relying on local stocks when they fought on land. It is instructive that the count of Flanders chose to travel by land. Of those with access to Mediterranean sea ports, only some, like the count of Toulouse, sailed directly to the Holy Land; others, led by the counts of Auvergne and Savoy, travelled via Italy and the short ferry crossing from Brindisi to Durazzo before crossing the Balkans to Constantinople.56 The Sicilian offer presented political difficulties. Roger II threatened German ambitions in Italy and Byzantine power in the Balkans and the central Mediterranean. Even if his offer to Louis was not simply a cover for an assault on the Greeks, Roger’s participation risked alienating Conrad and arousing Manuel’s justifiable suspicion for no obviously overwhelming benefit, suspicions confirmed by the Sicilian refusal to take any part in the crusade once their offer of transport had been declined. Mindful of Roger’s disobedience to the papacy, the ubiquitous Bernard of Clairvaux may have tilted the balance against Roger. Despite his innovative taxation, Louis himself may have feared the cost of accepting the Sicilian proposal. By placing himself so completely into the hands of another ruler, one renowned for ruthlessly pursuing his own self-interest, Louis’s independence could have been compromised. The year’s delay in deciding meant the sea option would now have jeopardized coordination with the German armies. At root, perhaps, lay the fear that the sea route was too risky, too difficult for so large a landlubber army. By contrast, the land route was familiar in nature if not geography and, significantly for an adventure self-consciously undertaken in the shadow of past triumphs, had been sanctified by the heroic achievements of the First Crusade.57 The discussion at Etampes possibly concealed a decision already taken: negotiations with Manuel I had progressed far, the emperor, and possibly the pope, assuming the land route, although this may merely represent the success of French diplomats in keeping their powder dry. In this context, Louis’s much-derided decision appears thoughtful and pragmatic. Unlike his later critics, notably his crusade chaplain Odo of Deuil, Louis did not know the future.
The assembly at Etampes concluded its business by appointing regents for France, led by Abbot Suger of St Denis, appropriate for the crusade’s leading critic, and fixing the muster for departure at Metz on 15 June to fit Conrad’s plans and the delays since Vezelay in organizing the French contingents. Louis’s formal leave-taking of his kingdom provided spectacular theatre. Held to coincide with the annual Lendit Fair at St Denis, 11 June, with the streets around the abbey church crowded with visitors, the ceremony began with Louis visiting a Parisian lazar house, a sign of humility, charity and, with its reference to the mystic royal power of healing, regality. On arrival at the recently rebuilt St Denis (parts of which still survive), before the pope, Abbot Suger, the monks and a crowd of family, courtiers and notables, and beneath newly commissioned panels of stained glass depicting the heroics of the First Crusade, Louis prostrated himself before the altar, kissed a relic of the patron saint, finally receiving from Suger the Oriflamme, the vermilion banner mounted on a gold lance that under Louis’s father, Louis VI, had become the official royal ensign, and the pilgrim’s scrip from the pope, visual confirmation of the three elements of his enterprise: penitential pilgrimage; holy war and national honour. Proceedings ended with the king and a few (male) companions dining with the monks in their refectory.58 This elaborate show paraded the special relationship of the French monarchy with the papacy and between St Denis and the king, providing a ceremonial expression of leaving the kingdom in the hands of the saint and the abbot, the king becoming an associate member of the monastic community. The personal and political meaning of Louis’s holy war was thus carefully spelt out for the crowds to witness and later to relate.
Conrad III also faced tricky decisions, mainly provoked by his fissiparous nobility. A general, formal peace to which all the nobility were committed by oath lay at the centre of Conrad’s political strategy for the crusade. At a crowded Imperial Diet at Frankfurt on 13 March, Conrad’s ten-year-old son, Henry, was accepted as heir and crowned as joint king to legitimize the regency government headed by Abbot Wibald of Stavelot, later of Corvey. The land route for the crusade was announced, the muster fixed at Regensburg in May, the presence of Bernard of Clairvaux easing agreement. Henry the Lion, the young duke of Saxony and nephew of the disgruntled
King Conrad’s crusade mobilized or neutralized the power brokers of the German empire. With him were staunch supporters based on his family and household: his half-brothers Duke Henry of Bavaria and Bishop Otto of Freising; his nephew, Duke Frederick of Swabia; and his chancellor Arnold of Wied; and allies such as Frederick of Bogen, advocate of Regensburg. Alongside them was his arch-enemy Welf of Bavaria. No less impressive was the geographic spread, not only men from Franconia, Swabia and Bavaria, but Saxons, such as Count Bernard of Ploetzkau, and Lorrainers under the bishops of Metz and Toul (brother of the count of Flanders) and the count of Moncon, and the contingent led by the bishop of Basel, the fruits of Bernard’s visit in December 1146. Joining this German coalition came the kings of Bohemia and Poland as well as the counts of Styria and Carinthia. Although the Lorrainers defected to, for them, the more congenial French at Constantinople, this gathering represented the firmest practical demonstration of the reach of German imperial power north of the Alps for almost a century.63 The wider context of the king’s leadership of Christendom in alliance with the pope was witnessed by the papal legate, Theodwin, Cardinal of St Rufina, the Curia’s German expert who had helped engineer Conrad’s election as king in 1138.64 In recruitment, leadership and organization, Conrad’s expedition received important support throughout the German church. Viewed in the perspective of German and imperial politics, Conrad’s eastern adventure temporarily resolved domestic political tensions while making manifest his grander claims to world leadership. The febrile optimism of the summer of 1147 contrasted with the subsequent dull disillusion of defeat was well captured by one of the campaign’s leaders and close royal ally, Otto of Freising:
And so, when the rigour of the winter cold had been dispelled, as flowers and plants came forth from the earth’s bosom under the gracious showers of spring and green meadows smiled upon the world, making glad the face of the earth, King Conrad led forth his troops from Nuremberg, in battle array. At Regensburg he took ship to descend the Danube and on Ascension Sunday (1 June) he pitched camp in the East Mark near a town called Ardacker… He drew after him so great a throng that the rivers seemed scarcely to suffice for navigation, or the extent of the plain for marching… But since the outcome of that expedition, because of our sins, is known to all, we have purposed this time to write not a tragedy but a joyous history, leave this to be related by others elsewhere.65
Except in the eyes of his own apologists, Louis VII’s international prestige fell short of Conrad’s. Yet, as with Conrad, the extent of recruitment and active political involvement of the leading provincial magnates encouraged his role as the driving force behind this eastern policy and, more generally, as king. The blend of pious show, military exertion and administrative direction in providing men, money, command and strategy provided Louis with a unique opportunity to establish himself and his dynasty. The muster roll of French lords who travelled east with the king testified to the potential political dividends. While the counts of Toulouse and Nimes sailed independently from ports on the French Mediterranean coast, most of the rest of the kingdom was represented in Louis’s great army:
