Armies of Heaven (16 page)

Godfrey also began to see himself as Alexius's accomplice. He returned to camp and ordered his men to keep the peace. When Alexius asked Godfrey to lead them across the Bosphorus in late February, as Bohemond's armies neared, he did so without complaint, presumably taking the followers of Hugh the Great, Robert of Flanders, and Peter the Hermit with him. Alexius, for his part, supplied Godfrey's men with money and markets. The Franks made occasional accusations of price gouging against the Greeks, but Godfrey and Alexius were always able to reach an understanding and avoid a repetition of the grim and violent scenes of the previous January.

Yet not everyone was as impressed at Alexius's generosity as Godfrey. Some of the Lotharingians felt that the emperor was continuing to play them for fools. “Amazing to say! All of the emperor's gifts that the duke distributed to his soldiers went straight back to the royal treasury in exchange for food. And not just the emperor's money, but also the money that the army had brought together there from all over the world.” From Alexius's perspective, the crusaders were a burden. They were primitive, they were violent, and they were fanatical, but with the right stage management and with quiet opportunism, he might even turn a slight profit off of their service.
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The next crusading leader to reach Constantinople was Bohemond, who arrived with a few companions on April 20, 1097. The main part of his army had stayed behind at Roussa (the Byzantine city Raymond had attacked for refusing him supplies) under the command of Bohemond's nephew Tancred. In theory, Bohemond ought to have been the most difficult crusade leader for Alexius to handle. Bohemond's father, Robert
Guiscard, had once set his eyes on toppling Alexius, and Bohemond himself, as we have already seen, had been testing the waters to see if Godfrey, and perhaps others, were willing to lay siege to the Byzantine capital before turning their attention to Jerusalem.

From Anna Comnena's perspective, among all the crusade leaders Bohemond's motives were the most suspect. Indeed, she found his obvious cynicism almost refreshing. “Apparently he left to worship at the Holy Sepulcher, but in reality to win power for himself—or rather, if possible, to seize the Roman Empire itself, as his father had suggested.” His cunning and ambition were familiar to a Greek audience, but this made him no less terrifying: “The sight of him inspired admiration, the mention of his name terror.... There was a certain charm about him, but it was somewhat dimmed by the alarm his person as a whole inspired; there was a hard, savage quality in his whole aspect, due, I suppose, to his great stature and his eyes; even his laugh sounded like a threat to others.” Even so, in comparison to earlier Western leaders, Alexius found Bohemond almost amiable. Perhaps this was because they spoke the same language: Bohemond knew Greek and was used to the customs, manners, and occasional acts of treachery characteristic of the East.
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Despite their many battles fifteen years earlier, Bohemond and Alexius were thus well suited to work together. Diplomacy, however, required them to perform certain rituals to overcome their mutual suspicions and establish something like understanding. At a ceremonial dinner, Alexius offered Bohemond two plates of food: one prepared in the Byzantine style and one left uncooked so that Bohemond's own chef could serve it as he wished. It was really an opportunity for the giant to show whether he trusted Alexius since the cooked plate could have been poisoned. Bohemond, cautious with his own life, turned the prepared dish over to his household, “for it was his habit to treat servants with utter indifference.” Afterward (in a scene that is likely more emblematical than historical) Alexius had one of his servants take Bohemond into a room filled “with all kinds of wealth: clothes, gold and silver, coins, objects of lesser value filled the place so completely that it was impossible for anyone to walk in it.” Bohemond mused that with such money he could long ago have conquered many countries, and the servant responded that he could indeed
have it all as a gift of the emperor. Bohemond hesitated for a time, probably trying to decide whether such a gift would put him too much in Alexius's debt—typical Latin moodiness, according to Anna. In the end his practical instincts won out. He accepted the loot and got down to the serious business of negotiating with the emperor.
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What exactly Bohemond requested or what Alexius offered is unclear. Several near contemporary accounts survive, but none by anyone involved in the actual meetings. The two things they all seem to agree on is that the negotiations were secretive and that the two men struck some sort of deal about the future government of Anatolia. According to Anna Comnena, Bohemond asked that Alexius name him “Domestic of the East,” or chief military commander for the empire's eastern lands. Alexius refused, apparently suspecting Bohemond's intentions, but nonetheless dangled hopes before him: “The time for that is not yet ripe, but with your energy and loyalty it will not be long before you have even that honor.” An anonymous Norman historian differed, claiming that Alexius made a fairly specific proposal. In return for loyal service, Alexius would give him control of lands variously described as “in Romania” or “around Antioch” and fifteen days' journey in length and eight days' journey in width. The gist of the two stories is similar. Alexius offered Bohemond money and land and probably agreed to make him an officer in the Byzantine Empire, and Bohemond decided, for the foreseeable future, to be the most loyal servant possible to Alexius. It is doubtful that either man trusted the other. Even after the agreement, Bohemond probably still would have taken a plate of raw meat rather than cooked food had Alexius given him the same choice. But each man, for a time, was willing to pretend that all was well between them.
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Not everyone was happy at this unexpected détente. A member of Bohemond's army complained, “Maybe we are always to be deceived by our leaders from this point forward. For what did they do at the end? They will say that necessity compelled them to humiliate themselves in obedience to that wicked emperor, whether they wanted to or not.”

Bohemond's nephew Tancred would likely have agreed with this assessment. Tancred arrived at Constantinople with the rest of the Italian-Norman army less than a week after Bohemond had sealed his pact with Alexius, but rather than risk having to take the oath, he marched straight past the imperial capital and immediately crossed the Bosphorus. According
to his biographer, Tancred felt sad for Bohemond and fearful for himself. “What a crime! Where is faith? Where is prudence? Oh, the hearts of men! The duplicity of the one who would shamelessly harm the other! The foolishness of the other, who recklessly trusts the one!” On April 26 his men joined with those of Godfrey, Hugh, and Robert of Flanders, and together they marched toward Nicea, leaving the temptations of Constantinople behind.
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At about the same time, or a little before, Count Raymond of Saint-Gilles finally arrived at Constantinople, like Bohemond having parted from his army with only a few knights to accompany him. He was shocked to learn that all the other leaders had taken oaths of homage to Alexius and to find Bohemond acting as a sort of go-between for the emperor and the crusaders. Right away Alexius began demanding, presumably through Bohemond, that Raymond swear to become a loyal servant of the empire. But Raymond was having none of it. Imperial soldiers had been regularly harassing his army. Some of his men had died as a result. The bishop of le Puy had nearly been killed. Rather than take the oath, the count brought charges against the emperor, claiming that he was owed some sort of reparation for the treatment of his men (particularly because he had heard rumors that Greek troops at Roussa had again attacked his army soon after he left for Constantinople). Alexius, of course, denied the accusations, but he did offer to participate in some sort of trial. As part of the proceedings, Bohemond volunteered himself as hostage and guarantee of the emperor's innocence. An inquiry was held—unfortunately we know nothing of the procedure—and Raymond was unable to prove his case. By whatever law they were following, the count had to release his hostage, Bohemond, back to the emperor.

But Raymond was still not satisfied. Isolated in the palace, he continued to contemplate revenge against Alexius. The consensus of the other princes, however, was that “it would be stupid to attack Christians, when Turks threatened.” Bohemond ratcheted up the pressure further by promising that he would stand as the emperor's ally if the count attempted anything against him or even if he merely continued to delay performing obeisance and homage to him. Under such duress from a Roman emperor and a mercenary giant, Raymond offered a compromise. He would take a limited oath of fidelity to Alexius, specifying that he would respect the
emperor's life and property but nothing else. It was an oath between equals of a sort characteristic of the landholding nobility in the south of France.

All of this wrangling over law and honor took at least a week. Even when it was finished, Alexius delayed Count Raymond in Constantinople for several more days, using all his charisma and wisdom to try to win the count more completely to his side. “He explained in more detail the adventures that the Latins must expect to meet with on their march; he also laid bare his own suspicions of their plans. In the course of many conversations on this subject he unreservedly opened the doors of his soul, as it were, to the count; he warned him always to be on his guard against Bohemond's perfidy, so that if attempts were made to break the treaty he might frustrate them and in every way thwart Bohemond's schemes.” How successful this charm offensive proved is unclear. Count Raymond still seemed to view any kind of dependence on the emperor as being less than honorable. His intransigence on this point, according to his chaplain, Raymond of Aguilers, had robbed the Provençals of the chance to acquire a lot of Greek money.
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Meanwhile, Bohemond left Constantinople a little ahead of Raymond, probably on May 7, now a firm friend of Alexius and expecting to be richly rewarded for it. If challenged about his motives, which seemed at the time and in retrospect transparently venal, he could have readily defended himself. Warm relations with Alexius brought many advantages to the Franks. For one thing, the emperor had sworn to provide logistical support to the army as it advanced to Jerusalem. These contributions would take many forms. First, he would provision them with food and weapons during the eight-hundred-mile march to Jerusalem. Second, he would provide military advice to help the Franks avoid a repetition of the disaster at Civitot—indeed, he had already begun dispensing such wisdom to the leaders and even to some of the regular soldiers at Constantinople (even to the angry and socially awkward Frank who had called the emperor a peasant and tried to sit down in front of him). Finally, Alexius indicated that he himself would join the crusade, though not right away. In the meantime, to accompany them, he dispatched a trusted general named Tetigus, an experienced leader who had once lost his nose in combat and wore in its place a golden prosthesis. Tetigus's counsel was no doubt invaluable,
but the Franks grew to hate him. In the memorable phrase of Raymond of Aguilers, his “nose and virtue were completely truncated.”

Each side depended on and resented the other. The crusaders needed Alexius's advice, his supplies, and his money if they were to reach Jerusalem. Alexius needed the crusaders' weapons if he was to regain Anatolia. It was also a marriage of convenience, a point that surely troubled most of the soldiers. For the pilgrims who desired only to walk in the sands where Jesus had lived and then to pray before His tomb, the crusade demanded, above all else, true passion.
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T
he last Frankish armies, led by Robert of Normandy and Stephen of Blois, arrived in Constantinople on May 14, 1097, blissfully ignorant of all the problems that had gone before. As far as they could see, Alexius was an ideal host and the crusade was moving forward as Pope Urban II had hoped—as a joint Latin-Greek project for the reconquest of Anatolia and perhaps even the eventual liberation of Jerusalem.

Having learned from past mistakes, Alexius allowed regular, small groups of Franks to enter his capital. They found it delightful. “My, what a noble and splendid city!” Fulcher of Chartres, in Stephen of Blois's army, said of Constantinople. “How many palaces, how many monasteries it has, and how wondrous is their construction! How many marvelous sites are there in the squares and roadways!” So vivid did the statues of men, women, horses, oxen, camels, and lions appear to Western eyes, accustomed to much more abstract and schematic artistic styles, that it was easy to believe rumors about times past, when these figures used to come to life through enchantment. All manner of exotic goods from around the world passed through Constantinople's ports, and there were, Fulcher concluded, at least 20,000 eunuchs living in the city. These are the observations of a happy tourist rather than the words of a pilgrim exposed to the travails of delicate and fraught diplomacy.

As far as negotiations went, Alexius asked Stephen and Robert to take the same oath as Bohemond, Godfrey, Hugh, and Robert of Flanders had,
and they readily agreed. Fulcher was aware of the bad impression these oaths might create—from what he had heard, somewhat inaccurately, Count Raymond of Saint-Gilles had refused point-blank to take any oath at all. Nevertheless, from his perspective a pact of friendship with the emperor was the only sensible course to take: “Without his counsel and aid, we could not complete our journey, nor could those who might follow us on this road. And the emperor gave them all as much spending money and as many silken garments as they could want, as well as the horses and funds necessary to complete the journey.” Gifts exchanged, soldiers rested, oaths of loyalty and mutual support offered—Alexius had finally perfected the system for welcoming and conscripting Latin armies. After two weeks Stephen and Robert and their followers were ready to march to the first major engagement of the crusade, the siege of Nicea.
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