Geoffroy de Sergines

Geoffroy de Sergines , also called Sargines (* around 1205 , † April 1269 in Akkon ) was a French knight and at times Seneschal and Regent (Bailli) of the Kingdom of Jerusalem .

Life

Geoffroy came from the lordly family of Sergines ( Yonne department ) and was a vassal of Count Hugo I of Châtillon . With his permission, however, around 1235 he became a religious follower of King Louis IX. of France . Around the same time his brother, Pierre de Sergines , was made Archbishop of Tire and Geoffroy followed him to the Holy Land . After he returned home from there in 1244, he became one of the most respected knights of the royal household. The chronicler Jean de Joinville later counted him, along with Thibaud de Marly, Philippe de Nanteuil and Humbert de Beaujeu , among the prudhommes chevaliers .

Following the king's entourage, Geoffroy took part in the sixth crusade into Egypt . At the disgraceful retreat from al-Mansura , he commanded the rearguard of the army together with Gaucher de Châtillon . When they were surprised on April 6, 1250 at Fariskur by an overwhelming force of the Mamluks , Geoffroy brought the king to a small hut in safety with the intention of defending him to the death. But before the final fight came, the other knights surrendered and like the king Geoffroy was captured by the Mamluks. He was committed to her release by organizing the handover of the city of Damiette to the Mamluks on May 6, 1250 .

After King Ludwig returned to France in 1254, Geoffroy stayed in Palestine. He was appointed by the king to captain a regiment that consisted of a hundred knights and several archers. It should serve to defend the beleaguered Christian barons and as the basis for a new crusade by King Ludwig. It was financed by annual subsidies from France amounting to 4,000 livre tournois, and it was to be constantly reinforced by France, both materially and personally. The regiment was initially stationed in Jaffa , but was shortly afterwards transferred to Acre , the capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Since Geoffroy carried the main burden of defending the city, he was also given the office of Seneschal of the Kingdom, i.e. the supreme command of all troops.

Together with Count John of Jaffa , he attacked an Egyptian caravan in 1256, defeated and then killed the Egyptian governor of Jerusalem, who had gone out to punish them. The latent threat to the Muslim powers by the Mongols relieved the Christians from this front in the following years, but they got bogged down in a civil war that was fomented by the sea powers Venice and Genoa . As a neutral authority in this dispute, Geoffroy was appointed in 1259 by the regent Plaisance as her deputy regent on the Palestinian mainland. Together with her he reached the end of the fighting in 1261 when the Genoese Tire and the Venetians and Pisans Acre were awarded as trading posts.

A little later, Plaisance died and Geoffroy provisionally took over the actual reign as Bailli in Acre, as a dispute had broken out within the royal family about the assignment of this office. Princess Isabella , the sister-in-law of Plaisance, came to Acre in 1263 and Geoffroy gave her the office of regent, but she died the following year. The barons then unanimously recognized their son, Prince Hugo of Antioch , as the new regent, for whom Geoffroy now acted as deputy. During this time, the situation of the Christians became more and more threatening after the Mamluks defeated the Mongols in 1261 in the battle of ʿAin Jālūt and were thus able to take an offensive again in the Holy Land. In 1263 Geoffroy fended off an attack by the Sultan Baibars I. on Acre, where he was seriously injured. In return, reinforced by knights under Olivier de Termes and the Knights of the Templars , he attacked the Egyptian fortresses of Ascalon and Bethsan in 1264 , which Baibars responded to in 1265 with the conquest of Caesarea , Haifa and Arsuf . In 1266, Baibars continued his conquest and took Safed and Toron . Meanwhile, reinforcements from France under Odo of Burgundy arrived in Acre . Although he died shortly afterwards, most of his knights remained under the leadership of Marshal Érard de Valéry in the city, which they were able to defend against another attack by Baibars in 1267. In the same year, King Hugo II of Cyprus died and the previous regent was named Hugo III. new king of Cyprus. And when the rightful king of Jerusalem, Konradin , was beheaded in 1268 , the “ Haute Cour ” of the Barons Outremers also offered the new Cypriot king the royal dignity of Jerusalem. Baibars continued to run unstoppable against the Christian castles in 1268, took Beaufort and Jaffa in a coup and destroyed the rich Antioch .

Geoffroy de Sergines died in Acre in the spring of 1269. His successor as regimental captain and seneschal was Robert de Crésèque. In December of the same year, the regiment was ambushed by the Mamluks and killed. Olivier de Termes then took the lead.

The poet Rutebeuf dedicated a lament ( La complainte de monseigneur Joffroi de Sergines ) to Geoffroy, praising him as the ideal of a crusader.

literature

• Christopher Marshall: Warfare in the Latin East, 1192-1291 (= Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought. Ser. 4, 17). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1994, ISBN 0-521-47742-5 .
• Jonathan Riley-Smith : What were the Crusades? 3rd edition. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2002, ISBN 0-333-94904-8 .
• Steven Runciman : History of the Crusades. Special edition in one volume without references to sources and literature. CH Beck, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-406-02527-7 .

Footnotes

1. ^ The Memoirs of the Lord of Joinville. A new English version by Ethel Wedgwood. J. Murray London 1906, II, § 7.
2. ↑ Cf. C. Marshall: Warfare in the Latin East. 1994, p. 77.

predecessor	Office	successor
Baldwin of Ibelin	Seneschal of Jerusalem 1254–1269	Robert of Crésèque
Johann von Ibelin-Arsuf Hugo of Antioch	Bailli of Jerusalem 1259-1261 1264-1267	Hugo of Antioch Balian by Ibelin-Arsuf
Plaisance of Antioch	Regent of Jerusalem 1261–1263	Isabella of Cyprus