Again this week, a user deleted their question, and their account, just as I was about to answer! This time the question was: Why did the Crusader States repeatedly enter peace treaties with the Muslim leaders (and vice versa) and why did they never break them? The short answer is, peace treaties were beneficial to both sides, because nobody wants to be at war all the time; but sometimes, they did break them.

We sometimes see the crusades (and the Muslim counter-crusade) as a constant war, but they really weren’t. The First Crusade certainly was a long war, but after the crusaders captured Jerusalem and established their own kingdom, it was more like long periods of peace broken up by wars. War is hell, war is hard, war is a continuation of policy by other means, and all sorts of similar sayings…it seems like maybe warfare was more common in the Middle Ages than it is now, but it sucked just as much then, and people preferred to avoid it.

Even after establishing the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the other crusader states, the biggest problem for the crusaders was maintaining a sufficient supply of men and material. They just didn’t have the ability to wage constant war. Lucky for them, in the early 12th century the surrounding states in Syria and Egypt couldn’t wage constant war either. They were as busy fighting each other as they were fighting the crusaders, which is really the only reason the crusaders were successful in the first place. Throughout the twelfth century, Syria was gradually united under Nur ad-Din, and then Syria and Egypt were united under his successor Saladin.

Saladin and the crusaders actually made truces several times, which are a good example here - the crusaders were firmly in control of the land between the Mediterranean coast and the Jordan River, and Saladin was firmly in control of the land around them in Egypt and Syria, but neither side was strong enough to wipe out the other. They both had other problems. Jerusalem could count on more crusaders arriving from Europe, but new crusaders were more eager to go around attacking things rather than thinking about strategy and tactics. Also, the more powerful Saladin became, the less interested Europeans were in sending men (or money). There were also different factions among the nobles of Jerusalem, some of whom wanted to continue to make treaties with Saladin, and others who wanted to take the offensive.

In 1180 Saladin and Baldwin IV made a truce, but Baldwin, who was a leper, sometimes had to hand over power to other people when he was too sick to rule. His advisors Guy of Lusignan and Raynald of Chatillon didn’t agree with the truce and broke it on several occasions; Raynald attacked caravans and pilgrims in the desert to the east of the Jordan, and he also may have tried to sail south down the Red Sea to attack Mecca. In retaliation in 1183, Saladin attacked one of Raynald’s castles, Kerak. Baldwin replaced Guy and Raynald with Raymond, the Count of Tripoli, who settled a new truce with Saladin in 1185. But Raynald didn’t think that truce applied to him personally, kept attacking caravans and pilgrims, and provoked Saladin to invade in 1187.

Could Saladin have also broken the truce and invaded anytime he wanted? Probably! But he had his own concerns too. It was hard to govern Egypt and Syria at the same time. There were rebellions in northern Syria and Mesopotamia. He didn’t have a professional, standing army - actually both his and the crusader army were made up of people also had lands and farms of their own that they had to take care of. No one could force them to stay if they simply wanted to go home. So if you want to break a truce you had better be ready for the consequences…and in 1187 the crusaders weren’t. Saladin destroyed them and wiped out nearly the entire kingdom.

The Third Crusade arrived to help restore some of the kingdom from 1190-1192, but they couldn’t restore Jerusalem. The leader of the crusade, Richard I of England, knew he couldn’t get Jerusalem back, and he also couldn’t keep an army so far away from home forever, especially if they were going to keep pointlessly fighting for Jerusalem. But he could stay there for awhile and make life difficult for Saladin. Even if Saladin was able to keep Jerusalem, he wasn’t able to completely dislodge the crusade from Acre and the other cities on the coast that they held. He couldn’t keep his army in the field forever either. So what could they do? Make a truce! Richard and Saladin settled the Treaty of Jaffa in 1192; the Muslims kept Jerusalem but Christians were allowed to visit and make pilgrimages.

Jerusalem remained in Muslim hands but two more crusades followed; one was diverted to Constantinople and accidentally conquered the Byzantine Empire, and the other attacked Egypt but was defeated in 1221. In 1229, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II arrived and tried a different tactic - without invading or attacking, he made a new truce with the sultan of Egypt, and the sultan returned Jerusalem to the crusaders. This didn’t really work out for Frederick for various reasons…he had been excommunicated back in Europe, so the church in Jerusalem wouldn’t recognize the truce, and secular and religious government never moved back to Jerusalem but stayed in Acre. They regained Jerusalem but they didn’t do anything with it.

The truce was intended to last for 10 years, so by 1239, both sides knew exactly what was going to happen - a new crusade was prepared in Europe, and the Egyptians and Syrians prepared to defend against it. The crusade was defeated in 1239. The crusaders held on to Jerusalem for another five years though, until 1244.

Another crusade arrived in 1249, led by Louis IX of France, but his expedition was a failure as well and he was taken captive in Egypt. Another notable truce occurred during his captivity, when he and the sultan of Egypt made a mutual pact to free Louis from prison. The Mamluk rulers of Egypt then spent the next 40-50 years slowly conquering the remnants of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the other crusader states.

But the Mamluks couldn’t keep men on campaign forever either, and sometimes they had to make truces too. The sultan concluded a 10-year truce with the crusaders in 1284 - we still call the crusader state the “Kingdom of Jerusalem” at this point, but all they really had left was the city of Acre. Under ideal circumstances Acre would have been safe until 1294, but there was an incident where Christians killed some Muslim merchants. The sultan considered this a violation of the truce, so he invaded and conquered Acre in 1291.

So how did these treaties and truces work? They are clearly an example of realpolitk winning out over the polemicism of crusading, where Muslims were an intractable enemy that must be destroyed at all costs, and vice versa, where crusaders were the enemy to be destroyed. In reality both sides recognized each other as valid rulers and equal parties. For example, King Baldwin II of Jerusalem made a treaty with the ruler of Aleppo, Ilghazi, in 1122. According to one Muslim author at the time, Baldwin

“…could not conceive that Ilghazi would actually break the existing treaty: ‘since we have sworn to him and he to us, we have not broken [the treaty] and we have protected his land in his absence, whereby we are nobles (shuyukh).’” (Kohler, 113)

Both sides would swear oaths to protect the truce. The oath was probably the most important part because in this period, where the literacy rate wasn’t very high, a man really was only as good as his word, as the saying goes. Breaking a solemn oath was one of the worst things you could do, whether you were Christian or Muslim.

Likewise in the truce between Louis IX and the Egyptian sultan, the sultan

“…swore that if the treaty was broken he should be dishonoured as one going bareheaded in penance to Mecca…or as one eating pork…In response, the king swore that by breaking the treaty he would be dishonoured as a Christian denying god (i.e. Christ) and his mother…” (Kohler, 308)

The sultan actually wanted Louis to swear that if he broke the treaty, it would be as if he was spitting on a crucifix, but Louis thought that was going too far.

So the key is, as soon as the crusaders established their kingdom in Jerusalem they realized that constant ideological Christian vs. Muslim warfare simply wasn’t feasible or even desirable. There were long stretches of peace where truces and treaties were made between two sides who considered each other equal and valid parties, and who both felt that keeping a solemn oath was extremely important. But in the end, they were still enemies, and treaties were sometimes intended to let one or both sides recuperate and build up their forces - a bit of breathing room before the next war.