The First Crusade (17 page)

Just a few hours after leaving the coast they ran into trouble. A formidable pack of Nicaean Turks had, it transpired, been planning their own attack that same day and the two forces met on the plains above Civetot. The Frankish knights put up strenuous resistance in the pitched battle that followed, but the awesome destructive power of the Turkish archers decimated the Latin ranks with wave upon wave of scything missiles. Walter Sansavoir fell, his body peppered by seven arrows, and around him the crusader army was all but annihilated. Years later, a Greek observer sorrowfully recalled that the number of Frankish dead was so great that their corpses formed a vast mound, adding, 'I will not say a mighty ridge or hill or peak, but a mountain
...
so
huge was the mass of bones’
³³

The Turks immediately followed up this bloody victory by falling upon the crusaders' camp at Civetot with merciless brutality. There they found 'the feeble and crippled, clerics, monks, aged women, boys at the breast, and put them all to the sword, regardless of age. They took away only the young girls and nuns, whose faces and figures seemed pleasing to their eyes, and beardless and beautiful young men
.
³⁴

The crusaders' first steps into Islamic territory had ended in utter catastrophe. Horrified by the news, Peter the Hermit convinced Alexius to send a rescue mission. A handful of survivors who had 'leapt into the sea [or hidden] in the woods or mountains' were picked up and brought back to Constantinople.
³⁵

The second wave: the princes' armies

The main armies of the First Crusade arrived in Byzantium between October
1096
and April
1097.
Their crossing of the empire presented problems for Latins and Greeks alike. Many crusaders arrived expecting to be treated as valued Christian allies. One member of the southern French contingent recalled that 'we were confident that we were in our own land, because we believed that Alexius and his followers were our Christian brothers and confederates'. On the crucial question of food and supplies, the Latins assumed that these would either be provided free of charge or made available for purchase at reasonably priced markets. But, in the wake of the first wave's indiscipline, the Greeks, left anxious and belligerent, guarded their resources, offering only a limited stock of victuals at exorbitant rates. Disillusioned crusaders were forced to forage to make up the shortfall, but there was a fine line between foraging and raiding, and most princes struggled to keep their armies under control. Yet, even as tensions rose, ideological and pragmatic considerations encouraged Latin temperance. The princes knew that

Pope Urban wanted the crusade to reinforce Byzantium, and the majority were planning to offer service to the emperor, so the outbreak of open conflict was best avoided. Without imperial support, the expedition would also have little chance of crossing the Bosphorus. A northern French crusader observed that 'it was essential that all establish friendship with the emperor since without his aid and counsel we could not easily make the journey, nor could those who were to follow us by the same route'.
³⁶

Having experienced the chaotic passage of the People's Crusade, the Emperor Alexius, for his part, sought to manage this second wave with greater efficiency, shepherding the Franks through the heartlands of Byzantium as peaceably and rapidly as possible. He was undoubtedly shocked by the overwhelming and unwieldy scale of the crusade, and this has prompted many to believe that he viewed the expedition with inbred hostility from the start. Years later, his daughter Anna Comnena remarked that Alexius had 'heard a rumour that countless Frankish armies were approaching [and] dreaded their arrival, knowing as he did their uncontrollable passion, their erratic character and their irresolution, not to mention their greed'. Elsewhere she described the crusaders as 'all the barbarians of the West' and was particularly scathing in her descriptions of Bohemond as 'a habitual rogue' who was 'by nature a liar'. But these opinions were heavily coloured by hindsight, and, while there was distrust and friction, initially at least there was little open enmity between the Greeks and the crusaders. In
1096-7
Alexius wanted to contain, control and exploit the Franks, and so long as they toed the line he was prepared to offer them guidance and assistance.
³⁷

The main armies all reached Constantinople relatively intact. A rather bedraggled Hugh of Vermandois was the first to arrive in November
1096,
trailed by Godfrey of Bouillon's contingent on
23
December. Raymond of Toulouse's and Bohemond's men followed in April
1097,
and the bulk of the northern French forces did not appear until mid-May. All endured a degree of difficulty and danger in their journeys across the empire.

Alexius had sent high-ranking envoys at the head of substantial Byzantine forces to greet each army at the fringes of Greek territory. Officially they were there to act as guides and liaison officers, but in reality their primary remit was to shadow the crusader forces, policing Latin activity. This policy was a limited success: Godfreys army traversed most of the northern pilgrim route without incident, passing Nish, Sofia and Philipopolis; Robert of Normandy and Stephen of Blois marched along the Via Egnatia, linking Durazzo to Constantinople, in the clement season of spring, moving with relative ease and rapidity. Full-scale warfare was avoided, as was widespread rape of the countryside.
³⁸

But there were flashes of hostility and open conflict. Raymond of Toulouse set out along the Via Egnatia in February and found the going far tougher. Although presented with letters of safe conduct by a member of the. imperial Comneni family at Durazzo, the southern French struggled to find sufficient supplies and their wide-ranging foraging soon led to clashes with elements of the Byzantine army detailed to monitor their progress. Early in th
e journey, the papal legate Adhe
mar of Le Puy was attacked by Petchenegs, now loosely allied to the Greeks. Thrown from his mule and captured, the bishop was stripped of all his valuables and beaten over the head. He would probably have suffered an even worse fate but for the actions of one particularly acquisitive Petcheneg. Deciding that he wanted all. Adhemar's treasure for himself, he set upon his fellow brigands, giving a group of crusaders time to come to the bishop's rescue. The trans-Balkan passage dragged on and by April the strain began to tell. When the people of Roussa offered a less than warm welcome, Latin discipline broke and the town was summarily stormed and sacked, an infringement that prompted retaliatory attacks from the Greeks. Raymond himself hurried on to Constantinople with just a handful of followers to restore relations with the emperor.
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Bohemond's contingent struck inland from the Adriatic coast at Avlona to join the Via Egnatia at Vodena, thus avoiding Greek scrutiny in the first part of the journey. Bohemond seems deliberately to have taken his time crossing the Balkans, perhaps waiting to see how the emperor dealt with other princes at Constantinople and formulating a strategy to turn events to his best advantage. Knowing that Alexius viewed the southern Italian Normans with profound unease because of the war of
1081-5,
^ne
apparently decided to give the emperor no grounds for early complaint, counselling his followers 'to be courteous and refrain from plundering that land, which belonged to Christians, and he said that no one was to take more than sufficed for his food'. This proved difficult to enforce, and the Byzantines and crusaders exchanged hostilities. In January
1097,
livestock was stolen from the citizens of Castoria when they refused to sell supplies; while crossing the River Vardar on
18
February Bohemond's forces were attacked by imperial troops; and a few days later the crusaders sacked a small castle on the approach to
Serres, apparently against Bohe
mond's wishes.

His conciliatory approach may simply have been a thin diplomatic veneer designed to mask his true intentions, because he was simultaneously probing the possibility of an anti-Greek alliance with other Latin princes. He tried to establish a line of communication with Godfrey of Bouillon, already camped outside Constantinople, proposing that they join forces and attack Alexius, but his envoys seem to have been intercepted. Intrigue was certainly in the air, because Godfrey was warned by his advisers to be wary of assassination attempts, even by such exotic methods as poisoned cloaks. With his schemes frustrated, Bohemond left the bulk of the army in the care of Tancred to pass Easter near Roussa and rode on to Constantinople to open negotiations with the emperor.
⁴⁰

The Graeco-Latin detente survived the piecemeal approach of the princes' armies towards the Byzantine capital, but an underlying current of mutual suspicion and ingrained antipathy was running dangerously close to the surface throughout the first half of
1097.

THE
GREAT
CITY
OF
CONSTANTINOPLE

The arduous journey from western Europe brought each contingent of the crusading host to the gates of Constantinople. There was no greater Christian city on earth. Its staggering size, exotic opulence and cosmopolitan populace astounded the Franks. One wrote:

Oh what a noble and beautiful city is Constantinople! How many monasteries and palaces it contains, constructed with wonderful skill! It would take too long to describe all the wealth that is there of every kind, of gold, of silver, all types of clothes, holy relics
...
There are, I think, around twenty thousand eunuchs living there always.
⁴¹

Poised as it was on an isthmus jutting out into the Bosphorus Strait - the thin body of water that connects the Mediterranean with the Black Sea and separates the European and Asian continents - the city was perfectly placed to exploit the pulsing trade route to the Orient. Known in antiquity as Byzantion (from which the word Byzantium is derived), it was renamed in honour of Constantine the Great when he chose it as the site of his new capital of the Roman Empire in
324
CE.
The city was shaped into a rough triangle, two sides of which abutted the sea, and was enclosed within massive twin walls - to the landward side these presented an awesome, impenetrable barrier, seven kilometres long, up to five metres thick and twenty metres high. The huge size of this metropolis dwarfed the largest city in Latin Europe ten-fold; its teeming populace, perhaps
500,000
strong, could have inhabited an entire realm back in the West.

Alexius Comnenus was determined to protect this great city at all costs. So even though the crusaders had come to Byzantium as allies, the emperor forced them to camp outside Constantinople s walls. One Latin eyewitness recalled that we did not try to enter the city because it was not agreeable to [Alexius] for he feared that possibly we would plot some harm to him
...
[We could only] enter the city at the rate of five or six each hour. Thus while we were leaving, others were e
ntering to pray in the churches.
⁴²
Those who were lucky enough to get in were greeted by sights of unparalleled grandeur. The colossal wealth of the Greeks was legendary, and the magnificence of their capital spoke of an empire possessed of immeasurable fortune and an ancient heritage.

The first stop of any crusader would have been the Basilica of St Sophia, the largest, most spectacular Christian church in the world. Built in the sixth century, its vast interior glistened, its walls, vaulted corridors and domes being covered with dramatic frescoes and mosaics whose craftsmanship far outstripped anything the Latins would have seen in western Europe. This giant structure was topped by an enormous dome more than fifty metres high and thirty metres wide. The basilica, like the city as a whole, was renowned for its collection of sacred relics. A visitor to Constantinople might see Christ's crown of thorns and pieces of the cross upon which he was crucified; the Virgin Mary's robe and locks of her hair; at least two heads of John the Baptist; and the bones of virtually all the apostles.

Elsewhere in the city, the Franks could marvel at countless wonders: the Forum of Constantine, dominated by a fifty-metre-high column, upon the summit of which stood a gigantic statue of the city's founder modelled as Apollo; the Hippodrome - an ancient stadium famed for its brutal chariot races, capable of seating a crowd of
100,000;
and the Equestrian Statue of Justinian - a monumental marble column topped by a bronze of the emperor astride his horse, rendered three times life-size, holding his hand out to the east as a symbolic warning to the Persians.

The most esteemed visitors might gain access to the imperial residence itself, the Palace of the Blachernae, situated atop a hill in the north-west corner of Constantinople, overlooking the city and its surroundings. A crusader who saw it in the twelfth century wrote:

On its three sides the Palace offers to its inhabitants the triple pleasure of gazing alternately on the sea, the countryside, and the town. The exterior of the palace is of almost incomparable loveliness and its interior surpasses anything that I can say about it. It is decorated throughout with gold and various colours and the floor is paved with cleverly arranged marble.
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