his entourage, other divisions of the army continued violent foraging, terrorizing local markets and brawling with German stragglers. As the march progressed, relations with the Greeks deteriorated. French foragers were cut down by Byzantine mercenaries; an advance guard was denied a market and attacked at Constantinople just as Louis’s ambassadors were continuing their delicate negotiations with Manuel over the terms of further Greek assistance. The Anglo-Norman contingent of the bishop of Langres and William of Warenne suffered a severe mauling in Thrace. Elements in the French army increasingly regarded the Greeks as hostile, their religious observances heretical, their social conventions despicable. A siege mentality developed. One member of the king’s closest circle recalled that, a day out of Constantinople, the disaffected, reinforced by news leaking out of Manuel’s treaty with the Seljuks, proposed a radical new strategy: use the huge western army to occupy Thrace; enter into an immediate alliance with Roger of Sicily and, with his fleet, which was already in Greek waters, seize Constantinople.35 Although possibly benefiting from hindsight, the story exposes mounting unease at the nature and value of Greek friendship.
As he had consistently since embarking from Metz, Louis rejected any diversion of effort, pressing on to reach Constantinople on 4 October. Any fears he may have held soon dissipated as Manuel, in stark contrast to his brusque treatment of Conrad, went out of his way to shower Louis with attention, granting him a specially favoured audience at which the king was permitted to be seated; personally conducting a guided tour of Constantinople’s shrines for the famously pious monarch; and entertaining him to such a lavish public banquet that some of more boorish and hard-to-please French guests feared poison. Ignoring continued outbreaks of arson and drunken affray by French troops, Manuel provided ample markets and a good exchange rate, leaving the discipline of the unruly elements to Louis, who, typically, proved inadequate to the task. The emperor even organized a joint celebration of the Feast of Louis’s patronal saint, St Denis (9 October), by Orthodox priests and Louis’s own chaplains; even the hellenophobe St Denis monk, Odo of Deuil, remembered the occasion with pleasure, especially the singing of Greek eunuchs.36 Manuel’s tactics of smothering his guest with affection concealed genuine worry at French intentions, hardly assuaged by the approach of contingents from Savoy, the Auvergne and north Italy who had travelled via Brindisi in Apulia, part of Roger of Sicily’s kingdom. The importance of his charm offensive immediately became clear as vocal elements in the French high command, led by the irascible Bishop Godfrey of Langres, urged an assault on the imperial capital, the capture of which would place the whole empire at the westerners’ disposal. The bishop, angered at his treatment at the hands of Greek soldiers, justified his proposal by accusing the Byzantines of heresy and recalling the campaign against Antioch by Manuel’s father, John II Comnenus, the replacement of the Latin patriarch by a Greek and the recent extraction of homage from Prince Raymond.37 The emergence of Antioch as an issue exposes one strand of western policy largely suppressed in the recruitment drive of 1146–7 and by the strenuous diplomacy of the Greeks. Bishop Godfrey’s complaints may well have reflected Bishop Hugh of Jubail’s negotiations in the west in 1145 to which the bishop of Langres may have been a party: he certainly proclaimed the cause of Edessa at Bourges at Christmas 1145 possibly in response to Bishop Hugh’s mission. King Louis appears to have consulted the pope on Antioch before departing for the east.38 This new front of anti-Greek policy was potentially more damaging to Manuel’s relations with the westerners, as it seemed more immediate to the French and less diplomatically awkward than an alliance with Sicily. However, just as in 1146, the question of Antioch subsided in the face of the claims of the Holy Sepulchre. Against Bishop Godfrey were argued the injunctions of the pope, which could not be reconciled with fighting Christians for ambition or money. Manuel, alert to the debates within the French camp, allegedly exerted pressure on the French to cross over the Bosporus by squeezing the flow of supplies, spreading false rumours that the Germans were winning great victories in Asia Minor and providing a hurriedly assembled fleet to transport the French to the Asiatic shore. The rank and file, as often on such expeditions, pushed for the simple strategy of progress towards the Holy Land; Louis agreed and on 16 or 17 October passed over to Asia, conveniently for Manuel a few days before the arrival of the armies that had come via Apulia.
Louis and his army loitered for some days in the region of Nicomedia, negotiating supplies and waiting for the counts of Savoy and Auvergne and the marquis of Montferrat. The embers of the debate over an attack on Constantinople briefly reignited as Manuel attempted to agree a treaty with Louis that would involve homage from the French, as in 1097, the return to the emperor of any captured cities and forts in exchange for supplies and a marriage alliance designed, in conjunction with the offer of a large financial subsidy, to secure the French king’s support against Roger of Sicily.39 The idea of an anti-Sicilian alliance may have been a Byzantine negotiating ploy; in view of the mood in the French camp it was certainly a bold if not cheeky proposal. After protracted and difficult talks, both sides gained their prime objectives. Manuel received the homage of the French barons and agreement over conquered land; Louis received provisions, the right to plunder where no supplies were available, Greek guides and promises of open markets on the road ahead. Manuel was not committed to provide an army; Louis escaped a binding alliance with Byzantium. Honour and politics were satisfied, even if the expedition itself scarcely benefited.
Almost immediately on leaving Nicomedia and Nicaea behind them on 26 October, ominously to some during a partial eclipse of the sun, the French learnt of the true fate of the Germans. From that moment, their march east never lost a sense of crisis, usually borne out by events. After consulting with Conrad, Louis agreed to wait for the Germans to regroup and join him at Lopadium, on the road south. Already markets had thinned and the army resorted to foraging, which soured relations with the Greek locals, who exacted reprisals on the exhausted and battle-shocked Germans struggling to catch up with the French. Too depleted to provide effective protection for the Christian column by themselves, the Germans were placed in the centre of the march, strengthened by the imperial contingents that had travelled separately through Italy, led by the bishop of Metz, who acted as Conrad’s chief interpreter, the counts of Savoy and Bar and the marquis of Montferrat. Some French soldiers could not resist taunting their new comrades with cries of ‘Pousse Allemand’ (literally ‘Push, German…’), which cannot have raised German morale.40 Avoiding the long coastal road taken a month earlier by Otto of Freising, Louis headed towards Philadelphia on what he hoped were easier roads than the more direct route across Anatolia attempted by Conrad. However, reaching Esseron on 11 November, the kings decided to change course, fearful of the winter dearth of supplies in hostile, Turkish-held central Anatolia. The coastal road at least ran within Byzantine territory and offered the prospect of supply by the sea. In reaching the port of Edremit, about fifty miles away, the French army showed a worrying tendency to break up, different units losing touch with each other, a characteristic later to prove near fatal. Rain, rivers in flood, steep passes, short and expensive supplies and curmudgeonly locals conspired to sap morale further. There were reports of soldiers deserting to take service with the Greeks and of others abandoning the march to find ships to lift them off an increasingly desperate shore. It took the westerners a month to arrive at Ephesus, where they hoped to spend Christmas, a distance of about 120 miles as the crow flies.41
At Ephesus, the army encountered Greek messengers warning of Turkish forces massing to attack the Christians if they advanced further and advising Louis to seek shelter in Byzantine fortresses for the winter. While well meant and accurate, such intelligence hardly compensated for what later struck some crusade veterans as Manuel’s highly cynical policy. He had failed to provide an adequate flow of provisions or a large enough shadowing fleet to succour or transport the western host. Even if impotent to keep Turkish incursions down the valleys of western Asia Minor from attacking the French, Manuel failed to encourage local Greek officials or citizens to show hospitality, welcome or open markets. With the German army destroyed, Manuel’s policy appeared less nervous and thus less supportive, his alliance with Louis now redundant. While not wishing the crusaders ill, Manuel no longer needed to appease or promote their interests, especially if they endangered his own in Anatolia or northern Syria. While the subsequent accusations of Greek perfidy, levelled notably by Louis’s chaplain Odo of Deuil, appear exaggerated and hysterical, especially as criticisms by Louis himself were muted, the king later recalling fondly his relations with Manuel, rumours of Byzantine obstruction persisted even in Greek circles.42 At most, Manuel helped only when and how it suited him; at worst he ensured, if only passively, that the odds were stacked against the westerners disrupting his political and diplomatic arrangements. Circumstances were unpropitious; Manuel did little to ameliorate them. Unlike Alexius I in 1096, he had not called for mass expeditions from the west; he was unsure of their motives, uncertain how best to capitalize on their frankly disruptive presence and unprepared to join a united offensive against Islam. Combating the Sicilian threat in Greece loomed far larger than putative gains in the Euphrates valley. So, when Conrad fell ill at Ephesus, Manuel saw the chance to reverse his diplomacy, abandon the French to their fate, good or ill, and reconstitute the Byzantine–German alliance against Roger of Sicily. Whisking Conrad off to Constantinople by sea, Manuel personally tended to the invalid amidst generous hospitality that the German king must have contrasted with the dry, for bidding welcome he had received at Constantinople
