But the patriarch was not long saved by this concession. In the months and years that followed, Baldwin I moved with calculated efficiency to stamp out any residual challenge to his authority and to realign the Latin Church in his favour. Fortunately for the king, his most significant secular rival, Tancred, left Palestine in the spring of 1101 to take up the regency of Antioch during Bohemond’s imprisonment. Later that year, Daimbert was deposed when it was discovered that he had embezzled money sent from Apulia to fund the defence of the Holy Land. After a brief return to power in 1102, Daimbert’s fortunes waned and the patriarchal seat passed to a succession of papally sanctioned candidates, culminating in 1112 with the reinstatement of Baldwin’s long-term ally, Arnulf of Chocques. These patriarchs were never wholly subservient to the crown, but were willing to engage in active and mutual cooperation with the king as he sought to consolidate Frankish control over Palestine.

One key feature of this collaboration was the management and cultivation of the cult associated with the Jerusalemite relic of the True Cross discovered by the First Crusaders in 1099. In the first years of the twelfth century the Cross became a totem of Latin power in the Levant. Borne by either the patriarch or one of his leading clergymen into a succession of battles against Islam, it quickly acquired a reputation for miraculous intervention; soon it was said that, in the presence of the Lord’s Cross, the Franks were invincible. ⁵³

Creating a kingdom

Having secured his accession, Baldwin I was confronted by one overwhelming difficulty. In reality, the kingdom over which he now ruled was little more than a loose network of dispersed outposts. The Franks held Jerusalem alongside the likes of Bethlehem, Ramla and Tiberias, but in 1100 these were still just isolated pockets of Latin settlement. Even here, the ruling Franks were vastly outnumbered by the indigenous Muslim population and by eastern Christian and Jewish communities. The bulk of Palestine remained unconquered and in the hands of semi-autonomous Islamic potentates. Worse still, the Latins had barely begun to assert control over the Levantine coastline, controlling only Jaffa and Haifa, neither of which offered an ideal natural harbour. Only by subjugating Palestine’s ports could Baldwin hope to secure lines of communication with western Europe, open his kingdom to Christian pilgrims and settlers, and tap into a potentially bounteous conduit of trade between East and West. Internal security and the need for territorial consolidation, therefore, were paramount.

A Latin eyewitness, Fulcher of Chartres, reflected upon this situation:

In the beginning of his reign Baldwin as yet possessed few cities and people…Up to that time the land route [to Palestine] was completely blocked to our pilgrims [and those Franks who could] came very timidly in single ships, or in squadrons of three or four, through the midst of hostile pirates and past the ports of the Saracens…Some remained in the Holy Land, and others went back to their native countries. For this reason the land of Jerusalem remained depopulated [and] we did not have more than 300 knights and as many footmen to defend [the kingdom].

The perils associated with these problems were reflected in the testimony of early Christian pilgrims who did reach the Near East. Saewulf, a pilgrim (most likely from Britain) who documented his journey to Jerusalem at the very start of the twelfth century, described the prevailing lawlessness of the Judean hills in disturbing detail. The road between Jaffa and the Holy City, he noted, ‘was very dangerous…because the Saracens are continually plotting an ambush…day and night always keeping a lookout for someone to attack’. En route he saw ‘countless corpses’ left to rot or to be ‘torn up by wild beasts’ because no one would risk stopping to organise proper burials. Things had improved somewhat by around 1107, when another pilgrim, a Russian known as Daniel the Abbot, visited the Holy Land, but he still complained bitterly that it was impossible to travel through Galilee without the protection of soldiers.

Perhaps the most striking demonstration that the Holy Land had yet to be truly conquered came in the summer of 1103 when, during a routine hunting trip near Caesarea, Baldwin I was attacked by a small Fatimid raiding party that had seemingly marched into Latin territory at will. Caught in the thick of the fighting, the king was struck by an enemy lance, and, although the precise nature of his injuries is unclear–one account had him stabbed ‘in the back near the heart’, another ‘pierced through the thigh and kidneys’–they were certainly grave. A Latin contemporary described how ‘at once streams of blood gushed ominously from this wound…his face began to grow pale [and] at length he fell from his horse to the ground as if dead’. Thanks to the careful ministrations of his physician, after a protracted convalescence Baldwin recovered, but he continued to be troubled by this injury for the remainder of his life.⁵⁴

Ultimately, Baldwin I was forced to dedicate much of the first decade of the twelfth century to the consolidation of his hold over Palestine, employing a mixture of pragmatic flexibility and icy resolve in his dealings with the Muslim inhabitants of the Holy Land. He received an early boost when a Genoese fleet arrived in Jaffa, possibly alongside ships from Pisa, just before Easter 1101. These sailors had come east probably with a mind to aid in the consolidation and defence of the Levant and to explore new avenues for commerce. They brought a much-needed naval element to Baldwin’s campaign of conquest and, in return, he offered them generous terms: a third share of any booty taken and a semi-independent trading enclave, to be held ‘by perpetual and hereditary right’, within any settlement taken with Italian aid. With the deal struck, Baldwin was ready to go on the offensive.

His first target, Arsuf, had staunchly resisted a land-based assault from Godfrey of Bouillon in December 1099. Now Baldwin was able to enforce a siege from the sea and, after just three days, its Muslim populace sued for peace on 29 April 1101. The king was magnanimous, granting them safe conduct, bearing any goods they could carry, as far as Ascalon. Success had been achieved without loss of Christian life.

Baldwin then turned his attention to Caesarea, twenty-odd miles to the north. This once bustling Greco-Roman settlement had faded over centuries of Muslim rule; its aged walls still stood, but the city’s celebrated port had long since been destroyed and all that remained was a small, shallow harbour. Baldwin sent a legation to the emir of Caesarea, urging him to capitulate or face a merciless siege; but, holding out hope of Fatimid reinforcement, the town’s Muslim inhabitants stoutly rejected any notion of a negotiated surrender. At Arsuf, the Latin king had shown clemency to a submissive foe; here, in the face of such brazen obstinacy, he sought to make a brutal demonstration. Moving in around 2 May 1101, he began bombarding Caesarea with mangonels. Its garrison put up stern resistance for fifteen days, but Frankish troops eventually managed to storm the city’s buckling defences with the aid of scaling ladders. Baldwin now allowed the full wanton fury of his troops to be unleashed on Caesarea’s terrified populace. Christian troops scoured the city, street by street, house by house, giving no quarter, butchering most of the male population, enslaving the women and children and plundering every shred of loot they could find. One Latin observer wrote:

How much property of various kinds was found there it is impossible to say, but many of our men who had been poor became rich. I saw a great many of the Saracens who were killed there put in a pile and burned. The fetid odour of their bodies bothered us greatly. These wretches were burned for the sake of finding the gold coins which some had swallowed.