of Jerusalem to its widest
limits. His reign is marked by almost incessant fighting in northern Syria.
In 1119, after the defeat and death of Roger of Antioch, he defeated the
amirs of Mardin and Damascus at Danith; in subsequent years he extended his
sway to the very gates of Aleppo. In 1123 he was captured by Balak of
Mardin, and confined in Kharput with Joscelin, his successor in the county
of Edessa, who had been captured in the previous year. During his captivity
Eustace Graverius became regent of Jerusalem, and succeeded, with the aid
of the Venetians, in repelling an Egyptian attack, and even in capturing
Tyre, 1124. In 1124 Baldwin II. succeeded in securing his liberty, under
conditions which he instantly broke; and he at once embarked on strenuous
and not unsuccessful hostilities against Aleppo and Damascus (1124-1127),
exacting tribute from both. During his reign he twice acted as regent in
Antioch (1119, 1130), and in 1126 he married his daughter Alice to Bohemund
II. In 1128 he offered the hand of his eldest daughter, Melisinda, to Fulk
of Anjou, who had been recommended to him by Honorius II. In 1129 Fulk came
and married Melisinda, and in 1131, on the death of Baldwin, he succeeded
to the crown.

Baldwin II. had much of the churchmanship of Godfrey and Baldwin I.; but he
appears most decidedly as an incessant warrior, under whom the Latin
domination in the East stretched, as Ibn al-Athir writes, in a long line
from Mardin in the North to el-Arish on the Red Sea--a line only broken by
the Mahommedan powers of Aleppo, Hamah, Homs and Damascus. The Franks
controlled the great routes of trade, and took tolls of the traders; and in
1130 their power may be regarded as having reached its height.

LITERATURE.--Fulcher of Chartres narrates the reign of Baldwin II. down to
1127; for the rest of the reign the authority is William of Tyre. R.
Roehricht, _Geschichte des Koenigreichs Jerusalem_ (Innsbruck, 1898), C.
vii.-x., is the chief modern authority.

(E. BR.)

BALDWIN III., king of Jerusalem (1143-1162), was the eldest son of Fulk of
Jerusalem by his wife Melisinda. He was born in 1130, and became king in
1143, under the regency of his mother, which lasted till 1152. He came to
the throne at a time when the attacks of the Greeks in Cilicia, and of
Zengi on Edessa, were fatally weakening the position of the Franks in
northern Syria; and from the beginning of his reign the power of the Latin
kingdom of Jerusalem