In 1192, Conrad of Montferrat—newly elected king of Jerusalem—was stabbed to death in the streets of Acre in one of the most famous political murders of the crusading era. Steve Tibble explores how the assassination was carried out, who may have ordered it, and why the identity of Conrad’s killer still remains uncertain.
By Steve Tibble
A small, slight man, well-dressed but not ostentatious, is walking home. The scene is a hot night in the close, dark streets of medieval Acre. The smell is atrocious. There is filth overflowing in the gutters. But he does not notice. This is normal. Even comforting. He is in familiar surroundings. And he is happy. He has just dined with his friend and is returning home. Pleasantly buzzed. Relaxed and feeling safe.
As he turns a corner, he notices two young men from his household running towards him. Unusual, but nothing too threatening. Possibly coming to warn him of some problem at home. Maybe bringing news of an overly pushy petitioner.
He has only a second or two to process what is happening before they reach him. Strangely, they do not stop. They both punch him in the stomach and keep moving. Fast. Their master is surprised rather than anything else. He is winded and surprised, almost pushed over by the force of their unexpected blows.
But he doesn’t fall. He just sinks slowly to his knees. And it is only then that he notices how wet he is. There is blood everywhere. It soaks his clothes, mixing slowly with the ordure and offal in the street.
The king-elect of Jerusalem is dying.
A Murder in the Streets of Acre
Map of Acre by Pietro Vesconte – British Library – Add.MS 27376
In the wake of the disaster at Hattin, the crusaders struggled to rebuild their country. The Templars struggled with the challenges of martyrdom.
But for the Assassins, it was business as usual.
The skills of the fidais were useful to protect the sect against bullies, but it also gave them something to trade. In return for safety and influence, they could act on behalf of their patrons, making sure that their enemies died in an appropriately unpleasant manner – a manner, moreover, that did not implicate those who commissioned their death. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the ferocious in-fighting amongst the Muslim city states of the time, many Turkic leaders availed themselves of this opportunity.
The Nizaris did not have a particular problem with Christians, of course. But, ultimately, business was business. In the deadly and pragmatic world of the medieval Holy Land, they occasionally undertook contracts for business reasons, in exchange for money or political advantage.
On 28 April, 1192 Conrad, marquis of Montferrat and, for a very short time, the uncrowned king of Jerusalem, became the victim of one such contract.
The attack was shocking. Conrad was greatly admired. He had been brave and quick-thinking in the immediate aftermath of the meltdown that followed the rout at Hattin. He had saved the city of Tyre, and helped lead the initial fightback. Arguably, it was only because of Conrad of Montferrat that the crusader states were able to struggle on for another century. The impact of his death on the Frankish community was profound.
The murder was, like the Assassins, both well documented, high profile, and yet shrouded in mystery – a lurid ‘true-crime’ murder, full of motives and suspects and yet still in search of a definitive answer. But while the identity of the ultimate author of the crime is unknown, the circumstances of the hit are known in some detail – and, luckily for us, they are corroborated by multiple sources, from different cultures and varying perspectives.
The denouement was a brief but violent dagger assault on the unsuspecting victim. The scene was the commercial district of the crusader city of Acre, the capital of what remained of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Conrad de Montferrat became the de facto King of Jerusalem (as Conrad I) by virtue of his marriage to Isabella I of Jerusalem (depicted here) from 24 November 1190, but officially elected only in 1192, days before his death – Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Français 2824 fol. 173v
That evening Conrad, marquis of Montferrat, ‘had eaten with the Bishop of Beauvais with great pleasure and joy and the time came for him to take his leave. He was in front of the Exchange [of Tyre]…As he went on his way, happy, two young men, without cloaks, carrying two knives, came running up to him, striking him in his body as they ran up, so that he fell’.
Conrad’s men ‘took him gently in their arms and took him from the place where he was hurt…He lived for a short time, then died. But first he made confession and said secretly to the marchioness, his wife, in whose eyes he saw tears, that she must turn her mind to the protection of Tyre…Then he died and was buried’. People were stunned. It was all over so quickly.
This was a classic Nizari hit. At least one of the murderers had insinuated his way into Conrad’s household, using patience to build up trust prior to the job. Both of the fidais had tried to escape but one of them was immediately grabbed and killed outright. The other sought refuge in a church, vainly seeking sanctuary. He was dragged out and interrogated.
Knowing that he was going to be killed, the Assassin proudly confessed that he and his comrade ‘had stayed near to the marquis for a long time in order to do this, that they had for a long time sought successfully to kill him, until the day came when many tears were shed, and that they had been sent by the Old Man of the Mountain who hated him and who causes all those whom he hates with a [bitter] hatred to be killed in such a way.’
Who Ordered the Killing?
Richard I depicted in a 15th century manuscript – British Library MS Harley 4205 fol. 3v
But the ultimate perpetrator, the man who commissioned the act, was never identified. And, as with any good whodunit, there was a long list of suspects.
Some blamed the English, because Richard the Lionheart had been a strong opponent of Conrad’s candidacy for the throne of Jerusalem. The French, inevitably, were pushing stories that ‘King Richard had pursued and sought the death of Conrad through payment’. Even more implausibly, they also suggested that he had hired another fidais squad to travel to France. The French army was so shaken that it ‘sent [messengers] to the king of France, saying that he should fear and protect himself from the Assassins, because they had killed the marquis and that the king of England had sent four of them to sweet France to kill him’.
The English, who, like their master, had been consistently hostile to Conrad, were outraged by the accusation. ‘God! What a foul thing to say’, wrote Ambroise, the Norman chronicler, ‘they did a vile deed when they sent the message [to France]. As a result of it many people were later troubled, angered and grieved…For a long time was the king melancholy on account of the news of the marquis, who by such great misfortune had been killed so hideously’.
Like the French, many local Muslims assumed that King Richard was behind the killing. Conrad had refused to support Richard’s campaigning after King Philip of France had returned to Europe – the English king’s disputes with Conrad had created bad blood and certainly gave him a possible motive.
But commissioning such an attack made little sense for Richard at that point. He had already accepted that Conrad was the only practical choice for king once the crusade had finished, and was planning to get back to England as soon as possible. Tempers were certainly running high, but Conrad’s death was an inconvenience for Richard, rather than an advantage – it merely delayed his return home.
Moreover, the timeline did not fit. Everyone agreed that the murder was the culmination of a long-standing conspiracy – the Assassins seem to have been in Conrad’s employ for at least six months before the murder, so, including planning and negotiations about payment, the plot must have been in train for the best part of a year. If King Richard had a major problem, as a blunt man of action who had no known connections with the Assassins, he would have been far more likely to confront Conrad in person than to enter into extended intrigues.
There were other western suspects too. The German chronicler, Arnold of Lübeck, extended the list of suspects to include, unconvincingly, the military orders. ‘King Conrad of Jerusalem was slain,’ he suggested, ‘through the treachery…of certain Templars,’ presumably in conjunction with their Assassin neighbours. Arnold, who had heard the elaborate stories of how the fidais were trained to accept death, also added with rather forced irony that, he did ‘not know whether [the murderers] found paradise’ after they succeeded in their mission.
Coin issued by Guy de Lusignan when he was Lord of Cyprus. The coin reads REX GVIDO D on the inverse. On the reverse EIERVSALEM is inscribed around the Holy Sepulchre, showing Guy’s reluctance to abandon his claim to Jerusalem. Photo by the Museum of the The Order of St. John and The University of Birmingham
Guy of Lusignan, the unsuccessful contender for the throne of Jerusalem, was Conrad’s arch-rival and yet another suspect – he had an obvious motive in seeing his competitor dead. Humphrey of Toron, a local nobleman whose wife was taken by Conrad as part of his campaign to legitimise his claim to be king of Jerusalem, was also, not surprisingly, no fan.
Most glaringly of all, the crusader Henry II, count of Champagne, deserves a prominent place on any list of suspects, if only because of his motive – he became king on Conrad’s death and took his pregnant widow as his wife. Henry had most to gain.
Even more suspiciously, however, Henry was the only Frankish ruler known to have had a face-to-face relationship with the leader of the Assassins in Syria. And he was also the only one who personally visited the Assassin castles – he went to Kahf in 1194, just a couple of years after Conrad’s death. While he was there, we know that he had discussions with Sinan’s successor, the (new) Old Man of the Mountain. This may have been a courtesy call. Or it may have been an attempt to forge an alliance. But it is also possible that he was there to acknowledge past debts and build on an existing business relationship.
Everyone had a theory, and in the absence of firm evidence, the number of suspects kept multiplying. It is still not clear who ordered the hit on Conrad. Ultimately, although the exact circumstances of the attack itself were known, all the other evidence was purely circumstantial. Accusations, therefore, centred around motivation rather than anything more conclusive. The problem was that there were too many suspects and too many motives – but far too little evidence.
Perhaps, as is so often the case with putative conspiracies, the truth lies in the most mundane, and most obvious, answer – that the Assassins killed Conrad because they didn’t like him.
Prosaically, Sinan had his own disputes with Conrad. In fact, we know that a ship belonging to the Assassins had been seized when it arrived in the port of Tyre and the marquis had refused to return it despite threats from the Old Man – and to make matters worse, Conrad’s men had mistreated the crew. Although Sinan was doubtless glad to accept large sums of money from all or any of the possible suspects, the dramatic assassination itself may have partly been the outcome of a paltry trade dispute, rather than anything of deeper significance.
But there were also far bigger issues at stake – issues which went to the heart of the Assassins’ future in Syria. Conrad and Richard had been at loggerheads. This distracted the crusaders and strengthened Saladin’s hands at the negotiating table. He had maintained direct diplomatic relations with both Conrad and Richard, and played them off against each other. The last thing the Assassins wanted was an undistracted Saladin with nothing better to do than deal with the ‘heretic problem’ that the Nizaris posed.
The Assassins were perhaps also trying to make a point. Conrad’s murder was both a wake-up call and a way to emphasise their importance at a time of critical change. A new map of the region was being drawn up between the Sunni Muslims of the Ayyubid Empire and the Franks of the Third Crusade. A relatively small group such as the Nizaris were in danger of being overlooked and excluded. But death at the highest level, the main bargaining chip in the Assassins’ arsenal, inevitably grabbed attention when it was needed most – and instability in the region was very much in their interests.
They had already made two (or more) attempts on Saladin’s life – and they had very nearly succeeded. The death of the ruler of Jerusalem served, if further proof was needed, to demonstrate how dangerous they were to have as enemies.
It may have been a coincidence, but soon after Conrad’s death a peace treaty was signed by Richard I and Saladin. The truce that was arranged was to run for three years and eight months, and would cover both land and sea. Significantly, Saladin ensured that the treaty covered the Assassins’ territories as well as the crusader states.
Steve Tibble, an honorary research associate at Royal Holloway, University of London, has a new book out – Assassins and Templars: A Battle in Myth and Blood – from Yale University Press. It tells the true history behind the hugely popular video game Assassin’s Creed and the medieval world’s two most extraordinary organisations, tracing their origins, strategies, violent clashes, and enduring legacy in myth and memory.
You can get your copy of Assassins and Templars: A Battle in Myth and Blood through
In 1192, Conrad of Montferrat—newly elected king of Jerusalem—was stabbed to death in the streets of Acre in one of the most famous political murders of the crusading era. Steve Tibble explores how the assassination was carried out, who may have ordered it, and why the identity of Conrad’s killer still remains uncertain.
By Steve Tibble
A small, slight man, well-dressed but not ostentatious, is walking home. The scene is a hot night in the close, dark streets of medieval Acre. The smell is atrocious. There is filth overflowing in the gutters. But he does not notice. This is normal. Even comforting. He is in familiar surroundings. And he is happy. He has just dined with his friend and is returning home. Pleasantly buzzed. Relaxed and feeling safe.
As he turns a corner, he notices two young men from his household running towards him. Unusual, but nothing too threatening. Possibly coming to warn him of some problem at home. Maybe bringing news of an overly pushy petitioner.
He has only a second or two to process what is happening before they reach him. Strangely, they do not stop. They both punch him in the stomach and keep moving. Fast. Their master is surprised rather than anything else. He is winded and surprised, almost pushed over by the force of their unexpected blows.
But he doesn’t fall. He just sinks slowly to his knees. And it is only then that he notices how wet he is. There is blood everywhere. It soaks his clothes, mixing slowly with the ordure and offal in the street.
The king-elect of Jerusalem is dying.
A Murder in the Streets of Acre
In the wake of the disaster at Hattin, the crusaders struggled to rebuild their country. The Templars struggled with the challenges of martyrdom.
But for the Assassins, it was business as usual.
The skills of the fidais were useful to protect the sect against bullies, but it also gave them something to trade. In return for safety and influence, they could act on behalf of their patrons, making sure that their enemies died in an appropriately unpleasant manner – a manner, moreover, that did not implicate those who commissioned their death. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the ferocious in-fighting amongst the Muslim city states of the time, many Turkic leaders availed themselves of this opportunity.
The Nizaris did not have a particular problem with Christians, of course. But, ultimately, business was business. In the deadly and pragmatic world of the medieval Holy Land, they occasionally undertook contracts for business reasons, in exchange for money or political advantage.
On 28 April, 1192 Conrad, marquis of Montferrat and, for a very short time, the uncrowned king of Jerusalem, became the victim of one such contract.
The attack was shocking. Conrad was greatly admired. He had been brave and quick-thinking in the immediate aftermath of the meltdown that followed the rout at Hattin. He had saved the city of Tyre, and helped lead the initial fightback. Arguably, it was only because of Conrad of Montferrat that the crusader states were able to struggle on for another century. The impact of his death on the Frankish community was profound.
The murder was, like the Assassins, both well documented, high profile, and yet shrouded in mystery – a lurid ‘true-crime’ murder, full of motives and suspects and yet still in search of a definitive answer. But while the identity of the ultimate author of the crime is unknown, the circumstances of the hit are known in some detail – and, luckily for us, they are corroborated by multiple sources, from different cultures and varying perspectives.
The denouement was a brief but violent dagger assault on the unsuspecting victim. The scene was the commercial district of the crusader city of Acre, the capital of what remained of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.
That evening Conrad, marquis of Montferrat, ‘had eaten with the Bishop of Beauvais with great pleasure and joy and the time came for him to take his leave. He was in front of the Exchange [of Tyre]…As he went on his way, happy, two young men, without cloaks, carrying two knives, came running up to him, striking him in his body as they ran up, so that he fell’.
Conrad’s men ‘took him gently in their arms and took him from the place where he was hurt…He lived for a short time, then died. But first he made confession and said secretly to the marchioness, his wife, in whose eyes he saw tears, that she must turn her mind to the protection of Tyre…Then he died and was buried’. People were stunned. It was all over so quickly.
This was a classic Nizari hit. At least one of the murderers had insinuated his way into Conrad’s household, using patience to build up trust prior to the job. Both of the fidais had tried to escape but one of them was immediately grabbed and killed outright. The other sought refuge in a church, vainly seeking sanctuary. He was dragged out and interrogated.
Knowing that he was going to be killed, the Assassin proudly confessed that he and his comrade ‘had stayed near to the marquis for a long time in order to do this, that they had for a long time sought successfully to kill him, until the day came when many tears were shed, and that they had been sent by the Old Man of the Mountain who hated him and who causes all those whom he hates with a [bitter] hatred to be killed in such a way.’
Who Ordered the Killing?
But the ultimate perpetrator, the man who commissioned the act, was never identified. And, as with any good whodunit, there was a long list of suspects.
Some blamed the English, because Richard the Lionheart had been a strong opponent of Conrad’s candidacy for the throne of Jerusalem. The French, inevitably, were pushing stories that ‘King Richard had pursued and sought the death of Conrad through payment’. Even more implausibly, they also suggested that he had hired another fidais squad to travel to France. The French army was so shaken that it ‘sent [messengers] to the king of France, saying that he should fear and protect himself from the Assassins, because they had killed the marquis and that the king of England had sent four of them to sweet France to kill him’.
The English, who, like their master, had been consistently hostile to Conrad, were outraged by the accusation. ‘God! What a foul thing to say’, wrote Ambroise, the Norman chronicler, ‘they did a vile deed when they sent the message [to France]. As a result of it many people were later troubled, angered and grieved…For a long time was the king melancholy on account of the news of the marquis, who by such great misfortune had been killed so hideously’.
Like the French, many local Muslims assumed that King Richard was behind the killing. Conrad had refused to support Richard’s campaigning after King Philip of France had returned to Europe – the English king’s disputes with Conrad had created bad blood and certainly gave him a possible motive.
But commissioning such an attack made little sense for Richard at that point. He had already accepted that Conrad was the only practical choice for king once the crusade had finished, and was planning to get back to England as soon as possible. Tempers were certainly running high, but Conrad’s death was an inconvenience for Richard, rather than an advantage – it merely delayed his return home.
Moreover, the timeline did not fit. Everyone agreed that the murder was the culmination of a long-standing conspiracy – the Assassins seem to have been in Conrad’s employ for at least six months before the murder, so, including planning and negotiations about payment, the plot must have been in train for the best part of a year. If King Richard had a major problem, as a blunt man of action who had no known connections with the Assassins, he would have been far more likely to confront Conrad in person than to enter into extended intrigues.
There were other western suspects too. The German chronicler, Arnold of Lübeck, extended the list of suspects to include, unconvincingly, the military orders. ‘King Conrad of Jerusalem was slain,’ he suggested, ‘through the treachery…of certain Templars,’ presumably in conjunction with their Assassin neighbours. Arnold, who had heard the elaborate stories of how the fidais were trained to accept death, also added with rather forced irony that, he did ‘not know whether [the murderers] found paradise’ after they succeeded in their mission.
Guy of Lusignan, the unsuccessful contender for the throne of Jerusalem, was Conrad’s arch-rival and yet another suspect – he had an obvious motive in seeing his competitor dead. Humphrey of Toron, a local nobleman whose wife was taken by Conrad as part of his campaign to legitimise his claim to be king of Jerusalem, was also, not surprisingly, no fan.
Most glaringly of all, the crusader Henry II, count of Champagne, deserves a prominent place on any list of suspects, if only because of his motive – he became king on Conrad’s death and took his pregnant widow as his wife. Henry had most to gain.
Even more suspiciously, however, Henry was the only Frankish ruler known to have had a face-to-face relationship with the leader of the Assassins in Syria. And he was also the only one who personally visited the Assassin castles – he went to Kahf in 1194, just a couple of years after Conrad’s death. While he was there, we know that he had discussions with Sinan’s successor, the (new) Old Man of the Mountain. This may have been a courtesy call. Or it may have been an attempt to forge an alliance. But it is also possible that he was there to acknowledge past debts and build on an existing business relationship.
Everyone had a theory, and in the absence of firm evidence, the number of suspects kept multiplying. It is still not clear who ordered the hit on Conrad. Ultimately, although the exact circumstances of the attack itself were known, all the other evidence was purely circumstantial. Accusations, therefore, centred around motivation rather than anything more conclusive. The problem was that there were too many suspects and too many motives – but far too little evidence.
Perhaps, as is so often the case with putative conspiracies, the truth lies in the most mundane, and most obvious, answer – that the Assassins killed Conrad because they didn’t like him.
Prosaically, Sinan had his own disputes with Conrad. In fact, we know that a ship belonging to the Assassins had been seized when it arrived in the port of Tyre and the marquis had refused to return it despite threats from the Old Man – and to make matters worse, Conrad’s men had mistreated the crew. Although Sinan was doubtless glad to accept large sums of money from all or any of the possible suspects, the dramatic assassination itself may have partly been the outcome of a paltry trade dispute, rather than anything of deeper significance.
But there were also far bigger issues at stake – issues which went to the heart of the Assassins’ future in Syria. Conrad and Richard had been at loggerheads. This distracted the crusaders and strengthened Saladin’s hands at the negotiating table. He had maintained direct diplomatic relations with both Conrad and Richard, and played them off against each other. The last thing the Assassins wanted was an undistracted Saladin with nothing better to do than deal with the ‘heretic problem’ that the Nizaris posed.
The Assassins were perhaps also trying to make a point. Conrad’s murder was both a wake-up call and a way to emphasise their importance at a time of critical change. A new map of the region was being drawn up between the Sunni Muslims of the Ayyubid Empire and the Franks of the Third Crusade. A relatively small group such as the Nizaris were in danger of being overlooked and excluded. But death at the highest level, the main bargaining chip in the Assassins’ arsenal, inevitably grabbed attention when it was needed most – and instability in the region was very much in their interests.
They had already made two (or more) attempts on Saladin’s life – and they had very nearly succeeded. The death of the ruler of Jerusalem served, if further proof was needed, to demonstrate how dangerous they were to have as enemies.
It may have been a coincidence, but soon after Conrad’s death a peace treaty was signed by Richard I and Saladin. The truce that was arranged was to run for three years and eight months, and would cover both land and sea. Significantly, Saladin ensured that the treaty covered the Assassins’ territories as well as the crusader states.
You can get your copy of Assassins and Templars: A Battle in Myth and Blood through
Yale University Press website
Amazon.com
Amazon.ca
Amazon.co.uk
To learn more about Steve, please visit his website or follow him on Instagram
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