God's Battalions (17 page)

The emperor was not favorably impressed by this message. Nor, it would appear, was Neptune. The predicted winter storms took place, and most of Hugh’s ships were sunk off the Byzantine port of Dyrrhachium. Many of his men drowned, but Hugh managed to reach shore, where Byzantine officials found him “bewildered and bedraggled.”
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The Greeks reequipped his surviving knights and flattered Hugh, but they kept him under house arrest. Escorted to Constantinople, he was greeted by Alexius Comnenus, but not given his freedom until he swore an oath of loyalty to the emperor.

After the crusader conquest of Antioch in 1098, Hugh went back to France. There he was shamed for having failed to keep his vow to go to Jerusalem—the new pope, Paschal II, even threatened to excommunicate him for it—so he went back to Palestine in 1101, where he was wounded in a battle and died of his wounds.

Godfrey of Bouillon

Godfrey of Bouillon (c. 1060–1100) was also Duke of Lower Lorraine, which was part of the German Holy Roman Empire, and (through his mother) he was a direct descendent of Charlemagne. He was tall, sturdy, very blond, and admired for his pleasant manners. Godfrey was greatly influenced by the Cluniac monks and so committed to the Crusade that he made very substantial financial sacrifices to go: he sold two major estates and borrowed against his castle from the bishop of Liège. This allowed him to equip and supply a large army. He was joined in this venture by his two brothers, Eustace III and Baldwin of Boulogne.

Eustace was not eager to go crusading but performed very well once he arrived in the Holy Land. Baldwin had been destined to the Church but lacked a taste for contemplation and chastity. He was even taller than Godfrey and as dark as Godfrey was fair. When he set out on the Crusade, Baldwin took along his Norman wife, Godehilde of Toeni, and their small children. He seems not to have intended to come back to Europe. In any event, he had a glorious career in the crusader states, eventually becoming king of Jerusalem, succeeding his brother Godfrey (although the latter had never permitted himself to be crowned).

Godfrey decided to journey to the Holy Land via the northern route. He left Lorraine at the end of August and marched up the Rhine Valley and then down the Danube Valley until he reached Hungary. King Coloman of Hungary was still angry about his experiences with the People’s Crusaders. So when Godfrey sent a delegation ahead to arrange for passage, Colomon arranged to meet directly with Godfrey. This meeting convinced the king to allow the crusaders to pass (for a very substantial price), but only if Baldwin and his wife and children would serve as hostages to guarantee the behavior of the army. Although reluctant to place this burden on his family, Baldwin eventually agreed, whereupon Godfrey sent heralds to announce to everyone in his army that any infractions against Hungarians or their property would be punished by death. No violations were reported, and when Godfrey’s forces reached Bulgaria, Baldwin and his family were released.

Having entered Bulgaria, Godfrey’s army passed by Belgrade, still a deserted ruin since its pillage five months earlier by Peter’s forces, and, heading for Nish, they were met halfway there by representatives of Emperor Alexius, who made arrangements to resupply the crusaders. Gregory then led his forces uneventfully to Sleymbria, on the coast of the Sea of Marmora. There, for entirely unknown reasons, Godfrey lost control of his troops, and they pillaged the countryside for eight days. Some have said that they were angered from having heard that Hugh of Vermandois was being held as a prisoner—at least that’s what Godfrey used as an excuse when he met with Byzantine representatives sent by the emperor.
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In any event, order was restored, and Godfrey’s army reached Constantinople on December 23, 1096.

The arrival of this large, well-armed, and unruly force of trained soldiers at his gates caused Emperor Alexius a great deal of worry. Therefore, he attempted to assure himself of Godfrey’s allegiance and to get him and his troops some distance from the capital as soon as possible. As to the first, he invited Godfrey to come to see him and to swear an oath of homage to him, using Hugh of Vermandois to carry the invitation. Godfrey refused. Eventually Alexius resorted to threats, marching to Godfrey’s camp with a large army of Byzantine veterans. Faced with overwhelming force, Godfrey consented to swearing the oath and to having his troops transported across the Bosporus to an encampment at Pelecanum.

Just behind Godfrey’s army came an assortment of small groups of knights, “probably composed of various vassals of Godfrey who had preferred to travel through Italy”
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and come from there by sea. They were a truculent lot and also resisted swearing an oath to the emperor. Eventually they did so, but only after an intervention by Godfrey. Then they, too, were quickly transported across the Bosporus; the emperor was convinced that the crusaders really meant to seize his empire and not go to Jerusalem. The party that came next was the one most likely to have imperial designs—Normans who already had repeatedly beaten Greek armies led by Alexius and who ruled over the former Byzantine colonies in southern Italy.

Bohemond of Taranto

On April 9, 1097, Bohemond, Prince of Taranto (c. 1058–1111), arrived in Constantinople, followed by his large army of veteran Norman knights. This was a quite remarkable event, since Bohemond was the son of Robert Guiscard, who had led the Norman conquest of Sicily and southern Italy by repeatedly defeating the best armies that Byzantium could send to defend them. Worse yet, father and son had fought, and usually won, a number of battles against Byzantine armies led by the Emperor Alexius Comnenus himself.

No wonder that when Alexius discovered that a major contingent of crusaders were Normans recruited in Italy and led by Bohemond, he was very apprehensive. His daughter Anna, who was fourteen at the time she met Bohemond, wrote a remarkable sketch of the man many years later in her
Alexiad:
“The sight of him inspired admiration, the mention of his name terror…His stature was such that he towered almost a full cubit [about twelve inches] over the tallest men.” In fact, his real name was Mark; his father had nicknamed him Bohemond (after the mythical giant) because of his great size as an infant. Anna continued, “He was slender of waist…perfectly proportioned…His skin was…very white…His hair was lightish-brown and not so long as that of other barbarians (that is, it did not hang to his shoulders)…There was a certain charm about him, but it was somewhat dimmed by the alarm his whole person inspired; there was a hard, savage quality in his whole aspect, due, I suppose to his great stature and his eyes; even his laugh sounded like a threat to others…His arrogance was everywhere manifest; he was cunning, too.”
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The emperor was fully aware that Bohemond was undoubtedly the most experienced, talented, and politically astute commander among the crusaders, having learned it the hard way. Back in 1081, having placed his new Norman kingdom of Italy and Sicily firmly under his control, Robert Guiscard and his son Bohemond had sailed their Norman troops across the Adriatic Sea, taking Corfu and Durazzo, coastal cities within the primary Byzantine area. Emperor Alexius Comnenus marched north to expel the Normans, only to be badly defeated at the Battle of Dyrrhachium. Next, the Normans conquered nearly all of northern Greece. Desperate to prevent the Normans from taking his entire empire, Alexius paid an enormous sum (said to be 360,000 gold pieces) to Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor, to attack the pope, who was the Normans’ ally in Italy. Robert Guiscard rushed back to Italy to meet this threat, leaving Bohemond in command in Greece. Although still in his early twenties, Bohemond proved a brilliant leader, especially gifted at recognizing and countering enemy tactics, and he defeated Alexius in two battles, thus putting the Normans in control of Macedonia and nearly all of Thessaly. At this point Alexius managed to convince the Seljuk Turks that the Normans were a threat to them, too, and so, with a new army including thousands of Turks, Alexius was barely able to defeat the Normans at Larissa. At this point, in large part because Bohemond lacked the funds to pay his troops their back salaries, the bulk of the Norman army sailed back to Italy, although Corfu and a substantial area along the Adriatic were still in Norman hands. To regain these, Alexius hired Venetians, who successfully attacked from the sea and restored the area to the empire.

Now, about fifteen years older and nearing forty, Bohemond had raised sufficient funds to fully support a large force to go crusading. Accompanied by the anonymous author of the
Gesta Francorum,
the most influential eyewitness account of the First Crusade, he boarded his forces on ships at Bari and sailed to the Bulgarian coast and from there marched on to Constantinople. His meetings with the Emperor Alexius were tense. Bohemond was as leery of the situation as was Alexius. Aware of the Greek penchant for palace poisonings, he refused to eat any food offered at court. However, he fully retained his political acumen and readily agreed to swear an oath of allegiance to Alexius. Then he led his troops across the Bosporus to join Godfrey’s contingent at Pelecanum.

Raymond IV of Toulouse

The fourth group of crusaders was led by Raymond IV of Toulouse (c. 1041–1105), also known as Count Raymond of Saint-Gilles. Although extremely devout, he was excommunicated twice for marrying women to whom, according to Church rules, he was too closely related. In keeping with the network aspect of crusading, the second of Raymond’s three wives was Bohemond’s niece.

Raymond had decided that he wished to be buried in the Holy Land, and so when the pope first began to circulate his proposal for a Crusade, Raymond was one of the first to respond; his representatives followed Urban’s speech at Clermont with the announcement that Raymond had already taken the cross. At fifty-five, Raymond was certainly the oldest of the leading crusaders, and he probably was the richest as well. He departed in October 1096 at the head of a large company of knights, accompanied by his third wife (the daughter of King Alfonso VI of Castile) and their infant son (who died on the journey).

Raymond’s party crossed the Alps, and because of the season Raymond decided he did not want to sail across the Adriatic Sea, so he marched on until he was able to descend the eastern shore—an unwise choice, as it turned out. The roads were very bad; it was winter, and the weather was foul; and the locals were mostly wild Slavs who refused to sell them any supplies, harassed and stole from their rear guard, and murdered stragglers. Hungry and miserable, the contingent reached Dyrrhachium early in February. There they were met by Byzantine officials and were escorted by local troops. This seems to have caused antagonism among Raymond’s knights, who already were angry. A series of minor skirmishes began with their escorts, but nothing too serious took place until they reached Roussa in Thrace. With Raymond having gone ahead to Constantinople and not there to exert control, his followers, finding there were no provisions for sale at Roussa (Bohemond’s man having bought everything two weeks earlier), scaled the walls of the city and pillaged all the homes. Then, as they continued on, they were intercepted by a major Byzantine army and suffered a serious defeat.

Meanwhile, Raymond was negotiating with Emperor Alexius. The emperor tried to play on Raymond’s fear that Bohemond would become leader of the Crusade, reassuring Raymond that he would never give Bohemond an imperial command. However, instead of swearing the oath of allegiance to Alexius, Raymond pledged himself to support the emperor only if Alexius led the Crusade in person. Then he and his forces, reassembled after their battle with the Byzantines, were ferried across the Bosporus.

Robert, Duke of Normandy

Robert, Duke of Normandy (c. 1051–1134), the eldest son of William the Conqueror, was denied the throne of England for having allied himself with the king of France and plotting against his father. Although he held the duchy of Normandy, he was very lacking in wealth and had to mortgage Normandy to his brother, King William of England, in order to support an army to go crusading. His party included Norman knights from England and Scotland as well as Normandy; the many notables among them included his cousin Robert II, Count of Flanders; his brother-in-law Stephen, Count of Blois; and the cleric Fulcher of Chartres, who wrote a lengthy history of the whole undertaking.

Having crossed the Alps, Robert’s forces marched south through Italy until they reached the Norman Kingdom. Because it was so late in the year, Robert wintered his forces in Calabria. Seeming to be in no hurry, Robert finally went to Brindisi in April and set sail. The first ship to leave was hardly under way when it suddenly broke in half and about four hundred were drowned. Some of the more weak hearted deserted at this point, but the bulk of the army was safely transported to Dyrrhachium. From there they marched, reaching Constantinople in early May. They were cordially received by the emperor, Robert swore the required oath to Alexius, and then he and his troops were ferried across the Bosporus.

Finally, the entire cast of crusaders had been assembled.

ABANDONED BY BYZANTIUM

It turns out Alexius had never anticipated that thousands of high-ranking European nobles and knights would answer his call for help against the Turks. He had assumed that companies of mercenaries would be sent; few upper-class Byzantines engaged in any military activities, and for centuries the armies of the empire had consisted of mercenaries, and even slaves—often under the command of a eunuch.
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Now Alexius was confronted with thousands of men who had come of their own free will, were dedicated to a cause, and already had fully demonstrated that they were difficult to manage. Alexius and his court thought them to be dangerous barbarians. In turn, the crusaders thought Alexius and his court were a bunch of decadent, devious plotters; the
Gesta Francorum
often attaches a nasty adjective when referring to Alexius, using phrases such as “the wretched emperor.”
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