The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (19 page)

In Jerusalem itself, an election was held to decide upon its future ruler. Raymond was the obvious candidate, but he refused. He was too unpopular, and he knew it; he would never be able to count on his colleagues for their obedience and support. The choice eventually fell on Godfrey of Bouillon, less for his military or diplomatic abilities than for his genuine piety and irreproachable private life. He accepted, declining only–in the city where Christ had worn the crown of thorns–to bear the title of king. Instead, he took that of
Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri
, Defender of the Holy Sepulchre, and was always addressed as
dux
or
princeps
, never as
rex
. But Godfrey lived for only a year after the capture of the city, and his successors were less punctilious; they were crowned as kings, of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.

That kingdom was to endure for eighty-eight years, during which time it would vary in size; at its largest extent, it reached from the head of the Gulf of Aqaba in the south to the Dog river, a few miles beyond Beirut, in the north. Its eastern frontier was the Jordan valley, its western the Mediterranean. To the Emperor Alexius, as a devout Christian, the news of its foundation could only have been welcome; the city had been in infidel hands for the best part of four centuries, and was anyway too far from Constantinople to be of major strategic importance. The situation in Antioch, on the other hand, caused him acute anxiety. This ancient city and patriarchate had also had a chequered history: it had been sacked by the Persians in the sixth century and occupied by them for nearly twenty years in the early seventh, before falling to the Arabs in 637; in 969 it had been reconquered by the Empire, of which it had remained an integral part until 1078. Its inhabitants were overwhelmingly Greek-speaking and Orthodox; in the eyes of Alexius and all his right-thinking subjects, it was a Byzantine city through and through. Now it had been seized by a Norman adventurer who, despite his oath of allegiance, clearly had no intention of surrendering it and was no longer making any secret of his hostility. He had even gone so far as to expel the Greek Patriarch and to replace him with a Roman Catholic. There was but one source of comfort: Bohemund was every bit as unwelcome to his neighbours to the north, the Danishmend Turks,
⁷¹
and Alexius’s satisfaction can well be imagined when he heard, in the summer of 1100, that the Prince of Antioch was their prisoner. He was to remain a captive for three long years until he was finally ransomed by Baldwin, who had succeeded his brother Godfrey on the throne of Jerusalem.

During these first years following the Crusaders’ triumph, it became ever more clear that Bohemund was not alone in his attitude to Byzantium. After the capture of Jerusalem, the genuine pilgrims–many of them sickened by the atrocities they had seen committed in Christ’s name–had begun to trickle home; the Franks who remained in Outremer (as the Crusader lands in the Middle East had come to be called) were the military adventurers who, having taken the Holy City, were now out for what they could get. Of all the leaders of the First Crusade, only Raymond of Toulouse–who, ironically, had alone refused to swear the oath of allegiance at Constantinople–had acted in good faith and had returned to the Emperor certain conquests of what had formerly been imperial territory. The rest were proving little better than the Saracens they had supplanted. Worst of all was Bohemund. In 1104, a year after his release by the Danishmends, he sailed for Apulia, where there was work to be done on his long-neglected estates. Then in September 1105 he moved on to Rome, where he effortlessly convinced Pope Paschal II that the arch-enemy of the Crusader states of Outremer was neither the Arab nor the Turk, but Alexius Comnenus himself. So enthusiastically did Paschal accept his arguments that, when the time came for Bohemund to go on to France, he found himself accompanied by a papal legate with instructions to preach a holy war against Byzantium. Alexius and his subjects saw their worst suspicions confirmed. The entire Crusade was now revealed as having been nothing more than a monstrous exercise in hypocrisy, in which the religious motive had been used merely as the thinnest of disguises for unashamed imperialism.

The Crusader county of Edessa, in southern Anatolia not far from the Syrian border, is nearly 150 miles from the Mediterranean. Its fall on Christmas Day 1144 to the forces of Imad ed-Din Zengi, Atabeg of Mosul, after a siege of twenty-five days and amid scenes of hideous butchery, would not therefore greatly concern us but for its direct consequence: the Second Crusade. The dreadful news had horrified the whole of Christendom. To the peoples of the west, who had seen the success of the First Crusade as a sign of divine favour, it called into question all their comfortably held opinions. How, after less than half a century, had the Cross once again given way to the Crescent? Travellers to the east had for some time been returning with reports of widespread degeneracy among the Franks of Outremer. Could it be, perhaps, that they were no longer worthy in the eyes of the Almighty to serve as guardians of the Holy Places?

The Franks knew better. The problem was, quite simply, that the vast majority of the original Crusaders had returned to their homes; the only permanent standing army–if it could be called such–was formed by the two military orders, the Knights of St John and the Templars, and they alone could not hope to hold out against a concerted offensive. The only hope was another Crusade. But Pope Eugenius III was no Urban; moreover, he had recently been obliged to flee the usual turmoil of medieval Rome and had taken refuge in Viterbo. The burden of leadership consequently fell on King Louis VII of France. Though still only twenty-four, Louis had already assumed an aura of lugubrious piety that made him look much older–and irritated to distraction his beautiful and high-spirited young wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. He was one of nature’s pilgrims; the Crusade was his duty as a Christian; and there were family reasons too, since Eleanor was the niece of Raymond, Prince of Antioch.
⁷²
At Christmas 1145 he announced his intention of taking the Cross; then, in order that the hearts of all his subjects should be filled like his own with crusading fire, he sent for Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux.

St Bernard, now fifty-five, was far and away the most powerful spiritual force in Europe. Tall and haggard, his features clouded by the constant pain that resulted from a lifetime of exaggerated physical austerities, he was consumed by a blazing religious zeal that left no room for tolerance or moderation. For the past thirty years he had been constantly on the move, preaching, arguing, debating, writing innumerable letters and compulsively plunging into the thick of every controversy, religious or political. The proposed Crusade was a venture after his own heart. On Palm Sunday, 31 March 1146, at Vézelay in Burgundy, he made the most fateful speech of his life, King Louis standing at his side. The King was wearing on his breast the cross sent him by the Pope in token of his decision, and as Bernard spoke all those who heard him–and there were many thousands–began to cry out for crosses of their own. Bundles of these, cut from rough cloth, had already been prepared for distribution; when the supply was exhausted, the Abbot flung off his own robe and began to tear it into strips to make more. Others followed his example, and he and his helpers were still stitching as night fell.

It was an astonishing achievement. No one else in Europe could have done it. And yet, as events were soon to tell, it were better had it not been done.

Away in Constantinople, Manuel I Comnenus fully understood the extent of the nightmare that the First Crusade had caused his grandfather Alexius half a century before. He had no wish to see it repeated. He made it clear at the outset that he would provide food and supplies for the armies, but that everything would have to be paid for. Moreover, all the leaders would be required once again to swear an oath of fealty to him as they passed through his dominions. The German army of about 20,000 which was the first to arrive, proved to be the most irresponsible yet. Many of its leaders, too, set a poor example to their men: although Conrad, King of the Romans
⁷³
–who had at first refused to have anything to do with the Crusade but had repented after a public castigation by Bernard–behaved with his usual dignity, his nephew and second-in-command, the young Duke Frederick of Swabia–better known in history by his later nickname of Barbarossa–burned down an entire monastery at Adrianople (the modern Edirne) in reprisal for an attack by local brigands, massacring a large number of perfectly innocent monks. Conrad indignantly rejected Manuel’s suggestion that his army should cross to Asia by the Hellespont–thereby avoiding Constantinople altogether–and when in mid-September 1147 the Crusaders at last pitched their camp outside the walls of the capital, relations between German and Greek could hardly have been worse.

The French army, arriving a few weeks later, was smaller and on the whole more seemly. Discipline was a little better, and the presence of many distinguished ladies, including Queen Eleanor herself, accompanying their husbands doubtless exercised a further moderating influence. Even then, however, progress was not altogether smooth. Not surprisingly, German excesses had made the Balkan peasants frankly hostile: they were now asking ridiculous prices for what little food they had left to sell. Mistrust soon became mutual and led to sharp practices on both sides. Thus, long before they reached Constantinople, the French had begun to feel considerable resentment against Germans and Byzantines alike.

Manuel flattered his chief guests with the usual round of entertainments and banquets, but even as he did so he feared the worst. Having recently returned from a campaign of his own in Anatolia, he knew that these shambling forces, already as lacking in morale as in discipline, would stand no chance against the Seljuk cavalry. He had furnished them with provisions and guides; he had warned them about the scarcity of water; and he had advised them not to take the direct route through the hinterland but to keep to the coast, most of which was still under Byzantine control. He could do no more. If, after all these precautions, they insisted on getting slaughtered, they would have only themselves to blame. He for his part would be sorry–but not, perhaps, inconsolable.

It cannot have been more than a few days after the Emperor had bidden the German army farewell that he received news that it had been taken by surprise by the Turks and virtually annihilated. Conrad himself and Frederick of Swabia had escaped and had returned to join the French, who were still at Nicaea, but nine-tenths of their men now lay dead and dying amid the wreckage of their camp. It was a bad start, and there was worse to follow. Conrad had continued only as far as Ephesus when he fell gravely ill. Manuel had immediately sailed down from Constantinople and brought him safely back to the palace. He prided himself on his medical skills, and personally nursed Conrad back to health. Finally, when Conrad was well enough to continue his journey, an imperial squadron was put at his disposal to carry him on to Palestine.

The French, meanwhile, had an agonising passage through Anatolia, where they suffered heavily at Turkish hands. Although this was entirely the fault of King Louis, who had ignored the Emperor’s warnings to keep to the coast, he persisted in attributing every encounter with the enemy to Byzantine carelessness or treachery or both, and rapidly developed an almost psychopathic resentment against the Greeks. At last in despair he, his household and as much of his cavalry as could be accommodated took ship from Attaleia (modern Antalya), leaving the rest of the army and the pilgrims to struggle on as best they might. It was late in the spring of 1148 before the sad remnants of the once great host dragged themselves into Antioch.

And that was only the beginning. The mighty Zengi was dead, but his mantle had passed to his still greater son-in-law Nur ed-Din, whose stronghold at Aleppo had now become the focus of Muslim opposition to the Franks. Aleppo should thus have been the Crusaders’ first objective, and Louis found himself under heavy pressure from Raymond of Antioch to mount an immediate attack on the city. He refused, on the ludicrous grounds that he must first pray at the Holy Sepulchre; whereat Queen Eleanor, whose affection for her husband had not been increased by the dangers and discomforts of the journey–and whose relations with Raymond were already suspected of going somewhat beyond those normally recommended between uncle and niece–announced her intention of remaining at Antioch and suing for divorce. She and her husband were distant cousins; the question of consanguinity had been conveniently overlooked at the time of their marriage, but if resurrected could still prove troublesome–and Eleanor knew it.

Louis, for all his moroseness, was not without spirit in moments of crisis. He ignored his wife’s protests and dragged her off to Jerusalem; he antagonised Raymond to the point where the Prince of Antioch refused to play any further part in the Crusade; and in May he arrived, his tight-lipped queen in tow, in the Holy City. There he remained until 24 June, when a meeting of all the leading Crusaders was held at Acre to decide on a plan of campaign. Why they chose at this moment to attack Damascus remains a mystery. The only major Arab state to continue hostile to Nur ed-Din, it could–and should–have been an invaluable ally. By attacking it, they drove it against its will into the Emir’s Muslim confederation–and they made their own destruction sure. They arrived to find Damascus strong, its defenders determined. On the second day, by yet another of those disastrous decisions that characterised the whole Crusade, they moved their camp to an area along the southeastern section of the walls devoid alike of shade and water. Louis and Conrad soon realised that to continue the siege would mean the almost certain destruction of their whole army. On 28 July, just five days after the opening of the campaign, they decided on retreat.