God's War: A New History of the Crusades

from the Holy Land. The various contingents led by princes and prelates only began to march from September 1100, some not until the following spring. All the main groups crossed into Asia from the European shore of the Bosporus between April and July 1101. These campaigns constituted a self-consciously fresh initiative by the pope, his legates and local diocesans, comparable in numbers of recruits with the efforts of Urban II and his agents in 1095– 6. The one difference with its predecessor was the disastrous result, fortuitously highlighting the remarkable achievement of 1099.

Recruitment in 1100–1101 appeared more regulated than in 1095–6, although this may reflect the evidence rather than the process: contemporaries were more alert to what was happening than five years before. Moreover, clear precedents had been set, to which was added the whip of unfulfilled vows. Paschal II’s threat to excommunicate defaulters in December 1099 was repeated by a synod of bishops led by the archbishop of Lyons at Anse the following spring. For those crucesignati who had never embarked and still more for those, like Stephen of Blois, who had deserted, official strictures lent weight to social and domestic peer pressure to redeem both vows and reputations. Victory in the east in 1099 made joining up attractive for new recruits and morally imperative for defaulters. Two papal legates reinforced the message in a tour of south-western France, in the footsteps of Urban II five years earlier, visiting Valence, Limoges and Poitiers in the autumn of 1100. The embrace of the recruiting drive stretched to Burgundy and into Germany. The speed of assembly and journeys to Constantinople; the substantial quantity of money, transports and war materials assembled; and firm command structures suggested tight organization. The bishop of Nevers later complained that some of his men had been forced to go by Count William II of Nevers.⁷ The enterprise was dominated by princes of church and state. Archbishop Hugh of Lyons, a veteran papal diplomat, went as the pope’s chief legate along with at least eleven other archbishops and bishops. The parade of secular rulers at least equalled that of 1096, including the embarrassed veterans Stephen of Blois and Hugh of Vermandois; William IX, duke of Aquitaine; the count of Nevers; Duke Odo and Count Stephen of Burgundy; Welf IV, duke of Bavaria; and Conrad, constable to Emperor Henry IV of Germany.

Motives appeared varied as much as before. Former deserters had experienced widespread public and private abuse. Most notoriously, Stephen of Blois’s strong-willed wife, Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror, waged an incessant campaign of bullying and moral blackmail, her nagging extending to their bedroom, where, before intercourse, she would urge her disgraced husband to consider his reputation and return to the Holy Land.⁸ Adela’s preference for being a hero’s widow rather than a coward’s wife cannot have been unique. Elsewhere, relatives of deserters attempted to expiate the family shame by joining up. With the deserters and vow-defaulters went those seeking penance, either with specific crimes to expunge, such as William of Nevers who had burnt the village of Molesme, or from a more general sense of the burden of sin. Eagerness to become associated with this new glorious enterprise combined with piety and devotion. As well as authorizing prayers and preaching to celebrate the new Christian enclave at Jerusalem, Archbishop Manasses of Rheims circulated copies of the letters he had received from Anselm of Ribemont in 1098 with their powerful evocation of spiritual excitement and martial achievement.⁹ Fame spurred the enthusiasm of William of Aquitaine. The cause of Jerusalem transcended the political divide of the Investiture Contest, in posthumous tribute to Urban II’s triumph. The disparate incentives were subsumed in ceremonies of taking the cross, now unequivocally associated with the notion of pilgrimage, which again provided the focal points of propaganda, commitment and recruitment. The earlier expedition had evidently failed to exhaust the supply of enthusiasts even in areas heavily represented in 1096, such as Aquitaine, although Burgundy, Lombardy and southern Germany loomed larger than before. Unfortunately for them, numbers and enthusiasm proved insufficient.

The Lombard army left Milan on 13 September 1100, before some other leaders such as William of Aquitaine had even taken the cross. Reaching Constantinople around the end of February or the beginning of March, the later stages of their overland journey were marked by the sort of extravagant foraging that easily slipped into pillage and casual atrocities against locals. Further trouble erupted during the Lombards’ two-month stay outside Constantinople, suggesting that the leadership lacked a firm hold on their followers. In late April, the Emperor Alexius managed to ship the Lombards across the Bosporous to Nicomedia to await further western contingents. Alexius’s response to this new wave of western armies was equivocal. Unlike five years before, he does not seem to have solicited fresh western aid, although his position in Asia Minor remained precarious. In his experience of the intervening years was conceived the fear and distrust of what he later described to his son as ‘the commotion coming from the West’ that threatened ‘the high majesty of the New Rome and the prestige of the Imperial throne’.¹⁰ According to his daughter’s apologia much later, Alexius adopted an indulgent but exasperated pose in 1101, keen to avoid armed confrontation near the capital, nervous of his own security, eager to influence the westerners’ strategy but prepared to subsidize their efforts by money, advice and men, and reluctantly acquiescing in their plans. As in 1097, he extracted promises that conquests in Asia Minor would be restored to Byzantine sovereignty and obtained from William of Aquitaine’s party, at least, oaths of fealty. Apart from logistic help, Alexius could also offer the new crusaders a veteran commander in Raymond of Toulouse, who had been the emperor’s guest since the summer of 1100, welcomed as an ally against the increasingly vexatious Norman rulers of Antioch. Raymond helped mediate agreement between Alexius and the unruly Lombards before joining the expedition itself on the arrival of his former comrade Stephen of Blois with the forces from northern France and Burgundy. Together with the small German following of the constable Conrad and a contingent of Turcopoles supplied by Alexius, the crusader army gathered at Nicomedia in early June 1101.

It was later claimed that Alexius had advised against a new assault on the Turks of Asia Minor, urging the westerners to follow the coast road through Byzantine territory to Cilicia and thence to the Holy Land. Western sources describe a fierce debate within the crusader camp, with the veterans Raymond’s and Stephen of Blois’s argument for a march in the footsteps of the 1097 campaign being overruled by the Lombards, who determined to attempt the rescue of Bohemond, captured by the Danishmends the year before and now held at Niksar, in the north-east of Asia Minor. There were even rumours that the Lombards planned a descent into Iraq to attack Baghdad.¹¹ Such grandiose schemes, fuelled by an incomprehension of geography or distance and an optimistic reliance on divine favour, however ludicrous in retrospect, were hardly more extravagant than the conquest of Jerusalem may have seemed in 1097, except that now the Turks understood their enemy better. They avoided battles and presented a more united front, the Danishmends being joined by troops from Aleppo and Harran in northern Iraq. However, the Lombard decision to free Bohemund, while offering the prospect of the release of the finest field commander of his generation, opened the prospect of reigniting the feud with Count Raymond. Yet, paradoxically, Raymond may have gone along with the plan, hoping to negotiate a favourable deal in Syria with a grateful and obligated Bohemund.

This western force, declining to await the other armies even then arriving at Constantinople, left Nicomedia around 3 June, carrying with them the Milanese relics of St Ambrose and Raymond’s Holy Lance from Antioch. After capturing Ankara on 23 June, the crusaders headed north-east to Chankiri, which proved too strong to take. Thereafter, constantly harried by troops of the Seljuk sultan Kilij Arslan, the westerners fought on painfully until they encountered the main Turkish army of Danishmends and their allies near Merzifon early in August. After days of fierce fighting, Turkish pressure proved too much, panic causing the Christian army to disintegrate. Only a few of the leaders, including Raymond of Toulouse, Stephen of Blois and the archbishop of Milan and their military entourages, escaped to limp back to Constantinople; the infantry, the women and civilians and many knights were massacred.

The other armies fared no better. William of Aquitaine, who had left home in March, joined forces en route to Constantinople with Welf of Bavaria arriving at the Byzantine capital just as the Lombards were leaving Nicomedia in early June. A few days later they were joined by William of Nevers, who, for unknown reasons, decided to try to catch up with the Lombard army. By the time the Nivernais force reached Ankara, William abandoned the pursuit, turning south towards Konya and the main route to Syria. After fighting off Turks, presumably of Kilij Arslan, William reached Konya in mid-August. Finding his force insufficient to capture or intimidate the city, and too vulnerable to await the Aquitainians and Bavarians, William decided on a dash for Cilicia, pressing on to Ereghli, where his army was surrounded and destroyed. Once again the cavalry abandoned the infantry and non-combatants to their fate; once again the leaders escaped, ultimately finding their way, destitute, to Antioch.

Hard on the Nivernais’ heels came the large army of William of Aquitaine and Welf of Bavaria, which included Hugh of Vermandois and, more exotically, Ida, dowager margravine of Austria. At Constantinople, rumours about the Lombards’ fate persuaded some nervous Germans sensibly but expensively to embark by sea for the Holy Land; according to one them, the chronicler Ekkehard abbot of Aura, they reached Jaffa in six weeks.¹²