Before you read the story of the Fifth Crusade, you should steel yourself: this is the one with arguably the most similarities to the Great Decider's current misadventures in Mesopotamia - readers are hereby warned that much forehead-slapping may occur as a result of perusing this historiorant.
In it, you'll find politics inhibiting logical action, long sieges punctuated by horrific acts of violence, disastrous tactical and strategic decision-making, and overtures which could have led to favorable peace settlements rejected with that spurn that only the religiously righteous seem to be able to summon. If you're Kossack, Kosine, or Kosmopolitain enough to deal with what the sagely Italian-American philosopher Lawrence P. Berra called "déjà vu all over again," please follow me into the Cave of the Moonbat, where a magic gangplank will allow us to board a ship of fools bound for Egypt...
Pope Innocent III just couldn't get enough of crusading. Including this one, the guy was responsible for
three of your resident historiorantologist's diaries on the Crusades - more than any other pope, king, or emperor. He was the dude who called the
Fourth Crusade shortly after ascending to the papacy in 1198, then watched it disintegrate into the sack and looting of the greatest city of Eastern Christendom. Innocent III was the Bishop of Rome who turned Europe in on itself with his pronouncement of the
Albigensian Crusade, in which he and his newly-formed army of land-grabbing French knights and inquisitive Dominican zealots waged genocide upon those they branded heretics. Under Innocent's watch, somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 children marched to their deaths in the two Children's Crusades, his sermons no doubt ringing in their ears. He even declared a Crusade in Spain, though that one didn't really end until 1492.
Combine an ego and a track record like that, and who could doubt that he would arise, Bush-like, from the ashes of his failures - only to argue that all he needed was one more chance and he'd get it right.
The PNAC of the 13th century The Fourth Lateran Council
A few centuries after the grand ecumenical gathering of November, 1215, Adam "Invisible Hand" Smith, addressing a completely different matter, observed that
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public..."
He couldn't have been more right - Mr. Cheney's "energy taskforce," anyone? - though he could easily have extended his analysis to include the many juntas of Church leaders during the High Middle Ages.
The Fourth Lateran Council was called by Innocent III in order to settle some hitherto unsettled weighty matters, and it was attended by all the religious frontpagers of its day. 71 Patriarchs and Metropolitans showed, as did 412 bishops and over 900 abbots and priors. The future St. Dominic was there, begging to found a new order (he'd get permission a little over a year later from Pope Honorius III), and so was the future St. Francis, who'd gotten papal blessing for his order back in 1209 (when Innocent's initial refusal was countermanded by the imagery in one of his dreams). With God on their lips and schemes in their hearts, these men gathered in the ancient Lateran buildings scattered about Rome.
weird historical sidenote: The word "Lateran" is derived from the family name Lateranus. They were very powerful during Roman Imperial times, though they lost most of their holdings to Constantine, who expropriated the buildings that became the Lateran Palace, the Palace of the Popes, and the Basilica of St. John Lateran, a/k/a the Cathedral of Rome, and handed them over to the Catholic Church.
The Fourth Lateran Council was all about The Message. Here's a brief rundown:
excerpted from the Moonbat-extrapolated Meeting Minutes:
The Council, after much agreement, concurrence, and rubber-stamping, adopted the following:
Resolved: The Dogma of Transubstantiation
- affirming the Church's position that Jesus was speaking literally when He held up a piece of bread and said, "This is my body." Only approved personages from approved Christian churches are permitted to conduct the ceremonies that transubstantiate the otherwise-ordinary Eucharistic host into the body and blood of Christ (see "Party Unity")
Resolved: Party Unity
- Only Church officials can promote people to offices like bishoprics. If kings and local lords want to determine Church hierarchy, tell them to become priests first.
Resolved: Stay the Course in Languedoc
- the attack against the heretical Cathars of southern France, who befoul lands rightfully belonging to the Catholic Church and anyone willing to fight on her behalf, is going swimmingly. We predict that we'll annihilate the entire bestial race within a century; Brother Dominic has some thoughts on how we might speed this up.
- the Church reaffirms that those who harbor and protect Cathars are to be regarded no differently than the obscenely open-minded Cathars themselves.
Resolved: The Unitary Papacy
- Christendom establishes a clear chain of command, with a flow chart that will make future corporate planners gasp with envy. The Pope is on top, followed by the Latin Patriarch of Constantinople (a troublesome hangover of the Fourth Crusade), then the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, in that order. Fredrick II, though we don't like him very much, gets to be Holy Roman Emperor, and we impotently decree that really ought to answer to the Pope more.
Resolved: Ethics Reform
- We're going to make sure all our priests know that they really are supposed to live celibate lifestyles, and that they should stop (or at least tone way back on) getting drunk, hunting, engaging in farces and histrionics, and performing surgery. We also want to give them some guidelines on Ordeals by Trial and Combat - again, Brother Dominic has some notes.
Resolved: What We Think of the Future Fifth Amendment
- Every Christian has a new "Easter Duty" to confess all their sins at least once a year. Those who don't will die like the evil, un-Christian Cathars and will burn in Hell forever (unless they purchase or win an indulgence - say, by going on a Crusade...).
Resolved: Support for The Long War
- It's everybody's sacred duty to fight when the Pope says to fight, and now he says it's time to fight again! That's right, folks! Fifth Crusade, up and at `em! People have been taking the Oath for nigh on 120 years now - you wouldn't want to dishonor their sacrifices, now would you? Or are you some kind of closet Saracen? Or a wimpy pacifist vegetarian un-Christian Cathar? No! Of course not! Onward, Christian soldiers!
A Charge To Keep Honorius III, Keeper/Denier of Innocent's Legacy
Innocent III died in 1216, leaving the task of organizing the new crusade to his successor, Honorius III (r. 1216-1227). They were two different men, with vastly different styles of leadership, though a Cathar under the lash or an Muslim farmer getting beaten and robbed by an Italian knight probably wouldn't have seen it that way. Innocent had been so feared and hated that his body was mistreated before it was interred; Honorius, by contrast, was beloved by the people of Rome. His problem was that the political situation didn't demand someone who was loved by his subjects, but someone strong and resolute - someone who could focus laser-beam-like (heheheh) - on the enemies of the Church, and he was only marginally equipped for the task. Still, if history was to have him play the role of the Decider, he was going to try his best.
He knew for sure that he hated heretics, and gave much of his attention to the "Cathar problem." He also wanted to spread Catholicism along the Baltic, maintain the crusade in Spain, and come to some sort of agreement with Holy Roman Emperor Fredrick II. In retrospect, things started slipping through the cracks of Honorius' papacy almost immediately, though the deficiencies probably were not apparent to the casual observer of the time.
For example, it took until the spring of 1218 (the Frisians were late with the boats) for the fleet bearing many soldiers of the Fifth Crusade set out from Italy - a delay which was largely a product of Honorius' and Fredrick's inability to come to terms over policy and jurisdiction. Fredrick, though he'd taken the Oath, was dithering, politicking, and fighting in and around Germany, and he abrogated his presumptive role as military leader of the crusade. The troops were instead under the overall command of the generally-competent John of Brienne, King of Jerusalem (even though the Christians didn't control Jerusalem, they still had a king ready for the day the infidels would be swept from the holy city's ramparts), and after a brief stay in Acre, they once again boarded the ships and set off for Egypt.
Egypt, you ask? Why attack Egypt if the objective is Jerusalem? The answer, like some of the neocon agenda, actually makes strategic sense - if one allows for the various human, geographic, and tactical factors that might come into play to be ignored and trivialized.
Fight `em there so we don't have to fight `em over there Domino Theory, ca. 1220 CE
The days of Saladin were perhaps not forgotten, but they were gone. By the time of the Fifth Crusade, Jerusalem would never have been able to hold against a determined Christian assault; there just weren't enough soldiers to defend the walls. The real power in the Muslim world at the time was Egypt, for it was from there that the relief army would be sent to recapture a Crusader-held, but presumably defenseless (the residents would likely knock down the walls and evacuate rather than face certain death in a 1099-style slaughter) city of Jerusalem.
Fortunately for the crusaders, the current sultan was old, and the politics of his sultanate were in disarray; the present seemed as good a time as any to mount an assault against his nevertheless-quite vigorous defenses. They descended upon these at a place called Damietta, about two miles upstream from one of the mouths of the Nile delta. There, a chain stretched from the city wall to a small island fortress; behind it lay what the crusaders thought would be an open road to Cairo.
It took them a month to capture the fort and cut the chain, but the loss was enough to kill the old sultan, who reportedly died upon hearing of his loss to the Christians. His vizier, al-Kamil, presently encamped with a small army near the equally small crusader force, became the new Sultan of Egypt, but did not risk attacking the enemy now digging in and awaiting reinforcements on his land.
They didn't have to wait all that long - new troops began arriving in early September - though they were angered when the Frisians (who had been, you'll remember, the last to show up) became the first to declare their obligations met and their intent to leave. This was to be, however, only the least of the misfortunes which plagued the Christian army after the arrival of those ships from Italy.
Neocon Pipedreams Put Into Practice Cardinal Pelagius, Patron Saint of Military Incompetence
One of the things about which Honorius agreed with his predecessor was the idea that Crusades should be led by the Church and fought by lay lords and knights, not the other way around. To this end, he sent as a legate the very assertive Cardinal Pelagius of Albano, who quickly (and over some secular objections) inserted himself into the councils of war. With his prompting, the crusade lurched forward to besiege the town of Damietta proper.
Al-Kamil kept up harassing attacks, and twice launched major assaults on the Christian camp. Both failed, though he was able to keep the crusaders from bringing ships to bear against Damietta's walls by sinking a bunch of small craft in the river channels. This obliged the crusaders to dredge out an old, unused channel, but before they could use it, a tremendous storm destroyed their work and caused the Nile (Katrina-like) to flood both camps, resulting in outbreaks of disease throughout the rest of the winter. During this time, Pelagius played the ole' God's-testing-us card to wrest control of the crusade from the lay lords.
Pelagius had a bit of good fortune fall into his lap in February, 1219, when al-Kamil got wind that his Kurdish general (Kurds made up the bulk of his army) Imad ad-Din was plotting against him. And how's this for timing?: Al-Kamil walked into ad-Din's tent at the very moment the latter had his hand on a Q'ran, taking an oath against the sultan. Al-Kamil had the general arrested, but was so freaked out that he fled back to Cairo in the middle of the night.
The next morning, the leaderless army did what leaderless armies tend to do: soldiers started milling about, then started heading home. They were scattered for miles around by the time the remaining Muslim commanders started getting things under control, but by then their camp was occupied by the Christians, who had been tipped off by a spy. The capture of the Egyptian camp had a profound effect on both the crusader's morale and on Pelagius' standing with the common soldier, for it seems that a mysteriously beneficial (to Pelagius) little book had appeared among the troops only a few weeks prior. It seemed to predict many events that had already occurred (or could be construed as such), but since it was written in Arabic, most of the soldiers relied on Pelagius' interpretation. He told them the book clearly indicated that this should be a Church-run endeavor, and the easy taking of the Muslim camp - in a way, an answer to their prayers - seemed to bear this out.
Establishing a Government for Iraq Holding Out for the Cherry-on-Top
There was a flurry of negotiations in early 1219, as Sultan al-Kazim grew more and more dubious about his own ability to hold on to power. Back in January, he had ordered his brother in Jerusalem to destroy the city walls in preparation for this moment (and as a hedge against the possible victory of a Crusader ally who had launched a diversionary attack from the north; now), he offered the crusaders all of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, less two castles, and a 30-year truce in exchange for their evacuation of Egypt.
It was a sweet deal, and John of Brienne was all for it. Pelagius, smelling blood in the water, disagreed, used his legatine trump card to overrule John, and rejected the overture out of hand. He then sent a delegation to the sultan to ensure that his demands were being clearly understood. Among the people eventually sent in to negotiate was Francis of Assisi (doesn't get the "St." prefix until 1238, a year-and-a-half after his death), who, even in his pre-Stigmata days, was a pretty convincing speaker, but even he couldn't get the sultan to surrender unconditionally. The best the negotiators could do was to get al-Kamil to kick in 30,000 gold bezants to pay for the castles, but Pelagius spurned that offer, too.
The deal was removed from the table when Muslim reinforcements arrived in March. Pelagius responded by ordering an unsuccessful storming of the city, and proved himself such an uninspiring tactician that some among his army began to grumble and go home. One of these, Leopold of Austria, commanded a large contingent and would be sorely missed, but on the upside, in May a steady stream of greenhorn replacements began to arrive from Italy. Pelagius promptly ordered them to charge the walls, too.
The summer dragged on, with Pelagius ordering assault after failed assault on Damietta. He had long before lost the confidence of King John and the French and German lords, but he still held sway over the numerous Italians, and so they dutifully and repeatedly marched to their doom as the Nile dried to a trickle around them. Finally, the bickering crusader leadership agreed to attack a softer target - in the form of the Egyptian camp - but here they fell victim to one of the oldest tricks in the book: the fake retreat. Only heroic antics by the military orders saved the day from turning into a complete rout.
Al-Kamil, thinking he might have knocked some sense into the crusaders, renewed his peace offer, and threw in a few more bells and whistles to boot. In addition to all of the concessions in the previous deal, he also promised to return the True Cross, repatriate a number of POWs, and finance the rebuilding of Jerusalem's walls. Three guesses as to Pelagius' reply...
The Role of Sanctions in the Fall of Baghdad The Capture of Damietta
By the time November rolled around, the siege of Damietta, combined with a general famine throughout Egypt, had reduced the city's population from 80,000 to around 3000. One night, Christian sentries noticed an unguarded section of wall, and by the morning of November 5th, crusaders were pouring in through a captured gate. There weren't enough survivors to have a massacre, so the Christians contented themselves with an against-orders pillaging of the nearly-intact city.
Al-Kamil moved off, knowing he could never dislodge the crusaders from Damietta with the army he had. With morale hitting rock bottom, he positioned his forces between the crusaders and Cairo and waited for an attack that never came. Unbeknownst to him, the leaders of the crusade had fallen into a pissing contest regarding exactly whose property was the captured city - a contest in which Pelagius eventually alienated the military orders, who sided with King John on this one. Things eventually degraded to the point that the Italians ran the French out of the city, only to have the same thing subsequently done to them by the Templars and Teutonic Knights.
The infighting distracted the Christians all winter, and al-Kamil's force had begun to recover both morale and numbers by the time the Christians were finished divvying up the spoils of war (a process which was aided immensely by John's sudden departure to Armenia, where he conveniently remembered that he had some sort of claim to a throne. It was all good, though: the Pope saw fit to officially let John off the hook for bailing on the crusade - think Colin Powell being allowed to retire without a swiftboating).
For a year, Pelagius urged the barons to follow him into battle, and for a year, all he heard in reply were excuses centering around the need to wait for Fredrick II, who had promised to set out in 1221. He didn't, though in May he did send a sizeable force under the command of Louis of Bavaria (there was simply no way the Holy Roman Emperor was going to place himself under the command of a mere Cardinal). June saw the return of King John with his army, but Al-Kamil, having been granted an Osama-esque reprieve, had used the time to turn his camp on the Cairo-Damietta road into a fortress and solidify his power base in Cairo.
Operation Desert Storm An Offensive Devoid of Intelligence
Pelagius came from the "overwhelm with human wave attacks by the inspired faithful" school of military leadership - ironically, a tactic used in earlier crusades (but now largely abandoned) by the Muslims he now faced. They had learned from their enemy, as well, and now it was their turn to use maneuver in order to get the power of the headlong charge to work against their tactically-regressing Christian foe. In mid-July, Pelagius' army of 5000 knights, 40,000 infantry, and untold numbers of archers and pilgrims, allowed itself to be suckered into entering the marshes and sandbars of the Nile delta. They encamped themselves on the opposite bank of a delta tributary called the Bahr as-Saghir, near its confluence with the main channel of the Nile.
Plenty of people warned Pelagius that when the waters rose in August (assuming the floods would resume this year), he was going to find himself cut off as the dry channels of the around his little hill filled up; he would hear none of it. They also warned him that marching with only a minimal supply of food was unwise, but Pelagius was certain that he would quickly capture the Egyptian camp, whose mythical larders would provide his army (Iraqi-oil-like) with hummus and falafel to its heart's content - so no further logistical planning was necessary. When one gets one's instructions from God, one has little need for the advice of man, it would seem.
The predicted floods did come, and by the end of August, the Egyptian river fleet was able isolate the crusaders on what was now an island, preventing resupply or relief from Damietta. Pelagius dallied until past the last possible moment, but finally surrendered to the inevitable by ordering a full retreat on the night of August 26.
The Chickenhawk Exit Strategy A Booze-Based Decision-Making Process
The men knew the order to bug out was imminent, so they set about lightening their load as much as they could. Since it didn't make any sense to abandon the army's supply of wine to a bunch of tee totaling Muslims, and since it was too heavy to carry, the soldiers began drinking it. So it was that most of them were hammered when nighttime came along with the order to move off the island.
Building on the evening's theme, a group of Teutonic Knights took it upon themselves to set fire to what supplies did remain on the island, and in so doing alerted the Muslims to the retreat. Reacting quickly, the Muslims moved to the banks of the rivers and channels, opened up various dikes and levies, and threw back the attempted breakout. Most of the knights were able to retreat to the smoldering cinders of their supply train, but the infantry found itself more or less screwed. To the western military canon was added an admonition against having one's infantry fight at night, drunk, and in the water against an enemy on dry ground.
A couple of Latin ships were able to slip through the blockade, and surprise! surprise! - Pelagius was on one of them. From the safety of Damietta, he asked for terms on the 28th, and received them on the 30th.
He had the remains of a crusader army under his thumb, but al-Kamil knew another crusader fleet was approaching and that a re-fortified Damietta was going to be a real bitch to take back. Accordingly, he gave the crusaders a choice that Le Duc Tho would, centuries later, tell Henry Kissinger was called "peace with honor." The crusaders were to evacuate Egypt (including Damietta), exchange all POWs, and observe an 8-year truce. They would not be getting Jerusalem. In exchange, al-Kamil promised to return the True Cross. In the end, they didn't even get that; no one could find the True Cross when al-Kamil sent his people to go fetch it. Last time anyone had seen it was at Saladin's capture of Jerusalem forty years earlier.
The Legacy of Conservative Foreign Policy The Aftereffects of Disaster
The Fifth Crusade was the last general crusade, the last time fighting men from across Europe banded together under a united banner of Christendom. All the subsequent crusades (with the exception of the one at Nicopolis, which we'll get to in due time) were financed by the treasuries of individual kings, and so were not subject to Church meddling in the planning rooms or on the battlefields. And that's to say nothing of the fact that people were simply burned out:
It was not so much that the Fifth Crusade had ended dismally so much as it appears that Europeans had finally worn themselves out with crusading. Ever since Saladin had captured Jerusalem, there had been call after call to liberate the Holy Land. The memory of the First Crusade laid a heavy burden on the conscience, and the leaders of Europe struggled mightily to equal that early victory. After forty years of trying, the papal letters and the fiery sermons no longer carried the same appeal.
In the end, the dream of Innocent and Honorius to sponsor a grand, Rome-run Crusade of their own ended up undermining the power of the office of the papacy for subsequent pontiffs. Following strategies based on faith and violence alone turned the military and secular leaders against those who implemented those strategies, and once lost, there was no recovering the legitimacy they had played upon. Society responded to their overreach by clipping the wings of their successors.
Historiorant
In writing this piece, I found myself tempted a great many times (far more than just section titles) to employ the historiorantographic technique called snark-by-strikethrough. It's an easy one to overuse or to have come off as patronizing, but can be devastating when deployed effectively - which inspired tonight's Moonbatological Query:
What's the best/funniest/most achingly ironic example of snark-by-strikethrough you've seen here on DKos?
On a personal note, thanks to everyone who indulged my two-week departure from this ever-longer Crusades series with a comment, rec, and/or positive vibe - though I gotta say that I thought there'd be a little more bloviation regarding the 7th-century Mayan Star Wars </snark. I'm afraid that work pressures are going to keep me from posting next week, but rest assured that the Cave of the Moonbat will be hosting an historiorant on the Sixth Crusade in a fortnight or so.