The early history of the Kingdom
of Cyprus is largely lost in the mists of time, and much of what we think we
know―or what is currently accepted in academic circles―is dubious.
My novel, The Last Crusader Kingdom, looks at both the founding of the Kingdom
of Cyprus in the years 1193-1199 from a new perspective and challenges conventional wisdom. It is based on two revisionist theses (that I hope to develop more fully in a later non-fiction book on the subject.) The first of those thesis is presented below.
We know that Richard I of
England, having conquered Cyprus in May 1191, sold it to the Knights Templar
for 100,000 bezants in July of the same year. According to Peter Edbury, the
leading modern historian of medieval Cyprus, their rule was “rapacious and
unpopular,” resulting in a revolt in April 1192. Although a Templar sortie
temporarily scattered the rebels, the causes of the revolt were hardly
addressed and the latent threat of continued/renewed violence was clear. In the
circumstances, the Grand Master of the Templars recognized that his Order would
have to invest considerable manpower to regain control of the island. He also recognized that he did not have the
resources to fight in both Cyprus and
Syria. In consequence, he gave precedence (as he must) to the struggle on the
mainland, the Holy Land itself, against the Saracens. The Templars duly
returned the island to Richard of England.
Richard promptly sold the island
a second time, this time to Guy de Lusignan. Guy de Lusignan had been crowned
and anointed King of Jerusalem in 1186 in a coup d’etat engineered by his wife,
Sibylla. Although widely viewed as a usurper, the bulk of the barons submitted
to his rule in order to fight united against the much superior forces of
Saladin that threatened the Kingdom. Guy, however, proceeded to prove the low-opinion
of his barons correct by promptly leading the entire Christian army to an
avoidable defeat on the Horns of Hattin on July 4, 1187. He spent roughly a
year in Saracen captivity, while his Kingdom fell city by city and castle by
castle to Saladin, until only the city of Tyre remained. Needless to say, this
further discredited him with the surviving barons, prelates, and burghers of
his kingdom. His claim to the crown of Jerusalem was undermined fatally when
his wife, through whom he had gained it, died in November 1190. Although Guy
continued to style himself “King of Jerusalem,” a fiction at first bolstered by
King Richard of England’s support, by April 1192 King Richard gave up on
him. Bowing to the High Court of Jerusalem, Richard acknowledged
Conrad de Montferrat as King of Jerusalem. The sale of Cyprus to Guy was,
therefore, a means of compensating him for the loss of his kingdom of
Jerusalem.
Guy may have left for Cyprus at
once, in which case he would have arrived in April 1192. However, this is far from certain because the Third Crusade was still being conducted. It is unlikely that Guy would have
been able to convince many knights to accompany him as long as Richard the
Lionheart was still fighting for Jerusalem and Jaffa. A more likely date for
Guy’s arrival on Cyprus is therefore October 1192, after Richard’s departure
for the West.
Guy was apparently accompanied by
a small group of Frankish lords and knights whose lands had been lost to
Saladin in 1187/1188 and not been recaptured in the course of the Third
Crusade. The names of only a few are known. These include Humphrey de Toron,
Renier de Jubail, Reynald Barlais, Walter de Bethsan, and Galganus de Cheneché.
(Guy's older brother Aimery is notably absent.)
Guy would have arrived on an island that
was either still in a state of open rebellion or completely lawless. Admittedly, historian George Hill
(who was actually an expert in ancient history, coins and iconography rather
than a medievalist), tries to explain how Guy arrived on an island eagerly
awaiting him by inventing (that is the only word one can use since he sites no
source) the story that the Templars “slew the Greeks indiscriminately like
sheep; a number of Greeks who sought asylum in a church were massacred; the
mounted Templars rode through [Nicosia] spitting on their lances everyone they
could reach; the streets ran with blood…The Templars rode through the land,
sacking villages and spreading desolation, for the population of both cities
and villages fled to the mountains.” (George Hill, A History of Cyprus, Volume 2: The Frankish Period 1192 – 1432,”
Cambridge University Press, 1948, p. 37.)
There’s a serious problem with
this lurid tale. (Quite aside from the technical one of lances being unsuitable for spitting multiple victims.) As Hill himself admits, the Templars had just fourteen knights
on Cyprus and 29 sergeants; the Greek population
of the island at this time, however, was roughly 100,000. Yes, in a surprise sortie to fight their way
out of Nicosia and flee to Acre (as we know they did), the Templars would surely
have killed many civilians, including innocent ones. It is unlikely, however, that
the fleeing Templars would have taken the time to stop and slaughter people
collected in a church; that would have given the far more numerous armed insurgents (who
had forced them to seek refuge in their commandery in the first place) to
rally, attack and kill them. They certainly did not have the time and resources
to slaughter people in other cities and towns scattered over nearly 10,000 square
kilometers of island. In short, we can be sure the Templars slaughtered enough
people to be remembered with hatred, but not enough to break the resistance to
Latin rule, much less to denude the island of its population. If nothing else,
if they had broken the resistance, they would not have fled to Acre, admitted
defeat and urged the Grand Chapter to return Cyprus to Richard of England!
Despite the absurdity of the
notion that Guy arrived on a peaceful island willing to receive him without
resistance, most histories today repeat a charming story. Namely: as soon as Guy
arrived on Cyprus he sent to his arch-enemy Saladin for advice on how to rule
it. What is more, the ever chivalrous and wise Sultan graciously responded that
“if he wants the island to be secure he must give it all away.” (See Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191
– 1374, Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 16.) Allegedly, based on this
advice, Guy invited settlers from all the Christian countries of the eastern
Mediterranean to settle on Cyprus, offering everyone rich rewards and making
them marry the local women. According to this fairy tale, the disposed peoples
of Syria, both high and low, flooded to Cyprus and were rewarded with rich
fiefs, until Guy had only enough land to support just 20 household knights, but
after that everyone lived happily ever after.
History isn’t like that, although―often―there
is a kernel of truth in such legends. I think it is fair to assume that very
many of the men and women who had lost their lands and livelihoods to the
Saracens after Hattin did eventually
come to settle on Cyprus, but I question that they arrived in the first two
years after Guy acquired the island. The reason I doubt this is simple. The Knights
Templar had just abandoned the island because it would be too costly, time-consuming and difficult to pacify. In short, whoever came to Cyprus with Guy in
early or late 1192 would not have
found an empty island―much less one full of happy natives waiting to welcome
them with song and flowers. On the contrary, they were already in active rebellion against the
Templars and ready to resist further attempts by the Latins to control and
dominate them. Perhaps the one sentence about making the settlers marry local
women is a hint to a more chilling reality: that after years of resistance to Latin rule, when the settlers finally came they found a local population with
few young men but many widows.
Furthermore, we know that at no
time in his life did Guy de Lusignan distinguish himself by wisdom or common
sense. He had alienated his brother-in-law King Baldwin IV and nearly the
entire High Court of Jerusalem within just three years of his marriage to
Sibylla. He lost his entire kingdom in a
disastrous and unnecessary campaign less than a year after he was crowned king.
He started a strategically nonsensical siege of Acre that consumed crusader
lives and resources for three years. He did nothing of note the entire time
Richard the Lionheart was in the Holy Land. Is it really credible that he then
took control of a rebellious island (that the Templars thought beyond their
capacity to pacify) and set everything right in less than two years?
I think not. And Guy had only two years because he died in
1194, either in April/May or toward the end of the year depending on which source
one consults. That is too little time even for a more competent leader to be the
architect of Cyprus’ success. That honor belongs, I believe, to his older
brother, the ever competent Aimery de Lusignan, who was lord of Cyprus not two
years but eleven.
It was certainly Aimery, who obtained
a crown by submitting the island to the Holy Roman Emperor, and it was Aimery
who established a Latin church hierarchy on the island. Indeed, there is ample
evidence of Aimery’s able administration of both Cyprus and, from 1197 to 1205,
the Kingdom of Jerusalem as well. It was
Aimery de Lusignan who collected the oral tradition for the laws of Jerusalem
(that had worked so well) and had them written down in a legal codex known as The Book of the King. Thus, it was Aimery, who founded not only the
dynasty that would last three hundred years, but also laid the legal and
institutional foundations that would serve Cyprus so well into the 15th
century. It is, in my opinion, far more likely that it was Aimery, not Guy, who
brought settlers in―after first pacifying the native population and institutionalizing
tolerance for the Orthodox church that mirrored the customs of the
Kingdom of Jerusalem. It is this thesis that forms the basis of : The Last Crusader Kingdom: Founding of a Dynasty in 12th Century Cyprus.
My second revisionist thesis concerning the Ibelins will be the subject of my next entry.
Meanwhile, read a fictional account of these events at:
