Message #166279

[Panita Ristau]

Eleanor enjoyed her stay, but her uncle implored her to remain to enlarge family lands and divorce Louis if the king refused to help what was assuredly the military cause of the Crusade. Louis quickly left Antioch for Tripoli with Eleanor in arrest. Meanwhile, Otto of Freising and the remnant of his troops arrived in Jerusalem early in April, and Conrad soon after.[28] Fulk, Patriarch of Jerusalem, was sent to invite Louis to join them. The fleet that had stopped at Lisbon arrived around this time, as well as the Provençals who had left Europe under the command of Alfonso Jordan, Count of Toulouse. Alphonso himself did not make it to Jerusalem as he died at Caesarea. He was supposedly poisoned either by Eleanor of Aquitaine or Raymond II of Tripoli, the nephew who feared his political aspirations in the county. The original focus of the crusade was Edessa, but the preferred target of King Baldwin III and the Knights Templar was Damascus.[27]