A History of the Crusades-Vol 2 (35 page)

1147-8:
Byzantine Policy during the Crusade

In one of his many letters home to the abbot
Suger, letters whose unvaried theme is a request for more money, King Louis
ascribed the disasters in Anatolia to ‘the treachery of the Emperor and also
our own fault’. The charge against Manuel is repeated more constantly and more
passionately by the official French chronicler of the Crusade, Odo of Deuil,
and it has been echoed by western historians, with few exceptions, to this day.
The misfortunes of the Crusades did so much to embitter relations between
western and eastern Christendom that the accusation must be examined more
closely. Odo complains that the Byzantines provided insufficient food-supplies
for which they charged exorbitant prices, inadequate transport and inefficient
guides and, worst of all, that they allied themselves with the Turks against
their fellow-Christians. The first charges are absurd. No medieval state, even
one so well organized as the Byzantine, possessed sufficient stocks of food to
be able to supply two exceptionally large armies which had arrived uninvited at
short notice; and when food is scarce, its prices inevitably rise. That many
local merchants and some government officials tried to cheat the invaders is
certain. Such behaviour has never been a rare phenomenon in commerce,
particularly in the Middle Ages and in the East. It was unreasonable to expect
Landolph to supply a sufficient number of ships for a whole army at the little
port of Attalia in mid-winter; nor could the guides, whose advice was seldom
taken, be blamed if they did not know of the latest destruction of bridges or
wells by the Turks, or if they fled before the threats and hostility of the men
that they were conducting. The question of the Turkish alliance is more
serious, but it must be regarded from Manuel’s viewpoint. Manuel neither
invited nor wished for the Crusade. He had good reasons for deploring it.
Byzantine diplomacy had learnt well by now how to play off the various Moslem
princes against each other and thus to isolate each of them in turn. A well
advertised expedition like the Crusade would inevitably again bring together a
united front against Christendom. Moreover, for Byzantine strategy against
Islam it was essential to control Antioch. Byzantium had at last won this
control, when Prince Raymond made his abject submission at Constantinople. The
coming of a Crusade with his niece and her husband at its head would inevitably
tempt him to throw off his vassalage. The behaviour of the Crusaders when they
were guests in his territory was not such as to increase the Emperor’s liking
for them. They pillaged; they attacked his police; they ignored his requests
about the routes that they should take; and many of their prominent men talked
openly of attacking Constantinople. Seen in such a light his treatment of them
seems generous and forbearing; and some of the Crusaders so recognized it. But
the westerners could not comprehend nor forgive his treaty with the Turks. The
broad needs of Byzantine policy were beyond their grasp; and they chose to
ignore, though they certainly were aware of the fact, that while they demanded
help from the Emperor against the infidel his own lands were being subjected to
a venomous attack from another Christian power. In the autumn of 1147 King
Roger of Sicily captured the island of Corfu and from there sent an army to
raid the Greek peninsula. Thebes was sacked, and thousands of its workers
kidnapped to help the nascent silk-industry of Palermo; and Corinth itself, the
chief fortress of the peninsula, was taken and bared of all its treasures.
Laden with spoil the Sicilian Normans fell back to Corfu, which they planned to
hold as a permanent threat to the Empire and a stranglehold on the Adriatic
Sea. It was the imminence of the Norman attack that had decided Manuel to
retire from Konya in 1146 and to accept the Sultan’s overtures for peace next
year. If Manuel was to rank as a traitor to Christendom, King Roger certainly
took precedence over him.

The Byzantine army was large but not
ubiquitous. The best troops were needed for the war against Roger. Then there
were rumours of unrest in the Russian Steppes, which was to result in the
summer of 1148 in a Polovtsian invasion of the Balkans. With the Crusade at
hand, Manuel could not denude his Cilician frontier of men; and the passage of
the Crusaders through the Empire meant that a large increase must be made in
the military police. With these preoccupations, the Emperor could not provide
full frontier forces to cover his long Anatolian borderlands. He preferred a
truce that would enable his Anatolian subjects to live their lives free from
the menace of Turkish raids. The Crusaders endangered this truce. Conrad’s march
on Dorylaeum was a direct provocation to the Turks; and Louis, though he kept
within Byzantine territory, publicly announced himself as the enemy of all
Moslems and refused the Emperor’s request to remain within the radius guarded
by Byzantine garrisons. It is quite possible that Manuel, faced by this
problem, made an arrangement with the Turks by which he condoned their
incursions into his territory so long as they only attacked the Crusaders, and
that they kept to the bargain, thus giving the clear impression that they were
in league with the local inhabitants; to whom indeed it was indifferent whether
their flocks and foodstocks were stolen by Crusaders or by Turks, and who under
these circumstances would naturally prefer the latter. But it is impossible to
believe with Odo of Deuil that they definitely attacked the Crusaders at the
Turks’ side. He makes this accusation against the inhabitants of Attalia
immediately after saying that they were later punished by the Emperor for
having shown kindness to the Crusaders.

1147-8: The Role
of the Emperor

The main responsibility for the disasters that
befell the Crusaders in Anatolia must be placed on their own follies. The
Emperor could indeed have done more to help them, but only at a grave risk to
his Empire. But the real issue lay deeper. Was it to the better interest of
Christendom that there should be occasional gallant expeditions to the East,
led by a mixture of unwise idealists and crude adventurers, to succour an
intrusive state there whose existence depended on Moslem disunity? Or that
Byzantium, who had been for so long the guardian of the eastern frontier,
should continue to play her part unembarrassed from the West? The story of the
Second Crusade showed even more clearly than that of the First that the two
policies were incompatible. When Constantinople itself had fallen and the Turks
were thundering at the gates of Vienna, it would be possible to see which
policy was right.

CHAPTER III

FIASCO

‘Take counsel
together
,
and it shall come to nought.’
ISAIAH VIII, 10

When news arrived on 19 March 1148 that King
Louis had landed at Saint Symeon, Prince Raymond and all his household rode
down from Antioch to welcome him and escort him up to the city. The next days
were spent in feasting and merriment. The gallant nobles of Antioch did their
best to please the Queen of France and the great ladies in her train; and in
the cheerful weather of the Syrian spring amid the luxuries of the Antiochene
Court the visitors forgot the hardships through which they had passed. As soon
as they had recovered Raymond began to discuss with the French leaders plans
for a campaign against the infidel. Raymond hoped for great results from the
coming of the Crusade. His position was precarious. Nur ed-Din was established
now along the Christian frontier from Edessa to Hama and had spent the autumn
of 1147 picking off one by one the Frankish fortresses east of the Orontes.
Count Joscelin was fully occupied in holding his own at Turbessel. If the
Moslems were to attack Antioch in force the only power that could help Raymond
was Byzantium; and the Byzantine troops might well arrive too late and would anyhow
insist on a tighter subservience. The French army, though the accidents of the
journey had reduced its infantry strength, provided such formidable cavalry
reinforcements that the Franks of Antioch would be able to take the offensive.
Raymond urged upon the King that they should strike together at the heart of
Nur ed-Din’s power, the city of Aleppo; and he induced many of the French
knights to join him in a preliminary reconnaissance up to its walls, to the
consternation of its inhabitants.

1148: Louis and
Eleanor at Antioch

But when it came to the point, King Louis
hesitated. He said that his Crusader vow obliged him first to go to Jerusalem
before he started on any campaign; but the excuse was made to veil his
indecision. All the princes of the Frankish East were demanding his help. Count
Joscelin hoped to use him for the recovery of Edessa; for had not its fall set
the whole Crusade in motion? Raymond of Tripoli, claiming a cousin’s right — for
his mother had been a French princess — sought his help for the recovery of
Montferrand. Then in April there arrived at Antioch the Patriarch of Jerusalem
himself, sent by the High Court of the Kingdom to beg him to hasten south and
to tell him that King Conrad was already in the Holy Land. In the end a purely personal
motive made up the King’s mind for him. Queen Eleanor was far more intelligent
than her husband. She saw at once the wisdom of Raymond’s scheme; but her
passionate and outspoken support of her uncle only roused Louis’s jealousy.
Tongues began to wag. The Queen and the Prince were seen too often together. It
was whispered that Raymond’s affection was more than avuncular. Louis, alarmed
for his honour, announced his immediate departure; whereat the Queen declared
that she at least would remain in Antioch, and would seek a divorce from her
husband. In reply Louis dragged his wife by force from her uncle’s palace and
set out with all his troops for Jerusalem.

King Conrad had landed at Acre with his chief
princes in the middle of April and had been given a cordial and honourable
reception at Jerusalem by Queen Melisende and her son. Similar honours were
paid to King Louis on his entry into the Holy Land a month later. Never had
Jerusalem seen so brilliant an assembly of knights and ladies. But there were many
notable absentees. Raymond of Antioch, furious at Louis’s behaviour, washed his
hands of the whole Crusade. He could not in any case afford to leave his
hard-pressed principality for some adventure in the south. Nor could Count
Joscelin leave Turbessel. The Count of Tripoli’s absence was due to a sinister
family tragedy. Amongst the Crusaders to take the vow with King Louis at
Vezelay had been Alfonso-Jordan, Count of Toulouse. With his wife and his
children he had travelled by sea from Constantinople and landed at Acre a few
days after Conrad. His arrival with a strong contingent had heartened the
Franks in the East to whom he was a romantic figure. For he was the son of the
old Crusader Raymond of Toulouse and he had been born in the East, at Mount
Pilgrim, while his father was besieging Tripoli. But his coming was an
embarrassment to the reigning Count of Tripoli, the grandson of old Count
Raymond’s bastard son Bertrand. If Alfonso-Jordan put in a claim to Tripoli, it
would be hard to deny it; and it seems that he liked to mention his rights. On
his way up to Jerusalem from Acre he paused at Caesarea, and there quite
suddenly he died in agony. It may have been some acute illness such as
appendicitis that caused his death; but everyone at once suspected poison, and
the dead man’s son Bertrand openly accused his cousin Raymond of Tripoli of
instigating the murder. Others believed that the culprit was Queen Melisende,
acting at the behest of her beloved sister, the Countess Hodierna, Raymond’s
wife. Nothing was proven; but Raymond in his indignation at the charge
abstained from any dealing with the Crusade.

1148: The
Decision to attack Damascus

When all the Crusaders had arrived in Palestine
Queen Melisende and King Baldwin invited them to attend a great assembly to be
held at Acre on 24 June 1148. It was an impressive gathering. The hosts were
King Baldwin and the Patriarch Fulcher, with the Archbishops of Caesarea and
Nazareth, the Grand Masters of the Temple and the Hospital, and the leading
prelates and barons of the kingdom. With Conrad were his half-brothers, Henry Jasomirgott
of Austria, and Otto of Freisingen, his nephew, Frederick of Swabia, Welf of
Bavaria and many lesser princes. Lorraine was represented by the Bishops of Metz
and Toul. With King Louis were his brother Robert of Dreux, his future
son-in-law Henry of Champagne, Thierry, Count of Flanders, as well as the young
Bertrand, Alfonso-Jordan’s bastard. We do not know what was the course of the
debate nor who made the final proposal. After some opposition the assembly
decided to concentrate all its strength on an attack against Damascus.

It was a decision of utter folly. Damascus
would indeed be a rich prize, and its possession by the Franks would entirely
cut off the Moslems of Egypt and Africa from their co-religionists in northern
Syria and the East. But of all the Moslem states the Burid kingdom of Damascus
alone was eager to remain in friendship with the Franks; for, like the
farther-sighted among the Franks, it recognized its chief foe to be Nur ed-Din.
Frankish interests lay in retaining Damascene friendship till Nur ed-Din should
be crushed, and to keep open the breach between Damascus and Aleppo. To attack
the former was, as the events of the previous year had shown, the surest way to
throw its rulers into Nur ed-Din’s hands. But the barons of Jerusalem coveted
the fertile lands that owed allegiance to Damascus, and they smarted under the
recollection of their recent humiliation, for which their high-spirited young
King must have longed for revenge. To the visiting Crusaders Aleppo meant
nothing, but Damascus was a city hallowed in Holy Writ, whose rescue from the
infidel would resound to the glory of God. It is idle to try to apportion blame
for the decision; but a greater responsibility must lie with the local barons,
who knew the situation, than with the new-comers to whom all Moslems were the
same.