Sixth Crusade

Mary Stone | June 6, 2023

Summary

The Sixth Crusade began in 1228 as an attempt to recapture Jerusalem. It began seven years after the failure of the Fifth Crusade.

Jean de Brienne, with all the diplomatic success and peace achieved in 1221, (for details see the Fifth Crusade) after his meeting with Al Kamil returned to Accra full of mistrust. He suspected that the Turks would not be slow to take revenge as soon as they had the chance, the failed crusade could only be an encouragement to the sultan, and the monkish orders were too weak an army to resist him, especially as the Mongols had also begun to intensify their attacks from the east.

King Acre had no choice but to go to Europe himself, to seek out Emperor Frederick II and persuade him, at any cost, to start a crusade in the East before Al Kamil had rebuilt his forces. This was also the view of the master of the Teutonic Order, Hermann von Salza, the king’s close adviser, who, relying on the personality of Frederick II, believed that the time had finally come for a German emperor to be crowned in Jerusalem and a new era to dawn for Christianity, as the prophecies foretold. Jean de Brienne had an expensive coin thrown onto the bargaining table, his only daughter Iolanda Isabella, a delicate 11-year-old child, far too sensitive to be torn from her parents’ home and taken far away across seas and countries. It was she whom the magister of the order wished to marry to the brilliant and extravagant Frederic, recently widowed, but for whom recent bereavement would not be an impediment to contracting a new marriage, especially if she also brought him a crown, and Iolanda through both her father and her mother, Mary, was the sole rightful heir of Jerusalem. So thought Pope Honorius III, who was in the best position to know Frederick, whose tutor and guide he had been in his childhood years, and so he embraced the project with enthusiasm, his dearest dream being to see his former pupil, to whom he remained emotionally attached, emperor of the world. The Pope’s wish, however, was not enough, the subject’s participation and cooperation were needed, and the idea of a marriage alliance seemed to Honorius to be the only one able to persuade the Emperor to honour his commitment to go on crusade, which he had made twice before, on the occasion of his two coronations, as King of Germany in Aachen (1212) and as Emperor of Catholic Christianity in Rome (1220). Jean de Brienne, with a heavy heart, was ready to sacrifice his child when he landed at Brundusium (little did the tried king suspect how far an emperor’s faith could go.

Frederick II, as expected, did not dislike the proposal. From his mother, Constantia, he had inherited southern Italy (Naples) with the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, from his father, Henry VI, the German Empire and northern Italy, now he was offered extensive possessions across the sea, plus a resounding title. Barbarossa’s nephew had that dominium mundi, so eagerly coveted by his grandfather, smiled upon him from afar. The mastery of Jerusalem, considered to be the centre of the world, and of rich and extensive possessions, however far away they were, was all he could have wished for, especially as the Eastern world, with its culture, refinement and pleasures, attracted him so much that at his court in Sicily he led the life of a sultan, surrounded by Arab scholars, Muslims and a veritable harem, to the scandal of the European princes and the indignation of the Pope. But the project, however enticing, was delayed for three years. Frederick II, by birth and upbringing more Italian than German and a Christian emperor, was preoccupied with the Italian problem, with the fate of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, where he was pursuing a policy of centralisation, of asserting state authority, of emancipating it from the tutelage of the papacy, had a whole programme of reforms to carry out in Italy, of clearing up some problems in the empire. The kind and benevolent Honorius III was content, as always when the crusade was postponed, to reproach his protégé, showing him what an unpleasant situation he was putting him in, the princes blaming the head of the apostolic church for his lack of firmness towards the emperor’s delay in going on the crusade, as, in fact, he was. In 1221, the pope, exasperated at having again been thwarted in his plan for the campaign in the East, resorted to threats, conveying to Frederick through his special envoy, Nicholas of Tusculum, his intention of excommunicating him, but the emperor remained unconcerned, for he knew beforehand that his much-praised and indulgent spiritual father would not do so, and that he would be deceived by a new promise of his and vow to go on crusade later. So did the emperor now. In April 1223, he swore at Ferentino that he would set out on the holy expedition in the summer of 1225, by which time preparations were to be made throughout the Christian world. The year 1225 was awaited by all the princes in great tension. The kings of France and England, at war, ceased hostilities, while in all the countries of Europe the marriage of the emperor to Iolanda was announced, and in the empire it was celebrated as divinitus inspiratus.

An imperial fleet of 14 ships, led by Enrico Pescatore, set sail in August 1225 to bring the heiress of Jerusalem to the German emperor. The marriage was officiated at Accra by Bishop Giacomo del Patti, according to the custom of the time, by proxy. The bride, aged 14, walked down the aisle with unsteady steps, almost crushed under the bridal finery, while the emperor’s sword was carried beside her on a cushion. Poor encouragement for the meek Iolanda to marry a sword. The groom she didn’t even know. The lavish celebrations of the event, which lasted 14 days, the coronation as empress at Tyre, for a time quelled Iolanda’s fear of being uprooted, torn from sweet Syria as she herself called her homeland at the moment of parting and her last farewell. Frederick II welcomed his young wife to Brindisi. She was sad, and nothing would cheer her up from now on. The very next day after the meeting at Brindisi, Frederick II, in control of the situation, stripped Jean de Brienne of his rights and proclaimed himself King of Jerusalem, despite his father-in-law’s protests. Iolanda was unhappy, the nobles of Syria were astonished, the European princes were waiting in suspense for what was to come.

The German emperor’s new status, which he had improperly obtained, did not make him any more scrupulous about the crusade, which he postponed for the fourth time, but he took care to swear once again at San Germano, before Cardinal Pelagius, that he would definitely leave in another two years, in August 1227. As for the promise, made before the wedding, that he would send a fleet of 50 ships to Syria and pay 100 000 ounces of gold to maintain a standing army for two years at the disposal of the master of the Teutonic order and the king, it fell apart with the dethronement of Jean de Brienne.

Honorius III, the only pope in a position to judge the actions of an emperor, found himself, as always, powerless in the face of Frederick’s political antics, and even if he wanted to take a stand, he did not have the time to do so, for in the same year (1227) he fell ill and died. The trials to which Iolanda had been prematurely subjected brought her early death. Shortly after giving birth to a son, christened Conrad, she died alone, without relatives, in a foreign land, having given her husband a son, thus securing the succession to the Hohenstaufens, and having left Fredric, together with the desired successor, another political right, this time unquestionable, to administer the possessions in Syria in the name of the minor child, legitimate heir to the throne of Jerusalem, as his mother’s sole heir. Jean de Brienne, far too old (he was 75) to be able to sustain an obviously unequal struggle with his son-in-law, died in his turn, inconsolable at having struck a bargain.

The decline of the crusading ideal had brought essential changes in the political ideology of the time. People, who were used to the idea of the crusade when it came to Eastern politics, did not give it up easily, but the idea had to be readapted to the new conditions and mentality. The emergence of the Mongols and the danger they presented needed to be explained. Thus arose the legend of the populus absconsus beyond the Euphrates, led by a certain priest John, with whom Gingis Han was confused, or of the Jews hidden in the mountains around the Caspian Sea, as it was said since the time of Alexander the Great. These people, people believed, represented the danger from the East announced by the Apocalypse as a sign of the approaching end of the world. They were to be opposed by the true kingdom from the West. We see a rhythm of prophecies alternating between the two kingdoms of East and West, both reflecting, in a naive form, the rediscovery of man by man. In a vision in which the fantastic and the miraculous were intertwined, one also saw all the tribes of the earth joining hands in a grand encounter with which, the prophecy sounded, the last era of mankind was to begin, an era of peace, undisturbed by war, disease and other earthly sufferings. As always, there were scholars, realists or simply sceptics who did not believe in such prophecies, one of them being Alberic des Trois Fontaines, the author of the text which rejects the legend of that populus absconsus and sees in the Mongols a people of a particular origin, coming from the steppes of Asia where they were born and lived, a hidden race returning among their own people.

Pope Honorius III wanted to interpret the prophecy in favour of Fredric II, who was designated as the emperor of the last dominion, thus trying to justify a new crusade. But the desire for peace, for people to work together, was stronger. Under the influence of the Franciscan current, a pacifist current par excellence, the belief in coexistence with Muslims, which is possible and permitted, spread rapidly, as they can be converted peacefully, drawn to the Christian community with patience and perseverance, religious causes not allowing the right to kill. The dream of brotherhood between people, uniting them as one big family across religious barriers, was beginning to take shape long before the Renaissance had explicitly formulated it.

With such changes in ideology, the crusade was overtaking itself to the point of almost cancelling itself. A change in the crusading ideal itself was needed to maintain it. Thus the warrior element slipped into the background. The crusader, first and foremost, was now a pilgrim, then a warrior, and only if absolutely necessary. The emphasis falls on individual asceticism, as opposed to the collective ideal of the beginning, which gave a note of joyous, almost noisy delight to joining the crusade. Now it was required that on departure the crusader should be without expensive clothes, money or unnecessary baggage, not to avoid the sadness of parting. The moral life became more important than the arduous attempt to embark on a crusade or the risks of it, and the pilgrimage was of no use unless it was followed by the pursuit of a moral life. Postponing the crusade, redeeming it, this was the mentality when Gregory IX ascended to the papal chair, a worthy descendant of Gregory VII, ambitious, violent, a fierce defender of Caesaropapism, ready to reopen the old conflict for political supremacy between popes and emperors.

The summer of 1227 was drawing to a close and Frederick showed no sign of following through on his vowed commitment to go on crusade. He was preoccupied by the unrest in the Lombard towns, where he suspected the pope’s meddling and sought excuses for delay. Gregory IX, however, was not fooled like Honorius III. Now was the time to act in the East, because Sultan Al Kamil had come into conflict with his brothers and, in desperation, asked for help from the West, forgetting all about the jihad and disregarding the consequences. The Pope, considering the emperor’s procrastination a disobedience to a decision of the Roman pontiff, irritated by the violation of apostolic authority in the kingdom of Sicily, sent Frederick II a final threatening letter. In brutal terms he reminded him that if the Kingdom of Sicily had been inherited from his mother, Germany from his father, the imperial crown had been given to him by the pope, and he too could take it away. Frederick II, as impulsive as Gregory IX, would not admit to being humiliated, but since he could not openly retaliate, he resorted to a stratagem, determined to deceive the beloved pontiff and act, as always, as he pleased.

At the end of the summer preparations for the crusade began, and on 8 September 1227, supported by numerous German crusaders, joined by a large number of English, he set sail for Brindisi. The fleet set sail with the usual noisy displays of farewell and grandeur in the service of a holy cause, but did not get far, for at Otranto the anchor was dropped, and the emperor disembarked feigning illness. The news was announced to the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Master of the Teutonic Order, and both, convinced of the emperor’s misfortune, gave him permission to abandon the expedition, but not the Pope. The emperor’s envoys were badly received in Rome, and all the explanations given and arguments made only increased the pope’s anger. Frederick II, as warned by Gregory IX in his last letter, was excommunicated. The emperor’s attempt had failed, the pope had gone too far, and the proud Frederick feeling strong in Italy, where his possessions in the north and south were squeezing the papacy like a pincer, decided to give Gregory IX a lesson at home. Throughout the autumn of 1227 and the winter of 1228, Frederick II, with familiar cunning, intrigued in Rome and provoked an uprising of the nobles against the pope. While a frightened and defenceless Gregory IX fled from his capital, the defiant emperor went on a crusade.

Between the autumn of 1227 and the spring of 1228, nothing special had happened to make the emperor suddenly decide to leave for the East, he just wanted to show that he leaves when he wants to, not when he is ordered to. The Pope, furious to the core, had no choice but to excommunicate the Crusaders. This was the most extraordinary thing to happen. An excommunicated crusade entered the holy land in the summer of 1228, led by an excommunicated emperor, who seemed not at all embarrassed by his position, nor intimidated by the fact that he had been unwelcome in Cyprus and that the regent Jean d’Ibelin had not recognised his right to the island. Nor was he more welcome in Accra. The clerics did not want to compromise themselves by collaborating with an excommunicated person, the barons were suspicious, for they had not forgotten the emperor’s behaviour towards Jean de Brienne, then they suspected him of an Islamophobic ply and even of having dealt with Malik al Kamil.

Mission accomplished: Jerusalem is taken over by the Crusaders

Fredric II was in a particularly delicate situation. Even the sultan now no longer wanted him in Syria. Meanwhile his brother Al-Muzzam, the ruler of Damascus, the most bitter of the warlords, had died, and the less threatened Al-Kamil preferred to settle his differences with the unruly atabegs himself. But Fredric II was not the kind of prince to return from a crusade with nothing to show for it, to admit defeat, a mere pilgrim, with only the merit of having seen the Holy Land. As he did not feel strong enough to undertake a conquest on his own, he resorted to negotiations with Al Kamil to have at least some rights over Jerusalem recognized; which, it is true, was no small thing, which proves how hardy the emperor was in his hour of need. The tone of his letter to the Sultan clearly shows the critical situation he was in: I am your friend, you know how high I stand above the principles of the West. You called me here. The kings and the pope know of my journey; if I return without having obtained anything, I lose all consideration in their eyes;…this Jerusalem…which you have destroyed…give it to me in the state it is in so that I may stand tall before the kings; whatever advantages I renounce…. Who would have thought the authoritarian Frederic could write in terms of humiliating honesty? But this too was a tactic. Frederick had learned not only to speak in several languages, but also in several voices. To him, Al-kamil was nothing but a stranger. He could therefore afford to show himself completely devoid of pride; he addressed him as one close to him who was able to understand and help him, he tried to soften him up by stripping himself of his imperial greatness, asking him, with disarming sincerity, not to leave him at will. By not defiantly asserting his claim to dominion, the emperor thought it would be easier for the sultan to accept the sacrifice he demanded, at a time when the political situation in Al Kamil’s dominions was not very clear either. Frederic’s diplomacy proved to be good. The Sultan, sensitive to the word friend, knowing that in reality the Emperor was a Muslim sympathiser, that as the chronicler Badr-Al-Din put it, he was toying with the Christian religion, inclined to compromise. He was urged to do so because he felt threatened by the ever-scrupulous policy of the ruler of Greater Armenia and by the new atabeg of Damascus, who had become hostile to Al Kamil. Only once before had the Sultan been ready to buy peace, the pledge being Jerusalem, however expensive the city was to him, and he was convinced beforehand that the Westerners would not hold it for long. Still, he hesitated. To save face and to hasten the Sultan’s decision, Frederick II made a show of force, marching with his army from Acre to Jaffa, and here, with the few resources at his disposal, he had the city walls rebuilt. In these circumstances, on 18 February 1229, the treaty was concluded.

But this has displeased fanatical Muslims and Christians alike. The Patriarch of Jerusalem, taking advantage of the king’s excommunication, forbade him to come to the city as master. But Frederick was not impressed. He had got what he wanted and there was no turning back. A month later, he entered Jerusalem, without caring for the Catholic clergy, and while the Muslims in the city held a mourning ceremony, he crowned himself alone in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The fanatical Muslims watched his movements, but Frederick, on the same day, in a well thought-out tactic, visited the two mosques, admiring their beauty without reservation, showing the respect due to a place of worship. On his visit he was accompanied by one of the most prominent Muslim politicians, Shams Al Din, a judge in Nablus, commissioned by Sultan Malik al Kamil, as a sign of friendship, to guide the Emperor through the city, so that the people of both religions could see the good understanding between their rulers. Sibt Ibn Al-Jawazi relates that Frederick II, at the entrance to the Aksa mosque, seeing a Christian priest who wanted to follow him, holding the Bible in his hand, struck him and shouted at him, seized with unexpected anger: Shameless! The Sultan has granted us the favour of visiting this place and you dare to behave like this? If any of you do the same again I’ll kill him. We are vassals and slaves of this Sultan Malik Al Kamil. He granted these churches (mosques) to me and to you as an act of grace. Don’t any of you dare break your pledge. The words spoken as a threat, but not put into practice, show that what was important to the German Emperor was political matters, not religious ones, and that for treaties to stand people had to learn to respect each other. It is hard to believe that Fredric used the words vassals and slaves to define the relationship with the Sultan, but it should not be forgotten that the information came to us from a Muslim, and this was the formula used by the Sultan’s chancellery. What is important, however, is not how Frederick expressed himself, but his attitude towards a cult foreign to the Christian one, in whose name the crusade was organised, and this is further evidence of the change of mentality. During the First Crusade, a king of any persuasion would not have had the courage to show such religious tolerance. Now, at the emperor’s behest, no one has touched the Muslims and their temples.

The joy of the coronation in Jerusalem

The coronation of a Christian emperor in Jerusalem brought indescribable joy to the pilgrims. They were simple, modest people, Alberic des Trois Fontaines tells us. The emperor was acclaimed, and the freed Christian prisoners saw in him, the excommunicator, a divine sign. The clergy, however, celebrated the event quietly, without the emperor even being invited. Frederick II hoped that his success would further tame Pope Gregory IX. He wrote him a beautiful epistle, making no allusion to excommunication, but only in choice words emphasising the merit of having conquered the place where Christ had set foot. Again political tact. To the Pope he spoke of Christ, to the Sultan of Allah. Gregory IX, however, had new reasons to be angry. Jerusalem had been ceded to the emperor, not to the church, the emperor had crowned himself, not the representative of the church. In a letter to the Archbishop of Milan, Gregory IX burst out referring to Frederick: He who is the enemy of the cross, the enemy of the faith, he who denies chastity (an allusion to the emperor’s harem), he who is cursed for eternity (an allusion to excommunication)…it is he whom we must now also adore…. But in Europe the imperial party, the Ghibellines, were jubilant. Roger de Wadover in his writings celebrated him as a cooperator of divine clemency. Jerusalem had been liberated after another 42 years of captivity, and the manner of the liberation did not matter.

But Frederick II was not the only enemy of the clergy. Three days after his great political triumph, the coronation in Jerusalem, the barons in Acre were revolting. In Italy, the Lombard towns had been raised up by the Pope against the Emperor. He was wise now to return home as soon as possible, to re-establish his authority in Italy, the political base of his power. This he did, forcing the pope in 1230 to lift the emperor’s excommunication and make peace with him.

After Frederick II’s departure from Accra, the barons’ uprising spread to Syria and then to the island of Cyprus. After three years of fighting between the imperial party and the anarchist group, the conflict ended with victory for the rebels. Legally speaking, the kingdom of Jerusalem remained under the suzerainty of the German emperors and belonged to the empire until 1268, i.e. also under Fredric II’s two successors, Conrad IV (1250-1254) and Conradin (1254-1268), i.e. until the end of the Hohenstauf dynasty. In practice, however, Crusader-occupied Syria remained a kind of noble republic, a federation of dominions, eternally at war with each other, the fundamental law governing them being the Jerusalem Settlements, applied and interpreted differently by the many princes. In a word, between 1230 and 1244 Syria fell prey to the greatest disorders. Sultan Malik Al Kamil, old and in eternal conflict with members of his family, preoccupied by the increasingly frequent Mongol attacks, did not take advantage of the anarchy in the Crusader states. After his death (1238), relations between Muslims and Christians worsened again, and in 1239 the peace treaty was broken due to the political imprudence of some Crusaders who had recently arrived in Acre. Believing that the fighting between Al-Kamil’s sons, brothers and nephews was a serious reason for the Muslims to lack cohesion and be unable to resist some attack, on the night of 12 November 1239, they headed for Gaza, where an Egyptian garrison, not very numerous and therefore, they thought, easily disarmed, was billeted. By chance, they arrived sooner than they thought, it was not yet dawn, and they found it convenient to rest on the dunes near the city walls, under the astonished eyes of the garrison sentries. Sleep quickly overtook them, the heavy sleep of the morning. Then the commander of the Ayyubid forces snuck out from behind the ramparts with his whole army, took the crusaders by surprise, so that they had no time to even mount to flee, some only opened their eyes to shut them again for ever, without being able to make a defensive gesture. It was a short battle, accompanied by a slaughter recorded in the chronicles: 1200 men were killed, 600 knights and puny fighters were taken prisoner and led into slavery. The defeat was an early wake-up call for the Crusaders, who, expecting the Ayyubids to resume their attacks and taking advantage of the feudal struggles between the Muslims, reverted to the traditional policy of alliance with Damascus.

The fighting between Al-Kamil’s relatives eventually ended with the recognition of one of his sons, Al-Salih-Ayub, as Sultan of Egypt. The new sultan, in order to break up the Frankish-Damascus coalition and punish the Crusaders, who were guilty of breaking the peace treaty, and eager to make a name for himself by regaining the dominions lost by his father, enlisted the help of the Mongol tribes, the famous Khwarizmian horsemen, known for their savagery in battle. They numbered about 10,000 men, led by Berke Khan in 1244, attacked and conquered Tiberias, then headed for Jerusalem, sowing terror in their path, but even in these trying times the crusaders did not unite. The barons of Acre, Beyruth, Tyre, Jaffa refused to come to Jerusalem’s aid, something almost incomprehensible. The Templars and Hospitallers decided too late to set out to defend the city which, with its defences destroyed, was not expected to hold out for long. The war council of the nobles decided to conclude an alliance with Transjordan and to strengthen the existing one with Damascus, but in the meantime the enemy had approached Gaza. A confrontation with the hastily arrived Franco-Damascan army followed, resulting in a most bloody defeat for the Crusaders and their allies, which was called the Second Hattin. The number of dead and prisoners, the chronicles say, amounted to 16,000 men. Of the Crusaders, 36 Templars, 26 Hospitallers and 3 Teutons escaped with their lives out of several hundred fighters from each order. On 23 August 1244, the Khwarizmians occupied Jerusalem in the name of Al-Salih. The city was devastated from one end to the other, the population that had failed to take refuge was largely massacred. According to the data, some 4000 people lost their lives in the slaughter. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was desecrated, the Latin kings disinterred, their bones scattered. Al-Salih himself was frightened by the scale of Berke Khan’s destruction. The Khwarizmian fighters were becoming dangerous, so in 1246 the sultan removed them from his army.

Frederick II, the Roman Emperor, was himself heavily involved in the Fifth Crusade by sending troops from Germany, but he failed to accompany the army directly, despite encouragement from Honorius III and later Gregory IX because he needed to consolidate his position in Germany and Italy at that time before participating directly in a crusade. However, Frederick again promised to personally participate in a crusade after his coronation as emperor in 1220 by Pope Honorius III.

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