Baldwin III, King of Jerusalem

BALDWIN III, King of Jerusalem. - Son of Fulk of Anjou, b. ca. 1130, d. 10 February 1162. He was under the guardianship of the queen mother Melisende, who had him anointed and crowned king of Jerusalem at the age of 13 in the basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, on 25 December 1143. Barely a year later (1144) the sultan of Mosul and Aleppo, 'Imād ad-dīn Zenkl, seized Edessa, the eastern linchpin of the Crusaders' dominion. The announcement of that tremendous loss provoked the second Crusade (1147-48) in the West, which failed completely. B. undertook an expedition with the emperor Conrad III of Germany and King Louis VII of France in 1148 against the Saracens who held Damascus, but he did not succeed in reconquering the city. More fatal than the military setbacks was the discord between the Crusaders and the individual Latin states in Palestine; even with the queen mother Melisende, B. had a conflict over dominion in 1152. The following year B. won an important military success by conquering the fortress of Ascalon, occupied by the Saracens. After a few years of tranquillity he had to resume the struggle against Nūr ed-dīn, who from Damascus threatened all the Latin states of the East, which had placed themselves under the ineffective protection of the Byzantine empire. B. did not see the end of that struggle, because he died on 10 February 1162 at Beirut at the age of 32, without a son to succeed him.