Titans of History

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  In 963, however, Basil was too young to rule the empire himself so his mother Theophano married a general in the army, who became Emperor Nikephoros II in 963. In 969, Theophano had Nikephoros murdered by her next lover, John Tzimisces, who also became emperor until his death in 976. Basil, now eighteen, finally acceded to the throne, but he soon faced open rebellion led by two ambitious landowners: first, Bardas Skleros, whose armies were swiftly destroyed in 979, and second, Bardas Phakos, whose forces were defeated in battle in April 989 after two years of fighting. Legend has it that Basil sat patiently on his horse, with his sword in one hand and a picture of the Virgin Mary in the other, preparing to face Phakos in one-to-one combat, before the latter suddenly died of a stroke.

  Still a young man, Basil—who had demanded Phakos’ severed head as a trophy—had shown himself to be a brave and ruthless combatant, not afraid to lead his armies into battle. Nonetheless, government of the empire remained largely in the hands of his uncle, the eunuch Basil Lekanpenos, the grand chamberlain of the imperial palace, so Basil accused him of secretly sympathizing with the rebel cause, and exiled him from Byzantium in 985. Distrustful of the established elite, Basil preferred to offer patronage and protection to small farmers in return for providing military service and regular taxes. He systematically toppled any other potential rivals, confiscating their lands and money to help fund his relentless military campaigns.

  In 995, angered by Arab incursions into Byzantine territory, he gathered 40,000 men and attacked Syria—securing it for the Empire for the next 75 years. In the process, he sacked Tripoli and nearly reached Palestine and Jerusalem. His mortal enemy, however, was the equally ambitious and self-styled Tsar Samuel of Bulgaria, who had used the distractions of the Byzantine civil wars to extend his own empire from the Adriatic to the Black Sea, swallowing up swathes of Byzantine territory. Basil’s early forays against the Bulgarians, such as the siege of Sofia in 986, had been costly and unsuccessful, leading to the disastrous ambush at the Gates of Trajan, in which thousands of his soldiers were lost and he barely escaped alive. From 1001, however, having eradicated his domestic enemies, Basil began to eat back into the territory conquered by Samuel, soon regaining Macedonia. Success was steady rather than spectacular until a massive victory at the Battle of Kleidon, on July 29, 1014, Basil’s forces taking Samuel’s capital.

  As a brutal denouement to the campaign, Basil lined up the defeated prisoners and had them blinded. In a macabre gesture, he left one eye for every hundred men so that the hapless troops could find their way back to their homes. A reported 15,000 shuffled away in pathetic columns, wounded, blinded and utterly terrorized. According to the 11th-century historian John Skylitzes, the tsar fainted after seeing his soldiers return and died of a stroke. In this single horrifying moment, Basil earned his epithet Bulgar Slayer.

  HASSAN AL-SABBAH AND THE ASSASSINS

  1056–1124

  No man ever escaped when the Sheikh of the Mountain desired his death.

  Marco Polo

  “The Old Man of the Mountain,” Hassan al-Sabbah, was arguably the forerunner of modern jihadist terrorism, a medieval Osama bin Laden (though unlike him, a Shiite), but he was also a figure of learning and mystique, a charismatic military and religious leader who achieved power for his sect far beyond its resources. His fiefdom of Alamut, high in the Elburz Mountains of northern Iran, was the base of the mysterious but deadly sect known as the Assassins. Marco Polo, who visited the area on his way back from China, told of a beautiful garden in which a powerful sheikh trained fanatical killers to become his loyal followers with hashish-fueled promises of paradise. These same men would then do all that the Old Man asked—even kill themselves, if that was what he desired.

  Hassan al-Sabbah was born in the Persian city of Qom, becoming an admired scholar of Shia Islam. While still a youth, his family moved to the town of Rayy, and it was there that he resolved to devote his life to the Shia Ismaili sect.

  Hassan carved an early career at the court of the Seljuq Turks, a Sunni dynasty whose empire controlled much of Iran, Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine between the 11th and 14th centuries. In the service of the Seljuq sultan, Hassan rose to become a senior adviser but ended up causing offense and was banished, an insult he never forgot.

  Hassan roamed around the Middle East until he arrived in Egypt in about 1078. Cairo was then the capital of the Fatimid empire whose caliphs were Shia Ismailis. He remained there for some three years, continuing his studies and establishing himself as a religious leader of the Nizariya faction. But when he and his faction lost out in a political struggle and were driven out of Cairo, he led his sect on a new path. He and his followers established or fortified a series of remote strongholds across the Middle East, from Lebanon to Iraq, and from Syria to Iran. He returned to his native Iran, taking over Alamut castle in the Elburz Mountains. It would remain his aerie and capital until his death.

  There Hassan set about building a militia of armed followers who could both defend his “kingdom,” proselytize on behalf of his Shia sect and destroy the enemies of true Islam. Foreigners claimed that through the profligate use of the psychoactive drug hashish, Hassan created his “Hashishim”—hence the word assassins—to kill “impious usurpers” and Sunni leaders. (He remained nominally loyal to the Fatimid caliphs in Cairo, but in reality he became a remarkable independent political force, feared and loathed by all the great powers of the Middle East.) His control was overwhelmingly through faith, will and charisma. His adepts called themselves the New Doctrine, while his feared fighters were the Fedayeen—or the Holy Killers, admired by some, feared by all; other Muslims sometimes called them Batini—seekers after esoteric knowledge. Their favorite weapon was the dagger, sometimes poisoned.

  On discovering one of his followers playing the flute, he had the man banished. He even had his own son executed for drinking wine. Those who came to serve Hassan were indoctrinated, trained and equipped before being sent forth to carry out their master’s orders. Integral to this process was the beautiful garden he had built, described by Marco Polo as the “largest and finest” the world had ever seen. The stories of the Assassins are partly mythical. It is impossible to confirm Marco Polo’s claims that within its walls conduits had been cut through which ran wine, milk, honey and water, while groups of beautiful women cavorted. The effect was such as to make people believe that this was indeed Paradise. Marco Polo described how Hassan manipulated young men into being his blindly obedient followers:

  The Old Man … had a potion given them, as a result of which they straightway fell asleep; then he had them taken up and put into the garden, and then awaked. When they awoke, they … saw all the things that I have told you, and so believed that they were really in Paradise. And the ladies and damsels remained with them all day, playing music and singing and making excellent cheer; and the young men had their pleasure of them. So these youths had all they could desire, and would never have left the place of their own free will.

  At that point, however, they were re-drugged, removed from the garden and returned to Hassan’s castle. The covenant he then offered them was simple: they could return to paradise, of which he was the guardian, provided they did everything that he asked.

  However it was gained, Hassan won the unswerving loyalty of his sect of fanatical believers and worked to foment uprisings against the Seljuq sultans and Abbasid caliphs, both Sunnis, as well as the infidel crusaders. The Assassins murdered Seljuq and Abbasid officials and sometimes Fatimids too. They assassinated the crusader princes Raymond II, count of Tripoli, and Conrad of Montferrat, whose murder may have been ordered by Richard I of England (Hassan was known sometimes to cooperate with crusaders). Much later, an Assassin almost succeeded in killing Prince Edward of England, who later became Edward I, with a poisoned dagger, but he survived. It was said that the Knights Hospitallers hired Assassins to murder various of their opponents. Other Muslim leaders were outraged by the power of the Old Man of the Mountain and often tried
to crush him—but he was a dangerous opponent. When the sultan Saladin resolved to destroy the Assassins, he found a dagger under his pillow, and took the warning. The great Middle Eastern princes attacked the Assassins, but each time they survived as an idiosyncratic outlaw state.

  The sheikh died of natural causes in 1124. He was replaced by his henchman Kya Bozorg-Ummid, who created an Assassin dynasty when he was succeeded by his son. But the Assassins were finally destroyed by the Mongol Khan and empire-builder Hulugu, Genghis Khan’s grandson, who stormed Alamut in 1256. The new Mamluk ruler of Egypt, Sultan Baybars, wiped out the last Assassin strongholds in Syria in 1273.

  GODFREY OF BOUILLON

  & THE CRUSADER KINGS OF JERUSALEM

  1060–1100

  … if you had been there you would have seen our feet colored to our ankles with the blood of the slain. But what more shall I relate? None of them were left alive; neither women nor children were spared.

  Fulcher of Chartres, medieval chronicler and chaplain to the armies of Godfrey of Bouillon and his brothers, describing the siege of Jerusalem in 1099

  The crusader warrior Godfrey of Bouillon became the first ruler of the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, after indiscriminately slaughtering thousands of Jews and Muslims, “purifying” the city in the name of God.

  Godfrey was born in 1060, probably in Boulogne-sur-Mer, to Eustace II, count of Boulogne (who had fought on the side of the Normans at the Battle of Hastings in 1066), and Ida “the Blessed” of Boulogne (a pious and saintly figure who founded a number of monasteries). Godfrey was an athletic and fair-haired boy of “pleasing” features, who, in the words of William of Tyre, was “tall of stature … strong beyond compare, with solidly built limbs and a stalwart chest.” As the second son of the family, Godfrey did not stand to inherit much from his father, but in 1076 his childless hunchback uncle bequeathed him the duchy of Lower Lorraine.

  If Godfrey was in many ways the typical crusader, the idea of the crusade belonged to one visionary: in 1095, Pope Urban II announced a new theological concept—Christian holy war. In Clermont on November 27, Urban addressed a crowd to declare that all who took the Cross and fought to liberate and cleanse the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem, to liquidate the infidel, would be granted remission of sins. As many as 80,000 people—from princes to peasants—answered the call and set off for Jerusalem, raising money any way they could, often with massacres and looting of Jewish communities. Some were adventurers who hoped to make their fortunes (as Godfrey’s family did) but this was an age of faith and the great majority were believers who risked their lives (and most died on the way) to reach Jerusalem. Godfrey himself, along with his brothers Eustace and Baldwin, answered the call. Godfrey declared he was determined to avenge the blood of Jesus on the Jews.

  In August 1096, Godfrey’s army—estimated at 40,000—began the long march through Hungary toward Constantinople. When they arrived in November, it soon became apparent that the crusaders and Emperor Alexius I had very different priorities. Alexius wanted to concentrate on winning back the lands he had lost to the Turks, whereas the crusaders were eager to conquer Jerusalem and capture the Holy Land. After a period of political tension throughout 1097—in which Godfrey’s troops pillaged the neighborhood of Salabria—Godfrey tentatively agreed that his army would submit to Alexius’s orders for a time before marching southwards toward Jerusalem.

  From the summer of 1098, Godfrey’s force—and other crusading armies—began to make inroads into Muslim lands, his reputation growing as he did so. In October, he reportedly killed 150 Turks with only twelve knights in a battle outside Antioch and the following month he cut a Turk in half with a single, downward swipe of his sword. Eventually, in February 1099, the various crusading armies finally conquered Antioch and Edessa and began their advance on Jerusalem, fighting through Tripoli and Beirut before arriving to besiege the city in June. Only about 12,000 crusaders had survived to reach the Holy City, under the command of five princes, Raymond the count of Toulouse, Robert the count of Flanders and Robert the duke of Normandy, plus the princely Norman adventurer Tancred de Hauteville and Godfrey. On the morning of Friday July 15, Godfrey was among the first crusaders to breach the city’s weak spot in its northern wall, after his men had built and scaled a movable tower which they had placed against the defenses. Ferocious fighting took place on the parapets as Godfrey bravely held his position and directed his men into the city so that they could open the gates.

  Thousands of crusaders flooded into the streets, as the Muslim citizens fled to al-Aqsa mosque. The Fatimid governor of the city, made his last stand in the Tower of David. He and some of his soldiers were allowed to escape, but over the next forty-eight hours, those left in the city—combatant and civilian, Muslim and Jew—were put to the sword and murdered in the streets. The crusaders pillaged Muslim holy sites such as the Dome of the Rock and either burned their victims to death or cut open their stomachs, believing that Muslims swallowed their gold. The city’s Jews had fled to a synagogue, which the crusaders simply burned to the ground. Raymond of Aguilers reported that he saw “piles of heads, hands and feet” scattered across the city, while Fulcher of Chartres, a chaplain to Baldwin’s army, wrote approvingly that “this place, so long contaminated by the superstition of the pagan inhabitants” had been “cleansed from their contagion.” Six months later, it still stank of putrefaction.

  At the height of the systematic massacre, Godfrey stripped to his undergarments and walked solemnly, barefoot through the blood, to pray at the Holy Sepulcher, site of Jesus’ crucifixion. On July 22, his fellow crusaders chose him to be the first Christian ruler of Jerusalem, although he refused to take the name of king in the city in which Christ had died, preferring instead the title Duke and Advocate of the Holy Sepulcher. It was there that he was buried after dying of plague on July 18, 1100, his mission complete.

  The massacre of Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem was a terrible crime but it was certainly vastly exaggerated: Muslim historians claimed that 70,000 or even 100,000 died in the slaughter but it is likely there were no more than 30,000 inside the city and the latest research from contemporary Arab source el-Arabi suggests the number may be closer to between 3,000 and 10,000. Crusader brutality demonstrates the evil of intolerance but the Christians were scarcely alone in this: when the crusader cities of Edessa and Acre later fell, the slaughter by Muslim conquerors was much greater.

  As for Godfrey, his short reign founded a kingdom and a dynasty, built by gifted and remarkable warlords: most significantly his much more dynamic, talented and bigamous brother, Baldwin count of Edessa who succeeded him as king of Jerusalem. Baldwin I conquered a substantial kingdom in what is today’s Israel, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. His heir was his cousin Baldwin II, who continued to build the kingdom, succeeded by his half-French, half-Armenian daughter, a powerful and shrewd ruler, Queen Melisende. Under her the Jerusalem kingdom reached its golden age: it was Melisende who built not only today’s church of the Holy Sepulcher but also the Tomb of the Virgin Mary and the markets of Jerusalem that also survive today. But the death of her son Baldwin III marked the end of its heroic period. The tragedy of Baldwin IV—a brave teenage prince who was slowly dying of leprosy—symbolized the crisis of the kingdom, beset by corruption, ineptitude and intrigue, which was defeated by Saladin. Jerusalem fell in 1187 but a rump kingdom based along the coast around Acre survived until 1291.

  ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE

  1122–1204

  No matter how bestial and obdurate a man might be, that woman could bend him to her will.

  Richard of Devizes, Chronicle of the Deeds of Richard the First

  (late 12th century)

  Eleanor of Aquitaine was the queen of two kings, and the mother of two more. Her resilience, her courage and her unshakeable will made her legendary across Europe as a woman in a male-dominated age who refused to submit to convention, and whose every action expressed her determination to rule.

  As a young woman, Eleanor was th
e matrimonial catch of Europe, beautiful and charismatic. On inheriting the duchy of Aquitaine at the age of fifteen, she became the ruler of one fifth of what is now modern France. Duke William IX of Aquitaine (1071–1126), Eleanor’s grandfather, was brazenly charming, famed as a troubadour and lover. His poetry was the first to use the vernacular of the south, the langue d’oc. Mixing obscenity with charm, delicate seductiveness with boisterous humor, manipulating complex verse forms with insouciant ease, Duke William inspired and fostered the languishing brilliance of the troubadour poets.

  “He made everything into a joke and made his listeners laugh uncontrollably,” reported the somewhat disapproving chronicler William of Malmesbury, who apparently felt that William’s crusading misadventures should not be fodder for uproarious rhyming couplets. The excommunicated duke, who had tucked away two wives in convents, took for his mistress the aptly named Dangerosa, wife of one of his barons. His shield had her image on it: William wanted to bear her into battle as often as she had borne him into bed.

  Unable to have children with his beloved Dangerosa, Duke William married his son to her daughter. The child of this marriage, Eleanor of Aquitaine, grew up in a court unique in Europe for its secularity, its abandon, its sheer joie de vivre, surrounded by poets and singers who idolized women as beautiful, brilliant, and able always to bend men to their will.

  Coming from this permissive, secular environment, Eleanor was an exotic figure in the stiffer northern courts of England and France.

  At the age of sixteen Eleanor became the queen of Louis VII of France, who was a dour and solemn religious fanatic. But she refused to be simply a consort. Louis’s apparent transformation from a mild-mannered, pious young man into an energetic ruler coincided with his marriage, and contemporaries suspected Eleanor’s hand lay behind the king’s sudden willingness to crack down on his barons and meddle in Church appointments. When Louis went on the Second Crusade, Eleanor—always willing to endure the hardships of travel—joined him.