Authors: Douglas Boyd
Eleanor’s followers recovered from the privations of winter in the Antiochene spring, which was so like that of Aquitaine. Peire Vidal, a Toulousain troubadour who wrote and sang his way through Spain, Provence, Italy and Hungary, captured the mood:
Be m’agrada la covinens sazos
e m’agrada lo cortes tems d’estiu
e m’agradon l’auzel quan chanton piu
e m’agradon floretas per boissos.
[Oh, how I love the gentle season / foretelling the dalliance of summer / when the birds sing again to one another / and every bush is bright with blossom.]
But while the joys of Antioch were expunging the nightmare of Turkey, the rift between Eleanor and Louis widened even further. Entertained and lodged in luxury with their own blood-relations, her followers naturally sided with the Prince of Antioch, who had in mind that even if the rest of the French contingent continued to Jerusalem, they alone would be enough to serve his immediate ends. The Franks and Normans, resentful that they had suffered so much worse than the southerners at Mount Cadmos, despised the rich and decadent lifestyle of these first representatives of the Latin Kingdom with whom they came in contact. They had a word for the expat type, softened in some cases by two generations of oriental living.
Poulain
meant literally a foal, protected by the mare, but was used disparagingly in the sense of ‘degenerate’.
The culture gap worked both ways. Fulcher of Chartres, who went to the Holy Land with Baldwin of Flanders on the First Crusade in 1099 and died there in 1127, wrote in his
History of Jerusalem
, ‘We used to be Westerners. Now we are Easterners. You may once have been a Roman or a Frenchman; here and now, you are a Galilean or a Palestinian. For we have forgotten the lands of our birth; to most of us they are strange, forgotten countries.’
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Eleanor was accustomed to the sight of Moorish, Sicilian and Jewish traders stepping ashore from their vessels moored below the walls of Bayonne and Bordeaux. She saw in Antioch again all the excitement of a vivid and colourful Mediterranean lifestyle that suited her far better than the claustrophobic court on the Ile de la Cité. However, Louis viewed with horror the locals who had intermarried not only with Greeks and Syrians but also with Saracens, whose costume they wore in public and whose language they spoke fluently.
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On ground that had been trodden by holy Luke and Peter, Barnabas and Paul, they ate and gamed and did business with turbaned pagans and Muslims in the shadow of statues of Apollo and Diana. The coinage of Baghdad and Damascus circulated alongside that of
Paris, Venice or Constantinople in this city that resembled a vast caravanserai.
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For every church there was a mosque, from whose minaret the muezzin’s call to prayer competed with church bells calling Christians to worship.
Learning that the Franks intended continuing to Jerusalem as soon as the rest of the army caught up with them, Raymond realised that his only hope lay in enlisting Eleanor’s support. His flattery and courting of her was, despite all the malicious slanders that pursued her afterwards, motivated by the desire to use her influence. Vulnerable to Raymond’s southern charm and his love of music and draughts and chess, she allowed to grow up between them a close relationship that marked the end of the marriage to Louis, with which she had long grown bored.
Reluctant as ever to believe ill of anyone, he could not but be aware of her pleasure in her uncle’s company, while to Raymond’s mind a king who had to be protected from his own beautiful, strong-willed wife by a monk and a eunuch was a figure of mockery, unworthy of respect. Louis’ advisers, unable to understand exactly what was going on between the queen and her uncle, perhaps read more than necessary into the jokes and jibes in Occitan. The flirting, natural enough for a healthy young woman after all the long months without any sex, thanks to Louis’ vow of celibacy, was to them the outward sign of a clandestine carnal relationship.
Throughout her life, Eleanor seems to have been unaware when others set out to damage her. She was at this time twenty-five years old, clothed and bejewelled by Raymond, lodged by him and flattered by his gifts and personal attentions. To Raymond she could confide the boredom of her life in Paris and the frustration of her marriage.
I found I had married a monk …
In addition, there was her resentment at being refused a seat at Louis’ council on the march, to which she should have been entitled as overlord of a sizeable portion of the contingent, yet which had been denied her all along by the hostility of his Frankish advisers. As to who concerted this, the clue may be in her open mockery of Thierry Galeran,
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a eunuch being an obvious butt for humour in Antiochene society.
Although openly blamed by the Franks for the massacre in the mountains, she had been denied the right to defend herself in council and put her view that Louis was at least as much at fault, for had he done as Abbé Bernard counselled and proceeded to Jerusalem without diversion instead of dawdling from one holy site to another, they would never have been at Mount Cadmos in the middle of winter.
When the count of Flanders and Archimbaud de Bourbon arrived with a mere handful of foot-soldiers and the news that the rest of the infantry was lost to disease and death at Satalia or had converted to the religion of the enemy, Raymond presented his plan with all the right military arguments at a plenary council of war, from which Eleanor was again excluded. Louis replied, ‘It was to go to the Holy Sepulchre that I made my crusader’s vow. I will not make war until after fulfilling my pilgrimage. Afterward I shall listen to the Prince of Antioch and the other barons of Syria in council and will, according to my power, offer myself to God’s will.’
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At this denial of what was the original purpose of the crusade, William of Tyre records that the tap of generosity was abruptly turned off. The prince of Antioch now informed Louis’ Frankish and Flemish nobles and knights on whom he had lavished so much hospitality that they were no longer welcome on his territory. In the midst of marshalling his troops for the road to Jerusalem, Louis received notice from Eleanor that she insisted on speaking with him face to face. As his wife, she announced that she no longer wanted anything to do with him or the house of Capet.
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As countess of Poitou and duchess of Aquitaine, she informed him that she and her vassals intended to continue the crusade by remaining in Antioch and assisting Raymond in retaking Edessa, as had been planned from the beginning.
Those seeking scandal can find it anywhere, but it was natural for her political sympathies to lie with Raymond’s cause. Not only was he her father’s brother, but in taking his side she was favouring her own cause in the breakaway duchy of Toulouse. In purely military terms, what remained of the French army could not possibly clear all the Turks and other Muslims from Outremer, but they could recapture Edessa which, under a stronger overlord than Joscelin, would again be the north-eastern bulwark of the Latin Kingdom. What better result could they hope to achieve?
For the details of the conversation between Eleanor and Louis, the record is sparse. Having studied in Paris under Peter Abelard, John of Salisbury certainly knew both Eleanor and Louis by reputation and probably in person. Later Becket’s secretary and thus present in Canterbury Cathedral at the time of the murder before going on to become bishop of Chartres, he was a reliable chronicler. He reports that Louis was deeply upset at Eleanor’s outpouring of her grievances, ending with a reminder that no less a person than Abbé Bernard had written, after Louis had refused consent for two of his vassals to marry heirs of Thibault of Champagne to whom they were related, ‘How is it
that the king is so scrupulous about con-sanguinity in [this] case when it is common knowledge that he has married his own cousin in the fourth degree?’
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Eleanor’s attendance at the contests of dialectic between Abelard and his rivals enabled her to put her case well, arguing that by holding her to a marriage which was sinful Louis was placing his immortal soul in jeopardy. A crusader’s past sins were to be remitted on arrival at Jerusalem but this would be future sin, for which he would pay with his soul.
The argument was perhaps too good. Louis was stunned as the commander who needed every knight under Eleanor’s command, stunned as a husband whose wife wanted no more of him, and stunned as a sovereign whose most important vassal was renouncing her feudal obligations.
The Frankish barons united with the Normans and Flemings in blaming Raymond for putting Eleanor up to this, for what woman could have made such a case for herself? To their way of thinking a queen, once married, was her husband’s chattel until death did them part or he sent her away. The only exception was the wife who had the decency to retire to a nunnery. The council was in uproar. If Raymond was allowed to get away with this, what would he think up next? Marry Eleanor off to one of his vassals? Get rid of Constance and marry her himself? In their righteous indignation, it seemed to them that anything was possible in this sink of corruption that had once been the holy city of Antioch.
Whatever Raymond’s plans, it was unthinkable for Louis to depart and leave Eleanor behind with some or all of her vassals. How could he explain to the young king of the Latin Kingdom and his mother Queen Melisende, to the master of the Templars and the patriarch of Jerusalem that, in addition to all the losses caused by disease, drowning and the enemy, he had now lost also that part of his army which came from Aquitaine?
It was the cold military logic of Galeran the eunuch that provided the short-term answer to Louis’ dilemma – and at the same time came near to ruining the king in the long run. In the middle of the night, Eleanor was seized in her apartments and taken at sword-point by Galeran’s men to St Paul’s Gate. Long before the first muezzin called the faithful to dawn prayer from the minarets of Antioch, she was riding under guard through the mountains that led to Jerusalem.
In the cool light of day, Louis became aware that, whatever the outcome of the crusade, he had a choice between alternatives, each of which held significant disadvantages. He could divorce Eleanor on their return to France, which would leave him free to marry again and obtain
the son needed for the succession. Against that, releasing her would mean returning her dowry, which would – as proved to be the case – dangerously strengthen the power of any other vassal of his whom she chose to marry.
Alternatively, he could imprison the queen and confiscate her territories as the price of treason. But where was the treason? There never was any proof of an illicit relationship between her and Raymond. Were unsupported hearsay and conjecture enough to convince her barons that she had no right to renounce her feudal obligations to Louis and that theirs towards him continued, no matter what she decided? It was an unclear area.
There was another drawback to this course in that he would still be married in the eyes of the Church and thus unable to sire the heir that France demanded. Even if he could talk Eleanor round on the journey home, what about the sin of consanguinity? As ever, it was to Suger that he turned for advice when all else failed. The letter has been lost, or was destroyed by the canny regent of France. But the reply remains: ‘If the queen has given you offence, conceal your resentment until you both have returned to your estates, when this matter may be dealt with.’
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The immediate problem was to justify to the slimmed-down French army and particularly the vassals who owed allegiance to the duchess of Aquitaine why she was travelling under guard and incommunicado. And thus was born one of the great slanders against Eleanor. William of Tyre refers soberly to her ‘indiscretions in Antioch and afterwards’, when he finds her ‘disregardful of her marriage bond’,
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but that could mean no more than a wife’s disobedience to her husband. John of Salisbury repeats the accusation that she had been guilty of too great familiarity with the prince of Antioch.
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Gervase of Canterbury recommends silence about Eleanor’s conduct in the Orient.
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Had the king of the Franks been a lustier man than Louis and caught in adultery with some princess in Antioch, every knight in the army would have approved this proof of manhood, never mind what penance was imposed for breaking the vow of celibacy. The Ten Commandments, including the prohibition of adultery, were not Christian, but Mosaic. Only in the following century would they be incorporated into a manual of instruction for those coming to confess their sins and eventually into the catechism used as religious training of the young.
So a king might beget his bastards freely – one of Henry II’s ended up as archbishop of York – but a queen’s body was state property. For her to use it in pleasure or fulfilment of her own emotions was effectively treason. While there was never a shred of proof that Eleanor
and Raymond had done more than flirt together, the slur against her good name was to follow her to the grave and beyond. Even if they had conspired together, it was not against Louis personally, but to concert their efforts in order to accomplish the original aim of the crusade by retaking Edessa.
The patriarch of Jerusalem had ridden most of the way to Antioch with a bodyguard of Templars not just to welcome Louis but to make sure he did not patch up his quarrel with Raymond or get embroiled with the count of Tripoli on the way. He had been wise to do so; Louis found it difficult to resist the stream of pleas for assistance from all corners of the Latin Kingdom that reached him daily.
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Prayers were offered as the party reached Nebi Samwil, the traditional site of the tomb of the Prophet Samuel, dubbed by the Franks Montjoie or
Mons Gaudi
in Latin because it afforded the first view of Jerusalem. The Judean capital was to them not so much a city as the gateway to heaven, of which Bernard of Cluny had written, ‘I seek you, I live in you, I burn for you, I desire you, I sing you, I salute you.’
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