Even if a crusader managed to avoid death or imprisonment, for most participants the expedition was an unbelievably gruelling experience. The most likely causes of hardship were lack of food and water. Only limited supplies could be carried with the armies and, once they moved out of friendly territories, it might prove impossible to secure provisions from a scared or hostile local population. As the writer of the
Gesta Francorum
understood from first-hand knowledge, the warriors of the First Crusade were forced to go to extreme lengths to survive: ‘Our men were so terribly afflicted by thirst that they bled their horses and asses and drank the blood; others let down belts and clothes into a sewer and squeezed the liquid into their mouths; others passed water into one another’s cupped hands and drank; others dug up damp earth and lay down on their backs, piling the earth upon their chests because they were so dry with thirst.’
28
At the siege of Jerusalem in July 1099 the same author wrote: ‘we suffered so badly from thirst that we sewed up the skins of oxen and buffaloes, and we used to carry water in them for the distance of nearly six miles. We drank water from these vessels, although it stank, and what with foul water and barley bread we suffered great distress every day, for the Saracens used to lie in wait for our men by every spring and pool, where they killed them and cut them to pieces.’
29
Earlier in the crusade an eight-month siege at Antioch in northern Syria tested men’s endurance to the limits: ‘So terrible was the famine that men boiled and ate the leaves of figs, vines, thistles and all kinds of trees. Others stewed the dried skins of horses, camels, asses, oxen or buffaloes, which they ate.’
30
Unsurprisingly, these arduous conditions caused many thousands of men to desert. By the time of the Third Crusade, however, better organisation and stricter discipline meant that fewer fled the campaign, although the problem of food and water supply remained a potential hazard for all medieval armies.
Closely associated with such deprivation was, of course, illness and disease. The army of the First Crusade was ravaged by an outbreak of (probably) typhoid in late 1098 and participants in the Third Crusade were endlessly riven by a variety of debilitating illnesses. A particularly dreadful plague hit the camp besieging Acre in 1190-1 and thousands perished, both rich and poor alike. The author of the
Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi,
an account of the Third Crusade, commented:
a recital of the enormous number of all those who died in the army in that short time would seem beyond belief. The total of the magnates alone, according to one writer, can be set out as follows, but that writer declared that it was impossible to discover the losses amongst the masses. In the army died: six archbishops and the patriarch of Jerusalem, twelve bishops, forty counts, 500 great nobles as well as a great crowd of priests, clergy and people whose number cannot be known.
31
Emergency medical care was, unsurprisingly, minimal. The Knights Hospitaller had field hospitals for the battles in the Holy Land, but the chances of dying from injury or infection of wounds remained considerable.
Because of the punishing physical demands of warfare and the conventions of medieval society, most crusaders were male. But some women also hoped to benefit from the offer of spiritual reward. Orderic Vitalis, writing in Normandy in the early twelfth century, reported: ‘wives, lamenting, longed passionately to leave their children and all their riches behind to follow their husbands’.
32
Although some women are known to have taken the cross, usually these were ladies of high birth, such as Queen Eleanor of France (best known today as Eleanor of Aquitaine, later the wife of Henry II of England). Unfortunately, she became embroiled in one of the great scandals of the medieval period when allegations of an affair with her uncle, Prince Raymond of Antioch, did much to confirm the prejudices of many churchmen that women could only bring trouble to a crusading army through their natural inclination to provoke the vices of lust and envy. Ordinary women might be present on a crusade as pilgrims, accompanying the expedition, or else they took on lowly, menial roles, such as washerwomen or—in spite of the spiritual character of a crusade—as prostitutes. The majority of crusaders’ wives chose to stay at home, however, where their presence was arguably more valuable as the guardian of family lands and of the next generation of the nobility.
33
Some women might actually encourage men to take the cross. As a chronicler of the Third Crusade wrote: ‘Brides urged their husbands and mothers incited their sons to go, their only sorrow being that they were not able to set out with them because of the weakness of their sex.’
34
On the other hand, women might also prevent men from going on crusade. Gerald of Wales had recruited a knight for the same expedition, only for the man’s wife to ‘put a sudden stop to his noble intentions by playing upon his weakness and exercising her womanly charms’.
35
Given the strong possibility that a crusader would die, the emotional pressure on those taking the cross must have been intense. In theory, a married man had to get his wife’s agreement before he became a crusader. Whether this stricture had any real effect is hard to tell: a man swept up by the enthusiasm of a sermon, or feeling pressured by peers or family traditions, may have had scant regard for the views of his spouse. In a few cases, however, it must have hampered recruitment because, in order to maximise support for his crusade—and contrary to canon law—in a letter of 1201 Pope Innocent indicated that a man need not seek his wife’s consent.
Regardless of marital status, many crusaders willingly set aside the comforts and security of home and family. A participant in the Second Crusade eloquently outlined the sacrifices made: ‘Yet it is a fact that they [the crusaders] have exchanged all their honours and dignities for a blessed pilgrimage in order to obtain an eternal reward. The alluring affection of wives, the tender kisses of sucking infants at the breast, the even more delightful pledges of grown-up children, the much desired consolation of relatives and friends—all these they have left behind to follow Christ, retaining only the sweet but torturing memory of their native land.’
36
The thought of leaving a wife, children, parents, family and friends must surely have weighed heavily on all those who took the cross. Given the rudimentary nature of medieval communications, even sending letters home was a difficult task. For the elite, and those with access to a literate cleric, this was an option, however. In early 1098 Count Stephen of Blois was able to address greetings to Adela, ‘his sweetest and most amiable wife, to his dear children and to his vassals of all ranks’ and report good progress for the First Crusade. Events could change quickly, though, and by the time Adela received the letter a couple of months later, Stephen’s optimism, along with his courage, had evaporated and the count had deserted the expedition.
37
Given the restricted levels of literacy, messages to religious houses were often the main conduit of news to the West and the clerics in turn would pass on information to the local people. In the light of these handicaps, all those in Europe could do was to pray for the safety of the crusaders; indeed, they were positively encouraged to do so by the papacy. In one case at least, an even more devout course was taken when one Walter of Treione joined the monastery of St Peter at Chartres to pray for his father as the latter set out on the Second Crusade in 1147.
38
As the men fought and marched their way to the Holy Land, their thoughts must often have strayed back to their native lands. A sense of homesickness emerges from some sources, particularly at moments of crisis. As the first Frankish settlers struggled to establish their control over the Holy Land they faced hostile armies far larger than their own. At times such as this the outlook seemed grim, as Fulcher of Chartres wrote: ‘On all sides we were besieged by our enemies ... That day nothing went well; we had no rest, nor were our thirsty beasts even watered. Indeed, I wished very much that I were in Chartres or Orléans, and so did others.’
39
One can sense his yearning for the security of the familiar sounds and smells of northern France—and feel the fatigue and fear of an army in trouble and far from home. One advantage later crusaders held over the pioneers of 1095—9 was the presence of fellow-Franks in the Levant. The shared faith, language and, in many cases, family ties represented a bridgehead that could help to soften the cultural shock of the journey to the East.
The safety of family and property were important concerns, too. On a personal level, some may have feared for a partner’s fidelity. The Muslim defenders at the siege of Lisbon in 1147 enjoyed baiting their attackers: ‘they taunted us with the idea of numerous children about to be born at home in our absence, and said that on this account our wives would not be concerned about our deaths since they would have bastard progeny enough. And they undertook that if any of us should survive, we would return to our home lands in poverty and misery; and they mocked us and gnashed their teeth against us.’
40
One way to try to ensure a woman’s safety, and her sexual purity, was to place her under the close care of a religious house. The First Crusader Gilbert of Aalst actually founded the monastery of Merhem for his sister Lietgard as he prepared to leave for the Levant.
41
The protection afforded by the great religious institutions of the time was important in dealing with another serious worry faced by a departing crusader and his family. Because of the turbulence of the medieval age, the absence of a noble and probably many of his knights presented a (literally) heaven-sent opportunity for a less scrupulous neighbour to exploit. The papacy had tried to pre-empt such a possibility by promising that crusaders’ lands were under ecclesiastical guardianship and threatening heavy penalties for anyone who transgressed. In fact, the welter of legal cases after the First Crusade seems to indicate that, even so, many knights and nobles suffered losses of land or rights in the course of their absence.
42
In order to prevent this a crusader would appoint someone—often a close relative—to look after his property. Hostile incursions were sometimes resisted as a result. Sibylla of Flanders took control of the county when her husband Thierry left on the Second Crusade in 1146. Two years later, when the neighbouring count of Hainault tried to seize Flemish territory, Sibylla herself led the opposition and forced the invaders to flee. Sibylla was by no means the only woman left in charge when her husband went on crusade, but such moments represented rare opportunities for women to exercise real political power in the medieval age.
43
Another consideration before taking the cross was the cost of the campaign. To equip a knight, his squires and servants required a considerable outlay. Chain mail, weapons and, most of all, horses were extremely expensive. It was also essential to take large sums of money to purchase food, although nobles sometimes carried valuables with them to barter, exchange or use as gifts as required.
The funding of a crusade obliged men to mortgage or sell their land and property rights, usually to the Church, because it was the only institution with sufficient resources to buy or lend large sums of money. Thousands of transactions, recorded in documents known as charters, survive from the medieval period and a significant proportion of them are connected with financing crusades. In a few cases we can see two or three documents made by the same man as he sought to organise the disposal of various property rights and to raise the cash he needed. At times, particular churches could not cope with the demand for money and were compelled to melt down valuables. They might also give gifts to an individual crusader in the form of money or useful items such as pack animals. Doubtless families offered whatever backing they could, although the disposal of land and rights often led to interminable arguments as to the validity of particular promises or deals.
It has been estimated that a knight needed to spend four times his annual income to pay for a crusade—yet his family still needed to survive at home and there had to be provision for them in case he did not return. Many crusaders seem to have run out of money in the course of their journey to the East, which meant that they relied on the patronage of the most senior nobles, or on securing booty from the campaign. If either of these was not forthcoming, destitution loomed; there was still the need to pay for a passage back to the West, too. It is not surprising to find crusaders expressing concern over financial matters. Hugh of Saint-Pol was one of the leading figures on the Fourth Crusade and in July 1203 he wrote to friends in northern Europe: ‘I am quite anxious about my lands and my loans because, if I return (God willing), I will return burdened with many debts, and it is in my interest that they be paid off from my lands.’
44
As people have discovered following recent episodes such as the Vietnam War and the 1991 Gulf conflict, it is easy to overlook the mixture of emotions generated in the aftermath of a crusade. For some families the homecoming brought fame and joy. Men’s achievements were enshrined in oral verse and literature. William of Malmesbury, writing in the 1120s, rhapsodised about the achievements of Godfrey of Bouillon and Tancred of Antioch:
... leaders of high renown, to whose praises posterity, if it judge aright, will assign no limits; heroes from the cold of Europe plunged into the intolerable heat of the East, careless of their own lives ... they overwhelmed so many enemy cities by the fame and operation of their prowess ... Let poets with their eulogies now give place, and fabled history no longer laud the heroes of Antiquity. Nothing to be compared with their glory has ever been begotten by any age.
45