin, afterwards king, Sybille and Isabelle. On his accession it was discovered, one wonders why the Church had not interfered earlier, that the marriage was unlawful, because his own and his wife’s grandfather, Baldwin du Bourg, and Jocelyn the elder, had been first cousins. He was therefore compelled to get a divorce from Agnes, who married again, first Hugh of Ibelin, a gallant fighting man, and afterwards Renaud of Sidon, also a marriage within the limits, only this time the Church did not think proper to interpose her authority.

Like all the kings of Jerusalem, Amaury began his reign with an expedition, by way of winning the spurs of gallantry. The Egyptians—the Fatemite dynasty being now in its last stage of decay—failed to pay the tribute which had been agreed upon after the taking of Ascalon. Amaury led an army to Pelusium, which he took and plundered, and returned home laden with spoils and glory.

The Fatemite Caliphs, degenerate now, and sunk in sloth, left the whole government of their rich empire to their viziers, who had taken the title of sultan. Dhargam, the vizier at this time, had a powerful rival named Shawer, whom he managed to turn out of his government and banish from the kingdom. Shawer repaired to Damascus, and representing to Nûr-ed-dín the weakened state of the kingdom, urged him to send an army which should in the first instance place himself in the seat of Dhargam, and in the next make Egypt a sort of appanage to Damascus. The project was tempting. If Egypt could be made even an ally of Damascus, or more properly speaking, of Baghdad, to which Caliphate Nûr-ed-dín belonged, the way was clear for united action against the Christian kingdom on three sides at once. Nûr-ed-dín did not hesitate long. Deputing his ablest general, Shírkoh, to lead his forces, he despatched a formidable army to Egypt, to support the rebellious claims of Shawer. But Dhargam in his turn was not idle. He sent messengers to King Amaury, offering conditions, almost any which the king might dictate, in return for assistance. But while the negotiations were pending, and Amaury was making up his mind how to act, Shírkoh and his army were already in Egypt. Dhargam led his troops to meet the enemy, and in a first engagement entirely routed the Syrians. The next day, however, these rallied, and the unfortunate Dhargam was killed by a chance arrow in the battle. Shawer entered into Cairo in triumph, killed all Dhargam’s relations—a summary and efficacious way of preventing any possible future claims on the part of his descendants—and allowed Shírkoh to establish himself in Pelusium, where the Syrians settled down, and refused either to quit the kingdom, or to acknowledge the authority of the caliph. Shawer found himself thus in the position of one seeking to be delivered from his friends, and saw no way of escape but by the intervention of the Christians. He sent ambassadors to Amaury, making overtures similar to those proposed by his late rival, even offering greater advantages if the previous terms were not sufficiently liberal; but Amaury accepted them, and marched with all his forces into Egypt. These allied forces of Shawer and Amaury besieged Shírkoh in Pelusium, but were not strong enough to get more than a conditional surrender, the Syrian general being allowed to depart with all the honours of war, and to return to Damascus. And at the same time Nûr-ed-dín received a defeat near Tripoli, which raised the spirit of the Christians to the highest point. Next year, however, he avenged himself by defeating young Bohemond of Antioch, Raymond of Tripoli, the Greek governor of Cilicia, and the Armenian prince Toros. It was a shameful rout. “No one bethought him of his former courage, or of the deeds of his ancestors; no one sought to avenge the insults of the enemy, or to fight gloriously for the liberty and honour of his country. Each, on the other hand, hastening to throw away his arms, endeavoured by indecent supplications to preserve a life which it would have been a thousand times better to sacrifice by fighting valiantly for his country. Toros the Armenian got away by flight: Bohemond and the rest were all taken prisoners, while they were shamefully running away.” In the midst of the consternation produced by this disaster, Thierry, Count of Flanders, who was continually coming into the country like a Deus ex machinâ in the midst of calamities, arrived opportunely with a small following of knights. He could not, however, prevent Nûr-ed-dín from taking the Castle of Banias, which in the absence of its seigneur, Humphrey, who was away in Egypt, had been consigned to the care of one Walter of Quesnet. Walter gave up the place, which he was too weak to defend, and in these degraded times was of course accused of having received bribes for the purpose from Nûr-ed-dín. Perhaps he did.

The king came back glorious with his Egyptian exploit, only to hear of these reverses, and to march north in hopes of repairing them. He could do no more than place the best men he had in the fortresses, while Shírkoh gained possession of a stronghold named the Grotto of Tyre, by treachery, as was alleged—at least the Christian governor was hanged for it at Sidon. The fortress of Montreal, in Moab, fell at the same time, and the king was so indignant that he hung up twelve of the Templars who had been among the besieged, and had consented to its capitulation. Nothing, in fact, can explain the continual reverses of the Christians except the fact of their utter demoralization and cowardice, and the dwindling away of that full stream of pilgrim soldiers who had formerly flocked yearly to the East. The Second Crusade, indeed, was productive of the greatest harm in this respect to the Christian kingdom. It drained the West of all the men who wished to become pilgrims; and the fact that so few returned deterred effectually those who would otherwise have wished to go. Other causes, of course, were at work. Of these, the chief were the crusades against the Moors in Spain and the Pagans in Germany, and the development of pilgrimages to local shrines and saints. It was much easier and a great deal pleasanter, though not so glorious, to ride across a friendly country to a saint not many hundreds of miles away, than to journey in peril and privation along the long and weary road which led to Jerusalem.

But there was a lull in the incursions of Nûr-ed-dín. He and Shírkoh had other and vaster projects on hand. They sent to the caliph at Baghdad, and pointed out the manifest advantages which would accrue from the extinction of the Fatemite power, the union of both caliphates into one, and the possession of a country so rich and so fertile as Egypt, the people of which were enervated by pleasure and luxury, and absolutely unfitted for any kind of resistance. The caliph listened. Surrounded as he was by every luxury that the heart of man could desire, it mattered little to him whether another rich country was added to his nominal rule or not. But it mattered greatly that the divided allegiance of Islam should be made to run again in one stream, and he consented to give all his influence provided the war were made a religious war. To this Nûr-ed-dín and his general eagerly assented, and the caliph wrote to all the princes who owned his sway, commanding them to assist Shírkoh in his intended invasion of Egypt.

Amaury possessed prudence enough to know that if the Syrians conquered Egypt his own position would be far worse than before; and he collected his forces and marched southwards, in hopes of intercepting the Syrian army in the desert. He missed them; but Shawer, full of admiration for the good faith which seemed to him to have actuated the Christians, welcomed them with every demonstration of gratitude when they arrived in Egypt, and placed, to use the phrase of the historian, all the treasures of the country at their disposal. Amaury established his camp near Cairo, on the banks of the Nile, and then held counsel what next to do. He determined to make another attempt to intercept Shírkoh, and though he again missed the main army, he came upon a small rear-guard, which he either killed or made prisoners. From the prisoners he learned that a great disaster had befallen the Turks on their way across the desert, South of Moab there had arisen a frightful storm and whirlwind, in which the sand was driven about like the waves of the sea. To escape it, the troops dismounted and crouched behind the beasts, covering their faces; they lost all their camels, most of their provisions, and a vast number of their men. Amaury came back again in good spirits at this intelligence, and thinking of returning home again, the tempest having done the work of his own sword. But he overrated the power of the Egyptians, and Shawer, knowing how utterly unable his own forces were to cope with those of Shírkoh, shattered as these were, implored the king to remain in Egypt and help him to drive off the invader. He undertook to give the Christians a sum of four hundred thousand gold pieces, half to be paid on the spot, half when the work was done, provided that the king undertook not to leave Egypt till the enemy had been driven out. The terms were agreed to; the king gave his right hand, in token of fidelity, and sent Hugh of Cæsarea, accompanied by a Templar named Foucher, to receive the personal promise of the great and mysterious caliph himself, whom no one had yet seen.

The two knights, with Shawer, proceeded to the palace. They were preceded by a number of trumpeters and swordsmen, and led through dark passages where gates, at each of which were Ethiopian guards, continually barred the way. Having passed through these, they found themselves in an open place, surrounded by galleries with marble columns, with panels of gold, and pavements of curious mosaic. There, too, were basins of marble filled with pure and sparkling water; the cries and calls of birds unknown to Europeans, of strange shape and glorious plumage, saluted their ears; and going farther on they found themselves in a menagerie of strange beasts, “such as the painter might imagine, or the poet, with his lying license, might invent, or the imagination of a sleeper could fancy in dreams of the night.”

Passing on still through more corridors, and along other passages, they arrived at last in the palace itself, where were armed men, and guards whose arms and martial bearing proclaimed the power, even as the splendour of the place proclaimed the wealth, of the sovereign who owned it. They were shown into an apartment one end of which was hidden by curtains, embroidered with gold and precious stones. Before the curtain Shawer, the sultan, prostrated himself twice, and then took the sword which hung from his neck and humbly laid it on the ground. At that moment the curtains drew apart, and disclosed the caliph himself, seated on a golden throne, in robes more splendid than those of kings, and surrounded by a small number of his domestics and favourite eunuchs. Then the sultan advanced and explained the object of this visit, and the reasons which had led to the treaty with the Christians. The caliph replied in a few words that he agreed to the treaty, and promised to interpret all the conditions in the manner most favourable to the king.