Four years earlier, Sibylla had promised her supporters she would set Guy aside after she was crowned, only to break her word and place the crown on Guy’s head. The surviving members of the High Court remembered that deceit all too well. Determined not to be tricked and trapped a second time, they insisted that Isabella rid herself of Humphrey before they would recognise her as queen. This is the context in which Isabella’s alleged ‘abduction’ took place.
As to what happened, all chronicles, including the Itinerarium, are in surprising agreement. Shortly after Sibylla’s death, knights entered the tent Isabella shared with Humphrey and removed her against her will. She was not, however, taken to Conrad, much less raped by him, but rather put in the care and protection of high-ranking clerics. She was sequestered and protected to prevent harm from coming to her while a clerical court was convened to rule on the validity of her marriage to Humphrey. The case hinged on the critical theological principle of mutual consent. Humphrey claimed that Isabella had consented, but when challenged by a witness to prove his word with his body (i.e., in judicial combat), Humphrey hung his head and refused to take up the thrown gauntlet. Isabella testified that she had not consented.
Ultimately, a clerical court headed by the papal legate ruled that Isabella’s marriage to Humphrey was invalid because, regardless of consent, she was not of legal age at the time of the marriage. That is, she was not yet 12 years old, the age at which girls were deemed adults and legally capable of giving consent. On 24 November 1190, Isabella married Conrad de Montferrat. Immediately following the marriage, the barons of Jerusalem did homage to her as their queen.
The question that remains is Isabella’s role in this affair. There seems little doubt she was taken by surprise when strange knights burst into her tent in the dark of night and dragged her away from the man she had viewed as her husband for the past ten years. When they took her, she could not have known what they intended to do. She may have believed they were Saracens in disguise or simply unscrupulous men intent on rape for the sake of a crown. Resistance was logical and understandable.
Once she had been separated from Humphrey and put under Church protection, however, the situation was explained to her by her mother, the dowager queen of Jerusalem, Maria Comnena. The Lyon Continuation of William of Tyre’s history, which is believed to be based primarily on sources from within the crusader states rather than Western sources states:
[Queen Maria] remonstrated with [Isabella] repeatedly and explained that she [Isabella] could not become lady of the kingdom unless she left Humphrey. She reminded her of the evil deed that [Humphrey] had done … [when he] had done homage to Queen Sibylla. … So long as Isabella was his wife, she could have neither honour nor her father’s kingdom.27
This text confirms that Isabella was initially reluctant to take her mother’s advice because she presumably loved Humphrey. Yet all sources agree that, in the end, she not only testified she had not legally consented to the marriage with Humphrey but also went willingly into the marriage with Montferrat. The latter is significant. While the clerical court ruled that Isabella’s marriage to Toron – when she was only 11 – was invalid, it also explicitly told her she was free to marry whomever she chose now. She could have decided to remarry Humphrey immediately; she did not. The reason seems obvious. Isabella understood that the barons refused categorically to do homage to Humphrey. She could not have both Humphrey and her kingdom. Unlike her sister Sibylla, Isabella chose the crown over the man.
The following spring, the kings of England and France arrived with large armies to reinforce the stalled siege of Acre. Philip II of France recognised his cousin Conrad de Montferrat as king of Jerusalem, but Richard I of England backed Guy de Lusignan. As long as the powerful western monarchs were present in the Holy Land, squabbles over claims to a kingdom that had effectively ceased to exist seemed irrelevant. Guy continued to call himself king yet docilely followed Richard the Lionheart wherever he went. Conrad remained in Tyre and tried to cut a separate peace with Saladin, while the sultan attempted to play Conrad against Richard.
Meanwhile the crusaders forced the garrison of Acre to surrender on 12 July 1191. Immediately afterwards, the French king abandoned the crusade, weakening Conrad’s (and Isabella’s) position, while the rest of the crusading army continued down the coast under Richard the Lionheart’s leadership. Outside Arsuf on 7 September, the joint Frankish/crusader army effectively rebuffed an attempt by Saladin to halt their advance. On 10 September, they recaptured Jaffa and turned towards the ultimate goal: Jerusalem.
Saladin, however, had garrisoned Jerusalem strongly and poisoned the wells around it. By late December, the crusaders were forced to face the fact that they did not have the strength for an assault nor the time to besiege the city. More importantly, as the local barons, Templars and Hospitallers noted, even if they took Jerusalem by storm, they could not retain it for long because the vast majority of the crusaders would return to the West. The forces remaining in the Holy Land were insufficient to defend an isolated outpost such as Jerusalem against the overwhelming might of Saladin. The combined Frankish and crusader host withdrew to the coast.
Here, Richard of England received word that his brother John and the king of France were trying to steal his inheritance. Since he would soon have to return home to defend his empire, Richard finally conceded that he had to leave Jerusalem in the hands of a king capable of protecting the gains he had come so far and fought so hard to achieve. He agreed to let the barons of Jerusalem elect their king, as was their constitutional right, and they unanimously elected Conrad de Montferrat. Richard accepted their decision, dropping his support for Guy de Lusignan. The English king, however, softened the impact of withdrawing his support from Lusignan by allowing him to buy the island of Cyprus.
Richard had captured Cyprus on his way to Acre. While the Mediterranean island was technically a part of the Byzantine empire, an unpopular Greek tyrant, Isaac Comnenus, had seized it several years earlier and declared his independence from Constantinople. The English king captured the island in less than six weeks without incurring significant casualties, largely because he had been welcomed by most of the island’s residents as a liberator. He secured their continued cooperation by promising to restore the laws of Manuel I Comnenus, the powerful and highly respected Byzantine Emperor and so ruler of Cyprus from 1143 until 1180.
Yet Richard’s interests in Cyprus were not dynastic. He did not need or want another lordship. Richard the Lionheart was a consummate strategist who recognised Cyprus’ military and strategic importance in securing the lines of communication between the West and the Holy Land. Cyprus controlled the Eastern Mediterranean and, with it, the coast of the Levant. Richard rightly foresaw that Cyprus would become an important staging ground for future crusades and a breadbasket for the territorially diminished crusader states on the mainland. In other words, although the Third Crusade restored Frankish control over the key coastal cities and the coastal plain between them, this much-reduced kingdom was not self-sufficient in foodstuffs. It was dependent on supplies of many vital materials from Cyprus. By selling Cyprus to Lusignan, Richard replenished his coffers and distracted Guy from losing his former kingdom while ensuring Cyprus remained in Latin Christian hands.
Just when everything appeared settled, however, assassins struck down Conrad de Montferrat in the streets of Tyre on 28 April 1192. Mortally wounded, he was carried to Isabella and died in her arms. At the time, she was carrying his child.
Isabella was now a 20-year-old widowed queen. She was not a pawn; her barons had already paid homage to her. She could legally marry whomever she liked – or choose not to remarry. Yet she was also the queen of a fragile and vulnerable kingdom surrounded by enemies. The powerful crusading armies that had come to restore it were already disintegrating. The king of France had left, and the king of England had declared his intention to leave shortly. With him would go most of the crusaders. If Jerusalem were to survive, it would need a king capable of defending it, a king the barons respected and were willing to obey.
Most narratives of what happened next focus poetically on personalities rather than institutions. Some accounts say King Richard recommended a candidate as Isabella’s next husband, while other accounts claim that the ‘people of Tyre’ spontaneously acclaimed him. Both versions ignore – again – the geopolitical reality in Outremer. The notion of the common people of one city in the kingdom having the right to ‘elect’ a king by acclamation is ludicrous. By this time, Acre, Caesarea, Arsuf, Jaffa and Ascalon were also in Frankish hands. If the common citizens elected Jerusalem’s kings, then the burghers of all these cities would have had a say in his election. But the common people in the Kingdom of Jerusalem did not – and never had – elected their kings any more than the commoners of England or France did.
As for the English king, he had only days earlier acknowledged that the barons of Jerusalem had the sole right to select their king. Therefore, he would not have attempted to impose his candidate on them. The Lyon Continuation of Tyre correctly states that Richard acting ‘on the advice of the barons of the kingdom’ went to Tyre with their favoured candidate.28 Yet, it is equally unthinkable that the barons would have made a recommendation (as they had the last time) without first consulting their ruling queen and obtaining her consent. The man they proposed to King Richard was, therefore, most likely Isabella’s choice, possibly based on the advice of her barons, but not against her wishes. It was Henri de Champagne.
As the son of Marie de Champagne, Eleanor of Aquitaine’s daughter by her first husband, Louis VII of France, Champagne was a nephew of both Philip II of France and Richard I of England. This made Champagne a worthy match for the ruling queen of Jerusalem and a highly diplomatic choice since neither the French nor English crown could object. He was also an ardent crusader who had come out to the Holy Land in advance of the main crusading armies. He was wealthy, young, courageous, courteous, educated and pious – in short, the personification of chivalry – and single. He was also just 26 years old. There is every reason to believe that Isabella knew and liked him before the proposal was put forward.
Yet the accounts of his selection agree he was a reluctant candidate for the crown of Jerusalem. On the one hand, he wanted to return home. On the other hand, Isabella was pregnant by Montferrat, which meant that if she bore a son, this boy would take precedence over any of Champagne’s children. The Lyon continuation of Tyre claims that Champagne was only persuaded to take up the burden of Jerusalem and marry Isabella because of promises made to him by Richard of England; the English king allegedly vowed to return with an even greater army in a couple of years and conquer all the former Kingdom of Jerusalem and more. The Itinerarium, on the other hand, claims that while the magnates of the kingdom were attempting to persuade a reluctant Henri to become their king, Isabella herself ‘came to the count of her own accord and offered him the keys of the city’.29 It goes on to say the marriage was hastily prepared and celebrated on 5 May 1192 (seven days after Conrad’s death). The author, who was so ready to insult Isabella, her mother and her stepfather a few pages earlier, now writes approvingly: ‘I don’t think that those who persuaded the count to do this had much to do, for it is no effort to force the willing’!30
The important point is that Isabella, with astonishing fortitude under the circumstances, was prepared to do the right thing for her kingdom: marry a man acceptable to her barons and do so without insisting on a year of mourning or other conditions. Henri proved his worth immediately; he persuaded his uncle Richard, and so, the entire crusading host, to remain in the Holy Land throughout the summer rather than return to the West at once. Although a second march on Jerusalem ended like the first and for the same reason, the English king’s dramatic victory over Saladin at Jaffa, at last, forced the sultan to the negotiating table. On 2 September 1192, Richard the Lionheart’s envoys, headed by Isabella’s husband and stepfather, signed a three-year truce with Saladin. As one of the last crusaders to depart, Richard the Lionheart sailed from Acre on 9 October 1192. Less than six months later, Saladin was dead. Isabella’s kingdom had been saved, if in a more compact form.
The following five years of Isabella’s life may have been amongst her happiest. She gave birth to Montferrat’s posthumous daughter, who she named after her mother, Maria. She also gave Champagne three daughters, Marguerite, Alice and Philippa; the latter two lived to adulthood. Because of the truce with Saladin, the kingdom was at peace, and the first steps towards economic recovery were possible. As the ceasefire neared its end, large contingents of crusaders started to arrive to the Holy Land in anticipation of a crusade led by the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI. Although the emperor died before he reached the Holy Land, German nobles and knights succeeded in recapturing the important coastal city of Beirut and, with it, established Frankish control of the entire coastline from Arsur (Jaffa had since been lost again) to the County of Tripoli. Perhaps because they were still hoping to recapture Jerusalem, Isabella and Henri had not been ceremoniously crowned and anointed, yet they were otherwise treated as king and queen.
In a freak accident, Henri de Champagne tragically died falling from a balcony (or when the balcony or its railing collapsed), leaving Isabella a widow in October 1197. Henri was just 31 at his death, and his widow Isabella was 25.
Again, as an adult widow and reigning queen, Isabella could have insisted on her right to remain single. It is unlikely that the barons would have taken action against her had she asserted her rights. Yet Isabella was a queen first and a woman second. She knew that her kingdom was still exceedingly vulnerable. Only weeks before, Saladin’s brother al-Adil had been threatening at the gates of Acre; his army had barely been beaten off by the German crusaders and Isabella’s army. Now his forces had seized Jaffa. She did not have the luxury to mourn or vacillate if she wanted to have a kingdom. The kingdom needed a strong king capable of defending it.
Isabella’s choice – and it was undoubtedly her choice – fell on a man whom she had known long and well, namely Aimery de Lusignan, the older brother of her sister’s disgraced consort Guy. Aimery had come to the Holy Land earlier than Guy. He had been appointed constable in the reign of Baldwin IV. For roughly thirty years, he had been married to her step-father’s niece, Eschiva d’Ibelin. But Eschiva had recently died, leaving Aimery a widower with several young children. Furthermore, Aimery had succeeded his brother as lord of Cyprus, a rich island with substantial resources that would be of use to Jerusalem. Last but not least, in a savvy move, Aimery had done homage for Cyprus to the Holy Roman Emperor, thereby elevating the island lordship into a kingdom. This made him equal in status to the queen of Jerusalem.
There is every reason to believe that Isabella personally liked and respected Aimery. Yet she unquestionably chose him as her consort because he was well-suited to please her barons and secure their enthusiastic support. Aimery de Lusignan had already demonstrated his extraordinary capabilities. He had decades of experience fighting in the Holy Land and had already commanded Jerusalem’s armies as constable under Baldwin IV. More recently, he had turned a rebellious island into a secure and prosperous kingdom. Equally importantly, Aimery was an outstanding administrator. In addition to elevating his lordship to a kingdom, he had wisely adopted the Greek administrative apparatus left behind by the Byzantines. This worked like a well-oiled machine to generate revenues and reduce local tensions and resentment. With the Greek bureaucracy behind him, Aimery rapidly established peace with the natives while consciously encouraging more settlement from the disenfranchised Franks of Syria. Lastly, he was economically savvy and pursued a policy of economic diversification, which led almost immediately to burgeoning prosperity.
Isabella and Aimery married in December 1197 and were crowned jointly in Acre’s cathedral in January 1198. Afterwards, Aimery turned his many talents to the benefit of what remained of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He secured a six-year truce with al-Adil in the first year of his reign which he later renewed. He thereby created the peace needed to concentrate on the reconstruction of institutions, infrastructure and the economy. He also commissioned scholars to collect information and record as much as possible from as many sources as possible about the laws of the Kingdom of Jerusalem to re-establish a legal basis for society. Meanwhile, Isabella gave birth to Sibylla in October 1198, a second daughter Melisende in 1200 and, at long last, a son in 1201. The boy was named Aimery after his father.
Yet tragedy struck again in early 1205. On 2 February, little Aimery died in Acre of unknown causes. Less than two months later, on 1 April, King Aimery fell victim to food poisoning after eating fish that was apparently off. Isabella may have partaken of the same meal or developed another illness. At roughly 33 years of age, she died on 5 May 1205, leaving her eldest daughter, Maria de Montferrat, as her heir.
Isabella may not have put herself in the limelight as much as Queen Melisende, yet her judicious choices for consort in 1192 and again in 1197 assured that her kingdom survived as a political entity. She chose to remain in the background, but that is not synonymous with being powerless. She most certainly guided Champagne as he navigated in a unique and, to him, unfamiliar legal environment, and he was reportedly devoted and reluctant to be parted from her. While Aimery was more independent, there is no indication that he ever attempted to raise himself above his wife, as Fulk had done. They were crowned and reigned jointly only to die little more than a month apart.
The Bartered Brides
Maria de Montferrat
Isabella’s heir was Maria, her daughter by Conrad de Montferrat. She was at most 13 and more likely 12 when her stepfather and mother died in early 1205. She was also still a maiden, and the High Court immediately appointed a regent to rule for her until a suitable candidate for her husband and consort could be identified. The High Court’s choice fell on her closest adult relative, her mother’s half-brother, John d’Ibelin.
John was the son of the Dowager Queen Maria Comnena by her second husband, Balian d’Ibelin. He had been appointed constable of the kingdom by King Aimery in 1197. However, he exchanged this post for the lordship of Beirut sometime before 1200, although the exact date is unknown. Beirut was one of the few cities in the kingdom to defy Saladin in 1187, and it paid a terrible price in assault, slaughter and plunder. German crusaders had recaptured the city from a Saracen garrison in 1197, but the city and surrounding countryside were in such a ruinous state that even the military orders did not want to assume the cost of restoring it. John d’Ibelin, however, succeeded in making it a functioning port that was soon producing immense revenues. It was probably this, as well as his blood ties to the young queen, that encouraged the High Court to appoint him regent, although he was, at most, 27 years old at the time.
The Lord of Beirut maintained the truces with the Ayyubids and acted as a conscientious caretaker of his niece’s kingdom, while representatives from the High Court requested that the French king select a suitable nobleman to be their queen’s consort. By 1208, a candidate had been identified, namely John de Brienne. Brienne’s title derived from a subsidiary county inside the County of Champagne, and John was, technically, only the regent of Brienne for his deceased elder brother’s minor heir. As such, he was at best of secondary rank, and the French king’s choice of this relatively obscure nobleman bordered on an insult to the once proud Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Yet Jerusalem was proud no more. It was symbolically and emotionally significant. It still commanded material wealth. But it was vulnerable and short of manpower. Beggars, as the expression goes, cannot be choosers. Besides, John de Brienne was a young and vigorous man, roughly 31, with a glamorous reputation on the tourney circuit. Furthermore, his cousin Walter of Montbéliard was then regent of Cyprus for King Hugh I, who was a minor. (Montbéliard had married the eldest of Hugh’s sisters.) Very likely, Montbéliard put in a good word for Brienne.
Yet, while Brienne’s reputation at arms was high, he was not a powerful lord with a large entourage or an extensive feudal base. To make up for this deficit, King Philip of France and the pope granted him large sums of money to hire mercenaries. In 1210, after almost two years of recruiting, John de Brienne arrived in the Kingdom of Jerusalem with an entourage estimated at 300 knights and an unknown number of squires, sergeants and archers. Although significant, this was not a vast crusading army likely to tip the balance of power in the Near East in favour of the Christians. Therefore, from the start, John was something of a disappointment to his subjects in Outremer.
Whether he was also a disappointment to his bride, the now 18-year-old Maria de Montferrat, is unknown. There is no reason to assume so. Not only was he a successful tournament champion, but he also came from the heartland of chivalry and was a writer of poetry and song. The couple was crowned jointly in Tyre, with most of the High Court in attendance.
This latter fact tempted the Saracens into launching an attack on Acre. Although the attack was beaten off, it was an inauspicious start to John and Maria’s reign. Maria’s new husband retaliated with a chevauchée (cavalry raid) of his own. Yet, while this did some damage and the participants returned loaded with loot, they achieved no lasting benefit for the kingdom. John next attempted to strike at Egypt with a sea-borne expedition into the Nile Delta. Unfortunately, he did not have sufficient force to do more than moderate damage to secondary targets. The Ayyubids concluded that John de Brienne was no Richard the Lionheart and was unlikely to do them serious harm. They brazenly began the construction of fortifications on Mount Tabor. These commanding heights threatened Nazareth, which the Christians had only recovered in 1204.
Meanwhile, John’s small host of crusaders had fulfilled their vows and returned home to France. John had little choice but to conclude a new six-year truce with the Saracens without territorial gains – the first time a treaty without territorial gain had been concluded since the Third Crusade. There can be little doubt that many men in John’s new kingdom were less than impressed by his performance. However, all might have been forgiven had he at least done his dynastic duty and produced a male heir. Instead, in November of 1212, Queen Maria gave birth to a daughter and died shortly afterwards. She was too young and had ruled too short a time to leave any notable mark on the kingdom; we have no idea what kind of queen she might have been. She left behind an infant, a female heir, the worst possible scenario. It immediately produced a constitutional crisis.
Isabella II (Yolanda)
As king-consort, John’s right to the throne of Jerusalem was derived through his wife. Already in 1190–1192, the precedent had been set that the consort of a ruling queen did not retain his position after her death. Unsurprisingly, Brienne followed Guy de Lusignan’s precedent of refusing to accept his dismissal. Like Guy before him, Brienne insisted that he had been crowned and anointed for life, or at least until his infant daughter came of age and married.
