From these crude estimates it is apparent that the Venetians needed to employ or provide at least 30,000 men—probably over half the adult population of the city itself—to sail a fleet of the size proposed in the contract. Thousands of local mariners from the Adriatic shores must have come to join the crusade as the Venetians strove to fulfil their side of the bargain. Meanwhile, as Villehardouin rode northwards carrying the news of a successfully negotiated deal, he must have wondered how recruitment for the crusade was progressing and which great nobles planned to join him on the expedition. By chance, as he crossed Mount Cenis in northern Italy, he met Walter of Brienne, a leading French lord who had taken the cross with Villehardouin and Count Thibaut of Champagne. Walter was heading towards Apulia in southern Italy to regain some lands belonging to his new wife, a member of the Sicilian royal family. He and his companions praised Villehardouin for what he had achieved and promised to join the army in Venice once they had completed their business in the south. In good heart, therefore, the marshal continued his journey. Little did he know, however, that the crusade was about to suffer its first, tragic setback.
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CHAPTER FIVE
‘Alas, Love, what a hard parting I shall have to make’
Final Preparations and Leaving Home, May 1201—June 1202
A
S VILLEHARDOUIN REACHED the southern regions of the county of Champagne in May 1201 he heard deeply disturbing news. His master—one of the three leaders of the crusade—Thibaut of Champagne, lay seriously ill at the town of Troyes. The count was in low spirits when Geoffrey arrived, but he was greatly heartened to learn of the treaty with Venice. We do not know the nature of Thibaut’s illness, but he was sufficiently invigorated by these developments to ride his horse—something that he had not done for weeks. Sadly, this burst of energy was to be shortlived and he soon plunged into a terminal decline. Thibaut’s sickness was all the more poignant for the fact that his wife, Blanche, was approaching the ninth month of her pregnancy.
The count realised that his last days were drawing near and he made his final testament. According to Robert of Clari he had raised 50,000 livres, some of it extracted from the Jewish community of Champagne. The Jews were a common target for those seeking funds for the crusades because they were a wealthy section of society whose profits often derived from the practice of usury—the lending of money for interest—which was viewed as deeply sinful by the Catholic Church. The twelfth century saw a dramatic expansion in the economy of western Europe and this raised a number of moral questions: should a Christian society seek profit at all? Was it right to make a profit (from interest on a loan) without seeming to perform any work? As churchmen railed against the deadly crimes of avarice and fraud, usury began to be compared to theft. One aspect of this disapproval was the notion that usurers were selling time —the longer the loan, the greater the interest paid; yet time was not theirs, but belonged to God. The Book of Psalms described the righteous man as one ‘who does not put out his money at interest’ (Ps. 15:5). Deuteronomy ruled: ‘Thou shalt not lend to thy brother money to usury, nor corn, not any other thing: But to the stranger. To thy brother thou shalt lend that which he wanteth, without usury: that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all thy works in the land, which thou shalt go into to possess’ (Deut. 23:19—20).
1
The Jews, operating outside these strictures, were the main practitioners of usury, which formed a central element in the blossoming economy. For many in western Europe, however, the Jews had a much more sinister legacy as the killers of Christ, a record that rendered them suitable targets for holy war. In 1096, the ill-disciplined rabble of the People’s Crusade (sometimes known as the Peasants’ Crusade) visited terrible acts of violence and murder on the Jewish communities of the Rhineland. Similarly, 50 years later, the Second Crusade provoked another outbreak of anti-Semitism in the same region. In simple terms, it was argued that if the crusade was intended to eradicate non-believers, then one should start at home and remove the impure from Christian lands. In 1146, Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, wrote: ‘But why should we pursue the enemies of the Christian faith in far and distant lands while the vile blasphemers, far worse than any Saracens, namely the Jews, who are not far away from us, but who live in our midst, blaspheme, abuse and trample on Christ and the Christian sacraments so freely, insolently and with impunity.’
2
In fact, the Bible stated that the Jews should not be killed in order that they may be punished on earth and, ultimately, be saved. In the same year as Peter’s pronouncements, Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux wrote: ‘Is it not a far better triumph for the Church to convince and convert the Jews than put them to the sword?’
3
Bernard’s views prevailed and he did much to halt the persecution of Jews.
In the late 1190S, Thibaut of Champagne had sufficient control over his lands to prevent any outbreaks of anti-Semitism, and he chose the Jews as a suitable source of finance for his own expedition. By the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries secular rulers were able to exploit formal church legislation against the Jews and usury to impose special levies on Jewish communities; indeed, it was from a tax of this sort that Thibaut had secured part of his crusade funding. In his will the count stipulated that this money should be divided amongst those who had taken the cross, although individual beneficiaries had to swear to sail from Venice—an early recognition of the need to try to channel men and resources in that direction. A further proportion of the funds was to be allocated to the common purse of the army and spent as seen fit.
On 24 May the count finally passed away, greatly mourned by all. The death of such a prominent figure was a public affair. Villehardouin, who was almost certainly present, wrote that Thibaut died ‘surrounded by a great crowd of relations and vassals. As for the mourning over his death and at his funeral, I dare not venture to describe it, for never was more honour paid to any other man ... no man of his day was ever more deeply loved by his own people.’
4
In part this is the tribute of a loyal retainer, but there is also a strong sense that Thibaut was genuinely loved and admired by his people. His widow, Blanche, commissioned a magnificent memorial for her husband in the church of Saint-Étienne in Troyes, where Thibaut was interred at the foot of his father’s grave. The tomb did not survive the French Revolution, but in 1704 a priest of the church wrote a highly detailed description of the monument. The plinth was decorated with 28 enamels, 34 columns of silver, and numerous niches that contained figures of relatives such as Louis VII of France (1137-80), who took part in the Second Crusade, and Henry II of Champagne, who ruled Jerusalem in the late twelfth century. The priest recorded a splendid image of a man holding a pilgrim’s staff and, on his right shoulder, bearing a cross made of the finest silver and decorated with gemstones. Such powerful imagery was, of course, linked to Thibaut’s unfulfilled crusade vow and the inscription on his tomb sought to draw a connection between the count’s planned expedition and the divine reward that his admirers felt was his due:
Intent upon making amends for the injuries of the Cross
and the land of the Crucified
He arranged the way with expenses, an army, a navy.
Seeking the terrestrial city, he finds the celestial one;
While he is obtaining his goal far distant, he finds it at home.
5
In other words, in death Thibaut had gone to the heavenly Jerusalem, rather than the earthly one he hoped to reach on crusade. Around a week after the funeral, Blanche gave birth to a son, also named Thibaut, who would later succeed to the comital title and lead a crusade of his own to the Holy Land in 1239-40.
6
Aside from the loss of a close friend, Thibaut’s death raised serious issues for the leadership of the crusade. A group of Champenois nobles turned to the duke of Burgundy and offered him all of Thibaut’s money and their loyalty if he would take the count’s place as their leader, but he declined. Soon afterwards, the count of Bar-le-Duc, Thibaut’s cousin, rejected a similar approach. Although it is difficult to assess the precise impact of the count’s passing, the demise of such an inspirational and popular figure, whose taking of the cross had done much to spark the initial enthusiasm for the crusade in northern France, must have had a significant effect on recruitment and morale. Thibaut had the charisma and pedigree to pull many other nobles and knights along with him and, as his will revealed, he was committed to going to the Holy Land via Venice and fulfilling the contract negotiated by Villehardouin. The marshal wrote that the crusaders were ‘greatly disheartened’ when Thibaut died.
7
It is possible that worries over the succession to the county of Champagne may also have discouraged some of his nobles from leaving on crusade: a female regency (Thibaut had no other children) or the arrival of an outsider chosen to take charge of the area were recipes for instability and it might be more prudent to stay at home.
8
In early June or July the senior crusaders met at Soissons in an attempt to resolve the growing crisis. The situation had become intensely serious and the counts of Flanders, Blois, Perche and Saint-Pol all joined the assembly to discuss how best to fill the vacuum caused by Thibaut’s death. Villehardouin credits himself with suggesting the solution: he proposed that Boniface, the marquis of Montferrat (in northern Italy), take overall charge of the crusade. Boniface was a man of truly international standing whose family was closely related to the Capetian kings of France and to the Hohenstaufen claimants to the imperial throne of Germany. The wealthy, fertile lands of Montferrat spread across Piedmont and included Turin, Casale and Tortona. Such was Boniface’s eminence that he was to be offered full control of the entire army, whereas previously it seems that Thibaut, Louis of Blois and Baldwin of Flanders had formed an unofficial triumvirate, each leading his own contingent.
Like Thibaut, Boniface came from a well-established crusading line with a long tradition of holy war. Unlike the northern French crusade leaders, he was an older man, aged about 50, who had ruled Montferrat since 1183, although he had not yet been on crusade. Over the latter half of the twelfth century, Boniface’s father, William the Old, and his (Boniface’s) three brothers, William Longsword, Conrad and Renier, had carved an indelible impression on the political landscape of western Europe, Byzantium and the Crusader States. William the Old fought on the Second Crusade and returned to the Holy Land in 1185, where he was captured by Saladin at the Battle of Hattin in 1187. Eleven years previously his son, William Longsword, had married Sibylla, the heiress to the throne of Jerusalem. The contemporary chronicler, William of Tyre, gives an incisive portrait of the qualities and failings of this member of the clan:
The marquis was a rather tall, good-looking young man with blond hair. He was exceedingly irascible, but generous and of an open disposition and manly courage. He never concealed any purpose but showed frankly just what he thought in his own mind. He was fond of eating and altogether too devoted to drinking, although not to such an extent to injure his mind. He had been trained in arms from the earliest youth and had the reputation of being experienced in the art of war. His worldly position was exalted—in fact, few, if any, could claim to be his equals.
9
Unfortunately, a mere three months after the marriage, he became seriously ill—possibly with malaria—and very soon, in June 1177, he died, leaving his wife pregnant with the future King Baldwin V of Jerusalem (1185-6).
In 1179 the house of Montferrat began to extend its influence into the Byzantine world. Such was the family’s standing that Emperor Manuel Comnenus offered Renier the hand in marriage of Maria, second in line to the imperial throne. William of Tyre was present at the ceremony in 1180 and he enthused over the magnificent nuptial splendour and the generous gifts that the emperor lavished on his own people as well as strangers:
We may mention the games of the circus which the inhabitants of Constantinople call hippodromes, and the glorious spectacles of varied nature shown to the people with great pomp during the days of the celebration; the imperial magnificence of the vestments and the royal robes adorned with a profusion of precious stones and pearls of a great weight; the vast amount of gold and silver furniture in the palace of untold value. Words would fail to speak in fitting terms of the valuable draperies adorning the royal abode, to mention the numerous servants and members of court ...
10
The union of the 17-year-old westerner with the 30-year-old Byzantine princess proved deeply unhappy. The Byzantine writer Niketas Choniates, no admirer of Maria, described the couple thus: ‘The maiden [Maria], a princess wooed by many, was like Agamemnon’s daughter, Electra, raving long in the palace and, stately as a white poplar wet with dew, longing for the marriage bed. Later ... she became the consort of [Renier] of Montferrat, who was fair of face and pleasant to look upon: his well-groomed hair shone like the sun and he was too young to grow a beard, while she had passed her thirtieth year and was as strong as a man.’
11
The emperor may also have granted Renier rights of overlordship to the city of Thessalonica in northern Greece, a considerable gift and one that later attracted the attention of Boniface.
12