By early April 1232, it was evident that Lord of Beirut did not have sufficient force to relieve his castle at Beirut. After smuggling in some 100 fighting men to reinforce the garrison, thereby ensuring its ability to hold out longer, Beirut turned his attention to finding additional allies. The results were both significant and surprising.
The
Lord of Beirut undertook a three-pronged effort to increase the forces
at his disposal for the difficult task of relieving his beleaguered
castle. First, he sought international support from the closest
international neighbor, the Prince of Antioch. Secondly, he sought
support from a maritime power, the Genoese. Last but not least, he
sought support from the burgesses or middle class.
To
secure support from the Prince of Antioch, the Lord of Beirut sent his
son and heir, Sir Balian, to meet with the Prince in nearby Tripoli. Sir
Balian took with him a marriage proposal sanctioned by (or originating
from) King Henry of Cyprus, offering a marriage between King Henry's
older sister Isabella and Prince Bohemond's younger son. Philip de
Novare traveled with Sir Balian, as did Sir William Viscount, a wise and
seasoned jurist. The party with Sir Balian took lodgings with the
Templars and were, according to Novare, initially received by the Prince
of Antioch with great honor and hospitality.
Abruptly,
however, everything changed. First the Templars closed their doors on
them, throwing them out. When they turned to the Hospitallers and
Cistercians, who also maintained large houses in Tripoli, the other
religious houses likewise refused them shelter. At the same time, Balian
was prevented from rejoining his father by the hostility of the barons
controlling the road south. According to Novare, Sir Balian's life was
repeatedly threatened by knights with close ties to the former baillies
of Cyprus and allies of the Holy Roman Emperor
Sir
Balian was forced to create lodgings for himself and his entourage in
an unused grange, cleaning it out and furnishing it as best they could.
He also sought to escape from Tripoli by requesting the Genoese to send
ships. This route of escape was closed, however, when the rudders of the
Genoese ships were removed on orders from the Prince of Antioch. Next,
Sir Balian turned to the Sultan of Damascus, Malik al Aschraf,
requesting a safe-conduct to pass through Saracen-controlled territory
on his way to Acre. The Sultan obliged, but by that time the
safe-conduct arrived it was no longer necessary; the direct route had
mysteriously re-opened.
It
is impossible with the information available to us to know exactly what
was going on here. Novare attributes this sudden change in heart to
"forged letters" from the Emperor, requesting Antioch not to render
assistance to the Ibelins. Why such letters would have been forged is
mysterious since the Emperor was engaged in a very open war against
Beirut. For three years before this incident, he had repeatedly sent
messengers to various lords of Outremer ordering them to arrest,
disseize and otherwise harm the Ibelins.
Historians
largely discount Novare's account of forgeries and his role in exposing
them and are inclined to think Antioch simply changed his mind in the
middle of the negotiations. Supposedly he (suddenly?) decided Beirut was
going to lose his war and wanted to be on the winning side. Given the
fact that Sir Balian arrived after his father had already abandoned his
attempt to relieve Beirut, this hardly seems logical either. Nothing in
Beirut's situation changed radically in the month Sir Balian was in
Tripoli.
What
might explain the sudden change in attitudes, particularly on the part
of clerics, however, was the arrival of news about Sir Balian's
excommunication. In March 1232, the pope excommunicated him for his
marriage to Eschiva de Montbelliard, a marriage that was within the
prohibited degrees. This would explain why all the religious houses
refused him lodging and would have made him persona non grata at the
court of the Prince as well. We will probably never know.
Meanwhile,
in Acre, the Lord of Beirut with the aid of King Henry had been able to
persuade the Genoese to throw in their lot with him. This was not so
difficult a task, one presumes, for two reasons. On the one hand, the
Genoese had a long history of hostility toward the Hohenstaufens. Under
the motto, "our enemy's enemy is our friend" they were undoubtedly
sympathetic to Beirut's cause. What turned sympathy into serious
support, however, was the lure of the rich profits that could be made in
Cyprus.
Up
to this point, none of the Italian maritime powers had established a
firm foothold on Cyprus. The Italian sea powers had won their privileges
on the mainland by providing often vital maritime support to sieges
during the early stages of the conquest of the coastal cities of the
Levant. (See:
https://defendingcrusaderkingdoms.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-italian-communes-in-crusader-states.html)
Cyprus,
on the other hand, had fallen into the lap of King Richard of England
without any contribution by Italian navies. The Genoese were keen (to
say the least) to get their foot in the door and secure the kind of
trading privileges that promised to enrich their metropolitan city.
They agreed to replace the Cypriot fleet that had been wrecked with a
Genoese one.
Far
more remarkable was Beirut's success in winning the support -- indeed,
as events would prove, the tenacious and passionate support -- of a
large portion of the middle class in the commercial heart of the
kingdom, Acre. It was only three years since the people of Acre had
expressed their opinion of Frederick Hohenstaufen by pelting him with
offal and intestines on his departure. Undoubtedly, this act was not a
collective act by responsible citizens, but it must have met with more
approval than disapproval as one never hears of outrage much apologies
or expressions of contrition on the part of the citizens of Acre to the
Holy Roman Emperor. In short, Emperor Frederick was hugely unpopular in
Acre because of the way he had behaved during his short sojourn in the
Latin East.
(For more see: https://defendingcrusaderkingdoms.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-curious-course-of-so-called-sixth.html)
Yet
popular or not, what happened next had no precedent in the history of
Jerusalem. It seems that after Riccardo Filangieri presented his
credentials as the Emperor's deputy in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, a
delegation of nobles, headed by the former regent of the kingdom Balian
de Sidon firmly objected to the siege of Beirut as it was an attempt to
disseize a lord without due process and a judgment of the High Court.
Filangieri replied that he was only following orders and that if anyone
didn't like what he was doing they could take it up with Emperor
Frederick II personally.
Aside
from this being an abject admission of powerlessness, the answer made
it clear to everyone -- from baron and bishop to the man on the street
-- that Filangieri had no intention whatever of acting as an independent
regent or, more important, of respecting the laws and constitution of
the Kingdom. That made people nervous.
If
Filangieri, in the Emperor's name, was prepared to attack a former
regent, what might he do to ordinary knights and burgesses? If
Filangieri was prepared to deny a man with close ties to royalty due
process and the protection of the law, where was the Rule of Law for the
man on the street? While it is claimed that the Lord of Beirut was
popular, it was far more self-interest than personal affection that
inspired men to take an unusual step: they decided to form a mutual
protection society.
Historian Jonathan Riley-Smith puts it like this:
In Acre there happened to be a confraternity dedicated to St. Andrew and chartered perhaps by Baldwin IV and Henry of Champagne...[It] was unusual in that its membership was not limited to those of one nationality or sect but was open to all.... So barons, knights and burgesses assembed and sent for the confraternity's cousellors and charters. These were read out and the majority of those present solemnly swore themselves in as members.
Thereafter,
they took to calling themselves simply the "Commune of Acre." This
implied -- somewhat disingenuously -- that the men who had voluntarily
joined represented the entire community of the city. That was hardly the
case, but the Commune was sufficiently influential to meet with no
opposition in Acre either. They next elected John d'Ibelin, Lord of
Beirut, their "mayor," a position that was good only for one year
requiring annual elections. As Riley-Smith makes clear, the Commune had
no other functions than to resist the Emperor and his minions.
With
the men of the Commune and the ships of the Genoese, Beirut was finally
strong enough to make a new attempt at relieving his castle. Indeed, he
felt that public sympathy had swung so much in his favor that he could
risk an even more dramatic attack: an assault on Filangieri's power base
in the city of Tyre.
The
City of Tyre sat on an island, connected to the mainland only by a
narrow causeway that was defended by three successive walls. The sea
around the city was full of rocks and bad for navigation. Tyre alone --
of all the cities of the kingdom -- had successfully defied Saladin in
1187. It had remained a lonely bastion of Christendom for four years
until the arrival of the Third Crusade. For Beirut to think that he
might capture Tyre with his rag-tag army of Cypriot and Syrian knights,
Genoese and burgesses sounds like hubris, not to say madness.
Yet
despite the apparent futility of his task, Beirut had calculated
correctly -- not because he could take Tyre, but because Filangieri
could not risk losing it. No sooner did Filangieri learn of Beirut's
objective than he abandoned the siege of the citadel of Beirut and
sailed in haste to Tyre, leaving his army to follow by land. This
prompt, apparently panicked, retreat suggests that Filangieri felt his
hold on Tyre was not sufficiently secure. Perhaps he feared that some of
the burgesses of Tyre would turn against him, if they realized Beirut
at the head of the "Commune of Acre" was approaching. Whatever his
reasons, Filangieri withdrew to his base at Tyre, the siege of the
citadel of Beirut was lifted. Sir Balian took possession of his father's
city and castle. Beirut had established the "status quo ante bellum,"
but the war was far from over.
