The First Crusade (16 page)
In reality, Byzantium had for centuries been fighting an almost constant battle for survival, surrounded by enemies. When Muslim warriors began pouring out of Arabia in the seventh century, much of the eastern Roman Empire, including Syria and Palestine, was overrun. From this point forth, the Byzantines faced an unending struggle to hold on to Asia Minor against Islam. Indeed, Constantinople itself was besieged in
668
and again in
717.
At the same time, ravening hordes of 'barbarians' surged out of the north and west - Bulgars, Petchenegs, Cumans - eating away at the empire's Balkan territory. At the start of the eleventh century Byzantium enjoyed something of a resurgence of wealth and power under the ferocious despot Basil II
(976-1025),
also known as Basil the Bulgar-Slayer. He earned this epithet through an act of unparalleled ruthlessness. Facing renewed Bulgar aggression in
1014,
he outmanoeuvred and trapped their army, capturing
14,000
prisoners. The Bulgar Prince Samuel escaped, so Basil decided to send him a clear message about the dangers of threatening the empire. He chose to release rather than execute his prisoners, but had ninety-nine in every hundred blinded, leaving the hundredth man one eye with which to guide his mutilated companions back into Bulgar territory. The sight of this train of broken wretches crushed Samuels spirit and he died of shock two days later.
Few of Basil's successors could match his cold-blooded yet visionary ambition, and the empire rapidly fell back into a state of chaotic decline after his death. In this unstable climate, the imperial throne became a seat of danger. Between the years
1025
and
1081
power changed hands thirteen times, as Constantinople burned with intrigue and successive emperors fell victim to violent
coups d'etat.
In
1071
the Emperor Romanus Diogenes suffered the humiliation of defeat and capture at the hands of the Muslim Turks in the Battle of Manzikert, after which much of Asia Minor fell to Islam and the western frontier became destabilised. The once mighty edifice of Byzantium was on the brink of collapse, its treasury bankrupt, its armies ill deployed and its latest emperor aged and ineffectual.
22
Alexius I Comnenus
(1081-1118),
a young general of aristocratic heritage, arrested this spiral of decline and, in the course of his long reign, initiated the process of rejuvenation. His daughter and biographer, Anna Comnena, offered this dramatised description of his appearance:
Alexius was not a very tall man, but broad shouldered and yet well proportioned. When standing he did not seem particularly striking to onlookers, but when one saw the grim flash of his eyes as he sat on the imperial throne, he reminded one of a fiery whirlwind, so overwhelming was
...
his presence. His dark eyebrows were curved, and beneath them the gaze of his eyes was both terrible and kind.
23
Alexius came to power in a bloodless coup, thanks to his proven military record and a network of noble support based on a carefully woven web of connections to the empire's most powerful families. An astute, measured politician and a wily diplomat, Alexius knew that to have any hope for a successful rule he would need to conjure two near miracles - survival in office and the rapid generation of vast amounts of cash. To preclude the almost unrelenting threat of assassination and rebellion, he conferred streams of empty titles on potential plotters, leaving them appeased and present, under his watchful eye, at the imperial court. Meanwhile, the treasury was restocked by wringing the empire dry through outrageously exorbitant taxation and, at a pinch, outright theft from the Church. Alexius used this wealth to recreate the aura of imperial munificence both within Byzantium and abroad, combining the raw purchasing power of money with the compelling image of unassailable majesty. Mixing bribery and intimidation, he shored up his political mandate at home, then gradually reasserted Greek supremacy on the international stage.
On the eastern frontier Alexius managed to halt the ongoing Muslim advance through a marriage of force and negotiation, but the Muslim Turks were still able to range freely across Asia Minor. In the northern reaches of Syria the valuable commercial centre of Antioch was lost, while closer to home the Turks maintained a tenacious foothold at the fortified city of Nicaea, just across the Bosphorus from Constantinople itself. The Greek capital held, but the Turks resisted Alexius' best attempts to dislodge them. Alexius judged that flushing out this enemy would require an injection of military ferocity from outside the borders of Byzantium, and the first and most obvious place to look was western Europe.
24
The Latin West was, in many ways, the empire's most natural ally; the two worlds were, after all, both Christian. But the bond of this common faith was tempered by the fact that the Byzantines followed the Greek rather than Roman creed. Greeks and Latins had long disagreed on some facets of the Christian religion - the dating of Easter, the practice of prayer and ritual and the use of religious images - and the Greek Church, headed by the patriarch of Constantinople, also staunchly disputed the Roman pope's claim to universal primacy. These factors, alongside political and ethnic considerations, culminated in the eruption of an open rift between the two Churches in
1054,
known as the Great Schism, the ecclesiastical equivalent of a breach in diplomatic relations. Channels were partially reopened within a few years, but the consequences of this fracture were still rumbling on in the background when Alexius came to power in
1081.
This spiritual friction was coupled with the
Realpolitik
of international relations. Just as the Christian lords of western Europe fought each other tooth and nail for power and wealth, so the religious fraternity failed to prevent Byzantium and the West from contesting political and economic domination of the Euro-Mediterranean world. The Greeks had long resented the fact that German kings habitually claimed the title of emperor, while more recently they had contested control of southern Italy and then the western Balkans with the Normans. The Greeks saw themselves as the cultured inheritors of Roman civilisation and regarded the Latins as little more than savage tribesmen, possessed of martial ferocity but otherwise to be scorned. In its dealings with the West, Byzantium thus generally adopted an arrogant, calculated stance, and certainly never regarded its neighbours as equals. But, as the eleventh century progressed and western Europeans began to make their presence felt on the world stage, this gap started to close. Byzantium might view the West with disdain, but the Latins increasingly looked back with a mixture of awed suspicion and budding assurance.
Alexius Comnenus had sought, since the start of his reign, to soothe tensions with western Christendom, encouraging compromise in the ecclesiastical sphere and reaffirming the empire's position as a major player in the arena of European politics. Like many emperors before him, he also maintained a significant western presence within the Byzantine military machine. For much of the eleventh century the core of the Greek army was actually manned by mercenaries, most notably in the elite Varangian Guard, dominated by Anglo-Saxon Englishmen and Scandinavian Vikings, whose duty it was to protect the emperor.
25
Confronted in the mid
-Kxjos
with the problem of an intractable Islamic presence on the borders of the empire, Alexius weighed up the twin forces of Christian fellowship and simmering hostility, and decided to turn to the West for aid. To him this was not a sign of weakness or even parity, but an exercise in pragmatic manipulation. He had already forged an alliance with the major Latin noble Robert I, count of Flanders, father to the First Crusader. Contact was established when Robert passed through Constantinople on pilgrimage to Jerusalem
c.
1091,
and culminated in the dispatch of
500
western knights to aid Alexius' military efforts. The emperor was probably looking for a similar infusion of manageable Latin manpower when he sent envoys to the council of Piacenza in
1095.
What he got was, of course, of an entirely different order of magnitude.
26
The first wave: the fate
of
the People's Crusade
The conduct of the
first
wave of crusaders to reach his borders shocked and disturbed Alexius Comnenus. Even depleted as they were by death and desertion, the roving pilgrim bands of the People's Crusade seemed like a riotous flood of humanity that threatened to inundate the Byzantine Empire. So numerous were they that one Greek contemporary likened them to 'the sands of the sea shore and the stars of heaven'.
27
Of all the contingents that eventually reached Constantinople, only the progress of that led by Peter the Hermit is recorded in any detail. Once in Greek territory, Peter did his best to maintain discipline among his followers, but failed to prevent looters from ravaging the outskirts of Nish, one of the major towns on the route south, and suffered punitive attacks from its citizens as a result. The rest of the journey passed with relative ease, but, once he arrived at Constantinople on
1
August
1096,
the problems of containment and restraint intensified. Now instead of a rambling gang of followers, Peter had to control the seething throng of crusaders that was gradually massing outside the Byzantine capital. Walter Sansavoir's contingent was already there, as was a large group of Italians; they were joined by a stream of French and German crusaders.
At first, Peter established cordial relations with Alexius. The emperor agreed to offer the Latins plentiful supplies and counselled them to await patiently the arrival of the main crusading armies before crossing the Bosphorus into hostile territory. But it was only a matter of days before rampant disorder set in. Even a Latin contemporary was forced to admit that 'those Christians behaved abominably, sacking and burning the palaces of the city, and stealing the lead from the roofs of churches and selling it to the Greeks, so that the emperor was angry and ordered them to cross the Bosphorus'.
28
Dismayed by this lawlessness and concerned for Byzantine security, Alexius saw little option but to deport these brigands to the exposed and alien shores of Bithynia in Asia Minor.
29
Peter the Hermit's ineffectual leadership and the emperor's resolute response had now placed the People's Crusade in extreme peril. On around
7
August, the Franks were shipped across to the Gulf of Nicomedia and within a few days they had set up camp along its southern coastline at Civitot. Alexius continued to supply them with ample provisions, but they were, nonetheless, desperately isolated. Less than two days' march to the east stood the major Turkish stronghold of Nicaea, a powerful Muslim enemy, of whom these inexperienced and ill-prepared crusaders had little knowledge or comprehension. Rather than maintain a sensibly discreet profile, ravening Latin mobs soon began to trawl the surrounding countryside in search of plunder, allegedly subjecting the region to savage rapine: 'acting with horrible cruelty to the whole population, they cut in pieces some of their babies, impaled others on wooden spits and roasted them over a fire [while] the elderly were subjected to every kind of torture'.
50
By September, expeditionary forces were ranging ever more boldly through the environs of Nicaea, stealing cattle and looting villages.
Then, towards the end of that month, a large group of Italian and German crusaders ravaged the nearby fort of Xerigordos. They were still revelling in pillage when a major force of Nicaean Turks suddenly arrived and surrounded them. Trapped inside the fort, the crusaders held out for eight days, but in the sapping late-summer heat they soon ran out of water. According to one near-contemporary, they were 'so terribly afflicted by thirst that they bled their horses and asses and drank the blood; others let down belts and clothes into a sewer and squeezed out the liquid into their mouths'.
31
With resistance fading, the Muslims broke in, slaughtering or enslaving the entire Latin force.
News of this defeat enraged the remaining crusaders camped at Civetot, and the more reckless began to advocate a direct counterattack on Nicaea itself. At that very moment, Peter the Hermit was in Constantinople bargaining with Alexius over provisions and thus unable to counsel caution. In the end, even Walter Sansavoir was convinced of the need for a pre-emptive strike and so, on
21
October
1097,
the full fighting manpower of the People's Crusade marched out of Civetot, leaving 'only those without weapons and the sick. . . behind in camp'.
32
This was not, as historians once thought, a wretchedly feeble rabble. The army was led by reasonably skilful commanders like Walter Sansavoir and boasted a robust core of some
500
knights, alongside thousands of footsoldiers and peasants. This force was, however, undertaking a perilously risky operation against a largely untested enemy, endangering the entire first wave of the crusade for litde or no reason.