“King Louis IX of France embarks on the Seventh Crusade” Paris,
Bibliothèque nationale de France MS FR 2813, fol. 298v
Louis IX’s First
Crusade
Four years elapsed between Louis’s assumption of the cross
in 1244 and his departure for the East in 1248. This delay was not the result
of any hesitation on Louis’s part, but of his concern to create the conditions
in which the crusade would succeed. He endeavored to achieve peace in the West
and unite Christendom in the interests of the expedition and sought to gain
spiritual support by righting injustices, soliciting the prayers of the
religious orders, and prohibiting those activities that might inspire the wrath
of God. He also made meticulous logistical preparations, which included raising
money, stockpiling food and arms, and engaging ships to transport the army.
The crusade attacked Egypt and in May 1249 captured the city
of Damietta. In April 1250, however, the expedition ended in defeat, and the
king and much of his army were captured. After a month of imprisonment, the
king was released and made his way to the Holy Land, where he spent four years
rebuilding and refortifying its defenses. Recognizing the Franks’ lack of
manpower, he left behind a contingent of knights, crossbowmen, and sergeants
led by a trusted lieutenant, Geoffrey of Sergines (d. 1269). Louis continued to
fund this force until his death in 1270 at a cost of approximately 4,000 livres
per year to the royal treasury.
Geoffrey of Sergines
Geoffrey is mentioned in connection with military
engagements in Palestine in 1242 and 1244 and the most likely date for his
arrival in the East would be 1 September 1239, with a crusade under Count
Thibaut of Champagne and Duke Hugh of Burgundy. He returned to France in 1244
and in 1248 travelled East with King Louis IX, to whom he had been closely
attached as early as 1236. In his account of Louis’s crusade in Egypt John of Joinville
wrote of Geoffrey as one who, like himself was among the king’s closest
confidants. He was one of a select band of eight companions who stood guard
over the king at Damietta and throughout the crusade he was to be found in the
king’s council and entrusted with important duties. On 5 April 1250, as the
crusade retired in disorder From Mansurah, he alone stood by and protected the
king. Louis was later to say that Geoffrey had defended him against the
Egyptians as a good valet swats the flies around his lord. Before he set out
for home in April 1254 Louis arranged to leave Geoffrey behind in Acre as
seneschal of the kingdom of Jerusalem and captain of a contingent of 100
knights financed by himself, with money to employ additional crossbowmen and
sergeants.
The seneschalcy was the most prestigious and demanding of
the great offices of the crown of Jerusalem and Geoffrey was to hold it until
his death. In the absence of the king or regent, and provided the ruler had not
appointed a lieutenant to represent him, the seneschal presided over meetings
of the High Court, the most important of the royal courts in which all
liege-vassals of the crown had the right to sit and speak. He was, therefore,
ex-officio the second man in the judicial hierarchy. He also supervised the
secrete, the royal financial office and treasury, which worked according to
Muslim methods. Geoffrey’s long period of office must have given him an
unrivalled experience of the working of the courts and royal administration.
From 1259 to September 1261 and from 1264 to 1267 he governed Palestine on
behalf of absent regents and from September 1261 to 1263, and perhaps for a few
months in 1264, he was regent himself. With only a few breaks, therefore, he
ruled the kingdom of Jerusalem from 1259 to 1267 and he did so well; alone of
the governors of the period his reputation for severe though impartial justice
was recognized by contemporaries.
Geoffrey was very pious, which would explain why he got on
so well with Louis. The popes of the 1260s wrote of him as one who was totally
committed to crusading, to the extent of exercising a ministry: ‘devoting
himself wholly in the ministry for the Crucified One … the one and only
minister in the defence of the Holy Land’. He was not the only a crusader, of course. His
career, and those of several contemporaries, marked the high point of the
tradition of the milites ad terminum,
the knights who out of devotion offered their services to the defence of the Holy
Land.
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Only a handful of inland castles still stood, including the
headquarters of the Teutonic Order at Montfort and the redoubtable Hospitaller
fortress, Krak des Chevaliers. Internal rivalry among the Latins was rife, with
various claimants contesting the Jerusalemite throne, the Italian merchants of
Venice and Genoa fighting over trading rights and even the Military Orders
embroiled in petty politics. Centralised authority had devolved to such an
extent that each Frankish city functioned as an independent polity. The shock
of Antioch’s conquest in 1268 did nothing to arrest this spiralling descent
into disunity and decay.
Sultan Baybars, meanwhile, had achieved major victories
against the Christians, manifestly affirming his commitment to jihad. His
pitiless approach to holy war had reduced the crusader states to a position of
almost prone vulnerability. But the sultan had to be mindful of the continued
threat posed by the Mongols. The problems that, for years, had left them
paralysed in Mesopotamia, Asia Minor and Russia – including protracted dynastic
upheavals and the open hostility between the Golden Horde and the Ilkhanate of
Persia – now were starting to diminish. A forceful new Ilkhan, Abaqa, had come
to power in 1265 and immediately initiated attempts to secure an anti-Mamluk
alliance with western Europe. Another destructive Ilkhanid assault on Islam
threatened. Yet, in spring 1270, even as Baybars looked to deal with this
northern menace, news reached him in Damascus that the French were preparing
again to mount a crusade from the West. Remembering only too well the havoc
caused in Egypt by the last Latin invasion in 1249, the sultan immediately
returned to Cairo to brace Muslim defences.
KING LOUIS’ SECOND CRUSADE
Back in Rome, Pope Clement IV was deeply alarmed by the
vicious Mamluk campaigning that began in 1265. Recognising that the war for the
Holy Land was being lost, in August 1266 Clement started to formulate plans for
a relatively small but swiftly deployed crusade. He recruited a band of troops,
mostly from the Low Countries – instructing them to depart no later than April
1267 – and opened coalition talks with Abaqa and the Byzantine Emperor Michael
VIII. In late summer 1266, however, King Louis IX of France caught wind of this
expedition. A veteran of the holy war, now in his early fifties and ever more
stringent in his religious devotions, Louis sensed a chance to lay the troubled
memories of Mansourah to rest. That September he privately informed the pope of
his wish to join the crusade. In some respects, Louis’ enrolment – publicly
confirmed by a crusading vow on 25 March 1267 – was a boon, for it promised to
result in a far larger and more potent campaign. With this in mind, Clement
postponed the smaller endeavour that he had originally envisaged. Somewhat
ironically, this delay (the result of Louis’ enthusiasm) left Baybars free to
crush Antioch in 1268.
Just as he had done in the 1240s, Louis made careful
financial and logistical preparations for his second crusade. Recruitment was
not as buoyant for this campaign – the king’s old comrade-in-arms John of Joinville
was one who did not enlist. But given the setbacks endured by previous
expeditions, and the concerns expressed in some quarters about the papacy’s
apparent abuse of the crusading ideal, the number of participants was
surprisingly substantial. The most notable figure to take the cross was the
future King Edward I of England, then known as the Lord Edward. Fresh from
winning the civil war that had threatened the reign of his embattled father
King Henry III, Edward committed to the crusade in June 1268 and, putting aside
any animosity with France, later agreed to coordinate his expedition with that
of King Louis.
In November 1268, however, Clement IV died, and because of
divisions with the Church over Rome’s dealings with the ambitious and, by some
accounts, untrustworthy Charles of Anjou (Louis IX’s surviving brother and now
the king of Sicily), no papal successor was appointed until 1271. During this
interregnum, the sense of urgency that Clement had sought to instill in the
crusaders quickly dissipated. With momentum lost, the departure was delayed
until summer 1270. In the interim, renewed attempts were made to contact the
Mongol Ilkhan Abaqa, and in March 1270 Charles of Anjou also took the cross.
After Louis finally embarked from Aigues-Mortes in July
1270, his second crusade proved to be a pathetic anticlimax. For reasons that
have never been satisfactorily explained, but may well have been related to the
machinations of his scheming brother Charles, Louis detoured from his declared
route to Palestine. Instead, he sailed to Tunis (in modern Tunisia), which was
then ruled by an independent Muslim warlord, Abu Abdallah. The French king
arrived in North Africa seemingly expecting Abu Abdallah to convert to
Christianity and collaborate in an attack on Mamluk Egypt. When he failed to do
so, plans for a direct assault on Tunis were laid – but the attack never came.
In the midsummer heat, disease took hold in the crusader camp and, in early
August, Louis himself fell ill. Over the course of three weeks his strength
ebbed. On 25 August 1270, the pious crusader monarch Louis IX died, his final
act a fruitless campaign far from the Holy Land. Legend has it that his last
whispered words were ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem’. The king’s dreams of recovering
that sacred city had come to nothing, but his earnest devotion was
unmistakeable. In 1297 Louis was canonised as a saint.
In the wake of Louis’ demise, efforts were made in
mid-November to sail on to the Levant, but when a large portion of the fleet
sank in a heavy storm, most Franks returned to Europe. Only Charles of Anjou
gained from the whole affair, securing a treaty with Abu Abdallah that brought
Sicily rich tribute payments. Edward of England, alone of the leading
crusaders, refused to be turned from his purpose and insisted on continuing his
journey to the Near East with a small fleet of thirteen ships.
