A History of the Crusades-Vol 2 (3 page)

The Rival
Caliphs

Of Syria’s Moslem neighbours the most powerful
were the Fatimid rulers of Egypt. The Nile valley and the Delta formed the most
thickly populated area in the medieval world. Cairo and Alexandria were great
industrial cities whose factories produced glass, pottery and metalwork, as
well as linens and brocades. The cultivated districts grew vast quantities of
corn; and there were huge sugar-plantations in the Delta. Egypt controlled the
trade of the Sudan, with its gold and its gum-arabic, its ostrich feathers and
ivory. The Far Eastern trade was now carried by ships using the Red Sea route
and therefore reached the Mediterranean through Egyptian ports. The Egyptian
government could put enormous armies into the field; and, though the Egyptians
themselves enjoyed a poor reputation as soldiers, it could afford to hire as
many mercenaries as it pleased. Moreover, alone of the Moslem powers, it
possessed a considerable navy. The Fatimid Caliph himself as a Shia was the
natural protector of the Shia of Syria. But he was traditionally tolerant; and
many of the Sunni Arabs who feared Turkish domination were ready to acknowledge
his suzerainty. The Turkish invasions had curtailed the empire of the Fatimids
in Syria; and the Frankish capture of Jerusalem and victory over the Egyptian
relieving force at Ascalon had damaged their prestige. But Egypt could afford
to lose an army. It was clear that Vizier al-Afdal, who ruled Egypt in the name
of the young Caliph al-Amir and was himself an Armenian born at Acre, would
seek as soon as possible to avenge the defeat and recover Palestine. In the
meantime the Egyptian fleet kept in touch with the Moslem cities of the coast.

The rival Caliph, the Abbasid al-Mustazhir, was
a shadowy youth, who reigned at Baghdad by the grace of the Seldjuk Sultan. But
the Sultan himself, Barkiyarok, the eldest son of the great Malik Shah, lacked
his father’s power and ability. His brothers continually revolted against him.
He had been obliged to enfeoff the youngest, Sanjar, with Khorassan, and from
1099 onwards he was at war with another brother, Mohammed, who eventually
secured the province of Iraq. These preoccupations made him a useless ally in
the struggle against the Christians.

The head of the youngest branch of the Seldjuk
dynasty, the Anatolian
Malik
Kilij Arslan, self-styled Sultan, was at
the moment little better placed than his cousin. The First Crusade had deprived
him of his capital, Nicaea, and of most of his treasure, lost on the battlefield
of Dorylaeum. Much of the land that he had controlled had passed back into
Byzantine hands. He was on bad terms with the Seldjuks of the East, whose
supremacy he refused to admit. But Turcoman immigrants into Anatolia gave him
the means for rebuilding his army and a population that would crowd out the
Christians. More effective was the Danishmend emirate, firmly established at
Sivas and dominating the north-east of the peninsula. The emir, Gumushtekin,
had recently won renown by his capture of Bohemond. He was the first Moslem
leader to win a victory over an army of Frankish knights. He too was being
continually strengthened by Turcoman immigration.

Between the Turks of Anatolia and the Frankish
states of northern Syria was a group of Armenian principalities. There was
Oshin, who controlled the central Taurus mountains, and to the east of him the
princes of the house of Roupen. There was Kogh Vasil in the Anti-Taurus,
Thatoul at Marash and Gabriel at Melitene. Thatoul and Gabriel belonged to the Orthodox
Church and were therefore inclined to co-operate with Byzantium. They and Oshin
based their juridical position on titles conferred on them by the Emperor. But
the Roupenians, who alone of these Armenians succeeded in founding an enduring
state, were traditionally hostile both to Byzantium and the Orthodox Church.

Byzantium

The external Christian power most concerned
with Syrian affairs was Byzantium. There the Emperor Alexius had been on the
throne for nearly twenty years. He had found the Empire at its nadir; but by
his diplomacy and his thrift, his judicious handling of his subjects and his
rivals, both at home and abroad, he had re-established it on solid foundations.
He had used the Crusading movement to recover western Asia Minor from the Turks;
and his reorganized fleet gave him control of the coasts. Even at its lowest
ebb, Byzantium enjoyed great traditional prestige throughout the East. It was
the Roman Empire, with a thousand years of history behind it; and its Emperor
was the acknowledged head of Christendom, however much his fellow-Christians
might dislike his policy or even his greed. Constantinople, with its
innumerable, busy inhabitants, its vast wealth and its formidable
fortifications, was the most impressive city in the world. The armed forces of
the Empire were the best equipped of their time. The imperial coinage had long
been the only sure currency. International exchange was calculated in terms of
the hyperpyron, often called the besant, the gold solidus whose value had been
fixed by Constantine the Great. Byzantium was to play a dominant role in
Oriental politics for almost a century to come; but in fact its successes were
due more to the brilliance of its statesmen and the prestige of its Roman name
than to its real strength. The Turkish invasions had destroyed the social and
economic organization of Anatolia, from whence of old the Empire had derived
the greater part of its soldiers and its food; and though territory might be
recovered, it was almost impossible to restore the former organization. The
army was now almost entirely mercenary, and therefore both expensive and
unreliable. Turkish mercenaries such as the Petchenegs might be safely employed
against the Franks or the Slavs, but they could not be trusted against the
Turks in Asia. Frankish mercenaries would not willingly fight against
fellow-Franks. Early in his reign Alexius had been obliged to buy Venetian help
by giving commercial concessions to the Venetians, to the detriment of his own
subjects; and these were followed by concessions to the other maritime cities,
Genoa and Pisa. The trade of the Empire thus began to pass into alien hands. A
little later, in his need for ready-money, Alexius tampered with the coinage,
issuing gold pieces that lacked their proper gold content. Confidence in the
besant began to diminish; and soon the clients of the Empire insisted on being
paid in ‘Michaels’, the currency minted under the Emperor Michael VII, the last
that was known to be trustworthy.

The Emperor’s chief concern was the welfare of
his Empire. He had welcomed the First Crusade and had been ready to co-operate
with its leaders; but Bohemond’s ambition and perfidy at Antioch had shocked
and angered him. His first desire was to recapture Antioch and to control the
roads that led there across Asia Minor. When the Crusaders moved southwards
into Palestine his active co-operation ended. The traditional Byzantine policy
had been for the past century an alliance with the Fatimids of Egypt against
the Sunni Abbasids and the Turks. Except under the mad Caliph Hakim the
Fatimids had treated the eastern Christians with kindly forbearance; and
Alexius had no reason to suppose that Frankish rule would be more agreeable to
them. He had therefore dissociated himself from the Frankish march on Jerusalem.
But at the same time, as patron of the Orthodox, he could not be indifferent to
the fate of Jerusalem. If the Frankish kingdom seemed likely to endure, he
would have to take steps to see that his rights were recognized. He was ready
to show the Franks in Palestine signs of good-will; but his active help would
be restricted to co-operation in opening up the routes across Asia Minor. For
the Normans at Antioch he felt nothing but hostility and was to prove a
dangerous enemy. He seems to have entertained no ambition for the recovery of
Edessa. Probably he recognized the value of the Frankish county there as an
outpost against the Moslem world.

A new factor had recently been introduced into
Oriental politics by the intervention of the Italian merchant-cities. They had
at first been diffident of joining in the Crusade till they saw that it
promised to be successful. Then Pisa, Venice and Genoa all sent fleets to the
East, promising help in return for establishments in any city in whose conquest
they shared. The Crusaders welcomed them; for they offered the sea-power
without which it would be impossible to reduce the Moslem coastal cities; and
their ships provided a swifter and safer route of communication with western
Europe than the long journey overland. But the concessions that they demanded
and obtained meant that the Frankish governments in the East lost much of their
potential revenue.

Baldwin’s
Problems

The complexities of the international situation
around him did not give King Baldwin much cause for optimism. His allies were
either half-hearted or rapacious, and concerned with their selfish interests.
The disunity of his enemies was helpful; but were the Moslem world to find a
leader who could bind it together, there was little chance that the Frankish
states in the East would survive. In the meantime he was placed with far too
few supporters in a land with a deadly climate, that had been down the
centuries the battlefield of nations. It was with pleasant expectation that he
learnt of new Crusading expeditions setting out from the West.

CHAPTER II

THE CRUSADES OF
1101

‘But they said
,
We
will not hearken’
JEREMIAH VI, 17

The news that the Christians had recovered
Jerusalem reached western Europe during the late summer of 1099. It was
received with enthusiasm and rejoicing. Everywhere chroniclers interrupted
their story of local happenings to record the great instance of God’s mercy.
Pope Urban himself had died before he could learn of it; but his friends and
helpers throughout the Church praised God for the success of his policy. During
the winter that followed, many of the Crusading leaders returned home with
their men. As is the wont of returning soldiers, the Crusaders no doubt exaggerated
both the hardships of their journey and the splendours of the land to which
they had penetrated; and they made much of the miracles with which they had
been encouraged by Heaven. But they all declared that warriors and colonists
were needed in the East, to carry on God’s work, and that wealth and great
estates lay there to be occupied by the adventurous. They urged a new Crusade
to which the preachers of the Church gave their blessing.

1100: The
Lombards Assemble

It was not until the early autumn of 1100 that
the next expedition could start out. The winter months were unsuitable for
travel; and then the harvest had to be gathered. But in September 1100 a
Crusade of Lombards left Italy for the East. At its head was the greatest
personage in Lombardy, the Archbishop of Milan, Anselm of Buis. With him were
Albert, Count of Biandrate, Count Guibert of Parma and Hugh of Montebello. The
Lombards had played an undistinguished part in the First Crusade. Many of them
had journeyed east during its early months and had joined up with Peter the
Hermit, and, by intriguing with his German followers against the French, had
helped to wreck his expedition. The survivors had then taken service under
Bohemond. In consequence, of the Crusading leaders it was Bohemond who enjoyed
the highest prestige in Lombardy. The present expedition was little better
organized. It included very few trained soldiers and was mainly composed of a
rabble drawn from the slums of the Lombard cities, men whose lives had been
disorganized by the growing industrialism of the province. With them were large
numbers of clerics and women and children. It was a large company; though
Albert of Aix’s estimate of two hundred thousand souls should be divided by at
least ten. Neither the Archbishop nor the Count of Biandrate, who was regarded
as the military leader, was able to keep it in control.

During the autumn of 1100 the Lombards made
their leisurely way across Carniola and down the valley of the Save, through
the territory of the King of Hungary, and entered the Byzantine Empire at
Belgrade. Alexius was ready to deal with them. His troops escorted them across
the Balkans. Then, as they were too numerous to be provisioned and policed in
one camp, they were divided into three companies. One was to spend the winter
in a camp outside Philippopolis, the second outside Adrianople and the third
outside Rodosto. But even so they were too disorderly to be kept under control.
Each company began to raid the district outside its camp, pillaging the
villages, breaking into the grain-stores and even robbing the churches. At
last, in March, the Emperor brought them all to a camp outside the walls of
Constantinople, intending to transport them as soon as possible across into
Asia. But they had heard by now that other Crusaders had set out to join them.
They refused to cross the Bosphorus until these reinforcements arrived. To
oblige them to move, the imperial authorities cut off their supplies; whereupon
they at once attacked the city walls and forced their way through into the
courtyard of the imperial palace of Blachernae. There they killed one of the
Emperor’s pet lions, and tried to open the palace gates. The Archbishop of
Milan and the Count of Biandrate, who had been well received by the Emperor,
were horrified. They rushed out into the midst of the rioting crowds and
succeeded at last in persuading them to return to the camp. They then had to
face the task of pacifying the Emperor.