William II (1153 - 1213)
Chapter V: Intervention in the Holy Land
In 1193 AD, after over twenty years of peace, the Kingdom of Sicily finally found itself at war again. But instead of fighting against invading Arabs, Germans, Greeks or even its own rebellious vassals, the Norman army would be fighting on the rugged hills and sandy dunes of the Levant.
The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem was ruled by Baldwin IV. Once a diligent and noble man of stature, leprosy had wasted away his body to a shadow of its former self. He had no children because of his condition, and thus declared his sister Sibylla as his heir.
Baldwin IV defeated a Saracen force led by Sultan Salah al-Din at the Battle of Montgisard in 1177 AD, despite being afflicted with leprosy.
For almost a century, the Kingdom of Jerusalem had weathered several invasions by the Saracens, who sought to bring the Holy Land back into the Mohammedan fold. In the north were the Abbasids. Though they were a shadow of the empire that dominated the Mohamedan world two hundred years prior, they remain a persistent threat to the Holy Land from their capital in Bagdhad. To the south was another Mohammaden dynasty known as the Ayubbids, led by a man named Salah al-Din who had overthrown the old Fatimid yoke and proclaimed himself Sultan of Egypt and Syria. But the Sultan’s reign would be short-lived, for he would die on April of 1179 of camp fever, an ignominuous end for a would-be conqueror. His lands were divvied up amongst families, who soon squabbled over who would inherit Salah al-Din’s empire.
Baldwin finally succumbed to his condition on February 14, 1179, and his sister ascended his throne. Sibylla proved to be as capable as her brother, despite being of the fairer sex, with many giving her the moniker of “the Righteous” for her sense of duty and justice. But more importantly, she had three children with her second husband Guy de Lusignan, all of whom were eligible for marriage.
King William thus saw an opportunity. Although he was no means a devout Christian, courting an alliance with Jerusalem would extend his family’s influence and legitimise his rule in the eyes of the pope, who his family had feuded with since the beginning of the Norman conquests. A marriage pact was thus arranged in 1193, with his second daughter Catherine betrothed to Sibylla’s son and heir Francois de Lusignan. In exchange, William was to provide military aid to Jerusalem, which was currently under assault by the fractured remnants of Salah al-Din’s empire, now under the tenuous leadership of Salah al-Din’s younger brother.
And so, eight thousand and six hundred soldiers set sail for the Holy Land on their longships. Unlike his Norman forebearers, William was no warrior and command of the army instead fell upon Nicefuru di Nicusa, a seasoned knight of admirable character. Our first-hand account detailing William’s war in Jerusalem comes from a scribe in the service of Nicefuru, who laid bare his experiences in the Holy Land. Although Nicefuru was an accomplished commander and warrior, he was illiterate and thus required his scribe to read him orders and correspondences.
Nicefuru di Nicusa served as the chief commander of the Norman army in Jerusalem.
The Norman army landed on the shores of the Levant, where they clashed with an Egyptian host on the 23rd of February 1194, in what would be known as the Battle of Ghazza. Among the prisoners taken was the eldest son of Salah al-Din himself. On the 18th of September, the Norman army would score another victory against the Mohammedans who were attempting to besiege the city of Arabella.
But in spite of these victories, the situation soon became dire for Jerusalem. Most of the Egyptian army was now besieging the Holy City itself with an estimated ten thousand soldiers. Trebuchets and other siege machines were set up within a day and began bombarding the city’s walls.
To make matters worse, the Abbasids of Baghdad would also declare war on Jerusalem, believing that the kingdom’s forces would be too preoccupied with the war in the south to protect its northern borders. They were correct, for the Abbasid armies soon overran Syria, plundering towns and enslaving the civilians.
In November, the Norman army attempted to break the siege of the Holy City, catching the Egyptian invaders by surprise after a night’s march. Although outnumbered, Nicefuru had assumed that the armies of Jerusalem would come to reinforce them, having dispatched messengers to inform his allies of the attack. He was sorely mistaken.
A Norman lancer strikes down a Saracen rider at the Battle for Jerusalem, 1194 AD.
The Norman cavalry had struck first, attacking the Egyptians' encampment and setting fire to their siege engines. Exhilarated by their success, however, the Norman cavalry had charged too far, and the Egyptians were able to rally their forces and launched a countercharge, their mounted archers loosing devastating volleys upon the Norman horsemen. Seeing that no reinforcements would come, Nicefuru ordered the remainder of his army to retreat northwards to the port city of Tyre. Twelve hundred Normans lost their lives in this battle.
It was in Tyre that Nicefuru would learn, to his fury, of the reason behind the Jerusalem army’s failure to reinforce him. They had moved north to stop the Abbasid advance in Syria, meaning that Nicefuru could not count on them for help.
Nevertheless, the Normans' attack had the intended effect of breaking the siege of Jerusalem. Without their siege engines, the Egyptians might as well be throwing their men against Jerusalem’s walls, so they retreated back to Egypt to resupply and rearm. But the First Battle for Jerusalem, as it was called, showed that the Normans could not hope to match the combined Egyptian army and their deadly horse archers in an open battle.
Thus, in a commendable display of cunning, Nicefuru paid for Tyre’s ships to sail his army towards the Nile Delta. By 1195, the Egyptians had already resupplied their armies and made another attempt to capture the Holy City, but this left their territories unprotected from the Normans, who landed on the Nile Delta with little opposition. They requisitioned food and supplies from nearby towns and villages, never laying a finger on the grateful populace. Those towns and villages that resisted, on the other hand, were put to the torch.
With food, supplies, and plunder in tow, the Normans moved north up the coast and towards the Holy City, now under siege by the Egyptians once again. Rather than confront the numerically superior Egyptians as he did before, Nicefurru instead traversed with his army through the Judean Mountains, assisted by a local guide who knew of a goat track in his childhood. Using the same strategy used by the Saracens against the crusader armies in the past, Nicefuru divided his light cavalry into smaller bands of outriders. They harassed the Egyptians’ supply lines and communications, retreating back into the safety of the mountains.
Nicefuru would finally have his chance for a decisive battle on September 7, 1196. The Egyptians had split off a third of their army in order to track down the elusive Norman force, while the rest continued their siege of the Holy City. This was a fatal error on their part, for as they passed through the city of Hebron, the seven thousand-strong Norman army fell upon them, with Nicefuru and a contingent of armoured horsemen leading the charge. Blocked off from the main army, the Egyptians instead attempted to flee southward with the Normans hot on their heels. Despite a desperate rearguard action by the Egyptians in what would be known as the Slaughter of Baidha-Petra, Nicefuru eventually caught up with the fleeing army by April 1197. The Egyptian army, already pushed to the brink by exhaustion and starvation, broke and fled. The Normans were victorious, even claiming one of the enemy’s banners, which they proceeded to burn on a pyre as a celebration of their victory.
Nicefuru would receive more good news, for Queen Sibylla had sent missives to Alodia. Nothing much is known about this enigmatic kingdom located further down the Nile River, other than that they had adopted the Egyptian teachings of Christianity, distinct from those in Rome and Constantinople. But they were Christians nonetheless, which made them a valuable ally against the Mohammedans. Queen Sibylla, more pragmatic than pious, managed to sway the king with promises of a marriage pact between their king and her eldest daughter, and their children would adopt the Christian faith of Alodia. And so, six thousand warriors and horsemen thus sailed across the Red Sea, where they met with Nicefurru’s army.
Swelled to a force of over thirteen thousand men, the combined army marched towards Jerusalem where the Egyptians, finally aware of the fate that befell the host they had dispatched, abandoned their siege of the Holy City a second time to meet the oncoming threat bearing down on them. Both armies met on the 9th of June 1197 in the Negev Desert. The Egyptian forces attempted to strike the first blow, when the desert sun was shining in their enemy’s faces. They sent their horse archers to encircle their enemy, showering a hail of arrows upon them. But the Normans and Alodian infantry quickly formed a formidable defence, their heavy armour protecting them from the worst of the onslaught. The Alodians also had mounted archers of their own, and they responded with arrows of their own and with much greater success. What followed was a clash of infantry as Norman and Alodian swordsmen threw themselves at Saracen spears and sabres. Both sides fought valiantly and fiercely, until Nicefurru and a contingent of knights charged into the enemy’s centre. The Egyptians soon lost their heart for battle and fled.
The First Battle at Negev was the turning point of the war, for while the allied army lost a thousand men, they inflicted twice as many casualties upon the enemy. But more importantly, defeat had caused the Egyptian coalition to scatter. Together they had been the bane of the Normans, but piecemeal they were as harmless as lambs to the slaughter. Several more skirmishes followed with the Second Battle at Negev in November 1197 and the Second Battle of Ghazza the following month, which were so inconsequential that Nicefuru’s scribe only made a passing mention of them in his accounts, other than that they resulted in the Normans triumphant.
But the Sultan of the Delta had managed to rally his forces for a last-ditch offensive into the heartland of the Kingdom of Heaven. The invaders were soon intercepted by the Norman-Alodian army five miles from the Holy City. Had the Egyptians still possessed their deadly mounted cavalry, which had been annihilated in the First Battle at Negev, they might have had a chance of victory. But they did not.
Realising that the battle was lost, the Sultan of Delta finally sued for peace on February 1198, bringing an end to the war. The Normans had lost roughly three thousand men, but it was the treacherous desert heat, rather than Saracen spears and arrows, that did most of the killing. Nevertheless, they brought back home with them many treasures and prisoners of war. Many of these captives were scribes and freeriders, who soon found their services needed in William’s court. Their writings, alongside those of Nicefuru’s scribe, served as valuable firsthand accounts of the war in the Holy Land.
While the Norman army returned home to regroup and resupply, Queen Sibylla’s war with the Abassids had finally swung in her favour. Her armies had pushed back the Abassids out of Syria and into their own lands. By April 1199, William pledges support for Sibylla in her war and his army sets sail for the Holy Land once more.
Unfortunately, little is known about the Normans’ involvement in Syria. Not even Nicefuru’s scribe, whose accounts had provided much insight into the Palestinian front, wrote much about his experiences there. What can be agreed upon, however, was that the Abassids would sue for peace in late September of 1201.
What followed was a few years of peace. However, in 1202, the Kingdom of Sicily was soon struck by a plague appropriately named Beelzebub’s Fever. The first symptoms of the disease was a rash on the chest and back that would later spread to the arms and legs. The fever came afterwards, which leave the afflicted burning to the touch. While not as devastating as the Aetolian Pox that came two decades prior, many succumbed to its effects. Not even the royal family was safe from the contagion. Princesses Catherine and Edith were the first to fall ill, though none caused as much an uproar than the king himself, who found himself burning with fever. Only through the valiant efforts of his court physician Esther that the king managed to survive.
Perhaps out of desperation, William attempted to introduce leechings as suggested by his physicians and scholars. But their failure to stop the plague’s advance, not to mention the mounting deaths of his friends and courtiers, dealt a heavy blow to the king’s confidence and he soon reclused himself in his chambers, while his wife Joan took charge of the kingdom’s affairs.
By the time Beelzebub’s Fever had receded, the Kingdom of Sicily would find itself thrust into another war.
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