Holy Warriors Page 13

  The siege was not, however, an entirely straightforward affair. The natural strength of the city’s defenses and the determined resistance of its inhabitants proved desperately hard to wear down. For much of the summer, the Christians made limited headway; they tried to construct huge siege towers—one was over thirty meters high, but the enemy set fire to it. The Anglo-Norman contingent made catapults and arranged a series of shifts to keep up a relentless barrage of stones and missiles, but again little progress was apparent. Eventually, however, the lack of food and outside help began to wear the Muslims down. Peace negotiations were opened although they quickly descended into Muslim diatribes against the divinity of Christ and allegations of the crusaders’ greed.32 Once more the assault was renewed: to the east of the city the Flemish-Rhineland contingent dug an elaborate series of multigalleried tunnels but even though this brought down a section of the wall, the defenders managed to barricade it quickly enough to prevent entry. The Anglo-Normans dragged up another siege tower and Raol, the eyewitness author of The Conquest of Lisbon, brandished a piece of the most talismanic relic of all, the True Cross, as he gave an impassioned final oration designed to inspire the crusaders to victory. He reminded the men of the sacrifices that they had made and promised them success. Raol made it clear that he would be in the thick of the battle himself, trusting in divine blessing to protect him from danger. The crusaders wept with emotion and fell to their knees to venerate the relic. With these spiritual preparations completed, the onslaught began.33 Slowly they heaved the tower toward the enemy. The Muslims tried everything possible to break, crush, or ignite the structure but it was too well protected by skins and padding. Inexorably it closed in on the walls—with the drawbridge just over a meter away from the battlements the defenders’ nerve broke. Starving and desperate, they could see there was no point in further resistance and so they sued for peace: a negotiated surrender was infinitely preferable to the likely horrors of an uncontrolled sack.

  With the fall of Lisbon, King Afonso had taken possession of a prized target in the reconquest, although the city of Coimbra remained the capital of Portugal for several more centuries. Most of Lisbon’s inhabitants were treated well enough to stay in situ because, as we saw in the Latin East, if they were killed or exiled, then the resultant ghost town was of little use to the conquerors. The crusaders received their promised booty and settled down to wait for the winter to pass. Once it was safe to venture to sea again—probably in late February—they set sail for the Levant to fulfill their vows and to pray at the Holy Sepulchre.

  FINAL PREPARATIONS FOR THE CRUSADE: SERMONS AND CEREMONIES

  Back in France and Germany the crusaders readied themselves to depart. They needed to mortgage and sell land to finance their journeys and such was the demand for precious metals that some churches were forced to melt down relics and religious vessels to supply the crusaders. Groups of warriors began to assemble and we can often see more than one family representative ready to go: it is striking how many sets of brothers took part in the Second Crusade, as well as a few fathers and sons too—once again, the old cliché of crusaders being landless younger sons is proved groundless.34

  In the weeks before the crusade set out, the anticipation and excitement were fueled by several major public events. Eugenius had journeyed to Paris and his presence added a special gloss to the spiritual preparations. He presided over a series of ceremonies that probably included a sermon by Abbot Peter the Venerable of Cluny on the importance of the Holy Sepulchre, and the dedication of a series of fourteen windows in the abbey of Saint-Denis to commemorate the achievements of the First Crusaders. Two of these roundels survive in a museum in the United States; the other twelve were destroyed during the French Revolution, but fortunately engravings of them remain. Some depict the great pre-crusading heroes of Christian history, Charlemagne and Constantine; others show a trio of kings being given the martyr’s crown; the majority tell of the battles, sieges, and triumphs of the First Crusade. In sum they formed a series of inspirational scenes designed to imbue the crusaders of 1147–48 with the values of their magnificent predecessors.35

  Saint-Denis was also the location for an emotional farewell to King Louis himself on June 11, 1147.36 The crowds present witnessed a brilliantly choreographed event designed to display Louis’s piety to maximum effect and to secure divine favor. As Louis journeyed to the abbey he stopped at a leprosarium and, with only two companions, entered. The patronage of lepers, who were kept separate from society by reason of their terrifying disease, was a deliberate echo of Christ’s care for those similarly afflicted. At Saint-Denis itself, the sense of expectation was tremendous. Excited crowds waited for a glimpse of their crusading king, although the extreme heat caused his mother to faint. Louis paused in front of everyone and asked to be given the oriflamme, the vermilion banner mounted on a golden lance that was equated with Charlemagne’s standard. Then he entered the abbey: the congregation within the cool, shadowy church fell silent. At the altar stood Abbot Suger, Abbot Bernard, and Pope Eugenius himself—a gathering of Europe’s elite churchmen—and in front of them lay a golden-plated casket that contained the remains of Saint Denis, the patron saint of the Capetian dynasty and the protector of France. Louis fell to the ground and prostrated himself in front of the altar. Eugenius and Suger carefully opened a small door on the casket and tenderly pulled out the silver reliquary holding the relics to allow the king to venerate the saint more closely and to be inspired in his holy task. After this Suger presented Louis with the oriflamme and Eugenius gave him a wallet, the traditional symbol of a pilgrim, and a reminder that a penitential journey remained a central part of crusading ideology. The pope blessed the king before Louis and his companions went to dine in the monks’ refectory to emphasize their change in status from earthly knights to holy warriors.

  TENSIONS AT CONSTANTINOPLE AND DEFEAT IN ASIA MINOR

  Conrad of Germany set out ahead of Louis and marched swiftly through Hungary toward the northern edge of the Byzantine Empire. In theory, his reception there should have been good because his sister-in-law had recently married Emperor Manuel Comnenus, but the woeful discipline of his army (perhaps some 35,000 in number) caused serious friction with the locals and provoked a series of skirmishes. In contrast to the First Crusade, the Greeks had not invited the westerners into their lands and they feared crusader aggression.37 It was a natural disaster that brought most trouble for the Germans, though. By early September they had reached Choerobacchi, just to the west of Constantinople, where they camped on a wide flood-plain. Heavy rainfall overnight caused a flash flood to cascade down from the mountains, and a torrent of water ripped through the Germans’ camp, carrying away huge amounts of equipment and drowning men and horses alike—a disturbing signal of divine disapproval.38

  The Germans then arrived outside Constantinople. The Greeks wished to move their visitors along as fast as possible in order to prevent a linkup with the French crusaders, and, through the usual carrot-and-stick routine—an offer of transportation over the Bosporus and the provision of markets—they managed to induce the Germans to cross into Asia Minor. The Bosporus may be only 550 meters wide at one point but, given the Greeks’ control of shipping, it was a genuinely formidable barrier and after Conrad had moved, the “queen of cities,” as the Greeks described their capital, was safe from one western army at least.

  Once in Asia Minor, Conrad was supposed to wait for Louis but, as he admitted later, he became impatient to attack the Turks and chose to advance. The Germans split their forces into two: a group of pilgrims were to take a slower, and nominally safer, route around the coast of Asia Minor, while the king and the bulk of the knights and foot soldiers planned to forge directly toward northern Syria. Accounts differ but it seems that the cumulative effects of a hopelessly overoptimistic rate of march, which in turn led to a shortfall of supplies, coupled with possible treachery from their Greek guides and fierce harassment by the Seljuk Turks, culminated in a crushing defeat.
Footmen were slaughtered in their thousands, and although Conrad himself was wounded, most of the better-armored knights survived and began to retreat.39

  Within a few days they encountered the first of the French crusaders. Their colleagues were astounded: the Greeks had claimed that the Germans were surging victoriously toward northern Syria, and when the truth emerged it was taken as clear evidence of Byzantine duplicity. Louis’s and Manuel’s relationship had been troubled from the start.40 Manuel’s recent wars with the principality of Antioch, presently ruled by Queen Eleanor’s uncle, Raymond, plus his recent decision to sign a twelve-year truce with the Seljuk sultan of Iconium, were perceived as indications of hostility to his fellow Christians. Prior to the crusade’s departure the emperor had written to Louis and asked him to swear fealty and return lands formerly held by the Byzantine Empire; in other words, to repeat the oaths of the First Crusaders. The French king declined, but as he drew nearer to Constantinople, Manuel’s demands for fealty, from the French nobles at least, grew more insistent. This was driven by the actions of a third party—the Sicilians: the Byzantines’ old enemy and, by coincidence, fraternal allies of the king of France. At this most delicate of moments King Roger II of Sicily sent a powerful fleet to invade the Peloponnese Peninsula, to ravage the city of Corinth, and then to smash Athens. Manuel was terrified that the French would join forces with the Sicilians and threaten Constantinople itself. To counter this Louis was subjected to the full splendor of Byzantine diplomacy: he enjoyed escorted visits to countless glittering churches, he was entertained with sumptuous banquets, and given audiences with the emperor. John Kinnamos, a Byzantine writer, noted that when the two rulers met in front of a grand assembly, Manuel was placed on a throne and Louis on a much lower stool: an unmistakable hierarchy. Still the French resisted Manuel’s calls for fealty—in fact, a vociferous minority in the crusader army even wanted to attack Constantinople and it was only the Greeks’ familiar combination of incentives and bullying—poor supplies outside the city and the promise of ample markets across the Bosporus—that induced the French to move.41

  In the aftermath of the German retreat Conrad and Louis met and the two armies joined together to begin a more circuitous march around the coast, a frustratingly slow process because of the innumerable inlets and rivers that had to be crossed. Conrad soon decided that his injuries were such that he had to rest and, thanks to the efforts of his sister-in-law, Empress Eirene, he was invited to winter in Constantinople. With most of the German troops gone and with no prospect of Conrad upstaging him, Manuel could afford to be magnanimous and he personally attended to the king and nursed him back to health.

  In the meantime, Louis and his troops had turned inland along the Maeander Valley where, in mid-December, they routed a Turkish force that tried to block their fording of the river. By early in the New Year they were in mountainous territory and it was here that disaster struck.42 On January 6, 1148, Geoffrey of Rancon commanded the vanguard as it moved over Mount Cadmus. He led the troops along at a brisk pace and by the end of the day had crossed the summit and started down the far side—well out of sight of the slow-moving baggage train and foot soldiers in the middle of the army; still further behind, the rear guard had not yet broken camp. The Turks shadowed the crusaders and soon glimpsed their opportunity. As the ponderous wagons and the lightly armed footmen labored over the mountain, the Seljuks pounced. They loosed volley after volley of arrows and bombarded the panic-stricken Christians from above and below: men and animals plummeted to their deaths and the Turks seized huge amounts of booty. Meanwhile, far ahead, the vanguard camped for the night, oblivious to their tragic error. Word of the attack eventually got back to Louis in the rear guard and the king and his household charged out to try to save the day, but by now the Turks were in total control of the situation and many of the royal entourage died. At first glance this seems an amazingly amateurish mistake—the loss of contact between contingents sounds so basic, but on closer examination, a few mitigating factors emerge. The French army probably numbered at least twenty thousand and to move over such awkward terrain was a seriously difficult task. Roads were rudimentary and the baggage train and troops probably extended for six miles. In unfamiliar territory it is perhaps understandable how such a situation could have developed because the mountains constantly broke up any sight lines and it became impossible to hold a proper formation. The vanguard waited in trepidation for their friends to appear. Throughout the night men emerged from the gloom in ones and twos to tell of their escape and to report the death of friends and comrades: a grim list of the missing, presumed dead, was compiled. Louis survived and soon took drastic action to try to ensure that such a catastrophic breakdown in order was never repeated. In an unprecedented move (and one not replicated by any later crusader king) he turned over the running of the entire army to the Knights Templar. This, only a couple of decades after their foundation, was a telling indication of the respect with which the warrior-monks were viewed, as well as a sign of the damage to Louis’s own morale. The crusaders swore to establish fraternity with the Templars and to obey their commands in full. With discipline established the army marched onward and duly reached the southern Turkish coast without further setbacks.

  ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE AND THE SCANDAL AT ANTIOCH

  In February 1148 Louis and Eleanor finally arrived at Antioch where Prince Raymond, her uncle, eagerly awaited their presence. The prospect that the Second Crusade would fight in northern Syria was of real excitement to Raymond because it meant he could tackle the neighboring Muslims of Aleppo; it also opened out the possibility that he could gain sufficient power to shrug off Byzantine overlordship, a situation he loathed. As the crusaders prepared to leave France the prince had sent them gifts to win their favor and now he welcomed his guests with processions and fine entertainments. Raymond was certain that his close ties to the Capetian royal family would aid his cause and there is even a suggestion that he commissioned the epic Old French poem Chanson des Chétifs in honor of their visit.43 Yet within weeks the situation had turned very sour indeed. When a formal assembly of Antiochenes and crusaders met to discuss a campaign in the north, the idea was, to Raymond’s complete horror and fury, rejected. The sources suggest that Louis’s wish to make his pilgrimage to the holy sites drew him toward Jerusalem, yet while there may be some truth in this, it does not seem convincing when set against the wider context of the crusade. More pertinently, the deteriorating condition of Edessa, the original target of the expedition, could have contributed to the decision to leave Antioch. In October 1146 the local Armenians had tried to break free from Muslim rule only to be crushed with the utmost ferocity. The walls of the citadel were shattered and many thousands of Christians were killed or sent into slavery. A northern Syrian writer of the late twelfth century offered an almost apocalyptic description of the city: “Edessa was deserted of life: an appalling vision, enveloped in a black cloud, drunk with blood, infected by the cadavers of its sons and daughters! Vampires and other savage beasts were running and coming into the city at night to feed themselves on the flesh of the massacred people.”44 In other words, the city was no longer worth recovering.

  The crossing of Asia Minor must have exhausted Louis and his men and the losses of horses and equipment were further serious problems. The presence of Conrad in the kingdom of Jerusalem (he had sailed there after his convalescence, well supplied with money and horses by Manuel) was another pull toward the south. Finally, an unwillingness to help Raymond, whose status as a vassal of the Greeks was known, is also relevant because the French blamed much of their misfortunes in Asia Minor on Byzantine guides and the Greeks’ dealings with the Seljuks. With his strategy in ruins, a furious Prince Raymond became hostile to King Louis and it is from this point on that the infamous cause célèbre of the Second Crusade emerged—the alleged relationship between Queen Eleanor and her uncle.

  Our sources for these events are problematic: William of Tyre wrote in the 1170s (although he claim
ed to have researched the matter closely) and, while the Englishman John of Salisbury met the king and queen on their journey home in mid-1149, he did not compose his History of the Popes until 1164. William suggested that Raymond resolved to steal Eleanor from the king in revenge for Louis’s unwillingness to fight in Syria. William stated categorically that “she disregarded her marriage vows and was unfaithful to her husband.”45 John was less certain, but indicated that “the attentions paid by the prince to the queen and his constant, indeed almost continuous, conversation with her aroused the king’s suspicions.”46 This latter issue might be explained by the fact that, unlike Louis, the prince and his niece were both Occitan speakers, the language of their native southern France; to an outsider, a “secret” language could have aroused suspicion. A later comment ascribed to Eleanor that the king was “more monk than man” gives a sexual twist to the situation.47