God's War: A New History of the Crusades

help failed, the main Muslim strategy appeared to be to wait for something to turn up, most likely the disintegration of Christian harmony and the raising of the siege as in 1142. These tactics showed prospects of success when, in early August, concerted assaults from east, west and the sea by large and elaborate siege engines, including rams, trebuchets, towers, one reputedly ninety-five feet high, and precarious ‘flying bridges’ mounted on pairs of ships, failed utterly, with most of the machines fired, stuck in the sand or damaged by Muslim artillery. Five times men from Cologne unsuccessfully tried to undermine the walls.

With casualties mounting, the besiegers faced a major crisis. The destruction of the siege engines left the attackers ‘not a little demoralized’ while with the failed mining operations, the East Anglian priest Raol remembered: ‘our forces again had cause for deep discouragement and, murmuring much among themselves, they made such complaints as that they might have been better employed elsewhere.’¹⁸ Now the dividends of the hard-fought battles of May and June to maintain unity and a chain of corporate command became apparent. Stories of the hunger, privations and desperation of the Muslims circulated. To quell talk of abandoning the siege, the leaders hauled some ships on to the beaches and ‘lowered the masts and put cordage under the hatches, as a sign that they were spending the winter (hyemandi signum)’.¹⁹ Successful foraging expeditions around Lisbon garnered rich pickings and heavy Muslim casualties as well as securing the besiegers from any threats to their supply lines. In the new mood of optimism, even the withdrawal of most of the Portuguese forces, leaving only Afonso and his military household with the bishop of Oporto, failed to cause a panic. As September arrived, instead of seeking an excuse to leave, the besiegers sensed their advantage as more and more of the besieged crossed the lines to surrender, bearing tales of the horrors within the city. According to a Rhineland witness most were so desperate that they accepted baptism; possibly these were in fact Mozarab Christians whom the northerners could not distinguish from Muslim locals; the cultural gulf remained unbridged: some of these unfortunate refugees ‘were sent back… to the walls with their hands cut off, and they were stoned by their fellow citizens’.²⁰ Perhaps this incident merely underscores the sadism inspired by prolonged close-contact warfare; perhaps it dimly echoes the blurred rhetoric of conquest and forced conversion heard by the Germans from the lips of the abbot of Clairvaux.

The final stages of the siege revolved around perfecting the mechanics of undermining or overtopping the stubborn city walls conducted in more or less security, as the defenders’ ability to launch sorties had subsided in the face of starvation and a massive sustained fusillade by the Anglo-Norman trebuchets firing at a rate of more than eight stones a minute. During September, while the Germano-Flemish dug a huge galleried mine under the eastern walls, the Anglo-Normans, directed by a Pisan engineer, constructed a new eighty-three-foot tower on the western beach. The final assaults, though protracted, appeared coordinated. The eastern mine was fired on the night of 16 October, causing a large section of the walls to collapse, although the pile of rubble in front of the breach prevented the attackers from forcing an immediate entry into the city. On 19 October, after the ritual dimension of warfare had been observed with the blessing both of the siege tower and the troops, the tower began to be manoeuvred into place before the south-western corner of the walls. So narrow was the level area of beach that the tower became surrounded by water, cutting it off from the main force. Throughout the night of 19 October and the whole of 20 October, the garrison of 100 Anglo-Norman and 100 Portuguese knights led support troops in a desperate defence of the tower, from fire, salvoes of missiles and sorties from the walls. Seven young men from Ipswich played a crucial part in dousing the flames that threatened to destroy the engine during the night of 19–20 October. Christian casualties mounted, the Pisan engineer was wounded by a stone and the Portuguese fled, the tower garrison only being relieved on the evening of 20 October.²¹ Next day saw the final assaults from both east and west. Seeing they would be overwhelmed, rather than be massacred the Muslim defenders asked for surrender terms. Negotiations became protracted, inciting restless elements in the crusader army to mutiny against the leadership, whom they suspected of selling out their rights to plunder and booty; the Anglo-Norman camp was wrecked by a group of 400 sailors led by a priest from Bristol, and the Portuguese camp threatened by a Germano- Flemish mob. Unsurprisingly, the Muslims temporarily withdrew their peace overtures until order had been restored. The treaty finally agreed on 23/4 October allowed the governor alone to retain food and property, while on 24 October 140 Anglo-Normans and 160 Germano-Flemish were peacefully to occupy the citadel and organize the despoliation of the city and its citizens. In the event the Germans and the Flemish smuggled in 200 more and the orderly occupation soon turned into looting, rape and pillage. The governor was captured; the Mozarab bishop had his throat cut.²² Having achieved immediate gratification, the Flemish and Germans then submitted with the other crusaders to the orderly ransacking of the city and expulsion of the citizens, which lasted five days (25–29 October). To the familiar accompaniment of rotting corpses, religious processions, racketeering and refugees, Lisbon returned to Christian rule.

Given the time of year, there was no prospect of an immediate resumption of the journey to Jerusalem. Afonso was eager to entice colonists and settlers, agreeing to the appointment of Gilbert of Hastings as the new bishop of Lisbon in a signal display of cultural imperialism.²³ With the Mozarab bishop conveniently murdered, there was no question of another local; equally Afonso may have hoped to encourage settlement and to display to the papacy his orthodox international ecclesiastical connections: Bishop Gilbert introduced the Salisbury breviary and missal into his cathedral and, a few years later, returned to England to recruit more soldiers and settlers. Others remaining included the priest Raol, to whom is attributed the most detailed account of the siege; he maintained his contacts with home, some years later sending a copy of his narrative to a Suffolk clerk, Osbert of Bawdsey. Such settlement witnessed the effective end to the unity so hard won and preserved since Dartmouth. While the thirst and competition for booty had both imperilled and inspired the assault on Lisbon, the lure of profitable and privileged colonization broke up the crusader army. In early February, part of the fleet embarked for the Mediterranean to fulfil their vows separately, per varia discrimina, as a Rhineland crusader put it. Before passing through the Straits of Gibraltar, one group, probably Flemish and German, attacked the port of Faro, without success, an attempt to extract protection money from the Muslims proving a messy failure. Once in the Mediterranean, some contingents sailed directly to the Holy Land.²⁴ Others, mainly Englishmen but also Flemings and Germans, who may have lingered at Lisbon until April, tried their luck with the papally blessed Christian campaigns in eastern Iberia, culminating in the Genoese-Catalan-led siege of Tortosa on the Ebro on the southern border of Catalonia (July to December 1148), after which a few continued to Palestine while their comrades, as at Lisbon, settled. One such, Osbert ‘Anglicus’, the Englishman, only honoured his Jerusalem vow after two decades waxing rich in the new Christian enclave.²⁵

The success of the crusaders at Lisbon confirmed the fears of the doubters. It had brought out the best and worst in them, the heroism of the young men from Suffolk, the obsessive, violent greed for a valuable horse shown by Arnold of Aerschot in the division of the spoils. The numbers and strength of the fleet became dissipated through casualties, subsequent diversion and settlement in Portugal and Catalonia. The survivors who reached Outremer in time to join the abortive siege of Damascus in July 1148, probably mainly Flemish and Germans who would have found their overlords Count Thierry and King Conrad in Jerusalem, represented only a fraction of the 10,000 who had sailed from Dartmouth in May 1147. Many of the leaders survived, including Hervey of Glanvill and Christian of Gistel, although, judging by the tone and omissions of his priest Raol’s account of events, the former may not have reached the Holy Land, while the latter almost certainly did. For the development of Portugal, the capture of Lisbon, with that of Santarem a few months earlier, marked a significant as well as symbolic advance. For the reconquista it provided new heroes and fresh opportunities. For the cause of the Holy Land, the fall of Lisbon proved at best an irrelevance, at worst a distraction. Most of the rest of Europe ignored it.

THE ROADS TO THE HOLY LAND: MAY 1147 TO APRIL 1148

On the same October day that the Christians began the orderly ransacking of Lisbon, 2,000 miles to the east one of the largest armies assembled by a medieval king met with disaster near Dorylaeum in north-west Anatolia, close to the scene of the First Crusade’s victory of 1097. The subsequent retreat westwards towards Nicaea and the coast finished what the battle had begun; losses were horrific; the rearguard wiped out; the commander-in- chief suffering a severe arrow wound to the head. The defeat of Conrad III’s magnificent army, with its echoes not of 1097 but of 1101, placed the whole enterprise in jeopardy, militarily and psychologically. Although within a few weeks, Conrad could describe the traumatic events in the Anatolian hills dispassionately, others saw in them the harsh judgement of God. Veterans later wept at the memory. Louis VII’s army remained in the field, but an aura of besieged failure became established, matched by the mounting practical obstacles against which the French in their turn were broken.²⁶