In Search of Genghis Khan

by Tim Severin

  If you enjoyed reading In Search of Genghis Khan you might be interested in Crusader: In Search of Jerusalem by Tim Severin, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from Crusader: In Search of Jerusalem by Tim Severin

  Chapter 1 - Carty

  The fat horse and I stared at one another with mutual doubts. Chubby and poorly coordinated, he had tripped over his own immense feet as he squelched through the mud to come to inspect me. Just a youngster who had not yet finished growing, already he weighed three quarters of a ton. Nor could anyone have described him as handsome. His head was blocky and enormous. A pronounced Roman bump on his nose gave him a slightly comical and endearing expression as he peered at me through long eye lashes, though his eyes seemed far too small for that massive head. The huge barrel of his body was supported by four legs as thick as small tree trunks but so short that at sixteen hands he appeared to lack the height to match his massive girth and huge frame. The stiff grey hair of his mane was tangled and matted, with the consistency of a wire wool pot scourer. His tail, trimmed into a ridiculous bob, was a joke, an afterthought stuck on his fat bottom. His shaggy winter coat was a lighter shade of grey, erratically tinged with strawberry blotches and now so liberally daubed with mud smears that he looked like a minor species of woolly mammoth that had emerged, blinking, from a forgotten corner of Siberia. Indeed the skeletons of his ancestors had been dug up from Stone Age caves, and there was an obvious, if superficial, resemblance to the roly-poly horses drawn on the cave walls by Cro-Magnon man. Yet the animal I was looking at was what I was seeking. He belonged to one of the oldest surviving breeds of working horse in Europe — the Ardennes Heavy Horse — and was a reasonable facsimile of a medieval warhorse.

  In our own ways both the fat horse and I were equally wary and naive. I had only read about such awe-inspiring creatures in books, while the horse's only horizon had been the couple of hundred acres of sour bog land, meadow, and forest on a remote farm in northern France where he had been raised. Yet I was hoping that those vast hooves, now totally submerged under his great weight in muddy slop, would somehow carry the both of us from this flat dripping semi-marshland, across a continent and more than two thousand miles of road, into parched mountains where a temperature of 38 or 39 degrees was normal on a summer's day. Also I had been warned that this particular four-year-old horse was really too young to undertake the tremendous journey I had in mind. He had run free since birth, and never been trained or ridden. In fact his owners probably didn't even possess a saddle broad enough to cover him. Fat as butter, he was totally unfit, and the thick woolly coat was obviously unsuitable for a hot climate. With a little imagination I could just about picture him pulling a cart, hauling a plough, or even trotting along as a member of a spectacular Heavy Horse team attached to a brewers' dray. But if it was difficult to see him as a saddle horse, it was virtually impossible to picture him for what he ran the risk of becoming. If I did not buy him, his next destination would probably be the butcher's block, because locally the flesh of the Ardennes horse was a prized food. As the lumbering youngster was certainly not of show quality, he was likely to be turned into steaks. Anything I had in mind for his future, I reflected, could not be quite such a miserable fate.

  But why did I need such an odd creature? And what had led me to this damp meadow in the borderlands between France and Belgium? The answer lay fifty miles to the northwest where the river Semois wriggles through the folds of a tough granite plateau that emerges like a craggy island from the rich agricultural lowlands of Flanders and Brabant. In the depths of that plateau the Semois coils around a steep crag of rock, and on the summit of that rock stands Chateau Bouillon. Its grey walls dominate the little medieval town that fills the river's gorge. The castle is the pride of the region, key to the routes that criss-cross the rain-soaked forest of Ardennes with its dense cover of oak and beech. Nearly nine centuries ago the seigneur of the castle had ridden from this primeval and misty land to begin a fabled journey. He had mortgaged his chateau to pay the ruinous cost of raising and arming a small army that amounted to his private brigade, and in 1096 Godfrey, Duke of Bouillon, had set out on the First Crusade to the Holy Land, vowing to reach Jerusalem. The Duke was only one among a number of Europe's leading noblemen who had pledged to liberate the Holy Land, but by the time Jerusalem was firmly in their hands some three years later, his haughty and turbulent colleagues selected him to be their Prince of Jerusalem. Less than a year afterwards he died in the Holy City, his reputation still unsullied, and the same followers buried his corpse close to the very spot where Jesus' body was laid when it was taken down from the cross. It was the holiest burial ground in Christendom and they felt that Duke Godfrey deserved this last resting place. He was their 'perfect knight'.

  Duke Godfrey's reputation endured far beyond his own times. Today, in the provinces where he raised his vanished army, school classrooms are still hung with engravings of his greatest triumphs, and in the nineteenth century a statue of the Duke, on a prancing and not at all ungainly horse, was installed in a central square in Brussels. When the pioneer English printer Caxton was commissioned to print a life of King Arthur, he suggested that the Duke of Bouillon's story would be more appropriate. Arthur's reputation, Caxton ventured to his patron, was largely legendary, but the heroism and merit of the Duke of Bouillon was proven fact. Minstrels and jongleurs had composed songs to commemorate Godfrey's exploits on that First Crusade. Illuminators took care to put him in their pictures when they coloured the medieval chronicles with scenes of noble battle and distant journey, and in folklore he was ranked with King Arthur and Sir Lancelot.

  Two years earlier I had added Godfrey to my personal list of semi-mythical travellers whose journeys had provided the raw material of legend. Such figures fascinated me, and in the past I had investigated the stories of St Brendan, Sindbad the Sailor, Jason and the Argonauts and Ulysses, using replicas of ancient boats to explore whether there was any truth behind their tales of distant travel. (The Brendan Voyage, Hutchinson, 1978. The Sindbad Voyage, Hutchinson, 1982. The Jason Voyage, Hutchinson, 1985. The Ulysses Voyage, Hutchinson, 1987.) Duke Godfrey's reputation also arose out of a great journey, but he posed a rather different sort of conundrum. Here was a real historical figure, an ordinary man, one among many, who had gone on the First Crusade. The events of the journey had made him a superhero to his immediate successors. Only a generation later stories were being told about his prodigious physical strength, his piety, his selflessness, his extraordinary feats of arms. What had happened to create such renown? Was it justified? And why had Duke Godfrey, among all the leaders of the First Crusade, been chosen for this special fame? To find the answer I proposed to follow Duke Godfrey's path to Jerusalem just as he had travelled along it — on horseback. Along that road, from Chateau Bouillon to his burial place in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, I hoped to find some clues to the building of the legend of a man whose deeds made him one of the greatest heroes of chivalry. But I had a wider purpose, too. By actually riding a horse to Jerusalem I also wanted to come to grips with that extraordinary phenomenon, when tens of thousands of men and women, even some children too, had ventured to walk and ride across a continent, trying to reach Christ's tomb. Not just knights and soldiers had followed Duke Godfrey, but a straggling train of civilians had trudged in his wake. Untold numbers had fallen by the way; some faltered and turned back, discouraged by the hardships of the road; others died of malnutrition and disease. Every single survivor who finally laid eyes on Jerusalem had paid dearly with sweat and pain. So gruelling was the experience that, although many other Crusades would depart from Europe for the Holy Land over the next 300 years, not one of them succeeded in repeating exactly the same path. A few tried and failed, but most shunned the sections where those early Crusaders had suffered so cruelly.

  Thus the First Crusade was a unique feat. Historians had dealt exhaustively with its documents and chronicles, written about its special geopolitics, causes and
effects, ecclesiastical, social, diplomatic and administrative topics. But I was much more drawn to the practical details of the trip itself. It had been a stupendous journey, an achievement difficult to comprehend with our modern means of rapid travel and notions of time and distance. The Crusaders had been on the road for nearly three years, moving farther and farther away from their bases and sources of supply, parted from their homes by unimaginable distances. Warriors and civilians alike had journeyed through alien lands ruled by exotic enemies. How had they achieved it? And why? Scholarly opinion proposed variously that the First Crusade had been motivated by greed, by land hunger, by fanaticism, by ignorance, that it was the child of deliberate political manipulation between a Pope in Rome and an Emperor in Byzantium, that it was a mass migration, that it failed for Christianity but succeeded for Christendom. Only was there general agreement that the Crusade turned into the single most important phenomenon of the age. What, then, was it like to have travelled to Jerusalem in the manner of a medieval man? If I could taste that experience, even marginally, perhaps it would give an insight into the motives of those travellers and the reasons for their persistence. For me, one man brought everything into focus: Duke Godfrey of Bouillon was still the perfect symbol of the Crusade.

  If I wanted to follow him, then there was a simple logic to choosing the correct type of horse I should use. Duke Godfrey recruited a major part of his army from his personal domain around Chateau Bouillon. His knights would have rallied to his banner with all manner, shapes and sizes of horses but, as the Duke's chateau lay in the heart of the Ardennes Forest, they must have brought with them at least some of the native breed — the Ardennes Heavy Horse. The breed books enthusiastically described the race as 'sober and robust ... renowned for its toughness, its ability to withstand all types of climate, its eagerness to work and its frugal feeding.' But to Duke Godfrey and his knights, an animal weighing as much as a ton and capable of galloping at 20 miles an hour for short distances had one overwhelming advantage: in ridden combat such a monstrous charger was their day's equivalent to a main battle tank. Anyone knocked down and trodden on by such a crushing weight would have no further interest in the fight. The 'Belgian Horse', as the Ardennes and other Low Country breeds came to be known, was the most devastating mobile weapon of war known at that time. Possession of a warhorse of such dimensions was so dangerous that, a century later, it was controlled by royal edict. Kings were aware that in the hands of a rebellious vassal a squadron of Heavy Horses could mean the loss of a throne. In the winter of 1095, when the war leaders were planning their march on Jerusalem, they knew they would have to fight their way through a cordon of Muslim states before reaching the walls of the Holy City. It would have been inconceivable to them not to start out with their warhorses. Just how few of the great animals would survive the journey, they could not have imagined.'

  In my quest for further information about the Ardennes Heavy Horses, a listing in the British Equestrian Directory had led me four months earlier to Charlie Pinney, whose Carthorse Company appeared under the subheading 'Ardennes'. Charlie preached convincingly that farming could still be done efficiently and economically using Heavy Horses. To prove his thesis, he ran his own small farm in Devon without a single tractor, designed and built horse-drawn farm machines to do all the work on the farm, gave tuition in handling Heavy Horses, and competed successfully in horse-drawn ploughing matches where Charlie's hefty six-foot-three in gum boots, muddy trousers, well-worn canvas jacket, and long side burns must have well matched his tremendous plough horses. His enthusiasm for the Ardennes Horse was carefully researched. 'One day I wrote down a list of all the qualities I wanted in a working Heavy Horse for farm work,' he told me. 'Then I sent letters to every Heavy Horse breeder I could locate, asking for details of their breeds. When the answers came in, I put a tick against each breed, column by column for each quality. When I had finished, one breed had a tick on each line — the Ardennes.'

  Charlie then took me out to a field to see his horses. He had an amazing rapport with the great beasts, constantly talking to them, scratching their stomachs so they stretched their huge bellies and almost purred with delight, picking up their massive feet, poking fingers in their mouths, and keeping up a constant flow of information. Every part of the animal seemed to have some special feature to look for. For the first time I heard about 'good black feet' that would hold horseshoe nails well, and was warned to beware too much 'feather', the shaggy tufts of hair round the hooves that would retain dirt and dried mud. 'You don't want your horse walking around with a breeze block on each foot' was how Charlie succinctly put it. I heard of the merits of good round leg bones — 'those legs won't snap off' — of the tremendous broad chests — 'perfect' — which meant the animal could pull several times its own weight in harness, and 'a back you can load without breaking'. When I asked Charlie how far one of these stately-looking creatures could walk in a day, he promptly replied that they were expected to pull '19 miles in the furrow'. This compared encouragingly with my calculation that Duke Godfrey's army must have covered an average of more than 15 miles per day. Already I had spent five months in the libraries reading the original chronicles of the Crusade, not just for details about Duke Godfrey himself but to extract all the practical data of travel and to try to lay out his route, stage by stage, on contemporary maps. The difficulty was, I knew, that a neat line drawn across a map did not take into account the nature of the terrain, the detours for finding shelter or fodder, time spent fording rivers, the delays from bad weather or animal sickness, and a host of other variables. Only first-hand experience of actual horseback travel ultimately would provide that information.

  For my own long journey Charlie counselled me against getting a mare — 'too moody' — but in almost the same breath he was jovially warning me that a stallion could prove even more of a handful if he saw an attractive female. Crusader Knights are always shown riding stallions but I had a sudden daunting vision of an amorous Ardennes stallion bulldozing his destructive trail through the countryside to get better acquainted with a seductive mare in a distant field. Charlie had already described how one day his inquisitive Ardennes stallion had wished to leave his field and visit the farmyard. The animal had merely walked through the field's five bar gate, which crashed off its hinges and lay bent on the ground behind him. But Charlie's enthusiasm for the Ardennes Horses allowed no second thoughts. He saw the most unexpected advantages in my choice of breed. 'Mind you, the Ardennes do fart a lot, but that could be useful in traffic,' and he laughed.

  But Charlie had no horse suitable for my unorthodox venture. His handful of Ardennes were all being trained for farmwork. So to find my mount for a Crusader's ride he advised me to go to France, to a horse farm on the fringes of the Ardennes, and ask the help of the remarkable woman who ran it. 'She's among the best breeders of Ardennes horses,' he said, 'and totally dedicated to the task. Once I was walking round her farm with her, and asked why she never got married. She let out a whistle, and a moment later a huge Ardennes stallion came charging over the hill, galloped down towards us, and came slithering to a great smashing stop in front of us. Turning to me she said, "And where would I find a man who would obey me like that!"

  Charlie gave me Cecile's address, and I wrote to her asking if I might visit the farm. After a month, when no reply came back, I telephoned Cecile and was told that of course any friend of 'Charlee' would be most welcome. But nothing Charlie told me prepared me adequately for my first visit to the Ferme du Bourbeau in the melancholy borderlands between France, Germany and Belgium where every kilometre is a reminder of the bloodbaths of the First World War. Each hill has a military cemetery and every town is a garrison name.

  Not far from Verdun, I found the Ferme du Bourbeau at the end of a narrow road leading through young forest. To enter the farmyard was like stepping back into an old black-and-white French film. A large, ancient cattle truck stood in the centre of the farmyard. Perhaps twenty years old, the vehicle had 'Atte
ntion Chevaux' printed on a metal plate bolted to the back of it. A part-Alsatian hound was leaping with rage at the end of its chain, barking frenziedly at my arrival, and besides the expected quota of chickens, there was a steady shuttle service of little pink pigs which trotted back and forth from the milking shed to raid the grain heap. On each sortie they were passing, at a nicely calculated radius, another hysterical part-Alsatian, no doubt a relative of the one already barking at me. Each time the dog came hurtling out to the full extent of its chain with a murderous snarling rush, but was brought up short with a strangling jerk that lifted the animal clean off its feet while the little pigs trotted on insolently to their snack. The noise was an ear-numbing combination of barking, snarling, squawking, clucking, the bawling of calves, squeals from pigs, the shrill neigh of a distant unseen horse, an unidentified clanking and clattering, and all suddenly overlaid by a piercing yell of 'Tais-toi!', directed at the woodshed dog by a short, bustling woman with close-cropped iron-grey hair who burst out of the woodshed door. She was dressed in a blue tee shirt and old blue trousers, and on her feet were what appeared to be a pair of army boots. She stumped towards me holding out a hand in welcome and simultaneously letting out a volley of abuse at the livestock. This was Cecile, Chevalier of the Legion of Honour (for services to agriculture) and doyenne of Ardennes Heavy Horse breeders.

  Cecile, I later discovered, was quite accustomed to Ardennes enthusiasts visiting the remote farmhouse to inspect her horses, and refused to let such visits disrupt her routine. So I was placed at the kitchen table and told to repose myself for ten minutes with the help of a vast pot of jam, a knife with a broken handle and an extremely large and slightly stale loaf of bread hauled out from a big paper sack containing eight other such loaves. There were no niceties to farm teas here; this was every minute a working household. Cecile took two slices of bread herself as she stamped back and forth, ramming chunks of wood into the maw of the cast iron stove, crashing a skillet on the top, kicking the door shut, and muttering to herself all the time that it was impossible to look after the house and keep up with the farmwork. 'Go and look at the horses, while I bring in the cows,' she announced marching out, 'then we'll talk,' and I could hear the barrage of shouts begin immediately as she entered the cacophonous yard.