Armies of Heaven (15 page)

It was the first time that the Franks had seen the Turkish military in action, and it was unlike anything they had previously encountered. The Turks fought almost exclusively on horseback and with bow and arrow. Rather than arrange themselves in tight formations, advancing to attack
at close quarters, they dispersed, scattering about as if they were hunters chasing prey, striking whenever opportunity arose and then retreating just as quickly, howling all the while in the most terrifying voices. Using their speed and maneuverability to their advantage, the Turks penetrated the crusaders' lines and began to encircle at least two of the six divisions. The fighting had barely begun before another line of Turkish cavalry had gotten behind the Frankish army and cut off its retreat. In a panic, some of the crusaders charged toward Nicea and into the heart of the Turkish forces. The Turks probably seemed to retreat in the face of this sudden onslaught, and the crusaders pressed what seemed to be their advantage. But they were in for a nasty surprise. Turkish soldiers were as skilled at firing arrows from behind while retreating as they were while attacking.

A few of the Christians managed to engage some of their enemies at close quarters and with great results. Albert of Aachen said that they cut down approximately two hundred Turks, though the number is necessarily a guess. At any rate, the Franks' success was short-lived. The Turks started aiming arrows at the crusaders' horses, turning the well-armed knights into common foot soldiers. A general massacre began, during which, among others, Walter of Sansavoir died. The sharp-tongued Godfrey Burel escaped, however, along with a few hundred other soldiers, heading back to Civitot.
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And the Turks were right behind them. They rode into Civitot and quickly dispatched the ill, the infirm, and the ugly. They took back to Anatolia attractive girls, nuns, and beardless boys. A few hundred of the pilgrims fled into an abandoned tower, but the rest were killed. Anna Comnena's description of the dead no doubt exaggerated their numbers, but it nonetheless provides a good sense of how the slaughter must have looked to survivors: “When they gathered the remains of the fallen, lying on every side, they heaped up, I will not say a mighty ridge or hill or peak, but a mountain of considerable height and depth and width, so huge was the mass of bones.” A few years later, with the Turks pushed back into Anatolia and Civitot returned safely to Byzantine control, Frankish laborers working for Alexius would build walls around Civitot, using bones from crusader bodies to patch gaps between the rocks. “In this way the city became their tomb.”

As for the survivors, the tower where they had enclosed themselves didn't have a gate to hold off the enemy, but they managed to create a makeshift barrier out of shields and rocks that at least would hold through the night. Rather than try to breach the barricade, the Turks fired arrows over the walls, intending to kill anyone unlucky enough to stand at the end of the arrows'trajectories. In the middle of the night, when the attacks slowed, a Greek man slipped out of the fortress and crossed the Bosphorus to Constantinople to plead one last time for Byzantine help.
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On this man's arrival, Peter the Hermit learned for the first time of the catastrophe that had befallen his men, and he went immediately to Alexius to beg him to do something. Anna Comnena wrote that news of the disaster distressed her father greatly. Another Western writer claimed that Alexius rejoiced to hear that the Franks had all perished. Whatever his emotions, he dispatched one of his generals, Constantine Euphorbenus Catacalon, at the head of an army of Turcopoles (ethnic Turks, believed by Christian writers to be the offspring of Christian mothers and Turkish fathers), to drive away Kilij-Arslan and to ferry the few remaining pilgrims back to the fields outside Constantinople.

Kilij-Arslan's men got word of the emperor's imminent arrival and withdrew. Perhaps they returned to Nicea. More likely they marched on to Nicomedia, where (as Peter the Hermit seemed to have forgotten) another army of Franks had encamped awaiting reinforcements before continuing to Jerusalem. These pilgrims were not expecting an attack. The Turks decapitated everyone they found and left bodies and heads unburied.
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Such was the situation that Godfrey of Bouillon discovered upon arriving at Constantinople. Hugh the Great, Robert of Flanders, and others had been held in honorable captivity or imprisoned, depending on one's perspective. All across Hungary Godfrey would have seen evidence of Catholics slaughtered by other Catholics. One of his fellow leaders on the crusade, Bohemond of Taranto, was aiming to turn the war for Jerusalem into an attack on Byzantium. The Greek emperor was harassing Godfrey's troops, and as he and his followers neared Constantinople, survivors from the
armies of Peter the Hermit and Walter Sansavoir were no doubt pathetically recounting for him how, just two months earlier, the Turks of Nicea had slaughtered pilgrims by the thousands, as the emperor had sat idly by.

And now the same Alexius who so callously allowed the crusaders to be massacred was demanding that Godfrey leave his armies outside the city walls and enter his palace to discuss terms. It was December 23, 1096, just in time for the Christmas court—from Alexius's perspective, a fine moment to impress a gathering of German yokels with the full pageantry and spectacle of Greek imperial government.

Godfrey declined. He had apparently received warnings from certain unnamed Frenchmen (perhaps members of Hugh's entourage or an early legation sent from Bohemond) that he was not to trust Alexius, no matter what the emperor promised and regardless of the honeyed words he used. Alexius, for his part, took Godfrey's refusal as a snub and closed the markets to his armies. The Lotharingians responded predictably, plundering the land and stealing sustenance from the locals. Alexius in turn ordered his archers on the city walls to open fire on the pilgrims—but to shoot to frighten, not to kill, “without taking aim and mostly off target.” But neither side had the stomach for this fight, and they quickly struck a new truce. Alexius agreed to open his markets temporarily for the Lotharingians, and Godfrey told his men not to destroy any more buildings or to kill anyone. It was, after all, Christmas.
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Alexius obviously was still trying to come up with a strategy for dealing with Godfrey and with the Latins more generally. It had been relatively easy to move Peter's armies along. They were, in Anna Comnena's words, “the simpler folk,” who “were in very truth led on by a desire to worship at our Lord's tomb and visit the holy places.” The strategy admittedly had ended in disaster for these credulous pilgrims, but things might not have gone so badly if they had not left so far in advance of Godfrey, or if the armies of Folkmar, Gottschalk, and Emicho had successfully passed through Hungary and had been able to reinforce them against the Turks. Hugh's and Robert of Flanders's armies, by contrast, had been small enough that Alexius bullied them around with ease. Thus, their time at Constantinople left barely a trace on the historical record. But Godfrey presented new problems. “A rich man, extremely proud of his noble birth, his own courage and the glory of his family,” he was able to maintain a
distance between his identity as a warrior of God and his identity as a more earthbound military leader. And his army was big enough to push back against Alexius—not big enough to take the city of Constantinople, but with Bohemond's army not far behind, big enough to seem a real danger to the Greeks. Alexius therefore dispatched groups of soldiers with instructions to break up any attempts at communication between Godfrey and Bohemond as they advanced toward his capital. In short, before the Franks could get their act together and turn their apocalyptic fury against a schismatic empire, Alexius needed to find a new way to exploit and appease the crusade.
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What he needed to do, fundamentally, was reassert his original vision of this venture: the recruitment of a few thousand religiously motivated Latin soldiers as allies against the Seljuk Turks. Success depended on Alexius's ability to bring Godfrey into his presence and, through a combination of charm and cajolery, to convince him that their interests were aligned. But Godfrey, having been warned against trusting Alexius, continued to resist his summonses. He did agree, on December 29, to move his troops to a less threatening position farther from the city and along the shores of the Bosphorus, where they might stay in abandoned buildings (perhaps storehouses, though Albert of Aachen understood them to be “palaces”) rather than tents. But Godfrey still refused to meet with the emperor. Instead, he sent envoys to explain his reluctance: “The many evil things that have reached my ears about you, and which may have been invented out of jealousy or fear, frighten me.” Alexius tried to assure Godfrey that whatever accusations he had heard were untrue, and he sent the envoys back laden with promises of all the benefits that would accrue from his friendship. But Godfrey continued to mistrust his words.

After two weeks of this back and forth, Alexius became aggressive. He once again began limiting the Lotharingians' access to markets, and lest they seek supplies elsewhere, he dispatched ships filled with Turcopoles to fire arrows into the Franks' camps, keeping them away from shore and away from alternative food sources. Godfrey's men in turn took up arms and began marching back toward Constantinople, ready to attack or besiege the city.

A full-fledged battle then began. Greek archers atop the walls opened fire on the pilgrims. Undeterred, Godfrey's brother Baldwin of Boulogne
led five hundred soldiers to cross a bridge to attack the imperial residence at the Blachernae Palace and to attempt to set the city gate on fire. A division of Turcopoles exited the city and tried to drive the Franks off the bridge. They succeeded to a point, but Baldwin held his ground and continued the fight against the emperor's guards, starting “a grim, dour struggle on both sides.” According to Anna, many of the Franks died, but few Greeks were injured. According to Albert, “On all sides the battle was fought violently; many fell on both sides; many of the Franks' horses died of arrow wounds.” The Lotharingians ultimately surrendered their ground, or else the Turcopoles fled back into the city. More likely, night fell and the battle was called due to darkness. And for the next six days, Godfrey's men ruthlessly plundered the lands around Constantinople “so that at least the emperor's pride and his men's might be brought low.”
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Finally, Alexius relented, sending a legation to Godfrey offering hostages as guarantees of peace, provided Godfrey would at last meet with him. In doing so, Alexius was either very lucky or else very well informed. It was on that very day (probably January 19, 1097) that agents from Bohemond, having eluded all of Alexius's traps, arrived at Godfrey's camp to propose an all-out war against Byzantium. After Godfrey learned that the emperor was going to send his own son John as hostage, and that the markets were already reopening, he rejected Bohemond's proposal. He “had not left his homeland and his kin for the sake of profit or the destruction of Christians, but had set out on the road to Jerusalem in the name of Christ.” The next day, after receiving the imperial heir into his custody, Godfrey left with a small group of nobles to face the emperor. His brother Baldwin stayed behind, likely still mulling over Bohemond's proposition.
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Their meeting must have begun tensely. Alexius sat on his throne and did not rise for Godfrey. Rather, the emperor demanded that all Godfrey's entourage kneel before him and, in order of social prominence, kiss his hand. It may have been at this meeting that one of the crusaders attempted to sit before Alexius and was overheard later to mumble, “What a peasant! He sits alone while generals like these stand beside him!” Alexius, not understanding the words, called over an interpreter to explain what the man had been talking about. Rather than express impatience at the Latins and their primitive ways, he bore these indignities patiently.

He was, in fact, an impeccable host. He voiced wonder at the splendid appearance of the Latins, especially at their clothes, “lavishly fringed with both purple and gold, snow-white ermine, and gray and variegated marten fur, which the princes of Gaul use in particular.” Godfrey had been warned to resist the emperor's flattery and promises, but he fell instantly under his spell. “I have heard about you,” Alexius told him, “that you are a very powerful knight and prince in your land, and a very wise man and completely honest. Because of this I am taking you as my adopted son, and I am putting everything I possess in your power, so that my empire and land can be freed and saved through you from the present and future multitudes.”
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As Greek courtiers stood in the shadows holding golden treasures destined for Godfrey, the duke delightedly accepted Alexius's offer. Perhaps he still doubted the emperor's promises, but he believed his treasure, and he grasped the imperial hands (which earlier he had been allowed only to kiss) and made himself a vassal of the Greek empire.

The exact terms of his oath remain unclear. He certainly promised (as Anna Comnena stressed and as events later in the crusade made clear) that he would return to Alexius whatever lands he had conquered that had recently belonged to the emperor. This included all of Anatolia as far as Antioch and perhaps the lands beyond. It certainly implied service obligations to Alexius on the part of the crusaders, though from their perspective it also required Alexius to protect and provision Godfrey's armies, as a good lord ought to do. Such was the Franks' custom, and their pledge was—again, according to Anna—“the customary Latin oath.”
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The questions about vassalage and service obligations, however, might cause us to overlook the more interesting half of the story: namely, that Alexius made Godfrey his son, “as is the custom of that land.” Whatever the emperor may have intended to accomplish by the ritual, according to Godfrey's interpretation, everything Alexius possessed was now “in his power, so that it could be freed and saved from the Turks and from other enemies.” Albert surely exaggerated the importance of the ceremony, but some language of adoption probably did figure in to Alexius's new plan for mollifying the crusaders. When Stephen of Blois finally reached Constantinople in May and had his audience with Alexius, he would write excitedly to his wife, Adela, “Truly, my sweet, he often instructed me and instructs
just as we might do for one of our sons!” No doubt cultural miscommuni-cations on both sides were thick in the air, but Godfrey left the palace with a belly full of fine food, his servants weighed down with gold, and a belief that he and the emperor were comrades in arms—perhaps even father and son. There is no evidence that before Godfrey met Alexius, he had dreamed of acquiring an empire for himself, as had the apocalyptically minded Emicho of Flonheim, but after dining within the Blachernae Palace, he very well may have begun to think on such prospects.
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