Victory in the East

by John France

  Almost all writing about the First Crusade has been dominated by the Gesta Francorum. This is, in part, because a work written (apparently) by a layman who participated would seem to be God’s gift to historians and there is about it an immediacy and an apparent freshness: it has been indicated here that this may in part be an illusion. It was extensively used by later writers – Bauldry of Dol, Guibert of Nogent, Peter Tudebode and Robert the Monk of Rheims, the anonymous Historia Belli Sacri are obvious examples whose works are virtually copies.15 Other writers, Raymond of Aguilers, Fulcher of Chartres, above all William of Tyre, knew his text or one of its many other derivatives, and de facto the idea has grown that the Anonymous’s is the ‘normal’ account of the crusade and its framework has been built into almost all modern writing. In fact this is a dangerous illusion. We need to look afresh at events without this assumption which has been dinned into us largely by the sheer repetition of the Anonymous’s tale. For the most part those who used his narrative reveal interesting attitudes and interpretations of events without contributing much to the elucidation of what happened at the time.16 Some, however, add useful information: Peter Tudebode actually went on the crusade on which two of his brothers died and he adds quite a lot of material, while the Historia Belli Sacri has a considerable value especially on matters concerning the South Italian Normans.17

  If the Gesta’s story has been overvalued, the very opposite can be said of that of Albert of Aachen. There is in Albert a great deal of poetic material, some of it found in the Chanson d’Antioche and some not.18 The whole question of the relationship between Albert’s text and that of the Chanson is highly controversial. It has always seemed unlikely that the poet (or poets) used Albert because they left out so much of his picturesque detail. However, the assumption that the Chanson is based on an earlier work by Richard the Pilgrim, who actually went on the crusade and therefore has historical value for events not mentioned by chroniclers, has been severely challenged.19 The commonsense solution is that Albert selected material which he heard in recitations and used it and that some of this was incorporated into the Chanson, often in slightly different form.20 That Albert used such material need not detract from his credibility for this was an age when the distinctions between romance, legend and history were fine – witness the fabulous passages in the Gesta. It has recently been demonstrated that Albert’s work was written shortly after 1102: anything so close to events has to be taken seriously, for the author would have been open to challenge by living persons. This same study has freed us from the tyranny of the ‘Lost Lorraine Chronicle’ which for over a hundred years has dominated discussion of Albert of Aachen.21 Albert did not go on the crusade but he seems to have based his story, as he asserts, on the tales of people who did. Often he found it difficult to work out precisely what they were telling him for he did not know the ground – it is clear that he was confused about the location of the gates of Antioch. At other times he seems to have had more than one story about the same thing – as in the case of Guinemer of Boulogne. Overall his sources were men of middling rank – and knights deeply interested in military affairs.22 This produces much convincing material, but it is episodic, like that of the Anonymous, for his informants were not of a rank to direct events. However, there is so much information in Albert that it is vitally important in building up a picture of crusader operations. Albert was a German and devoted to Godfrey of Bouillon and it was probably to protect his reputation against Bohemond’s high standing in the wake of the crusade (so high that the Italians in the crusade of HOI set out to rescue him from Turkish imprisonment) that Albert disparages him so consistently.23 It is interesting that Albert does not share the general hostility of the other narrative sources and indeed he sometimes praises Alexius. Even in his account of the skirmishing at Constantinople when his hero Godfrey was involved, he is less than wholehearted in his condemnation.24 This is important because Albert presumably reflected the attitudes of his informants, men of middling rank who had been on the crusade. This would suggest that hostility to the Greeks was less a general phenomenon than something confined to most of the political leadership and shared by chroniclers for various reasons. However, Albert is generally disparaging about the Provençals and this reinforces what has been said about the isolation of Count Raymond.25 William of Tyre used Albert’s Historia extensively and sometimes corrected it but he adds little to our understanding of the events of the crusade.

  Given the early date and the nature of his sources Albert’s work deserves to be treated as an eyewitness account. From the point of view of the military historian his chief weakness is that of all the narratives – it is episodic. But Albert did try to put his information together to gain a picture of events and he succeeded to a remarkable degree.26 Perhaps because he was a cleric and not a participant he tells us a lot about methods of weapons and siege-machinery. His own ignorance compelled him to take an overview of events which is highly useful. But, in fact, taking all the Western eyewitness and near-eyewitness sources together the major problem they pose for the military historian is that they tell us little directly about the ‘nuts and bolts’ of war. They simply assumed this knowledge in the audience for which they wrote and so left posterity the task of teasing it out.

  The Islamic sources are radically different. It is possible to get a very good picture of Islamic politics and society at the time of the First Crusade. Nizam al-Mulk had been deeply involved in the government of the Seljuks in the eleventh century which gives his Book of government special value. Ibn-Khaldun’s Muqaddima is of vital importance, not least because he gives us insights into the waging of war in the Islamic world. There is a considerable literature which informs us about the methods and organisation of war, but on the events of the crusade the information is very limited. This is hardly surprising for from their perspective the crusade was hardly a glorious episode. Ibn al-Qalanisi’s Damascus chronicle of the crusades, written about half a century after the First Crusade, is very brief. Kemal ad-Din wrote his Chronicle of Aleppo in the early thirteenth century on the basis of earlier material, and it provides a very interesting and useful account of events in North Syria without adding much to the western sources. Ibn al-Athir’s remarkable World history was also written in the thirteenth century using earlier material but it is not especially useful for the Crusade. No source gives us any real insight into the Turks of Asia Minor about whom we are abysmally ignorant. By contrast the Islamic manuals of war such as those edited by Cahen, Latham, and Paterson and Scanlin, are very valuable even though many of them were written much later. The greatest gap which all this leaves is information about the Turks and in particular about their horses. The skill of these horse-archers was much admired, but we do not know how they cared for their animals and even whether they used strings of them to support their tactics.27

  The Armenian Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa, written about 1140, is very valuable for the information it provides on relations between the Armenians and their former Byzantine overlords and new friends or enemies from the West. Michael the Syrian was Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch (1166–99) but his Syriac account is not very informative on the events of the First Crusade. Anna Comnena’s Alexiad is informative, but it is also the most mendacious of the sources. She presents the Crusade as some natural disaster which fell upon the empire, never admitting that her father had asked for Western aid and she never admits his debt to its success. Her whole account, written forty years after the event, is coloured by hindsight and in particular by the question of Antioch which would so concern Alexius and his two immediate successors. Anna is contemptuous of the barbarian Franks whom she denounces as untrustworthy while at the same time praising her father’s cunning tricks. If her attitudes were widely shared by the Byzantine upper class one can perhaps understand the deep hostility to Byzantium which was generated in the ranks of the crusaders.

  The spate of translations of oriental sources in the years since Runciman’s History of the crusades has gi
ven us more insight into conditions in the East but the essential story of the crusade must still be written from the Western, and in particular the eyewitness, accounts. Amongst these that of Albert of Aachen is the most important from a military point of view. The production of a new edition and translation should help to reduce our excessive dependence on the Anonymous Gesta Francorum the text of which though valuable, is not as simple as has been believed and will not bear the weight of scholarly interpretation piled upon it.

  * * *

  1 See above, pp. 165–7.

  2 Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, pp. 140, 144, 149.

  3 Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, pp. 132, 142–4, 161–5.

  4 Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, pp. 168–74.

  5 Krey, First Crusade, pp. 8, 276.

  6 On which see Blake, ‘Formation of the “Crusade Idea”, 11–31.

  7 GF, pp. 20–1.

  8 See below, p. 378. On Fulcher and his sources, amongst which was the Gesta Francorum see the Introduction to the Hagenmeyer edition.

  9 ‘In so far as the battlefield presented itself to the bare eyesight of men, it had no entirety, no length, no breadth, no depth, no size, no shape, and was made up of nothing except small numberless circlets commensurate with such ranges of vision as the mist might allow at each spot… in such conditions, each separate gathering of English soldiery went on fighting its own little battle in happy and advantageous ignorance of the general state of the action; nay even very often in ignorance that any great conflict was raging.’ E. W. Kinglake, Invasion of the Crimea, 9 vols. (London, 1901), 6.486 on the battle of Inkerman.

  10 GF, pp. 60–2; see above, pp. 275–6 and compare Fig. 13.

  11 See above, pp. 239–47, 283.

  12 See above, pp. 248, 285.

  13 See above, pp. 161, 129, 312.

  14 See above, pp. 16, n. 48, 276.

  15 The attempt to assert the primacy of Tudebode’s chronicle by its latest editors, Hill and Hill, appears to founder on the simple fact that the South Italian attitudes of the author are so evident. However, it is recognised that the early textual history of the Gesta is probably more complex than has generally been imagined.

  16 On which see Blake, cited n. 6 above.

  17 PT, pp. 7–9. On HBS sec above, pp. 163–6, 245–6.

  18 For examples see above, pp. 216–18.

  19 R. F. Cook, “Chanson d’Antioche”, Chanson de Geste: le Cycle de la Croisade est-il épique? (Amsterdam, 1980), pp. 40–5 and 49–69. I rather share Cook’s scepticism of the historical value of the Chanson. As his ‘Nouveau Resumé’, pp. 49–69, suggests, there is little of value and the stories not supported by chronicle evidence appear fabulous and at best distortions.

  20 This is the conclusion of S. Edgington, A Critical Edition of the Historia Iherosolimitana of Albert of Aachen, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1991.

  21 Once again these are the conclusions of Dr Edgington in Chapter 1 of her thesis. The demolition of the ‘Lost Lorraine Chronicle’ is very convincing. This is a major contribution to crusader historiography.

  22 See above, pp. 172, 217, 231.

  23 For example see above, pp. 241, 292. Dr Edington points out that, in the early stages of his account, Albert uses honorific descriptions of Bohemond and sometimes praises him, but that later this is dropped. She suggests that this may reflect attitudes amongst returning crusaders. However, the careful denigration of his role at the Foraging Battle and the battle against Kerbogah suggest to me something more deliberate.

  24 I owe perception of the importance of this theme to Dr Edgington.

  25 See above, p. 324.

  26 His account of events at Edessa is remarkably accurate. Beaumont, ‘Albert of Aix and the county of Edessa’, pp. 101–38 discussed this long ago and Dr Edgington’s thesis reinforces the point.

  27 For a detailed discussion of the Oriental sources see Gahen, Syrie du Nord, pp. 33–93 and Sivan, L’Islam et la croisade, pp. 23–37.

  Select bibliography

  * * *

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  Pearson, J. D. Index Islamicus 1906–35 (Cambridge, 1958) and Supplements 1982–

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