The Siege of Jerusalem: Crusade and Conquest in 1099 Read online

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  restricting which categories of persons should participate. Th

  e spiritual reward

  that he off ered participants was remission of their sins. He also set the start date for the departure of the crusade, 15 August 1096.

  Urban, however, had set in motion social forces far beyond those he could control and his letters had only limited eff ect. For the most part the details of his message were lost. Every social class of person thought that they were eligible to participate in the journey. Everyone, including educated clerics, believed that to join was to merit more than forgiveness for their sins: to join this fi ght for God was to be guaranteed of a place in heaven. And many thousands of people, impatient to start, intended to do so in the spring, rather than aft er the autumn harvest.

  It did not help the pope that a number of self-appointed preachers began to travel through Europe gathering recruits for the journey with their own version of the crusading message. Th

  ere were the women who found a cross, fallen

  from heaven, who very many people prepared to follow to the east. Another woman made an extraordinary impression when she claimed to be the mistress of a goose that was divinely inspired. Word of this saintly bird spread through castles and towns and while there were those who scoff ed at such superstition, when she reached Cambrai, a huge city then theoretically part of the empire of the German king, Henry IV (today at the north-eastern edge of France), a large assembly fi lled the church, to witness the woman and her goose as they arrived at the city and walked together up to the altar. 2 But among all the popular preachers of the journey to Jerusalem, there was one whose activities made him the dominant fi gure, to such an extent that for many it was he, rather than the pope, who was the authoritative voice of God in this matter.

  Peter the Hermit was a small, middle-aged, man with a tremendous turn of phrase and corresponding powers of persuasion. Riding a donkey, he dressed in the humble garb of a hermit. His critics pointed out that despite this show of modesty, Peter did not forgo meat and wine, as a true hermit should. But his critics were few. As Peter travelled from town to town, he displayed a letter, which, it was popularly believed, God himself had given to the hermit. In fact, Peter’s letter was from the Patriarch of Jerusalem appealing for assistance from the Christian west. Having been in the Holy City as a pilgrim, Peter had witnessed for himself how the followers of Christ were being exploited, how the holy places of the city were refused to all those who did not have gold, and how many devout Christians died outside the walls with their desire to worship in Holy Sepulchre unfulfi lled. 3

  Great multitudes came to hear Peter. Some, believing themselves in the presence of a living saint, strove to obtain relics from the hermit, even prizing the

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  silver hairs from the tail of Peter’s donkey. Peter spoke to all social orders and all responded to him. Th

  e rich gave generously and with their wealth Peter was

  very generous on behalf of the poor. He was particularly concerned with the most unfortunate women of the cities of France. Peter’s generation, more than any other, had seen the church wage a vigorous campaign to end clerical marriage, even to the extent of mobilizing crowds to drive from the churches those clergy who refused to renounce their wives. In addition to the numbers of cast-off and impoverished women who, for one reason or another, had lost their male guardians, the towns of Peter’s day were fi lled with women who as a result of the campaign against the sin of Nicholiatism had fallen from a respectable and secure state to a precarious existence. To them and all marginal women, Peter off ered dowries so that they could regain through marriage their lost security.

  In the course of his constant travels and urgent exhortations, Peter recruited an enormous army of men and women, some 40,000 strong, for the march to Jerusalem. But it was noticeable that there were only around 500 knights amongst this force. Th

  e vast majority of Peter’s army were foot soldiers and

  poorly equipped farmers.4 Nevertheless, it was an extraordinary achievement for a hitherto unknown hermit to raise the largest army in Christendom. Th at

  success itself testifi ed to many that divine will was being made manifest through the small but passionate preacher. For the participants themselves, their lowly status was a badge of pride: divine approval was more likely to come to the humble than the proud.

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  e appeal of Peter’s preaching was assisted by the fact that life for the poor was extremely harsh in 1094 and 1095, the two years preceding his Pied Piper speaking tour. In those years famine and plague had ravaged northern Europe.

  Famine had reduced the poor to living on the roots of wild plants, and even the rich were threatened by the shortage of crops. Th

  e ‘plague’ described by the

  chroniclers was in fact an outbreak of ergot poisoning in the rye crop. Th is

  sickness caused limbs to wither and blacken, as though burnt by an invisible fi re. In abandoned churches the rotting trunks of the unfortunate victims of the mould were piled up in stacks. How much more attractive was the prospect of moving to the Promised Land? Hundreds of farmers seized the opportunity provided by Peter’s expedition, loaded up their carts with all their household belongings and together with their wives and children set out with the hermit.

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  ese farmers were not just intending to fi ght as part of a Christian army: they were emigrating. Th

  e value of land and farms collapsed as a rush of people

  strove to turn their fi xed property into coin for the journey. 5

  At Peter’s right hand was one of the few nobles to join this popular march, the Burgundian knight, Walter Sanzavohir. Walter left Cologne for the long

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  journey through central Europe to Byzantium shortly aft er Easter, 12 April 1096, with just eight knights but thousands of men and women on foot. Some eight days later, Peter followed him with a war chest full of gold from the donations of the wealthy towards the cause. As they passed through Germany, incredulous peasants scoff ed to learn that this rabble intended to march all the way to Jerusalem. But soon these cynics in turn became infl amed by the excitement. Perhaps, aft er all, they were living in an age where God’s handiwork was more manifest than at any time since the days of Christ. Were there not signs in the heavens? Th

  e celestial portents alone testifi ed that this was the time

  to abandon the routine but grim struggle for a living and exchange it for a blessed journey to the Promised Land. New armed bands formed from those who had formerly been labelled ‘Epicureans’ for their refusal to undergo the hardships of the march. Gottschalk, for example, was a German priest who had been inspired to assist in preaching the journey to Jerusalem aft er attending a sermon by Peter the Hermit. With his own eff ective speaking skills, Gottschalk drew together a sizeable army of pilgrims in the Rhineland, this time including very many knights.6

  Right at the outset of the crusade the darker side of this popular enthusiasm for the divine mission was evident. Among the contingents that formed up in the wake of the passage of Walter and Peter through Lotharingia, Francia and Bavaria were those who turned the passions aroused by the hermit into warfare against the local Jewish population. Th

  e Jewish community of Cologne were

  surprised by a sudden attack on 29 May 1096 and aft er a great massacre, their property was shared among a crusading army. At Mainz a powerful local noble, Count Emicho, together with his fellow knights Clarembald of Vendeuil and Th

  omas of Marle, had been awaiting the arrival of the pilgrims to lead a similar onslaught against the Jewish population of the locality. Forewarned by the experience of their co-religionists in Speyer and Worms, the Jewish community of Mainz sought protection from Bishop Ruthard and paid an incredible sum of coin for it. But Ruthard was u
nable to prevent Emicho and his army breaking into the episcopal palace where most of the Jewish community had gathered and slaughtering them all, men, women and children. 7 Is it any wonder that when news of these massacres reached the Near East, the Jewish population of Jerusalem chose to fi ght side by side with the Muslim population of the city against the crusading army. Aft er all, outside the city walls were Clarembald, Th

  omas and other knights who had already led Christian pilgrim armies against unarmed Jews.

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  e idea of taking the cross and marching to capture Jerusalem appealed just as much to those at the top of the social spectrum as to those at the bottom.

  Although no king found the crusading message persuasive, very many senior

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  lords – for a variety of reasons – welcomed the idea and took the cross. Of these, the most exalted in status, if not in the number of his followers, was Hugh of Vermandois, known as Hugh the Great, brother of the now excommunicate King Philip I of France. Almost as prominent in the higher reaches of the European nobility was Robert Curthose, the eldest son of Duke William I of Normandy, the conqueror of England. Th

  e adventure of the crusade

  appealed to this dissolute lord, who abandoned his hunting and depredations in Normandy in anticipation of pursuing the same interests in the Near East.

  A more pious crusader and equally prominent noble was another Robert, the second count of that name from Flanders. Robert had been regent of Flanders between 1085 and 1091 when his father, Robert I of Flanders had been on pilgrimage. Th

  ese two men of the same name, but of very diff erent character,

  co-operated to bring a sizeable army from northern Europe. Th

  eir acceptance

  of the cross had come as a surprise to the pope, who now found he had to grant the northerners their own papal legate, Arnulf of Choques, an outspoken teacher from the cathedral school at Caen who joined the expedition as chaplain to Robert of Normandy.

  Not be to outdone, when Stephen, the elderly and wealthy Count of Blois, took the cross he too had the pope give legatine powers to his chaplain, Alexander.

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  us as the news from Clermont had spread north, the unanticipated response to the idea of a penitential expedition to Jerusalem had required Urban to revise his initial conception of the leadership of the undertaking. Instead of one Christian army, at the head of which was the experienced Count Raymond and the Bishop of Le Puy, there were now three armies marshalling their forces with papal approval. Not to mention that Peter and several popular armies were already underway, albeit with a rather more tenuous relationship to the papacy.

  And the mobilization of Christendom for Holy War was not fi nished, for two more powerful armies formed up in support of the expedition. One was drawn from the people of Lotharingia, the other composed of Normans from southern Italy.

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  ree brothers of Boulogne (located in modern day north-eastern France beside the English Channel), took the cross: Eustace, the elder, destined to inherit the family lordship of the city; Godfrey, who was adopted as heir to his maternal uncle’s position as Duke of Lower Lotharingia; and Baldwin, the youngest, who had left a career in the church to enjoy the lifestyle he preferred, that of a knight. Th

  e decision of such important nobles to journey to Jerusalem

  encouraged many other prominent fi gures from Lower Lotharingia and nearby regions to attach themselves to this contingent. Not all were vassals of Godfrey, but as duke of the region from which many of them came, Godfrey carried the

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  greatest authority in the Lotharingian army, more so, indeed, than his elder brother. In accordance with papal direction, the German contingent set out in August 1096, fi nding themselves travelling in the wake of the political chaos generated by the fact that on the route ahead of them had gone the various contingents of the People’s Crusade.

  Last to form up were those whose general was Bohemond, leader of a south Italian Norman army. Th

  e Normans were recent arrivals in southern Italian

  politics, but had defeated the local nobility, the papacy and the Byzantine Empire, to become the ruling elite of the region. When Robert Guiscard, the lowly sixth son of a minor Norman family, went to Italy he did so as a mercenary, but by the time of his death in 1085, he was the Duke of Apulia, recognized as such by the papacy.

  In 1096, news of the crusade reached Amalfi at a time that Bohemond, eldest son of Robert Guiscard, was fi ghting for the city in alliance with his uncle, Roger I of Sicily, against his half-brother, Roger Borsa. Suddenly, an entirely new horizon opened to Bohemond. He took aside his young nephew Tancred and tried to persuade the talented warrior that their fortunes would be better served in the east than squabbling over their family inheritance in Italy.

  Tancred was sceptical until he was promised the role of second-in-command and that he would have the same freedom of action as would a duke under a king. Th

  e agreement was struck. Norman adventurers in search of fortune

  knew the value of uniting together against the world and when they did so thrones tumbled. Bohemond announced to his army his intention of supporting the papal initiative. Demonstratively, he cut up his most valuable cloak to make crosses. Not only did his own men rush to follow, but also – and this was the fi rst fruit of Bohemond’s adoption of the crusade – so did hundreds of knights who had been vassals of his ally. Lamenting the loss of his army, Roger was forced to abandon the siege of Amalfi and return to Sicily. 8

  Did any of those who took the cross really understand what lay ahead of them on the route to Jerusalem: three years of marching; gruelling sieges; ferocious battles; several periods of famine and months of pestilence? No other medieval army made such a journey to reach its goal. No other medieval army set itself such an extraordinary goal. Th

  e journey from Paris to Jerusalem is

  over 2,000 miles and while the initial stages were through the territories of fellow Christians, over 1,000 miles of the journey were travelled through land controlled by their enemies. Th

  ere were something like 100,000 people who

  set off in 1096 to conquer Jerusalem for Christ. When, in 1099, the Christian army began the siege of the city, they numbered about 20,000. Fewer than one in fi ve who took the cross reached their goal. Many had turned back at various

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  diffi

  cult points along the journey, but just as many had died. Fields and ditches along the trail of their marches were marked by hundreds of graves.

  If the hardships and battles that lay ahead were unknown, the same cannot be said of the geography of their journey. Th

  e pilgrim route for European

  Christians to Jerusalem was long established, with popular tracts in circulation that specifi ed the exact distances to be travelled each day and the halting places.

  Older still were the network of Roman roads that for over 1,000 years had linked the peoples of the Mediterranean. Th

  e crusaders took a variety of diff erent

  Roman roads in 1096. Th

  ese all led, however, not to Rome, but to Constantino-

  ple, one of the world’s most fabulous cities and claimant to the inheritance of the Roman Empire.

  From the perspective of the Greeks, the west had lapsed into barbarism, while from behind their impressive double-ringed walls, the rulers of the Byzantine Empire had preserved the only culture that deserved to be considered civilized. Constantinople in 1096 was a city of relics and statues. It was a city of enormous wealth, of busy commerce, of intense enthusiasm for public games, but above all it was a city whose elite were locked into a vicious but subtle striving for position within a bureaucratic hierarchy whose intricacies were completely lost to the outsider. Where to sit for a public function? Which dy
es could be used to colour the clothes you were allowed to wear? How should the person at your side be addressed? Th

  ese were all supremely important

  matters to the Byzantine noble and it is no wonder that as the western lords arrived, dressed as they pleased, speaking to their hosts in curt indelicate phrases, eating in great mouthfuls, and showing more interest in their horses than the artistic work on display around them that the Byzantine elite collectively raised their eyebrows in a horror that was not entirely pretence.

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  e fact that the fi rst armies to arrive at Constantinople were the popular ones inspired by Peter the Hermit did little to warm the Greeks towards the crusading project. If Pope Urban’s initial plans had come to fruition in a more modest way, the representative of the Latin Church would have been the extremely tactful Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy and at his side the dignifi ed and cultured count Raymond of Toulouse. As the papal legate was to show during the expedition, by emphasizing the common cause of all Christians it was possible to create very smooth working relationships between Latin and Greek clergy, especially in the lands regained from their pagan enemies. Instead, in the middle of July 1096, the Byzantines received Walther Sanzavoir and his army.

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  e crowds of crusaders were at fi rst suitably impressed by the size and wealth of the city. Th

  ey settled in their camp and, in limited numbers, took tours of the city to visit the saints. But as the days passed, their boldness grew: soon bands

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  of crusaders were stealing into the city and prising lead from the church roofs to sell back to the Greeks. Th

  ey even began to raid wealthy houses, leaving the

  properties burning once all valuables had been seized. 9

  At the head of the Byzantine hierarchy was the emperor, who in 1096 was the former general and astute politician, Alexius Comnenus. Alexius, 48 at the time that the crusaders arrived at his capital, had come to power in 1081 in the by now traditional Byzantine manner: military coup. Naturally, the Greek emperor wanted to ship this turbulent barbarian army across the Bosphorus and away from the environs of his capital, but Walter insisted upon waiting for his comrade, Peter the Hermit, who, it was thought, was not far behind. Indeed, Peter arrived at Constantinople on 1 August, but his army was in a very diff erent condition to that of his companion. At the town of Nish (now Niš, in south-eastern Serbia) on the fringes of the Byzantine Empire, on or around 4 July 1096, a dispute had arisen between Nicetas, governor of Bulgaria, and Peter’s forces. A body of 1,000 headstrong and imprudent crusaders attempted to storm the city. In response to this attack Nicetas unleashed his full force, scattering the crusaders, who eventually reformed with the loss of about a quarter of their number and the war chest of silver and gold. It was a chastened and much reduced force of Latin troops that arrived at Constantinople with Peter. 10