‘because all our menfled shamefully’; it was not his fault, in other words.
He was hung from a gibbet outside his own town of Jaffa, and told that he
would not be cut down until it capitulated. But Walter cried out to the
people that they should not yield under any circumstances, and that if
they did, he himself would kill them. A much better speech is provided by
the English chronicler, Matthew Paris:
You see that my body is so broken that only by my voice and words alone am
I recognizable to you. Death is almost upon me; with difficulty I inhale the breath
of life. You should concede nothing for me. Why ransom someone who is already
dying?...By the blood of Christ, which was poured on this land for the salvation
of the whole world, do not surrender the citadel and the town to these infidel
dogs...for it is certain that they would show you no mercy, nor would you be
rescued by those who are now hastening to your aid.^95
Since he could not get anything useful out of Walter, Berke Khan sent
him as a gift to Cairo. There, with the sultan’s permission, the count was
ignominiously murdered by a posse of Egyptian merchants whom he had
wronged in the past. (A more colourful version of this story claims that
Walter was killed in a brawl with his captor, an Ayyubid amir, with whom
he was playing chess.)^96 The crucial point is hammered home by
Joinville:‘we may believe that, because of this, he is numbered amongst
the martyrs in heaven’.^97
It is highly appropriate, then, that Joinville completes this quasi-
hagiography with an account of what happened to the new martyr’s
relics.Asiswellknown,LouisIX’sfirst crusade was prompted by the
news of the battle of La Forbie. When Louis made peace with the
Egyptians after his own military catastrophe six years later, the deal
included not only the liberation of all the Frankish captives, but also the
release of Walter’s remains so that they could be given a proper Chris-
tian burial. Joinville takes up the story:‘my lady of Sidon [Margaret of
Reynel] received the bones of Count Walter and had them buried in the
Hospital at Acre...she arranged the service so that each knight offered
acandleandasilverdenier, and [King Louis] offered a candle and a
gold bezant...’Margaret herself bore almost all the costs, and this
made the admiring chronicler very keen to stress his own kinship with
her:‘she was the cousin of Count Walter and the sister of my lord
Walter, lord of Reynel, whose daughter John, lord of Joinville, took as
his wife after he returned from overseas.’^98
(^95) Matthew Paris,Chronica majora, v, 219–20.
(^96) SeeChroniques d’Amadi et de Strambaldi, ed. R. de Mas Latrie (Paris, 1891–3), 202; and
97 also above. 66.
Adapted from Joinville,‘Life’, sections 531–8.^98 Ibid., sections 465–6.
Cyprus and the Holy Land 95