Crusade (34 page)

Robert’s Norman army included many Norman knights based in England and a few dozen native Englishmen who could afford the costs of horses, grooms and men-at-arms. I was given the honour of leading the English with my own staff and retinue. Edwin became my standard-bearer and Sweyn my aide-de-camp. He was granted a full knight’s title by Robert – Sir Sweyn of Bourne – which allowed Adela to revert to her role as Sweyn’s wife and take the title Lady Adela of Bourne, thus granting her sufficient status to mix with other high-born Crusaders. Robert also found a title of esteem for Estrith, appointing her as Abbess of Fécamp, a dormant appellation within his gift for a foundation that had been closed during his father’s reign.

Several other lords and knights brought their wives – some even brought their children – so Adela and Estrith had far more female company than they had been used to.

Our route took us via Lyon and Geneva and we crossed the Alps well before the first snows, refreshing ourselves with an extended stay outside the gates of Turin. We were fêted everywhere we went with wild cheering and gifts of
food, wine and religious relics. Masses were said for us, and many of our knights were blessed with more amorous gifts by women along the route.

In some places, a few particularly ardent souls took the spontaneous decision to join the Crusade, closed up their houses, gathered their belongings and weapons and found a place in the convoy.

I often looked back to admire the remarkable sight that we presented – an immensely long band of colour weaving its way through the lush autumn countryside. The usual martial array of heraldic pennons, gonfalons and war banners in every hue imaginable had been superseded by the blood red of Christ’s cross. It also seemed to be painted on every shield and embroidered on every surcoat and cloak, creating a striking statement of common cause.

Songs and prayers often broke the monotonous trundle of the carts and the clatter of hooves, and there were always the laughter and animated conversation of excited people, enthused by their mission.

Robert was a well-organized leader. The daily march was carefully shepherded and the route meticulously plotted; only the dust of southern Italy created some minor inconvenience. We all had mixed feelings. The cause seemed worthy enough – to replace oppressive Muslim rule with a benign Christian realm like the one Count Roger had created in Sicily, a sovereignty now welcomed by Muslims.

But what if the stories were exaggerated, or not even true?

When we arrived at Bari, we met with the two larger convoys, the armies of Robert of Flanders and Stephen of
Blois. A huge armada of Pisan, Genoese and Venetian ships was waiting for us, but the captains advised us that the autumn gales of the Adriatic were too great a risk and suggested we sit and wait for the spring. That was easier said than done but, with his typical calm efficiency, Robert made a detailed plan which the other two leaders were happy to accept.

To prevent us swamping the local population and resources, we retreated far into the woods of the hilly hinterland to make camp, and only quartermasters and stewards were allowed to Bari to buy provisions in the markets. Most of our food we would find for ourselves in the forests and rivers, and we would make our own entertainment.

After an uneventful but surprisingly cold winter gorging ourselves on fish and game, we finally crossed the Adriatic and landed in Durazzo in late February 1097. There we met two more huge caravans of Crusaders: the knights of Bohemond of Taranto, who had sailed from Brindisi; and the biggest army of all, the formidable collection of zealots and soldiers of fortune under the command of Raymond of Toulouse and his son, Bertrand, who had chosen to cross the plains of northern Italy and follow the Adriatic coast from Trieste.

We used the old Roman road from Durazzo to Constantinople and made good progress despite the now gargantuan scale of our army, a host of over 60,000. Despite our best efforts, Count Raymond was impetuous and cared little for the peasant communities we were passing. We descended on them like a plague of locusts, leaving in our wake fields, barns and markets bare of anything edible or useful.

Discipline began to decline and soon money was no
longer left in exchange for goods; they were simply stolen. Whores weren’t rewarded for their services, and eventually were discarded altogether in favour of the rape of local women.

Alexius, the Emperor of Byzantium, had sent emissaries and small units of the Imperial Guard to greet us in Durazzo, no doubt to keep an eye on us. Understandably, these men tried to prevent the looting and, inevitably, violent clashes followed, among the worst of which took place in the Ancient Greek city of Thessaloniki, one of Byzantium’s most important centres of trade and learning.

Although we insisted that the army camp outside the city, many of the young knights were restless and knew that, like any other thriving port, Thessaloniki’s waterfront would have available all the diversions a saddle-weary soldier would require. By mid-evening on the first night, the noise of mayhem was already drifting up the hillsides of the city. Most of our leadership was indifferent to the problem, but Robert asked me to mount my contingent and bring order to the city. He gave me two of his conrois to add his authority to our presence.

What we found when we arrived in the narrow streets of the docks area was akin to a battleground. The Emperor’s men had scattered to the hills, intimidated by the huge number of ill-disciplined Christians. Shops and warehouses were ablaze, carts were piled high with anything of value, and bodies were strewn everywhere. The brothels were empty – the girls had presumably recognized the danger signs and left – but women were screaming from every direction as our valiant Christian Crusaders marauded through the streets,
kicking down doors and looking for women and girls.

I organized small squads of a dozen men, with a senior knight leading each one, and sent them on street-by-street missions to stop the looting and rape. Their task was unpleasant, but not difficult, as most of the miscreants were so drunk they were unable to put up much of a fight. Adela was a particularly effective admonisher, kicking and punching the men until they did her bidding but dealing gently with the women she found, making sure that someone was on hand to take care of them.

We organized carts to transport the men back to camp in disgrace, and we helped the locals to identify their belongings and then returned what was left of them. Sadly, as in the examples from central Europe, it was Thessaloniki’s Jewish community which bore the brunt of the crimes. The docks area was a Jewish enclave and, once again, they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

As we got close to Constantinople, the final groups of Crusaders joined us – Germans, north Europeans and Lotharingians, led by Duke Godfrey of Bouillon – making us into an army over 80,000 strong.

Both Duke Godfrey and Count Raymond had had difficult journeys, beset by indiscipline, poor morale and clashes with local communities. Robert called several Councils of War to try to restore discipline, but each ended in chaos as the rival lords argued every point. I tried hard to use common sense in the debates and argued vociferously for unity. I think my words won me some admirers, but they made little difference to the outcome. Obduracy ruled – egos were too big to listen to reason.

When we reached Byzantium’s fabled capital, we found its gates barred against us and an envoy from Emperor Alexius waiting to escort us to an audience with the man who wore the Purple of Rome – a ruler whose empire was over 1,200 years old and who still thought of himself as Roman.

Just as we called the Byzantines ‘Greeks’ because of their language and affiliation to the Eastern Church, they called western Europeans ‘Latins’ because of our use of the Latin language for all our formal documents and because of our adherence to the Church of Rome. Although it had been only forty years since the Great Schism between the two Churches, it looked like it was going to be a permanent rupture in the faith.

All the senior command staffs of the Crusader armies were summoned, and Robert managed to obtain places for Adela and Estrith in the entourage as interpreters. The cream of European aristocracy – over 200 dukes, counts and knights, and some of their wives and daughters – were escorted through the gates of the world’s most magnificent city and seated in royal carriages to be given a ceremonial entrance.

Horns and trumpets signalled the beginning of the procession as a company of the Emperor’s personal bodyguard, the legendary Varangian Guard, led the procession. The entire route was lined with soldiers from the many themes of the Byzantine army: Macedonians, Thracians, Thessalonians and men recruited from as far away as Cyprus, Mesopotamia and Crete.

We ‘Latin Princes’ were people used to the best that money could buy, but none of us had seen anything on
such a scale or possessed of such opulence and grandeur.

Shaped like a triangle pointing at the sea, the city was surrounded by water on two sides. On the landward side, it was defended by not one but two mighty walls – each five miles long, sixteen feet thick and over seventy feet high – with huge open spaces in between. It was impossible to imagine them ever being breached.

We were told that more than half a million people lived in the city, ten times the number of inhabitants in the biggest cities in the West. We had seen Rome, and the superb basilica of St Peter’s, but most of the population lived in modest wooden homes amidst the crumbling remains of the city’s former imperial glory. But Constantinople was awash with magnificent palaces, churches and public buildings; its homes were full of the finest furnishings, marbles and mosaics; its people were dressed in the finest cottons and silks and adorned in gold and precious gems.

Constantine himself watched over the city, represented as Apollo in a huge bronze statue atop a column 170 feet high. The Emperor Justinian, captured on horseback in marble three times lifesize, presided over the Hippodrome, an arena with a capacity for 100,000 people. The most impressive sight of all was the Basilica of St Sophia, a building of great antiquity, but far bigger than any Christian church in the West, even the ones newly constructed. The top of its dome was as high as the statue to Constantine and over a hundred feet across.

Estrith stared at it, open-mouthed.

‘My mother told me about it. Isn’t it magnificent? The calculations are outstanding! They were done by the architect Isidorus of Miletus and the mathematician Arthamius
of Tralles. No need for my hammer beams; the key is the circular dome. The weight is distributed evenly to the massive walls, buttressed by the even bigger corner columns. But the strength comes from the apex, which holds the roof like the locking ring at the top of a tripod; the pressure from any one direction is held by an equal force fighting against it.’

She made it sound simple; I was sure it wasn’t.

The Emperor’s palace, the Blachernae, stood proudly on a hilltop in the north-west corner of the city with views of the sea and the surrounding countryside. Without wishing to be too disparaging about the abodes of my noble comrades, it made their ducal palaces look like peasants’ hovels. Emperor Alexius had granted us a rare privilege in greeting us at the Blachernae, his private palace, rather than at the Great Palace, usually used for ceremonial occasions. The Great Palace had been built by the Emperor Constantine hundreds of years ago but had, like Byzantium itself, fallen on hard times. An important part of Alexius’s rebuilding of his city and empire had been the commissioning of a new palace to match those of the great Caesars of the past.

Alexius had been one of Byzantium’s highest nobility, and was a highly renowned general, when he became Emperor in a palace coup over fifteen years earlier. The empire was on its knees: the army was demoralized after a crushing defeat at the infamous Battle of Manzikert; the treasury was bare; and a succession of weak or despotic emperors had sapped the energy of the people.

In truth, the empire had been in a constant state of struggle for hundreds of years against fierce warrior-tribes from the North and the messianic valour of Islam from the
south. By the time of Alexius’s accession, the chalice of the Purple could well have been a poisoned one and the empire in its death throes. However, slowly and shrewdly, with a combination of diplomacy and aggression, generosity and ruthlessness, Alexius had managed to rebuild the army, refill his treasury and restore the vigour of the people.

When several significant Muslim leaders died in quick succession and internal squabbling between the Shia believers of the Fatimid Caliphate of Cairo and the Sunnis of the Abbasid of Baghdad weakened it, Alexius chose the moment to make his move. His masterstroke was to appeal to his Christian brothers in the West to do his fighting for him. Perhaps, like Pope Urban, who yearned to unite the two Christian Churches under his governance in Rome, Alexius dreamed of uniting East and West under his sovereignty in Constantinople and recreating the glorious empire of Ancient Rome.

Now, as we arrived at what we assumed was the Emperor’s Great Hall, we were amazed to discover that it was only an anteroom for guests to await an audience with him. Even more remarkably, there were two more grand halls after the first, for guests or delegations of increasing importance. Each one was covered from floor to ceiling in intricately woven tapestries – at least three times the size of any I had seen before – the finest marbles, laid in complex symmetrical patterns aglow with vibrant colours, and astonishing mosaics, the quality of which was breathtaking. They depicted hunting, harvests, banquets, bathing and Byzantium’s great military victories in such detail and realism that it looked as if the people and animals were alive beneath one’s feet.

When we finally arrived at his reception hall, it was so large that all 200 of us seemed swallowed by it, even though the Emperor’s court, entourage and bodyguards were already there in significant numbers.

As we took our positions, standing in neat rows beneath the imperial dais, lords in the front rows, lesser mortals in order of precedence towards the back, the Emperor sat in silence, acknowledging only the most senior men with a slight nod of his head and the hint of a smile.