Fall of Ruad
The Ruad expedition was a major Crusader expedition against the shore of the Levant undertaken in 1300-1302 in order to link up with the forces of the Mongol ruler Ghazan against the Muslim Mamluks. The junction between the two armies eventually failed to happen, and this attempt ended with the capture of Ruad Island by the Mamluks in the Siege of Ruad in 1302. The Ruad expedition is to be understood in the context of the strategy of the Franco-Mongol alliance in which the Crusaders were attempting to coordinate actions with the Mongols against the Mamluks.[1] The Ruad expedition has been studied in detail by the French historian Alain Demurger, who devotes a whole chapter to the subject in his 2002 book Jacques de Molay.
Background
The Ruad expedition came at a time when the Frank Crusaders had already recently been expelled from the Holy Land following the Siege of Acre on 18 May 1291, and abandonned their last stronghold of Atlit on 14 August,[2] and Tortosa on the continent on 4 August 1291 to only keep the small Ruad Island two miles offshore.[3][4]
The refugees from the Holy Land had regrouped on Cyprus, where the Templars were keeping an important base.[5] The nearest Christian kingdom was that of Little Armenia, which was suffering greatly from the attacks of the Mamluks.[5] In 1298-99 the Mamluks attacked Syria, capturing Servantikar and Roche-Guillaume, the last Templar stronghold on the continent.[6] The Grand Masters of the Orders, Jacques de Molay and Guillaume de Villaret apparently participated to these operations.[6] These event prompted the Armenian king Hethoum to ask for the intervention of the Mongol ruler Ghazan.[6]
The relations between the Templars and the king of the Kingdom of Cyprus Henri II were difficult, as the Grand Master Guillaume de Beaujeu had supported a rival claimant to the Cypriot throne.[5] However, the new Grand Master Jacques de Molay was ordered by Pope Boniface VIII to resolve the disputes with Henri II.[5]
Combined operations
The aim of the Ruad expedition was to link up with the Mongol ruler Ghazan.[5][7] In 1299, as he prepared an offensive against Syria, Ghazan had sent embassies to the king of Cyprus Henri and to Pope Boniface VIII, and invited them to participate in combined operations against the Mamluks.[5][7]
Henri soon made some attempts to combine with the Mongols.[7] In Autumn of 1299, he sent a fleet of two galleys to join Ghazan, led by Guy of Ibelin and John of Giblet, which reoccupied Botrun on the mainland to rebuild the fortress of Nephin until February 1300.[7][6]
Winter Mongol offensive
On his side, Ghazan inflicted a crushing defeat on the Mamluks on 22 December 1299 at the Battle of Wadi al-Khazandar, assisted by the troops of Hethoum II and apparently some Templars and Hospitallers of the Kingdom of Armenia.[7][6] He then occupied Palestine from December 1299 until May 1300, controlling the land as far as Gaza and symbolically holding Jerusalem for a few months, raising enthusiastic rumours of the recovery of the Holy Land in the West.[8][9][6] In May however, they had to retreat from the Mamluks.[7] Ghazan himself had had to leave as early as February, due to a revolt in the East led by Qutlugh-Khoja, the son of the Jagatai ruler of Turkestan,[10] but he announced that he would return to the Holy Land in November 1300, and sent letters and ambassadors to West so that they could prepare themselves. A Mongol ambassador named Vicarius visited the Pope in July 1300.[6]
Naval raid of July 1300
Probably in order to reaffirm their commitment to the unity of the Franks and the Mongols,[6] in July 1300,[11] Henri II set up a large naval raiding operation, when 16 galleys combining the forces of Cyprus with those of the Templars and Hospitallers were able to raid Rosetta, Alexandria, Acre, Tortosa and Maraclea, with Ghazan's ambassador Isol the Pisan onboard, who raised the Il-Khan's banner.[5][7][12]
Expedition of November 1300
The citadel of Atlit having been dismantled in 1291, Tortosa remained the only stronghold on the mainland which had the potential to be recaptured, especially since Ruad could be used as a base.[4]
In November 1300, the Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay, who seems to have been enthusiastic about the operation,[7] and the king's brother Amaury de Lusignan launched the expedition to reoccupy Tortosa, with 600 men, including about 150 Knights Templar.[5] Jacques de Molay was in Ruad in November 1300.[13] In November 1300 they attempted to occupy Tortosa on the mainland, staying there for 25 days, destroying property and taking captives, but then moved offshore to the nearby island of Ruad to establish a base.[5][6]
The Mongols were delayed by the rigourous winter, so that the planned junction could not happen.[4] In February 1301 however, the Mongols, accompanied by the Armenian ruler Hethoum, finally made an advance into Syria.[7][4] General Kutlushka had been to Cilicia to fetch Armenian troops and moved south through Antioch.[6] The Armenians were also accompanied by Guy of Ibelin, Count of Jaffa, and John, lord of Giblet.[14][6] He had a force of 60,000, but could do little else than engage in some raids around Syria. They managed to reach the area the city of Aleppo.[7]
Ghazan however had announced that he had cancelled his operations for the year.[6] After deliberations, the Crusader forces decided to return to Cyprus, leaving only a garrison on Ruad.[7][14] Based in the Templar stronghold of Limassol, in Cyprus, Jacques de Molay continued to send appeals to the West, and to organize the building-up of troops and supplies.[15]
Reinforcement of Ruad
| Crusader troops at Ruad | ||
| November 1300 -January 1301 |
May 1301 -April 1302 | |
| Cypriots | 300 | 500 |
| Templars | 150 | 120 |
| Hospitallers | 150 | 0 |
In November 1301, Pope Boniface VIII officially granted Ruad Island to the Knights Templar.[5]
The fortifications of Ruad were strengthened, and a force of 120 Templar knights, 500 archers and 400 servants was installed on the island.[4][6] This represented a considerable commitment as the manpower being engaged corresponded to "close to half the size of the normal complement for the twelfth-century Kingdom of Jerusalem".[4][14] They were under the order of the Templar Marshall Barthélemy de Quincy.[4][6]
Plans for combined operations between the Europeans and the Mongols were again made for the following winter offensives, in 1301 and 1302.[16] A letter has been kept from Jacques de Molay to Edward I, and dated April 8, 1301, informing him of the troubles encountered by Ghazan, but announcing that Ghazan was supposed to come in Autumn:
"And our convent, with all our galleys and 'tarides' [light galleys][lacuna] has been transported to the isle of Tortosa to await Ghazan's army and his Tartars."
— Jacques de Molay, letter to Edward I, April 8, 1301[17]
And in a letter he wrote to the king of Aragon a few months later:[16]
"The king of Armenia had sent his messengers to the king of Cyprus to tell him . . . that Ghazan was now on the point of coming to the sultan's lands with a multitude of Tartars. Knowing this, we now intend to go to the isle of Tortosa, where our convent has remained all this year with horses and arms, causing much damage to the casaux along the coast and capturing many Saracens. We intend to go there and settle in to await the Tartars."
— Jacques de Molay, letter to the king of Aragon, 1301.[16]
Ghazan again sent a letter to king Edward I of England in 1302.[7]
Mamluk counter-attack
In mid-1302 the Egyptian Mamluks attacked Ruad with a fleet of 16 galleys, and captured it in the Siege of Ruad.[5][7] Ruad was to be the last Crusader base in the Levant.[18] The Mamluks slaughtered many of the inhabitants, beheaded the Syrian footsoldiers, and captured the surviving Templars to send them to prison in Cairo.[5] About 40 of the Templars were still in prison in Cairo several years later, refusing to apostasise.[5]
Ghazan made a last attack on the Mamluks in Spring 1303, which ended in disaster, his general Qutlugh Shah being defeated near Damascus at the Battle of Marj al-Saffar on 20 April 1303.[7]
When Ghâzân died in 1304 Jacques de Molay's dream of a rapid reconquest of the Holy Land was destroyed. These dramatic events led Jacques de Molay to oppose the principle of a small-scale Crusader attacks in anticipation of the attack of a larger force, as a strategy to recapture the Holy Land.[5]
Despite this failure, new plans for a Crusade were made in 1305 by Pope Clement V.[5] In 1307 Clement V received new ambassadors from Oljeitu, cheering him "like spiritual sustenance", and encouraging him to evoke the restitution of the Holy Land by the Mongols as a strong possibility.[7] To develop these plans, Jacques de Molay was summoned to France, from which he would never return.[5]
Notes
- ^ Demurger, p.139
- ^ The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem by Denys Pringle p.70
- ^ Crusader art in the Holy Land Jaroslav Folda p.525
- ^ a b c d e f g Malcom Barber (1995). The New Knighthood, p. 294. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521558727.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Malcom Barber (2006). The trial of the templars, p.22ff. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521856396.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Demurger, p.142ff
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Peter Jackson (2005). The Mongols and the West, 1221-1410, p.170ff. Pearson Education. ISBN 0582368960.
- ^ Andrew Jotischky (2004). Crusading and the crusader states, p.249. Pearson Education. ISBN 0582418518.
- ^ Helen Nicholson (2001). The Knights Hospitaller, p.45. Boydell & Brewer. ISBN 0851158455.
- ^ The Islamic world in ascendancy: from the Arab conquests to the siege of Vienna by Martin Sicker p.128
- ^ Malcom Barber, The new Knighthood, Cambridge University Press, 1995, ISBN 0521558727, p.293
- ^ Demurger, p.147
- ^ Demurger, p.159
- ^ a b c Peter W. Edbury (1991). Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191-1374, p.105. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521268761.
- ^ Demurger, p.159
- ^ a b c Demurger, p.154ff
- ^ Quoted in Demurger, p.154. PRO, Ancient Correspondence, Special Collections 1/55, f. 22; published in Sacrae Domus Militiae Templi, p. 368.
- ^ Ibn Khaldun: the Mediterranean in the 14th century : rise and fall of Empiresp.19
References
- Demurger, Alain 2002 Jacques de Molay, Bibiographie Payot, ISBN 9782228902359