Lord Edward's crusade
Lord Edward's Crusade | |||||||
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Part of the Crusades | |||||||
Operations during Lord Edward's crusade Mamluks Crusaders Mongols | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Military orders |
Mamluk Egypt
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Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Baibars | |||||||
Strength | |||||||
Crusaders: Unknown
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Casualties and losses | |||||||
Unknown |
Unknown total
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Lord Edward's Crusade,
The crusade saw Edward clash with the
From Dover to Acre
Following the Mamluk victory over the
. As the Crusader fortress cities fell one by one, the Christians sought help from Europe, but assistance was slow in coming.In 1268, Baibars captured Antioch, thereby destroying the last remnant of the Principality of Antioch, securing the Mamluk northern front and threatening the small Crusader County of Tripoli. With royal and papal approval, Edward "took the cross" on 24 June 1268.[2] Louis IX of France organized a large crusader army with the intent of attacking Egypt, but diverted it instead to Tunis. Louis himself died there in 1270. He had loaned Edward 70,000 livres tournois for his crusade.[3]
Edward and his brother Edmund prepared an expedition to join Louis at Tunis, but it was delayed several times in the summer of 1270 because their father, King Henry III of England, could not make up his mind whether to join it or not. On the advice of his councilors, he opted to stay in England and the crusaders embarked at Dover on 20 August.[4] Unusual for the time, they were accompanied by Edward's wife Eleanor of Castile throughout.[5]
Edward traveled slowly through France, arriving in
On 18 November, Charles granted Edward a safe-conduct allowing him to stay in Sicily while contemplating his next steps.
Operations in the Holy Land
Edward arrived at Acre while it was still under siege. His arrival caused Baibars to change his plans and turn away from Acre.[7] In the meantime, Edward discovered that the Venetians had a flourishing trade with the Mamluks, providing the latter with timber and metal needed for armaments. In addition, they controlled the slave-trade along with the Genoese, in which they carried Turkish and Tartar slaves from the Black Sea ports to Egypt. However, he could not prevent such businesses, as they had licenses from the High Court at Acre.[11]
Crusader raids
The forces under Edward's command were much too small to take on the Mamluks in a straight battle, being unable to even stop the Mamluks from seizing the nearby Teutonic Montfort Castle. They settled for launching a series of raids. After capturing Nazareth,[12] Edward raided St Georges-de-Lebeyne but accomplished little other than burning some houses and crops, on top of losing a few men to the heat.[13]
Later, the arrival of additional forces from England and Hugh III of Cyprus, under the command of Edward's younger brother
In December 1271, Edward and his troops saw some action when they repelled an attack by Baibars on the city of Acre.[13] Baibars eventually abandoned his siege of Tripoli, but the exact reason is not known. Contemporary accounts state that Edward's attacks on Baibars' interior lines forced him to abandon the siege. Some modern observers reject this interpretation, saying he instead abandoned it to avoid overcommitting himself in one direction due to a lack of intelligence on the Crusaders' true capabilities.[16][17]
Mongol raids
As soon as Edward arrived in Acre, he made some attempts to form a
At the end of October 1271, a Mongol army arrived in Syria. However Abagha, occupied by other conflicts in
In the interim, Baibars came to suspect there would be a combined land-sea attack on Egypt. Feeling his position sufficiently threatened, he endeavoured to head off such a manoeuvre by building a fleet. Having finished construction of the fleet, rather than attack the Crusader army directly, Baibars attempted to land on Cyprus in 1271, hoping to draw Hugh III of Cyprus (the nominal king of Jerusalem) and his fleet out of Acre, with the objective of conquering the island and leaving Edward and the crusader army isolated in the Holy Land. He disguised 17 war galleys as Christian vessels and attacked Limassol. However, in the ensuing naval campaign the fleet was destroyed off the coast of Limassol and Baibars' armies were forced back.[22][23]
End of the Crusade
Following this victory, Edward realized that to create a force capable of retaking Jerusalem it would be necessary to end the internal unrest within the Christian state, and so he mediated between Hugh and his unenthusiastic
Aftermath
Edward had been accompanied by Theobald Visconti, who became
Although the crusaders' internecine war was debilitating, it offered the possibility of unified control of the crusade under Charles. However, this hope was dashed when Venice suggested a crusade be called not against the Mamluks but against
The remaining nine years saw an increase in demands from the
In 1275, Abaqa sent a messenger to Edward with a letter. Abaqa requested that Edward mobilize for another Crusade, saying he could offer more help this time. Edward wrote back the same year, thanking Abaqa for his help in the Ninth Crusade while also noting his affection for Christianity. He said he did not know when there would be another Crusade, but was eager to get back to the Holy Land, and would inform Abaqa if the Pope declared another. The letter was almost certainly a formality, as Edward made no preparations for another Crusade. In 1276, another envoy was sent to Edward with the same message, with an additional message of apology for not effectively intervening in 1271.[27]
In 1291, a group of pilgrims from Acre came under attack and in retaliation killed nineteen Muslim merchants in a Syrian
See also
- Egyptian Armed Forces
- Egyptian Army
- Military of ancient Egypt
- List of wars involving Egypt
- Alexandrian Crusade
- Henry V, Count of Luxembourg, joined Edward of England on his crusade
Notes
- ^ Henry Summerson (2005). "Lord Edward's crusade (act. 1270–1274)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
- ^ Michael Lower, The Tunis Crusade of 1270: A Mediterranean History (Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 76.
- ^ a b Lower 2018, p. 104.
- ^ a b c Lower 2018, pp. 174–76.
- ^ Hamilton 1995, pp. 94–95.
- ^ Lower 2018, pp. 134–35.
- ^ a b Prestwich, p. 75
- ^ Lower 2018, pp. 179–82.
- ^ Prestwich, p. 71
- ^ Lower 2018, p. 179, says 300 knights.
- ^ Runciman 1987, p. 336.
- ^ Gough, Henry (1900). "Introduction". Itinerary of King Edward the First throughout his reign. Vol. 1. Paisley: Alexander Gardner. p. ii.
In May, 1271, he captured Nazareth, and the same year gained several victories over the Saracens.
- ^ a b Tyerman, p. 813
- ^ Preiss, p. 70
- ^ Prestwich, p. 77
- ^ Howard, p.
- ^ "Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen", Sara Cockerill, Amberley, Dec 19, 2015.
- Eracles, p. 461) explaining that Edward contacted the Mongols "por querre secors" ("To ask for help").
- ^ Preiss, p. 98
- ^ Histoire des Croisades III, René Grousset, p. 653.
- ^ Runciman, pp. 336–337
- ^ Howard, p.?
- ^ "The Later Crusades, 1189–1311", Kenneth M. Setton, Robert Lee Wolff. p. 616.
- ^ Baldwin 2014, p. 43.
- ^ Prestwich, p. 78
- ^ Collins 2009, p. 265.
- ^ Preiss, p. 101
References
- Baldwin, Philip Bruce (2014). Pope Gregory X and the Crusades. The Boydell Press.
- Collins, Roger (2009). Keepers of the Keys of Heaven: A History of the Papacy. Basic Books.
- Hamilton, B. (1995). "Eleanor of Castile and the Crusading Movement". Mediterranean Historical Review. 10 (1–2): 92–103. .
- "Histoire des Croisades III", René Grousset
- "Edward I", Michael Prestwich, University of California Press, 1988
- "The Crusades: A History of One of the Most Epic Military Campaigns of All Time", Jonathan Howard, 2011
- God's War: A New History of the Crusades, Christopher Tyerman
- "Mongols and Mamluks", Reuven Amitai-Preiss, 2005
- Runciman, Steven (1987). A History of the Crusades: Volume 3, The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521347723.
Further reading
- Simon Lloyd, "The Lord Edward's Crusade, 1270–2: Its Setting and Significance," in War and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of J. O. Prestwich, ed. John Gillingham and J. C. Holt (Cambridge: Boydell Press, 1984).