This view of events is riddled with significant problems. The bulk of contemporary evidence suggests that the pope was aware of Bohemond’s intentions and nonetheless supported him, even dispatching a papal legate to accompany and endorse the preaching campaigns in France and Italy. Even in the unlikely case that the pope was misled, there can be no doubt that a huge number of lay recruits accepted the idea of joining a crusade against the Greeks. In fact, the tendency to sideline Bohemond’s expedition as a perversion of crusading is symptomatic of a more fundamental misconception: a belief that the ideas and practices of crusading had already coalesced to create a uniform ideal. For most people living in western Europe in the early twelfth century, this new type of devotional warfare had no finite identity and was still subject to continual, organic development. As far as they were concerned, crusades did not need to be directed against Muslims, and many readily accepted the idea of waging a holy war against Alexius Comnenus once he had been deemed the enemy of Latin Christendom.

However the background to the 1107–8 ‘crusade’ against Byzantium is viewed, the expedition itself proved to be a shambolic disaster. Crossing the Adriatic in October 1107, the Latins laid siege to the city of Durazzo (in modern Albania), regarded by contemporaries as ‘the western gate of the [Greek] empire’. But, in spite of his military pedigree, Bohemond was outwitted by Alexius, who deployed his forces to cut the invaders’ supply lines while carefully avoiding direct confrontation. Weakened by hunger, unable to break Durazzo’s defences, the Latins capitulated in September 1108. Bohemond was forced to accede to a humiliating peace accord, the Treaty of Devol. By the terms of this agreement, he was to hold Antioch for the remainder of his life as the emperor’s subject, but the Greek patriarch was to be restored to power in the city and the principality itself to be all but emasculated by the cession of Cilicia and Latakia to Byzantium.

As it was, this agreement was not implemented and thus had little bearing upon future events, because Bohemond never returned to the Levant. After sailing back to southern Italy in the autumn of 1108, he appears only fleetingly in historical records, his reputation broken, his grand dreams and ambitions shattered. Constance bore him a son, also named Bohemond, around 1109, but by 1111 the once great commander of the First Crusade was ailing, and on 7 March he died in Apulia. At Antioch, Tancred remained in power, perhaps still nominally as regent, but with his authority uncontested among the Franks. From the perspective of Outremer, one positive did emerge from Bohemond’s later career: his Balkan campaign diverted Greek resources from the Levant, allowing Tancred to assert lasting control over Latakia and Cilicia.⁶⁶

TO RULE IN THE HOLY REALM

Tancred’s drive to expand the principality of Antioch and to augment its wealth and international influence accelerated after 1108, and he showed a ruthless willingness to use any and all means in pursuit of these ambitions, even if that meant fighting fellow Latins while engaging Muslim allies. For the next five years he worked tirelessly, drawing upon a seemingly inexhaustible pool of martial energy to engage in near-constant campaigning. Beleaguering his neighbours and opponents through a mixture of territorial conquest, political coercion and economic exploitation, Tancred came close to forging an Antiochene empire in the Levant.

The counties of Edessa and Tripoli

Between 1104 and 1108 Antioch was the effective overlord of the county of Edessa. Once Tancred assumed control of the principality in autumn 1104, he installed his brother-in-law and fellow southern Italian Norman First Crusader Richard of Salerno as regent of Edessa. Even though Richard proved unpopular, Antiochene influence went unchecked while Count Baldwin II remained in captivity.

Antioch certainly made no effort to orchestrate the count’s release. In the summer of 1104, when Baldwin’s captors first sought to organise the terms of his ransom, even Bohemond demurred. Rather than repay the energy Baldwin had expended to secure Bohemond’s own freedom in 1103, the prince preferred to retain control of Edessa’s considerable agrarian and commercial resources, estimated to value in excess of 40,000 gold bezants per annum. Once at the helm of Frankish Syria, Tancred continued to enjoy these revenues and to ignore Baldwin’s plight.

By 1107 the count’s companion, Joscelin of Courtenay, lord of Tell Bashir, had been ransomed by the populace of that town, and in the following year Joscelin successfully negotiated Baldwin’s release from Mosul. It was the Turkish warlord Chavli, the latest ruler of Mosul, who finally agreed terms; but with an eye to the fragility of his own position and the ongoing internecine struggles within Near Eastern Islam, Chavli demanded not only a cash ransom and hostages, but also a promise of military alliance.

When Baldwin sought to reclaim Edessa in the summer of 1108, a tense standoff ensued. Having enjoyed access to the wealth and resources of the county for four years, Tancred had no intention of simply handing over a territory which he had saved from conquest, and he now sought to pressure Baldwin into taking an oath of subservience; after all, he argued, historically Edessa had been the vassal of the Byzantine duchy of Antioch. The count refused, not least because he had already sworn allegiance to Baldwin of Boulogne in 1100. With neither side willing to give ground, conflict seemed inevitable.

In early September both men raised armies. Less than ten years after Jerusalem’s conquest, Baldwin and Tancred–fellow Latins and veteran crusaders–were now ready and willing to crush one another in open war. More shocking still was the fact that Baldwin marched forth to this struggle alongside his new ally, Chavli of Mosul, and some 7,000 Muslim troops. When battle was joined, probably near Tell Bashir, Tancred, although outnumbered, managed to hold the field. But with some 2,000 Christian dead on both sides, Patriarch Bernard, the ecclesiastical overlord of both Antioch and Edessa, stepped in to calm frayed tempers and adjudicate. When witnesses publicly attested that Tancred had actually promised Bohemond in 1104 that he would relinquish control of Edessa upon Baldwin’s release, the Antiochene ruler was forced grudgingly to back down. The city of Edessa itself may have been repatriated, but the embedded hatred and rivalry remained. Tancred stubbornly refused to hand over territory in the northern reaches of the county and was soon pressing Baldwin to make tribute payments in return for peace with Antioch.⁶⁷

With this dispute still simmering, Tancred’s acquisitive gaze settled upon the nascent county of Tripoli. In the immediate aftermath of the First Crusade his old rival Raymond of Toulouse had sought to carve out his own Levantine lordship centred on the northern reaches of modern-day Lebanon. The challenge confronting Raymond was considerable, for unlike the founders of other Latin settlements he had no crusader conquests to build upon, and the region’s dominant city, Tripoli, remained in Muslim hands.

Nonetheless, Raymond made some progress, capturing the port of Tortosa in 1102, with the aid of a Genoese fleet and survivors from the 1101 crusade. Two years later he conquered a second port to the south, Jubail, resplendent with Roman ruins. Meanwhile, on a hill outside Tripoli, Raymond constructed a doughty fortress, christened Mount Pilgrim, thereby securing effective control of the surrounding region. Yet, despite his tenacious efforts, when the count died in his mid-sixties on 28 February 1105, Tripoli itself remained unconquered.