Not since the sack of the Holy City itself in 1099 had the Levant witnessed such avaricious barbarity. The wealth seized was substantial–the Genoese alone, upon receiving their allotted third, were able to distribute forty-eight solidi of Poitou and two pounds of valuable spices to each of 8,000 men–and the spoils must also have done much to restock the royal treasury. In addition, the Italians were given an emerald-green bowl, the Sacro Catino, once believed to be the Holy Grail, which remains in Genoa’s Cathedral of San Lorenzo to this day. Baldwin I, meanwhile, made a point of sparing the emir and qadi (judge) of Caesarea in order to secure a hefty ransom. A cleric also named Baldwin, notorious for having branded a cross on his forehead at the start of the First Crusade, was then appointed as the new Latin archbishop of Caesarea.55
This conquest sent a stark message to the remaining Muslim settlements in Palestine: resistance would bring annihilation. Before long this notion smoothed the way to the most significant conquest of Baldwin’s early reign. In April 1104 he laid siege to the port of Acre, some twelve miles north of Haifa, home to Palestine’s largest and most sheltered harbour. Fighting alongside a seventy-ship-strong Genoese fleet, the king began an assault siege, and the Muslim garrison, isolated from any possible Fatimid reinforcement, soon capitulated, requesting the same terms of surrender given at Arsuf. Baldwin readily acquiesced; indeed, he even allowed Muslim citizens to remain in Acre in return for payment of a form of poll tax. With limited loss of life, he had acquired a valuable prize–a port offering relatively secure anchorage, whatever the season, that could act as a vital channel for maritime communication and commerce with western Europe.56 Before long, Acre became the Latin kingdom’s trading capital.
In the years that followed, Baldwin continued gradually to extend and consolidate his control over the Mediterranean seaboard. Beirut was captured in May 1110, this time with the aid of Genoese and Pisan ships. Later that year Baldwin targeted Sidon, which for some time had been bribing the Frankish king with lavish tributes of gold to secure immunity. With the able support of a large contingent of recently arrived Norwegian crusader-pilgrims, under their young king Sigurd, Baldwin laid siege to Sidon in October and forced its surrender by early December, once again on terms of safe conduct and a provision to allow some members of the Muslim population to remain in peace, working the land under Latin rule.
In the course of this first decade, Baldwin I brought a real measure of territorial security to his nascent kingdom and forged a crucial lifeline back to the Christian west. Nonetheless, two cities remained beyond his grasp. To the north, the strongly fortified port of Tyre stood as a stubborn Muslim outpost, separating Acre from Sidon and Beirut; it survived a concerted Frankish siege in 1111 largely because its emir switched allegiance from Egypt to Damascus, securing valuable reinforcement. Unable to achieve its capture, Baldwin isolated Tyre by building fortresses inland at Toron and south along the coast at a narrow cliff pass known as Scandelion.
To the south, Ascalon likewise slipped through Baldwin’s fingers. In the spring of 1111 he threatened to besiege the city, frightening its latest emir, Shams al-Khilafa, into adopting a remarkable policy of political realignment. The emir first bought peace with the promise of a tribute of 7,000 dinars. With al-Afdal, the Fatimid vizier of Egypt, rumbling his objections back in Cairo, al-Khilafa decided that his best hope of political survival lay in a dramatic switch of allegiance. Breaking with the Fatimid caliphate, he travelled to Jerusalem to broker a new deal with Baldwin I and, having pledged his loyalty to the Latin kingdom, was left in power as a semi-independent client ruler. Soon afterwards a Christian garrison of 300 troops was installed in Ascalon, and for some months it seemed that Baldwin’s pragmatism had finally closed the doorway between Egypt and Palestine. The unfortunate Shams al-Khilafa did not live long beyond that summer. A group of Ascalonite Berbers, still loyal to the Fatimids, attacked him while he was out riding. Badly wounded, he fled to his house, but was hunted down and butchered. Before King Baldwin could come to its aid, the Christian garrison was similarly dispatched. Having been sent al-Khilafa’s head, al-Afdal swiftly reimposed Fatimid control over Ascalon.57
Servants to the crown
Baldwin I demonstrated a gift for forceful governance in his role as king of an expanding realm. Throughout the first phase of his reign he took great care to ensure that the balance of power in Latin Palestine lay with the crown and not with the nobility. In this he had a particular advantage over fellow monarchs back in the West in that he was, in relative terms at least, beginning with a clean slate. Not having to deal with an imbedded aristocracy, enmeshed within centuries-old systems of lordship and landholding, Baldwin could shape the new kingdom of Jerusalem to his advantage.
A central feature of his approach was the maintenance of a powerful royal domain–the territory owned and directly administered by the crown. Kings in Europe might inherit realms in which many of the richest and most powerful territories had long since been parcelled out to nobles, to be governed as fiefs in the name of the crown but ruled in semi-autonomous fashion. Baldwin I kept many of Palestine’s most important settlements within his domain, including Jerusalem, Jaffa and Acre, creating very few new lordships. Frequently whittled away by the high mortality rate of the warfare-strewn Levant, the aristocracy also had little opportunity to assert hereditary claims to the fiefs that were available. The king also made frequent use of money fiefs, rewarding service with cash rather than land.
The early history of two lordships–Haifa and Tiberias–is particularly illustrative of Baldwin’s management of, and attitude to, his leading vassals. Once Tancred left for Antioch in 1101, Baldwin divided the overpowerful principality of Galilee in two. Geldemar Carpinel, a southern French crusader who had been in Godfrey of Bouillon’s service, was given Haifa in March 1101, perhaps in return for his support of Baldwin’s claim to the throne. Geldemar was killed in battle just six months later and, over the next fifteen years, the lordship of Haifa passed through the hands of three further men, none of whom were related. In this way, authority over the port consistently reverted to the crown, and on each occasion Baldwin was able to redistribute the reward of this fief as he chose.
Tiberias, meanwhile, was given to one of the king’s closest followers, Hugh of Falchenberg, the knight from Flanders who had probably joined Baldwin during the First Crusade. Hugh served the kingdom well, but soon fell foul of the region’s military insecurity and was killed by an arrow during an ambush in 1106. Tiberias then passed to a northern Frenchman, Gervase of Bazoches, who became one of Baldwin’s favourites and was appointed as royal seneschal (in charge of financial administration and the judiciary). Within two years, however, Gervase was captured by Damascene troops during a Muslim raid on Galilee.
Of course, not all of Baldwin I’s vassals met with precipitous or gruesome deaths. Along the northern coast of Palestine, on the border with Lebanon and far from the immediate reach of Jerusalem, the king created some new lordships. One of these, Sidon, he gave to the great rising star of his reign, Eustace Garnier. A knight, probably of Norman origin, Eustace had likely served Baldwin while still in Edessa, and certainly fought for him against the Egyptians in 1105. From relative obscurity, Eustace quickly amassed a potent clutch of lordships, including Caesarea and, through marriage to Emma (the well-connected daughter of Patriarch Arnulf of Chocques), the town of Jericho. Eustace was, however, an exception. On the whole, Baldwin seems to have created a loyal and effective noble class that was, as yet, largely subservient to the crown.58