The Emperor entrusted the Duke of Cyprus with the erection of such a fort and ordered him to dispatch the fleet quickly with all the requisites and also the masons to build this fort on the spot Isangeles signified to them. This was done while Isangeles. was encamped outside Tripolis and never ceased straining every nerve to take it. On the other hand, when Bohemund was informed of Tzintziluces’ entry into Laodicea, the enmity which he had so long fostered against the Emperor, burst out openly, and he sent his nephew Tancred with a considerable army to besiege Laodicea.
A rumour of this had hardly come to Isangeles’ hearing before, without the slightest delay, he rushed to Laodicea and opened negotiations with Tancred, and by various arguments tried to persuade him to desist from besieging the town. But when after a long colloquy he found he could not move him, and only seemed to be c singing to a deaf man,’ he departed and went back again to Tripolis.
And the other did not relax the siege in the slightest; consequently when Tzintziluces saw Tancred’s determination, and he and his were being reduced to straits. he asked for help from there (or from Cyprus). But the authorities in Cyprus were dilatory, and, as he was now very hard beset both by the siege and the pressure of famine, he elected to surrender the town.
Tripolis for Isangeles
VIII During the course of these events Godfrey died and, as it was necessary to elect another King to take his place, the Latins in Jerusalem at once sent to Tripolis for Isangeles, intending to make him King of Jerusalem. But he kept on postponing his departure for Jerusalem. Consequently when the Latins in Jerusalem heard he had gone to the metropolis and was lingering there, they sent for Balduinus, who was then at Edessa, and appointed him King of Jerusalem. The Emperor received Isangeles with great pleasure and when he heard that Balduinus had accepted the sovereignty of Jerusalem, he kept him with him.
At this time a Norman army arrived whose leaders were two brothers called Flanders. The Emperor repeatedly advised them to travel by the same road as the armies that had gone on before, and to reach Jerusalem by the coast and thus join the rest of the Latin army. But he found that they would not listen as they did not wish to join the Franks, but wanted to ti avel by another route more to the east and march stright to Chorosan in the hope of taking it.
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