Eleanor of Aquitaine: The Mother Queen

by Seward, Desmond

  The Greek emperor was carefully attentive towards Eleanor, who was also fêted by the empress Irene. The latter was a German lady originally called Bertha of Sulzbach, noted for her boast that she stemmed from ‘an unconquerably warlike breed’; one suspects that Irene was something of a frump. It must have been a humiliation for the French queen to meet with a refinement of manners and elegance that were beyond her dreams; for this was a city where the material civilization of ancient Greece and Rome had never come to an end, where there was still scientific medicine, plumbing and drainage, and central heating, and where ladies had never ceased using cosmetics. Eleanor acquired a taste for Byzantine clothes and it was probably she who brought back to France such fashions as bulbous turbans, tall pointed hats, and shoes like the beaks of birds.

  Despite his amiable reception, Manuel wanted to be rid of his French guests as quickly as possible. He genuinely liked westerners, even if they sometimes attacked his empire. But he could hardly be expected to welcome rapacious troops who terrorized his subjects and upset relations with his Turkish neighbours — relations that depended on a complex and subtly balanced diplomacy. He was therefore pleased to be able to tell Louis that he had just heard of a glorious victory won by the emperor Conrad, in which many thousands of Turks had fallen. Anxious to share in his fellow crusader’s triumph, the king left Constantinople after three weeks, no doubt much to Eleanor’s regret. The French army crossed the Bosphorus, camping at Chalcedon before marching on to Nicaea, which they reached in early November.

  Frightening news awaited them. Contrary to Manuel’s information, the Germans had suffered a terrible defeat and had been reduced to a tenth of their original strength. The two armies joined forces and, instead of taking the direct route through Cappadocia as they had originally planned, marched down the Anatolian coast inside Byzantine territory and within reach of ports. The French went first, some of them shouting insults at the German remnants who formed the rearguard. Conrad’s health had broken down, so he and his lords sailed back from Ephesus to Constantinople, where he was nursed by Manuel himself.

  The French crusaders and the Germans whom Conrad had left behind struggled on, their discipline deteriorating in the winter weather. Eleanor and her ladies travelled in horse-drawn litters whose curtains probably protected them to some extent, but they must have been miserably uncomfortable. On Christmas Day, which was being spent at Decervium, a combination of rain and floods destroyed their tents and baggage and killed many men and horses. Shortly afterwards they began to be attacked by Saracens — Turkish bowmen on fast ponies, who shot from the saddle before closing in with yataghans (short sabres). At Pisidian Antioch the heavily armoured French and German knights fought their way across the bridge with difficulty. They were now making for Laodicea in the Phrygian mountains, hoping to shorten the distance to Antioch. In January they found themselves in bleak hill country, the Turks watching from the peaks ready to gallop down and pounce on stragglers. Odo of Deuil tells us that ‘the road had become so rugged that sometimes the helmets of the knights touched the sky while sometimes their horses’ hooves trod the very floor of hell’. Constant harassment by the enemy, winter storms, shortage of food and suspicion of Byzantine guides were breaking down the crusaders’ morale.

  Near Attalia there was almost a disaster that might have destroyed the entire Christian army. One evening, instead of obeying Louis’s orders to camp on the crest of the pass through which they were travelling, the French advance guard went on down into the less exposed valley. (Not at Eleanor’s suggestion, as some contemporaries seem to have suspected.) This enabled the Turks to get between it and the main body of the army, which — after seizing the high ground of the pass — they at once attacked. Desperately the knights charged uphill at them but were beaten back in confusion. Louis had his horse killed beneath him and was surrounded by the enemy; he saved himself by climbing onto a rock and, with his back to the mountain, managed to parry the yataghans of the exultant Turks until he was rescued. Probably he owed his life to his plain armour, which prevented the enemy from recognizing him. Many of the crusaders were slain, their comrades being saved only by the onset of darkness.

  Next day Louis gathered his battered army together and handed over command to a really experienced soldier, the Master of the Knights Templar, whose contingent was the only one that had kept its discipline. The Templars brought what was left of the army safely down to Attalia. It proved to be a poor place without enough food, and the king decided that his only hope of reaching the Holy Land was by sea. He had to spend more than a month hiring ships, during which time the Turks raided the neighbourhood around the town relentlessly. When the fleet was ready, there was no room for the infantry or the pilgrims, so Louis abandoned them to struggle on by land as best they might, and set sail with his chivalry.

  It was a dreadful voyage, made terrifying by seasonal storms. Amid the howling wind and the high waves Eleanor may even have wished herself back in her jolting litter being shot at by Turks. To convert them into horse transports, the ships had had great doors cut in their hulls, which were caulked before sailing, and there was a constant danger that they would be stove in. A century later another crusader, Joinville, wrote: ‘For what voyager can tell when he goes to sleep at night whether or not he may be lying at the bottom of the sea the next morning?’

  After three weeks the storm-tossed fleet eventually reached Saint Symeon, the northernmost port of the Latin principality of Antioch, on 19 March 1148. As they disembarked, the French king and queen were greeted by priests singing the Te Deum and by the prince of Antioch and his entire court, who escorted them back to the capital. Their arrival at Antioch was celebrated by tournaments, banquets and pageants. It was the brief but enchanting Syrian spring, with gardens and hillsides a mass of flowers, and the sunlight gentle but clear. Antioch, on a mountain slope above the river Orontes, had eight miles of walls, 360 bastions, and countless villas, palaces, and terrace gardens, and was still almost the glorious city of antiquity.

  For the crusaders, Outremer must have been no less dazzling than Constantinople. The Latin settlers dressed like Saracens in silken turban and burnous, their ladies’ painted faces veiled against the sun. To a visitor from the primitive west the luxury of their villas seemed sinful; outside there were courtyards, rooftop gardens and fountains and wells with water piped from mighty aqueducts; inside there were mosaic floors, carpets on which to sit, tableware of gold, silver and faience, coffers inlaid with ivory and sandalwood, sunken baths, and beds with sheets. Among the novelties were soap, sugar, spices, fruits — lemons, oranges, pomegranates, persimmons — fabrics such as cotton and muslin, and the miracles of oriental medicine. Obviously the queen enjoyed it all immensely.

  During her ten days at Antioch, Eleanor’s dangers and hardships were amply recompensed by such entertainments as picnics on the banks of the river Orontes, with delicacies such as snow-cooled wine and gazelle hunts with falcons. Her pleasure must have been increased by meeting many Aquitainians among the leading settlers; even the patriarch came from Limoges. But Eleanor’s chief diversion was the prince of Antioch himself, her long-lost uncle Raymond of Poitiers, who was still only in his forties.

  Much of Raymond’s colourful personality is symbolized by the way in which he acquired his principality. When Bohemond II was slain in battle by the Turks in 1130 his ambitious widow Alice offered to marry her daughter Constance — who was Bohemond’s heiress — to a son of the Byzantine emperor. The horrified Latin barons and prelates of Antioch appealed for help to king Fulk of Jerusalem. Fulk decided that Raymond, being of excellent capabilities and ducal birth but landless, would make a suitable prince, and sent secret messengers to him in England at Henry I’s court. To avoid being arrested en route by the Sicilian king, who also had designs on Antioch, Raymond travelled to the East in disguise, sometimes as a pedlar, sometimes as a poor pilgrim. When he arrived he revealed himself to Alice and immediately proposed marriage. His proposal was accept
ed but, while Alice was preparing for her wedding, Raymond — with the connivance of the Latin patriarch — surreptitiously married the nine-year-old princess Constance in the cathedral. He was now ruling prince of Antioch by right and the unfortunate Alice had to depart into obscurity.

  Raymond I’s ingeniously won principality was a rich and glorious one, but he was constantly threatened by either the Turks or the Greeks and had to spend most of his time on dangerous campaigns or in complicated and hazardous diplomacy. However, he was a brave and resourceful ruler and extremely popular with his Latin, Greek and Saracen subjects.

  In addition Raymond was tall and good-looking, with great personal magnetism. Sir Steven Runciman says of him: ‘He was handsome and of immense physical strength, not well educated, fond of gambling and impetuous and at the same time indolent, but with a high reputation for gallantry and for purity of conduct.’ He could bring a war horse to a halt by the grip of his thighs, and was a famous jouster and huntsman. As befitted the son of William IX, he liked to have poems and chronicles read to him.

  Unfortunately the immediate liking that sprang up between uncle and niece was so demonstrative that, despite Raymond’s reputation for ‘purity of conduct’, there were actually whispers of incest. But we hear of this allegation only from a chronicler who wrote forty years later. There are other legends of the queen’s immorality that we know to be completely unfounded; she was said to have become infatuated with a Saracen slave, although he was only a boy, and even to have slept with sultan Saladin himself — who at this date was thirteen and whom she certainly never met. Admittedly, Eleanor was quite capable of being unfaithful to a husband as monkish and bloodless as Louis. But reliable contemporary writers such as John of Salisbury and Gervase of Canterbury are plainly convinced of her innocence. There is no evidence that she slept with her uncle, and no serious historian now believes the accusation.

  Nonetheless it is undeniable that the king was angered by his wife’s affection for prince Raymond. The explanation seems to lie in a disagreement over the purpose of the French crusade. Raymond wanted to use such a reinforcement to attack the most dangerous Saracen strongholds, in particular Aleppo; he even hoped to reconquer and restore the lost county of Edessa. He had too few troops of his own and without help there was a possibility that he might be overrun by the Saracens; and if Antioch fell, all Outremer would be in danger. But Louis decided to go on to Jerusalem, and clung to his resolve with all the obstinacy of a weak young man. Perhaps he resented the excessive self-assurance of his elegant and possibly patronizing host, and he may have nursed suspicions of Raymond’s relations with the Greeks, whom Louis had now grown to hate.

  Eleanor was outraged by her husband’s stupidity. In front of everyone she spoke long and passionately in favour of her uncle’s plan. Infuriated by what must have seemed open contempt for him, the king announced that he was leaving Antioch without further delay and that as a dutiful wife she had to accompany him. The queen, by now equally angry, answered that he might go but she would stay in Antioch, and that furthermore she wanted their marriage annulled on grounds of consanguinity (i.e. that they were within the degree of kinship that made a marriage canonically illegal). One unreliable chronicler claims that she told Louis he wasn’t ‘worth a bad pear’.

  The king’s paymaster, a Templar named Thierry Galeran, was a eunuch of whom Eleanor had made an enemy by mocking at his disability. No doubt with relish, Thierry advised Louis to use force. Accordingly in the middle of the next night, royal troops broke into the queen’s palace and dragged her off to the St Paul gate, where her husband was waiting. They left Antioch secretly, before dawn.

  Louis wrote to Suger complaining about Eleanor, but the wise abbot replied: ‘With regard to the queen your wife, I think you should conceal any displeasure until you are back in your own kingdom, when you will be able to consider the matter more calmly.’ The king seems to have taken this advice, but the rift between the couple never really mended.

  Flaws in Louis VII’s character, brought out by the strains of the crusade, may be discerned in his attitude towards the Greeks. He hated them because of their failure to help him in Anatolia, most unjustly blaming his misfortunes on the emperor Manuel. One may even guess at an element of paranoia.

  After the French king and queen had at last reached Jerusalem — where Louis was welcomed ‘as an angel of the Lord’ — and fulfilled their vow to pray at the Holy Sepulchre, they went on to Acre, which was the second city and chief port of the little kingdom. Here they found an imposing assembly that included the young king Baldwin III of Jerusalem and his Palestinian barons together with the emperor Conrad and many German lords. Louis allowed himself to be talked into joining a great and misguided expedition against the hitherto friendly Saracen city of Damascus. It ended in disaster, the Latin army having to beat a humiliating retreat and suffering many casualties. Despite letters from Suger that implored him to come home, however, Louis insisted on staying in the kingdom of Jerusalem for another year. Whatever the quarrel between them, Eleanor can hardly have been averse to such agreeable surroundings. And she had the acid consolation of knowing that if only her husband had taken her advice and co-operated with Raymond of Antioch, Outremer would now have been rejoicing instead of lamenting the débâcle at Damascus.

  Some time after Easter 1149, Louis and Eleanor at last left the Holy Land, sailing from Acre in separate ships. There was war between Sicily and Byzantium and the queen’s vessel was captured by the Greek emperor’s ships off the Peloponnese coast. The king’s vessel escaped, and when, after an exhausting voyage that lasted several weeks, he landed on the shore of Calabria, he did not know whether his wife was still alive; he shows little emotion in a letter giving Suger the news. King Roger of Sicily was happy to inform him that his navy had recaptured Eleanor’s ship and that she had been recuperating at Palermo, where she insisted on staying for at least a fortnight longer.

  Anyone so intelligent as Eleanor would have been intrigued by the extraordinary Sicilian court. Its Norman king dressed in robes of Byzantine purple embroidered with kufic lettering and weird animals in gold, worshipped according to the Latin rite in Greek churches, and kept his wife in a harem. His army contained Frankish knights and Saracen infantry, and his government was administered by Norman chamberlains, Byzantine catapans and Arab cadis. The luxury rivalled that of Constantinople and Antioch. She must have been most reluctant to rejoin her husband on the Italian mainland.

  As for Raymond of Antioch, his niece never saw him again. About the time that she was setting sail from Acre, in June 1149, he fell in battle against the Saracens. His skull was set in silver and sent to the caliph of Baghdad.

  4 The Divorce

  ‘Peut-être on t’a conté la fameuse disgrace De l’altière Vasthi ….’

  Racine, Esther

  ‘Let it be known among the laws of the Persians and the Medes, that it be not altered, that Vashti come no more before King Ahasuerus; and let the king give her royal estate to another that is better than she.’

  The Book of Esther

  The end of Louis and Eleanor’s marriage was plainly in sight. The king had been so affected by his experiences during the crusade that he spent even longer hours at prayer, and cropped his head and shaved his beard like a priest. Eleanor’s comment was ‘I married a monk, not a king’. He no longer slept with her, although, given the mediaeval Christian’s distrust of physical love, it is unlikely that he had ever spent much time in her bed. (This is probably the reason why she had borne only one child; later she presented a more virile husband with five sons and three daughters.) Meanwhile they continued their journey homeward by land, having had enough of sea voyages, and rode glumly northward through Italy.

  The atmosphere must have been tense with misery. Louis was obsessed by the consanguinity that Eleanor had raised so furiously at Antioch. Even during the Champagne war St Bernard had asked why the king could take such exception to the consanguinity of Raoul of Vermandois and
his wife when Louis and Eleanor were themselves related within the fourth, forbidden degree. Moreover, the pope had eventually accepted Raoul’s plea and recognized the annulment. As the king always had a most delicate conscience and was a martyr to scruples, he was tormented by guilt. His anguish was made worse by the fact that despite all their quarrels he was still passionately in love with Eleanor.