War of the Lombards
| War of the Lombards | |||||||
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 Map of the Crusader states, 1240 | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
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Teutonic Knights |
Papacy | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
.svg){kind=small} Emperor Frederick II  Riccardo Filangieri | |||||||
The War of the Lombards (1228–1243) was a
Hohenstaufen dynasty
.
Origins
Frederick had been
Balian. In 1239 Philip of Montfort assumed the leadership of the opposition.[1]
Though the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the
Arsuf, and Caesarea as well as the old capital of Acre. In 1231 the citizens of Acre formed a commune with their headquarters at the church of Saint Andrew's in order to unify their opposition to Filangieri. In 1232 John of Ibelin was elected its mayor.[2]
Course
The first major battle of the war took place at Casal Imbert in May 1232. Filangieri defeated the Ibelins.[3] In June, however, he was so soundly defeated by an inferior force at the Battle of Agridi in Cyprus that his support on the island dwindled to zero within a year.
In 1241 the barons offered the
bailliage of Acre to Simon de Montfort, the Earl of Leicester, a cousin of Philip of Montfort, and a relative through marriage to both the Hohenstaufen and the Plantagenets. He never assumed it. In 1242 or 1243 Conrad declared his own majority and on 5 June the absentee monarch's regency was granted by the High Court to Alice, widow of Hugh I of Cyprus and daughter of Isabella I of Jerusalem.[4] Alice promptly began ruling as if queen, ignoring Conrad, who was in Italy, and ordering Filangieri arrested. After a long siege, Tyre fell on 12 June. The Ibelins seized its citadel on 7 or 10 July, with the help of Alice, whose forces arrived on 15 June. Only the Ibelins could claim to be the winners of the war.[5]
Primary sources
The chief primary source for the War is
Les gestes des Chiprois
, and it is sometimes difficult to determine if a detail was amended by the compiler. His account, written contemporaneously with events, only covers the years 1228–33, 1236, and 1241–42. He wrote the last part of his account between 1242 and 1247, adding interpolations until as late as 1258. It is Philip that gives the name "Longuebars" (Lombards) to the imperialists.
The
Liber Albus, but is a less precise, though more contemporaneous, account than Philip's.[7]
Raymond VII of Toulouse met the emperor at Melfi
in September 1242 and intervened on behalf of the defeated Filangieri.
References
- Bromiley, Geoffrey N. (1977). "Philip of Novara's Account of the War Between Frederick II of Hohenstaufen and the Ibelins". Journal of Medieval History, 3:4, pp. 325–337.
- Jackson, Peter (1986). "The End of Hohenstaufen Rule in Syria". Historical Research, 59:139, pp. 20–36.
- Jacoby, David (1986). "The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Collapse of Hohenstaufen Power in the Levant". Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 40:83–101.
- Marshall, Christopher (1992). Warfare in the Latin East, 1192–1291. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Tyerman, Christopher(2006). God's War: A New History of the Crusades. London: Penguin Books.
Notes
- ^ The chronology of the opposition leadership is given in Tyerman, 725. According to Jackson, 20, the communal party was moderate.
- ^ A summary description of the factions and the territories they controlled can be found in Tyerman, 726.
- ^ Tyerman, 726.
- ^ According to Jacoby, 83–84, the date of 1242 comes from Philip of Novara, while the date of 1243 is an extrapolation from Conrad's birth year (1228).
- ^ Tyerman, 726, explains that only the Ibelins "gained" from the war, for their position at its conclusion was stronger than at its commencement.
- ^ The relevant criticism of Philip's history can be found in Jacoby, 84–85.
- ^ Jacoby, 85–86, provides an analysis of Zorzi's value to historians. Marsilius Georgius is described as baiulus in Syria Venetorum, iussi domini duci Iacobi Teupoli. His report was completed in 1244.
- ^ Jacoby, 86.