Baldwin III

Also known as the first poulain king

The first King of Jerusalem born in the East, Baldwin III was a true poulain — a ruler who understood the subtle three-cornered diplomacy between Damascus, Byzantium and his own Latin nobility in a way his European-born predecessors never had. Crowned jointly with his mother Melisende at thirteen, he reached his majority in 1145 but found her unwilling to hand over the royal seal. The crisis festered for seven years. In 1152 Baldwin besieged her in the Tower of David; when she surrendered he let her retire to Nablus with her dignity intact, and the kingdom had its first sole king in twenty years.

In 1153, after a gruelling seven-month siege, his army captured Ascalon from the Fatimids — the last pocket of Egyptian territory on the Palestinian coast, and a fortress that had raided the outskirts of Jerusalem for half a century. He cemented his northern flank by marrying the thirteen-year-old Byzantine princess Theodora Komnene in 1158, recognising imperial suzerainty over Antioch in exchange for a hard Greek shield against the rising power of Nur ad-Din in Syria. He was well-read in the kingdom's customary law, an enthusiastic debater of theology and history, and by William of Tyre's account an exceptionally gifted public speaker.

He died in Beirut in February 1163, aged only thirty-three, perhaps poisoned by a Syrian physician's prescription. The procession that carried him from Beirut to the Holy Sepulchre took eight days, and even Muslim chroniclers paused their campaigning to mourn — Nur ad-Din was reported to have told his commanders that he would not raid Frankish territory while the dead king's people were in grief, because “the Franks have lost such a prince as the world will not see again.” Historians still call his reign the Indian Summer of the First Kingdom.

Preceded by Fulk & Melisende. Succeeded by Amalric I.

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