Defending the Crusader Kingdoms: John de Brienne

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Saturday, November 8, 2025

The Sixth Crusade

The so-called "Sixth Crusade" is arguably the most peculiar of all the 'crusades.' It was led by a man who had been excommunicated and was condemned by the Pope. Allegedly the participating bishops, scholars and dancing girls outnumbered the barons. There were no battles -- except between Christians -- and it ended in a 'victory' that has deceived only historians while contemporaries saw it for the farce it was.

After repeated crusading pledges which he had not fulfilled, Frederich II Hohenstaufen finally gathered his forces in Apulia in the summer of 1227, only for an epidemic to strike down thousands of men before they could depart. Frederick put to sea despite being ill in order to avoid excommunication. After the Landgraf of Thuringia died at sea, however, Friedrich lost heart and returned to Brindisi. Pope Gregory IX promptly excommunicated him. Under the circumstances, the excommunication was hardly justified, and in retrospect represented the opening volley in a power-struggle between the papacy and the Hohenstaufens that would last for decades. At the heart of the conflict were conflicting views of the role of sacred and secular authority, a topic beyond the scope of this work. However, as a result of the excommunication Frederick’s planned expedition to the Holy Land lost papal blessing and could no longer be called a ‘crusade.’ Indeed, it was explicitly characterized as an ‘anti-crusade’ by the papacy.

To make matters worse, in April 1228 fifteen-year-old Queen Yolanda of Jerusalem died of the complications of childbirth. She left an infant son, Conrad, as heir to the throne of Jerusalem. With Yolanda’s death, Friedrich II lost the right to call himself King of Jerusalem; that title now belonged to his infant son Conrad. The most Frederick could claim was the regency for his son (as John of Brienne had done for Yolanda) until the boy came of age at 15. Characteristically, Frederick ignored the law of Jerusalem and insisted on calling himself ‘King of Jerusalem’ until the day he died.

Frederick also proceeded with his crusade. His reasoning appears to be that if he succeeded in liberating Jerusalem, this would vindicate his earlier delays and prove that God was on his side in his conflict with the pope. Friedrich had good reason to believe he would liberate Jerusalem because he had already been promised Jerusalem by al-Kamil. The Sultan of Egypt had fallen out with his brother al-Mu’azzam and was looking for allies. He offered to deliver Jerusalem (his brother’s city) to the Emperor in exchange for the Emperor helping him take it away from his brother in the first place. It was rather like the King of France promising to give the Holy Roman Emperor London — just as soon as the later had captured it for him.

The ironies of the deal appear to have been lost on Frederick Hohenstaufen — and many modern commentators! Expecting a rapid diplomatic end to his ‘crusade,’ Frederick took a comparatively small number of fighting men with him, all of whom were drawn exclusively from his own domains since no one else was prepared to join an ‘anti-crusade’ led by an excommunicate. After a stop in Cyprus which will be discussed later, he proceeded to Acre arriving in 10 September 1228. Shortly after his arrival, Friedrich learned that the pope had raised an army to invade the Kingdom of Sicily with the declared intent of deposing him. One of the men leading the pope’s forces was the man Frederick had so callously humiliated: his father-in-law, King John of Jerusalem.

The threat to his core kingdom made a rapid conclusion of his Near Eastern expedition imperative. Frederick immediately opened up secret negotiations with al-Kamil, reminding him of earlier promises. However, al-Mu’azzam had died, and al-Kamil no longer felt he needed the assistance of a Christian ruler to subdue his nephew. Frederick was reduced to begging al-Kamil for Jerusalem on almost any terms at all. Finally, on 18 February 1229, after five months of secret negotiations, a personal treaty was signed between Frederick and al-Kamil, which, significantly, did not include commitments by any of the other Ayyubids.

Biographers and admirers of Frederick Hohenstaufen are apt to call Friedrich’s preference for diplomacy over warfare ‘enlightened’ or attribute his ‘astonishing success’ to greater ‘subtlety’ and even ‘genius’. It has been claimed, for example, that the treaty demonstrated Frederick’s ‘willingness to compromise and his diplomatic skills.’[i] The fact that diplomacy had been employed by the Franks for more than a hundred years before Frederick’s arrival — and indeed by Richard the Lionheart — is ignored. Furthermore, the fact that Friedrich was vehemently criticized by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Templars, the Hospitallers and the local barons as well as the population at large is attributed blithely to the alleged bigotry of the church and ‘blood-thirsty’ character of the Franks in Outremer. Such allegations reflect ignorance of the Holy Land, the Franks, the circumstances of the treaty, and substance of the objections to Frederick’s treaty.

Praise for Frederick’s treaty is almost entirely misplaced given the fact that he did not secure Jerusalem. What Frederick II obtained was temporary Christian control (ten years, ten months and ten days) of some of Jerusalem and a couple other cities, such as Bethlehem. The treaty explicitly prohibited Christians from setting foot on the Temple Mount and prohibited the Franks from building walls around Jerusalem. Rather than defensible borders, the Christians were granted a narrow corridor connecting Jerusalem to Jaffa. This could so easily be severed that it represented a vulnerability rather than an asset. The truce furthermore left the Saracens in control of key strategic castles such as Kerak and Montreal, while prohibiting the Franks from undertaking military campaigns elsewhere. The truce left Jerusalem so exposed that not one religious institution thought it was worthwhile returning their headquarters there.

Furthermore, the superficial success of Frederick bloodless crusade obscures the fact the constitution of Jerusalem reserved to the High Court the right to make treaties. Frederick II Hohenstaufen blissfully ignored this constitutional nicety. He negotiated in secret and presented the barons of Jerusalem with a fait accompli. This, as much as the seriously flawed terms of the treaty, outraged the local nobility. The Arab sources, meanwhile, stress that al-Kamil openly bragged that ‘when he had achieved his aim and had the situation in hand, he could purify Jerusalem of the Franks and chase them out.’[ii]

The terms of the truce reveal the degree to which Friedrich’s entire ‘crusade’ was about his power struggle with the Pope rather than Jerusalem or the Holy Land. While leaving the residents of Outremer to deal with the consequences of his worthless truce, he made a great show of wearing the Imperial crown in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. This was his way of thumbing his nose at the Pope, but it was also ‘an affront to the laws and traditions of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, a blatantly illegal action bordering on sacrilege. It is no wonder, then, that the Christians in the East saw the crusade of Frederick II as a war aimed not at Muslims but at themselves.’[iii]

Having had his day in Jerusalem (and ostentatiously telling the Muslims they should continue their call to prayers even in his presence), Frederick departed the Holy Land never to return. Neither his son nor his grandson, despite being titular kings of Jerusalem, ever set foot in the kingdom. It was left to other kings, such as Louis IX, to try to reclaim Christian control of the Holy City and secure the Holy Land. Meanwhile, the common people of Acre expressed their opinion of Frederick’s ‘anti-crusade’ by pelting him with offal and intestines from their rooftops and balconies as he made his way down to the harbor to embark on his return voyage. Yet by far the worst aspect of Frederick II’s anti-crusade was the legacy it left behind: civil war.

[i] Suhr, Heiko. Friedrich II von Hohenstaufen: Seine politischen und kulturellen Verbindungen zum Islam. [Norderstedt: GRIN Verlag, 2008] 17.

[ii] Ibn Wasil, Arab Historians of the Crusades. Translated by Francesco Gabrieli [Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1957] 271)

[iii] Madden, Thomas F. The Concise History of the Crusades. [New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014] 155.

The bulk of this entry is an excerpt from Dr. Schrader's comprehensive study of the crusader states.

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The Sixth Crusade is depicted in Rebels against Tyranny. Buy Now!

Altogether, Dr. Helena P. Schrader is the author of six books set in the Holy Land in the Era of the Crusades.

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"The Tale of the English Templar" is a fictional work that depicts the destruction of the Knight's Templar.

An escaped Templar, an intrepid, old crusader, and a discarded bride

embark on a quest for justice in the face of tyranny.

Find out more at: https://helenapschrader.net/the-english-templar/

"St. Louis Knight" is a novel set against the backdrop of the Seventh Crusade and St. Louis' sojourn in the Holy Land. A Templar novice and King Louis are the central characters.

It is now available in audiobook as well as paperback and ebook.

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A crusader in search of faith --
A lame lady in search of revenge --
And a King who would be saint.

St. Louis' Knight takes you to the Holy Land in the 13th century, and a world filled with knights, nobles, prophets -- and assassins.

(Available in Audiobook)

Saturday, November 1, 2025

The Fifth Crusade

While the Franks regained their footing in the Holy Land, the crusading spirit experienced a revival in Western Europe. In 1212, a youth movement to capture Jerusalem by faith alone shamed the pope into issuing a new crusading appeal in 1213. The youthful King of Sicily and Germany, Frederick II Hohenstaufen, stepped into his grandfather and father’s crusading footsteps, taking the cross at his coronation in Aachen on 25 July 1215. Other kings were also recruited, namely the kings of Hungary, Cyprus, and Jerusalem, but Pope Innocent III was determined to retain control of this crusade, which he considered only one strand of a vast and permanent crusading movement.

Pope Innocent III envisaged crusading as a permanent state of warfare against the enemies of the Church, wherever they were and whatever form they took (Moors, pagans, Saracens or heretics). Despite Innocent’s death in 1216, this crusading vision was adopted and pursued by his successor Honorius III, who appointed a papal legate, Cardinal Pelagius, to represent him in the Fifth Crusade. Because the cardinal embodied papal authority in a campaign without a dominant secular leader — and because he had the largest purse — Pelagius wielded undue influence. This experiment with church leadership of a crusade proved utterly disastrous.

The first contingents of crusaders started arriving in Acre in late 1216 and helped push back the borders of the Frankish kingdom marginally before sailing in late May 1217 to lay siege to the Egyptian port of Damietta. The strategy, devised apparently collectively, was to strike a decisive blow against the Ayyubids in their power-base of Egypt in order to force them to surrender not just bits and pieces of territory but everything that had once been part of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The strategy assumed that an attack on Cairo would threaten the Ayyubids to such an extent that they would concede Jerusalem.

The siege of Damietta lasted nearly two years and was characterized by a lack of unified command as contingents of crusaders came and went independently. In the midst of the siege, August 1218, the Sultan al-Adil died, and his empire broke up. The two major pieces went to his son al-Kamil, who inherited Egypt, and his son al-Mu’azzam, who inherited Syria, with smaller fragments on the fringes going to other heirs. Shortly after the crusaders captured Damietta in December 1219, al-Kamil persuaded his brother al-Mu’azzam to attack the crusader states in order to divert attention from Egypt. The tactic worked only partially. With King John and most of his knights in Egypt, the Saracens were able to strike deep into the heart of the kingdom, overrunning and laying waste to Caesarea. King John and the knights of Jerusalem rushed back to their homeland to restore the situation. This, however, did not seriously alter the situation in Egypt, since the vast majority of the crusaders remained in position and retained possession of Damietta.

Al-Kamil tried a new tactic: diplomacy. He offered to restore all territories that had formerly belonged to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, with the exception of the castles of Transjordan, in exchange for the crusaders evacuating Egypt. All sources agree that King John and the barons of Jerusalem were wholeheartedly in favor of accepting these terms. For them, this was what the crusade was about. The Military Orders, however, objected to the fact that the castles in Transjordan were not included. The crusaders from the Italian city-states opposed the treaty because they considered Egypt a far more lucrative trading base than inland Palestine. The German crusaders appear to have been reluctant to abort a crusade that their Emperor had vowed to join, even if he was still notably absent. The Papal Legate appears to have seen the offer as a sign of weakness that justified pursuing the crusade with more vigor. For whatever reasons, the majority rejected the offer, and the crusade continued, meaning the crusaders remained in occupation of Damietta awaiting the arrival of Emperor Frederick II.

He never came. He had excuses. Other items on his agenda, such as subduing a Muslim rebellion in Sicily, took priority.

In July 1221, after rejecting a second offer from al-Kamil with roughly the same terms as before, the crusaders marched out with the goal of capturing Cairo. Instead, the Nile flooded and the Saracen army used its better knowledge of the terrain to cut the crusaders off from their supplies and retreat. It was a complete debacle in which Damietta was returned to the Sultan not for Jerusalem but merely for the lives and freedom of thousands of captives. The survivors went home with their tails between their legs.

In retrospect, the truce offered by al-Kamil looks good, yet it was probably always a mirage. Al-Kamil was giving away his brother’s (not his own) territory and it is doubtful if he could have delivered on his promises. Even if al-Mu’azzam had cooperated, and the fact that he destroyed Jerusalem’s fortifications suggests he intended to, the agreement would have been temporary because from the Muslim perspective the maximum validity of any truce signed with non-Believers was ten years, ten months and ten days. The fact that al-Kamil did not fully comply with the terms of the agreement he did sign, likewise suggests that the grandiose offer of restoring the Kingdom of Jerusalem to its former borders was a red-herring designed to sow dissent among the crusaders. Considering the outcome of the advance up the Nile, on the other hand, the crusaders might have done better to call the Sultan’s bluff.

This entry is an excerpt from Dr. Schrader's comprehensive study of the crusader states.

Order now!

Dr. Helena P. Schrader is also the author of six books set in the Holy Land in the Era of the Crusades.

Buy Now! Buy Now! Buy Now!

"The Tale of the English Templar" is a fictional work that depicts the destruction of the Knight's Templar.

An escaped Templar, an intrepid, old crusader, and a discarded bride

embark on a quest for justice in the face of tyranny.

Find out more at: https://helenapschrader.net/the-english-templar/

"St. Louis Knight" is a novel set against the backdrop of the Seventh Crusade and St. Louis' sojourn in the Holy Land. A Templar novice and King Louis are the central characters.

It is now available in audiobook as well as paperback and ebook.

Buy Now!

(Available in Audiobook)

Thursday, September 27, 2018

The Tragic Tale of a Child Queen

Although the Holy Roman Emperors were staunch supporters of the crusades and the crusader states, it was not until Frederick II Hohenstaufen married the heiress to the crown of Jerusalem that the Holy Roman Emperors attempted to exert sustained control over the Kingdom of Jerusalem ― leading to a bitter civil war between the Imperial faction and rebellious barons.

The dynastic link that gave the Hohenstaufens a claim to rule in Jerusalem is, therefore, an important historical figure. Yet there are few figures in history that so completely exemplify the tragedy of being born to power ― particularly for women ― as Yolanda of Jerusalem

Yolanda became Queen of Jerusalem within days of her birth in November 1212. Her mother, Maria de Montferrat, through whom she derived her titled, died of complications of giving birth of Yolanda, her first and only child. Maria was just 20 years old at her death.

Yolanda was thus a half-orphan almost from birth, and her father, John de Brienne, was a parvenu new-comer to her kingdom. Immediately voices were raised that questioned her father’s right remain king. Based on the precedent set twenty years earlier, when Queen Sibylla had died, it was argued that the kingdom passed to the infant Yolanda, and the regency during her minority should be exercised by her closest adult relative on her mother’s side. John de Brienne was able to rally sufficient support for his claim to be regent for his infant daughter to retain his crown, but his position was clearly undermined.

Less than two years after the death of Yolanda’s mother, John de Brienne married a second time, the Armenian princess Stephanie. Yolanda would still have been a toddler, largely in the care of nannies, and Stephanie might well have become a mother to her. Perhaps, for the next six years, Yolanda had what we could consider a degree of security and happiness surrounded by her father, step-mother and, soon, a baby half-brother, as well.

That idyll, if it ever existed, was shattered when both Stephanie and her son died in early 1220. Furthermore, they died in a period when the Kingdom of Jerusalem was under attack from the Sultan of Damascus. The city of Caesarea was captured and sacked, and justifiable fears that other crusader cities might suffer the same fate induced John de Brienne, other Syrian barons, and the Knights Templars to abandon the Fifth Crusade in order to defend the Kingdom of Jerusalem directly. Yolanda would have been seven years old ― old enough to feel the pain of losing the only mother she had ever known and her little brother and old enough to sense the fear and alarm that had brought her father back.

Any joy she felt at seeing her father again, however, was short-lived. John returned to Egypt and the Fifth Crusade, where his advice to trade Damietta (held by the crusaders) for Jerusalem (held by the Ayyubids) was ignored. Instead, the crusade made the fatal mistake of trying to march on Cairo and ended in a debacle. John himself had to stand hostage for the implementation of the negotiated settlement.

John returned home to his now eight-year-old daughter, but not for long. In early 1221, he set off on a grand tour of West intended to raise money and troops for a new crusade. He would never again set foot in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Instead, for the next years, he traversed Europe, getting as far to the north as England and Cologne, but spending more time in Italy and Spain. During these travels, he secured a third wife, Berengaria of Castile, for himself and also negotiated the fateful marriage of Yolanda with the Holy Roman Emperor.

And Yolanda? Just nine-years-old when her father departed, she was not yet thirteen, when she married Frederick II by proxy in Acre. The historical record tells us nothing about her activities in this period, and we can only assume that she was undergoing the kind of education thought suitable for queens in this period. Most probably that education was entrusted to one of the convents that traditionally took daughters of the higher nobility into their ranks as pupils, nuns, and abbesses.

The quality of such an education should not be underestimated. Convents had a long tradition of being centers of learning, and in the early 13^th century were still home to intellectual inquiry and debate. At a minimum, Yolanda learned to read and write in French and Latin, but she may well also have learned Greek, given how widespread the language was in the Holy Land and the existence of many religious texts still available in the original Greek. She would have been expected to know Christian dogma and theology, which entailed reading not only the Bible but other religious texts as well. (This was before the age of fundamentalism that reduced everything to the Bible.) She would have been expected to command arithmetic, though not necessarily geometry or algebra, and to know the history of her own kingdom and that of its most important supporters such as the Holy Roman Empire, the Kings of France and England. She would probably have been educated about the kingdom’s enemies as well, possibly including some knowledge of Arabic; many of the nobles in the kingdom were fluent in the language. Some knowledge of the natural sciences, particularly human biology and fundamental recipes for treating common illnesses and injuries, might also have been included in the curricula. Mandatory would have been manners, protocol, spinning, and needlework.

Yolanda’s education would hardly have been considered “complete,” however, when envoys from the Holy Roman Emperor arrived in Acre with the news that her father had negotiated her marriage to the most powerful monarch on earth, the man already calling himself “the Wonder of the World.” The wedding followed almost immediately. Still only twelve years old, she was married by proxy to Frederick in Acre and crowned Queen in Tyre, before setting sail with a large escort of prelates and noblemen for Apulia. She arrived at Brindisi and married Frederick II on November 9, 1225; it was literally just days before or after her thirteenth birthday. Her bridegroom was a thirty-year-old widower, who already maintained a harem in the Sicilian tradition.

The marriage got off to a terrible start. John de Brienne had negotiated for the marriage with either implicit or explicit assurances from the Emperor that John would remain King of Jerusalem until his death. He saw the marriage of his daughter to the Holy Roman Emperor as a means of securing aid in the form of loans and troops, as well as a means to secure the viability of the kingdom after his death. Frederick Hohenstaufen, however, declared himself King of Jerusalem the day after the wedding ― and made the barons who had escorted Yolanda to Italy swear fealty him at once.

John de Brienne was outraged, and so was the Master of the Teutonic Knights, Herman von Salza, who had been instrumental in the negotiations. The latter fact strongly suggests that Brienne had not simply been deluding himself. It appears that Frederick had been intentionally misleading about his intentions, or had lied outright. In any case, Frederick instantly made an enemy of his father-in-law, and the breach ensured that Yolanda never saw her father again before she died.

Perhaps, given how often he had been away during her short life, she did not miss him, but she certainly found no comfort or companionship from her husband. Although it is hard to distinguish facts from propaganda, the tales of Yolanda’s marriage are unremittingly negative. The horror stories start with one contemporary chronicle that claims Frederick scorned his little bride on the wedding night itself, preferring to seduce one of her ladies instead. Several sources agree that “soon after the marriage, Frederick imprisoned, or otherwise maltreated, his wife.” (Perry, Guy. John of Brienne: King of Jerusalem, Emperor of Constantinople, c. 1175 – 1237. Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 135.)

Within a six-month, Yolanda’s father was openly at war with her husband by supporting the ever rebellious Lombard League. Allegedly, the frustrated Emperor took out his rage on his thirteen-year-old bride, beating her so brutally, according to the Chronicle of Ernoul, that she miscarried the child she was carrying. Whether her husband’s abuse was the cause or not, Yolanda certainly miscarried a child at about this time, still only thirteen or at most fourteen-years-old.

Meanwhile, Frederick was under increasing pressure to fulfill his repeated promises to go to the aid of the Holy Land. He had first taken crusading vows in 1215, and eleven years later he had nothing but excuses to show for it. During the negotiations for his marriage to Yolanda, he had promised to set out on crusade no-later-than August 1227, or face excommunication. In the summer of 1227, a great army was assembled in Apulia with the goal of a campaign in defense of Christian Syria, but before the crusaders could embark they were devastated by a contagious disease that killed thousands. Frederick boarded a vessel but was so ill that his companions urged him to return. Frederick put about and landed not in the Holy Land but in his own Sicily. He was promptly excommunicated by the Pope.

And Yolanda? She was still imprisoned in Frederick’s harem. He had not even thought to take her with him when he set out for her kingdom. She was also soon pregnant again.

On May 5, 1228, ten days after being delivered of a son, Yolanda of Jerusalem died. She was not yet sixteen years old. Although she had been a queen almost from the day of her birth, not once had she exercised the authority to which she had been born.

Frederick hardly took any notice of the fact. He continued to claim her kingdom as his right ― despite having denied his father-in-law the exact same dignity. Frederick II consistently ignored legal principles that got in the way of his own power. Because of this disregard for the laws and customs of Yolanda’s kingdom, he soon found himself at loggerheads with the barons of Jerusalem. In the end, Yolanda’s subjects defeated her husband, but only decades after she had been sacrificed on the altar of her father and husband’s ambitions.

Striking is the extent to which Yolanda was a helpless pawn in this game of kings, popes, and barons. It is particularly striking when one considers how powerful her predecessors had been. Queen Melusinde commanded the support of barons and bishops to such an extent that her husband was forced to submit to her will. Sibylla refused to cave in to pressure from her brother King Baldwin IV and foisted her (utterly unsuitable) candidate for king upon the entire kingdom. Isabella I divorced one husband and married three others for the benefit of her kingdom, but she was never pushed off the stage, never imprisoned, neglected or ignored. She was Queen of Jerusalem still, after her fourth husband’s death. Was it just circumstances, particularly Yolanda’s youth, that condemned her to a life little better than a slave? Or was it the play of personalities? Emperor Frederick was certainly full of overweening pride and arrogance, but would a different girl have been better at confronting him and defending her undeniable rights? We will never know.

Yolanda plays a minor role in Rebels against Tyranny, and the tragic consequences of her marriage to the Holy Roman Emperor form the main plot of this novel, the first in a new series set in the crusader states. Although Yolanda's early death meant she could not play a role in the rebellion against her husband’s autocratic policies, I wanted nevertheless to give her a voice and face. Watch for an excerpt from Rebels against

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Dr. Helena P. Schrader holds a PhD in History.

She is the Chief Editor of the Real Crusades History Blog.

She is an award-winning novelist and author of numerous books both fiction and non-fiction. Her three-part biography of Balian d'Ibelin won a total of 14 literary accolades. Her most recent release is a novel about the founding of the crusader Kingdom of Cyprus. You can find out more at: http://crusaderkingdoms.com

Thursday, September 20, 2018

The Remarkable Career of John de Brienne, Part III: Emperor in Constantinople

As the 13th-century historian, philosopher and jurist Philip of Novare worded it, “A good knight, by the fame of his valour and by his effort, has frequently come to great riches and acquisitions. And many of them have been crowned kings, and others have had great riches and lordships.”[1] No career was more spectacular than that of John de Brienne, the younger son of a minor French count, who rose to be not only King of Jerusalem but Emperor of Constantinople as well. Today I conclude my three-part series on his life.

With the collapse of the Fifth Crusade in humiliating defeat, most of the survivors could return home and forswear crusading altogether, if they wished. John de Brienne, however, King of Jerusalem, did not have that option. His kingdom was more vulnerable than ever before, now that the Ayyubids had every reason to question the efficacy of Christian arms. John was in his late forties, a widower for the second time, and his only surviving child was his little girl by Marie de Montferrat, Yolanda/Isabella, who was now ten years old.

Rather than returning to his kingdom and daughter, however, John de Brienne embarked on an expansive “tour” of Western Europe intended to raise funds, troops, and support for a new crusade to rescue his beleaguered kingdom. Between 1223 and 1225, Brienne traveled to Flanders and England, to Metz and Cologne, across northern Italy and down into what is now Spain.

In the latter, he visited the pilgrimage site of Santiago de Compostella, but more important contracted a third marriage, this time to Berengaria of Castile, the daughter of Alfonso IX. The couple was married in Toledo in May 1224. Berengaria had the advantage of being a niece of the Queen Blanch of France, thereby strengthening Brienne’s ties with the French monarchy.

Yet the more important marriage that Brienne arranged during the first three years following the end of the Fifth Crusade was that between his daughter Yolanda, the heiress of Jerusalem, and the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II Hohenstaufen. It is unclear where the idea of Frederick II marrying the future queen of Jerusalem originated. Pierre Boulle, one of Frederick II’s biographers, suggests it was the Pope’s idea. Another possible father for the idea is Herman von Salza, the tireless and diplomatically gifted, Master of the Teutonic Knights. Or, the idea might have originated with Brienne himself. In any case, the idea had the obvious advantage of giving Frederick II a material interest in finally fulfilling his multiple crusade vows. Brienne, the Pope, and the Masters of the military orders all hoped that if Frederick were to marry the heiress of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, he would finally do something to shore it up.

Although historians presume there was a marriage contract negotiated by Herman von Salza, no copy has survived into our own time. Nevertheless, there is a general consensus that Frederick II agreed to allow John de Brienne to retain the title, dignity, revenues, and functions of King of Jerusalem for his lifetime. The marriage was celebrated in Acre by proxy (the Archbishop of Capua standing in for the absent Emperor) in the summer of 1225. At the time Yolanda was only twelve-years-old, this being the legal age of consent for girls. The proxy wedding was followed by Yolanda’s coronation at Tyre, before she boarded a ship, accompanied by leading barons of her kingdom, and sailed for Brindisi. On November 9, 1225 (still possibly short of her thirteenth birthday), Yolanda married Frederick II in person ― and the very next day Frederick demanded homage from the knights and barons of Jerusalem that had accompanied his wife to Brindisi. There can be no question that Brienne himself ― but also the Pope and Salza ― all believed that Frederick’s actions were in violation of the terms they had negotiated.

What he had promised during the negotiations interested Frederick II (who liked to call himself the “Wonder of the World”) not one iota. The knights and barons of Jerusalem, moreover, were all too ready to swap the ineffective and impoverished Brienne for the powerful and wealthy Holy Roman Emperor. All those present did homage as demanded. They lived to regret it.

Despite the marriage, Frederick still failed to fulfill his crusading vow by the agreed date of Sept. 1227. To be sure, he made the attempt, but much of his army and leading commanders were struck down by illness. The Emperor himself became so sick after setting sail that he returned to Apulia. The Pope, now Gregory IX, promptly excommunicated him for failing (yet again) to fulfill his vows.

Frederick was unimpressed and set about raising a new army. Meanwhile, according to various chronicles (admittedly hostile to Frederick), the Emperor abused his bride. On the one hand, he was said to neglect her for his harem slaves or other women, and on the other is said to have beaten her so severely that she lost, or nearly lost, a child. She certainly did lose her first child, but since she was at most 14 at the time, abuse may have had nothing to do with it. Equally certain, she died in May 1228 just ten days later after giving birth to a son when she was still only 15 years of age.

Frederick was now in exactly the same situation that Brienne had been at the death of his wife Queen Marie. Like Brienne, he blithely insisted that he remained King of Jerusalem, although the tie that bound him to Jerusalem was dead. Naturally, he could ― like Brienne ― claim to rule for his infant son, the heir to the crown, but ― again like Brienne ― he claimed more, until the day he died he insisted on the title and dignity of King of Jerusalem. He did not do so without opposition. John d’Ibelin would oppose him in this, just as he had opposed Brienne, and far more successfully, but that will have to be the subject of a separate entry.

For Brienne, of course, the loss of his daughter was not material; he claimed the crown because he had been crowned and anointed, just as Guy de Lusignan had done before him and Emperor Frederick was doing too. Brienne was fortunate to have a powerful patron in the pope.

Pope Honorius was at loggerheads with the Holy Roman Emperor over a variety of issues that far exceed the parameters of this essay. It is enough to say that in his struggle with Frederick II, Brienne was a useful tool. Brienne had already allied himself with the Lombard League, the northern Italian cities then in revolt against Frederick’s rule. Brienne evidently enjoyed much respect and sympathy among the Lombards. Honorius clearly wanted to keep Brienne on hand and on his side, so he furnished Brienne with substantial income by appointing him “rector” in the papal state of Tuscany. Honorius was succeeded as pope by Gregory IX, an even more inveterate opponent of the Hohenstaufen. He immediately confirmed Brienne in this position as rector and then turned to him as an experienced military commander to lead (among others) papal forces directed at the Frederick II’s Kingdom of Sicily.

Frederick himself had set off on his much-postponed crusade despite being excommunicate and despite the fact that Pope Gregory expressly forbade him from setting out. (The Pope called Frederick’s expedition to the Holy Land an “anti-crusade.”) Frederick took only a few troops with him, but many scholars, archbishops, and harem slaves. He conducted no military operations against the Saracen, preferring to attack his barons on Cyprus and the Knights Templar in the heart of Acre. Secretly he begged the Sultan al-Kamil for terms that would restore Jerusalem to Christian hands, without consulting any of his allies. Although he ultimately succeeded in obtaining a ten-year truce that included restoration of Jerusalem and some other territory, his treaty with al-Kamil had many flaws (as I will show in a future entry). All this took time, however, and while he was away, Pope Gregory’s army assaulted his holdings in southern Italy.

The papal war against the Frederick has gone down in history as the “War of the Keys” because papal forces used the papal keys as their insignia. The forces fighting for the pope were commanded by not only John de Brienne but also Cardinal Pelagius (of Fifth Crusade ill-repute) and Cardinal Colonna. Together, they initially enjoyed significant successes, but these were built on sand: Frederick’s absence. As soon as the Emperor returned from the Holy Land, landing at Brindisi on June 10, 1229, rebellious cities and lords got cold feet. They soon abandoned their rebellion or the papal cause, depending on how you look at it.

This defeat was not nearly as devastating for Brienne as it may seem on the surface. This is because roughly six months before Frederick’s return from the Holy Land and the collapse of the “War of the Keys,” Brienne had been offered the Imperial crown of Constantinople, the Latin empire built (precariously) upon the foundations of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire) that had fallen to Latin mercenaries after the capture of Constantinople in 1204.

Without getting into too much detail, the throne in Constantinople had fallen vacant following the death of Emperor Robert of Courtenay in 1228. His heir was his younger brother Baldwin, who was only 11 years old at the time. With the Latin empire under threat from resurgent Greeks under both John III Doukas Vatazes and Theodore of Epiros, the barons did not want to wait for Baldwin to grow up. They wanted a tried military leader now.

Unfortunately for them, Constantinople did not have the emotional appeal of Jerusalem. Many knights and barons continued to view the conquest of Constantinople as scandalous or even sinful. Many men who were prepared to risk life, limb, and fortune to secure the Holy Land, were completely disinterested in Constantinople. In short, there were no great kings or barons willing to give up their secure hereditary lands in the West for a throne that was already tottering on the brink of collapse. Brienne, on the other hand, had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Before setting out for Constantinople, however, Brienne negotiated terms that, “reflect the fact that he was now in a much stronger position, vis-à-vis desperate Latin Constantinople, than he had been two decades earlier when negotiating for the throne of Jerusalem. He seems to have refused to accept a mere regency for young Baldwin de Courtenay. Instead, it was agreed that John would become sole emperor (not co-emperor, as is still sometimes said).”[1] Brienne was to be Baldwin’s guardian until the latter came of age, after which Baldwin was to swear fealty to Brienne until Brienne’s death. He would then succeed Brienne. Meanwhile, Baldwin was to marry Brienne’s daughter Mary and be invested with all territory of the empire in Asia Minor ― just as soon as somebody had conquered it again. Brienne’s sons were also to be provided for from territories of his new empire, which for all its weakness still theoretically stretched from the Balkans deep into what is now Turkey.

So Brienne once again went recruiting for the men and money to defend the throne to which he had been elected. He received strong support from the Venetians, who were largely responsible for the creation of Latin empire in Greece and offered very generous terms for the transport of Brienne’s army (in contrast to the debacle of 1204). It is an indication of Brienne’s greater prestige after two decades in the international arena that he was able to muster a significantly larger force for his move to Constantinople than he had been able to pull together for his arrival in Jerusalem. The transport treaty with Venice suggests he brought 500 knights, 1,200 horses, and 5,000 infantry. Yet, in the end, it was not nearly enough.

The challenge Brienne faced in Constantinople was considerably greater than what he had confronted in Jerusalem. The Latin empire was flanked by hostile, Christian powers, and ruled over a population that was at best indifferent to the Frankish elite. Unlike in Jerusalem, the native Orthodox population had not invited the Franks in and did not see them as an improvement over what had been before. The “enemy,” particularly the Greeks rallying around John III Doukas Vatatzes, was widely perceived as more legitimate than the Frankish rulers. Furthermore, while the Ayyubids had been divided among themselves and fighting each other as often as they fought the Franks, shortly after Brienne arrived in Constantinople, the Vlach-Bulgar kingdom switched alliances and started supporting the Orthodox Byzantines rather than the Latin Franks.

In 1235, four years into Brienne’s reign, the Byzantines and Bulgars jointly attacked the Latin Empire. They rapidly eliminated the Latin outposts in Asia Minor and in Thrace and the combined forces appeared before Constantinople. They had sufficient force to attack in two places at once, and the strategy appeared to be to attack in one place, draw the defenders to that part of the wall, and then launch a second attack somewhere else. Brienne responded with cavalry sallies that evidently astonished and disrupted the besiegers, but meanwhile, the native population within the city was far from trustworthy, adding another dimension of danger. Fortunately, the timely arrival of a fleet of ships from Venice broke the coordinated attacks of the enemy by destroying 24 Greek ships and putting the rest to flight.

The Venetians docked in triumph, celebrated their victory, and sailed for home. The enemy returned, renewing the siege of Constantinople through the winter of 1235-1236. Having received a “bloody nose” in the earlier assaults, however, the combined Byzantine-Bulgar army now attempted to force surrender through siege alone. Brienne managed to get word to Rome of his dire situation ― and the West rallied.

In a rare instance of self-interest over-riding rivalries, the Venetians, Pisans, and Genoese jointly rallied to the defense of Constantinople. Equally important, the Frankish Prince of Achaea (essentially the Peloponnese) likewise brought up troops to relieve Constantinople. As the prospects of success dimmed, the Bulgars abandoned the Byzantines, seeking reconciliation with Rome via envoys. The Byzantines, recognizing the impossibility of continuing the siege on their own, likewise withdrew.

Brienne had won a surprising victory against overwhelming forces, but his Empire was no stronger than it had been before. Indeed, it had been weakened by the year-long siege. It was clearly just a matter of time before the next assault would be made by the Byzantines that would never accept a Latin Constantinople. But Brienne had run out of time. In mid-March (the exact date is unknown), John de Brienne, Emperor of Constantinople and former King of Jerusalem, died in Constantinople. His young wife died within weeks of him, leading historians to speculate that he died of some siege-related illness, (siege conditions often lead to the spread of various communicable diseases). He was survived by three sons and a daughter, all the children of his third wife.

[1] Perry, Guy. John of Brienne: King of Jerusalem, Emperor of Constantinople, c. 1175-1237. Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 151.

Next week I'll look more closely at the so-called Sixth Crusade. Meanwhile, enjoy my award-winning novels set in the Holy Land in the late 12th century.