Although Frederick II Hohenstaufen spent only a few months in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, his impact on the kingdom was arguably fatal. With the wisdom of hindsight, we can see that the civil war that he ignited and the policy of absentee monarchy that his dynasty adopted doomed the kingdom more certainly than the actions of Saladin or the Mamluks.
The opening volley in this war occurred incongruously
at a banquet shortly after Frederick’s arrival in Cyprus on his way to Acre for
the Sixth Crusade. Here the emperor's armed men surrounded the unarmed guests and then Frederick proceeded to demand that one of the leading noblemen of he land, the Lord of Beirut, surrender his lordship — without stating a reason much less proving any
wrong-doing.
Despite
the obvious threat of violence, Beirut responded by saying he held Beirut by
right and would not surrender it without a judgement of the High Court. He then walked out of the banquet with the bulk of the
Cypriot knights and barons at his back. The bulk of the nobility sided with Beirut because he demanded no more than what his contemporaries viewed as
right and just: the right to a trial before his peers. The Emperors response
was to threaten violence, to demand hostages, and to allow these to be
mishandled while in his custody.
A temporary compromise was worked out in which
the Emperor agreed to release the hostages and bring the charges against Beirut
in the respective High Courts in exchange for Beirut surrendering the castles
of Cyprus to the Emperor’s men and joining his crusade. While Beirut, his adult
sons, nephews, and vassals were in Syria, however, the Emperor sent the Count
of Cotron to Cyprus to lay waste the lands of Beirut, his family and supporters.
Furthermore, Frederick attempted to arbitrarily bestow the lordship and castle
of Toron on his clients the Teutonic Knights, ignoring the claims of the
hereditary heirs thereby alienating another powerful family in Outremer. He likewise
attempted to seize control of the Templar castle of Athlit by force. By all these
actions, Frederick demonstrated that he had no interest in the laws or
constitution of the kingdom. It was clear to all that he respected no one’s rights but his own, and that he was willing to use force against his own subjects to get his way.
When Frederick departed the Holy Land via
Cyprus, he sold the regency for the still under-aged King Henry of Cyprus to
five Cypriot noblemen. They were ordered to ensure Beirut and his supporters
never again set foot in the island kingdom. This demonstrated that all his
signed promises to bring his charges against Beirut before the High Court were
worthless. He then sailed away never to return.
The ‘five baillies’ of Cyprus (as they have
gone down in history) began a rapacious regime that undermined their
popularity. In consequence, when Beirut returned with a
small force, he was able to land at Gastria and advance to the outskirts of
Nicosia. The five baillies called up the feudal army of Cyprus and met Beirut’s
army at the Battle of Nicosia on 14 July 1229. Although the victory went to the
Ibelins, all five baillies escaped to the mountain castles. Beirut was forced
to besiege both Kantara and St. Hilarion.
Not until shortly after Easter 1230 did the baillies surrender St.
Hilarion in exchange for a full amnesty.
Frederick II, however, had not achieved his
objectives. So, in the autumn of 1231 he sent the Imperial Marshal Richard
Filangieri with a fleet of thirty-three ships loaded with mercenaries to
enforce his rule in the kingdoms of both Cyprus and Jerusalem. In the former, Fredrick
issued orders to King Henry in his capacity as the “Overlord of Cyprus.” In Jerusalem,
Frederick named Filangieri his “baillie” or deputy.
Filangieri anchored first off Cyprus and sent
the Bishop of Melfi ashore as Frederick’s envoy. In Frederick’s name, the
bishop ineptly demanded that King Henry of Cyprus expel the Lord of Beirut and all
his relatives from his realm. Henry blandly pointed out that he could not
comply with the Emperor’s orders because he was himself a relative of Beirut. He
further noted that it was a lord’s duty to defend his vassals — not hound them
out of their fiefs without cause or trial.
Since Beirut had rushed to Cyprus with all the
men and his sons held the ports, the Emperor’s marshal made the wise decision
not to attempt a landing in Cyprus against resistance. Instead, he sailed by
night and struck the undefended city of Beirut. The town surrendered without
a fight, but the citadel with only a skeleton garrison held firm for their lord.
Leaving the bulk of his forces investing the citadel, Filangieri continued to
Acre where he presented his credentials as Frederick’s baillie and was
recognized as such by the High Court of Jerusalem. However, the Court objected to
his seizure of the city of Beirut on the grounds there had been no judgement by the Court against
the Lord of Beirut. Filangieri, who had just sworn to uphold the laws and
customs of the kingdom, answered that he needed to ‘take counsel’ with his
magnates. He withdrew from Acre, set up his residence in Tyre, and joined his troops
to pursue the siege of Beirut citadel with increased vigor. In short,
Filangieri had no more interest in the laws and customs of the Kingdom than did
his master Frederick II. The Lord of Beirut had been disseized by force without
a judgement of the High Court.
Beirut, however, refused to concede defeat.
Instead, he made a dramatic appeal to King Henry of Cyprus for aid, and the king
responded by personally calling up the feudal army of Cyprus. After a dangerous
winter crossing, this army landed on the Syrian coast. Here the former Imperial
baillies and some eighty knights (roughly 20% of the Cypriot feudal elite) defected
from King Henry’s host and rode for Tripoli. The remaining troops under the
Lord of Beirut and King Henry advanced down the coast to challenge the Imperial
army besieging Beirut. When it became clear that the Cypriot army was
insufficiently strong to lift the siege, Beirut smuggled roughly one hundred
fighting men through the sea blockade into the citadel, and then withdrew with
the rest of the army to Acre in search of additional backing.
Beirut put his case before the High Court.
This brought him the direct support of some forty knights, while the High Court
sent a high-ranking delegation to Filangieri to remind him of the laws and advise
him to end his siege. Filangieri’s referred them back to Emperor Friedrich. His
blunt dismissal of the concerns of the representatives of the High Court won over the minority of nobles who until then had remained loyal to the Emperor
In addition, Beirut won the support
of the Genoese — who were dogged opponents of the Hohenstaufens in Italy
already. In addition, the ‘Commune of Acre’ had been created. This was an ad
hoc body with no legal basis or function, which served as a rallying point for opponents
of Imperial power from all classes, ethnic groups and religions. The ‘Commune’
elected the Lord of Beirut their ‘mayor.’
With these forces Beirut felt strong
enough to risk an attack on Filangieri’s base in Tyre. The threat to Tyre,
forced Filangieri to lift the siege of Beirut Citadel, and offer to negotiate.
While the Lord of Beirut was negotiating with Filangieri’s envoys in Acre, however,
Filangieri’s army overran the Cypriot/Ibelin camp at Casal Imbert capturing ships,
horses, tents, equipment and twenty-four knights. King Henry barely escaped in
his nightshirt, riding all the way to Acre to bring word of the debacle.
In assessments of this incident, too much
attention has been paid to the fact that the Cypriots/Ibelins were caught
completely off guard, and too little attention to how the defeat significantly increased
popular support for the Lord of Beirut. Filangieri’s surprise strike during a truce was considered treacherous. Like the banquet for unarmed guests in which Frederick
hid soldiers and like the Count of Cotron’s attack in Cyprus while Beirut was
loyally serving under Frederick in Syria, this attack struck contemporaries as deceitful
and dishonorable.
Meanwhile, thinking the Lord of Beirut and the
King of Cyprus were effectively knocked out of action by their humiliation at
Casal Imbert, Filangieri took his fleet and army to overrun Cyprus. King Henry and Beirut pursued them -- in imperial ships that they expropriated in Acre! They dramatically wrecked this ships on an coastal
island, crossed over a ford only passable at low tide, and took Famagusta from
the rear without a fight as the Imperial forces fled in the night. Henry was
able to re-occupy his capital without bloodshed.
However, Filiangieri still commanded
a much larger army of Imperial mercenaries. Furthermore, the
king’s sisters were trapped in the castle of St. Hilarion, which was besieged by
Imperial forces, and supplies were running dangerously low. This latter fact forced King Henry and Beirut to attempt
the relief of St. Hilarion, thereby risking a confrontation with the Imperial
forces drawn up on the flank of the mountain ridge separating the Cypriot army
from St. Hilarion.
At the sight of the Cypriot/Ibelin army, the Imperial knights charged down the hill confident of overwhelming it. In the ensuing Battle of Agridi fought on 15 June 1232, the
Cypriot/Ibelin force decisively defeated Filangieri’s men. The battle is
remembered for the role played by the infantry, largely composed of local
troops who came out in support of their king. These reportedly killed unhorsed Imperial
knights, while helping Cypriot/Ibelin knights back into the saddle. Imperial
casualties were huge by the standards of the day, namely sixty knights. Nevertheless,
Filangieri was able to withdraw with the bulk of his troops to the coastal
castle of Kyrenia.
From here Filangieri appealed to Antioch,
Armenia, and the Emperor for help; he received none. He and those Cypriots who had
sided with the him sailed away to safety, while a garrison held Kyrenia for
almost a year before surrendering to royal Cypriot forces. Frederick II never
again tried to interfere in Cypriot affairs, and in 1246 the pope solemnized
the de facto situation by formally absolving King Henry of all oaths of
vassalage to the Holy Roman Emperor. Thereafter, the Kingdom of Cyprus was
fully independent.
Frederick’s claim to be King of Jerusalem and
to rule without the consent of the High Court, however, had not been resolved —
and nor had his determination to humiliate the Lord of Beirut. The latter,
however, continued to enjoy the solid backing of the bulk of the politically
active elements in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, including the Knights Templar, the
Genoese and the Commune of Acre. On the other hand, the Teutonic Knights were
staunchly Imperial in their loyalties, and the Hospitallers tended to the Imperial
side. In addition, a significant minority of knights and burgesses,
concentrated in Tyre, remained loyal to the Holy Roman Emperor. Thus, the
kingdom was effectively split into two entities.
Recognizing that the use of force had failed
in the short-term, Frederick II put forward a ‘compromise’ proposal which
entailed a general amnesty for everyone who had (in his opinion) committed
treason — except the Ibelins. He also recognized the de-facto division of the
kingdom into two halves, proposing that henceforth the north of the kingdom
would be ruled from Tyre by his baillie Filangieri, while the south of the
kingdom with the intransigent Acre would be ruled by a new baillie who he who personally appoint without the approval of the High Court. The proposal shows just how
little the Emperor understood the rebellion. The problem was not one of
personnel but principle. The Rebels challenged his right to appoint any
baillie without the consent of the High Court and objected to his attempts to
disseize one of their number without a judgement of the High Court.
In April 1234 the pope became involved in seeking
a settlement between the Emperor and his rebellious subjects in the Holy Land. The
terms he proposed amounted to unconditional surrender by the rebels, recognition
of the Emperor’s right to appoint whoever he liked, dissolution of the Commune
of Acre, and no pardons for the Ibelins. The rebels shrugged and ignored the
offer, bringing down papal wrath, which included not only excommunication for the
Lord of Beirut and his supporters but interdict on the city Acre. By October,
the pope was frantically rescinding the interdict because so many Franks were
simply turning to the Orthodox churches. At last recognizing that one cannot
negotiate an agreement by listening only to one side, the pope asked the rebels
to send representatives to Rome to discuss terms.
The men sent to Rome appear to have been
intimidated and bullied into accepting disadvantageous terms because on their
return they were nearly lynched. New envoys were sent back to the pope,
arriving in April 1236. By now, despite the death of the Lord of Beirut (who
was still in full possession of his fiefs and wealthy enough dispense largess
with both hands on his deathbed), the pope’s relationship with Frederick II was
deteriorating again. Pope Gregory IX suddenly discovered that the rebels might have
some valid points after all. Thereafter, he made no further attempt to
intervene, and the stalemate continued.
In April 1243, the infant boy whose birth had killed
Queen Yolanda turned fifteen. In accordance with the laws of Jerusalem, Frederick
II’s regency ended. Yet Frederick continued to call himself ‘King of
Jerusalem,’ thereby usurping the rights of his own son. Nevertheless, Frederick
knew enough about the laws to send instructions to Acre and Tyre in Conrad’s
name. The barons weren’t fooled. They became even more inventive in finding transparently
self-serving legal arguments for non-compliance. The most important of these
was a fictitious claim that when a monarch came of age while absent from the kingdom,
his/her closest relative resident in the country held the regency until
the monarch appeared in person to take the homage of vassals. By this ploy,
Conrad’s great-aunt Alice, the dowager queen of Cyprus, became regent. She demanded
the surrender of Tyre to her, and when (as expected) Filangieri refused, Balian
of Beirut (John d’Ibelin’s eldest son and heir) seized it by force. Filangieri
returned to Sicily where Frederick imprisoned him for his years of loyal
service and sent in his stead Thomas of Accera. The later did not dare set foot
in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and spent his entire tenure in Antioch instead.
A colorful contemporary account of the
conflict written by Philip de Novare, an opponent of the Emperor, has
disproportionately influenced modern understanding of the conflict, reducing it
to nothing more than a personal struggle between Frederick II and the Lord of Beirut.
This is unfortunate. While Beirut was a highly respected nobleman, he did not
enjoy the support of roughly four-fifths of the Cypriot nobility, more than
half of the Syrian nobility, the Templars, the Genoese and the Commune of Acre
because he was such a nice fellow. Rather, the Emperor’s arrogant, arbitrary
and unconstitutional attempt to disseize Beirut met with widespread outrage and
finally armed opposition because it was recognised as a dangerous precedent. The
lords of Cyprus and Jerusalem recognized that if the Emperor got away with
disseizing a lord as powerful and well-connected as Beirut, than no one else
would be safe from arbitrary Imperial actions.
Stripped of personalities and rhetoric, the
underlying issue in this conflict between Emperor Frederick and the rebel
barons were incompatible views about the nature of monarchy in the Kingdom of
Jerusalem. Frederick II was a proponent of absolutism, who viewed himself as
Emperor and King by the Grace of God. He recognized no fetters on his rights to
rule ― neither laws nor constitutions, not institutions nor counsels, nor
indeed his own promises, as he reserved to himself the right to change his mind
about anything. The Kingdom of Jerusalem, on the other hand, was a feudal state
par excellence. Furthermore, by this point in time, the nobility of the
Kingdom of Jerusalem had already evolved sophisticated constitutional views and
legal procedures.
First and foremost, the nobility of Outremer
held to the fundamental feudal concept that government was a contract between
the king and his subjects, a reciprocal agreement entailing obligations on both
sides. Yet Frederick consistently flaunted the laws and customs of the kingdom
and especially the High Court. The baronial faction countered by becoming
ever more inventive in discovering ‘laws’ and customs that undermined
Hohenstaufen rule rather than submit to a known tyrant.
The bulk of this entry is an excerpt from Dr. Schrader's comprehensive study of the crusader states.
The Civil War in the Crusader States is the subject of Schrader's "Rebels of Outremer" Series starting with Rebels against Tyranny. Buy Now!
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Helena P. Schrader is the author of six books set in the Holy Land
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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.
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