King Baldwin IV - The Leper King of Jerusalem Documentary

The man known to history as King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem was born at some point in the early summer of 1161. The exact date of his birth is not known, nor is the location, though it is usually assumed that it was in the city of Jerusalem. His father was Amalric, Count of Jaffa and Ascalon. As count he was one of the foremost lords of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, hardly surprising given that he was a member of the royal family and his brother was King Baldwin III of Jerusalem. The young Baldwin was named after his uncle,

the king, who also stood as godfather for the new-born when he was baptised in 1161. Baldwin, though, would never know the monarch for whom he was named. In February 1163 Baldwin III died, most likely from complications owing to dysentery, though suspicions arose that he was poisoned. Childless at just 33 years of age, his death paved the way for his brother Amalric to succeed as King of Jerusalem. With this, Baldwin, who was still shy of his second birthday, became the heir to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Baldwin’s mother was Agnes of Courtenay, a scion of the House

of Courtenay which had branches back in Western Europe and in the Holy Land, her father Joscelin having been Count of Edessa. She was also closely related to the royal line of Jerusalem. She and Amalric had one other child beyond Baldwin, a daughter named Sibylla who was born either in 1158 or 1159 and so was Baldwin’s older sister. Sibylla would play a major role in Baldwin’s life. His mother, though, would never be Queen of Jerusalem. At the time of the death of Baldwin III in the spring of 1163, as Amalric was preparing to succeed his brother,

the religious authorities of Jerusalem and other bishoprics of the Crusader States had objected to Agnes becoming queen, claiming that she and Amalric were too closely related for their marriage back in 1157 to have been given church approval. The pair were only related in the fourth degree, a hardly unusual circumstance in the marriage of royals and nobles in medieval times, and so the objection to Agnes becoming queen must have been the result of some unclear political intrigue. Whatever the precise reasons were, Amalric caved to the church’s demands. He declared his marriage to Agnes void and became

king, remarrying in 1167 to Maria Komnene, a grandniece of the Byzantine emperor, Manuel I. This second marriage would result in just one daughter and so Baldwin remained the undisputed heir to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Meanwhile, even though he had been forced to renounce her in 1163, Agnes remained a powerful figure at the royal court in Jerusalem throughout the 1160s, 1170s and early 1180s during Baldwin’s later reign. Baldwin was born in the Crusader States of the Holy Land. These had only existed for just over a half a century. Back in the early days of Christianity in

late antiquity, the Eastern Mediterranean had been the heartland of the Christian church, but in the middle of the seventh century the Levant, parts of Asia Minor and west into North Africa had all been conquered by the Arabs and people there converted to Islam for the most part in the seventh and eighth centuries. The Arab Muslims had been relatively tolerant of Christian pilgrims visiting Jerusalem over the centuries, but the Turks who conquered large parts of the region in the eleventh century were less so. It was in response to the expansion of Turkish power in the second

half of the eleventh century that the First Crusade was preached by Pope Urban II in Western Europe in 1095. Tens of thousands took the cross and headed east. Between 1097 and 1099 they succeeded in conquering most of the Levant, finally entering Jerusalem in July 1099. With this, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the County of Tripoli, the Principality of Antioch and the County of Edessa, were set up in the Holy Land as Christian Crusader states. The most senior of these were the rulers of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The first of these was Godfrey of Bouillon, one of

the leaders of the First Crusade, who subsequently was acclaimed as King Godfrey I of Jerusalem after the capture of the holy city in 1099. The Crusader region was referred to back in Western Christendom over the next two centuries as Outremer, meaning ‘Overseas’, though many historians today refer to the region in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as either the Crusader States or the Latin East, or even as the Frankish kingdoms in recognition that many of the main Crusader lords came from what had been the Kingdom of the Franks back in Western Europe. Indeed, the Muslims of

the Levant came to refer to them collectively as ‘the Franks’. In the early twelfth century the Crusader States began to emerge as settled polities, with Italian merchants operating out of ports such as Acre and connecting it with Western Christendom, with several orders of religious knights such as the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitallers emerging as powerful orders of holy warriors. But the Muslim response was also quick in coming. Muslim lords such as Imad al-Din, better known as Zengi, and Nur ad-Din, operating out of Syria, Egypt and northern Mesopotamia, began battling extensively with the Crusader states

from the 1120s onwards. In 1144 the city of Edessa fell to the Muslims, leading to a new crusade being preached back in Europe. The Second Crusade had been more extensive than the First Crusade, bringing both King Louis VII of France and King Conrad III of Germany to the Holy Land with tens of thousands of warriors. It was a sign of the stiff resistance which the Christians now faced in the Levant that this Second Crusade was far less successful than the First, with little new land brought under the control of the Crusader States, though after the

Second Crusade, in 1153, King Baldwin III of Jerusalem, young Baldwin’s uncle, had succeeded in seizing Ascalon, one of the few urban centres in the Levant which the Fatimid rulers of Egypt had managed to retain control of since the First Crusade. But when his brother, Baldwin’s father Almaric, succeeded him in 1163, after Baldwin III died childless, he would face a major threat in the shape of Nur ad-Din. This was the context in which Baldwin IV’s life and reign would play out. Before exploring the life of Baldwin, it is worth pausing to briefly consider the nature of

the historical sources which are available for the Crusader Sates at this time. In general the High Middle Ages are a period for which there is nothing like the abundant amount of bureaucratic, governmental and judicial records which survive for more modern times, or even extensive correspondence. This is doubly the case for the Crusader states of the Holy Land where what records were produced in the twelfth century were generally lost and destroyed as the Crusader states collapsed in the course of the thirteenth century. Owing to this we are especially reliant on a number of chronicles written by

contemporary historians. Two of these were written by figures that were present in Outremer during Baldwin’s times and who were eye-witnesses to much of the events they describe. The Chronicle of William of Tyre, the archbishop of Tyre between 1175 and his death in 1186, is especially valuable as William was a tutor to Baldwin in his youth, played a role in diagnosing the future king with leprosy in his childhood years and was central to the history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem throughout Baldwin’s reign. Another valuable contemporary source is the Chronicle of Ernoul and Bernard the Treasurer. This

was written by Ernoul, a squire of Balian of Ibelin, a Crusader lord of the 1170s and 1180s. Ernoul’s Chronicle provides a history of the Crusader states from 1100 to 1228 and is a valuable source for Baldwin’s life from an individual who was a teenager there in the early 1180s. While these are the two most important sources for Baldwin’s life, there are others which provide some ancillary details, notably a number of Latin chronicles written by figures in Western Europe who related the news that arrived in England, France and other regions from the Holy Land during Baldwin’s

reign, while the Libellus de Expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum, meaning roughly The book of the conquest of the Holy Land by Saladin, written by an anonymous knight who was present in the Holy Land in the 1180s provides some important details on developments there in the mid-1180s around the time of Baldwin’s death. There are also numerous Arabic and Byzantine chronicles and histories of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries that shed light on Baldwin’s reign. As such, there are a good number of different sources available for Baldwin’s life, but inevitably there are still considerable limitations to what

we can decipher about a monarch who lived over 800 years ago. From the sources which we have, we know a good deal about how Baldwin was brought up and educated. He would have spent much of his early life in Jerusalem, rarely venturing beyond the city in a land where the Christians held the towns and cities, but where the countryside was prone to attacks by Muslim bands. In Jerusalem Baldwin would have grown up at a court which had more of a military feel than even those back in medieval Europe, one in which every ruler knew beyond

a doubt that his primary role was to defend his state against Muslim incursions and to try to reclaim further territories for the church, a land where even monks wore armour and carried weapons. In 1170, William of Tyre, the man who would later write a chronicle of Baldwin’s reign, returned from the capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, where Amalric had dispatched him on a diplomatic mission. When he reached Jerusalem, the king appointed him as tutor to his son, as William, who by then was an archdeacon, was widely recognised as one of the most learned figures in

Outremer. The dual nature of the Christian Crusader States as polities in which Christians and Muslims often lived side by side was seen in Baldwin’s education in other spheres. It was an Arab by the name of Abul’Khair who taught Baldwin to ride a horse. Baldwin’s early years and education were highly significant in other respects. He was sent to live for lengthy periods of time in the household of William of Tyre and it was while he was there that William first noticed the symptoms of Baldwin’s leprosy. In later years he recounted his discovery in the following way:

“While he was staying with me…it happened that, as he was playing with some boys of noble birth who were with him and they were pinching each other on the arms and hands with their nails, as children often do when playing together, the others cried out when they were hurt, whereas he bore it all with great patience, like one who is used to pain, although his friends did not spare him in any way. When this had happened several times, and I was told about it, I thought it was a consequence of his patient disposition, not of

his insensitivity to pain, and calling him to me I began to ask him questions about it. And finally I came to realise that half of his right arm and hand was dead, so that he could not feel the pinchings at all, or even feel if he was bitten. Then I began to feel uncertain in my mind, recalling the words of the wise man who said: ‘It is a certainty that a limb which is without feeling is not conducive to health and that a sick man who does not feel himself to be so incurs great danger.’

His father was told, and after the doctors had been consulted, careful attempts were made to help him with poultices, ointments and even charms, but all in vain. For with the passage of time we came to understand more clearly that this marked the beginning of a more serious and totally incurable disease. It grieves me greatly to say this, but when he became an adolescent, he was seen to be suffering from leprosy to a dangerous degree.” Another sign of the cultural tolerance which existed in the Crusader States at this time was seen in the hiring of Arab

doctors to treat Baldwin, chief amongst them Abu Sulayman Dawud, but there was no cure for Baldwin’s leprosy or even an effective treatment. His leprosy would come to define his life in many ways, as will become clear. The disease that his son and heir was suffering from was not King Amalric’s only concern. He had begun his reign by taking the offensive against the Muslims that bordered on the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The main power at this time was the Fatimid Caliphate which ruled Egypt and adjoining lands, a power which had been in decline for some time, in

part because of the expansion of the Turkic Muslim powers further to the north who had controlled the Levant prior to the arrival of the First Crusade. The Fatimids experienced a period of intense internal instability and famine throughout the 1160s and Amalric was able to campaign effectively against them in the first year of his reign, consolidating the southern frontier of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. But matters were very different to the north. In the early autumn of 1164, news arrived in Jerusalem that Nur ad-Din, the Turkic Muslim ruler of Syria, had defeated a crusader force of the

County of Tripoli and the Principality of Antioch at the Battle of Harim, obliterating or capturing thousands of Crusader knights and soldiers, a costly defeat which the Crusader States could ill afford at a time when reinforcement from Western Europe was the only way of making up for such losses on the battlefield. Defeat at Harim put the Crusaders on the defensive for several years to come. It was at this juncture that Amalric entered negotiations with the Byzantines that resulted in him marrying Maria Komnene in order to acquire military aid from the Greeks. It was several years after

the disaster at Harim when Amalric learned of his son’s condition. It was most likely kept secret to begin with and there may even have been some doubt as to whether the diagnosis was correct. Baldwin did not appear to have any visible physical symptoms of leprosy during his youth and the diagnosis was made purely on the basis of his lack of nerve sensation. The royal family would also have been reluctant to publicise the illness of the king’s son. Leprosy carried an enormous social stigma at the time, the belief being that the disease was something of an

affliction visited on individuals by god for some perceived wrongdoing. Consider the following passage on leprosy from the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament: “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted.” Scholars have speculated that the Christians of the Crusader States were more tolerant of leprosy than their brethren back in Western

Europe and indeed in the 1140s the Order of St Lazarus had been established in Jerusalem for the care of lepers. However, there was still no doubt that Baldwin’s condition would be enormously problematic, not least because lepers were largely expected to segregate themselves away from wider society, the belief in the contagious nature of leprosy being strong. Hansen’s Disease, to give it its modern clinical name, is contagious, but it requires prolonged exposure to the bodily fluids of those who carry it for someone to be infected. This was not known in pre-modern times, however. The expectation that someone

like Baldwin should shut himself away under the care of the Lazare house in Jerusalem was impractical for a king in waiting whose primary duty was to lead armies, something which would become nigh on impossible as his condition deteriorated in years to come but which Baldwin would still rise to challenge of doing. Amalric was aware of all of this and was concerned about the succession as a result, something which may have informed his decision to remarry in 1167, but he would find no solution before his own premature death, the latest in a long line of Kings

of Jerusalem to die young. In 1174, after the death of Nur ad-Din, the great nemesis of his reign, Amalric had laid siege to the town of Banias. Eventually he had to given up on this, realising that the town was not worth the resources that would have required to maintain a long siege. It was while heading back to Jerusalem from Banias that he fell ill with dysentery. Though easily treatable in an age of antibiotics, medicines and clean water, dysentery was often fatal in pre-modern times, and so it proved to be in Amalric’s case. His condition deteriorated

in the days that followed and back in Jerusalem he began running a severe fever. Despite being attended by a range of Latin, Greek and Arab doctors in the days that followed, nothing effective could be done and Amalric died on the 11th of July 1174 at just 38 years of age. With that, Baldwin, who was approximately 13 years old at the time, succeeded as King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem. Owing to this youth a regency government would control affairs until he reached his majority, which was deemed to be at age 15. Initially Miles of Plancy, the seneschal

of Jerusalem, a senior magistrate in the city, assumed the position of regent, but within a few weeks Raymond, Count of Tripoli, one of the senior-most nobles of Outremer, arrived in Jerusalem and declared his intention to rule as regent during Baldwin’s minority. The two years of Baldwin’s minority rule were important in framing the circumstances in which Baldwin would reign in his own right from 1176 onwards. The death of Nur ad-Din had left something of a political vacuum in Syria. It was quickly filled by a noted warrior of a scholarly disposition who had emerged in the 1160s

under Nur ad-Din’s wing. This was Yusuf ibn Ayyub, a warlord who hailed from Tikrit in what is now Iraq. He is better known by the Arabic laqab or epithet which he acquired in later life, Salah ad-Din or Saladin, meaning the ‘Righteousness of the Faith’. In the mid-1160s Saladin had gone to Egypt with Nur ad-Din’s blessing to shore up the Muslim position there as the Fatimid Caliphate was in crisis. In 1171, following the death of the last Fatimid Caliph, Saladin effectively brought the Egyptian Caliphate to an end and realigned it with the Islamic Caliphate in Baghdad.

Then, in the mid-1170s following Nur ad-Din’s death he seized power to a large extent in Syria as well. What this meant was that the Crusader States, and Baldwin as the chief ruler amongst them, now faced a skilled Muslim warlord who could strike at Outremer from both the north out of Syria and the south out of Egypt, while also controlling much of the Arabian Peninsula. In Jerusalem, even as a teenager, Baldwin knew that the threat posed by Saladin and the Ayyubids was a major issue that would have implications for his reign. Our sources make it fairly

clear that from early on in his reign he was considering the succession already and his role as ruler of Jerusalem. His leprosy precluded the possibility of marriage and of siring children of his own. He did not have a brother to whom the throne might easily descend, but unlike some Christian kingdoms back in the Latin West, women were not precluded from the succession in Outremer. Indeed, Baldwin’s grandmother, Melisende, had ruled as Queen of Jerusalem either on her own or as a co-ruler for much of the period between the death of her father, King Baldwin II, in

1131 and when her own son, Baldwin III, began to rule in his own stead in the 1150s. As a result, it was clear to many in Jerusalem that Baldwin IV’s sister, Sibylla, offered a clear line of succession within the kingdom. This was further cemented in the mid-1170s when Sibylla married William of Montferrat, known by the epithet ‘Longsword’, an indication of his military prowess. It seems that Baldwin may have been preparing to abdicate in favour of William and Sibylla when William was well enough prepared for the role. However, his plan was quickly scuppered. William died in

1177, most likely from malaria, though not before Sibylla fell pregnant with a son who would subsequently be christened Baldwin after his uncle the king. In response to the death of William in 1177, Baldwin moved to appoint Raynald of Chatillon as the new regent. As a king who could not campaign for sustained periods of time against Saladin and other Muslim warlords, Baldwin needed someone who could do so on his behalf, especially so in regions far from Jerusalem. Raynald was an ideal candidate. He was born in France and had only arrived in Outremer in the late 1140s

as part of the Second Crusade, becoming a substantial force for a time in the Principality of Antioch during the 1150s, but in more recent years he had established himself as the most aggressive of the Crusaders nobles, though a ruthless one who launched raids on Cyprus and the Byzantine Empire in an effort to aggrandize himself at the expense of his neighbours, be they Christian or Muslim. Around the time of Baldwin’s birth in the early 1160s Raynald had been captured by the Muslims of Syria and had spent many years in captivity, but in 1176 he had been

released on payment of a large ransom. With this he established himself as the Lord of Oultrejordain, a principality to the southeast of the Dead Sea in what is now Jordan, by marrying the lady of the territory, Stephanie of Milly. There Raynald quickly developed a reputation for his aggressive attacks on the Ayyubid trade and caravan routes between Egypt and their wider territories in Syria and Mesopotamia, sundering connections between the two parts of Saladin’s growing sphere of control. Having proved himself in this capacity, Baldwin and his advisors determined that Raynald was the best individual to appoint as

regent and military commander of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1177. His decision to do so was owing to deteriorating health, Baldwin having seemingly become ill from whatever had killed William Longsword around the same time. Raynald soon distinguished himself in one of the most significant military encounters between the Christian Crusaders and the Muslim lords of the Levant and Egypt during the twelfth century, the Battle of Montgisard. Baldwin was involved in this as well. The clash took place against diplomatic efforts by Baldwin to form a new alliance with the Byzantine Empire, Manuel I Komnenos, with the aim

of launching a fresh expedition into Egypt. Baldwin’s efforts to do so were seemingly aided by the arrival of Philip, Count of Flanders in the Low Countries, to the Holy Land in August 1177 with extensive resources. Philip landed at the port of Acre and immediately sent word to Jerusalem to Baldwin who was Philip’s cousin. Baldwin viewed Philip’s arrival as a potential mechanism to allow him to withdraw from the kingship, offering Philip the regency, but Philip refused and also balked at the idea of campaigning into Egypt. Instead he headed to Tripoli with his forces to join up

with Raymond III, Count of Tripoli, for an attack on the city of Harim in Saladin’s territory in Syria. Alerted to the movement of hundreds of Crusader knights and auxiliary forces towards Harim, Saladin now decided to strike into the Kingdom of Jerusalem while the Crusader resources were deployed far to the north. Though his illness generally precluded Baldwin from sustained military campaigning himself, in the military emergency which now developed he had no option but to oversee the gathering of what resources and men could be mustered and to lead the defence of Jerusalem and the surrounding region against

Saladin’s incursion in November 1177. The figures for such military engagements are notoriously unreliable. The Christian chroniclers, for instance, suggest that Saladin led a host of upwards of 25,000 men into the Kingdom that early winter, which was surely an exaggeration, but the idea that Baldwin and Raynald only had a few hundred knights and several thousand auxiliary soldiers to defend the Kingdom with was probably more accurate. His initial goal was to protect the city of Ascalon, but after learning of Saladin’s attacks on numerous Christian settlements further inland, Baldwin moved eastwards away from the coastal region. His and

Saladin’s forces would eventually meet on the 25th of November 1177. The exact location of the Battle of Montgisard is unclear, though scholars agree it took place somewhere in the Ramla region lying to the south of what is now Tel Aviv-Yafo and northeast of Ashdod. Here Baldwin’s forces needed victory in order to prevent Saladin capturing extensive territory, or potentially even marching on Jerusalem itself. The arrival of Baldwin and his men around Montgisard took Saladin by surprise. He had not expected the Crusaders to leave the safety of Ascalon and other cities while so much of their forces

were far away to the north in Syria. Thus, on the 25th, at the Battle of Montgisard, Baldwin and Raynald caught Saladin’s forces by surprise. Not all of his army was arraigned here and Saladin had dispersed some of his units to scour the surrounding countryside. Hence the Muslim commander was taken by surprise and cut off with only some of his men when the Crusaders charged at them near Montgisard. Raynald and Baldwin, the latter of whom despite his leprosy was known to have been a skilful horse-rider in his youth, led a cavalry charge straight towards the centre

of Saladin’s lines with his heavy cavalry. The result was a complete rout as Saladin tried to form up his battle lines properly and then ordered a retreat. This manoeuvre became chaotic, and as Raynald’s and Baldwin’s units chased after the Muslim forces many of Saladin’s men, his great-nephew included, were cut down. The slaughter was compounded by the fall of darkness, which made the retreat even more disjointed. Then, to compound matters, in the two days that followed Baldwin, Raynald and their men were able to identify pockets of Saladin’s men in the surrounding countryside, cutting them off and

taking many prisoners. The Battle of Montgisard was a consummate victory for the Crusader cause, one which insured the safety of Jerusalem for several years to come as Saladin regrouped. Despite his physical limitations, Baldwin had won a major victory. The victory at Montgisard was a galvanizing episode for Baldwin, one which shored up support for the monarchy in Jerusalem after years of intrigue surrounding the king whose leprosy was viewed as a sign of god’s ill judgement. Now others thought differently. Rumours spread of St George having been seen on the field of battle near Baldwin during the clash.

To commemorate the victory and make the most of it from a propaganda perspective it was determined that a Benedictine monastery would be erected at the site of the clash in honour of St Catherine, on whose feast day the battle had occurred. Meanwhile, to the north in Syria Philip of Flanders and the other Crusader lords there reached an agreement whereby they would abandon the siege of Harim in return for the ceding of some minor lands and villages to the Crusader States from the Muslims. With that Philip left to return to Europe, bringing to an end his

own personal crusade. In Jerusalem Baldwin began to associate himself more closely in the late 1170s with his sister, making it clear that if he was to die soon without a clear successor having emerged, Sibylla would rule on behalf of her infant son who had just been born and christened Baldwin in honour of the king. This was not a case of joint rule at this juncture, though as his health declined further in years to come it would become something akin to this. In the main he was able to begin stamping his authority to a greater extent

in the aftermath of Montgisard as he entered into his adult years. Under Baldwin, Jerusalem continued as a city of religious toleration, to a fair degree, with the young king inclined, much like both his father and uncle had been as kings of Jerusalem, to allow Muslims access to the city, the third holiest in Islam after Mecca and Medina, and to form a relatively cosmopolitan polity in line with his upbringing with some Arab tutors and doctors. Baldwin, his father Amalric and his brother, Baldwin III, were at heart largely scholar kings with an interest in the law and

literature, rather than being strictly warrior kings. Consequently, as limited in length as Baldwin’s reign would be, there was a cerebral quality to it above and beyond the near incessant clashes between Muslim and Christian across Outremer. With his newfound role as a substantial leader in the aftermath of Montgisard, Baldwin became a more regular war leader in the years that followed. But it proved nearly impossible to recreate the success of the early winter of 1177. While the Battle of Montgisard had ended in victory, it had also cost the Crusaders men and, in a region where reinforcements nearly

always had to arrive from the faraway Latin West, this backup was slow in coming. Broad based Crusades were only ever preached in response to disasters in the Levant, such as the loss of Edessa which instigated the Second Crusade in the mid-1140s. Successes like Montgisard did not. Instead, when matters were going well for the Christian cause in the Levant, the rulers of Western Europe ignored it and continued their own petty squabbles back in France, England and Germany. Thus, Baldwin’s armies were reduced in size at the end of the 1170s. Saladin, who could acquire many reinforcements when

he needed them, realised this and so quickly recovered from the defeat at Montgisard and in 1179 launched a new military incursion against the Crusader States. This was in response to a raid which Baldwin led into Syria that spring. These movements culminated on the 10th of June 1179, in the Battle of Marj Ayyun near Sidon. Here Baldwin and his allies, including the master of the Knights Templar and Raymond of Tripoli, succeeded in defeating an initial Muslim force, but in the aftermath Saladin’s main force arrived and inflicted a serious defeat on the Christians. The defeat at the

Battle of Marj Ayyun was nearly fatal for Baldwin. In the midst of it he was unhorsed and while he was still able to ride at this juncture, he could not remount his horse unaided. In the end the king had to be rushed from the battlefield being carried on the back of a Crusader knight while his personal bodyguard fought their way out of the Muslim forces that had surrounded Baldwin and his entourage. Hence, the King of Jerusalem barely escaped with his life from the battlefield. Others were less fortunate. Many Christian knights and soldiers were killed or

taken prisoner. Amongst the prisoners was Odo of St Amand, the grand master of the Knights Templar. He would die in captivity the following year. Count Raymond of Tripoli only barely escaped from the fighting. Overall the Battle of Marj Ayyun was a disaster for the Crusader cause, reversing the victory a year and a half earlier at Montgisard. Where Baldwin had hoped to follow up that initial success by expanding his domain, in the aftermath of Marj Ayyun, as the 1180s dawned, the Crusaders were now on the back foot, with a dwindling amount of military resources and were

forced to adopt a defensive posture. Saladin, by way of contrast, was buoyant. After the Battle of Marj Ayyun he immediately moved to strike at the castle of Chastelet. Baldwin had ordered the construction of this structure the previous year overlooking Jacob’s Ford, one of the larger fords of the upper course of the Jordan River. The castle was virtually complete by the summer of 1179 and now formed an important Crusader stronghold on the main route between the Galilee region eastwards through the Golan Heights and into Syria. Unhappy with the new Christian construction, Saladin decided to destroy it

just weeks after Marj Ayyun, having previously attempted to bribe Baldwin into ceasing construction at Jacob’s Ford. When that failed, and with Baldwin and the other Crusader lords reeling from the defeat at Marj Ayyun, he initiated a siege on the 23rd of August which lasted for just over a week before a tunnel was successfully dug under the walls and a fire lit, collapsing the walls through a siege method known as sapping. With this, the Muslims burst into the fortress, killing many of the Crusaders and taking several hundred prisoners in another major defeat for Baldwin. The castle

was left abandoned with the walls semi-collapsed, though some of their ruins are still visible today eight and a half centuries later. The victory was also not without cost for Saladin as an outbreak of disease occurred amongst his men after seizing Chastelet, and claimed many Muslim soldiers. Back in Jerusalem, as the full scale of the military reverse which had occurred in the summer of 1179 became clear, political measures were taken to try to acquire greater support from the Latin West for the Crusader cause in the east and to shore up the government in Jerusalem itself. At

the heart of this were the royal family and a newcomer to the Holy Land, Guy of Lusignan. Guy was a French knight who arrived in the Levant at some juncture in the second half of the 1170s. The exact time of his appearance remains a matter of debate, but he was clearly in Jerusalem by 1179 when the disastrous Christian defeats at Marj Ayyun and Jacob’s Ford occurred, or shortly thereafter. In the months that followed he and his supporters gained the ear of Baldwin’s mother Agnes and she was soon promoting the idea that her daughter, Baldwin’s sister,

Sibylla, a widow since the death of William Longsword in 1177, should marry Guy. These developments came to a head in Easter week of 1180, when a marriage alliance between Guy and Sibylla was formed with Baldwin’s blessing. William of Tyre informs us that the reason for the marriage alliance was in order to gain Guy’s aid in forestalling a plot by Count Raymond of Tripoli and Prince Bohemond of Antioch to overthrow Baldwin, though William himself was absent from Jerusalem at this time and was not an eyewitness to these events. Whatever the truth of it may have been,

the result is reasonably clear. Guy married Sibylla, bringing fresh support to Baldwin’s kingship in the shape of the Lusignan faction that shored up the king’s position in the aftermath of the defeats of 1179. It was not just Guy and the supporters of Lusignan that Baldwin was seeking to acquire aid from in 1180. In the immediate aftermath of the marriage, Baldwin dispatched one of his closest advisors and ministers and a near relative on his mother’s side, Joscelin of Courtenay to Constantinople, the goal being to allay the concerns which the emperor there may have had about the

diplomatic reorientation in Jerusalem and to appeal for fresh aid from the Byzantines. However, at Constantinople Joscelin’s mission stalled as Emperor Manuel I died there in September 1180 and was succeeded by his eleven year old son, Alexios II, initiating a regency government which was in little position to offer immediate aid to the Crusader States. Envoys to Western Europe dispatched through the Knights Templar, which had become a powerful institution in Western Christendom by that time, initially held out the hope of a major new crusade in response to the defeats in the Levant of 1179. Pope Alexander III

responded by sending out missives to many monarchs and lords in Europe, notably King Philip II of France and King Henry II of England. These would fall on deaf ears for the most part, though it is noteworthy that Alexander’s petitions included a searing attack on Baldwin, claiming that Saladin’s victories in 1179 at Marj Ayyun and Jacob’s Ford were the result of Baldwin’s leprosy, which in turn was portrayed as a symptom of god’s judgement of the sins of the Crusaders. It is typically assumed that it was this Papal condemnation of Baldwin’s illness that inspired William of Tyre

to begin writing his chronicle as a defence of Baldwin, his former pupil. While little material support was forthcoming from the west to the Christians of the Levant in the early 1180s, circumstances were nevertheless improving for Baldwin and the Crusader lords there during these years. A reconciliation of a kind was reached between Baldwin and Guy of Lusignan on the one hand and Raymond of Tripoli on the other, the latter of which had aspired to seize the throne of Jerusalem for a time. With this rapprochement the Crusaders assembled their forces and were able to meet Saladin’s armies

again in the field at La Fortelet in the south of the Galilee region in July of 1182. At this battle, where Baldwin was again present in person to command the Crusader forces, the Christians won a notable victory, the first sign of changing fortunes since the series of defeats in the summer of 1179. Saladin made a further effort to strike that summer against Beirut, but Baldwin, Guy and Raymond, assisted by a small contingent of reinforcements from Germany and Italy led by Duke Henry of Lotharingia and financed by the merchants of the port city of Pisa in

Italy, were able to fend off the attack. Thereafter Raynald of Chatillon recommenced the attacks he had engaged in several years earlier against the Arab caravan routes passing through Jordan and the Sinai Peninsula. He even managed to launch five Crusader warships on the Red Sea near the Gulf of Aqaba, a feat never before accomplished by the Crusaders. These attacks on Muslim shipping ranged from Yemen northwards to Saladin’s other territories. In 1183 a Christian force even penetrated Arabia to within a day’s march of Medina. Thus, while 1179 had seen major reverses for the Crusader States and while

Pope Alexander might have criticised Baldwin to the rest of Christendom in 1181, the two years that followed saw a resurgence of Christian power in the Middle East. While 1182 and 1183 had seen some successes, Baldwin’s own personal circumstances were not good. His health had begun to decline precipitously in the early 1180s. By 1182 his leprosy had degenerated to the point where he was largely blind and crippled. He could barely use his hands or feet unaided. William of Tyre presents the following description of the degeneration of Baldwin’s health: “Day by day his condition became worse. The

extremities and face were especially attacked, so that his faithful followers were moved with compassion when they looked at him…In addition, the leprosy which had begun to trouble him at the beginning of his reign — in fact, in very early youth — became much worse than usual. His sight failed and his extremities were covered with ulcerations so that he was unable to use either his hands or his feet. Yet up to this time he had declined to heed the suggestion offered by some that he lay aside his kingly dignity and give up the administration of the

realm.” Despite these ailments, there was resilience to Baldwin. A good horse-rider in his youth, when he lost the ability to ride at the front of his armies he insisted on still campaigning, being carried on a litter. In Jerusalem he attended councils of state even when ill. These councils often focused on the problems of continuing to finance the military campaigns and in February 1183 Baldwin was forced to impose a tax known as the curia generalis, a general levy of 1% of the value of property and 2% of all incomes. There is no evidence to suggest that

Baldwin would have attended these council meetings wearing a mask of any kind as some popular modern depictions of him have suggested. Instead his advisors, the Crusader lords and the heads of the religious orders, would have seen directly the deteriorating physical state of their king, his face a growing mass of scabs and necrotic scars. Most would have known that he did not have long left in the world. By 1184 Baldwin’s situation had declined to the extent that he effectively established his nephew, Sibylla’s son Baldwin from her first marriage to the deceased William of Montferrat, as his

official co-ruler. Clearly the young Baldwin, who was only six years of age, did not perform this role in any capacity himself, but what it did mean was that power was being shared to an even greater extent with Sibylla and her second husband, Guy of Lusignan. This arrangement was fractious. Guy was a heavy-handed figure, one who increasingly treated the severely ill king with disdain, refusing to grant him the city of Tyre, part of Guy’s territory, when Baldwin offered to leave Guy in charge of Jerusalem in exchange, the king wishing to reside at Tyre on the coast

in his final days where proximity to the Mediterranean seemed to aid his condition, perhaps the additional moisture in the air relieving the torment to his skin. Further agitation followed when Guy’s actions nearly led to the loss of Kerak Castle in Jordan, while in 1184 Guy massacred a contingent of Bedouin in the Negev region who had previously allied with the Crusaders, actions which Baldwin strongly condemned. There was one last effort made by Baldwin to secure aid from the Latin West, though unbeknownst to Guy and others in Outremer the mission was also launched with orders from Baldwin

to consult with the Christian lords back in Western Europe on the succession to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Ideally Baldwin was seeking a western prince who would come to the Levant and rule in association with him, allowing him to live his last years in peace while also circumventing the perennially feuding Crusader lords such as his brother-in-law, Guy of Lusignan, Raynald of Chatillon and Count Raymond of Tripoli. The mission was led by Heraclius, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem and Archbishop of Caesarea, the leading Christian religious figure in the Levant. In 1184 he was dispatched across the Mediterranean

along with Roger de Moulins, the Grand Master of one of the major religious orders, the Knights Hospitallers, and the new Grand Master of the Templars, Arnold of Torraja. The trio took with them several relics and the keys of both the gates of Jerusalem and the doors of the Holy Sepulchre, the most holy church in the Levant in the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem. In Europe Heraclius visited Italy, France and England. Like many such envoys before and afterwards he received grand promises from the monarchs and lords of Western Christendom about their intentions to head on Crusade to

Outremer, but they all proved lacklustre. In 1185 he returned to Jerusalem with a promise from Henry II of England that he would soon follow with an army to reinforce Baldwin’s position, but it never materialised. By the time Heraclius returned to Outremer, the king who had sent him to Western Europe was dead. Baldwin’s rapid deterioration over the past years came to a head in 1185. He died at some unknown date in the spring of that year a few weeks short of his 24th birthday and certainly before the 16th of May at which time his nephew was

referred to as the sole King of Jerusalem. Sicardus of Cremona, a contemporary Italian religious authority and historian who later ended up in the Levant himself as part of the Fourth Crusade and who was involved in efforts to organise a new crusade in the 1180s around the time Baldwin died, lauded Baldwin in an encomiastic passage in one of his writings, declaring that although he had suffered greatly from leprosy from a young age, he had won a notable victory over Saladin at Montgisard in 1177 and had preserved the Crusader States during his reign. Baldwin was laid to

rest in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem at the foot of Mount Calvary near his father King Amalric’s tomb and those of the other Latin kings who had ruled the Kingdom of Jerusalem since the First Crusade. With Baldwin’s passing his nephew succeeded as King Baldwin V of Jerusalem. A child nearing just eight years old, he was unable to rule in his own right and a minority government headed by Raymond III, Count of Tripoli, was set up to govern the Kingdom of Jerusalem until he came of age. That would never happen. He was dead

himself a year later, the child dying under murky circumstances in the early autumn of 1186, though many historians dispute the inference of the chroniclers that Raymond had his charge poisoned in order to become king himself. In any event, it was not Raymond who claimed the throne after Baldwin V’s premature death, but instead Sibylla and her husband, Guy of Lusignan, stepped into the breach. The accession of Guy as King of Jerusalem in 1186 virtually guaranteed renewed war with the Muslims and Saladin. And so it proved. Clashes broke out in late 1186 and continued into 1187. These

culminated in July that year in the Battle of Hattin to the west of the Sea of Galilee. In this, Saladin won a major victory and Guy was captured along with Raynald of Chatillon who had caused Saladin such problems with the caravan routes between Egypt and Syria for the better part of a decade. While Guy was kept prisoner, Saladin had Raynald beheaded, proclaiming him to be nothing more than a bandit. With victory at Hattin and Guy imprisoned in Damascus, Saladin now marched on Jerusalem and, after a short siege of two weeks in late September and early

October, the city fell to the Muslims after less than a century under Christian Crusader control. With this calamitous development the call went out to Western Europe for a new crusade. The Third Crusade is arguably the most famous of them all, an engagement which pitted Richard the Lionheart, the King of England and lord of extensive territories in France, against Saladin for several years in the early 1190s. The Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, was also involved, leading many to refer to the Third Crusade as the King’s Crusade. However, despite the fact that it drew both Barbarossa and

Richard the Lionheart to participate, the Third Crusade failed in its ultimate objective of recapturing Jerusalem for the Christians. Though the holy city was so reclaimed forty years later during the Sixth Crusade in 1229, this was only a brief hiatus. Ultimately, the Crusader cause was flagging by then as the monarchs and lords of Europe continued to show a greater interest in fighting each other than the Muslims of the Levant, while resources were also directed towards failed expeditions to North Africa. Beginning in the 1250s the Crusader States lost growing amounts of territory to new Muslim lords, concluding

in 1291 with the fall of Acre, the last Christian stronghold in the Holy Land. The Crusader States came to an end two centuries after they were first established. Baldwin IV’s reign as King of Jerusalem was highly complex. He succeeded as the ruler of the kingdom when he was barely a teenager and with the added complication of suffering from leprosy. It was clear from early on that he would never produce an heir and so a succession crisis always overshadowed his time as King of Jerusalem. But despite these limitations his time as king was successful in some

respects. In particular the Crusader victory at the Battle of Montgisard stalled the Muslim advance against the Crusaders in the 1170s, as did some further military successes in the years that followed. Baldwin earned the respect of his contemporaries for overseeing these efforts, but there was never any doubt that his reign was going to be a brief one. In the end he died at just 23 years of age. When he did a fresh series of crises struck the Crusader states in quick succession, notably the death of Baldwin V, the defeat at Hattin, the imprisonment of King Guy

by Saladin and the loss of Jerusalem. It was only with the fall of Jerusalem that Western Christendom awoke to the scale of the threat posed by Saladin in the Levant. Had they provided aid and launched a Third Crusade earlier during Baldwin’s reign one wonders whether Jerusalem would have fallen and how the history of the Crusader States might have been different. What do you think of King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem? Do you think if he had not been ill and had lived longer that he might have been able to galvanise the Crusader States and have prevented

the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin? Please let us know in the comment section, and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.