In the years that followed, two men sought to press claims to Raymond’s legacy. His nephew, William Jordan, the first to arrive in Outremer, continued to pressure Tripoli while also overcoming the neighbouring town of Arqa. In March 1109, however, Raymond’s son Bertrand of Toulouse reached the Holy Land, determined to assert his rights as heir. When he brought a sizeable fleet to reinforce the siege of Tripoli, the two claimants squabbled over rights to the city, even though it had yet to be captured, and William Jordan quit Mount Pilgrim for the north. The emergent county of Tripoli looked as if it might founder amid bitter dynastic squabbling.

In the end, however, the contest for control of Tripoli involved far more than the simple issue of inheritance; it became the centrepiece of a wider struggle for dominion over the crusader states. Realising that he would need an ally if he was to have any hope of claiming Tripoli, William Jordan turned to Tancred, offering to become his vassal. Not surprisingly, Tancred seized this sudden opportunity to expand Antiochene influence southwards; should Tripoli fall under his sway and his designs upon Edessa come to fruition, then the principality might rightly claim to be Outremer’s leading power. Modern historical analysis has persistently underestimated the significance of this episode, the assumption being that the kingdom of Jerusalem was automatically and immediately recognised as the overlord of the Frankish East at the start of the twelfth century. True, the Holy City had been the focus of the First Crusade, and Baldwin of Boulogne was the only Latin ruler in the Levant to assume the title of king, but his realm encompassed Palestine, not the entire Near East. Each of the four crusader states was founded as an independent polity and Jerusalem’s pre-eminent status among them had never been formally ratified. A current of rivalry had coloured relations between Baldwin and Tancred ever since they contested control of Cilicia in 1097; now, in 1109, Tancred’s brash assertiveness offered a challenge to Baldwin’s authority that would determine the balance of power in the Latin Levant.

Over the next twelve months, Jerusalem’s monarch resolved this political crisis with stunning finesse, roundly outplaying his old opponent. To his credit, Baldwin made no attempt to counter Antiochene ambition with direct force of arms, preferring instead to promote and harness the notion of Frankish solidarity in the face of Muslim adversaries. Employing diplomatic guile, he affirmed Jerusalemite supremacy even as he advanced Outremer’s defensive security.

In the summer of 1109 Baldwin called the rulers of the Latin East to assist Bertrand of Toulouse at the siege of Tripoli. On the face of it, this was to be a grand Frankish alliance, dedicated to the subjugation of an intransigent Muslim outpost. The king himself marched north with some 500 knights; Tancred, together with 700 knights, arrived in the company of his new ally, William Jordan; and Baldwin II of Edessa and Joscelin likewise brought a sizeable force. Alongside Bertrand’s Provençal navy and a Genoese fleet, this represented a formidable assembly. And yet, entrenched animosity and fractious suspicion rippled beneath the surface of this coalition.

Of course, the subtext to the whole affair–as all the key players must well have known–was the issue of power among the Franks. Would Baldwin I allow Antioch’s burgeoning influence to go unchecked, and if not, what manner of riposte would the king employ? With the gathering complete, the king enacted his canny scheme. Having already taken Bertrand of Toulouse under his wing, extracting an oath of fealty in exchange for Jerusalem’s support, he now convened a general council to resolve the dispute over Tripoli’s future. Baldwin I’s masterstroke was to comport himself not as a wrathful, overbearing overlord, nor as Tancred’s conniving rival, but rather as an impartial arbiter of justice. In the words of one Latin contemporary, the king listened to ‘all the injuries of both sides’ along with a jury of ‘his loyal men’ and then enacted reconciliation. Raymond of Toulouse’s heirs were ‘made friends’, with Bertrand given rights to the bulk of the county, including Tripoli, Mount Pilgrim and Jubail, and William placated with Tortosa and Arqa. What is more, Baldwin II and Tancred were said to have been ‘reconciled’ on the understanding that Antioch would relinquish control of all remaining Edessene territory. By way of compensation, Tancred was reinstated as the lord of Haifa and Galilee.

The king appeared to have achieved an equitable settlement, restoring harmony to Outremer. The coalition forces were certainly able to prosecute Tripoli’s investment with renewed vigour, bludgeoning the city’s Muslim garrison into submission by 12 July 1109. In reality, however, Tancred had been stymied and humbled. He made no effort to claim his lordship in the kingdom of Jerusalem, not least because this involved an oath of subservience to Baldwin I. The king, meanwhile, despite maintaining a façade of impartiality, had served his own interests, protecting his relationship with Edessa and positioning his own favourite as the new ruler of a Tripolitan county. He cannot have been overly dejected when, soon after Tripoli’s capitulation, William Jordan was ‘pierced through the heart in a secret attack and died’, leaving Bertrand in a position of uncontested authority.

In May 1110 Baldwin I seized an opportunity to consolidate further his status as overlord of the Latin Levant. That spring, Muhammad, the Seljuq sultan of Baghdad, finally reacted to the Frankish subjugation of the Near East. He dispatched a Mesopotamian army to begin the work of reclaiming Syria under the command of Maudud, a capable Turkish general who recently had come to power in Mosul. The first target was the county of Edessa. In the face of this threat, the Latins united, and the swift arrival of a large coalition army from Jerusalem, Tripoli and Antioch forced Maudud to break off his short-lived siege of Edessa. King Baldwin I used the opportunity presented by this gathering of the ruling Frankish elite to call a second council of arbitration, this time with the sole focus of addressing the ongoing dispute between Tancred and Baldwin of Bourcq. According to one Christian contemporary, resolution was to be achieved, ‘either by a fair trial or by agreement of a council of magnates’. Knowing that he was unlikely to receive anything approaching ‘fair’ treatment, Tancred had to be persuaded to attend by his closest advisers and, once the council began, his fears were soon confirmed. With King Baldwin presiding in judgement, Tancred was accused of inciting Maudud of Mosul to attack Edessa and of allying with Muslims. These charges were almost certainly manufactured and, notably, no mention was made of either Baldwin of Bourcq’s own alliance with Mosul in 1108 or Baldwin I’s dealings with Damascus. Facing the united opprobrium of the council and threatened with ostracism from the Frankish community, Tancred was once again forced to back down. From this point on, he seems to have stopped demanding tribute from Edessa.

Antioch’s submission had not been formalised and, in the years to come, the principality would make renewed attempts to assert its independence. Throughout the early decades of the twelfth century this secular power struggle was also mirrored by a protracted and embittered squabble over ecclesiastical jurisdiction between the Latin patriarchs of Antioch and Jerusalem. Nonetheless, in 1110 King Baldwin had, for the time being at least, affirmed his own personal authority and established Jerusalem’s position as the pre-eminent secular power in Outremer.⁶⁸

Tancred’s legacy

In spite of the political setbacks of 1109 and 1110, the closing years of Tancred’s life proved to be a triumph. With unabated vigour he pushed the principality’s frontiers to the limit and subdued his Muslim neighbours, fighting for months on end almost without pause. In this period, Tancred confronted a significant strategic quandary that has been largely ignored by modern historians. For Tancred, as for all medieval military commanders, topography was a key consideration. By 1110 the principality had expanded its borders to two natural boundaries. To the east, on the frontier between Antioch and Aleppo, Frankish power now extended to the foot of the Belus Hills, a craggy spine of arid, low-altitude fells. To the south, towards Muslim Shaizar, the principality stretched to the edge of the Summaq plateau and to the Orontes River valley. As it stood, the physical barriers running along these two border zones offered both Latin Antioch and its Muslim neighbours a relatively equal balance of power and security.⁶⁹