Decline & Fall - Byzantium 03 (7 page)

When Urban had succeeded to the papal throne three years later he

1 See
Byzantium: The Apogee,
pp. 316-22.

had been at first too preoccupied with his own affairs to bother overmuch with the Empire of the East. As a result of the struggle between Pope Gregory and Henry IV, Rome was still in the hands of an anti-Pope; it was five years before Urban succeeded, by patient diplomacy, in installing himself at the Lateran. Already in 1089, however, he had started the reconciliation by lifting the excommunication on Alexius; the Emperor, who had previously closed all the Latin churches in Constantinople, had responded by opening them again and by calling a synod which decreed that the Pope's name had been omitted from the diptychs
1
'not by any canonical decision but, as it were, from carelessness' - an assurance that can have deceived nobody but at least showed a measure of goodwill. Letters were exchanged; theological and liturgical differences were discussed with a mildness almost unparalleled in Byzantine Church history; and thus the breach was gradually healed, until by the time the papal embassy reached Constantinople Emperor and Pope were once again on genuinely friendly terms.

The legates carried with them an invitation to send representatives to a great council of the Western Church, to be held in Piacenza the following March; and Alexius accepted at once. Most of the proceedings, he knew, would be concerned with domestic matters - simony, the adultery of King Philip of France, clerical marriage and the like - which would interest him only insofar as the views expressed might differ from those held by the Orthodox; but the council might also provide him with the opportunity he had long sought, to appeal for Western aid against the Turks. The situation in Anatolia was in fact a good deal more promising than it had been at any time since Manzikert: the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum had largely disintegrated, and the various Emirs who now held effective power were far more occupied with their own internecine squabbles - many of them carefully engineered by Byzantine agents - than with a united stand against the Empire. For the first time, the reconquest of Asia Minor seemed a distinct possibility. But until that should happen the Emperor remained desperately short of manpower, dependent on foreign mercenaries - most of them barbarians of varying degrees of reliability - on his largely Anglo-Saxon Varangian Guard, and on the occasional Western soldiers of fortune who took temporary service in his army. All these together were just capable of guarding his long frontiers to the west and north, and for keeping watch against

1 These were lists of names - read aloud during the Eucharist - of those dignitaries, living and dead, upon whom the divine blessing was particularly sought.

further Norman incursions from South Italy; but for a concerted campaign against the Seljuks they remained hopelessly inadequate. What he needed was military assistance from the West, on a considerable scale; and Piacenza promised to be just the place to say so.

The Byzantine spokesmen did their work well. Sensibly, in view of the circumstances, they laid their emphasis less on the prizes to be won -though we can be sure that these did not go unmentioned - than on the religious aspects of the appeal: the sufferings of the Christian communities of the East, the submergence of Asia Minor beneath the Turkish tide, the presence of the infidel armies at the very gates of Constantinople and the appalling danger they represented, not only to the Empire of the East but to all Christendom. The listening delegates were impressed -none more, perhaps, than Pope Urban himself. From Piacenza he travelled to Cremona to receive the homage of Conrad, Henry IV's rebellious son, and thence across the Alps to his native France; and, as his long and arduous journey progressed, a scheme gradually took shape in his mind - a scheme far more ambitious than any that Alexius Comnenus had ever dreamed of: for nothing less than a Holy War, in which the combined forces of Europe would march against the Saracen.

Piacenza, he had decided, was only a prelude. When he arrived in France he called another council, larger and far more important, to meet at Clermont
1
on 1
8
November. It would last for ten days, most of which would be taken up with routine Church business; on Tuesday, 27 November, however, there would be a public session open to everyone, at which, it was announced, the Pope would make a statement of immense significance to all Christendom. This promise had precisely the effect that Urban had intended. So great were the crowds that poured into the little town to hear the Pontiff speak that the cathedral was abandoned, and the papal throne was erected instead on a high platform set in an open field outside the eastern gate.
2

The text of Urban's speech has not come down to us, and the four contemporary reports that have are different enough to make it clear that none of them has any serious claims to accuracy. The Pope seems to have begun by repeating the points made by Alexius's delegates at

1
Clermont — which merged with its neighbour Montferrand in 1650 and has been known ever since as Clermont-Ferrand - appears at first sight to be depressingly industrialized and is consequently ignored by most tourists. This is a pity, since it boasts a magnificent thirteenth-century cathedral of the local black lava (the whole town is built over an extinct volcano) and a supe
rb romanesquc church, Notre-Dame
-du-Port, two hundred years older still.

2
The site is now occupied by the Place Delille.

Piacenza, developing their arguments and endorsing their appeal; unlike the Byzantines, however, he then turned to the plight of Jerusalem,
1
where Christian pilgrims were being regularly robbed and persecuted by the city's Turkish overlords. Such a state of affairs, he declared, could no longer continue; it was the duty of Western Christendom to march to the rescue of the Christian East. All those who agreed to do so 'from devotion only, not from advantage of honour or gain', would die absolved, their sins remitted. There must be the minimum of delay: the great Crusading army must be ready to march by the Feast of the Assumption, 15 August 1096.

The response to his impassioned appeal was more enthusiastic than Urban can have dared to hope. Led by Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy, several hundred people - priests and monks, noblemen and peasants together - knelt before his throne and pledged themselves to take the Cross. The First Crusade was under way.

Alexius Comnenus on the other hand, when he heard of the proceedings at Clermont, was appalled. A crusade such as Urban had preached was the last thing he had had in mind. To him as to his subjects, there was nothing new or exciting about a war with the infidel; Byzantium had been waging one, on and off, for the best part of five hundred years. As for Jerusalem, it had formerly been part of his Empire - to which, so far as he was concerned, it still properly belonged - and he fully intended to win it back if he could; but that was a task for his imperial army, not an obligation on Christendom in general. Now at last the Anatolian horizons were brightening and there seemed to be a real chance of regaining his lost territory; but instead of being allowed to do so in his own way, and in his own time, he was faced with the prospect of perhaps hundreds of thousands of undisciplined Western brigands pouring across his borders, constantly demanding food while almost certainly refusing to recognize any authority but their own. He needed mercenaries, not Crusaders.

Meanwhile, he did everything he could to limit the potential damage. In the hopes of preventing the rabble armies from ravaging the countryside and plundering the local inhabitants he ordered huge stocks of provisions to be accumulated at Durazzo and regular points along the Via

1
Jerusalem had been in Muslim hands since its first capture by the Caliph Omar in
638,
but for most of the intervening period Christian pilgrims had been freely admitted and allowed to worship as and where they wished, without let or hindrance. The city had been taken by the Seljuk Turks in
1077.

Egnatia, while each party on arrival was to be met by a detachment of Pecheneg military police - presumably survivors from Levunium -and escorted to the capital. These precautions taken, he could only sit back and await the coming invasion; and the arrival of the first wave -preceded by a voracious swarm of locusts, from which the soothsayers of Constantinople drew their own conclusions - confirmed his direst fears.

Peter the Hermit was not in truth a hermit at all; he was a fanatical itinerant monk from the neighbourhood of Amiens, ragged and malodorous, and yet possessed of a personal magnetism that was both curious and compelling. Preaching the Crusade throughout northern France and Germany, he had quickly attracted a following of some forty thousand. It included large numbers of women and children, many of whom -confusing the Old Jerusalem with the New - believed that he would literally be leading them into that land flowing with milk and honey of which their priests had told them; but whereas the expeditions that were to follow were to be led and largely financed by the nobility, Peter's army was — apart from a few minor German knights - composed essentially of French and German peasants and their families. Somehow, this straggling and unwieldy company made its way across Europe, without serious mishap as far as the Hungarian town of Semlin - the modern Zemun - which faces Belgrade across the Sava river. There, however, the troubles began. A dispute said to have arisen over a pair of shoes led to a riot, in the course of which Peter's men - though almost certainly against his wishes - stormed the citadel and killed four thousand Hungarians. Crossing the river to Belgrade, they pillaged and set fire to the city. At Nish they attempted the same thing again; but this time Nicetas, the Byzantine governor of Bulgaria, sent in his own mounted troops. Against a trained and disciplined force, the Crusaders were powerless. Many of them were killed, many more taken prisoner. Of the forty thousand who had started out, a good quarter were lost by the time the party reached Sardica (Sofia).
1

Thereafter there were no more incidents; nor - surprisingly - were there recriminations. The expedition, it was felt, had suffered enough for its misdoings - of which its leader himself and the vast majority of his followers had been in any case totally innocent - and was received graciously at Constantinople when it arrived on 1 August, Peter being

1 Numbers are notoriously uncertain in medieval history. The chroniclers invariably exaggerate; never, under any circumstances, do they agree. The above figures are taken from Albert of Aix (I, 9-12), who is probably more reliable than most.

even summoned to an audience with the Emperor. A single conversation with him, and a glance at his followers, was however enough to convince Alexius that, once in Anatolia and confronted by the Seljuks, this so-called army would not stand a chance. In other circumstances he might have forbidden Peter to continue so suicidal a journey; but from the outer suburbs in which the Crusaders were encamped - the rank and file were allowed through the gates only in small, strictly-controlled parties of sightseers — complaints were already pouring in of robberies, rapes and lootings. Clearly the army could not be allowed to remain; and since it refused to return whence it had come it must continue on its way. On
6
August the whole force was ferried across the Bosphorus under heavy escort and left to look after itself.

The end of the story can be quickly told. At Nicomedia - now Izmit -a mere fifty miles from the straits, the French and the German sections quarrelled and separated, a smaller Italian contingent siding with the Germans. Both sections then continued around the Gulf of Nicomedia to the village of Cibotus, a few miles east of the modern Yalova. With this as their base, they settled down to ravage the local countryside, the French penetrating as far as the walls of Nicaea itself - by now the Seljuk capital - killing, raping and occasionally torturing
1
the local inhabitants, all of whom were Christian Greeks. Their success aroused the jealousy of the Germans, who pushed well beyond Nicaea - confining their bestiality, however, to the Muslim communities - and captured a castle known as Xerigordon. It proved to be their downfall. Xerigordon was set high on a hill, its only water supplies outside the walls; so that when at the end of September the Seljuk army laid siege to the castle the defenders were doomed. For a week they held out; on the eighth day, by which time they were drinking not just the blood of their horses and donkeys but even each other's urine, they surrendered. Those who apostatized had their lives spared and were sent off into captivity; the rest were massacred.

When the news reached Cibotus it caused something approaching panic; and morale was not improved by reports arriving soon afterwards that the Turks were advancing on the camp. Some advised that no action could be taken till the return of Peter, who had gone to Constantinople for discussions; but he gave no sign of coming, and as the enemy continued to approach it became clear that a pitched battle was inevitable.

1
The story that they roasted Christian babies on spits can probably be discounted, though it was widely believed at the time.

On 21 October, the entire Crusading army of some twenty thousand men marched out of Cibotus - straight into a Turkish ambush. A sudden hail of arrows stopped it in its tracks; the cavalry was flung back on to the infantry, and within a few minutes the whole host was in headlong flight back to the camp, the Seljuks in pursuit. For those who had remained at Cibotus - the old men, the women and children and the sick - there was little chance. A few lucky ones managed to take refuge in an old castle on the seashore, where they barricaded themselves in and somehow survived, as did a number of young girls and boys whom the Turks appropriated for their own purposes. The rest were slaughtered. The People's Crusade was over.