God's War: A New History of the Crusades Read online

  Instead of the archetype of a bumptious, threatening and deceitful barbarian as portrayed by Anna Comnena, Bohemund provided a medium of contact between east and west. He was not alone. When Godfrey of Bouillon arrived at Constantinople, he was met by a court official, Roger, son of Dagobert, a Norman who had joined the service of Alexius in the 1080s and progenitor of a family of Greek politicians. Peter of Alifa had fought with Guiscard and Bohemund against Alexius in the 1080s but, with many Italian Normans, had entered imperial service after Guiscard’s death in 1085. Accompanying the crusaders after Nicaea, he received the governorship of Comana in eastern Anatolia, captured by the crusaders in the autumn of 1097, ‘in fealty to God and the Holy Sepulchre, and to our leaders and the emperor’. Peter founded a Byzantine dynasty which adopted the name Petraliphas; both he and Roger, son of Dagobert, later fought for Alexius against Bohemund in the Epirus war of 1107–8.37 Another recruit at Alexius’s court was Bohemund’s own half-brother, Guy; in June 1098, when Alexius decided to withdraw from his projected relief of the crusaders at Antioch, he unavailingly begged the emperor to continue to save his kindred. Another imperial servant was Bohemund’s brother-in-law, William of Grandmesnil from Normandy, who travelled with Tatikios’s Greek division that marched with Bohemund in the vanguard across Asia Minor. Thus, viewed in the perspective of Norman experience, not propaganda, the First Crusade appears as part of an existing process of contact, tension and reaction. When Bohemund arrived in Constantinople in April 1097 and swore fealty to Alexius, his former enemy, he was doing no more than his half-brother and brother-in-law had done before him.

  Bohemund’s prominence rested on establishing Byzantine credentials. Alexius need not have trusted him; but he could use him to suit his own purpose of controlling the crusade by proxy. He thought he had achieved this, as he had with so many other Italian Normans, by appealing to Bohemund’s ambition and greed. Bohemund was a highly suitable agent not least because he probably spoke Greek. There is evidence that he read Greek; according to Anna Comnena he could pun in Greek; and a number of western sources indicate that he conversed in Greek with the treacherous Armenian who allowed the crusaders into Antioch in June 1098, Firuz, who expected Bohemund’s troops to do the same. Bohemund’s relatives at Alexius’s court spoke Greek; Tancred apparently could speak Arabic (and did so at Antioch); language skills ran in the family. Indeed, Bohemund itself was a nickname, coined by his father after seeing the size of his infant son; it referred to a legendary giant. The boy had been baptized Mark, a Greek name.38

  The timing of arrivals at Constantinople exerted a profound influence on the balance, nature and course of the rest of the expedition. That Alexius had managed to extract oaths from Count Hugh, Duke Godfrey and Bohemund, as well as the count of Flanders, who had left his travelling companions the duke of Normandy and the count of Blois behind in Italy at the turn of the year, and had shipped their troops across the Bosporus by 26 April 1097, presented Raymond of Toulouse with something of a fait accompli when he arrived in the last days of April 1097. As his chaplain recorded, it was reported to Raymond that ‘Bohemund, the duke of Lorraine, the count of Flanders and other princes besought him to make a pact with Alexius’.39 His temper can hardly have been improved by what had proved a long, exhausting and increasingly violent and ill-disciplined march.

  Although probably the first magnate to take the cross, and the only one certainly to have had prior warning of Urban’s message at Clermont, Raymond had started late, in October 1096. His army was probably the largest and best funded; his preparations had been meticulous; his entourage filled with the eminent from the Limousin, Languedoc and Provence, including the counts of Orange and Montpellier, the viscounts of Béarn and Turenne, as well as the pope’s designated leader of the enterprise, Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy and his Monteil brothers from the Auvergne. It is possible Raymond’s planning lay behind the Genoese fleet despatched to the Levant in July 1097; Urban had sent a legation to the city led by Bishop William of Orange, who later accompanied Raymond east.40 Yet Urban’s grant of a papal banner to Hugh of Vermandois and legatine authority to the chaplains of the duke of Normandy and the count of Blois at Lucca in October 1096 indicated that, despite Raymond’s early involvement and Urban’s tour of his lands in June and July 1096, he had no claim to overall command of the enterprise beyond his seniority (he was about sixty); possibly his experience in fighting in Spain; his association with Bishop Adhemar; and his money.41 He proved a difficult colleague; it is hard to determine whether his repeated displays of ill-temper were a cause or effect of his political isolation. However, his journey to Constantinople might have tried a saint.

  Avoiding the Adriatic crossings from Italy, presumably because of the lateness of season, Raymond laboriously led his large army around the head of the Adriatic and down the Dalmatian coast across very difficult terrain. The natives proved unfriendly, provoking reciprocal atrocities. On reaching Byzantine territory at Durazzo in January, Raymond’s troops discovered a resentful populace, suspicious authorities and hard-pressed escorts. It was mid-winter; food supplies were beginning to present a problem, not least because of the recent passage of Bohemund’s army. There were increasing confrontations with locals and the Pecheneg police escort. Raymond of Aguilers caught the bitterness of the crusaders’ reaction:

  we were confident that we were in our own land, because we believed that Alexius and his followers were our Christian brothers and confederates. But truly, with the savagery of lions they rushed upon peaceful men who were oblivious of their need for self defence.42

  In one incident, Adhemar of Le Puy was quite badly wounded; although he recovered after recuperating at Thessalonica, he appears hardly at all in the chroniclers’ accounts of the negotiations at Constantinople. The problem was food. The Provençals sacked Roussa and, after Raymond had left his troops to parley with emperor in April 1097, were dispersed by imperial soldiers as punishment for ravaging. When he heard, the count was unamused and in no mood to place himself under the lordship of a ruler whose conduct had to date appeared either incompetent or mendacious.

  The last army to reach the Byzantine capital contained the contingents led by Robert of Normandy and his brother-in-law Stephen of Blois. Initially, they had travelled with Count Robert II of Flanders, whose father, Robert I the Frisian, having undertaken a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, had served with Alexius in the Balkans in the late 1080s and had later sent the emperor a force of 500 knights. Robert II of Normandy’s grandfather, Robert I the Devil (or Magnificent according to taste) had died on pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1035; his father, William the Conqueror, had been asked to assist the Byzantines against the Turks in the 1060s.43 His own crusade owed as much to his political difficulties in his duchy as to the advice of his spiritual advisers, who were credited with persuading him to join the march to Jerusalem. A poor politician, Robert was an effective military leader and warrior and a popular companion. Supported by the 10,000 marks provided by his younger brother, William II Rufus, king of England, Robert cut a finer figure on crusade than he had at home. At the head of a substantial force of Anglo-Norman nobles, including representatives of the families of Montgomery, Grandmesnil, Gournay and Percy, he picked up more followers on the journey. Eustace III of Boulogne, eldest brother to Godfrey of Bouillon and Baldwin, and a major landowner in England, probably travelled with him; in Italy Norman émigrés such as Roger of Barneville joined their ancestral lord.

  Duke Robert earned glittering fame on crusade, playing prominent roles in the crucial encounters at Dorylaeum (July 1097), Antioch, Jerusalem and Ascalon (August 1099). In 1097–8, he assumed control of the vital Syrian port of Lattakiah. The second Latin bishop appointed by the Franks in the east, at Ramla in June 1099, was a Norman, Robert of Rouen; Duke Robert’s own chaplain, the foul-mouthed philanderer Arnulf of Chocques, was elected Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem in August 1099. There was even talk of Robert being a candidate for the crown of Jerusalem, which he was supposed to have reje
cted, characteristically, ‘out of fear of the work involved’.44 This prominence was in part a function of Robert’s wealth, which enabled him to maintain his independence and a sizeable retinue of knights; even as late as January 1099, he appears to have been able to maintain about 100 knights in his army, the same as Godfrey of Bouillon and twice the number supported by Robert of Flanders.45 On his return to the west, Robert found himself the hero of instant legend, his alleged deeds enshrined in stained glass at the great royal abbey of St Denis within a decade of his death. His reputation formed an acute contrast with his totally disastrous political career, which ended in twenty-eight years’ incarceration (1106–34) by his youngest brother, King Henry I of England.

  His brother-in-law, Stephen count of Blois, left an even more equivocal reputation. Famously hen-pecked by his tough wife, Adela, the Conqueror’s daughter, Stephen may have been a reluctant crusader, but he was one of the wealthiest. Perhaps this explained why, at a crisis at Antioch in 1098, he was chosen by the other leaders as, in his own words, ‘lord, director and governor’ of the enterprise, perhaps implying a chairman’s role in the council of the high command.46 He scarcely exercised any authority, deserting the siege of Antioch the day before its capture in June 1098. His presence with Robert of Normandy confirmed an intimate dynastic network that underpinned their expedition. The counts of Flanders and Boulogne were closely related; Duke Robert’s mother was of the Flemish comital house; Count Stephen was the duke’s brother-in-law. With them was Duke Robert’s uncle, the worldly and acquisitive but now disgraced Odo bishop of Bayeux: he was to die in the winter of 1096–7, the guest of another successful Norman opportunist, Count Roger of Sicily, who provided a fine tomb for him in Palermo. The sense of family business was reinforced when the army reached Apulia, where Duke Roger Borsa’s wife was Robert of Flanders’s sister.

  These northern French lords left for the east in late September or early October 1096, travelling across the Alps to the Po valley. They met Urban II at Lucca in late October, before visiting Rome and Monte Cassino on their journey south to Bari. There, Robert of Flanders left them to cross the Adriatic despite the late season. Duke Robert and Count Stephen stayed in southern Italy for the winter. This delay presented some less affluent, self-funded crusaders with acute problems. Unable to forage freely in friendly territory, their costs rising, those who lacked the patronage of lords or knights faced both hunger and ruin. Many, one of the chaplains attached to Count Stephen recalled, ‘sold their weapons and again took up their pilgrims’ staves and returned home’.47 However, it was still a considerable force that was shipped from Brindisi to Durazzo in early April 1097. Shipwreck and flash floods reduced the ranks, but by then supplies in the Balkans presented fewer problems. All the other armies had crossed or were in the process of crossing to Asia when the northern French reached their destination. Arriving at Constantinople on 14 May, the leaders were deeply impressed by Alexius’s lavish welcome; the other ranks received guided tours of the fabulous city in select groups of five or six. None of them had seen anything like it.

  CONSTANTINOPLE

  The negotiations between Alexius and the military leaders of the Jerusalem expedition formed a pivot around which the nature and future perception of the campaign revolved.48 Both sides understood the importance of what was agreed, even though they later chose to interpret events very differently. Alexius wished to use the westerners to exploit divisions among the Turks of Asia Minor and Syria to restore a measure of Byzantine control without risking a full commitment of his own military reserves. His dilemma lay in the extent to which he imposed his authority over the crusaders as paymaster and beneficiary while remaining essentially a sleeping partner in the operation. Fully aware of the obsession with Jerusalem, Alexius needed to encourage the idea that he shared the crusaders’ strategic goals while being more interested in undermining Seljuk power in Anatolia and opening stronger lines of political communication with sympathetic Armenians in Cilicia and Syria. Although he may not have been unhappy that Syrian Antioch had been taken from one of his Greek opponents in 1084–5, the fact that this great city had been lost to Islam in his own reign did not look good.49 On the other side, while Urban II had clearly envisaged the closest cooperation with the Greek emperor, of greater urgency were immediate logistical considerations. The western armies required Byzantine advice and material aid before they headed out across hostile Muslim territory. If they had doubted it, the disasters at Xerigordo and Kibotos would have persuaded them. However, the westerners lacked unified leadership, a coherent political strategy or an agreed military plan. They knew something of what problems to expect across the frontier with the Turks; they also had no clear view as to how to deal with them. Thus, Alexius was eager to assert demonstrable but indirect leadership over the expedition, while the crusaders were equally keen to accept Byzantine assistance. What needed to be resolved were the terms of that control and the conditions of that assistance.

  Traditional Byzantine foreign policy, derived from the techniques of the Roman empire, outlined the best course of action when dealing with barbarians, those outside the empire or those, like the Normans in Italy and Sicily or the Armenians and Turks in northern Syria who, in the timeless Byzantine view of the world, were squatting on former imperial lands. If such tribes threatened the empire, or the emperor wished to use them, the tactics remained much the same: smother them with hospitality; learn their customs and exploit these; divide and rule; forge links of dependence based on profit, golden chains as it were; employ them; Byzantinize them. These were Alexius’s methods in the early months of 1097, to which he added a high dose of flexible opportunism. He was welcoming to all who accepted his hospitality; some, such as Godfrey of Bouillon or Tancred of Lecce, who avoided Constantinople and tried not to meet the emperor, required some small element of coercion; for the rest nothing was too much, as Alexius imposed the authority of fabulous wealth on his bucolic visitors. The oath he wished them to swear to him was, according to Anna, a ‘customary Latin oath’; whatever its details, the reactions of the leaders suggest that they recognized it.50 Alexius used Hugh of Vermandois to persuade Godfrey to come to heel and ensured Godfrey and the rest witnessed Bohemund’s oath. Bohemund, Godfrey and Robert of Flanders were cited as wishing Raymond’s adherence to Alexius’s contract. Bohemund was employed to extract agreement from Raymond and to force Tancred to fall into line. Once agreement and acquiescence had been obtained, Alexius lavished gifts on the westeners, whom he now regarded as his servants. The only aspect of the Greek formula that failed, and did so disastrously, was the inability of most of the westerners to become Byzantines. Although they could meet over mutual self-interest in the deals struck at Constantinople, there was a fundamental gulf not so much of understanding but of aspiration.

  Alexius saw his interests as eternal: the benefit of the empire. Anything else was peripheral or secondary, not least remote Jerusalem. He probably minimized the importance of the reciprocal nature of his agreement with the crusaders, seeing them effectively as mercenaries; they regarded him as a lord with contractual obligations to preserve the interests of his vassals. When he was persuaded that the crusaders were doomed at Antioch in June 1098, Alexius preserved his strategy by withdrawing his own army from danger. For the crusaders, this withdrawal was inexplicable treachery from a lord whose help had been sworn. They, who had risked all so many times, failed to appreciate his caution. The shadow of Antioch fell deep over Graeco-Latin relations in the twelfth century, nowhere more black than in the pages of the eyewitness chroniclers who felt and experienced the betrayal in which dim light they re-evaluated all that had transpired between Alexius and the crusade leadership. It is small wonder that Anna Comnena was so frenetic in her attempts to exonerate Alexius from any suggestion of culpability over Antioch, for he had been caught out by that most politically damaging agent: events. If the westerners had been annihilated at Antioch, as common sense dictated they should have been, Alexius would have been vi
ndicated. Unfortunately not only did they survive, they proceeded to win Jerusalem and return to tell their tale.

  At the heart of the dispute lay the oaths sworn, which were solemn and serious. Despite the contrasting sensitivities locked into the descriptions of events at Constantinople, it appears that Alexius demanded and received from all the leaders except Raymond of Toulouse homage and fealty. They became the emperor’s vassals, promising to restore to imperial rule all lands, towns and castles they captured which had formally belonged to the empire. This is effect meant lands lost in the relatively recent past: even Raymond of Toulouse, who became most protective of the relationship with Alexius, considered towns in Syria beyond Antioch, such as al-Bara, beyond the remit of the agreement.51 In return, Alexius promised help for the crusaders. Some tried to argue that he had promised to join the march to Jerusalem, but this probably represents a post-Antioch gloss. Raymond of Aguilers, a very hostile source, stated that Alexius ruled out his personal involvement. More probable was a guarantee of military aid, supplies and advice, as well as promises to protect the crusaders’ rear and assist reinforcements. The importance of these arrangements was underlined by Alexius’s insistence at the crusaders’ Asiatic base at Pelekanum just before they left for the march across Anatolia that even lesser lords took the oath. The one exception was Raymond of Toulouse, who insisted on swearing an oath more acceptable to Provençal practice, that ‘he would not, either through himself or through others, take away from the emperor, life and possessions’.52 Yet he abided by his obligations more faithfully than his colleagues, perhaps because Alexius had taken special pains to establish good relations with him after their sticky introduction.