In Distant Lands

by Lars Brownworth

  Instead of a single crusading army, therefore, there were four separate armies, each under the control of a major noble who believed that they should be in charge of all the rest. They left in the late summer of 1096, each taking a different route to Constantinople. The plan, to the extent that they had one, was to figure out the pecking order once everyone arrived.

  Hugh of Vermandois

  The first major figure to depart was Hugh of Vermandois, the younger brother of the King of France, Phillip I, whose amorous activities had drawn the pope to Clermont. Since he was both the son and sibling of royalty, Hugh considered himself to be the obvious leader of the crusade, and did his best to broadcast that fact. He certainly didn't lack confidence. Before leaving central France, he dispatched a letter to the Byzantine emperor Alexius, addressing himself as 'King of Kings, the greatest of all beneath the heavens', demanding to be given a reception worthy of his status.40 He then marched down through Italy and met Urban at the city of Lucca, where he was personally given the standard of St. Peter as a token of the pope's blessing.

  Armed with the papal banner – which he took as a sign that he was the leader of the crusade – Hugh proceeded to the city of Bari on the heel of the Italian peninsula, where he loaded his troops onto several transports.41 Thus far his journey had been a smashing success, but when his ships neared the Dalmatian coast of what is present-day Albania, disaster struck. A sudden storm scattered the fleet, stranding Hugh in unfamiliar territory without most of his men.

  To make matters worse, the soggy ‘King of Kings' had to be rescued by the emperor's nephew who rounded up the shattered army and sent them – under guard to prevent any further mischief – to Constantinople. It was hardly the grand entrance that Hugh wanted to make, but his reception was at least gratifyingly warm. He and his men were given a banquet and Hugh was granted an immediate audience with the emperor.

  Even to a man of Hugh's ego, a meeting with the Roman Emperor was an imposing experience. Alexius Comnenus may have been a bit on the short side, but he sat on the throne of Constantine the Great, and could count Augustus Caesar among his predecessors. He was also a brilliant political thinker who could be dazzling when he wanted to. And at this particular moment he had many reasons to appear charming.

  In this first meeting between a Crusading prince and the emperor whose letter had started the whole endeavor, Alexius had far more to lose. Although they were few in number and mildly dispirited, Hugh's knights were clearly more imposing than Peter's rabble, and the emperor was unsure of their motives. Like all easterners, he was slightly baffled by the crusade. Despite being locked into a life and death struggle with Islam for more than four centuries, the Christian East had never developed the idea of a 'holy' war. As the influential fourth century Church Father Saint Basil of Caesarea had taught, killing was sometimes necessary but never something to be praised, and certainly not grounds for the forgiveness of sins.

  Centuries of Muslim aggression – most of it successful – hadn't changed the Church's stance. When the great warrior-emperor Nicephorus Phocas had managed to push back the Islamic advance in the tenth century, he petitioned the Patriarch, the head of the Church in Constantinople, to have the soldiers who died fighting the Muslims declared martyrs for the faith. Despite this being the first success that Christendom had against Islam in nearly three hundred years, the Patriarch stuck to his guns, telling the emperor in no uncertain terms that although at times necessary, killing could never be a glorious – let alone a holy – endeavor.

  To the Byzantines, the western knights in Constantinople who claimed to be fighting a righteous war for the forgiveness of their sins, could obviously not be trusted. This idea was reinforced by the priests they had with them. Eastern clergy were forbidden from bearing arms, and the sight of western clerics bearing heavy maces, wearing armor, and leading troops, was unnerving. Many Byzantines suspected that the true aim of the crusade – despite the pious words of the crusaders – wasn't the liberation of Jerusalem at all, but the capture of Constantinople. Foreign visitors had always been awed by the imperial capital, but that emotion inevitably turned to greed. The Byzantines had seen it countless times before, from the days of Attila the Hun in the 5th century to the most recent Norman invasions of 1085. Surely these uncouth westerners were no different.

  Alexius, therefore, had to move carefully. There was a very real possibility that this crusade would be turned against him – the behavior of Peter the Hermit's men had demonstrated that clearly enough. Instead of combating the great Islamic threat, he may unwittingly have added a new Christian enemy. His first concern was to protect the empire and its capital city. That had been, after all, his motive for asking for help in the first place.

  If Hugh of Vermandois represented a puzzle for Alexius, the Byzantines were just as much of an enigma to the crusaders. These 'Greeks', as the westerners dismissively called them, seemed effeminate and soft. They wore too much perfume, added too much olive oil to everything, and on the whole dressed more like Persian merchants than Roman legionaries. The emperor himself was even more confusing. They had come at his request, but what part would he play in the crusade? At the very least he ought to send his army with them, if not lead it in person.

  This last assumption was obviously impossible. The empire had maintained its precarious position against its many enemies precisely by not risking its army unless it absolutely had to. Diplomacy and carefully targeted strikes were necessary for survival. A frontal assault against the Abbasid Caliphate and the distant and strategically isolated Jerusalem would be the height of stupidity. This gulf between imperial and crusader aims would ultimately poison relations between them and set the stage for the tragedy to come.

  For the moment, however, things went smoothly enough. By all accounts, Alexius put on a masterful performance. Hugh was dazzled with gifts and feted at imperial banquets. All the presents, however, came with a price. Alexius was informed enough about Western society to know of the importance knights placed on oaths, and his true aim was to extract a vow of loyalty to himself. He may not have trusted the crusaders, but he was determined to make good use of them if he could.

  At first Hugh demurred. He viewed himself as the leader of the crusade and was unwilling to place himself under the authority of anyone else. Furthermore, if he swore an oath and the other great magnates refused, he would be left looking foolish. Alexius' appeals became more insistent. He hinted that if Hugh took the oath – to return any captured city or lands to Byzantium – Alexius would consider adding imperial troops to the grand Christian army, and perhaps even take to the field himself if the time was right. The gifts became more lavish, but so did the threats.42 The honor guard that escorted him to his opulent rooms in the palace was suddenly more heavily armed and less accommodating. When he tried to return to his camp, he was politely reminded that he was a guest of the emperor. After several days in his gilded prison, Hugh caved in.

  It was fortunate for Alexius that the first crusading prince to reach Constantinople had done so without much of his army. Getting a man of Hugh's ambition and entitlement to swear an oath of fealty was always going to be a monumental task, but once it was done it made it that much harder for the next noble to resist. In any case, he had obtained the vow just in time. The second army was approaching Constantinople.

  Godfrey of Bouillon

  Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lorraine, a swath of territory that comprised present-day Netherlands, Belgium, and parts of northwestern Germany, was more than a match for Hugh in self-confidence. A direct descendant of Charlemagne, he was the most famous and well-connected of the Crusading leaders. He had also dramatically committed himself to the crusade publicly by liquidating most of his assets, mortgaging his various claims, and turning over the rest of his possessions to the monastery of Saint-Gilles.43

  Unlike Hugh, Godfrey had elected to travel to Constantinople by land, following the Rhine-Danube route that Peter the Hermit had taken. The experience of the
People's Crusade, however, had soured the local opinion of crusaders, and when Godfrey reached Hungary he was flatly refused entrance. For three weeks he had to wait, and only managed to obtain passage by turning over his brother Baldwin as a hostage for the army's good conduct.

  By the time he reached Constantinople, Godfrey was in a foul mood. He had pledged to aid his Christian brothers in the east – a gesture that had entailed considerable personal sacrifice – but had been treated with nothing but suspicion and hostility at every turn. Now, at the imperial capital, the shabby behavior continued. Though Hugh's army had already been ferried across the Bosporus, news had reached Godfrey of the outrageous oath that Hugh had been asked to swear, so when the emperor's representatives invited him to the palace he angrily refused.

  Alexius responded by informing Godfrey that he wouldn't be transported across until he had sworn to return all reconquered Roman lands to the empire. When Godfrey still stalled, Alexius ratcheted up the pressure by cutting off access to the imperial markets. This was the last straw. Godfrey had already heard a wild rumor that Hugh had been thrown into a Byzantine prison until he agreed to swear the oath, and now here was direct proof of the emperor's perfidy. In a rage, he swept through the countryside, looting the suburbs of Constantinople.

  Alexius realized that he had pushed Godfrey too hard, and immediately restored the crusader's access to their supplies. Hugh was sent scrambling to Godfrey's camp to ensure him that he had not in fact been thrown into prison or otherwise mistreated. Godfrey called off his attacks, but all of Hugh's entreaties to get him to swear the oath fell on deaf ears. In his own mind he had acted with considerable restraint, and had stood up to the emperor's bullying. It was fine for Hugh to go crawling to Alexius, but he was made of sterner stuff.44

  For three weeks, Godfrey refused to take the oath, but the emperor gave no sign of relaxing his demands. The mood in the crusader camp grew tense as the knights, who had given up so much to liberate Jerusalem, began to wonder why they couldn't just be on their way. Obviously, Godfrey would have to force Alexius' hand.

  This time, his attempt at saber-rattling was a disaster. Further crusading armies were on the way, and Alexius couldn't afford to have them add their strength to Godfrey's numbers. The imperial army was sent out and the crusaders were roughly pushed back. The duke got the point. When the emperor's representatives again visited his camp and politely repeated their invitation, the appropriately chastened Godfrey agreed. Within days he had reluctantly sworn the oath and been transported with his men to join Hugh's army on the other side of the Bosporus.

  Bohemond

  If Alexius was less diplomatic with Godfrey than he had been with Hugh it was for good reason. His spies had been watching the steady progress of the two remaining crusader armies and had informed him that the Norman adventurer, Bohemond, was approaching with a large army.

  Any prudent leader would be alarmed by this news. Of all the great crusading princes, Bohemond of Taranto was both the most ambitious and the most personally terrifying. Although slightly stoop-shouldered at age forty, he was a blond-haired giant, a hulking throwback to his Viking ancestors who had conquered Normandy.45 His father, Robert Guiscard, had been one of the most successful adventurers who ever lived,46 and Bohemond had fully inherited his wanderlust. Even his enemies found something magnetic about him. The emperor's daughter Anna, who met Bohemond when she was only fourteen, found him terrifying, but admitted that he was 'a marvel for the eyes to behold'.

  Such a man at the head of an army would have been worrisome enough, but the emperor Alexius also had personal reasons to fear the arrival of Bohemond. The Byzantine empire was well acquainted with Bohemond's family. In 1071, Bohemond’s father, Robert, had evicted the Byzantines from Bari, the empire's last foothold in Italy. Ten years later both Robert and the twenty-seven-year-old Bohemond had launched an invasion against the empire, ravaging their way through the Balkans. Alexius had been personally wounded in the struggle, and had seen no less than three imperial armies get smashed by the Norman heavy cavalry. Believing that they had defeated the emperor, the Normans had started making plans to place Bohemond on the imperial throne. Only quick thinking – and several well-placed bribes – had salvaged the situation for Alexius.

  Three years later Bohemond had tried again with a more considerable army, but conveniently for Alexius, plague had stricken the Norman army and killed Robert before the pair could do much damage. Thanks to the political maneuvering of his step-mother, Bohemond had then been completely disinherited, and had spent the intervening years trying to rebuild his fortunes.

  Even to his contemporaries, it was clear that Bohemond was not joining the crusade for religious reasons.47 His prospects in southern Italy had foundered badly thanks to his powerful uncle who had no intention of letting him develop into a rival. Bohemond was busy besieging a city on the Amalfi coast – grudgingly, on behalf of his uncle – when crusading pilgrims who were looking for a sea route to Constantinople told him about the crusade. He quickly realized that he had the magnificent opportunity to both carve out a kingdom for himself in the East and annoy his uncle. He immediately announced his intention to go to Jerusalem, taking so many soldiers with him that his uncle was forced to abandon the siege.

  Bohemond's decision to join the crusade may have been opportunistic, but it was meticulously planned. Together with his nephew Tancred and a moderate but well-heeled army, Bohemond set sail from the city of Bari and crossed the Adriatic at its narrowest point. His troops disembarked at several locations along the Dalmatian coast in order not to overwhelm local food supplies, and waited while he obtained the usual permissions to march across imperial lands.

  His army was a model of decorum and order. They had been forbidden from looting on pain of death – a threat that he was perfectly willing to carry out – and therefore managed to avoid the ill-will of the locals that usually greeted crusading armies. This was especially impressive since Bohemond had chosen a difficult route that led through the passes of the Pindus Mountains of northeastern Greece, nearly four thousand feet above sea level. In what is today western Macedonia, he joined the Via Egnatia, the seven hundred mile long Roman road that snaked across the Balkans to Constantinople. He was met there by a nervous detachment of imperial soldiers whose task it was to both secure provisions for the army and, more importantly, keep tabs on their progress. Good relations were scrupulously maintained, but the fact that this was the precise route that Bohemond had taken a decade before on his failed attempt to conquer the empire, was taken as an ominous sign.

  Fortunately for Alexius, however, Bohemond had other plans. His father had suffered only one defeat during his remarkable career – and that had been at the hands of the wily Alexius. Bohemond wasn't foolish enough to waste his army on a futile attack against the best-fortified city in the world. What he wanted was to carve out a kingdom in the wealthy east, and for that he needed to stay on good terms with the emperor. Byzantium was by far the most significant Christian power in the Near East, and without its support – or at least cooperation – no permanent success could be achieved in the East.

  A friendly attitude toward the empire could also have other benefits. Bohemond's goals would be far easier to accomplish if he had access to the resources of the crusade, and as Roman Emperor, Alexius had the authority to name a de facto leader. With that promotion, Bohemond would become the pivotal figure in the grand Christian alliance between east and west.

  Despite the recent hostility between Normans and Byzantines, there were several reasons for Bohemond to be optimistic about his chances.48 More than any other westerner, he understood the Byzantines. He probably spoke enough Greek to communicate, was intimately familiar with imperial protocol, and could be very persuasive in person. If Alexius was reluctant, he could at least obtain information about what the other crusader princes had agreed to. Then it would just be a matter of biding his time until a suitable opportunity presented itself.

  The treatment
he received in Constantinople was encouraging. Usually, guests who requested imperial audiences were quarantined for several days while an army of protocol officers meticulously instructed them on how to behave. Bohemond, however, after a single night in the monastery of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, mercifully free of courtiers, was given a special escort to the Great Palace.

  The speed with which he cleared the Byzantine bureaucracy – an honor bestowed on no other westerner – was a sign of how seriously Alexius took Bohemond. It was also a bit of a gamble on the emperor's part considering the appalling behavior of some of the previous crusaders. The dignity of the emperor – regardless of who was presently occupying the throne – was of paramount importance to the Byzantine mind. The empire may not be as strong as it had been in previous centuries, but it was still the universal Christian state, and its monarch stood higher than any other temporal power. If it could no longer claim the political loyalty of all Christians, it still demanded their respect. The crusaders, however, had largely failed to show the proper deference.

  From Alexius’ point of view, the behavior of the westerners verged on boorishness. Instead of being grateful for his gifts, most nobles saw them as either too stingy or somehow duplicitous. Many grumbled – with some justification – that they weren't really gifts at all since the imperial markets were so expensive that they went right back into imperial hands. Even those who kept their gifts seemed unsatisfied since the obvious wealth of the emperor made his generosity seem less impressive. He was accused of handing out trinkets, and some even rudely complained that the stream of handouts didn’t come quickly or steadily enough.