Victory in the East

by John France

  Loot and glory, such are the lures of war, and in the official decree Urban II was at pains to demand pure and righteous intention for those who would gain a heavenly reward. If, as Robert the Monk suggests, Urban recalled Carolingian glories, the evocation of past conquest would have been as evident to his audience as to him, while there is some evidence that he anticipated the formation of principalities in the East.40 As far as the military classes were concerned, Urban II’s endorsement of war against the infidel was also an endorsement of the normal means of war – destruction, death and plunder, and its pleasures. These were inseparable: the church might be concerned about proper intention but for the lay mind such distinctions were too fine: the fate of the Jews in Western Germany, plundered and massacred by departing crusaders who seem to have seen their destruction as an integral part of Urban’s appeal, is evidence of that.41 Crude materialism and pride were integral to the appeal of the crusade, at least as far as the military classes were concerned. We also need to allow for the considerable social mobility of the age. For the young knight seeking to rise, the expedition to the east offered prospects. Baldwin of Boulogne, Godfrey de Bouillon’s younger brother, was the very type of a young man, albeit of very high birth, on the make. He had entered the church, but left, probably because the new reform temper limited his opportunities for profit, and made a good marriage. He seems to have felt the allure of the east only well after his brothers had taken the cross and subsequently appears as a skillful politician, who rose to be prince of Edessa and later king of Jerusalem.42 Perhaps equally important to some, it was an affirmation of the value of war, their chosen means of social mobility.43 Nor should we dismiss the hope of land as a factor in motivating military men to join the crusade. After the victory at Ascalon most crusaders did return to the West, leaving Godfrey with a total military force of not more than 3,000 men, though this fell somewhat, by the spring of the following year to perhaps as low as 300 knights and 2,000 foot or even fewer. Our accounts are, as usual, not very precise, but on this reckoning between 200 and 300 knights of the army which triumphed at Ascalon stayed behind – between a quarter and a sixth of the 1,200 who went to battle at Ascalon (where they suffered some casualties).44 This was not an insignificant proportion. They may have been moved to stay by many considerations – amongst which kinship, loyalty and close association with Godfrey were important for many.45 But it is remarkable that of those who survived to the end, such a large proportion were ready to stay: perhaps as many as 3,000 settled at Antioch with a substantial number remaining at Edessa, so the settlement of Franks in the east was, in terms of the overall effort, not negligible, and we are entitled to consider this in discussing their motives. According to Ekkehard of Aura, many of the poor in the West Frankish lands may have been excited by false prophets and driven on by famine and plague, presumably in the hope of finding better things in the fabled East.46 However, general statements about famine and want spurring people on need to be handled carefully, for they were often local phenomena. The lesser crusaders probably had much the same mixed motives as their betters. We may suspect that some groups had very specific motives of a gross material kind. For Italian city states like Genoa the crusade must have seemed to be an extension of their long-standing drive to expel Muslims from the trade routes. As soon as Antioch was in Christian hands, the Genoese sought and obtained from Bohemond a quarter in the city with extraterritorial jurisdiction.47 This is not to say that people from the Italian trading cities did not share the enthusiasm for the crusade; the letter of Pope Urban to Bologna reveals its strength there, while the letter of the people of Lucca shows great pride in one of their citizens who participated in the great expedition. It is merely and self-evidently the case that their motives were mixed and that brute material ends clearly loomed large. In the case of Bohemond we see an individual whose first act on the crusade was to negotiate a position for himself. Anna tells us that at Constantinople in 1097 he sought the position of Grand Domestic of the East.48 In a crude old world the niceties of proper intention about which the canon of the Council of Clermont was so concerned, and which lay at the heart of Augustine’s theory of Just War and the superstructure which the church had built upon it, went by the board. The appeal to righteous war was a grant of righteous plunder or whatever other advantage was available – Tancred was later to treat the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem as a mere prize of war. The lure of booty, the hope perhaps of land or position in the exotic east, personal or institutional advantage, a whole spectrum of motives drove men to the east.49 Without a profound belief in God and a deep-seated fear of His judgment they would never have gone, but the very sanctity of their undertaking also sanctioned gain, and between these impulses they had no sense of dichotomy. Hence when Bohemond’s army was pressed hard at Dorylaeum, the rallying cry went round: ‘Stand fast all together, trusting in Christ and in the victory of the Holy Cross. Today, please God, you will all gain much booty’.50

  So religious enthusiasm should be recognised as a simplification, a shorthand, for the sense of drive and purpose unleashed by Urban’s appeal, and it should be remembered that large numbers probably had little choice but to go. This explains the fragility of the crusade and the scale of desertion.51 It was in the end the motivation of many of the upper class who took the cross, but we have tended to see an explanation of motivation as an explanation of why the crusade succeeded. In fact religious enthusiasm had to be controlled and exploited, and buttressed by other solidarities which compounded and interacted with it.

  This interaction transformed enthusiasm, itself a thing of fits and starts, into the morale of a fighting army. The crusaders came as the army of God to do His will, but men and women do not live constantly at that level of awareness. The day-to-day business of keeping alive and comfortable, not least perhaps keeping horses alive, tends to erode high purpose as do want, hardship and fear, all factors which gravely effected the army. Many who went were following their masters, and could have had little choice in the matter. Urban, however, had disciplined the enthusiasm he tapped by insisting that those who joined the expedition should take a vow. This was not yet the subject of canonistic refinement, but it was nevertheless viewed by contemporaries as binding, an obligation to which the individual crusader could be recalled.52 Moreover, there also existed an authority to recall him. Urban established Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy as his legate on the crusade. There has been much debate as to what exactly his role was, much of it wide of the mark, for it is evident that after his death on 1 August 1098 there was a vacuum in the ecclesiastical leadership of the crusade, as Raymond of Aguilers clearly discerned.53 In January 1098, when the army was struggling in the siege of Antioch and famine stalked the camp, Adhémar proclaimed a fast with masses, processions and prayers, and we find precisely the same measures taken at the second siege of Antioch to prepare the army for the attack on Kerbogha. Similar measures were resorted to later – the barefoot procession out of Ma’arra, and the march around Jerusalem in clear imitation of Joshua’s at Jericho, though by that time the strong will of Adhémar was gone. There was a conscious adoption of the pilgrim custom of walking barefoot the last few miles to the sacred shrine as the army approached Jerusalem. This liturgical aspect of the crusade is very marked – Raymond of Aguilers twice compared the army prepared for battle to a church procession, and such language is a commonplace.54 We think of such activities as having a morale-raising effect. Contemporaries conceived their purpose as being to win God’s favour and their effect as objective. Stephen of Valence transmitted the words of Christ to the army in Antioch: ‘they shall return to me and I will return unto them, and within five days I will send them a mighty help’. It was the conviction of Divine favour, stimulated by penance and obedience to His will, which formed the bedrock of crusader conviction.55

  The importance of Adhémar of Le Puy as the moral arbiter of the crusade is revealed by events after his death. The army fell to quarrelling and many of the leaders seem to have d
eveloped ambitions of their own in North Syria. Unless there was a person to mobilise religious enthusiasm, which we are accustomed to seeing as the driving force of the crusade, it was too diffuse and too flaccid to stamp itself on events. But a new and different kind of leadership emerged. A group of Provençal clerics, amongst them the chronicler Raymond of Aguilers, emerged. They were the associates of Peter Bartholemew and the guardians of the Holy Lance which had become the token of the great victory over Kerbogha at Antioch. The visions of Peter Bartholemew are an articulation of the needs of the lesser people, many knights amongst them, who had been left out of the distribution of land and spoils after the fall of Antioch. For them plunder was a necessity impossible in what was now friendly territory in North Syria. Perhaps to their disgust some of the leaders had even taken to making friendly arrangements with nearby Muslim powers.56 The economic and religious imperatives of these people were one, and they were mobilised by Peter Bartholemew and the Provençal clergy as a pressure upon the count of Toulouse and the other leaders. In the end, this coalition of forces, of the poor and the ambitions of Raymond of Toulouse, succeeded precisely because its ultimate demand, the liberation of Jerusalem, was shared by everyone and could not be argued against.57 The role of Peter Bartholemew and the chaplains of the count of Toulouse indicates how the basic religious enthusiasm – and that term is itself a simplification for a compound of factors – had to be focussed and provided with leadership if there were to be success.

  But the religious drive of the crusaders was buttressed by other solidarities. The people who went on the crusade came from all over Western Europe, and they seem to have fallen quite naturally into nations which grouped round their leading members. Raymond of Aguilers carefully explains which people were called Provençals, to distinguish them from the Franks, then in his account of the battle against Kerbogha indicates that everyone fought with his own leader and in his own cognatio, and similar expressions and ideas can be found in every account.58 This was not invariable and the course of events changed allegiances. The Bretons certainly seem to have set off with the forces of Robert of Normandy – quite a natural alliance in terms of the Breton contribution to the army of 1066.59 Many northerners seem to have entered the army of Toulouse in late 1098 when it was the only force confronting the enemy and preparing the way to Jerusalem, while at Jerusalem Gaston of Beam, whose lands lay in the central Pyrenees, supervised the construction of the North French tower.60 In general, however, people travelled with groups from their own nations. This is one of the bonds which held them together and attached them to strong leaders, for quite naturally such groups tended to gather round major figures. And here, perhaps, we come to one of the key reasons for the success of the First Crusade.

  The pages of the chronicles are dominated by the ‘Princes’ who went on the crusade. Even for men at the time it was a vague term; William of Poitiers, struggling to explain the position of William of Normandy, expressed both the reality and the difficulties of definition when he commented that ‘Normandy, long subject to the king of France was now almost erected into a kingdom’.61

  Urban appealed for support to the rising military class of Europe as a whole – not to the kings and princes alone but to the whole gamut of lords, barons and knights. At the core of every army were the sworn vassals and household knights of the prince who led it. Probably the key factor which precipitated their decision to go was his. Although they were free agents as far as the matter of decision went – in theory no man could be bound to go on crusade by the decision of his lord – once the decision was made the vassal relationship usually continued. Such men, gathered round their great prince, formed the nucleus of each army. Albert of Aachen makes clear references to sodales, the household knights accompanying Godfrey, while Raymond of Aguilers speaks of the familiares of the count of Toulouse. Bohemond also seems to have had his core following.62 The riches and status of this group enabled them to dominate affairs. Urban may have revealed something of his intentions to the count of Toulouse. It was he and others who dominated the discussions with Alexius at Constantinople. The chroniclers tell us time after time that it was the council of princes which made the decisions. But beyond their sworn household followers there were many others only loosely bound, if at all, to them. French society below the level of the princes was dominated by lesser men, counts, viscounts, castellans and of course knights. Such people came as individuals to the crusade, many of them with their own followings. Farald, viscount of Thouars, was evidently in the Provençal contingent for he went with the count of Toulouse to witness Peter Bartholemew’s revelation of the Holy Lance, yet he was a Poitevin whose ancestor had followed William the Conqueror in the Hastings campaign.63 Some of these lesser figures appear briefly in the pages of Anna Comnena who describes how her father took oaths from many of them as well as the Princes. Evidently Alexius appreciated that they were free agents who would not feel bound by the promises of others. He was particularly concerned about Tancred who had slipped across the Bosphorous without taking the oath at Constantinople, and staged another oath-taking at Pelekanum to ensnare him.64 There are hints that some of these people may have had influence on events. In the council held on 1 November 1098 to discuss the resumption of the crusade the Gesta reports the dispute between the count of Toulouse and Bohemond, then says that: ‘The bishops, with Duke Godfrey, the counts of Flanders and Normandy and the other leaders (aliique seniores)’ considered their judgment. Who were these ‘other leaders’? Stephen and Hugh of Vermandois, clearly princes, were long gone and there were no others of this rank. Raymond of Aguilers’ account strongly implies that there were many parties to the debate at this point.65 This may have been an exceptional occasion, but it warns us against being hypnotised by the princes. Such substantial people maintained their own followings, their own nuclei, to which knights attached themselves from time to time as they did to those of the princes. An obvious example is Raymond Pilet who led a raid into Syria in the summer of 1098.66 Generally the ties of nation and propinquity prevailed in such choices but there were anomalies. Some French knights, amongst them Boel of Chartres whose brother Fulcher played a notable role in the capture of Antioch, were in Bohemond’s contingent. They may have come with the unnamed Franks who filtered into South Italy as the crusade got underway, or perhaps they had gone there to make their fortune and decided to press on.67 Knights involved in the people’s crusade attached themselves to others after its break-up, while the crisis provoked by the dispute over Antioch produced a lot of realignments, most notably that of Tancred and the author of the Gesta who joined the army of Toulouse. Below the knights there were the lesser crusaders and the non-combatants who in the first place, seem to have followed the main armies simply on the basis of propinquity and nation. Amongst them were the servants and armed followers of the great, but a substantial number of non-combatants were never anybody’s responsibility, and they seem to have suffered appallingly. It is in the context of these extremely fluid relationships that the key role of the princes and perhaps some of the other great lords needs to be understood.

  If the basic driving force of the crusade was a compound of greed, pride and religious zeal, cemented by personal, feudal and national bonds, the disaster of the so-called ‘People’s Crusade’ enables us to understand the role of the princes and the great. The same motives influenced those who went on the People’s Crusade, but there was no princely leadership. The army of Peter and the others was divided into nations which proved to be mutually hostile, and the enterprise fell apart. The powerful leaders were the capstone of the whole structure of the First Crusade. They had wealth, position and social prestige, and control of the common fund established amongst them for the general good.68 The crusade was made up of free agents who looked after themselves, providing their own food, horses and shelter, relating in different ways to the princes, for whom, however, this was not an entirely novel situation. Medieval armies were gatherings of groups who often stood in an uncertain
relationship with their commander who could be surest of his household followers, intimates and mercenaries; quite often these last were the most reliable.69 The crusade was certainly an event on a larger scale and overall it was a very fluid body. However, traditional loyalty, prestige, habit, all bound men to a prince. Above all we must remember the strength of fear which was especially strong on such an uncertain enterprise. The crusade was an experience of terrible hardship and we hear constantly of dearth and destitution. The famine at New Year 1098 was so bad that Adhémar tried to raise morale by religious celebrations, Bohemond threatened to leave because he was too poor to finance a long siege and Tatikios, the imperial representative on the expedition, revived the idea of a distant blockade, though this was prevented by the count of Toulouse.70 Early in the siege of Antioch Anselm of Ribemont wrote to the archbishop of Rheims asking his prayers for thirteen who had died on the expedition, of whom seven had perished in battle and six by illness. Bishop Adhémar himself would die of plague on 1 August 1098. Stories of illness were commonplace, while at Ma’arra there was actual cannibalism amongst the poor.71 Knights as well as others suffered from these miseries. Under these pressures, lesser men turned to the princes to sustain them.