Conrad of Montferrat (Italian: Corrado del Monferrato; Piedmontese: Conrà ëd Monfrà) (c. 1146 – 28 April 1192) was a nobleman, one of the major participants in the Third Crusade. He was the de facto King of Jerusalem (as Conrad I) by virtue of his marriage to Isabella I of Jerusalem from 24 November 1190, but officially elected only in 1192, days before his death. He was also the eighth Marquess of Montferrat from 1191.
Early life
Conrad was the second son of Marquess William V of Montferrat, "the Elder", and his wife Judith of Babenberg. He was a first cousin of Frederick Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor, as well as Louis VII of France and Leopold V of Austria.
Conrad was born in Montferrat, which is now a region of Piedmont, in northwest Italy; during the era in which he was born, it was a margraviate of the Kingdom of Italy in the Holy Roman Empire. The exact place and year are unknown. He is first mentioned in a charter in 1160, when serving at the court of his maternal uncle, Conrad, Bishop of Passau, later Archbishop of Salzburg. (He may have been named after him, or after his mother's half-brother, Conrad III of Germany.)
A handsome man, with great personal courage and intelligence, he was described in the Historia brevis occupationis et amissionis Terrae Sanctae ("A Short History of the Occupation and Loss of the Holy Land"):
(The last sentence refers to his third marriage to Isabella of Jerusalem in 1190, for which see below.)
He was active in diplomacy from his twenties, and became an effective military commander, campaigning alongside other members of his family in the struggles with the Lombard League. He first married an unidentified lady before 1179, but she was dead by the end of 1186, without leaving any surviving issue.
Byzantine Empire
In 1179, following the family's alliance with Manuel I Comnenos, Conrad led an army against Frederick Barbarossa's forces, then commanded by the imperial Chancellor, Archbishop Christian of Mainz. He defeated them at Camerino in September, taking the Chancellor hostage. (He had previously been a hostage of the Chancellor.) He left the captive in his brother Boniface's care and went to Constantinople to be rewarded by the Emperor, returning to Italy shortly after Manuel's death in 1180. Now in his mid-thirties, his personality and good looks made a striking impression at the Byzantine court: Niketas Choniates describes him as "of beautiful appearance, comely in life's springtime, exceptional and peerless in manly courage and intelligence, and in the flower of his body's strength".
In the winter of 1186–1187, Isaac II Angelus offered his sister, Theodora, as a bride to Conrad's younger brother Boniface, to renew the Byzantine alliance with Montferrat, but Boniface was married. Conrad, recently widowed, had taken the cross, intending to join his father in the Kingdom of Jerusalem; instead, he accepted Isaac's offer and returned to Constantinople in the spring of 1187. On his marriage, he was awarded the rank of Caesar. However, almost immediately, he had to help the Emperor defend his throne against a revolt, led by General Alexios Vranas. According to Choniates, Conrad inspired the weak Emperor to take the initiative. He fought without a shield or helmet and wore a linen cuirass instead of mail in the battle in which Vranas was killed. He was slightly wounded in the shoulder, but unhorsed Vranas, who was then killed and beheaded by his bodyguards.
However, feeling that his service had been insufficiently rewarded, wary of Byzantine anti-Latin sentiment (his youngest brother, Caesar "of Thessalonica" Renier, had been murdered in 1182) and of possible vengeance-seeking by Vranas's family, Conrad set off for the Kingdom of Jerusalem in July 1187 aboard a Genoese merchantman. Some popular modern histories have claimed that he was fleeing vengeance after committing a private murder: this is due to a failure to recognise Vranas's name, garbled into "Lyvernas" in the Old French Continuation of William of Tyre and Roger of Howden's abridgement of his own Gesta regis Henrici Secundi (formerly attributed to Benedict of Peterborough). Roger had initially referred to Conrad as "having slain a prominent nobleman in a rebellion"—meaning Vranas; in his Chronica, he condensed this to "having committed homicide", omitting the context.
Defense of Tyre
frame|Conrad arrives at Tyre: marginal sketch in late a 12th-century copy of the [[Brevis Historia Regni Hierosolymitani, a continuation of the Annals of Genoa (Bib. Nat. Française)]]
Conrad evidently intended to join his father, who held the castle of St Elias. He arrived first off Acre, which had recently fallen to Saladin (Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb), and so sailed north to Tyre, where he found the remnants of the Crusader army. After his victory at the Battle of Hattin over the army of Jerusalem, Saladin was on the march north, and had already captured Acre, Sidon, and Beirut. Raymond III of Tripoli and his stepsons, Reginald of Sidon and several other leading nobles who had escaped the battle had fled to Tyre, but most were anxious to return to their own territories to defend them. Raymond of Tripoli was in failing health, and died soon after he went home.
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 went to refortify his own castle of Belfort on the Litani River. With the support of the established Italian merchant communities in the city, Conrad re-organised the defence 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. As the chronicler Ibn al-Athir wrote of the man the Arabs came to respect and fear as al-Markis: "He was a devil incarnate in his ability to govern and defend a town, and a man of extraordinary courage". Tyre successfully withstood the siege, and desiring a more profitable conquest, Saladin's army moved on south to Caesarea, Arsuf, and Jaffa. Meanwhile, Conrad sent Joscius, Archbishop of Tyre, to the West in a black-sailed ship, bearing appeals for aid. Arabic writers claimed that he also carried propaganda pictures to use in his preaching, including one of the horses of Saladin's army stabled (and urinating) in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and another of a Saracen slapping Christ's face.
In November 1187, Saladin returned for a second siege of Tyre. Conrad was still in command of the city, which was now heavily fortified and filled with Christian refugees from across the north of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. This time Saladin opted for a combined ground and naval assault, setting up a blockade of the harbour. In an incident described by the Itinerarium Peregrinorum (which is generally hostile to Conrad), the Old French Continuation and Sicardus of Cremona's second chronicle (now known through quotations by Salimbene di Adam and Alberto Millioli), Saladin presented Conrad's aged father, William V of Montferrat, who had been captured at Hattin, before the walls of the city. He offered to release William and bestow great gifts upon Conrad if he surrendered Tyre. The old man told his son to stand firm, even when the Egyptians threatened to kill him. Conrad declared that William had lived a long life already, and aimed at him with a crossbow himself. Saladin allegedly said, "This man is an unbeliever and very cruel". But he had succeeded in calling Saladin's bluff: the old Marquis William was released, unharmed, at Tortosa in 1188, and returned to his son.
On 30 December, Conrad's forces launched a dawn raid on the weary Egyptian sailors, capturing many of their galleys. The remaining Egyptian ships tried to escape to Beirut, but the Tyrian ships gave chase, and the Egyptians were forced to beach their ships and flee. Saladin then launched an assault on the landward walls, thinking that the defenders were still distracted by the sea battle. However, Conrad led his men in a charge out of the gates and broke the enemy: Hugh of Tiberias distinguished himself in the battle. Saladin was forced to pull back yet again, burning his siege engines and ships to prevent them from falling into enemy hands.
Struggle for the crown
thumb|right|300px|The Near East, 1190, at the outset of the Third Crusade
In the summer of 1188, Saladin released king Guy of Lusignan, the husband of Queen Sibylla, from captivity. A year later, in 1189, Guy, accompanied by his brother Geoffrey, appeared at Tyre and demanded that Conrad hand over the keys to the city to him. Conrad refused this demand and declared that Guy had forfeited his rights to be king of Jerusalem at the Battle of Hattin in 1187. He said that he was holding the city until the arrival of the kings from Europe. By this, he was invoking the terms of Baldwin IV's will, terms already broken by Guy and Sibylla: in the event of the death of his nephew Baldwin V of Jerusalem it had been Baldwin's will that Baldwin V's "most rightful heirs" were to hold the regency until the succession could be settled by Henry II of England, Philip II of France, and the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I. Conrad would not allow Guy and Sibylla to enter the city but did allow them to camp outside Tyre's walls with their retainers.
Conrad was persuaded by his cousin-once-removed, Louis III, Landgrave of Thuringia, to join Guy in the Siege of Acre in 1189. The siege lasted for over two years. In the summer of 1190, Conrad travelled north to Antioch to lead another young kinsman, Frederick of Swabia, safely back to Acre with the remnants of his cousin Frederick Barbarossa's imperial army.
thumb|Marriage of Conrad of Montferrat and Isabelle of Jerusalem
When Queen Sibylla and their daughters died of disease later that year, King Guy no longer had a legal claim to the throne—but refused to step aside. The heiress of Jerusalem was Queen Sibylla's half-sister Isabella, who was married to Humphrey IV of Toron, of whom she was fond. However, Conrad had the support of her mother Maria Comnena and stepfather Balian of Ibelin, as well as Reginald of Sidon and other major nobles of Outremer. They obtained an annulment on the grounds that Isabella had been underage at the time of the marriage and had not been able to give consent. Conrad then married Isabella himself, despite rumours of bigamy because of his marriage to Theodora, who was still alive. However, Choniates, who usually expresses strong disapproval of marital/sexual irregularities, makes no mention of this. This may imply that a divorce had been effected from the Byzantine side before 1190, by which time it was obvious that Conrad would not be returning. There were also objections on grounds of canonical incest, since Conrad's brother had previously been married to Isabella's half-sister, and Church law regarded this kind of affinity as equal to a blood relationship. However, the papal legate Ubaldo Lanfranchi, Archbishop of Pisa, gave his approval. Opponents claimed he had been bribed. The marriage, on 24 November 1190, was conducted by Philip of Dreux, Bishop of Beauvais—son of Conrad's cousin Robert I of Dreux. Conrad was now de jure King of Jerusalem. However, he had been wounded in battle only nine days previously and returned with his bride to Tyre to recover. He came back to the siege in spring, making an unsuccessful sea attack against the Tower of Flies at the harbour entrance.
As Guy was a vassal of Richard I, King of England for his lands in Poitou, Richard supported him in this political struggle, while Conrad was supported by his cousin Leopold V of Austria and cousin-once-removed Philip II, King of France. Conrad acted as chief negotiator in the surrender of Acre and raised the kings' banners in the city. Afterwards, the parties attempted to come to an agreement. Guy was confirmed as king of Jerusalem, and Conrad was made his heir. Conrad would retain the cities of Tyre, Beirut, and Sidon, and his heirs would inherit Jerusalem on Guy's death. In July 1191 Conrad's kinsman, King Philip, decided to return to France, but before he left he turned over half the treasure plundered from Acre to Conrad, along with all his prominent Muslim hostages. King Richard asked Conrad to hand over the hostages, but Conrad refused as long as he could. After he finally relented (since Richard was now the leader of the Crusade), Richard had all the hostages killed. Conrad did not join Richard on the campaign to the south, preferring to remain with his wife Isabella in Tyre—believing his life to be in danger. It was probably around this time that Conrad's father died.
During that winter, Conrad opened direct negotiations with Saladin, suspecting that Richard's next move would be to attempt to wrest Tyre from him and restore it to the royal domain for Guy. His primary aim was to be recognised as ruler in the north, while Saladin (who was simultaneously negotiating with Richard for a possible marriage between his brother Al-Adil and Richard's widowed sister Joan, Dowager Queen of Sicily) hoped to separate him from the Crusaders. The situation took a farcical turn when Richard's envoy, Isabella's ex-husband Humphrey of Toron, spotted Conrad's envoy, Reginald of Sidon, out hawking with Al-Adil. There seems to have been no conclusive agreement with Conrad, and Joan refused marriage to a Muslim.
Assassination
In April 1192, the kingship was put to the vote. To Richard's consternation, the barons of the Kingdom of Jerusalem unanimously elected Conrad as King. Richard sold Guy the lordship of Cyprus, where he continued to use a king's title, to compensate him and to deter him from returning to Poitou, where his family had long had a reputation for rebelliousness. Richard's nephew, Henry II of Champagne, brought the news of the election result to Tyre on 24 April and returned to Acre.
However, Conrad was never crowned. Around late morning or noon on 28 April, Isabella, who was pregnant, was late in returning from the hammam to dine with him, and so, "in a celebratory mood", he went to eat at the house of his kinsman and friend, Philip, Bishop of Beauvais. However, "finding that the prelate had already eaten his meal", Conrad