Victory in the East

by John France

  For Bohemond and his south Italian Normans the journey to Constantinople across the Adriatic was a familiar one. In late October his force landed in a number of places, then concentrated near Avlona well to the south of Dyrrachium, and did not join the Via Egnetia until Vodena (see fig. 1). This curious choice of route took Bohemond into an area where he had campaigned against the Byzantines little more than ten years before and where the Normans had been well-received. He probably avoided Dyrrachium, the scene of such heavy fighting in Guiscard’s expedition, because of its concentration of Byzantine forces which were escorting crusaders.72 Bohemond’s particular problem was to transform himself from a much-feared enemy of the Byzantines, whom Anna treats with the gravest of suspicion, into an ally.73 However, only one serious incident occurred: at the Vardar crossing, on the Via Egnetia, when imperial escorts harassed the Normans and were put to flight. Bohemond began the march by ordering his army not to pillage, and certainly sent an embassy on to Constantinople to assure Alexius of his good intentions. When it returned with a senior Byzantine official his guidance was accepted and animals, stolen at Kastoria when the inhabitants refused to grant a market, were returned. After that, presumably as a sign of goodwill, Bohemond agreed to leave his army in the charge of Tancred and go on to Constantinople where he arrived on 1 April. However, Bohemond’s march took a very long time to reach Constantinople, a fact of considerable importance.74

  The peaceful passage of such substantial armies was a triumph for Alexius’s organisation. He had alerted his governors at frontier points like Dyrrachium and moved his fleet into the Adriatic to control the Franks. Along the routes were disposed Patzinack and other troops, who formed a policing force, while food was stockpiled.75 However, to have a friendly army march through your territory was, as the king of Hungary had discovered earlier, almost as bad as to be attacked by a hostile one. In either case food was demanded, and linguistic and cultural differences made the prospects of trouble very great indeed. The count of Toulouse left the west in mid-December 1096 with what historians believe was the largest of all the armies, accompanied by substantial numbers of poor pilgrims. We assume that they crossed the plain of the Po and moved through Istria before we are quite definitely informed by their chronicler, Raymond of Aguilers, that they entered Sclavonia and followed the old Roman road south parallel to the Dalmatian and Montenegrin coast via Scodra (modern Shkodër) to Dyrrachium. The wild inhabitants of this obscure region caused them much trouble. Even a treaty with Constantine Bodin king of Zeta (by 1070 – after 1101), had very little effect in curbing their attacks.76 Probably Raymond did not travel through Italy to Bari because it was December, when it was not easy to cross the sea. A sea passage for such a large army would have been costly and ships might not have been available. From Aquileia he could have taken the old Via Gemina into the Save valley and down to Belgrade on the main pilgrim route and we do not know why he turned south. As it was, the army, which arrived at Dyrrachium in February 1097 after much skirmishing with the natives, was hungry and tired, and relieved, as its chronicler tells us, to be in what was assumed to be friendly territory.77 They were travelling along the Via Egnetia at the very worst time of the year, late winter and early spring, when food stocks were at their lowest, and efforts to forage were frustrated by attacks from imperial troops who killed, amongst others, Peter and Pons of Fay-Chapteuil, while, in mid-February, the bishop of Le Puy was wounded by Patzinacks and was later left at Thessalonica to recover. Exchanges with the imperial escorts came to a climax at Roussa which the Provençals sacked on 12 April 1097.78 However, at Dyrrachium Count Raymond seems to have received letters of safe-conduct from the Byzantines and he had apparently sent on envoys to Constantinople for about 18 May these met the army at Rodosto. They brought with them assurances of safe-conduct from the Emperor and asked that Raymond should hasten on to Constantinople to discuss matters with Alexius and the crusader leaders who had already arrived. A few days after this, to the great annoyance of Count Raymond, his army was scattered by imperial forces, probably as a result of ravaging the countryside.79 The problems of the Provençals were the result of travelling through the winter when food was short. They were compounded because, for part of their journey, they were following behind Bohemond’s troops.

  For Godfrey it was natural to take the route via Ratisbon and then down the Danube into the Byzantine empire but this route had been closed by the king of Hungary because of the disorders of the People’s Crusade. As he approached Hungary in early September, Godfrey met survivors of the earlier debâcles who were returning home. He camped at Tulina and sent his relative, Godfrey of Esch-sur-Sûre, who had gone on crusade with his brother Henry, to investigate the situation and to ask King Coloman for passage.80 Godfrey of Esch had apparently been used by the duke on an earlier embassy to Coloman, and this was perhaps why Godfrey was soon able to meet Coloman and to arrange terms. By the treaty which Godfrey had proclaimed, in the army there was to be no ravaging or attacks and all goods were to be paid for. Coloman agreed to provide a market at fair prices. To guarantee the peace, Godfrey gave his brother Baldwin (who was unwilling), his wife and members of his household as hostages. In the event, Godfrey got on well with the king, his army entered Hungary at the end of September and its journey passed off well. It was a good time of the year to be on the march, and food was no problem. At the Save crossing into imperial territory in early November the presence of imperial troops caused such anxiety that Godfrey sent on many of his knights, Albert says 1,000, to secure passage, which they did without meeting any resistance. Alexius had evidently prepared for the coming of the Franks, for shortly afterwards, his envoys met Godfrey and offered a market for food-providing that the newcomers agreed not to ravage. Albert reports ample supplies at Nish, where they arrived on 4 November and rested for four days, and a positive plenitude at Phillipopolis, where they rested for eight in late November and early December.81

  The trouble which erupted in the last stages of the journey was not about food, but about politics. Godfrey was informed that Alexius was keeping Hugh of Vermandois together with Drogo of Nesle and Clarembold of Vendeuil in prison. He sent envoys to demand their release and, when this was refused and food was denied at Adrianople, he allowed the army to ravage the area of Salabria until Franks, sent as imperial envoys, came bearing promises that the prisoners would be released; perhaps what this really means is that they convinced Godfrey that the distinguished Franks were not prisoners and that all was well. It was in this affronted mood that Godfrey left Adrianople on 8 December and arrived at Constantinople on 23 December 1097, the first of the great princes. He had travelled at a good time of year, and the closing of Hungary meant that there was no army immediately ahead of him to eat up supplies. Byzantine organisation worked well to feed one of the biggest of the western armies.82

  The army of the North French must also have been large, but it had presumably resupplied in Italy, and it was able to make very good time, landing at Dyrrachium on 9 April and arriving at Constantinople on 14 May. This was a very quick march: 920 kilometres in thirty-six days, averaging twenty-five per day. By contrast, Bohemond left Avlona on 1 November 1096 and his army arrived at Constantinople on 26 April, a journey of 178 days at a daily average of just over five kilometres. The count of Toulouse arrived at Dyrrachium in early February 1097 and was at Constantinople at virtually the same time as the Italian Normans, 27 April; almost the same distance in half the time with a much bigger army averaging over 11 kilometres per day.83 It is tempting to think that the chronologists have made an error about the dating of Bohemond’s march, but this does not appear to be the case. The author of the Historia Belli Sacri states quite baldly that Bohemond crossed the Adriatic on the Feast of All Saints, 1 November 1096, and agrees with the Anonymous who was certainly with Bohemond’s army, that Christmas was spent at Kastoria.84 To make the point even more forcefully the Anonymous is unusually clear about the date of the skirmish at the Vardar crossing on 18 February wh
ich means an average march of only four kilometres per day up to this point; by this time the count of Toulouse’s army had only just left Dyrrachium. The Provençals were the largest army and might have been expected to move slowly, yet by Roussa they were only four days behind the Normans who averaged only 7.3 kilometres per day for this part of the journey, and as Tancred, in the absence of Bohemond, rested the army, they were only a day behind by the time they got to Constantinople. It took Bohemond three months to reach the Via Egnetia, and then another three to get to Constantinople. Such delay must have been deliberate; Bohemond was travelling through an area in which he had fought in 1082, and he knew the roads. He remained in the general area of his earlier victories from November 1096 to mid-February of the following year, apparently free from Byzantine military supervision. Even when he reached the Via Egnetia, at which point imperial forces appeared, he dawdled. This was purposeful procrastination.

  As the leaders approached Constantinople they were probably pondering two closely related problems: how the crusade was to be led and how they were to regularise their relationship with the emperor. Equally, each would have been wondering how any settlement would effect his individual power and prestige. Raymond of Aguilers says that Count Raymond was led to believe that Alexius was about to take command of the crusade to Jerusalem by messengers from Alexius and the crusader leaders at Constantinople urging him to leave his army and hasten on to see the emperor. This may, however, only be a version of camp rumour for the chronicler was always bitterly anti-Byzantine. Raymond of Toulouse’s later offer to Alexius to give him homage if he would come to Jerusalem may have been a bargaining step. The Anonymous alone suggests that the emperor was intending to come on the journey in person, but this should be seen in the context of his reporting.85 The princes most certainly knew of Urban II’s political directive. There is a tendency to see this as the determinant factor in the minds of the Franks as they approached Constantinople, but in fact it is likely that more prosaic military and political considerations were in their minds. Their difficulty was that they were approaching Constantinople as individuals who had not spoken to one another and had no clear view of what to do. Urban had not developed a plan for the crusade, but an idea, and had left the participants to work out the details. The leaders probably appreciated the simple truth which Fulcher of Chartres would later point out so clearly to posterity. ‘For it was essential that all establish friendship with the emperor since without his aid and counsel we could not easily make the journey, nor could those who were to follow us by the same route.’ They must also have wanted help on supplies, guidance on routes, knowledge of enemy dispositions and methods, the presence of allies and all the myriad things that an army needs to know if it is to fight well. The mention of reinforcements was a deep preoccupation of the crusaders, and would appear frequently in their letters to the west.86 However, because they lacked any plan and were each on his own, the initiative lay with the emperor. He probably had a good idea of Urban II’s wishes, but he too had military and political priorities which would strongly influence the settlement between the two sides.

  Fig. 3 Friends and enemies in the Middle East, 1095

  When Alexius appealed to Urban II for military aid he was seeking mercenaries like those who had been sent to him by Robert the Frisian. As late as 1090, the Patzinacks, in alliance with the Emir Tzachas of Smyrna, had besieged Constantinople and had only been defeated with the aid of the Cumans at Mount Levunion in 1091. The Cumans then became a menace until 1094, when their siege of Adrianople collapsed. Byzantine diplomacy had neutralised the ambitious Tzachas by an alliance with the Seljuks of Rhum but their huge dominion virtually excluded Byzantium from Asia Minor. Nicaea was their capital while Antioch, Byzantium’s last stronghold in the east, had fallen in 1085 and come under the control of the Syrian Seljuks (see figs. 2 and 3).87 During the desperate 1080s Alexius had often been very short of money, and indeed Anna says that at one stage the treasury was so empty that the doors were left open and Alexius was forced to take property from the church.88 By the time of the crusade such complaints are becoming rarer, and, presumably as Alexius’s régime stabilised, the underlying prosperity of the empire enabled him to replenish his reserves.89 His appeal to the west for aid was carefully timed. He would have known of the divisions amongst the Turks in Asia Minor and Syria, and there can be little doubt that he wanted to use his unexpected allies, just as he had wanted to use the mercenaries before, for the restoration of his empire.90 However, grave difficulties arise for understanding the relationship between Alexius and the crusaders because of the sources available. Anna Comnena’s life of her father, The Alexiad, is at first sight a godsend to the historians; it is an account of Alexius’s attitudes and policies from an intimate member of the family. However, Anna was writing some forty years after the events she describes which happened when she was a child of thirteen, so she is unlikely to have had any real recollection of events. Her access to official sources was very uneven, and for much of the work she probably relied on the recollections of elderly people.91 In these circumstances it is entirely natural that her account of the form of the relationship is often vague. She speaks of Hugh of Vermandois swearing to Alexius ‘the customary oath of the Latins’ and of Bohemond taking the ‘customary Latin oath’, while some unnamed Franks, like Tancred, simply swear an oath to the emperor; no oath is mentioned as having been demanded from the count of Toulouse.92 Some confusion has been caused by translators rendering Anna’s rather general language into specifically feudal terms; Hugh of Vermandois’s oath is translated wrongly, as necessarily implying that he became the ‘man’ of the emperor, but the Greek was not a translation of a Latin term and simply means retainer or supporter, while the phrase ‘liege-man’, applied to the nameless Franks, may be quite wrong in its connotations.93 But sometimes Anna is very specific. She gives us an account of the conflict between Godfrey de Bouillon and Alexius over the Frankish leader’s refusal to come to any arrangement with the emperor which is broadly comparable to that of Albert of Aachen and concludes that:

  Godfrey was soon obliged to submit to the will of the emperor. He then went to find him and took the required oath to him; its tenor was that all towns districts and fortresses which he might in the future subdue and which had previously belonged to the empire of the Romans would be handed over to the senior officer sent by the emperor for this purpose.94

  This a good basis for a treaty between the crusaders and the emperor; Alexius could hope to regain lost land, and we know that he did so hope because he sent Tatikios with the crusaders to be that ‘senior officer’. The crusaders would be relieved of the responsibility of holding cities whose garrisons would erode the strength of their army on its way to Jerusalem.95 But what was the import of that vague phrase ‘customary oath of the Latins’ with its ‘feudal’ overtones? Moreover, the prominence of return of land in her account, and her vilification of Bohemond, need to be seen in the context of the hindsight which informs her writing. In 1098 Bohemond seized Antioch with the connivance of most of the crusader leaders and its possession then became a matter of dispute between Byzantium and the Franks of the east for all of Anna’s lifetime. In Anna’s view this was a breach of their promise; the crusaders held that Alexius had failed to deliver on his side of this bargain made at Constantinople in 1097. The desire to justify her father in this respect is a very powerful element in Anna’s account of the crusade.96 On the other hand, some of the western sources written by eye-witnesses were not very interested in detailing events which led to one of the most squalid and divisive incidents of the crusade, the quarrel over Antioch which almost broke up the crusade. Fulcher of Chartres speaks of friendship being concluded at Constantinople; in later passages he never mentions the quarrel over Antioch and although he refers to the departure of Stephen of Blois from Antioch he does not tell us that on his flight westward he met Alexius, at Philomelium, who concluded from his report that the crusaders were doomed and turned with his
army back to Constantinople.97 The three western eyewitness accounts of the crusade, the Anonymous author of the Gesta, Raymond of Aguilers and Albert of Aachen, never mention the issue of returning land to Alexius in their account of events at Constantinople in 1097. However, all three admit that after the final capture of Antioch the issue of the promise they had made to Alexius to return the city to him became a divisive issue in the army, primarily between Bohemond and Count Raymond.98 Clearly this was an element in the agreements made at Constantinople, but all these and other eyewitness or near eyewitness sources use language of the agreement which suggest another element which clarifies Anna’s ‘customary oaths of the Latins’.