Conrad of Montferrat

Conrad of Monferrat, following his family's alliance with Manuel I Komnenos, had in 1179 led an army against Frederick Barbarossa's forces, then commanded by the imperial Chancellor, Archbishop Christian of Mainz.

He had defeated them at Camerino in September, taking the Chancellor hostage.

(He had previously been a hostage of the Chancellor.)

Leaving the captive in his brother Boniface's care, he had gone to Constantinople to be rewarded by the Emperor, returning to Italy shortly after Manuel's death in 1180.

Then in his mid-thirties, his personality and good looks had made a striking impression at the imperial court.

Isaac II Angelus had in the winter of 1186–1187 offered his sister Theodora as a bride to Conrad's younger brother Boniface, to renew the imperial family’s alliance with Montferrat, but Boniface is married.

Conrad, recently widowed, had taken the cross, intending to join his father in the Kingdom of Jerusalem; instead, he accepts Isaac's offer and returns o Constantinople in spring 1187.

On his marriage, he is awarded the rank of Caesar.

However, almost immediately, he has to help the Emperor defend his throne against a revolt, led by General Alexios Branas, who is doubly linked to the imperial Komnenos family.

He is the son of Michael Branas and of Maria Komnene, who was the great-niece of Alexios I Komnenos.

He himself had married Anna Vatatzaina, the niece of Manuel I Komnenos, and her sister, Theodora, had been Manuel's lover.

Branas is one of relatively few generals who had never rebelled against Andronikos I Komnenos, who had rewarded his loyalty by raising him to the exalted rank of protosebastos.

Branas had led several successful campaigns on his behalf, against the forces of Béla III of Hungary in 1183, against a rebellion led by Andronikos, Isaac and Alexios Angelos in 1184, and against the Norman invaders under William II of Sicily in 1185 (Battle of Demetritzes).

Shortly after the accession of Isaac II Angelos, Branas is in 1187 sent to counter the Vlach-Bulgarian Rebellion.

This time he does rebel, but is defeated by Conrad of Montferrat, the emperor's brother-in-law, who commands the center of the imperial forces in the battle.

Branas wounds Conrad slightly in the shoulder, who nevertheless unhorses him, his lance striking the cheekpiece of his helmet.

Branas is then beheaded by Conrad's supporting foot soldiers.

The head is taken to the imperial palace, where it is treated like a football, and is then sent to Branas's wife Anna, who (according to the historian Niketas Choniates) reacts bravely to the shocking sight.

However, Conrad, feeling that his service had been insufficiently rewarded, wary of Constantinople’s anti-Latin sentiment (his youngest brother Renier had been murdered in 1182) and of possible vengeance-seeking by Branas's family, sets off for the Kingdom of Jerusalem in July 1187 aboard a Genoese merchant vessel.

Conrad of Montferrat, Baldwin V's paternal uncle, lands at Tyre with a small Italian fleet and a number of followers barely two weeks after Hattin.

Conrad had evidently intended to join his father, who holds the castle of St. Elias.

He had arrived first off Acre, which had recently fallen to Saladin, and so had sailed north to Tyre, where he finds the remnants of the Crusader army.

Raymond III of Tripoli and his stepsons, Reginald of Sidon, Balian of Ibelin, Payen of Haifa and several other leading nobles who had escaped the battle, have fled to Tyre, but most are anxious to return to their own territories to defend them.

Raymond, despairing of Tyre's defense and in failing health, had returned to Tripoli, where he will die soon afterwards; Reginald returns to Sidon.

According to the Old French Continuation of William of Tyre, Reginald of Sidon had taken charge in Tyre and was in the process of negotiating its surrender with Saladin.

Conrad allegedly threw Saladin's banners into the ditch, and made the Tyrians swear total loyalty to him.

His rise to power seems to have been less dramatic in reality.

Reginald goes to refortify his own castle of Belfort on the Litani River.

With the support of the established Italian merchant communities in the city, Conrad reorganizes the defense of Tyre, setting up a commune, similar to those he had so often fought against in Italy.

When Saladin's army arrived, they found the city well defended and defiant.

Saladin presents Conrad's aged father, William V of Montferrat, who had been captured at Hattin, before the walls of the city, and offers to release his father and bestow great gifts upon Conrad if he surrenders Tyre.

The old man tells his son to stand firm, even when the Egyptians threaten to kill him.

Conrad declares that William has lived a long life already, and aims at him with a crossbow himself.

According to the Old French Continuation of William of Tyre, Saladin said, "This man is an unbeliever and very cruel".

Conrad succeeds, however, in calling Saladin's bluff: the old Marquess William in 1188 will be released unharmed at Tortosa and returned to his son.

Saladin's sudden success, which sees the crusaders reduced to the occupation of only three important cities, is marred by his failure to capture Tyre, an almost impregnable coastal fortress to which the scattered Christian survivors of the recent battles flock.

Balian is to become one of Conrad’s closest allies.

Leaving Tyre, Balian asks Saladin for permission to return through the lines to Jerusalem to escort his wife and their children to Tripoli.

Saladin allows this, provided that Balian leave the city and take an oath to never raise arms against him.

Saladin indeed arrives to besiege Jerusalem in September, after he has conquered almost all of the rest of the kingdom, including Ibelin, Nablus, Ramla, and Ascalon.

The sultan feels no ill will to Balian for breaking his oath, and arranges for an escort to accompany Maria and their children to Tripoli.

As the highest ranking lord remaining in Jerusalem, Balian, as Ibn al-Athir wrote, is seen by the Muslims as holding a rank "more or less equal to that of a king."

Acre, …

…Nazareth, …

…Caesarea, …

…Nablus, …

…Jaffa, and …

…Ascalon have fallen within three months.

Saladin and his lieutenants by September 1187 have occupied most of the major strongholds in the kingdom and all of the ports south of Tripoli.

Gaza, which has declined during the Crusades, reverts to Muslim control; it will never regain its former importance.