INTRODUCTORY 13
For three months after Godfrey's death, the principality
of Jerusalem had no ruler. The Patriarch of Jerusalem—
Dagobert, Bishop of Pisa—was an ambitious and thrustful
prelate, and in the name of the Church he demanded the
custody of the Holy City and Jaffa. Godfrey, he declared,
had promised that, if he died childless, the Church should
succeed to these places, and the Patriarch insisted that this
promise must be honoured. Even apart from Godfrey's
undertaking, Dagobert argued that since God alone had made
the conquest of Jerusalem possible and as He was its King,
the Church, as God's representative on earth, should be
entrusted with the government. Godfrey's brother, Baldwin
of Edessa, refused to admit the pretensions of the Church.
He marched to Jerusalem with 1,500 men and laid claim to
the principality. The age feared, if it did not reverence, the
Church j but, as at the time of Godfrey's election, most men
felt that a warrior was needed for a territory threatened by
so many foes, and Baldwin—" a little saddened by the death
of his brother ", says Fulcher of Chartres, " but most happy
to succeed to his heritage "—was chosen to be the second
ruler. The black-bearded luxury-loving Baldwin I did not
reject a crown. On Christmas Day, uoo, he had himself
crowned at Bethlehem as King of Jerusalem amid scenes of
the greatest splendour. Unlike his brother Godfrey, he
delighted in ostentation and he surrounded himself with all
the panoply of an oriental ruler. He adopted eastern dress,
eastern manners, eastern ceremony, maintaining a brilliantly-
appointed court and never appearing in public on State
occasions without a magnificent escort.
Baldwin was called upon to wage almost incessant war with
inadequate resources in men and money. He had expected
to receive the assistance of large armies from the West, and
in 1100 three expeditions set out from Europe about the same
time to fight the infidel in the Holy Land. All three, how-
ever, were wretched failures* Badly led, betrayed to the