This could well have contributed to Andrew, Bohemund and Hugh’s
decision to quit the crusade after only a few months, in January 1218.^95
The focus now shifted to Egypt. As the only crowned head present,
John became the crusade’s formal leader there– and this was very
necessary, if he wanted to be sure that conquests made in Egypt would
come into his hands. John was more the expedition’s supreme military
commander, however, than he was its political director. Throughout the
crusade, he displayed his courage and knightly prowess to the full,
although he was cautious, too, as and when prudence required it. We
should note, for instance, how carefully he reconnoitred the abandoned
Egyptian camp at al-’Adilīyah in the spring of 1219. Despite John’s best
efforts, though, the crusade got bogged down besieging the port of
Damietta, producing‘the longest static campaign in the history of the
eastern crusades’.^96 Furthermore, a challenge to John’s leadership
emerged in the person of the papal legate, Pelagius of Albano. The legate
represented the newly aggrandized post-Innocentian papacy, and it is
worth noting that he also had control over the disbursement of vast
amounts of ready cash that the Church had collected. The biggest
problem, though, was simply that Pelagius saw his task as maintaining
the crusade until the papacy’s proposed ‘real’ commander-in-chief,
Frederick II, was ready to lead it. Frederick had long ago shed his role
as the vulnerable child-king of Sicily. By 1219 he had gathered up the
Hohenstaufen inheritance, becoming king of Germany too, and he was
on the verge of acquiring the imperial title. He was already the greatest
figure in the Latin West, and the Fifth Crusade was dominated by his
subjects.^97
John and Pelagius’s first major disagreement took place not long
before the crusaders finally captured Damietta in early November
- The new head of the Ayyubid dynasty, al-Kāmil, cannily offered
the crusaders almost everything they wanted in the Holy Land in
exchange for a withdrawal from his heartland of Egypt. John was in
favour of this proposal, but the crusade’s chieffigures rejected iten
masse–primarily, it seems, because al-Kāmil intended to retain a pair
of vital Transjordanian fortresses, making the Holy City indefensible in
the long run. The key clash between John and Pelagius took place after
Damietta’s capture, however. The issue at stake was who should have the
lordship of the city: the perennial issue of the disposition of crusade
conquests. Pelagius argued that Damietta should be held by the Church
in trust until Frederick II’s arrival. For his part, John would have wanted
(^95) See Perry,John,89–94. (^96) Tyerman,God’s War, 629.
(^97) For this phase of the crusade, see Perry,John,97–103.
John of Brienne and the Call of Jerusalem 53