As the effective lord of Jaffa, Walter was a keyfigure in the politics of
the kingdom of Jerusalem in the late 1230s and early 1240s. As might
have been expected, he seems to have stepped quite naturally into a
leadership role in what was left of the‘Brienne party’, alongside Odo of
Montbéliard and Balian of Sidon. Nevertheless, we can catch only
glimpses of Walter in the extant source material. For example, we hear
that, in 1237, the master of the Temple, Armand of Périgord, engaged in
a series of skirmishes against Ayyubid raiding parties, not far south of
Acre. In the process, he came up against a much larger enemy force than
expected. Against Walter’s advice, we are told, the Templars engaged the
Muslims–and the result was a foregone conclusion. Only the master and
nine of his knights escaped.^84 It is all too easy to interpret this episode as
the root cause for a deepening animosity between Walter and the Order,
which had descended into‘outright hostility’by the time of the battle of
La Forbie. However, charter evidence suggests that Walter remained on
adequate terms with the Templars, even in the immediate aftermath of
the raiding incident.^85 In any event, it can certainly be argued that this
is one of several heavily stylized anecdotes, designed to be set against
what happened a few years later, when Walter’s sound military advice
was ignored once again.
This brings us neatly to the‘Barons’Crusade’of 1239–41. Thefirst
part of this expedition was led by Walter’s suzerain from back home in
France, Count Theobald IV of Champagne, who had also succeeded to
the throne of Navarre in 1234. Walter was present at thefirst great
council of the crusade, at which it was agreed to refortify Ascalon, in
the far south of the kingdom of Jerusalem, before turning the bulk of the
expedition against Damascus. This decision certainly seems to show the
weight of Walter’sinfluence. The notion of refortifying Ascalon could
well have appealed to him, since he was the ruler of the neighbouring
lordship of Jaffa for his mother-in-law, Queen Alice, and there was also a
lingering tradition that the two seigneuries could be paired together
as a sort of‘double county’.^86 On the other hand, though, Theobald
himself was not well disposed towards Alice, since he had been obliged
to buy her off from asserting her claim to Champagne.^87 Theobald was
not really in control of the expedition, however, and this was amply
(^84) Alberic of Trois-Fontaines,Chronica, 942.
(^85) See‘Catalogue’, no. 171; Duchesne 76, fol. 54; and Polejowski,‘The Counts of Brienne
and the Military Orders in the Thirteenth Century’, 290–1.
(^86) The phase is taken from H. E. Mayer,‘The Double County of Jaffa and Ascalon: One
Fief or Two?’, reprinted in hisKings and Lords in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem
87 (Aldershot, 1994), essay no. XII, 181–90.
D’Arbois de Jubainville,Histoire, iv, part 1, 256–64.
92 In the Pages of Joinville (c. 1237–1267)