The Business of the Cross
Sources:
Tyerman Christopher. 2006. God's War : A New History of the Crusades. Cambridge Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Tyerman Christopher. 1998. The Invention of the Crusades. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Bartlett Robert. 1994. The Making of Europe : Conquest Colonization and Cultural Change : 950-1350. London: Penguin Books.
Joinville Jean Caroline Smith and Geoffroi de Villehardouin. 2008. Chronicles of the Crusades [New ed.] ed. London: Penguin Books.
Cobb Paul M. 2014. The Race for Paradise : An Islamic History of the Crusades. New York: Oxford University Press.
On September 16th, 2001, while the United States was still reeling in shock from the terrorist attacks on 9/11, then President George W. Bush held a press conference. A reporter asked the president about the prospects of increased government surveillance, and how that might result in potential infringement of American’s constitutional rights. The president replied that they are facing a new enemy, using never-before-seen barbaric tactics - a new kind of evil, he called it. He wrapped up his answer to the reporter by saying:
This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while. And the American people must be patient. I'm going to be patient.
The president’s use of the word ‘crusade’ went relatively unnoticed in the United States. Some in the press bristled at the context, but by in large, the country was in no state to care about such a minor controversy. There was, however, some damage control. Bush’s aides went out and clarified the what the President meant by the usage of the word. The president himself later made a point to declare Muslims and Arabs friends of the United State. But suspicions were nonetheless raised in the Muslim world. What would a western crusade in the 21st century mean look like for the world?
Even if flippant, the president was not alone in his framing of the coming conflict. Just three years earlier, Osama Bin Laden himself recalled the crusades as the only time in history that the armies of the west marched on their lands.
Just a few days after President Bush’s crusade remarks, Islamic intellectual and politician Laith Shubeilat told the Wall Street Journal that during the Crusades, people were told they were fighting for Christ, but fought, in reality for Venetian trade routes. And that today, just like the past, just tell the Christians the coming war is for an idea, and they do the bidding of Texaco.
Despite how minor this presidential faux pas was, I still find it remarkable in its acuteness. Depending on what you count as crusades, the period ended anywhere from 700 years to 500 years prior to the President’s speech. The first crusade was commenced 900 years prior. And yet, the word is still loaded enough that’s its usage can cause a minor geopolitical crisis.
Now, geopolitics aside, the word crusade is of course also loaded with religious context. When asked to define a crusade, your average person today would probably string together something about Christian holy war, or knights. Overly simplistic, yet still correct.
These Christian holy wars emblazoned into modern consciousness that we collectively call the crusades existed before the protestant reformation, and therefore, are explicit Catholic history. The modern papacy as we know it was in fact carefully crafted by crusader-era popes. The most prominent and most universally recognized promoter for holy war to Judea was St. Bernard of Clairvaux, canonized in 1197 and declared a doctor of the Church. Battles of epic scope, accounts of miracles, the most venerated of Catholic relics, and the most renowned holy orders exploded into western European society and its consciousness. Yet in the margins of the pages of the chronicles of these times, despite the overall affirmation of their means, you’ll also find terrible crimes: institutional greed and scandal, thefts on an unimaginable scale, and mass murder. While this is less a condemnation of the behavior of Christians, and rather an indictment of the fallen state of mankind, as Catholics, this particular history is ours to reckon with.
It is obvious that European society didn’t suddenly wake up one day and decide to conquer Jerusalem. This begs an answer to the question of what and why – what were the crusades and why did the crusades happen? This seemingly simple question is what I’m going to attempt to answer.
I know I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time on the word ‘crusade’, but one final point I want to make on the word will, I think, also help provide a good starting point for this discussion. ‘Crusade’ is not a medieval word. There are some early variations of it in the late 16th century, but the exact word doesn’t arrive in the European lexicon until the 18th century.
This relatively novel word reflects the question of what and why. How can we ask ‘what were the crusades and why did the crusades happen’ if we are using a word that a crusader would never have understood? So, what would one of these soldiers have called themselves? Most concisely, they would have said they were taking up the cross. In the 12th century, if I had told you that, you would understand where I was going, and what my new legal protections were under the pope and the king. You would understand my new status in society was something closer to a monk. And you knew my family wouldn’t see me again for years, if ever again. Yet you would also understand that I had achieved complete remission of my sins and expunged whatever temporal punishment awaited me in purgatory. These are the those that today we call crusaders.
Christopher Tyerman, Oxford professor and author of countless books on the crusades tells us that to take up the cross was a specific religious act, closely bound with Catholic eschatological issues of the soul – meaning the salvation of one’s soul. But to crusade was also demonstrably political and social in consequence. It was at its basic function, a military activity in which one’s internal spirituality complemented external ambition. The crusader was the reflection of the contemporary practical and ideological conflicts: faith, self-regard, religious discipline, social control, honor, pride, material, and spiritual greed.
It is tempting and would appear easy to view the crusades as a singular subject to be used as a historiological definition of an era. I think that attempt is not only incorrect, but also impossible to do with any intellectual honesty or satisfaction. The crusades were a product of medieval Europe, not the other way around. The fact the crusades reflected and refracted all aspects of their contemporary existence is what makes them so hard to define in any neatly packaged concept.
Crusader involvement represented a tiny fraction of society, with most taking no part in them directly. The call to crusade was never compulsory or permanent. Canon law reflects virtually nothing of crusading as a practice of the faith and crusader apologists never succeeding in couching the wars in any legal context for justification.
After the third crusade, crucesignatus – meaning ‘a person signed by the cross’ became the closest single word – but it carried with it no distinction between warrior or peaceful pilgrim to the Holy Land. Other words too were used for the act of taking a spiritual sabbatical to Judea, such as expedito, profectio, passagium, via, and voyage – all words for extensions of social and religious activities already entrenched in society. Eventually, certain aspects of crusading did become recognized routine or tradition, especially in theological apologetics. A succinct term was given at last by Pope Innocent III when he called for the fourth crusade as an attempt to codify all these social and religious extensions. He called it negotium crucis – the business of the Cross.
To begin a comprehensive narrative, we need to understand chemical composition of the fertile ground in which the crusades were planted – in a word, Christendom. More specifically the High Middle Ages, defined as the 11th to the 14th century. Leading up to this period, Europe was emerging form the first millennium having survived the Viking age by assimilating them into its own existing paradigms of social order. The afterbirth of wedding European social structures with Viking attitudes was a period that would come to be defined by massive creative activity in the arts, gothic Church architecture, systemic legal maturation, and new levels of production and distribution driven by population growth. In short, an entirely new existence that can be summed up as urbanization and commercialization.
Author Robert Bartlett, in his Making of Europe identifies three critical inheritances of this medieval society: first, the roman imperial skeleton of roads cities, and Latin language; second, Christianity’s traditions of scripture and sacraments; and third, Germanic pagan cultures of military aristocracy, rites, and ethos.
Of the people inhabiting this world, there were three large and distinct groups: The aristocratic laymen comprised of soldiers and nobles preoccupied with preserving their lineage. Second were the clergy, clerics and monastics: unique in their literacy and vows of celibacy. Both the aristocracy and the clergy supported each other through a loosely organized structures of hierarchy and alliance. The last group making up medieval Europe was of course the peasants: the salt of the earth agricultural hunters and gatherers under the domination, for better or worse, by the other two groups. The clergy, it’s worth noting, coming out of the first millennium found almost no centralized authority in the papacy, giving the bishop a Rome only a nod over the Alps in recognition of the primacy of the chair of Peter.
Bartlett tells us that the easiest way to track the expansion of western European frontier society was to track the Latin church’s bishoprics. With each new diocese came detailed records, reliable dates, parish communities, followed soon by stone churches and grand cathedrals – the physical and tangible embodiment of the Latin Church.
By the year 1200, there were 800 bishoprics that recognized the chair of St. Peter and joined the pope in celebrated the Roman liturgy. 300 alone were in Italy, southern France, and the Rhineland with some bishop’s seats only 6 miles apart. The oldest of these bishoprics had linear histories back to the earliest centuries of the Church.
With rapid growth from the Aegean to the Atlantic, fueled by the tapestry of western European cultures and traditions, various liturgies arose that were still “Latin”, albeit unique in form and rubric. Overtime, by way of papal suppression, these local rites of worship were eliminated. Their followers brought to heel by papal influence that demanded the uniformity of the official Roman liturgy. Robert Bartlett identifies this centralized auhtority of the Latin Church with not only western European military and political hegemony, but also with waning power of the Byzantine Empire:
When we turn to the definition of Latin Christendom as an obedience, that is, as a multitude of churches who accept the authority of the pope, we find an organization with an active executive head, and it is easier to imagine growth springing from the drives of an institution rather than from liturgical forms.
With the rise of the Latins, Byzantium was finding itself increasingly pinched geopolitically. And as the artistic flavor of the Latin Church embodied gothic architecture, scholasticism, and Arthurian romance, the divide between eastern and western churches begins to develop into ethnic fault lines. Latin increasingly came to mean Frankish. The expansionary gumption and the ground level organization of the bishoprics gave the Latins the edge in conquest throughout Europe, as it soon would in Judea.
There is another “X” factor that must be addressed when discussing the formation of medieval Europe, and it plays a significant role in understanding why the crusades happened the way they did. That “X” factor is Norman culture, or perhaps more honestly, Norman conquest. One of the authors I read, I think it was Bartlett, called this “X” factor, Norman Diaspora.
If one was going to place a bet on who would rule the High Middle Ages in western Europe, one might be inclined to put money on Charlemagne’s Carolingian dynasty, and the subsequent Holy Roman Empire. One would lose this bet. While the Normans, these French speaking descendants of the Vikings, now had a new language and land, they did not lose their fathers’ insatiable, terrifying and deadly spirit of adventure. A practical explanation of Norman expansionism can be found by examining a fundamental change in European inheritance tradition from one millennium to the next. From Bartlett:
Recent work by German and French historians suggests that the structure of the aristocratic family itself underwent a transformation in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Loosely linked kindreds, for whom maternal and paternal relations might be equally important, and who possessed no enduring genealogical or territorial center, were, it has been argued, replaced by clearly defined linages, in which patrimony and primogeniture became ever more important. A single line of male decent, excluding as far as possible, younger sibling, cousins, and women, came to dominate at the expense of the wider, more amorphous kindred of the earlier period. The decline in opportunities for some family members of the military aristocracy – notoriously, of course, younger sons – may have been the impetus to emigration.
In my last podcast series, Written in Blood, I wrote an episode on John De Courcy - Norman conqueror of Ulster. He was the younger son of a younger son. He had no inheritance yet possessed immeasurable ambition. It was these younger sons, like De Courcy, who founded Norman dynasties across Europe and eventually into the Holy Land. Remember that one of William the Conqueror’s titles was William the Bastard. Yet after his conquest in 1066, Normans now controlled the English crown and kingdom, and significant holdings in France. After England, Norman conquest expanded to Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Sicily and Spain. With the Normans assimilated into French society, and, much like the Latin Church, Norman conquest became increasingly recognized as… Frankish.
While it may be obvious, it must be highlighted that transition to Norman rule was not pleasant for the conquered. A chronicler of the conquest of Wales recounts the deeds of Robert, Earl of Chester as he subdued those people:
This warlike marcher often fought against that restless nation and shed much blood in frequent battles. He pushed back the Welsh by fierce warfare, expanded his territory and founded a strong castle on the hill of Degannwy, next to the sea. For fifteen years he ground down the Welsh inexorably and invaded the lands of men who had previously enjoyed liberty and owed the Normans nothing. Through the woods and marshes and harsh mountains he pursued and harried the enemy. Some he slaughtered indiscriminately like beasts, others he bound in chains for long periods or harshly subjected to undue service. Pride and avarice, which control the hearts of everyone in this world of mortal men, drove the marcher Robert to this unrestrained plundering and killing.
This is obviously not Holy War, but it did represent the expansionary frontier of the Latin Church and Roman liturgy, albeit indirectly. The previously mentioned biographical subject of mine, John De Courcy, established his dynasty in Ulster by way of not only defensive motte-and-bailey castles, but also with minted coins bearing his name on one side, and St. Patrick on the other. He founded and endowed six monasteries, along with more religious houses. The preexisting pseudo pagan-Irish Christianity was replaced with the Roman liturgy, and a bishop was sent from Rome. John de Courcy’s method of establishing himself as a semi-autonomous prince with papal anointment was the playbook of Norman conquest. Even Willian the Conqueror marched under a papal banner when he through out nearly every dynasty of England.
At one parley during Norman conquest in the Balkans, a leader of the eastern European people was recorded to ask the Frankish knight leading the conquest:
Lord, we wonder greatly at your good chivalry. And we wonder greatly at what you are seeking in this land, and why you came here to conquer lands from such a distant country. Have you no lands in your own country to support you?
This medieval Norman diaspora was a military aristocracy, that planted withing Frankish culture their weapons and methods of war, techniques that gave them a distinct edge in combat.
Heavy cavalry, or the mounted knight, is a staple of any great medieval epic. The dominance of the infantry was still hundreds of years away. These cavalries were heavy because they were clad in iron: conical helms, coats of mail, large shields, spears, swords, maces, clubs, and axes. The mail coat was often the single most expensive object a knight could owned. At a time when much of the world’s infrastructure was built from wood, this marching wall of iron could decisively tip the scales on the battlefield. Bartlett rightly notes that though they lived in the wheat age, they looked like men of the steel age.
Their war horses had to not only bare the tonnage of these iron soldiers but also face the rigors of combat. Thus, they were specially bred and trained. Noble horses were not only highly valued weapons of war, but highly valuable plunder too. All of this was fantastically expensive, especially considering that most knights required at least three war horse to properly operate, and each horse needed their own trappings and armor. The aristocracy is the only class rich enough to support this method of mounted cavalry – a method so effective it remained virtually unchanged for 300 years.
Of equal military significance were the bowmen, and of them you had three kinds: the short bow, the long bow, and the crossbow. The short bow was three feet long and could be pulled back to the chest. Nearly every medieval army utilized them, but in terms of range and lethality, it couldn’t compete with the long bow. It was six feet long and could be drawn back to the ear. The Welsh were the first to introduce this weapon onto the medieval battlefield. A twelfth century chronicler recount reads:
One of the men at arms was struck by an arrow shot at him by a Welshman. It went right through his thigh, high up, where it was protected inside and outside the leg by his iron [armor], and then through the skirt of his leather tunic; next it penetrated … the saddle… and finally it lodged in his horse, driving so deep that it killed the animal.
But the most terrifying battlefield projectile was the crossbow. Years later when the crusaders brought this weapon to Byzantium, princess Anna Comnena called it barbaric, and diabolical. The Latin clergy quite agreed with her. At the Lateran Council in 1139 its use was declared illegal under pain of excommunication. This ban was completely ignored by the princes of western Europe. And by the end of the 12th century, any respectable lord had a crossbow corps. Despite their usage, these corps were considered unchivalrous pariahs, thus the crossbow corps were made of mercenaries and heretics – yet well paid all the same.
The last weapon of war of the Franko-Normans is of course their castles. The encastleation of Europe by these peoples did not follow an organized infrastructure plan. Each was erected for uniquely local political and military purposes. But there are two features of Norman motte-and-bailey castles that make them efficient and effective – they were small and they were tall.
On average their footprint was only about 3000 square feet. They were not meant to shelter whole communities, but to simply be a place military defense for their lord. These cheap, innovative, and utilitarian structures exploded across western Europe and beyond as fast as the Normans did. In England, in the year 1100, 44 years after the Norman conquest there were over 500 castles less than 50 years old.
Naturally, along with this highly defensible innovation came new methods of breeching them. Catapults were generally to small and weak to break the thick stone walls several meters deep, so the trebuchet was invented. Your average trebuchet could throw a 500 lb. projectile 300 yards. Siege craft became an art, and the corps of engineers was born.
The last point that needs to be touched on with regards to the Normans is of the personality of the conqueror himself. A Norman conqueror was elevated to mythical status by his unique chronicler. Often, when writing of their lords the chronicler would ignore technological or strategic superiority but highlight the psychological characteristics that gave them the edge in battle. The Norman conqueror was called “energetic at arms” or “obtaining favor of all though their energy”. Before battle one Franco-Norman knight called on his men to remember energy of their ancestral race, i.e. the Vikings. Robert Guiscard, conqueror of Italy and Sicily was said to win the day by his “great daring and knightly energy”.
Chronicler of the Normans, William of Apulia describes them as more powerful than any other people in military conquest. Exaggerated, sure, but it does show that something different was happening in Europe. A new people had arrived in history and their time was nigh. In describing how the Greeks were routed by the Muslims of Sicily, William literally calls the Normans a new race:
Then it was the turn of our men. The Messinese had not yet experienced our prowess and attacked fiercely at first, but when they realized they were being pressed much harder than usual, they turned tail in flight from this new race’s warfare.
This “new race” had developed a reputation. The Lombards of France called the Normans savage, barbarous, and a “horrible race of inhuman disposition”. Pro-Norman chroniclers preferred terms like ferocious. Bartlett emphasizes that this reputation was not an accident. In fact, it was carefully crafted. During their Sicily conquest, Muslim carrier pigeons fell into Norman hands after a catastrophic loss. The Normans wrote the account of the battle in the blood of the dead Muslims, affixed them to the pigeons, and sent them back flying to the women and children awaiting news of their fathers and husbands.
Their own chroniclers were eager to highlight such violence as a means of instilling fear in their enemies. But they were also unabashed about their greed as well:
They spread here and there through various parts of the world, in various regions and countries… this people set out and left behind small fortune in order to acquire a greater. And they did not follow the custom of many who go through the world, and enter the service of others, but, like the ancient knights, they wished to have everybody subject to them and under their lordship. They took arms and broke the bond of peace and performed great feats of war and knighthood.
Another chronicler notes the Norman inability to be content with whatever ill-gotten gains they acquire:
Who does not know that the Norman race refuses no effort in the continual exercise of its power? Its warlikeness is ever hardened by adversity, it is not easily upset by difficulties nor, when difficulties have been overcome, it does not allow itself to be conquered by slothful inactivity, for it has learned always to shake off the vice of sloth with activity.
It’s a bizarre argument, isn’t it? Despite their faults, at least they weren’t lazy.
While this mix of vigor, boldness, avarice, and viciousness may have given the Franco-Norman conqueror the psychological edge he needed to overcome aristocratic rules of inheritance, to the Byzantines, according to historians Michael Attaleiates, they were simply bloodthirsty. According to a Muslims aristocrat, they were:
Animals possessing the virtues of courage and fighting, but nothing else.
Coinciding with Norman expansionism, western Europe was in the midst of a population boom. By the 12th century, its biggest cities would for the first time reach 100,000 citizens. In a 100-year period the walls of Florence expanded from 200 acres to encapsulating 1500 acres. Urbanization was afoot. Using the Norman’s Domesday Book as a guide, England was estimated to have a population of 1.2 million during the time of their conquest. 300 years later, and after the black death killed approximately half the population, an English census put the population at 6.5 million.
With urbanization pushing rural Europe further out, agricultural resources were being strained with growth that required additional labor, larger farms, and more efficient logistics. Rural Europe was forced to develop itself into cities and towns, followed, of course, by new bishoprics. With Roman liturgical influence and practice reaching now out into the boonies, linguistic uniqueness of the French and German countryside began to blend into national tongues.
Latinized legal framework also followed both the growth of urban centers, but also the Norman conquests. Thus, at a certain time in history, a Frankish knight could have a reasonable presumption of his same legal right in Wales, as he would in Sicily, and soon, Palestine.
Partly fueling this expansion into European frontiers is something that looks awfully like capitalistic new world exploration a few hundred years later. Entrepreneurial fiefdoms were conceived. An aspiring aristocrat could receive funding to plant his flag in some distant countryside, and then send tithes back to the bankroller of the expedition. But they weren’t the only ones cashing in on growth and expansion.
Sea born trade had of course always existed, yet its true power was now finally recognized. In the Mediterranean, the line between merchant and pirate was very thin. However, these were the people western lords must do business with if they want protection form the Egyptians or the Byzantines. Enter the Italian merchants: the Pisans, Genoese, and, shrewder and more successful then all were the Venetians, far from idealists, trading with Latin, Greek, and Muslim alike.
Due to illiteracy, the effect Catholic theology had on the individual person amidst all these societal changes is hard to firmly grasp. Today we take the cliched concept of “what would Jesus do”, a bit for granted. The Old and New testaments were not accessible to the average person during the medieval periods. The Faith was generally received through commentary by Church fathers like Origen, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and Pope Gregory I.
Stories of Old Testament violence, without any theological context were popular because they were exciting: Moses enlisting the Levites to slaughter the followers of the golden calf. God exhorting Saul to kill the Amalekite mothers and babies. Despite Origen’s insistence that these stories should be viewed as allegorical spiritual battles, this sort of genocide and violence against the helpless seemed to be pleasing to God. The writings of St. Ambrose and St. Augustine did little to dissuade violence among the masses by building on Aristotle’s and Cicero’s theories of Just War. Clovis, as the founder of the franks won victory in battle by invoking the name of God. The Venerable Bede, Saint, and Doctor of the Church, arguable one of the most important historical scholars to have ever lived (and my patron Saint by the way), even he wrote of the justifications of war between Christian peoples.
It would be no surprise then that Charlemagne demand Christian prayers and fasting to defeat and ultimately carry out something akin to genocide against the Saxons – just as the Israelites had done.
This history is not easy to reckon with. It flies in the face of not only modern expectations of civil, rational behavior, but also seems to ignore the teachings of Jesus Christ and the apostles after Him. Yet as I said before, because of the lack of actual access to the scripture, we can’t completely comprehend these people’s understandings of them. This populist distortion of scripture is made exceptionally clear, and honestly a bit disturbing when examining the Vikings conversions.
When the Vikings arrived, they encountered the residual military structure of the Roman empire. That is, warlords with armies vying for local and regional supremacy. The bishoprics, obviously had to form alliances with these warlords in a symbiotic relationship for support and influence. This resulted in Bishops commanding their own military retinues. As the Vikings ravaged Europe, they found a people and a Faith that was not afraid to fight – this was attractive to Viking nature. During the attack of Paris in 855, a French monk proved himself not only deadly with a ballista, but also laconic in speech:
He was capable of piercing seven men with a single arrow. In jest he commanded some of them be taken to the kitchen.
Stories of Christian battles with the Vikings began to look like stories told in a mead hall. The ghost of St. Benedict was purported to be running around battlefields, directing cavalry, and killing Vikings with his staff. Christopher Tyerman calls these tales, what are likely a recruitment stories, are a foreshadowing of the confusing blend of the sacred and the profane that would come to define Christian Holy War.
This blend appealed directly to Viking sensibilities. About a generation after their conversion to the Faith, an old English poem was written called The Dream of Rood. In it, Christ is described as a young warrior called the Lord of Victories. His death on the cross was described as a battle. Heaven is a type of Valhalla for the victorious. In their unregulated vernacular Christianity, Christ is called manno drohtin– a generous mead-giver. His disciples are styled as his earls in “high horned ships”. Judas committed the crime of changing his loyalties from one lord to another lord. St Peter is remembered as a mighty and noble swordsman.
Moving toward the end of the first millennium, dependence on these warriors rose around them. Those who became aristocrats were increasingly important to governance. Others became knights. Political, juridic, and fiscal policies reflected their sensibilities. These neighboring warlord aristocrats engaged in endless violence to expand their holdings, but also, on some level at least, recognized the need to save their immortal soul and with the same vigor, yet now engaged in contrition.
One of the ways this warrior class achieved contrition was by going on pilgrimage to the holy land. As this custom increased, they along the way founded abbeys and monasteries who’s explicit directive was to continually pray for the soul of its founder, that he may be forgiven the river of blood his brutality left behind.
This internal Christian on Christian warring for land reached recognizable crises around the year 1050. In response to the bloodshed a movement arose that called itself The Peace of God, or the Truce of God. The clergy was trying to get a handle on the chaos and began to threaten excommunication if the violence did not cease. Ceremonies were then held before the bones and relics of now forgotten saints where knights would line up and swear oaths of chivalry. There they promised to forever protect and serve the Church, its clerics, the monasteries, and also the poor and helpless. Then the knight’s armor and weapons were blessed, preventing them from using these tools against each other, lest they commit a sacrilege. This movement reached official clerical approval at the Council of Narbonne in 1054 where it declared Christian on Christian violence equal to shedding the blood of Christ.
The knightly warrior class of western Europe was now couched in a pseudo-spiritual chivalric light. They were defenders of the Faith, the Church, and the poor, and now forbidden to ply their trade within Christendom.
At this dawn of the new millennium, there were also massive geopolitical changes. The Carolingian empire had descended into chaos, torn apart by Germanic and Italian states to the east, Vikings to the north, and Mediterranean Arab pirates to the south. By the end of the 10th century, France was still an idea, with the king holding little real power.
Germanic lords replaced the elective Carolingian kings with Parisian lords with rights of hereditary succussion, preserving a dynasty more loyal to them. The Latin Church was on board and lent ideological support. The wealthy Parisian aristocracy poured money into the new dynasty. France became a vassalage, ruled by thugs and knights in high castles. Frankish romantic tales of lore had died with the Carolingians.
The ill-defined mess that was the western European system of lordship lent itself perfectly to external control. A French lord could possess holdings in both France and Germany, thus owing two allegiances. Christopher Tyerman calls it a political minefield. Case in point, William the conqueror being both the Duke of Normandy and King of England.
Which brings us to England. England had by far the most centralized system of government, allowing for coherent national policies and societal growth, but also made it a juicy target of conquest – all one had to do was capture the throne. Again, case in point, William the conqueror. This is the paradox of power. France, due to its disunity, could never easily be conquered. From Tyerman:
For all its elaborate institutions of government, the English state was created and maintained by armed force. After 1066, England was invaded in 1088, 1101, 1139, 1153, 1216 and 1217; civil wars involving the English king or regent were fought in 1087, 1088. 1100-1106, 1123-1124, 1139-1153, 1173-1174, 1191, and 1215-1217.
Before the era of statehood, organized violence was as ubiquitous as it was inescapable. It was the general employment of the tapestry of the noble class. It is arguable that only the Byzantines at this point in Christianity who had some semblance of national state. Compared with the Latins, the Greeks seemed dominant in culture, trade, and politics. Their empire was vast, but their influence was being chipped away by growing Latin influence, Germanic expansion, and most consequentially, the rise of the Seljuk Turks – recent nomadic converts to Islam. They had taken Syria, Palestine, and now Anatolia. They made Nicaea their capital and were now within striking distance of Constantinople. Seeing the success of the Turks, other nomadic tribes were now pressing into the Balkans.
The Seljuk Turks not only pinched the Greek Empire but destabilized the whole middle east. They were very much a foreign ruling class reigning over all the various ethno-religious groups from Egypt to Anatolia. Simultaneously, the Islamic states in Spain were falling to what would later be called the Reconquista. Disunity amongst the Spanish Muslims allowed Christian nobles to push south and establish the states of Catalonia, Aragon, Navarre, Leon, and Castile. German knights took advantage of all this cross-continental instability by pushing into Prussia and the Baltics. The warrior class was now greatly desired, and desperately needed to both defend and expand. Kurdish mercenaries, Flemish mercenaries, Varangian guards – lords, nobles, and aristocrats who sold their swords to Christian and Muslim alike amounted to a new prominence and social profile. The image of the feudal lord as a mounted, armored knight found its way on wax imprints, paintings, sculptures, stained glass, poetry, and funeral effigies.
Astride horses bred for combat, armor with dozens of arrows sticking out of it like a hedgehog, and only being unseated by a lance or spear, or direct hit to the eye, it’s no wonder these warriors were revered. Considering the damage a knight could inflict and sustain, and along with the expense of maintain these fighters, pitched battles were extremely expensive, and therefore rare and avoided. Most skirmishes were little more than a few dozen men or raiding parties looking for easy pickings. The only mitigating component to the potential for wanton terror a nobleman could unleash was this newly instituted concept of the Truce of God – what we would later call chivalry. Yet, there were still incentives for the knight to engage in combat – loyalty and idealism were two. Treasure was another. Soon, Holy War would provide another.
When discussing the transformations of second millennium Europe, the most significant is also the easiest to miss. The Church and the papacy were directing and undergoing extensive changes.
We’ve already touched on how, through its system of bishoprics, the Latin Church had an expansionary edge. Yet with this newfound influence came newfound centralization of power. Latin Christendom was increasingly becoming not only a rite, but an obedience. Other religions throughout the world and even other forms of Christianity tolerated, to one degree or another, liturgical diversity. The Latin Church was unique in that it outright demanded liturgical uniformity and tied it together with canon law with jurisdictional authority. In other words, institutional legal and liturgical uniformity – rite and obedience.
By the eleventh century, the oldest institution consciously tracing its history was the papacy – the chair of Peter, one of the five original patriarchs of the Church. The others being Jerusalem, Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria. After the Arab invasions of the 7th century, only Rome and Constantinople survived. And with Rome being the successor to Peter, it held innate primacy.
There is an old agreement, many say a forgery, that exists between Constantinople and Rome – called the Donation of Constantine. It is said that before he died, Constantine gifted the care of the Eastern Orthodox Church to Pope Sylvester I. The Latins believed it. The Greeks didn’t. Nonetheless, it was always used as legal leverage between the two patriarchs in matters of authority.
But besides Byzantium, there is another flashpoint of the papacy that must be understood – that is its relationship to the Holy Roman Empire.
On Christmas day, 800 AD, Pope Leo 3rd crowned Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor. As the Carolingians declined, the crown changed over to the Germans in 962 when King Otto I was invited by Pope John XII to invade Italy and defeat the enemies of the papacy. In return, Otto received the imperial crown. A few years later the Chair of Peter found itself in need of an army again. From the South, Norman conquest threatened the Papal States. So, in exchange for full remission of sins, Pope Leo IX assembled and army and marched on the Normans. The papal army was obliterated at the battle of Civitate and the Pope Leo IX was captured and held hostage. Soon after attaining control of the papacy, the Normans negotiated to receive papal banners for their coming conquests of both England and Sicily.
These Normans in Italy, who are contemporaneously described as “a surplus of arms-bearers with an insufficiency of land” had now become papal reformers. Norman aristocrat Robert Guiscard received the title Duke of Sicily, and with his younger brother they invaded the island in May 1061. This former goldmine of Byzantium was currently under the control of the Muslims, but soon it would fall to its new conqueror - a Norman anointed by the Latin Church. The business of Norman-style conquest had gained spiritual legitimacy.
Both because of, and in spite of the Norman’s, ecclesiastical reformers had grabbed the reigns of the papacy with the ascension of Pope Saint Gregory VII in 1073. There were several facets to his reforms, the most crucial regarded the papacy itself. Using the Petrine texts (meaning the scenes from the Gospels where Christ appointed Peter as head of the Church) they became Gregory’s baton he waved for total, unquestioned papal authority in all matters. The pope was and ought the be the worldly kingmaker. It was a gross violation of the Church of Christ, in Gregory’s view, for kings and dukes to squabble over the installation of popes and bishops. His own ascension to the Chair reflected this – as he was one of a few rare popes to be elected by acclimation – meaning there was a groundswell of people who declared him people.
Gregory walked the walk. He injected himself and the Latin Church in as many military matters that he possibly could. He twice granted remission of sins to armies going to battle – once against the Muslim in Sicily, and once against Byzantium itself. He increased military enlistments in Italy in defense of the papacy and encouraged civil conflict in the papal states where it suited the Church’s interests.
The effect of Gregory’s very public papal rhetoric was enormous. Kings and princes found themselves bombarded with letters from the new pope insisting they adhere to his principles of papal supremacy. He took sides against the Henry IV, Holy Roman Empire in Germany to exert what he saw as the Church’s independent authority to dictate geopolitical policy. This division between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire would come to be known as the investiture contest – it was essentially a debate about who had the right to appoint bishops: The king, or the pope?
So dramatic was Gregory in his ideological views of the papacy, that in 1074 he shocked everyone when he announced that he would personally lead an army to aid the Christians of the eastern Mediterranean against the Seljuk Turks. He called on Christendom to “take up arms against the enemies of God and push forwards even to the Sepulcher of the Lord under His supreme leadership.”
Christopher Tyerman points out that the Latin Church inherited by Gregory existed in a delicate triangulation between the Papacy, the Normans, and the Greeks – for the pope to declare, even rhetorically, unto his own authority active military leadership of all of Christendom, lay and ecclesiastical, east, and west, towards the goal of seizing the Holy City of Jerusalem – was quite a new recognition of potential power.
The growing dispute between the pope and the Holy Roman Emperor is relevant to our subject matter for several reasons. For one, it became such an international debacle that, by requiring all of Gregory’s time, it ensured his rhetoric about marching to Jerusalem remained exactly that. But perhaps more importantly, the dispute serves as a tangible, while overly dramatic, demonstration of exactly what new political inlfuence the papacy was seeking.
In 1073 Gregory attempted to codify his investiture reforms via a papal decree called Dictatus Papae – Dictates of the Pope. Henry, leader in opposition to the pope represented the traditionalist camp. He argued that he had the right and authority, as dictated by history, to invest bishops, abbots, and other clergymen to positions, despite this novel papal decree.
Two years after this decree, after wiping out a Saxon rebellion, Henry appointed, by his own volition a bishop of Milan, northern Italy, driving deeper the wedge between himself and the pontiff. That Christmas, an anti-Gregory mob attacked the Pope while he was saying Christmas Mass and threw him in prison. The very next day, papist supporters stormed the prison and released him. Pope Gregory then picked up Mass precisely where he had left off the day before.
The very next month, in January, Henry assembled a group of German Bishops at Worms where he convinced them to abandon all loyalties to the to the pope. Henry then began calling for Gregory’s abdication.
Now remember, the entire conflict revolved around who’s in charge of who. Thus, Gregory’s response was to calls for his abdication was excommunicate the Holy Roman Emperor, and declared him deposed from the throne, and further, that if he did not repent within one year hence, his loss of kingship would be permanent.
Emperor Henry found himself losing a realpolitik chess match against a master, for Gregory new that without papal support, the title of Holy Roman Emperor would do little to protect him from his enemies withing the empire, particularly the Saxons. Henry’s situation quickly deteriorated. He needed to act decisively.
Pope Gregory locked himself up at Canossa Castle in northern Italy just in case Henry came went on the march. Henry did just that. The emperor arrived at the castle without his army and almost no personal retinue. He then asked to see the pope. His entry was refused. So, he donned the dress of a penitent of the age, going barefoot and wearing a hairshirt. And there, in front of the gates of the castle he fasted for three days.
Finally on January 28th, the castle gates were opened, where Gregory the reformer was waiting. Henry fell before the feet of the pope and begged his forgiveness. Gregory then absolved Henry of his sins and invited him back into the Church. Afterward, Henry, his wife, and the pope shared communion at the sacrifice of the Mass, officially ending the Holy Roman Emperor’s excommunication.
The capitulation of the Holy Roman Emperor represents a watershed moment in both papal and secular relations but also in Gregory’s campaign for papal supremacy. Now it should be noted, and expected, that the drama between the two did not end there, in fact it got worse, to the point where Henry was excommunicated again, and Gregory ended up having to flee Rome when Henry actually did march on the city. The papacy, as an office, learned a fundamental truth – while the pope lacked legions, it could push its authority only so far.
From a legacy standpoint, once could argue Gregory gave the papacy two. Obviously, establishing papal supremacy in a lasting way was one – and would be built on and expanded by the popes to come. The other is planting the seed of Holy War in the consciousness of Christendom. Gregory in his willingness to enlist the help of the warmongering Normans to both protect and further the influence of the papacy found himself cast out of Rome, a pope in exile at the whim of the Holy Roman Emperor.
Under the rise of papal influence, prescriptions for war took a legal context. If, after the Truce of God movement, it was now illegal for a knight to wage war against his Christian brothers, now it was certainly legal, and encouraged now by the bishop of Rome to wage it against say the pagans in Ireland, or the infidels in Spain.
The monastic orders, which were swiftly growing in influence at the turn of the millennium had found themselves the victims to Muslim violence in Spain, and now with Spain being taken back by Christians, Gregory proclaimed that any monk who broke their vow of peace against the Moors would be granted salvation. Absolution in exchange for violence by papal decree was already granted under Leo IX, and again under Gregory VII, now he extended and expanded this to the monastics. Christopher Tyerman described the moment the papacy had arrived at:
From the perspective of the western church, conflict with Islam was ispo facto meritorious in a religious context. Whatever the reality of ambitious Italian trading cities, Norman bandits, Spanish lords or even Greek princes, churchmen, in particular successive popes, conceptualized the conflict, fitting into a wider picture of cosmic significance and individual grace. Whereas in the ninth century, Christendom appeared genuinely threatened, the frontier skirmishing of the eleventh century was of a very different order, yet the rhetoric was conversely gaudier.
The rise of the warrior class, the rise of the papacy, the rise of the Turks, the fall of the Moors, and the decline of Byzantium – while much of this constituted a new experience for western Europe Christians it’s important to remember that it didn’t all happen overnight – our narrative has already covered roughly 200 years. The world seemed normal. It stands to reason that if there are holy warriors then there must be holy wars needing fought. With little to no access to scriptures, the words of Christ are not there to couch any of this in a healthy theology.
The military society might have even seemed existential. Europeans had good reason to fear external threats –Carolingian France and Visigoth Spain knew all too well the capabilities of both the Moors and the Vikings – eliciting a quite natural pastoral, scriptural, theological, and legal response to equip the Faith to deal with these threats. Though positivity towards the military society and the desire to make Holy War was not ubiquitous. Far from it, in fact. Pope Gregory VII had many enemies, some of them political, but some of them theological. Many of the monastics abhorred the idea of holy war – but they were not in charge.
At the side of Gregory VII during his pontificate was an aspiring Cardinal bishop, who contemporaries mockingly called Gregory’s valet, named Odo of Largery.
In March of 1088, Odo was elected Pope by acclimation by a small group cardinals and prelates – as pope he took the name Urban II. He was an acolyte of Gregory, and it was implied by virtue of his election that he would continue Gregorian reforms. Any doubt about the zeal for the new pope’s continued fight for papal supremacy was swiftly laid to rest by Urban himself.
Urban II inherited Gregory’s papacy in exile while an anti-pope named Clement III occupied Rome. But he also inherited friendly relations with the Franks – and their Norman warriors. He was a native of France and knew the spirit and temperament of that land. So he launched his papacy on what might look like stump speeches across western Europe, favoring regions that supported him, avoid those that didn’t.
He was an august figure, and his presence was stirring. He spoke with confidence and demanded respect. He was politically savvy and worked to form alliances on the road. He was careful to deliver his most important speeches about the duties of Catholics to the Papacy during the two penitential seasons of the Church, Advent, and Lent. In one of his more lasting reforms, he revamped the bureaucratic operational efficiency of how the church dispenses judgment on worldwide matters by created the modern-day roman curia.
On one fateful day, Urban II assembled the Council of Piacenza – an international ecclesiastical meeting to pass judgements on a variety of matters effecting the church. Most of the issues had to do with reforming the internal workings of administrative affairs, but one issues was brought to the table that would change the course of history – Byzantine Emperor Comnenus had sent ambassadors to deliver a message to Urban. It was a plea for help. A plea for men at arms to aid them in their fight against the infidels marching on the empire’s doorstep. It was a request that had been made before, and the manner and scope of the help was, as always, left vague.
At the conclusion of the council, Pope Urban summoned his bishops and nobility and the swaths of peasants to Clermont France, where he had prepared a sermon in answer to the request of the eastern Church. So many people had turned out that the speech was moved outdoors to accommodate the crowds. There is no official transcript of Urbans speech, but there are roughly five or six accounts that all differ in one way or another. I’ll read an excerpt from Robert the Monk who we know was present:
This land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the seas and surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population; nor does it abound in wealth; and it furnishes scarcely food enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder one another, that you wage war, and that frequently you perish by mutual wounds. Let therefore hatred depart from among you, let your quarrels and, let wars cease, and let all dissensions and controversies slumber. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulcher; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves… God has conferred upon you above all nations great glory in arms. Accordingly undertake this journey for the remission of your sins, with the assurance of the imperishable glory of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Robert continues his account:
When Pope Urban had said these things… he so influenced to one purpose the desires of all who were present, that they cried out "It is the will of God! It is the will of God!". When the venerable Roman pontiff heard that, [he] said: "Most beloved brethren, today is manifest in you what the Lord says in the Gospel, 'Where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them.' Unless the Lord God had been present in your spirits, all of you would not have uttered the same cry. For, although the cry issued from numerous mouths, yet the origin of the cry was one. Therefore I say to you that God, who implanted this in your breasts, has drawn it forth from you. Let this then be your war-cry in combats, because this word is given to you by God. When an armed attack is made upon the enemy, let this one cry be raised by all the soldiers of God: It is the will of God! It is the will of God!"
It is the will of God – Deus Vult, Deus Vult.
The Fulcher of Chartres wrote his own account of Urban’s speech where he quotes the pope as promising:
All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested.
For a peasant or noble, the promise of full remission of sins was a pretty good deal.
Urban was a planner. His speech was not spontaneous and was attended by the who’s who of medieval Europe. It was theatrical and organized. His offer of expunging sins was couched nicely in the familiar concepts of just war, Old Testament sentiments, and anger towards Islam. When he finished his speech, cloth crosses were suddenly produced and affixed to the shoulder or breast of those who agreed in that moment to take up the cross, and march to the Holy Land. While the laity signed up in droves, the high-level aristocracy and clergy was notably, not moved.
Nonetheless Urban was great at marketing. And soon instructions were sent to the pulpits of eastern Europe, obliging the pastors to pass along the pope’s instructions. His words admonished each Christian to search their own soul, to sign up in the service the Church and the Pope, and wrestle the holy land from the infidel, and all the while gain eternal salvation.
Pope Urban had managed to do what Gregory before him could not, he had (perhaps unwittingly) tied all the loose ends of High Medieval Europe into one single cohesive focused release of energy. Those who now found themselves taking up the cross, the crucisignati, were those same Norman knights, eager to ply their trade and found dynastic legacies. Also taking up the cross were the peasants who pined for something more than a life of a poverty. All of them all found themselves motivated a sense of loyalty to the newfound power and prestige of the papacy. And they were all, no doubt sinners, in need of redemption. Some were true believers, others, profiteers. Many wondered who would leave and who would go – and what could be gained in another’s absence. The chance of success was low, the road seemed hard. Some planned a seaward passage; others began planning marches through the Balkans. Despite the best laid plans of Christendom, all bets would be off once they reached Judea.
Despite the impossibility of task, the call of Urban to Jerusalem evoked something beyond worldly practicality. From Tyerman:
Jerusalem in the eleventh century as in other centuries defined an ideal as much as a terrestrial city. It could stand as a metaphor, ‘The holy city, God’s celestial Jerusalem’, as an English royal charter of 1093 put it, for the world redeemed by Christ. Jerusalem could represent a spiritual condition and aspiration, as in the religious life of an individual or community, or its attributes could be geographically transposed to create a virtual reality in relics and shrines. More pervasively, the liturgy recreated scenes from Jerusalem in the Mass or enacted whole episodes, as in the increasingly popular Easter plays, each a glimpse of the holy city. Yet for all its liminality, poised between heaven and earth, God and man, Jerusalem remained a place as well as an ideal, temporal as well as spiritual, corporal as well as supernatural. In the tenth and eleventh centuries its distance and association with Christ’s life, Passion, and Resurrection ensured Jerusalem as the most meritorious goal of pilgrimage to such an extent that the chronicler Ralh Glaber noted that such a trip was in danger of becoming a fashionable social accessory rather than an act of piety. The difficulties of the journey magnified a hundredfold by war, secured its penitential attraction.
This was Urban’s call. He wanted a Holy War to liberate the streets on which Jesus Christ trod. But it was the interlinked and hardened military aristocracy in need of remission of sins that answered. And their results would astonish the world.
The undertow of enthusiasm that swept up western Europe in response to Urban II’s speech is probably not he help Emperor Alexius expected, nor wanted. Unleashing pent up Norman martialism and Holy Land fervor created an acuteness of power under Urban that the papacy never yet exercised. Urban himself was very aware of this. It’s clear from his writings that he intended to unite all the armies of Christendom under a banner of the cross, led by the pope.
Even so, and as we’ve already discussed, preparing for conquest under a papal banner was not new to any of these people. That war of conquest with approval from Rome was already a facet of medieval life lent itself to the ease in which society accepted Urban’s call to what would become the first crusade. This can be seen when examining at what people did in response to the call to take up the cross. There was almost no central military leadership, at least at first. After crossing themselves at a ceremony, usually after Mass, individuals simply began their pilgrimage east. And not everyone went to fight.
As swathes of peasants, merchants, and nobles meandered eastward, they encountered the western European diaspora of prior generations making this same pilgrimage – abbeys, monasteries, cemeteries of pilgrims, reminding them of the frailty of life, and the footsteps of their ancestors. Within a year of Pope Urban’s call, its estimated that 80,000 pilgrims had made their way east, mostly from France, but also from Italy and Germany. The journey was expensive. Nobles broke medieval society code by selling their holdings and inheritances to fund their own pilgrimages. Many peasants, finding the road harder than expected, and short on provisions, turned back before even reaching eastern Europe.
It should not be surprising that copycats of Urban appeared on the scene, preachers who, in their own way thought they were furthering the intentions of the pope, but their messages would have been something that we might today call… unhinged. Some were charismatic populists, and some were apocalyptic prophets of doom.
One group of wayward pilgrims, not knowing how to actually get to the holy land, had decided that a wayward goose in their company had been sent by God to lead them to the Holy Sepulcher. And so, every day, this group followed wherever this goose led them.
Celestial events gave further credit to the whole endeavor. A meteor shower put itself on display for western Europe to behold in 1095. And many recalled that Haley’s Comet had appeared before the Norman conquest of 1066. It was God telling them that they were doing was his will and he would be with them.
The Fulcher of Chartres appealed directly to criminals and murders, asking them to redirect their vices:
Let those who are accustomed wantonly to wage private war against the faithful march upon the infidels… Let those who have long been robbers now be soldiers of Christ; let those who once fought against brothers and relatives now rightfully fight against barbarians. Let those who have been hirelings for a few pieces of silver now attain an eternal reward.
True killers and butchers headed the call of the charismatic crusade preacher. Guys like Bertrand of Moncontour and Nivelo of Freteval signed up. Both had long histories of terrorizing the local peasantry subject to their rule. Thomas of Marle terrorized and pillaged the French locals on his way to the east. William of Melun, earned the nickname the carpenter for his skills as a battlefield butcher. Stephen of Blois (who will come up again) had a personal body count racked up in his own private wars that would rival the coming crusade. Raimbold Croton castrated a monk who opposed him in a land dispute.
By today’s standards, these men are monsters, not the pious types that our modern sensibilities would hope to see answer a call to Holy War. But remember, they were Norman, and have built a legacy on brutality and conquest. And critically important to remember, they were responding to a call that promised to expunge their sins no matter how terrible or numerous.
Christopher Tyerman gives a wonderful summary of the overall zeitgeist:
Part revivalism, part politics, part a search for release and personal renewal, both manipulation of popular beliefs and prejudices common to all social groups and an attempt to channel these towards a narrowly laudable yet essentially familiar and explicable end, the summons to Jerusalem succeeded because it caught the imagination of a society not necessarily ready but psychologically, culturally, and materially equipped to answer the call. In the level of official enthusiasm, in the rapidity of popular acceptance, in the extremes of response, in the widespread uncertainty, indifference and regional variation shadowing extravagant and well-publicized bellicosity, 1096 was the 1914 of the Middle Ages.
The military elite and hardened warriors who knew very well what it took to campaign successfully, they were taking time assembling their forces, but as Tyerman points out this summons to Jerusalem had taken on a societal imperative with a life of its own. Some simply wouldn’t wait for the warrior class. The impatient masses of people would constitute the first wave, that would come to be known as the people’s crusade.
The man we need to introduce to discuss this first wave of pilgrims is one of those over-the-top characters that history just loves to throw in at the perfect time for their strangeness to shine through. This man was a priest known as Peter the hermit. When I think of Peter the hermit, I think of one of those street corner preachers, repent, the end of the world is nigh. It’s possible he was at Pope Urban’s speech at Clermont, but no one knows for sure. What is known is that he was a true believer in this call to take back Jerusalem. Anna Komnene, daughter of the Byzantine emperor who kept a magnificently detailed journal of the first crusade, believed Peter the hermit had attempted a crusade before. We know he had been to the Church of the Holy Sepulture before and was appalled at the way Christian were treated in front of the empty tomb of Christ.
As I said, the warriors of Christendom were making battle and provision plans, but Peter said forget that, I’ve got the Holy Ghost on my side. Thus, on April 12th, Holy Saturday, a mere four months after Pope Urban’s summons, thousands of Peter’s followers assembled at Cologne. That’s an astonishingly short amount of time for any army to muster, even by modern standards – but Peter’s followers are not warriors. While there might have been a smattering of low-level knights here and there, this crowd is mostly poor pilgrims, true believers in Peter the Hermit’s zeal, and he commanded thousands of them. Some historians put the number as high as 40,000, just insane numbers. Imagine if today some street corner preacher who was written off as only having one oar in the water, amasses 40,000 followers in four months. Any body of people that size gets very hungry, very fast, and if you don’t feed them very bad things can happen. This is where we begin to see that the holy idealistic call of the crusades cannot out way human prejudices and fallen nature.
In medieval Europe, when Christians needed money, they often went to the Jews. The Jewish communities in Christendom did not have a ton of career opportunities among them, so loaning money on interest was one business they could occupy since, depending when and where you were in Christendom, loaning on interest was either frowned upon or completely banned under the sin of usury.
Peter the Hermit had zero plans for provisions and financing. So, they turned to the local Jewish leaders. And in something that can amounts to a shake down, those leaders procured letters for the pilgrims to show to the Jews in the nearby communities urging them to hand over whatever money they had. Bearing these letter on the day after Easter, Peter the Hermit and his merry band of pilgrims began their march to the holy land.
The size and unruliness of Peter’s pilgrims preceded them, causing some of the Jewish communities to throw open their gates at his arrival out of fear. The pilgrims marched light and fast through France, covering 20 miles a day until they reached the Hungarian city of Semlin, and now in bad in need of more provisions.
In the medieval days, the prospects of feeding and support tens of thousands of foreigners could bring starvation to your own family. The Hungarians, not interested in Peter the Hermit’s pilgrims, nor Urban’s call to Jerusalem, shut their gates and refused entry or provisions. So, the pilgrims attacked and ransacked the city, and simply pilfered whatever provisions they wanted and looted whatever else was available too. It’s estimated that 4000 Hungarian men, women and children were left dead in the wake of the attack – these were 4000 Christians they killed, not infidels or pagans, not that it makes it more acceptable, just revoltingly ironic.
Word was now out about what this wayward army of pilgrims from France was really capable of. Most towns between them and Constantinople emptied and got out of dodge. Some of those town, Peter’s pilgrims burned as they passed through them. Peter’s chroniclers tell us that Peter tried to stop them, and did not condone their destruction, but such is the inherent danger of the mob. He was no longer in control of his own creature.
The pilgrims by this point new they were public enemy number one in Hungary and were trying to hightail it to Byzantium as quick as possible. But one of the local governors had caught up with Peter’s pilgrims and attacked. Before they could make their escape, its estimated a quarter of the Frankish pilgrims were cut down like cattle.
This bleeding, starving, murderous band of thieves and plunderers was the first western army that arrived in Byzantium in answer to Emperor Alexius’s call for help against the Turks. By now everyone knew there were more professional armies mobilizing behind them, but still, his disappointment had to be considerable. The emperor was even more shocked when Peter the Hermit asked for transportation across the Bosporus to Anatolia. Alexius told him of the perils that awaiting his poorly equipped army there, but Peter would have none of it. He and his pilgrims were headed to the Holy Land under the protection of God – they didn’t need to wait for anyone. Being a Christian in Anatolia in the late 12th century under Turkish rule had its downsides, but one could generally be left alone. To be an invading Franco-Norman pilgrim crusader without soldiers or a plan, was borderline suicide.
Reaching Anatolia, Peter’s pilgrims broke into various raiding parties and began pillaging the Anatolian countryside for provisions, much as they had done in Europe. One group attacked and raided Nicaea. Another seized a castle at Xerigordo – this pilgrim contingent at Xerigordo, after taking the castle, found themselves surrounded by an army of Seljuk Turks. The pilgrims held up at the castle were now under siege, in an arid climate, with no water. One contemporary recounts:
Our people were in such distress from thirst that they bled their horses and asses and drank the blood; others let their girdles and handkerchiefs down into the cistern and squeezed out the water from them into their mouths; some urinated into one another's hollowed hands and drank; and others dug up the moist ground and lay down on their backs and spread the earth over their breasts to relieve the excessive dryness of thirst.
On the 8th day, the pilgrim contingent in the castle surrendered. The Turks gave them a choice – convert to Islam or be killed. Some converted, many didn’t. Those who converted were sold into slavery. The rest were killed.
In revenge for Xerigordo, the pilgrims attempted to attack the Turks outright. They were again slaughtered like the lumbering, untrained, unarmored rabble that they were. The European camps were nearly overrun entirely until Greek Imperial troops arrived to give the pilgrims a narrow escape back to Constantinople.
Peter the Hermit and his pilgrims were only the first wave of the first crusade. Other similar rag-tag groups of true believers followed that spring, but after Peter, Coloman, King of Hungary was done letting crusaders march through his country, and he shut his borders.
The leader of the next wave was very different from Peter the Hermit. He was not a member of the clergy, but a member of the German nobility. His name is Count Emicho. Count Emicho did a lot of awful things. And so, as does happen with people like him, contemporaries, and chroniclers sympathetic to the victims of a guy like Count Emicho, tend to pile on. Yet there are plenty of verifiable things that Count Emicho did do on his way to the Holy Land, as you’ll see.
The more you examine Count Emicho, the more you find things that make you… seriously question his sanity. It is said that his reason for taking up the cross in the first place was based on a vision given to him by God, in which he received a crown from one of the apostles and was destined to invade the Holy Land and kill everyone who resisted him. To add another facet of eeriness to Count Emicho, the pilgrims who were following that goose to the holy land were under Emicho’s wing.
Emicho had assembled probably around 10,000 crusaders, many were peasants, but he had a lot more knights and nobles in his group that Peter. They assembled at Speyer – Emicho is said to have been there, but sources are mixed. Crusader fever descended into mob mentality as the assembling pilgrims demanded the conversions the local Jews, by force if necessary. When they refused, the pilgrims began executing them. The local bishop swiftly stepped in and stopped the slaughter. By the time he did, historians estimate less than 20 had been killed. The Jews who converted under duress were allowed to revert to their faith by the bishop. Those Christians who had direct involvement in the killings, had their hands cut off.
It was a close call. While tragic for the families of those killed, it could have been much worse.
After Speyer, it’s said that Count Emicho moved to Worms. Again, riots against the Jews broke out. This time, hundreds were killed. Some sources say as many as 800. Torahs were desecrated and burned. Some Jews allegedly committed suicide rather than be forced to renounce their faith. The local bishop opened his palace as sanctuary for the those lucky enough to flee the bloodbath. But the palace could not hold back the rioting pilgrims. They broke into to the bishop’s palace and executed the Jews seeking sanctuary. Even one of the bishop’s own family members was killed in the frenzy.
After Worms, there is undeniable evidence showing beyond a doubt that Count Emicho personally moved his army on Mainz. The Bishop of Mainz, who had heard of the mayhem being wrought by the Count, ordered the city gates shut against him. So, the pilgrims frothed up anti-Jewish sentiments among the locals in the countryside and convinced them to march on the city. The Jewish leaders inside attempted to buy off Count Emicho. Some sources say he took the gold offering and attacked anyway. Regardless, he attacked. The Christian Burghers, which are basically German businessmen joined up with the bishop’s forces and the local military in defense of their city. Many of the Jews were given shelter in friendly Christian homes.
The burghers and guards first attempted to fend off the crusaders, but they were quickly overrun and fled the city. The bishop fled with them. The pillaging and slaughter lasted for two days. Some of the Jews formed an armed resistance in the bishop’s palace, but eventually they were all killed. The synagogue was destroyed. Some of the Jewish parents chose to kill their children before the Christians could get a hold of them. One story circulated by the chroniclers tells of a woman named Rachel looking for her son Aaron who fled at seeing his mother kill his siblings:
When this pious woman had completed sacrificing her three children to their Creator, she raised her voice and called to her son: ‘Aaron, Aaron, where are you? I will not spare you either or have mercy on you.’ She drew him out by his feet from under the box where he had hidden and slaughtered him before the Exalted and Lofty God.
When the crusaders reached Rachel, surrounded by the still twitching bodies of her children, they demanded she show them the money that she, as a Jew, must have hidden up her sleeves.
The chronicler continued:
Cruel foreigners, fierce and swift, Frenchmen and Germans...[who] put crosses on their clothing and were more plentiful than locusts on the face of the earth.
By the time Count Emicho reached Cologne, the Jews took no chances and fled. From there, the Jewish body counts fell, but the desecration of synagogues continued.
After Cologne, Emicho continued his path of destruction toward the Holy Land. He traveled down the Danube into Hungary, but instead of finding innocent helpless Jews, he found the army of King Coloman of Hungary – now a sworn enemy of the Crusaders. After skirmishing, Count Emicho’s army broke apart. Many were slaughtered. Some drowned trying to flee. Count Emicho survived and slithered back to his home.
Count Emicho’s crusade was not the last of the pogroms that would come to be known as the Rhineland massacres, but his crusade was the pinnacle of those vile atrocities. After the Rhineland massacres, some of the German aristocracy attempted to put some spin on what had happened. They formulated a populist argument, asking why should they crusade against enemies of the Cross in the Holy Land when they have so many enemies of the Cross in their own lands.
By August 15th, 1096, the date Urban had set for the armies of Christendom to depart for the Holy Land, three separate German expeditions had completely collapsed and failed to even make it out of Europe, while Peter the Hermit’s contingent sat on the rim of western Asia, barely alive. The time had finally come for the Norman princes of Europe to embark. Stephen of Blois, husband of William the Conqueror’s daughter, remembers the scene of their leaving:
What sighs, what weeping, what lamentation among friends when husband left wife so dear to him, his children, his possessions however great, his father, mother, brother, and other relatives. But however many tears those remaining shed for departing friends and in their presence, none flinched from going… Then husband told wife what time he expected to return, assuring her that if by God’s grace he survived he would come back home to her. He commended her to the Lord, kissed her lingeringly, and promised her as she wept that he would return. She, though, fearing that she would never see him again, could not stand but swooned to the ground, mourning her loved one, whom she was losing in this life as if he were already dead. He, however, like one who has no pity – although he had – and as if he were not moved by the tears of his wife nor the grief of any of his friends – yet secretly moved in his heart – departed with firm resolution. Sadness was the lot of those who remained, elation, of those who departed.
I can’t help but pause her and consider how very different societal structure in medieval Europe is from ours. Many of these guys described here by Stephen of Blois were fabulously wealthy and internationally famous. While Stephen’s description could be of middle-class American soldiers departing for Iraq, it would be more like if Jeff Bezos and his entourage of Amazon underlings were kissing their families goodbye to go fight. Oh, and by the way, the Amazon contingent better hurry up because the Elon Musk contingent also leaving, and we need to beat them to the Holy Land.
Stephen of Blois gives us a great account here, but the first great western lord to set out on crusade was the younger brother of the king of France, Count Hugh of Vermandois. Hugh setting out first on crusade is intentionally symbolic, partly because of his closeness to the French throne, but also because he represented a reunion between the papacy and the king. The king, Philip I had been excommunicated for bigamy, but the prospect of a significant Frankish lord to rule over the rowdy Normans was too appealing for Urban. Employing his little brother allowed the prestige of the French crown to be used under a papal banner, while still saving face.
These Franco-Norman designs were not the unplanned escapades of Peter the Hermit. The organization was impressive. An itinerary was devised and sent to Emperor Alexius, giving him estimations of the armies’ route and arrival. Hugh’s army was swollen with crucisignati from all corners of France – including remnants from Count Emicho’s contingent.
Hugh reached Constantinople toward the end of 1096 and was immediately put under house arrest by the emperor. Emperor Alexius, despite requesting military aid from the Latins, was immediately suspicious of them. The infamy of crusader pillaging and sacking on their way to his city was well known. How could he be certain this army wouldn’t do the same to Constantinople? After all, the Greeks and Romans they were barely 50 years into their worsening schismatic relationship. For all of Urban’s polemicizing of papal supremacy it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think this might be some western plot to force the Greeks to conform to Latin rites of worship.
By Christmas, a duke of Lorraine named Godfrey of Bouillon arrived with his contingent. When you think of romanticized caricatures of fearless, chivalric crusading knight, Godfrey stands out as one of the closest things to that in history. He, like others of the aristocracy, was not above extorting money from the Jews to fund his campaign, but he wasn’t a cold-blooded killer. He’s described as tall, strong, handsome, and in his mid-30s.
Godfrey, it could be said, had that intangible stability that tends to attract other people, placing him inevitably in a position of leadership. In his retinue were soldiers sent by the Holy Roman Emperor, as well as a couple of future kings of Jerusalem. Godfrey’s feudal house of knights that followed him was large, experienced in war, and extremely loyal to him. As a testament to his character, successfully negotiated peaceful passage through Hungary with King Coloman was his doing. Upon arriving in Byzantine territory, he promised the emperor that his army would not resort to raid or plunder of the countryside, provided the town markets were open to them to buy provisions.
After entering Constantinople, and finding Count Hugh under house arrest, Godfrey was furious and demanded his release. The emperor demanded Godfrey agree to serve the emperor as a condition of Hugh’s release, provisions, and passage to Anatolia. Godfrey refused and had 8000 mounted Norman knights and tens of thousands of infantry to back him up. After some negotiations, a mutual agreement was struck where the crusaders agreed to return former byzantine lands they liberated along their way.
And here we come to the predictable conflict of interest since pope Urban’s speech. Alexius wanted western aid to recapture Byzantine holdings. The crucesignati wanted to capture the Holy Land. It’s a critical failure of diplomacy that would plague both Rome and Constantinople with every crusade.
Arriving behind Godfrey was Bohemund, Norman prince from Taranto Italy. To complicate the delicate alliance, Bohemund and Emperor Alexius were mortal enemies, having fought territorial wars against each other for years. It’s alleged that when Bohemund arrived, he attempted to convince Godfrey to sack Constantinople and take it for the Latins. Godfrey refused, and Bohemund agreed to the emperor’s contract, but now you might begin to get an idea of why Emperor Alexius treated the crusaders with suspicion. But the emperor likewise had to respect Bohemund’s presence – he had as much experience fighting the Turks as he did the Byzantines.
Count Raymond of Toulouse arrived next. His contingent was the best funded and largest. He had a reputation as a planner but was said to have arrived in a furious mood due to the difficulty of his journey. One could speculate that his demeanor accounted for him being the only western lord not to sign the emperor’s agreement to return Byzantine lands.
Last to arrive was Robert of Normandy, brother of the king of England. With him was Stephen of Blois who we’ve referenced a few times. Stephen’s own son would one day sit upon that throne.
By May of 1097, the armies of Christendom, those warriors who had answered the call of the pope, had assembled and were ready to march east. Their goal was Jerusalem. For Emperor Alexius, he could care less about Jerusalem, so long as they won back for him the lands of his once great empire.
After these armies of God took the leap of faith into Anatolia, they steamrolled through its barren landscape. By June, Nicaea was wrestled from the Turks in what Stephen of Blois called a remarkable achievement. Rumors of the innumerable Franks marching toward Jerusalem made their way through the Turkish and Arab powers. Their fear, disunity and division played into the hands of the Normans, allowing them to enter Asia unopposed. Those divisions in Islam were deep. Not only did you have religious rifts of Sunni and Shia, but also political, like Egyptian caliphs and Berber mercenaries, along with ethnic divides like Turk and Arab.
Serious Islamic resistance finally came together at the battle of Dorylaeum. It was close. The Normans almost lost, but they rallied and drove off the Turks. The locals received them as liberators, giving the crucesignati a sprit de corp despite their near destruction.
Despite all their planning, the climate realities of Anatolia eventually set in: blistering heat by day, biting cold by night; fatigue, thirst, hunger. After a few weeks most of the horses were gone. Thousands of men died from exhaustion. Mothers among the crucesignati abandoned their newborn children for they could no longer care for them. Eventually, the entire operation slowed to five miles per day. The leaders were affected to. Raymond of Toulouse fell ill enough to receive last rites, and Godfrey of Bouillon, was randomly attacked by a bear receiving nearly lethal injuries. Despite these difficulties, Anatolia inexorably fell to the Armies of God, putting Antioch in attacking range.
Antioch was once a powerhouse city of Byzantium. It is critically important both geopolitically and biblically. If Constantinople is gateway to the east, Antioch is gateway to the Holy Land.
As they approached, Armenian Christian lords in exile lent their help to the Norman conquerors. Greek imperial ships also arrived and secured the coast, reinforcing the Christian armies from the harbors. In October of 1097, the Norman’s dug in for a siege against Antioch.
Sieges were not the Norman’s strong suite, for sitting still went against their nature. As boredom and discomfort set in, so did desertion. Even Peter the Hermit was caught attempting to flee. Moral was given a jolt however from additional crusaders arriving by boat from Italy, England, and Denmark. Tyerman points out that it’s a testament to planning and a miracle of logistics that this army was never entirely cut off from Byzantium or the west.
During the siege an Islamic relief force from Aleppo was defeated by Bohemund’s contingent. Nonetheless their numbers were still dwindling. Those who remained were an elite corps of hardened warriors. They were now used to the environment and had multiple successes in pitched battles. All the pomp and fluff of the army was starved out of it. Yet Antioch still stood.
News arrived that a massive coalition of Turks was only days away from arriving at Antioch with intentions of breaking the siege and driving the crusaders to the sea. The Norman leadership held an emergency council to decide what to do next. It was decided that the city must be taken immediately, that they would never survive being pinched between Antioch and an enemy army.
This was a dark night for the crusaders. The prospects were near hopeless, so hopeless that some abandoned the mission, most notable Stephen of Blois, who snuck away mere hours before the attack.
Bohemund and his soldiers, as I said had experience fighting both Greek and Turk, and thus spoke both languages. He had been working on backchannel communications with the local Armenians inside the city and found some among the local population willing to help them. On the night of June 2nd, the gates were secretly opened. The citizens of Antioch awoke to the sounds of pillaging. The garrison fled, abandoning Antioch to be plundered by the conquerors. The Latins, unable to tell Christian from Muslim, massacred thousands indiscriminately. While it was a victory, it was of little consolation. They knew the Turkish relief forces was still on its way.
Five days later the Turkish army arrived and dug in for a siege. Latin moral plummeted, and panic began to set in. More pilgrims attempted to flee the entire expedition by scaling ropes draped down the city walls. So many fled by this way that they garnered a nick name – furtive funambuli – shifty rope dancers. It’s estimated that as the Turkish siege set in, less than 30,000 crucesignati remained.
Crusader lore, like Catholic hagiography, sometimes encounters difficult to believe stories. When one reads the chroniclers details of what happened at Antioch, one is asked by them to suspend a strictly historical narrative. Whether these things are true, we will never know. That they are claimed to have happened is absolutely true. It is alleged that a priest named Stephen of Valence found himself beset with grief at the impending disaster soon to fall upon Armies of God. So, he did what countless Christians before him had done for centuries during times of hopelessness – he went to a church to pray for the intercession of the Blessed Mother. There he claimed to receive a vision of Christ, the cross, the Virgin Mary and St. Peter – first bishop and Christian patron of the city of Antioch.
St. Peter assured Stephen the crusaders would receive his aid in five days if they demonstrated their faith with prayers, worship, and penance for their sinfulness. The Norman leaders, upon hearing this priest’s vision were… pessimistic. So, Stephen swore to the truthfulness of the visions upon the gospels themselves. Thus, the Norman leaders obliged the heavenly request.
At the same time another pilgrim named Peter Bartholomew claimed he had been receiving visions form St. Andrew – brother of St. Peter, who likewise insisted that the crusaders do penance. The martyr allegedly told Peter Bartholomew where he could find the Holy Lance that pierced the side of Christ, right there within the city of Antioch. Again, the Norman leadership was cautious in obliging these tales, but nonetheless allowed Peter to lead them to a spot in the Cathedral of St. Peter, where he instructed they begin digging. And after a few feet they indeed found something not unlike the point of a lance.
These stories are difficult, even for a Catholic, for one could easily stray into superstition. Historian Christopher Tyerman offers refreshingly sober perspective on these events:
The objective reality of these visions or the authenticity of the Holy Lance are immaterial. The visions fitted the contemporary models of such encounters, the visual iconography of the celestial messengers borrowing from contemporary art. A scrap of metal found beneath an old, much-renovated church after a day’s digging does not stretch credibility or credulity. What mattered in June 1098 was the crusaders’ belief.
The result of these events was a collective boost in moral – which is borderline miraculous by itself. Peter the Hermit was then sent as an emissary to the Turkish leader, a warlord named Kerbogha. Peter was probably sent as more of a spy than messenger, for his proposal was that they settle this siege by duel, which was flatly rejected, and Peter returned to Antioch, but he had surmised the enemy’s strength and position. Bohemond decided then that with moral high, and the enemy’s position more or less unsuspecting, the time had come to breakout.
And so, the gates of Antioch were thrown open. And Bohemund unleashed the Latin legions upon he Turks. The battled hardened Norman knights remained disciplined, and well ordered. They executed tight maneuvers that drew in Kerbogha’s forces allowing them to outflank the Turks and roll up their rear guard, crushing them. Now I can’t help but go back to my Written in Blood podcast days and think of what General Patton called this risky strategy – he called it grabbing the enemy by the nose, and kicking him in the ass.
Kerbogha, seeing the trap he’d fallen into, fled the field in terror, leaving his camp behind full of his retinue: women, prisoners, provisions, tents, beasts of burden, gold, silver, food, drink and other spoils to plunder. Contemporary sources say all the Muslims were killed. The women had lances driven through their bellies to extinguish the next generation.
Wanton death, after a month’s long painful, fearful, miserable siege, by either side, while abhorrent to us moderns, is the norm throughout. I say this not to make excuses for Christians, but to remind myself that this is fallen human nature on display – and while there is nothing holy about it that I can see, in the context of history, it is expected.
Shortly after the semi-miraculous victory of Antioch it was learned that Emperor Alexius was preparing a relief force to send to the Latins, but some of the absconding lords, including Stephen of Blois convinced him that all hope was lost, and so the relief force was never sent. For the Latins, this constituted unforgivable treachery in their most dire hour of need. The Byzantines were now never to be trusted. As a result, perhaps inevitable result, Bohemund considered his contract with the emperor broken and claimed Antioch for himself. The crusader leadership became mired in squabbling over the riches of Antioch. So paralyzing were the feuds that some sent letters to Urban himself to visit the city to get the crusade back on track.
But their delay did have unknown positives. Kerbogha’s defeat significantly weakened his own personal grip on Jerusalem, allowing it to be conquered by the Fatimid Caliphate from Egypt - a Shia sect. The Latins had a diplomatic connection with the Fatimid’s – the Coptic Christians who enjoyed friendly relations with the Fatimids. This allowed, at least temporarily, open lines of negotiations between the two groups, which secured Christian pilgrimages permission to celebrate Easter that year in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
Yet conquering Jerusalem for themselves was still very much the crusader goal. The weakness of both the Fatimids and the Latins created a sense urgency – like a space race to the moon. Yet the strategy remained elusive. There were ultimately two options. First was the long game - move down through Judea and lay siege to each city and conquer territory by territory. The other option was more expedient – make a mad dash for Jerusalem now while they still had the strength, and attack. The latter won out for many reasons. First, conquering territory was no longer a goal since they abandoned their oath to Byzantium anyway. Second, attacking Jerusalem had populist support among the troops. Third, Godfrey of Bouillon liked it.
And so, on May 16th, 1099, the Armies of God began their march at breakneck pace toward the Holy City. The speed was truly remarkable for a massive medieval army: 200 miles in 20 days, shadowed along the coast by the English fleet the entire way. Speed necessitated diplomacy. Hasty treaties were written up with each city they encountered along the way: Beirut, Acre, Tyre, Haifa, Caesarea. The conquerors moved so fast their Viking ancestors would have been impressed. So fast, the Fatimids could not form any organize resistance, allowing the crusaders to completely overrun Jaffa – the port to Jerusalem, and critical lynchpin to take the city. They occupied Bethlehem and fanned out across the Judean hills securing towns and outposts. The locals welcomed them as just the next wave of foreign rulers, happy at least that they weren’t more Turks.
But the Fatimid’s weren’t entirely helpless. Most of the trees between Jaffa and Jerusalem were cut down to prevent the Latins from building siege weapons – must-haves to capture a walled city. They also poisoned the local wells – also necessities for large armies in desert climates.
Despite the best efforts of the Fatimids, on June 7th, 1099, the dwindled Franco-Norman army of less than 14,000 arrived at the walls of Jerusalem. The sight of the walls was a long desired and nearly overwhelming spiritual experience. Many of the knights took off their shoes as they approached – a symbol of reverence for the same streets trodden by Christ, and an act of penance that they might expunge their sins. Yet time was not on their side. They knew a Fatimid resistance army of relief was imminent. The Norman conquerors on the other hand had no hope of any relief reinforcements, no locals to call on for support, and were deep in enemy territory. They had too little men to form a blockade or siege. Water was scarce. Dysentery was spreading. Provisions were gone. The city must be taken now.
Then a miracle of logistical support arrived in Jaffa at this very moment – Genoese mariners, thanks to negotiations by Bohemund in exchange for trade rights in Antioch. On June 17th these famed marine engineers put into port and delivered large European timbers and the engineers required to turn them into siege weapons.
Jerusalem is defended by double walls, moats, and a naturally hilly landscape. The governor inside controlled only a small garrison made up of local militias consisting of Egyptians and jews. With such a small force, he decided to launch no disruptive forays as the siege building progressed – a critical error. His strategy rested solely on a relief army from Egypt.
On July 13th the attack commenced from two separate crusader contingents – one from the north, and one from the south. A signal corps was set up upon the Mount of Olives with reflectors to coordinate both attacks – the very hill in which Christ warned of coming tribulation and destruction. At the base of these hills was the garden of Gethsemane, the sight of Christ’s agony in the garden.
Godfrey, Duke of Bouillon oversaw the siege tower on the north side. It’s recorded that he placed a gold cross on top of it and he himself stood at its peak, firing his crossbow into the city below while the tower rolled forward. Once pushed up against the walls of the city, Godfrey stepped down upon the walls of the city, followed by other princes of Europe. Massacre ensued. The citizenry and shred of resistance fled and melted away. Some of the people made for the citadel hoping for mercy, but this was not a day of mercy, and were all murdered. Jews fled to their synagogues and were slaughtered where they stood. Muslims were butchered indiscriminately. Stories range from decapitations – who were the lucky ones, to being tied to a spit and roasted over a fire. The accounts are from the Christian sources.
Such was the horror that a Jewish onlooker coldly commented that at least the Christians didn’t rape them as the Muslims did when they arrived. From Tyerman:
The city was comprehensively ransacked: gold, silver, horses, food, the domestic contents of houses, were seized by the conquerors in a pillage as thorough as any in the middle ages.
After three years of blood and toil, and now pillaging and destruction, a crucesignatus recounted reaching the Church of the Holy Sepulcher:
Jerusalem was now littered with bodies and stained with blood… With the fall of the city, it was rewarding to see the worship of pilgrims at the Holy Sepulcher, the clapping of hands, the rejoicing and singing of a new song to the Lord. Their souls offered to the victorious and triumphant God prayers of praise which they could not explain in words.
I, as your podcast host, can’t entirely explain in words these events. We moderns… we Catholics… can we rejoice as these crusaders did at these events? As the great one, Dan Carlin so often says, we all have the same DNA. Again, I return to my usual crutch, but it’s all I have. From a historical perspective, when an army conquers a city, pillage and plunder is the norm.
Modern reservations aside, and to get back to the narrative, the crusaders had little time to celebrate their victory. The inevitable Egyptian relief army was mere miles away. And by now the crusaders barely numbers 10,000 soldiers. But there was only one option. On August 10th the crusaders left Jerusalem and met the Egyptians out in the open, destroying an army twice their size. With surprise, speed, unity, determination, and an indomitable Norman spirit of conquest, they routed the Egyptian relief army at the battle of Ascalon, putting their seal on the campaign for the holy land. The only question now, was could they keep it?
By the end of August, most of the crucesignati were eager to return home. Only Godfrey of Bouillon was willing to stay behind. He was presented with the title of King of Jerusalem – which he rejected, refusing, in his words, to wear a crown of gold where his savior had worn a crown of thorns. Nonetheless he was the leader of the Holy city.
On July 29th, 1099, Pope Urban the reformer, acolyte of Gregory VII, the one whose call for Holy War define the next two hundred years of western European history and set in motion events that would establish the papacy as the most powerful earthy office the world had ever seen, died a mere hours before news of the capture of Jerusalem could reach his ears.
On July 15th, 1149, 50 years to the day after the capture of Jerusalem, in the southern corner of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, there was a dedication ceremony to a complex of new chapels built around what was thought to be Cavalry. There engraved is the following:
This place is holy, sanctified by the blood of Christ. By our consecration we add nothing to its holiness.
The entirely unexpected, logic-defying success of the first crusade turned those involved, especially Godfrey of Bouillon into instant mythical heroes. The secular results are far easier to track than spiritual – it cemented the military tactics of the Norman warrior class for the entire world. Conquering England was one thing, Italy and Sicily were perhaps more impressive, but owning Judea represented geopolitical supremacy between spanning two great continents.
The lands of Judea were carved into four distinct Catholic states. Moving south along the banks of the Mediterranean, they are the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem – which, after the death of Godfrey of Bouillon, his brother became king, not having the same reservations of a crown of gold. Together, the Franks called the crusader states Outremer, meaning overseas. Frankish Outremer to the north and east, was surrounded by the Seljuk Turks. To the south, the Egyptian Fatimids. Enemies all.
The business of the cross now turned to the business of governance. Walls needed defending, fields needed tending, ports needed shipping. The new lords of Outremer were faced with not only governing the locals but managing the flood of pilgrims from the west. Pilgrims granted remission of sins by the pope were now arriving in droves, but there were also secular reasons for coming to Frankish Outremer. Alleged relics procured in the holy land and brought back to western Europe sold for small fortunes. Tour guides set up businesses selling maps and brought the tourists on biblical expeditions. New lands were prospected by wealthy western lords. There was also a military necessity to attracting pilgrims, as most of the original crusaders had gone back home, and all these Holy sites and relics needed defending.
Some pilgrims enlisted in the service of the king, but more significant were the new military orders that filled the gap of necessity. The Order of the Hospital of St. John, also called the Hospitallers were given papal recognition in 1113 with the mission of caring for the sick and infirm, but soon after acquired military duties. Around 1120 they were joined by the Order of the Temple of Solomon – the Templars. Their job was to guard the pilgrim routes from the port of Jaffa to Jerusalem. Even though Jerusalem was conquered using Frankish people and tactics, these military orders gave it a uniquely garrisoned feel. These military orders soon found huge benefactors in the kings of Europe, highlighting the general acceptance of their necessity. But not everyone was happy about the combination of monk and warrior. Some thought it was monstrous. The head of abbey wrote:
It is useless attacking external enemies if we do not first conquer those within ourselves… first purge our souls of vices, then the lands from the barbarians.
These types of arguments were outweighed by the cold practical need to manage the huge numbers of faithful arriving every day, responding to the tourism propaganda sent back home.
Within 12 years of the capture of Jerusalem, there were four full published accounts of the first crusade being circulated, not to mentioned epic poems and songs that spread like wildfire. Tyerman recounted that some of the crusading heroes had to sit through painfully inaccurate stories and deeds that never happened.
All this post crusade zeal and confidence cemented a model of spiritual warfare that could be waged in the physical world. New artwork was commissioned by the papacy depicting Christ as a mounted warrior knight. The critics of Urban and Gregory’s new penitential warfare in the service of the papacy were silenced, while Urban received a posthumous triumph of his reforms. The pope’s direct involvement in the salvation of the individual Catholic was established through indulgences for the remission of sins. Criminals could be exonerated by going on pilgrimage. Political enemies of the pope – like the Holy Roman Emperor – could reconcile by going to Jerusalem. Immunity against debts and crime was gifted to the crucesignati. Yet difficulty arose in codifying these changes with successive popes using vague language. Canon lawyers now had their days filled with examining when remission was fulfilled or not.
Pope Paschal II, who succeeded Urban recognized the need to offer support to the holy land and ignited a fresh recruitment campaign for warriors to go on pilgrimage in support of Frankish Outremer. For those who now took up the cross, he added the punishment of excommunication for anyone who failed to begin or fled as a coward.
Previous deserters, like Stephen of Blois were subjected to public humiliation. Stephen also received private humiliation from his wife, the daughter of William the conquer. Before she would agree to lay in bed with him she reminded him of his cowardice.
Her humiliation had its desired effect. Stephen, along with other princes united in purpose across the many fault lines of medieval Europe, went on pilgrimage to offer their services to the new Catholic states in Judea. These armies of course needed to pass through Constantinople, bringing fresh stresses on the infrastructure and markets of the city. Emperor Alexius now constantly bemoaned what he called “the commotion from the west.” Like many of the Latin armies before them, Stephen and his contingent pillaged the countryside of Byzantium. The emperor simply shipped them across the Bosporus as fast as logistically possible.
The Muslims warlords had now learned something of their enemy – they learned pitched battle against iron clad mounted warriors was a bad idea. They also learned they needed to act on a more united front against the lords from the west. The evolving of Turkish tactics became clear almost immediately when Stephen of Blois’ army was destroyed trying to take a Turkish outpost. The women and children in his contingent were massacred on sight. The surviving knights limped back to Constantinople. The hopes and dreams of the various princes of the west who attempted to expand the Christian frontier died in the deserts of the middle east. The Turks were masters of food and water logistics, something the crusaders proved shockingly terrible at managing. This disparity was made crystal clear during post-crusade military engagements. The myth of the invincible soldier of the Christ was shattered, sending thousands of pilgrims: prince and peasant alike, back to Europe bereft of money and dignity.
After these expansion expeditions failed din glorious fashion, simply holding on to what was already occupied in Syria and Palestine became the official military policy.
Outremer was small and narrow, roughly the size of England along the Mediterranean coast. There were few roads that brought you there. None of the citizens of the new states were crusaders, and few were western, making the political and economic realities of governance complex and extensive. They had virtually no police force to call on – for instance, before Godfrey died, at any given time he had only 300 knights and 200 infantry at his service in the event of a crisis. There was trouble in the royal palace too. Nearly every male line of the king failed repeatedly and quickly devolved into a level of bigamy and sleaziness that, well frankly, is very normal for the European aristocracy.
The rule of law was surprisingly Neapolitan. The Hospitallers would treat anyone no matter their race or religion. The courts of justice allowed for jurors to be Syrian or European, and each witness could swear upon the bible, Koran, or torah.
This instability of Outremer was the major deterrent to pilgrims – one never knew when one might arrive and find themselves pressed into military service against a Turkish army. This inherent military weakness forced the crusader states to sustain themselves with a strange mix of Franko-Norman feudalism, and constant diplomacy and negotiation with their Turk and Arab neighbors – sometimes even going to battle alongside one another. This realpolitik to governing Judea was abhorred by the new coming pilgrims from the west who believed the propaganda depicting an eastern Christendom digging in its heels and holding back the Islamic hordes.
Not unlike the Vikings centuries before in Europe, it was the Europeans in Judea who were enveloped into eastern society. Many married Muslims, blending language and creating new words with French and Arabic syllables – so much so that interpreters were only needed in official legal affairs. Yet Normans are still Normans and shall rule the Norman way. They established their dynastic territories, formed treaties with Muslim lords, and leveraged their friendship for material gain with the infidel.
This contentment with the enemy, combined with the political tolerance for Muslim and Jew led predictably to theological fissures between western nobles and Outremer Nobles. To the west, this crop of leadership seemed a far cry from those haughty conquerors barely a generation ago.
Yet the leadership of Outremer did acknowledge its lifeline was western tourism and Holy pilgrimage that flooded it with money and men. This transient existence in the long run hurt Outremer. Few of European descent were born and died in the Holy Land. There was very little of what we might call hometown pride. It was largely a population was on vacation. This is highlighted by the fact that during the entire 12th century, there was only one Latin bishop who could claim to be born in Judea.
The primary sphere were the Franks and the locals hit it off was in trade. From Tyerman:
Most evident is the degree to which the Franks in Outremer fitted into the Levantine economy, exporting dyes, luxury textiles, castor sugar and glassware and, increasingly, spices, while importing from Europe and Islamic neighbors such things as foodstuffs, metals, wood, and cotton. Outremer stimulated cross-Mediterranean commerce, in men and goods. By the 1160s, one Genoese notary was recording a higher value (almost double) in trade to Syria than to Alexandria, the greatest depot of the eastern Mediterranean. In return, the profits of commerce increasingly sustained the economy and finances of Outremer. Thus, it may have appeared to restless westerners that Outremer indeed promised a land of opportunity which its rulers and patrons of settlements struggled to realize.
The Latins had captured a gold mine. The problem was the people they captured it from still existed.
Going into the 1140s, there was a new Turkish leader on the scene named Imad al-Din Zengi. He was riding of wave of Islamic revivalism, fueled by the displaced Muslims from the crusader states that created a diaspora of their own. To cope with this loss, they turned to their culture of art, music, mythology, and religious zeal for solace. Islamic political unity and spiritual purity had come together into a movement. Zengi looked toward the County of Edessa as low hanging fruit. It was the least latinized and least populated of the four Christian states. He attacked and laid siege to it and brought it to its knees on Christmas Eve 1144. Muslim chroniclers mark this moment as the beginning of their jihad against the crusaders.
To western Europe, the message was clear. Islam was on the march. News reached the papacy in the autumn of 1145, but the response was muted. There had been crises before, and Rome, before reacting always had to consider how any action would be percieved by the Emperor of Byzantium.
The pope at this time was Eugenius III, and he had reason for caution. He had seen his predecessor killed in the streets and was nursing a still exiled papacy. Yet it seemed obvious to everyone that without western support, the Turks would continue to march on Outremer. Thus a call to arms seemed necessary, perhaps inevitable. So, Eugenius couched his request for what would come to be call the second crusade in a defense of Byzantium, in a bull on December 1st, 1145, called Quantum Praedecessores.
In it he recalled the heroic events of the first crusade, and of the new onslaughts of the Turks. He reiterated the papacy’s unilateral ability to expunge sins and offered this same deal to a new generation of crusaders, in particular to Louis VII, king of France. Added to these rewards was also the promise of Church protection of pilgrim’s property in their absence, and forgiveness of interest on loans. But Eugenius also emphasized the need for the Latin warrior class to maintain its status:
So that the dignity of the name of Christ may be enhanced… and your reputation for strength, which is praised throughout the world, may be kept unimpaired and unsullied.
Unbeknownst to Pope Eugenius, King Louis VII – energetic 25-year-old that he was, was already preparing to go on crusade any way. All that changed for him was the windfall of papal approval. Like any other French king before him, he had almost no control over his country. Crusading would allow the young king to centralize himself, placing his barons directly under his martial control. He also had some repair work to do in his relations with his countrymen and the Church. Louis already had his own citizen’s blood on his hands. Years earlier in a war against one of his barons, he burned down a church with 1500 people inside who were seeking refuge during the war. With this coming crusade, he would be the first Frankish king to go on foreign conquest in three centuries.
Another King who agreed to take up the cross, was Conrad III, King of Germany – he was not Holy Roman Emperor due to ongoing feuds with Rome, so he instead begrudgingly styled himself as King of the Romans – whatever that means.
An interesting difference already alluded to between the first and second crusade is papal involvement. Unlike Urban, Eugenius went on no speaking tours, and took virtually no ownership of the enterprise. Recruitment was put in the hands of a mystic abbot, co-founder of the Templars, and future saint – Bernard of Clairvaux. He was an obvious choice. He had a trusted relationship with the papacy and strong ties to the Holy Land. He was already famous through his wide network of Cistercians. With his blessing from the pope, he instantly became a staple of the second crusade recruitment process.
When St. Bernard came to town you wanted to be there – it was like a rock star had arrived and you couldn’t the once in a lifetime opportunity pass without hearing him. Towns and castles emptied to attend his sermons. And where he couldn’t travel, he would write – Brittany, England, Bavaria, Bohemia and more were inundated with his letters, encouraging pilgrims to once again take up the cross and defend their brothers holding the line against Islam. But what Bernard found was that despite his ability to draw crowds, there was virtually no popular support for another crusade when compared to the fervor in 1095. Remission of sins simply wasn’t worth the journey. So, St. Bernard amped up the rhetoric and added King Louis of France as his stagehand.
Together, St. Bernard and Louis, monk and king stood upon a platform in a field outside Vezelay, where Bernard is recorded to make the following remarks:
O ye who listen to me! Hasten to appease the anger of heaven, but no longer implore its goodness by vain complaints. Clothe yourselves in sackcloth, but also cover yourselves with your impenetrable bucklers. The din of arms, the danger, the labors, the fatigues of war, are the penances that God now imposes upon you. Hasten then to expiate your sins by victories over the Infidels, and let the deliverance of the holy places be the reward of your repentance.
Then it is said the crowd cried back, “Deus vult! Deus vult”, so loud that it echoed throughout the countryside. To which St. Bernard answered:
Cursed be he who does not stain his sword with blood.
To use the parlance of our times, the crowd went wild and enlisted in droves. When the organizers ran out of cloth to make crosses to sew on the pilgrims, Bernard is said to have taken off his own robe and tore it into strips to make more. Others did the same until they all had vowed to take up the cross.
St. Bernard’s words were designed to reach down into the soul of Norman heritage, to tap into the chivalric essence of the warrior class. He took St. Paul’s spiritual armor of God and turned it into a far more materially useful armor:
The knight who puts the breastplate of faith on his soul in the same way as he puts on a breastplate of iron on his body is truly intrepid and safe from everything… so forward in safety, knights, and with undaunted souls drive off the enemies of the Cross of Christ.
His recorded speeches and letter are full of this type of imagery. The result of his speaking tour had a achieved quite a remarkable thing – he had taken a generally disinterested Europe and incited them, with apparently convincing arguments based on new testament texts, to wage Holy War. His speeches of course fly in the face of not only the overall message and tone of the New Testament but also the words of Christ himself. Yet remember, most of the laity haven’t read scripture.
In Germany, Bernard ran into lack of zeal, as he did in France, but he also discovered another problem with recruitment… a shall we say, uniquely Rhineland problem – frothing hatred toward the Jews. When he preached of taking up the Cross to go kill the enemies of Christ, the response was the same as before, why not kill the enemies of Christ who live amongst us? Bernard’s answer was clear:
The Jews are not to be persecuted, killed, or even put to flight… The Jews are for us the living words of scripture, for they remind us always of what our Lord suffered… Under Christian princes they endure a hard captivity.
There was another recruiting monk in Germany named Radulf, who was one of the prime instigators of anti-Jewish sentiment and violence. More pogroms resulted. One Rabbi was found with the five wounds of Christ inflicted upon him. Force baptisms led yet again to suicides and murder. Another Jew who refused to forgo his faith was brought to a wine press and squeezed until his head fell was severed from his body.
St. Bernard stepped in quickly and publicly rebuked Radulf, which, due to the prestige of Bernard, thankfully ended Radulf’s recruitment career. Against anti-Jewish mobs, the bishops reacted with much greater force this time, establishing either military patrols to protect the Jews or granting them santuary in their palaces. In the end, as awful as this stuff is, it didn’t reach the scale of horror of the Rhineland massacres of 1096.
Kings Louis and Conrad were now ready to launch this second crusade. Louis held a grand ceremony to see he and his nobles upon the road. Conrad being over 50, named his son co-king, having doubts in his chances of returning alive.
Conrad would set our first in June of 1147. But Louis was on his heels with both armies planning to meet in Constantinople. Moral was high. The planning was thorough. Feelings of optimism and piety were everywhere in the common ranks. There was an air of professionalism in its organization. The kings offered stable, reliable leadership, and tons of cash. The routes for safe passage were personally negotiated by St. Bernard. And the entire endeavor had the full confidence of the pope.
The first sign of trouble occurred not in either of the kings’ armies, but in Spain. A contingent of sea born crusaders set sail with roughly 200 ships from England that were supposed to pass into the Mediterranean and meet the land-based armies on the coast of Palestine. As this contingent was navigating the Portuguese coast they ran into bad weather and decided to anchor in the city of Porto on June 16th – about the same time Conrad and Louis were began their march.
The local bishop recognized opportunity knocking on his door – here was an armada of crusaders, and he had an Islamic Moor problem on his hands. He convinced the maritime leadership, through promises of plunder to and lay siege to Lisbon and wrestle it from the Moors. And so, without permission from the pope, they did just that. By July, Lisbon was under attack.
Muslim artillery proved a formidable answer to crusader siege weaponry. The battle settled into a month’s long stalemate. Both sides began running out of food. Some of the deserters who left Lisbon in search of food and relief from the crusaders had their hands cut off and were turned away, or simply stoned to death – the unfortunate result of the type of animus that builds up during close, prolonged conflict.
By October, wall mining operations by the crusaders finally brought down part of the city defenses. Still the Moors defended their city to the death. Gruesome casualties mounted on both sides. Eventually the Moors could see the writing on the wall and asked to parley. But as the negotiation dragged on, the rank-and-file sailor and soldier began to get the sneaking suspicion their promises of plunder and booty were being bargained away – so a mutiny arose among the crusaders. To end the mutiny, the crusader leaders promised they would negotiate a “ordered plunder” of the city without bloodshed – the Moors had no choice but to accept the terms.
But the ordered plunder predictably descended into mayhem. Looting, rape, and outright pillaging ruled the day. The violence was senseless. A contemporary for the chaos recounted:
They ran hither and yon. They plundered. They broke down doors. They rummaged through the interior of every house. They drove the citizens away and harassed them improperly and unjustly. They destroyed clothes and utensils. They treated virgins shamefully. They acted as if right and wrong were the same. They secretly took away everything which should have been common property. They even cut the throat of the elderly Bishop of the city, slaying him against all right and justice.
Not even the bishop was spared. At the end of it all, with a ceremonial procession through the blood-stained city streets, Lisbon was reconsecrated to Christian rule.
By the time the siege was over, it was November. The crusader armada split a few different ways. Some went deeper into Portugal to conquer and settle. Some left immediately for the Holy Land in disgust. But most of them stayed put, content to spend the winter in Portugal. The Holy Land could wait.
In the contemporary context of the second crusade, the fall of Lisbon was seen as both irrelevant and a distraction. Tyerman points out that most of Europe ignored it ever happened. But armada’s presence in Judea would soon be missed.
King Conrad reached the edges of Byzantium on July 20th, 1147. His army had substantially larger retinues of noncombatants than the previous crusade army, and thus moved much slower – only 10 miles per day. But they also marched unopposed thanks to the organizational efforts of St. Bernard. Another notable difference was the leadership’s control of the men. Conrad was strict and disciplined and tried to keep his men from descending into plunder. He lost control of them in the Byzantine city of Philippopolis, where the Germans left behind a city strewn with corpses. Another violent outbreak of plunder broke out at Andrianopoulos, quelled only by a flash flood that struck the German camp, washing away their horses and provisions.
Despite his efforts of discipline, Conrad’s army was ill tempered and unruly by the time it reached Constantinople. Emperor Manuel understandably, had the Byzantine legions on full military alert. The threat of Latins sacking the enviable city, again hung heavy in the air. When news of the attacks by the German army reached Emperor Manuel, he was in the east giving battle to the Turks. He quickly signed a peace treaty and marched back to the defense of his capital city. Beyond the sacking of his towns to the west, he had other reasons to fear a Latin attack. Roger II of Sicily had recently began attacking Byzantine holdings. Roger and this new wave of Latin crusaders had a relationship way too close for comfort. A papal-Germanic-Franko-Sicilian alliance against Byzantium would be worse for him than the armies of Islam.
So, Manuel did what most Byzantine emperors do when a large Latin army arrives at Constantinople – he sailed them across the Bosporus as fast as possible. At this crossing, King Conrad made two decisions. He refused any alliance or treaty with the Byzantine Emperor, promising him nothing. And he refused to wait for the Frankish army, deciding instead to press on to Syria.
The Germans moved at a snail’s pace through Anatolia – a strategically stupid mistake. We’ve discussed the hazards of that peninsula before. Soon, the Germans were predictably running out of food and water. As their provisions decreased, Turkish skirmishers increased – testing the mettle of this new invasion force. On October 25th, the same day Lisbon fell far to the west, the Turkish army engaged the Germans in force. The fast-moving Turks on horseback had discovered that the unruly Christians were easily suspectable to being drawn out by feigned attacks. When this tactic worked yet again, a German cavalry contingent of knights found themselves utterly separated from the main army, leaving the infantry they were supposed to be protecting, dangerously exposed. Both wings were cut to pieces. Conrad ordered a general retreat to Nicaea, but the march was slow as they had to forage for food along the way. The stragglers were slaughtered where they stood, while volleys of arrows continually rained down on the main body. Finally, Conrad’s rearguard collapsed and rolled up, and the retreat turned into a rout. Turkish mounted archers raced and weaved around the lumbering German knights like stinging hornets. When it was all over, Conrad himself had two arrows stuck in his body. And his once grand army of 20,000 had been reduced to 2000.
Catching up to the Germans was the French army. Louis had made his way through Hungary rather peacefully by negotiating fair prices for his soldiers and safe passage. But when they reached Byzantium, the stress of the journey began to set in. Food ran out, so foragers were dispatched. But Byzantine mercenaries were ready for the foragers and cut the Franks down. Now, both Latin and Greek were increasingly regarding each other as hostile enemies, with heretical religious practices. The Frankish leadership began grumbling about forming an alliance with Roger of Sicily and making an attack Byzantium, just as Manuel had feared.
On October 4th the Franks reached Constantinople. Manuel knew his dangerous situation, and so instead of antagonizing Louis, he killed him with kindness by lavishing praise upon the young king. He gave him a personal guided tour through the enormous city, showing him all its relics and holy sites. Huge feasts were planned, including one to honor the feast day of the French saint Denis, at which, the emperor allowed for both Roman and Greek liturgical celebrations. For both groups, who considered each other at best schismatic, at worse, heretics, celebrating the Roman rite of Mass in Constantinople was a big deal.
Yet still there were many who desired to take the great city by force for the glory of the Roman Pontiff. The most aggressive in trying to convince Louis of this were of course his bishops. But he would have none of it. The young king kept his eye on the prize. They were marching to the relief of Edessa. But rumor of these plots reached the ears of Manuel, and so he resorted back to his old tactics. He told Louis that Constantinople was running out of provisions, and that the Germans were winning massive victories in the east and used these pretenses to shuttle the Franks across the Bosporus, avoiding, in his mind, an inevitable attack from the crusaders if they lingered. Upon leaving, Louis VII accepted the emperor’s terms of returning former Byzantium holdings.
After marching into Anatolia, the French camped at Nicaea. As they set out to leave Nicaea, under a partial eclipse in the sky, the ran into the fleeing, starving, broken, and terrified remnant of the German army.
The rest of the march through central Anatolia was precarious. Even though the Turks ruled this land, the populations that were still Greek were likewise hostile to this Latin army slowly looting their way through their cities. Feeling hungry, thirsty, outnumbered, and unwanted, dissertations were rampant. Finally, the army reached Ephesus, where they hoped to spend Christmas. When they arrived, King Conrad had fallen so ill that he had to be sent back to Constantinople for treatment where the emperor took the sickly into his house under the care of his personal physicians. This German king who had led one of the largest armies ever sent from the west, was now a sick and dying invalid in a foreign land.
Back in Ephesus, King Louis received intelligence that Turkish armies were marching through Anatolia, on the prowl for crucesignati. The young king was brave and undaunted, and willed the march to Edessa forward. As soon as he was out of sight of Ephesus, the Turks attacked, hoping to once and for all scatter the crusaders. But the French and Germans held their ground and beat back the Turks. King Louis was seen by his men as both brave and noble on crusade. He used money from his own coffers to care for the poor and injured. At the battle of Honaz, he found himself the only thing between attacking Turks and a group of noncombatants, so he led a charge against the oncoming enemy with his personal retinue. A chronicler recounts the scene:
During this engagement the king lost his small but renowned royal guard; keeping a stout heart, however, he nimbly and bravely scaled a rock by making use of some tree roots… The enemy climbed after, in order to capture him, and the more distant rabble shot arrows at him. But his breastplate protected him from the arrows, and to keep from being captured he defended the crag with his bloody sword, cutting of the heads and hands of many opponents in the process. Since they did not recognize him and felt that he would be too difficult to capture… the enemy thereupon turned back to collect the spoils before night fell.
That was written in the 12th century, but it’s hard not to let the mind’s eye put that into a Ridley Scott film.
After this near defeat at Honaz, Louis finally realized bravery is no substitute for experience, and handed martial control of his army over to the Templars. Under their leadership the French and Germans repelled four more intense Turkish attacks. Despite these victories they were now completely out of food, filling their bellies with only horse meat. The army arrived in Adalia, on the southern coast of modern-day Turkey, on January 20th, 1148. Adalia was a Byzantine city surrounded by enemies.
The peasants and low-level fighters who followed King Louis didn’t have much left in the gas tank. And his nobles weren’t in much better shape – financially destroyed from the whole affair – all their armor, horses, knights, and piles of equipment brought on campaign were gone. Again, King Louis pulled from his own pockets to keep as many afloat as he could. About fifty years ago, when the first crusaders were in nearly the same situation at nearly the same place, relief ships came ashore from the Mediterranean. Louis and Conrad had arranged for the same plan, but that relief fleet they needed was currently overwintering in Portugal.
The winter in Anatolia was brutal. They were constantly under attack by Turkish skirmishers. When a smattering of ships did arrive, King Louis was convinced that to carry on by land was futile. And so, with zero fanfare, he took his nobles and what knights he could fit and boarded a ship for Antioch. He left behind money for the care of the peasants and infantry – the bulk of the army, hoping that somehow, they would find passage back to Constantinople.
But remember, the low-level soldiers that made up the crucesignati were not politicians, or nobles vying for recognition. They were true believers in this cause. They were there to kill the infidels and free Edessa in exchange for eternal salvation. In the wake of being abandoned by their king, they decided they would rather die fighting their enemy on the field of battle instead of running and hiding or sitting in Adalia only to slowly succumb to starvation and famine. So, they, without their king marched out to meet the Turks, and were massacred. Anyone who survived the battle was either executed or sold into the abyss of slavery.
Christopher Tyerman, while reflecting on this event notes that the French, unlike the Germans were not defeated in battle, but defeated themselves due to poor planning and logistics, and poor help form the indifferent Greeks who didn’t ask for nor want this crusade. For the Latins, it was an unfolding disaster. For Islam, it was proof the west could be defeated.
King Louis and his small band of nobles landed at the port of St. Simeon in Antioch on March 19th, where Prince Raymond of Antioch, who was also the uncle of Louis’ wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, was waiting to greet the army-less king. After his arrival in Antioch, almost miraculously, late comers to the crusade began arriving and eager to get in on the fight against Islam. Conrad too had by this time recovered and put in port at Acre with a contingent of soldiers. And then finally, better late than never I suppose, came the English ships from Lisbon. All of the sudden, the crusader camp had swelled to tens of thousands strong – some sources say as many as fifty thousand – and further, the crusader leadership was still intact.
The problem now lay in how to attack Edessa. It was a huge region under firm control by the Turkish leader Nur al-Din. There was another reality too. While it was a Christian state it had very few actual Christians living there, they had all left when it fell. There was no one in Edessa who needed liberating.
Eleanor of Aquitaine, at the urging of her uncle Raymond, pressed her husband to march on Aleppo, and use that as a gateway to Edessa. Her insistence on this plan, that had very little strategic upside to it, was made mirky by the rumors that she and her uncle were involved in an affair. Historians generally regard the evidence of this credible, but not conclusive. And something did lead to their annulment four years later. All of this is to say, King Louis did not trust the intentions of the Aleppo plan and saw no benefits to it.
The teenaged king Baldwin of Jerusalem was urging King Louis to march on Damascus – an Islamic kingdom that had once been aligned with Jerusalem but recently switched sides after seeing which way the wind was blowing.
But King Louis could not wholly trust this council either. There was something of a civil war going on in Jerusalem during this time. King Baldwin’s mother was not yet ready to relinquish control of the kingdom to her son. And so, this historically predictably, incessantly repetitive, manifestly obvious, and catastrophic flaw in monarchal government had spit the entire kingdom of Jerusalem in two over nothing more than a minor family feud. King Baldwin had thought that a victory in Damascus would secure for him the military clout he needed to get out of the time out corner and show mommy who’s boss.
The Damascus plan did have practical reasons too. Its capture would actually protect and strengthen Jerusalem unlike Aleppo where al-Din’s main army would be encamped. It would also gain control of a large part of the desert that would protect it from attacks. Further, Jerusalem had allies on the inside. Having someone willing to open the gates is always a huge ace in the hole.
So, Damascus was decided upon, and the plan was speed. They wouldn’t waste time building siege weapons, and prepared little provisions. Shock and awe would, it was hoped, terrify the defenders into a quick surrender with little actual fighting. At this point, the second crusade just needed something they could call a win.
The army mustered at Tiberius in mid-July, and arrived at Damascus on the 24th, with it is said, possibly as many as 50,000 soldiers. But Damascus is huge. And after two days of skirmishing, they made no progress at penetrating the city walls, so they moved to what we would call the suburbs, hoping to find a weakness into the city from there. But without towers and catapults, the effort, to use Tyerman’s description was stillborn. And then, they received word that Nur al-Din was on his way with a relief army.
Out if fear, at dawn on July 28th, the retreat was sounded, and the crusaders marched back to Palestine, harassed by Turks the whole way. The siege had barely lasted four days. Both western and Muslim chroniclers acknowledge that this was easily the most humiliating defeat for the crusaders yet. They ran from a ghost in the desert while their army was still completely intact.
Naturally the leaders all began pointing fingers at one another. Accusations of betrayal were everywhere. King Conrad was furious at the whole debacle and tried to conceive plans to just march out and capture something. He called for a muster for an army to follow him, they were to meet at an appointed time and place… but no one showed up. And so, the aging German king finally abandoned the second crusade and prepared himself for his long journey back to his kingdom.
King Louis was nearly broke. He donated even more of his money toward the defense of Jerusalem and stayed through Easter of 1149. It could be said that when he returned to his throne he had a much closer relationship with the many princes of Europe, that might be called a win. However, despite his own demonstrable heroism, his legacy was now tarnished with cowardice.
As news of the disintegration of the second crusade made its way west, the reaction was a combination of shock and disgust. Many blamed the failure on the sinfulness of the crusaders themselves, that they had not the grace of God with them. The leadership bore the brunt of these accusations. Pope Eugenius called it “the most severe injury of the Christian name that God’s Church has suffered in our time”. One English apologist argued that the English contingent that took Lisbon was the best part of the entire effort. In the cold, calculating lens of geopolitics, he was right.
St Bernard of Clairvaux, the Pope’s energetic recruiter for the enterprise also blamed the failure on the sins of the crusaders, but also wrote a personal apology to Eugenius for his role in the endeavor.
A monk in Germany who personally witnessed the atrocities carried out against the Jews as the crusaders set out, scolded them all:
The preachers, pseudo-prophets, sons of Belial and witnesses of the Antichrist, who seduced the Christian with empty words.
The once silenced and loathsome critics of killing in the name of Christ had re-emerged. The notion of Holy War now a shattered stained-glass window in Christendom. Fewer pilgrims now made their way to Jerusalem, lest they get mixed up in some pointless war.
The fiasco of what came to be called the second crusade cast a long shadow over Europe. There was no appetite among the peasantry, the clergy, or the aristocracy to return. Regardless of Western disinterest, the Christian states of Outremer, seeing the coming tidal wave of Islamic military cohesion from the south and the east, had no choice but to petition them for aid. They soon realized the Holy Land was largely on its own.
Small private expeditions and pilgrimages occurred here and there for various reasons. The Byzantine emperor too would occasionally petition the Latins for a joint assault against the Turks, but support was nonexistent. Byzantium was now consistently losing battles and the Kingdom of Jerusalem was consistently losing alliances, which piled on to the growing western view that one was hopelessly weak, and the other hopelessly corrupt. When the patriarch of Jerusalem personally visited the west to garner military support for the Holy Land, he was brushed off as “all dangling jewelry and incense”. Holy war, as a model of warfare, appeared to be over.
One of my favorite movie quotes comes from the Big Lebowski, and if you are a convert from my other podcast Written in Blood, you know it’s one I often use. Sometimes there’s a man, and he’s the man for his time and place. The man we’re about to discuss was Kurdish by birth, born around 1137. His full name was Yusuf ibn Ayyub ibn Shadi, as he rose in prominence, he was given the epithet Salah ad-Din, which was soon latinized as Saladin.
He was originally a mercenary lieutenant for Nur ad-Din, leader of the Turks, and was sent to the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt to help ad-Din maintain power over them. Saladin’s career from here gets a bit complex from here but the long and short of it was that he travelled with his uncle, Asad al-Din Shirkuh who was able to exert control over the Fatimids. This Islamic unification to the north, east and south of Outremer represented a worst nightmare. So, King Almeric of Jerusalem attacked Egypt to break the alliance before it could solidify. The proceeding war resulted in Egypt owing tribute payments to Jerusalem as a protectorate. But then, King Almeric attacked again, desiring now to have utter control of Egypt. To win the war this time, Saladin’s uncle, Shirkuh had the Shia leadership assassinated and took control of Egypt for himself. By March of 1169, Shirkuh was dying from old age and left his newly usurped kingdom to his nephew, Saladin.
Saladin’s rule of Egypt was by no means secure. He reigned directly over a few thousand mercenaries, the recently acquired Fatimid armies. But his new kingdom was currently under attack by some 30,000 black infantry from Sudan. Yet, within a year Saladin had defeated the Sudanese, repelled King Almeric of Jerusalem by land and sea, and sent him packing back to Palestine. The factor of motivation, unification, zeal, and self-confidence that came to define Saladin’s forces was singular. He and his subordinates bred and trained his legions in traditional Islam. In 1170, Saladin went on the offensive. He took both Gaza on the Mediterranean coast, and Aila on the Red Sea from the Franks, and forced his control and influence into Arabia and Yemen. As this new sultan of Cairo grew in power and prestige, Nur al-Din began preparing to fight this mercenary upstart once subservient to him.
But on May 15th, 1174, before the two men could wage their war for control of the middle east, Nur al-Din dropped dead of a heart attack in Damascus. Then, on July 11th, King Almeric died of a fever in Jerusalem at 38 years old. By October, Saladin had entered the city of Damascus as ruler of Iraq, Syria, Arabia, and Egypt. His geopolitical and spiritual enemy, the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem was now in the hands of Almeric’s son, a 13-year-old boy, tormented with leprosy. Archbishop William of Tyre, and contemporary to these events wrote in no uncertain terms about the decisive and terrifying advantage Jerusalem’s enemies now had:
Now… all the kingdoms adjacent to us have been brought under the power of one man. Within quite recent times, Zengi… first conquered many other kingdoms by force and then laid violent hands on Edessa… Then his son, Nur al-Din, drove the king of Damascus from his own land… seized that realm for himself, and added it to his paternal heritage. Still more recently, the same Nur al-Din, with assiduous aid of Shirkuh, seized the ancient and wealthy kingdom of Egypt as his own… Thus… all the kingdoms round about us obey one ruler, they do the will of one man, and at his command alone, however reluctantly, they are ready, as a unit, to take up arms for our injury. Not one among them is free to indulge any inclinations of his own or may with impunity disregard the commands of his overlord. This Saladin… a man of humble antecedents and lowly station, now holds under his control all these kingdoms, for fortune has smiled too graciously upon him.
If you were to take out a map of Saladin’s kingdom at this time, the coastal land bridge that connected the two lungs of Saladin’s empire and happened to contain the most consequential city in all of history, was Frankish Outremer.
To make matters worse, Frankish Outremer was a corrupt mud swamp. Saladin’s rise coincided with a political low point for Jerusalem. Its recent kings were various combinations of bigamists and war mongers, and all wildly unpopular. Their defensive strategy was a series of truces with Islamic warlords prowling on their borders – it became a game of how much money could the Christians pay to not be attacked. This naturally created perpetual state of bankruptcy, which prevented reinvestments infrastructure and defense. The Templars and Hospitallers had by now devolved into real estate empires. In Caesarea alone the military orders owned over half of the landed property. Nearly every Castle in Outremer was their collective property. In response to this desperate situation, the only thing the kings new how to do was to raise taxes.
Archbishop William of Tyre, who we just quoted, was a tutor to the new boy-king of Jerusalem. Christopher Tyerman wrote that of all the chronicles and contemporary writings on the crusades, the most haunting are the archbishop’s writings on the life of Baldwin IV. It was under his tutelage that the symptoms of leprosy first appeared, but they were not officially diagnosed until after he was made king at the age of 13. You get the sense when you read about Baldwin IV, his demeaner and philosophical nature, that if there was a king that Jerusalem needed, it was him.
The leper king, as he came to be called, increasingly crippled and maimed form his terrible disease, had to face down one of the most powerful Islamic rulers to date, with scant resources. It is an inherent and systemic weakness in European monarchy that a king has little direct control over his barons and knights. Baldwin at any given time could call on around 700 knights, 700 templars, and maybe 5000 troops from the towns, but this would leave his kingdom completely open to invasion. Mercenaries existed, but they were expensive, and Jerusalem was out of money anyway.
Vultures circled in and around Baldwin’s court knowing his reign would be short-lived. The path to the throne for ambitious Christian nobles was through his sister Sybil. Most were not so secret in vying for her hand in marriage. The resulting amoral sleazy contest would have beaten out any series of the bachelorette in ratings. It’s complex and hard to follow. I had to chart the relationships to get any sort of basic handle on it all. But it can be boiled down into a couple of rival factions. Some wanted a decisive pitched battle against Saladin. Some wanted Sybils hand in marriage. Some had decided to completely abandon Outremer for the hopeless rat’s nest that it was. These factions were not static and crossed interests and familial relationships when convenient. Tyerman sums up King Baldwin’s court nicely when he calls it “fluid self-interest”.
But political intrigue had to wait for the moment. Saladin was on the march, and he had detected that Jerusalem was weak, ripe for an attack. But the leper king, at the age of 16, personally led an army out to meet him. It was by all appearances the foolhardy move of a novice military brat in over his head. The exact numbers are hard to ascertain for certain, but historians think Baldwin had maybe three or four thousand troops, while Saladin had over 20,000. The two armies clashed on November 25th, 1177, in what would be called the battle of Motgisard. Under the surprisingly lucid leadership of Baldwin the Jerusalem army routed the Muslims, rolling them up almost immediately. When Saladin’s army turned and fled, the Christians pursued them for 12 miles. Saladin survived and escaped to Cairo on December 8th, with only a tenth of his army left. Baldwin, for the short time he had left on this earth, proved far more capable than Saladin, or any of his contemporaries gave him credit for.
Despite the military successes of Baldwin IV, the suiters after his throne were on the on the verge of a military overthrow of his kingship if he did not appoint an heir – the poor, suffering young man was just taking too damn long to die. And so, at last Baldwin chose the newly arrived Guy of Lusignan his sister’s hand in marriage.
By June of 1183 Saladin had reconsolidated his forces and was on the March again in earnest. Baldwin, anticipating an attack sent his army out to muster in a show of force. But the leper king fell seriously ill, and feeling as if death was imminent, he gave the regency of his kingdom temporarily over to his new brother-in-law, Guy.
The Christian muster reached numbers that surprised Saladin, and the Sultan feared he may be outnumbered. But the Christian generals feared Saladin’s army too, so both forces played coy, shadowing each other without engaging in combat. At the end of it all, nothing happened. Baldwin was furious and revoked Guy’s regency, who took the blame for not using the massive muster to attack and destroy their great enemy. Baldwin then transferred the regency to his sister’s son with her first husband, now Guy’s stepson and gave command of his armies to Raymond of Tripoli. Guy was publicly shamed, and worse, entirely bereft of any chance of inheriting the throne of Jerusalem. He then lodged himself in his castle and brooded over the judgement of the half paralyzed, mostly blind, dying king.
On May 16th, 1185, Baldwin IV finally succumbed to his lifelong disease. Sybils son, another Baldwin, was now King, and only around eight years old. Raymond of Tripoli was named regent over the kingdom. But the young boy died within a year of taking the throne of unknown causes. His mother Sybil then took the crown and named her disgraced husband Guy of Lusignan as king of Jerusalem.
Count Raymond of Tripoli despised Guy, and refused to acknowledge him as king, probably also feeling passed over for the same crown Guy now bore. And so, in an act that borders on something akin to treason, Raymond signed a separate peace treaty with Saladin to protect his realm north of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and essentially revoking any willingness to aid the king.
Outremer in general had a temporary truce, ironically negotiated by Raymond and Saladin during his regency, that was set to expire a week after the coming Easter of 1187. Saladin had no intention of restoring it. He could smell Christian blood in the water.
King Guy had little skill for leadership, many of the counts and barons recognized this about him. The way he had led the army in the past in addition to his path to the throne left almost no one in Outremer with any sense of loyalty to him. This was exasperated by his behavior of promoting himself with kingly pomp rather than paying attention to the defense of the holy land. When it became obvious to everyone that a campaign by Saladin was imminent, Guy knew he had to swiftly reconcile with Raymond of Tripoli, who controlled Galilee. If Raymond allowed Saladin to march through his lands, the West bank and coastal plains would fall, leaving the Kingdom of Jerusalem completely unprotected. Thus, King Guy, a day late and a dollar short sent delegations to the disgruntled count.
During all this, Saladin’s son led a force of 7000 soldiers through Raymond’s territory toward Nazareth, and though Raymond was in the best situation to confront this expeditionary force, Nazareth itself was technically outside of his territory, and so he let them pass, so as not to break his truce with Saladin. The terrified locals at Nazareth called on the Templars and Hospitallers for aid, and in an act of incredible and legendary act of chivalric bravery, they defenders came, but were only a few hundred mounted knights against 7000. Gerard of Ridefort led the Templars. Roger of Moulins led the Hospitallers. Another knight, Balian of Ibelin was a day behind them after trying to make peace with Raymond of Tripoli.
On May 1st, 1187, Gerard and Roger found the 7000 forces lead by Saladin’s son and charged them head on. The battle of Cresson commenced. It was brave, but hopeless. Roger, leader of the Hospitallers was killed, along with nearly everyone else. Only Gerard and three or four knights survived. By the time Balian could have arrived to help, it was all over. Saladin’s troops put the dead Frankish soldiers’ heads on spears and carried them ahead of their march.
The fallen knights became instant martyrs in living memory. Both Christian and Muslim chroniclers note that after the tragedy of Cresson, nearly every noble in Outremer turned against Raymond of Tripoli. Even the count’s own subordinates were blaming him personally for the disaster. The tragedy worked in favor of Guy. It wasn’t long before Raymond officially severed his ties with Saladin and returned his support back to the King of Jerusalem. Cresson was now a Christian rally cry. Nearly every soldier from as far and Tripoli and Antioch came now to the protection of Jerusalem. At first muster, Guy had somewhere around 1200 mounted knights, and nearly twenty thousand infantry. Saladin mustered his forces at the south end of the Sea of Galilee with about 30,000 strong.
After marching out to meet Saladin, and just like four years earlier, Guy was weary of committing to pitched battle. Saladin tried drawing him out with raiding parties and detachments from the main army, but Guy wouldn’t bite. Finally, Saladin sent a force to take the city of Tiberius, currently under rule of Raymond’s wife. Guy, likely out of fear of being accused of inaction, and preserving his friendly relations with Raymond, marched to the relief of Tiberius on July 3rd.
The march was slow, and lumbering in the desert heat under with heavy armor, and constantly needing to stop at known springs to rehydrate. Nonetheless Saladin had reason to fear Guy’s army. It was formidably large and well-seasoned, so he broke off his siege on Tiberius to turn and face Guy head on. Saladin attacked Guy’s rear guard and right flanks, causing them to roll up. The Christian leadership waivered and fled. They regrouped and camped at Maskana, an arid plateau overlooking the sea of Galilee. They were exhausted, out of water, and had no idea how large the enemy’s strength was. Their spirits were beginning to break.
On the morning of July 4th, 1187, Guy’s army awoke to find itself surrounded by Saladin’s. Their only hope of survival was to break through Saladin’s lines and race for the fresh water of the Sea of Galilee. Raymond was the first to launch an assault, and what happened next could be either confirmation of Raymond’s treachery or brilliant psychological warfare by Saladin. He opened his lines and let Raymond’s contingent pass unscathed. The rest of the Christian army seethed at this apparent act of friendship.
For the rest caught in his trap, Saladin showered them with arrows and set brush fires all around them. The Franks formed up and regrouped upon a dramatic and strange geological feature called the Horns of Hattin – twin extinct volcanic peaks that formed a high plateau capped with ancient bronze and iron age ruins sinking into the sands. It was a defensible position, but like the Alamo, it was one from which there was no escape.
Guy and his franks fought on in desperation, hoping for a miracle from God that never came. Guy himself launched a last desperate charge but was beaten back. Saladin’s own son recounts this pivotal charge by the king:
When the king of the Franks was on the hill with that band, they made a formidable charge against the Muslims facing them, so that they drove them back to my father. I looked towards him and he was overcome by grief and his complexion pale. He took hold of his beard and advanced, crying out "Give the lie to the Devil!" The Muslims rallied, returned to the fight, and climbed the hill. When I saw that the Franks withdrew, pursued by the Muslims, I shouted for joy, "We have beaten them!" But the Franks rallied and charged again like the first time and drove the Muslims back to my father. He acted as he had done on the first occasion and the Muslims turned upon the Franks and drove them back to the hill. I again shouted, "We have beaten them!" but my father rounded on me and said, "Be quiet! We have not beaten them until that tent falls." As he was speaking to me, the tent fell. The sultan dismounted, prostrated himself in thanks to God Almighty, and wept for joy.
The bishop of acre, in possession of what was said to be a relic of the true cross was killed in the melee. The Christians watched has Saladin’s army took ownership of the relic, affixed it upside down upon a lance, and carried it behind enemy lines. This event was the nail in the coffin for Christian moral. God, it seemed to them, was not on their side. When Saladin’s lieutenants finally entered the Christian camp, they found Guy, his knights and nobles slumped on the ground in despair.
The bulk of the low-level infantry were herded off to the slave markets. 200 or so Templars and Hospitallers were summarily executed. Saladin had captured the head of the Jerusalem snake – Guy and his top lords were taken prisoner.
To commemorate his victory over the infidels Saladin had a dome constructed upon the Horns of Hattin. But there was another monument to his victory, one more macabre. A year after the battle of Hattin, an Islamic historian travelled to see the old battlefield. Coming upon it, he saw:
The land all covered with bones, which could be seen even from a distance, lying in heaps or scattered around.
Hattin was the first domino. Next, Tiberias fell, then Acre after it. Over the next two months, most of southern Outremer and all its ports fell to Saladin. On September 20th, 1187, Saladin surrounded Jerusalem.
There was no army and no king to defend the city. They had all been captured or killed at Hattin. Jerusalem was completely unprepared for a siege. Patriarch Heraclius, archbishop of Caesarea was technically in charge, but with him was Balian, recently from Tyre, and late comer to the battle of Cresson. Being one of the only knights left alive, Balian was given martial control of Jerusalem. There was minor resistance against the siege, but that proved futile almost immediately. So the Christian citizenry was ordered to due public penance for their sins, praying for God’s mercy, as well as Saladin’s. Balian then moved to negotiations with the Islamic leader.
What’s fascinating is that Balian already had friendly relations with Saladin. Saladin had earlier allowed him safe passage into the Holy City so that he may retrieve his wife and children, so long as he agreed to leave the city immediately afterward. When Balian decided to break his agreement and stay to assist with whatever Jerusalem needed, he sent a message to Saladin, letting him know he had decided to break his agreement. Saladin replied that he understood, and even arranged an escort to ensure Balian’s family safe passage to Tripoli. This, to me stands out as a remarkable moment of decency in a decidedly indecent time and place where the stakes really couldn’t be higher for either side, and both have fought bloody wars over issues of cosmological significance.
Perhaps, it’s as simple as both men knowing that the war was already over. Balian had no hope of defending the city, no swelled with refugees from Saladin’s campaigns, and more arriving every day. In the entire city, Balian had less than twenty knights.
In the end, he negotiated for the city to be relinquished to Saladin peacefully. In exchange, Saladin agreed that almost all its inhabitants would be allowed leave with their lives so long as they pay the sultan a ransom made from the melted gold and silver of the Christian churches, and their own pockets.
On October 2nd, the doors to Jerusalem were opened by the Latins. The queen, Sybil was allowed to leave with her entire retinue. Saladin even guaranteed her safe passage to visit her husband in his captivity. The rest of the women were let go without having to make any ransom at all. Saladin’s own brother took pity on the miserable Christians. Upon seeing over a thousand in captivity that Saladin for whatever reason decided would not be freed, his brother asked them to be transferred as slaves to him as payment for his military service. Upon receiving the would-be slaves, Saladin’s brother immediately released them, and let them go.
Patriarch Heraclius asked Saladin to release another 700 in his captivity, and Balian petition for 500 more. Saladin granted both of their requests, releasing them all. Any of the elderly who could not pay a ransom were freed immediately and allowed to leave the city. This peculiar conqueror of Jerusalem further provided military escorts ensuring the Christian caravans made their way to safety. Saladin did some captives who could not pay him ransom – it’s hard to say exactly how many, but how different is this from what could have been? What would have been the historical norm we’ve now seen countless times? Saladin was keenly aware of his benevolence, and in fact reminded the Christian leadership of this fact. He recalled to their memories the mass butchery and beastly slaughter his own people suffered at the hands of the crusaders when they conquered this same city, 88 years ago.
At taking possession of Jerusalem, Saladin ordered the Church of the Holy Sepulcher closed while he decided what should be done with it. Some of his advisors argued he should destroy it and end Christian interest in the city. Others argued the Christians would still come regardless. After three days, he allowed the church to reopen, and declared that he had no desire to prevent Christian pilgrimages to the sacred site.
Naturally, with new rulers yet again, change did come to Jerusalem. The cross the Franks had put on the Dome of the Rock, an old Islamic Mosque, was removed, and the Mosque restored to its original use. The Church of St. Anne was converted into an Islamic seminary. The Latin clergy was expelled. Islamic calls to prayer resumed across the city as every mosque was ritually purified with rose water. Their Christian furnishings were replaced with oriental rugs. The walls were re-adorned with texts from the Koran. Native Orthodox and Syriac Christians were allowed to stay, free to practice their faith. The Coptic Christians along with other local branches, who were considered heretics, barred from entering the city, were now allowed entry without paying any fees or tithes. Saladin considered these people his subjects and returned to them their Churches once robbed from them by the Latins.
Byzantine Emperor Isaac Angelus sent a message to Saladin, congratulating him on his victory, and requested that all the Orthodox churches in the city be reverted to Orthodox care, and that the ceremonies therein returned to the Eastern Orthodox Liturgy, and further, that all Christian affairs be transferred to the jurisdiction of the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople. Saladin agreed to it all. Before long he carried a new epithet, the Restorer of the World and Faith.
News of the fall hit western Europe like a lightning bolt. One, probably apocryphal claim is that upon hearing of the loss of Jerusalem Pope Urban III instantly died.
The news of the collapse of the Kingdom of Jerusalem did not, like after the second crusade expose already festering attitudes of apathy towards the east, instead, at the direction of the papacy of course, it shocked the west into action. As soon as October of that same year, the new pope Gregory VIII issued a bull called Audita Tremendi, authorizing yet another expedition to Judea, guaranteeing again all the usual conditions of remission of sins. But this time, he commanded the ‘whole Christian people’ to take up the cross in defense of that land from which ‘our salvation and truth arose from earth”. To quote Christopher Tyerman’s summation of the latest call to the holy land:
After forty years of complacency, indifference and lip-service, Christendom’s response to Gregory’s call was overwhelming.
This new crusade was put into clear context by Pope Gregory VIII. It was in no uncertain terms a call to religious revival. The business of the cross was discussed with clear communication and tones of professionalism yet unseen in the crusades. The preaching was even more tightly monitored and coordinated under the direction of the papacy. New taxes, specifically called the Saladin tax were levied in both France and England. Massive sea fairing transportation contracts were negotiated. The experienced western military nobles devoted their time to deeper strategic understanding of eastern conquest. And, in a demand indicative of a new plane of political power from Gregory VII to Gregory VIII, as well as the beginning transformation from kingdoms to nation-states, the pope asked for and received new legal distinctions between pilgrim and crucisignatus – between peaceful travelers, and armed conquerors. The latter, who once enjoyed spiritual prominence and respect, now found themselves enjoying new temporal legal status in society. Bear arms for the pope and never pay taxes again.
By Christmas of the same year that Saladin had taken Jerusalem, European nobility was fully anticipating and preparing for a new crusade. Sicily was already pulling the anchors on a fleet of 200 ships to secure the Mediterranean coast ahead of the armies.
By March, Holy Roman Emperor, and veteran of the second crusade, Frederick Barbarossa had taken up the cross. Following his leadership, King Henry II of England and King Phillip of France also signed up. In witness of the Bishop of Tyre they agreed at least temporarily, to put down their wars with each other and march to Judea. With these three kings, would follow nearly every count and duke of Europe.
The coordinated marketing and preaching propaganda efforts from the papacy were wildly successful, with tens of thousands taking up the cross from Germany to the Atlantic in just a few months’ time, all committing themselves to taking back Jerusalem. There were even stories of monks catching crusading fever, throwing off their dull robes in exchange for mail and swords.
While not to minimize whatever newfound filial piety the kings had toward the pope, as always, crusading carried political benefits. Emperor Barbarossa had a block of disloyal dukes that he had been contending with. The spiritual commitment of taking up the cross brought many to heel, but not all. When given the choice of following the emperor to the holy land or exile, at least one chose exile. Problem solved.
Henry II of England thought taking up the cross would allow him to exert what he considered his natural authority over the rebellious Welsh. He offered to settle their ongoing border disputes with them if they marched under his banner to Jerusalem. The Welsh flatly refused, leading to their excommunication by the Bishop of Canterbury.
For Phillip II of France, his dukes under his reign were, as always, famously unwieldy. Crusading would bring the dukes under his direct military authority, but leaving France also carried risk of losing lands to opportunistic nobles.
It should be noted that the opposition movement against the crusades had reached the highest levels of the aristocracy. Up until the fall of Jerusalem, King Henry II of England was one of the strongest opponents of calls to the east. This apprehension was partly due to the innate and growing English disdain for the increasing power and influence of the papacy. The English were not entirely convinced of this novel concept of papal supremacy, and King Henry himself spoke against the propaganda put forward by the Church and the Byzantines:
These clerks can incite us boldly to arms and danger since they themselves will receive no blows in the struggle, nor will they undertake any burdens which they can avoid.
Even William Marshal, arguably the most famous knight in history and known for his legendary, and almost superhero qualities of chivalry, opted to avoid Holy War altogether. Many contemporary English chroniclers shared these views to, dispensing open hostility the calls of the papacy, accusing the office using blood to fulfill mere political ambitions. Growing doubt can be found France too, with chroniclers questioning conquest to the east, doubting whether they carried any spiritual benefit at all.
In the norther kingdoms of Denmark and Norway, where there was no affection for the bishop of Rome, no real acknowledgment of earlier doctrines of papal supremacy over their kingdoms, and no prior interest in crusading at all, the propaganda failed entirely. For the third crusade, the recruitment effort was largely built upon the foundation of preexisting familiarity with the Holy Land, Holy War and diplomatic proximity to the papacy.
From Tyerman:
While the impact of the preaching of the third crusade was spectacular, it presumed prior acceptance of the message being promoted. Preaching provided ceremonial confirmation of pledges already agreed and created the conditions in which preparation, planning and recruitment could be achieved with maximum public consent. Preaching rarely created a spontaneous response. By taking the cross the crucesigntatus not only acquired exemptions from repayment of debts, paying the crusade tax and answering certain lawsuits but also gave a solemn promise to fulfil the vow, in theory enforceable through canon law. The high chances of death on crusade and the need to convert income into capital, commonly through sale or mortgage of property, required careful consideration and consultation not least with other family members. Conjugal rights also could not, in theory, be ignored nor the very real dangers to life, limb and possessions to which abandoned crusader’s wives, widows and heiresses were liable. Numerous uplifting moral anecdotes, known as exempla, concerned the obtaining of family agreement before the irrevocable adoption of the cross. On a social as well as political level, the crusade sermon, and the ritual of giving the Cross constituted an act of recognition as much as inspiration.
These ceremonies, just as before, took place after the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, after reliving Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross, with the relics of saints and martyrs looking on. Other, more provocative imagery was used was used as propaganda, such as an Arab striking the face of Christ, or a Muslim cavalrymen’s horse urinating on the Holy Sepulcher. These images, when discovered by Muslim chroniclers were understandably quite offended considering the unique and friendly treatment the Christian faith received in the wake of its recent defeat.
The growth in centralized stately power of the late 12th century monarchs is one of the key influences on the financial organization of the third crusade, but they still had little coercive military power. Thus, any support of subjects had to be met with mutual benefit. The biggest rub for Europeans during recruitment was, predictably, the Saladin tax. It was immensely unpopular. A crucesignatus, as I mentioned was exempt, but most of the crusaders were rich enough to afford it anyway. Popular peasant and low-level aristocratic outcry against it were so strong in France that Phillip was forced to revoke it in exchange for mobilization of his country. In England, during all this planning, before the crusade march began, the royal landscape changed significantly. By July of 1189, Henry II of England was dead, succeeded by his quick-tempered son Richard, who inherited an impressively centralized throne, well-oiled military recruitment apparatus, and an armada of ships ready to sail.
The efforts of these burgeoning nations of Europe had completed the most comprehensive military recruitment campaign in history, one that would not be matched again until World War I. They were now ready to march once again upon the Holy Land, to bring the full ironclad military might of the west against Saladin. It would come to be known as the King’s Crusade.
If you were to look at a map of the planned routes of the kings, it would reveal a terrifying scenario for Saladin. Two marches by land and one by sea, plus various smaller continents and reinforcements all converging on Acre. The first king to set out was Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.
Tyre was the last significant city in the holy land under Frankish control. Saladin had tried to take it, and probably would have without the arrival of Barbarossa’s cousin, Conrad of Montferrat. Though he only had a single ship of knights, he possessed a General Patton-esque character of leadership and resolve. Arriving in Tyre, Conrad found the remnants of the Outremer army preparing to surrender to Saladin. It is recorded that when he took command of the city, he threw Saladin’s banners into a ditch and forced all the inhabitants to swear loyalty to him. Dramatic? Yes. Apocryphal? Maybe. Its tough to say when coming from the mouths of friendly chroniclers. Something caused Saladin’s assault on Tyre to stall, which allowed new men from the west to begin arriving with ever increasing numbers and never before seen resolve.
Saladin’s reconstitution of Islamic control over the holy land was still patchy. He may have captured castles and cities, but the larger regions were full of people now three generations of western pilgrims intermingled with Syrian farmers. Customs and traditions were blended. Loyalties were… uncertain. Western friendly inhabitants who otherwise spoke Arabic were now using their cultural ambiguity to actively delay and confound Saladin’s troops. The sultan’s benevolent pragmatism was now seen as a liability and miscalculation. An Iraqi contemporary blamed him specifically for letting the Christians regroup at Tyre.
These complicating factors for Saladin, multiplied a thousand times over all the holy land resulted in a single truth obvious even to his own chroniclers, his army was stretched.
In August of 1189, Saladin received word that Guy of Lusignan had broken his sworn oath and condition of his freedom by reentering the fight. He had mustered an army and was marching towards Acre, the same destination as the crusader armies from the west. Acre was not only was it the richest port on the Palestinian coast, it was Saladin’s main garrison town and largest weapons depot. It was startling news for the sultan, who was engaged in other fights at the moment, and would have trouble responding quickly.
Guy’s decision to march south to Acre was not without danger. He was a king without a kingdom or much support. While in Tyre, he demanded to take kingship over the city, but it was denied by Conrad. The Templars sided with Guy. The Hospitallers sided with Conrad. His position was weak. His army was small. Acre, on the other hand was a massive walled city with an enormous garrison. And if Saladin decide to attack, which we definitely would, Guy will find himself caught between the stone walls of Acre, and the full force of Saladin’s army. The confidence with which Guy marched to Acre seems to suggest that he knew legions of westerners were on their way to the same city, but historians can’t confirm that he knew anything of their plans. Whether Guy knew it or not, his army constituted the vanguard of a full-scale invasion force. He arrived outside the walls of Acre on August 28th, 1189. By the end of September, detachments had arrived from Germany, France, and England.
Saladin chose not to attack the growing army immediately. The Christians had already attempted to assault the walls once and failed. He had confidence that the defenses he built at Acre would hold. This, he thought, would by him time to fully muster, calling to him all his troops from his vast kingdom. Guy's army circled in Acre, and Saladin’s army circled in Guy. Despite this attempted pinch, by October, Guy’s forces had swelled to a formidable 30,000 strong.
Sensing a tip in military balance, Guy attacked Saladin on the plains of Acre. It was a bloody battle, leaving thousands dead on both sides. The Christians were ultimately beaten back, but the heaps of rotting corpses began spreading disease across both camps. Saladin, always wary of pitched battles anyway, withdrew to wait for reinforcements. Over the next few weeks, both armies continued to grow. Then, almost anachronistically, something like trench warfare settled in, with the French digging huge ditches and ramparts around their camp, while skirmishes broke out in no-man’s land between the camps. From both disease and battles of attraction, low moral began to set in amongst the Christian ranks.
A contemporary at the siege of Acre recounts:
The Turks were a constant threat. While our people sweated away digging trenches, the Turks harassed them in relays incessantly from dawn to dusk. So, while half were working the rest had to defend them against the Turkish assault… while the air was black with pouring rain of darts and arrows beyond number or estimate… Many other future martyrs and confessors of the Faith came to shore and were joined to the number of faithful. They really were martyrs: no small number of them died soon afterwards from the foul air, polluted with the stink of corpses, worn out by anxious nights spent on guard, and shattered by other hardships and needs. There was no rest, not even time to breathe. Our workers in the trench were pressed ceaselessly by the Turks who kept rushing down on them in unexpected assaults. The Turks reduced them to exasperation before the trench was eventually before the trench was eventually finished.
In previous crusades, the Mediterranean fleets played a relatively small role, but now they were everything. Not only did they keep the ports open, but they were delivering men by the thousands. Off the planks of these ships stepped the nobility of Europe – first the bishops, followed by the cousins and brothers of kings.
Saladin was also in an increasingly dangerous situation. As the Christian ranks swelled with more and more nobility, he knew soon the kings of Europe would be upon him with their hosts of soldiers. But received a stroke of luck. His Egyptian fleet arrived not a moment too soon and blockaded Acre’s coast from the western ships.
Then winter set in. The Christians, blocked in by sea and land, began running out of food and showing signs of weakness. Still Saladin still did not attack, drawing the ire of his contemporaries. As winter boredom took over both sides, we begin to get bizarre stories of inter-army fraternization. There are accounts of both Christian and Muslim inviting each other to dinner parties, exchanging views, singing, dancing, and playing games. There was also interaction on a more carnal level. The Christian camp had a sizeable red-light district, something strictly forbidden in the Muslim camp. One of Saladin’s secretaries notes his annoyance that Christian prostitutes were so often visited by Islamic soldiers.
Guy, realizing his lifeline was being strangled by the Egyptian fleet, made amends with Conrad up in Tyre. And on March 25th, as the weather was improving, just before easter, Conrad arrived with a fleet of his ships and broke the Egyptian blockade, delivering fresh food, equipment and men.
By April 28th, the Christian camp had completed three siege towers and was reinvigorated with hope. They renewed their attack on Acre hoping to finally take it down. Saladin, in turn launched a fresh attack on the Christians to stifle their efforts. After a week of fighting, the assault ended in failure. The siege engines were set on fire by the enemy. Acre still stood.
Then on July 25th a small skirmish broke out while intending to roll up a Muslim flank. The operation deteriorated into a full-scale battle between both armies. The Christian lords lost control of their forces, and by the end of it 5000 Christians were dead. Blame was laid upon the low-level knights unwilling to follow orders. These knights responded by accusing their lords of cowardice. It was beginning to look like the siege of Acre would soon be over. But three days after this catastrophe, an enormous crusader fleet arrived under the command of Henry II of France, Count of Champaign – one of the wealthiest nobles in all of Europe, and nephew of both the kings of France and England. Henry brought with him partially fabricate siege weapons and massive quantities of men. Christian moral swelled around the arrival of this extravagantly wealthy noble – effectively ending any command King Guy had over the siege.
Saladin now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that more French would be arriving, followed by the English, followed by the Holy Roman Emperor arriving from the north by land. He was very soon going to be facing a war on two fronts.
As Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa was de facto military leader of the third crusade. His presence repaired decades long disputes with the papacy. He occupied many of the papal states and was potential heir to Sicily. The pope had no choice but to respect this prestige. Frederick traveled with a copy of the account of the first crusade in his pocket, written by Robert of Rheims. He was idealistic yet determined to avoid the errors of his predecessors. His army was well funded, well organized, and gigantic, with some 20,000 knights and 80,000 infantry. It was said that it took this army some three days just to pass a single point, and only travelling by land because it was too big to go by sea.
Barbarossa kept strict control of his army. He was severe with discipline against disorderly conduct and installed a regimental judicial system allowing for commanders to dish out justice for the crimes of their subordinates. Any looting or theft was met with either the loss of one’s hands, or head. Any undesirable elements, such as prostitutes, were strictly forbidden, giving Barbarossa’s army a reputation for order and piety.
He raised small taxes on the Jews to help fund the endeavor but successfully prevented any pogroms or riots against them. When passing through a city with a Jewish quarter, Frederick was sure to ride down its streets with a rabbi at his side as a message to his own men.
Barbarossa was a thoughtful diplomat too. He travelled through Hungary with a negotiated delivery of provisions, equipment, and access to markets. But navigating the politics of Byzantium would still be challenging for any crusader army. The schism between east and west was all but calcified now. And the Latins were sick and tires of Greek apathy toward the Holy Land.
The political situation in Constantinople at this point was a trainwreck anyway. Emperor Isaac Angelus came to power through a bloody mob. His predecessor was a murderous usurper of the same throne. Further, Isaac was on friendly terms with Saladin, and kept the Sultan abreast of the Latin army’s movements. When German envoys arrived at Constantinople ahead of Barbarossa, they found Saladin’s envoys already there. The Germans envoys were thrown in prison.
As Frederick inched closer to Constantinople, his army began suffering attacks form Byzantine skirmishers. At first it appeared random, then is seemed peculiar, then it was clearly intentional. Reaching the Byzantine city of Sophia on August 13th, 1189, Frederick found the promised markets closed, and his route fortified against him. But the behemoth of the Holy Roman Empire would not be stopped. It muscled its way through all Isaac could throw at it. Then he reached Philippopolis on August 24th, the Germans found the city completely abandoned on imperial orders, and its defense destroyed. Soon after, Barbarossa learned of his ambassadors’ imprisonment. He had now substantial evidence of an alliance between Isaac and Saladin in unity against the Latins. He knew too that he had the clear military advantage over the crumbing empire. He could sack the capital city on a whim. And here it is again, that thing that Byzantine emperors always feared, a Latin attack on Constantinople. Yet it seemed the more they tried to prevent it, the more they laid the groundwork.
Barbarossa moved his army to occupy Thrace and contacted Bulgarian rebels, who he knew were always willing to go to war with the Byzantine empire. He wrote to his son and regent to procure a fleet of ships from Italian ports to meet his army in preparation for an attack on Constantinople.
Then, Frederick Barbarossa suddenly changed his mind. He decided to keep his cool and maintain diplomatic pressure on Isaac. All he needed from the petty eastern emperor was transportation across the Bosporus. Finally, after months of delay, and outright threats, Isaac finally capitulated and signed a treaty with Frederick in the Hagia Sophia in February of 1190. Once again the Byzantine emperor would shuttle Latins to Anatolia.
Saladin, being kept aware of Barbarossa’s progress took advantage of the five-month delay by reinforcing his northern Syrian defenses. Throughout the ranks of Christendom, news spread of Isaac’s traitorous and vindictive behavior. Any love for Byzantium that still existed in the west was now gone.
As the German army trudged through Anatolia toward the end of March, Turkish skirmishing and pestering began. Like all crusader marches in Anatolia, hunger, thirst, and exasperation from constant attacks began to take its toll on Christian moral. But military discipline, the weight of numbers, and lack of options carried the day for Frederick Barbarossa. As he drew close to the Seljuk Turk capital of Iconium he decided he’d rather take it than leave it as a base of operations to be attacked from at his rear. He split his forces with one army attacking the city directly, and himself leading the other to attack the main Turkish army directly. Both operations were victorious, with Iconium falling easily. Fredericks army was now flush with food, supplies, and high moral yet again. The local Turk leadership was forced to sign a peace treaty. Then on May 23rd, he set out to continue his march to the holy land. This enormous German army, with dependable, coherent leadership like Frederick Barbarossa, seemed to be an indomitable force of nature.
This Holy Roman Emperor had done what the first two crusades had failed to do, bring a Christian army intact into the middle east. It was rumored that Saladin expected his vast empire to begin folding up at the German juggernaut steamrolling towards him. But God, it seems had other designs for Frederick Barbarossa.
In early June, while fording a river, something went terribly wrong. The chroniclers differ a bit on exact details, but the best guess that historians make is that during a detour suggested by friendly Armenians, while making a crossing, Frederick Barbarossa suffered a heart attack, fell from his horse, and drowned. Other accounts say he tried to swim across the river and was carried away by the current. And still others claim he attempted to take a bath and suddenly drowned.
For the German army, this was worse than any potential battlefield defeat that Saladin might have handed them. German morale vanished in the blink of an eye. Barbarossa’s son, Frederick VI of Swabia tried to maintain control, but he was not his father. Nearly everyone in the German army deserted. By the time they arrived at the siege of Acre in October, Barbarossa’s son had barely 5000 soldiers that being sapped of spirit and racked with disease, added next to nothing to the scales of the battle.
The unexpected demise of Frederick Barbarossa left the command of the crusade to rivals, King Phillip II of France, and King Richard of England. The Christian camp was still locked in deadly stalemate with disease increasing every day. Soon Queen Sybil and her two daughters succumbed to the mystery sickness, throwing Christian succession of the imaginary throne of the Kingdom of Jerusalem into chaos. While Guy technically held rights to the throne through Sybil, now that she was dead, some thought this was a good opportunity to move on from him. Through a series of absurd annulments and political conspiracies the inheritance of the throne was transferred to Conrad of Montferrat by wedding him to Sybils half-sister Isabella. Without bigamy, and loose rules on the sacrament of marriage, the Jerusalem monarchy would never have lasted this long. After this dodgy transfer of power to Conrad, however much Guy insisted he was still the rightful king, no one cared. Now, everyone was waiting on the kings of France and England.
King Richard, who would be called the Loin Heart before this episode is through, was an unlikely inheritor of the throne. He was the third son – but his older brothers died before his father did. Richard was a showman, and his men loved him for it. As he set sail for the Mediterranean, he brought with him a sword that he claimed was Excalibur, although he later sold it when he was short on cash. He met up with his fleet at Lisbon where, yet again, pillaging, looting, and rape occurred at the expense of both the Jewish and Christian quarters alike. Things got so out of hand that King Sancho of Portugal had to step in to quell the attack. By September of 1190, Richard rendezvoused in Sicily with Phillip of France. Despite the chaos at Lisbon, the ability to control a fleet of several hundred ships across thousands of miles of ocean and see demonstrates an intense degree of competency. He also did not plan on being a neglectful king. He brought with him a retinue of bureaucrats and officials who would maintain streams of messengers back to England, keeping Richard in tight control of his government back home.
Richard was 33, Phillip was 25. Both were operating at significant capacities for war, and both distrusted each other. Phillip, for his youth, was already in his second decade as king. He was cunning and quiet and had a knack for political intrigue. Richard was very much the opposite, quick tempered with hot emotions, yet a capable battlefield general.
Both kings had planned to keep their armies in Messina through the winter and wait until spring to cross the Mediterranean and land in Judea. But they found Sicily not quite the peaceful respite it was supposed to be.
King William of Sicily had died a year earlier. The claims to the throne were passed to the eldest son of the now deceased Frederick Barbarossa, Henry VI. But William’s cousin Tancrid seized the throne and threw the country into a succession crisis. It was largely thought that Henry would be invading in short order to enforce his rights to the throne. So Tancrid recalled the 200 ships from the Mediterranean coast that were sent there to aid the crusade, ad brought them home to aid himself. His position of the throne of Sicily was shaky at best. He had Greek populations openly hostile to him, an active Islamic revolt, and now, two of the most powerful kings in the world over wintering with their armies on his island.
In Messina, Tancrid failed to prevent the locals from harassing Richard’s troops, so he sacked the city and forced Tancrid pay him 40,000 gold ounces for his troubles, giving a third of it to Phillip of France – technically a violation of their agreement. Plunder was supposed to be split 50/50.
Phillip finally arrived at acre on April 20th, 1191 on ships loaned to him from Richard. The ships were cargo vessels, and there was little fanfare as the king of France stepped off. Upon his arrival, he was the highest ranking noble in the Holy Land. He immediately took control of the siege and pressed for renewed attacks against Saladin.
Richard was taking his sweet time. He was busy taking delivery of his new fiancé, under the arrangement of his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Finally, he set sail with his armada of 219 ships to the Holy Land on April 10th. But a storm struck the fleet, blowing the ships apart. The ships carrying his future bride, his sister, and his treasure were cast out of sight of the fleet, crash landing on the southern coast of Cyprus. There they were found by the forces of its local Byzantine-connected ruler, Isaac Comnenus. Then, in an incredibly irrational and shortsighted move he took King Richard’s bride to be and sister as hostages, presumably to be ransomed.
The furious Richard landed on the island, alongside Guy of Lusignan to march to their rescue. Richard demanded his family be released. Isaac refused, and so naturally Richard attacked. The attack quickly turned into a conquest. The pleas for help from Acre went ignored as Richard in his own words said he was spurred on by revenge. Isaac had been a monster of a ruler for the people of Cyprus and saw Richard more as a liberator than a conqueror. The nobility quickly abandoned Isaac and sided with the King of England. Within a month, the conquest was complete. Upon capturing Isaac, the disgraced ruler pleaded with the king of England not to be clapped in iron chains. Richard agreed and had chains of silver made for him instead. He then sold the island to the Templar knights.
The shipwreck of his sister and fiancé was a windfall for Richard. He was flush with cash from not only the sale, but also the plunder. Cyprus too was a fantastic strategic base of operations for future crusaders. It was well out of the reaches of Saladin, and Christian forces could safely assemble, and raid form its coasts.
In early June, Richard reached Tyre, but was refused entry by Conrad of Montferrat on the grounds that Richard supported Guy in his claim to the still somewhat imaginary throne of Jerusalem. If you are finding yourself eyerolling at this constant, self-inflicted disunity, and petty bickering, instead of keeping their eyes on the prize, you are not alone. But I can hear the pessimist in me reminding my more ideological side that these men are men of their times. Who’s to say I would be any different had I lived the. In high medieval Europe, birthrights were everything. I digress.
Richard sailed south directly for Acre and along the way ran into a Muslim barge carrying more of Saladin’s soldiers to the siege. Richard’s fleet attacked it and sunk it. Finally, on June 8th, 1192, Richard stepped foot upon the soil of Judea, three and a half years after taking up the cross. His delivery of western siege engines, catapults, scaling ladders and engineers helped turn the tide of the battle. Each duke now had their own enormous catapult in his war chest. The kings of France and England had the two biggest. Phillips was named “bad neighbor”. Richard’s was named “God’s Own”. The Christian camps were injected with 25,000 new men in the fight, and plenty of cold hard cash to throw around at local mercenaries.
However, within two days of Richards arrival, both kings fell sick with the mystery camp sickness that had been plaguing the battle. Historians’ best guess is scurvy. The king’s hair and nails fell out. Richard nearly died. The effects of this disease lingered with both men for the rest of their lives.
Moral tanked because of the kings of the west being laid low by what seemed to be the curse of God. Yet, Richard the showman felt compelled to do something. He was carried to the front lines and stood up to face the walls of Acre where he fired off a few shots from his crossbow to show the men he was still in the fight.
There were growing personality tensions between the kings as well. For the throne of Jerusalem, Richard openly backed Guy. Phillip openly backed Conrad. When Phillip would hire knights at three gold pieces per month, Richard would offer four. When the count of Flanders died, Richard took control of his siege engines that should have gone to Phillip. And, in a remarkably idiotic show of disunity to their enemy, each king had opened his own separate line of negotiation with Saladin.
While Richard seemed most of the time to be a braggadocios blowhard, he was also a shrewd diplomat who knew violence would be the means to a negotiated end. If Saladin could not yet be intimidated or threatened, he would continue to box him in until he had no choice but to negotiate.
The very idea of negotiating with Saladin was anathema to the true believers in the true believers. This was holy war, a battle of cosmological significance, a future which tens of thousands have died for, that hundreds of thousands of wives and children gave their fathers and husbands for. The salvation of one’s eternal soul was wrapped up in this fight, called for by the successor to the chair of St. Peter. How could one negotiate with the infidels of Asia or Africa like petty merchants and keep their piety? But Richard knew better. He was far more pragmatic than this and didn’t give purist councils the time of day.
On June 17th, the negotiation parties first met. Saladin’s hard line was keeping Jerusalem, as well as the land bridge between the north and south wings of his empire, Syria and Egypt. When Richard heard this news, he could also hear the battering of his catapults against the walls of Acre and decided he would wait. And he wouldn’t have to wait long.
On July 3rd a large breech was finally achieved in the city walls. The Christians attacked but were repelled. Yet on July 4th, seeing no options, Acre offered its surrender terms. Richard rejected them, wanting an unconditional surrender. On July 7th, Acre sent word to Saladin that unless he attacked and immediately relieved the city they would be forced to capitulate. Saladin was helpless. On July 11th, another attack on Acre. On July 12th the city gave itself up to Richard.
It’s worth mentioning that the defense of Acre is one for the history books. The crusaders literally had to undo the defensive walls stone by stone until the massive city yielded. While undoubtedly a massive psychological blow to Saladin and his armies, it was also a testament to their resolve. For Richard, their ferocious defense put the future siege of Jerusalem in healthy context.
The defenders’ wives and children were sparred their lives in exchange for ransom payments. And Per the terms, Saladin was supposed to free 1500 Christian prisoners, and return the relic of the true cross, taken at the Battle of Hattin. All the massive stores provisions and weapons of Acre were now in the hands of the crusaders, as well as 70 galleys of Saladin’s fleet. The captures of his naval fleet was a catastrophic military setback.
Per their agreement, Phillip and Richard split the spoils of Acre equally, leaving out all the other Dukes and barons who had been chewing sand while these kings over wintered in Sicily. Remember, throughout most of history, plunder was how a soldier expected to be paid. Many, like Duke Leopold of Austria left the holy land, disgusted at the greed of the kings.
Then, just ten days after the fall of Acre, King Phillip announced he was done crusading, and prepared to take his leave back to France. Historians aren’t settled on any single reason, more than likely a combination of several. It may be the cumulative displeasure at Richard aggressively overshadowing him at every turn. It could have been a shake up in the aristocracy back home – remember, the king of medieval France had one of the most bizarrely decentralized thrones in Europe. His nobles could very easily squeeze him into a ceremonial role, especially in his absence. Whatever the reason, King Phillip was leaving, and he was leaving without his men. This act, strangely similar of the last French king on crusade, again left his chroniclers struggling to defend – for any other crusader this act would constitute excommunication by the pope. His soldiers despised him for it. Before he left, he further abandoned his support for Conrad and capitulated the throne of Jerusalem to Guy. He swore publicly that he would do no harm to Richard’s lands while he was away. And he appointed the Duke of Burgundy in charge of the remaining French forces. By July 31st, he was gone.
With Phillip gone, Richard was unilateral leader of the third crusade. He did have a growing contender for power in Conrad who was gifted one half of Acre by Phillip before he left. But the more urgent issue was Saladin, who had not delivered on the terms of the surrender of Acre. The Sultan was playing it slow, delaying both the delivery of the True Cross and the release of the Christian prisoners. His strategy of delay, rested in the hope that as time went on, the Christian ranks would become fractious, and self-destructive, as they often had before.
On August 20th, ten days after the deadline to meet the terms of the surrender expired, Richard acted. And I’ll let the lionheart tell us in his own words what he did:
On Saladin’s behalf it had been agreed that the Holy Cross and 1,500 living persons would be handed over to us, and he fixed a day for us when all this was to be done. But the time limit expired, and, as the pact which he had agreed was entirely made void, we quite properly had the Saracens we had in custody – about 2,600 of them – put to death. A few of the more notable were spared, and we hope to recover the Holy Cross and certain Christian captives in exchange for them.
One of Saladin’s chroniclers witnessed this event. His account is a bit less business-like than Richards:
When the king of England saw that the sultan hesitated to hand over the money, the prisoners and the Cross, he dealt treacherously towards the Muslim prisoners… He and all the Frankish forces, horse and foot, marched out at the time of the afternoon prayers on Tuesday, (August 20th). They… moved on into the middle of the plain. The enemy then brought out the Muslim prisoners for whom God had decreed martyrdom, about 3000 bound in ropes. Then as one man they charged and with stabbings and blows with the sword they slew them in cold blood.
This was not a crime of passion or mob violence like the first crusade. It was, as that Muslims chronicler noted, cold blooded in the purest sense. Like in the Godfather film, it was not personal. It was business. In this transaction one party had failed to deliver, so the other made a power move. Saladin, it is said knew what Richard’s motives were and took them for nothing more than that. He had no desire for vengeance because he had no justification for it. He must have known he was partly responsible for it.
Saladin also now knew the type of King he was dealing with. His chronicles note that because of the massacre, Saladin held Richard in high respect. Just two weeks after this incident, he reopened lines of negotiation with Richard.
But Richard was not ready to negotiate yet. He wanted more leverage. So, he left Acre to march 80 miles south to the port of Jaffa, with plans of re-conquering the Holy Land along the way. He put the Templars ahead as his vanguard, the Hospitallers as his rear guard, and split the infantry and archers into organized columns, anticipating Saladin harassing him the whole way. Guy and his Jerusalem contingent marched with what was left of the French forces. Saladin, knowing the crusader’s aim had launched a scorched earth policy, burning crops and fields, leveling defenses, eliminating rest stops. But Richard didn’t need local provisions. Instead, he stayed close to the coast, shadowed, and supported by his navy the entire time.
During the march, Richard himself was wounded while he was rallying his troops. Saladin pressed again for negotiations. Richard refused, unless the surrender of Jerusalem was on the table. Saladin obviously rejected those terms, leaving only the prospects of pitched battle, something the sultan was loathe to do.
On September 7th, the harassment of his army had finally pushed Richard over the edge, and he turned to fight the Sultan. It was the desired response. Muslim tactics were predictable in both their operations, and effectiveness against crusader armies. Annoy the crusaders until they are lured into an unplanned battle. Muslim light cavalry would then feign an attack on Christian lines, drawing them out into disorganized countercharges where they would be chopped into pieces by Turkish mounted archers. The Christian gold standard of military tactics was still the good old fashioned cavalry charge, sweeping the battlefield clean by tanks on horseback. This time Saladin found the Christian line unusually disciplined, and not fooled by the feints – a testament to not only the leadership of the nobility but the bravery of the infantry. Finally, the Hospitallers played into Saladin’s hands. They broke formation and were goaded into a charge, taking with them the French division to their right. Richard immediately grasped the unfolding battle and instead of leaving the defenseless divisions to be butchered out in the open, he ordered a general attack.
This was completely unexpected by the Turks, and Saladin was beat back by the onslaught and forced to regroup. This gave Richard time to raise the English Red Dragon standard and rally the troops to him. He then led a charge of his own choice, driving the Turks from the field. Saladin, for the moment was beaten.
The Christian army marched into Jaffa on September 10th, 1191, putting Saladin in an extremely dangerous situation. He had no way to stop this Christian behemoth led by the lionheart and now at Jaffa, they controlled port access to Jerusalem.
As Richard encamped at Jaffa, he began seeking intelligence about the strength of Saladin behind the walls of Jerusalem. He may have been lionhearted, but he was also a strategist, and knew full well that a successful siege required command of the surrounding region. He used Saladin’s own tactics against him, harassing the Sultans forces with constant skirmishing and foraging raids. He boxed the Turkish forces out of the plains around Jerusalem and squeezed all of Saladin’s army into the Holy City.
Despite possessing the battlefield initiative, Richard was thinking of the long game. Even if the crusaders took Jerusalem, Saladin would only be defeated temporarily. The Sultan’s true military strength was in Egypt, with its ports and standing armies. Yet this was no ordinary war relying on strategic acumen. This was Holy War – the only thing that mattered to the rank and file of true believes was Jerusalem. The crucisignati would never stand for any deviation from this goal. They were less than fifty miles from their long sought after purpose and that is the only place would allow themselves to be led.
On October 1st, Richard’s army left Jaffa for Jerusalem. Nearly a hundred years ago this march took the first crusaders a week. It took Richard two months. His army was larger and required more provisions. But he was also rebuilding and refortifying old Christian castles and forts along the way. By January of 1192, King Richard had total command of all activity in the coastal plains of Jerusalem – a critical element for a siege.
During all this, Richard maintained constant communication with Saladin, engaging in diplomacy and exchanging gifts. When this relationship became public knowledge, there was uproar in his ranks. To quell the rank and file he had a few Muslim prisoners beheaded a to show he was still a man of God.
Lingering now nearly within sight of Jerusalem, and having secured a stranglehold on the coastal plains, Richard and the high command debated what the next steps would be. One faction wanted to chance it all to Divine Providence and attack immediately. But this wasn’t Richard’s style. Other, more hardened veterans who understood the realities of desert warfare urged caution. They pointed out that even if the city were taken, they did not have the men nor means to keep it for very long.
Richard then made a decision that made perfect military sense but lacked any ideological reward. He withdrew the army to Ascalon for the winter, to reinforce the coastal territories and lock down any imports of material and men that Saladin would need to improve his position within Jerusalem. It kept Saladin stagnant, preventing him from using the city as a launchpad for an attack.
This decision by Richard, despite its reason, precipitated into moral collapse among the crucesignati. Many openly cursed the English king, swearing the city would have fallen if they had attacked. Some of the nobility and barons abandoned Richard and the whole crusade in despair. Others moved into Conrad’s camp, bolstering his claims to the throne that may one day exists again. Saladin, espying the division, and concluding that there would be no attack this winter gave his soldiers leave home.
For the crusesignati, some of those innate, debilitating and obvious fundamental flaws with monarchal government were going to begin affecting the crusade from way back in England. News was reaching Richard of problems in his court back at home. His little brother, the soon to be infamous King John of Robin Hood fame was attempting a coup in his brother’s absence – yet another otherwise minor family feud that dictates intercontinental geopolitical events and hundreds of thousands of fates. Apart from the coup, Richard was also faced with overwhelming crusader support for Conrad over Guy as king of Jerusalem. So to simplify his problems, he withdrew support for Guy and transferred it to Conrad and compensated Guy for the loss of his kingship by allowing the Templars to sell the island of Cyprus to him.
Yet, shortly after Richard switch allegiances, Conrad was stabbed to death by an assassin. Eight days after Conrad’s murder, Richard married off his own nephew, Henry II of Champagne to Conrad’s widow, Isabella, who was also carrying Conrad’s child. The murderer was never discovered. But Richard’s contemporaries openly accused him of organizing the entire plot.
With Jerusalem succession put to bed, and eager to get back home, Richard offered Saladin a partition state in Jerusalem. Saladin refused. So to strengthen his leverage, Richard marched on Darum, one of the sultan’s last strongholds in the area. It fell on May 22nd, 1192.
Seeing renewed vigor in the army, the military command became eager to March on Jerusalem, but this time under Henry II, without Richard who had fallen somewhat in disfavor after Conrad’s murder. Richard skulked at the plan but marched with the anyway towards the Holy City, not really having any choice. Despite division, partisanship, and intrigue among the Christian nobility, from the Muslim perspective, the crusader army was a steamroller that could not be stopped. Seeing Richard, the Lionheart at the helm of a crusader army became something of a dreadful ghost story for the Muslim skirmishers. One recounted seeing him on this march:
I have been assured ... that on that day the king of England, lance in hand, rode along the whole length of our army from right to left, and not one of our soldiers left the ranks to attack him. The Sultan was wroth thereat and left the battlefield in anger.
With the crusaders closing in on Jerusalem again, Saladin’s generals were as divided as Richard’s. The Christians were upon his doorstep yet again. The sultan, for all his reputation, had failed to dislodge them. The city began hunkering down for the inevitable siege to come. It is said that during Friday prayers, Saladin went to the al-Aqsa mosque to pray, where he openly wept.
What Saladin did not know, was that dissention was festering in the crusader camps. The rank and file were sick of strategic delays and wanted to attack now. The French contingent agreed. Yet still Richard urged cation and patience. To stem the chaos, the King called a meeting of the crusader brass. In that meeting, the hawkish French military found themselves in a minority. Most of the leaders decided not to attack Jerusalem. The vigorous defense of Acre was still fresh on their minds. How much greater the Islamic defense would be of Jerusalem with Saladin himself lodged in the city.
Saladin then watched, with what must have been an unthinkable sense of relief, as this great crusader army, the greatest and most successful that had yet been assembled, slinked back to the coast. The next western army to come this close to Jerusalem wouldn’t be until 1917.
Crusader unity utterly collapsed in the wake of the retreat. Whatever was left of the French army went home. Richard himself was running out of cash and men. And he still had threats against his own throne back home from his brother. He was simply out of time to complete the mission. While this seem to be a defeat, it’s worth remembering why Richard made the fateful decision not to attack Jerusalem. He was an experienced, pragmatic military commander. He recognized that total victory for either army was out of reach. He said as much in a note he sent to Saladin:
You and we are together ruined.
Saladin underestimated what resolve Richard still had. After the crusaders retreated from Jerusalem, the sultan made a surprise attack on the port of Jaffa. The garrison of this city had no choice by to hold up in the citadel – where they would likely be slaughtered. Then, like a Tolkien-esqeu Deus ex machina, King Richard himself arrived upon the coast with a few dozen knights, a few hundred infantrymen and a couple thousand Italian mercenaries. They swam from their ships to the relief of Jaffa under occupation by up to 10,000 of Saladin’s light cavalry.
The sight of Richard the Lionheart personally storming the coast of Jaffa struck disproportionate fear into the hearts of the Muslims. Panic gripped them and they abandoned their posts. Saladin tried to regroup and launch a counterattack, but it was repelled by Richard who now had the initiative of the battle. The attack on Jaffa was over. It was a massive psychological defeat for Saladin, sapping him of the victory of keeping Jerusalem.
Both Saladin and Richard had come to the realization that their respective positions were becoming untenable. The invasion had precipitated problems with the stability of Saladin’s own rule – he had suffered a series of defeats against the crusaders under Richard, and he could not kick the Christians out of the Holy Land. The Christians could not retake Jerusalem – it was as simple a stalemate as that. Christopher Tyerman brilliantly describes this as the result of two world championship heavyweight boxers sugging it out, each unwilling to give up, unable to deliver a knockout punch, and each out of gas.
So, these two leaders entered negotiations again, thought never meeting personally. What came out of these meetings was a three year truce, a partition of Palestine, but most importantly to the crusaders, and yet most insignificant to history, was that unarmed Latin Christian pilgrims were allowed to visit the Holy Sepulcher unmolested. This, being something that Saladin had already promised anyway.
Nonetheless, the crusader leadership wase determined to consider this anticlimactic news a win. With the declaration of truce, many put down their arms an marched barefoot to Jerusalem. One of the first to arrive was a bishop named Hubert. Bishop Hubert was personally entertained by Saladin, where he was permitted an audience in front of the relic of the True Cross. Establishing friendly terms with Saladin, Bishop Hubert then successfully got the Sultan to agree to the allowance of a skeleton crew of clergy to officiate the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth.
Richard, for his part, never stepped foot in Jerusalem and never met Saladin in person. On his journey back home, passing through eastern Europe, he was arrested by the Holy Roman Emperor for the murder of Conrad of Montferrat. For those awaiting their beloved to come back home, overall Christian casualties are estimated to be so high, that not a quarter of those who left for the holy land were said to have returned.
From a military perspective, the third crusade under Rochard the Lionheart was a success, despite heavy losses and not taking back Jerusalem. Christian grip on the coast was regained and strengthened. Much of Saladin’s territorial conquest was reversed, as was his reputation for invincibility. Yet, Jerusalem stood under control of the infidel, and Latin Christendom had thrown countless lives at its retaking. Those who considered Holy War to be a theological mental illness were not quiet in their opinions. The claim was made that if God wanted to enact vengeance upon the Muslims, he could do it without kings and knights. These crusaders were viewed by some as casting aside the value of life wastefully in the futile attempt to force God’s hand. And now, in the wake of the third crusade, God’s purpose seemed for clouded than ever.
Power in Europe was shifting. After Tancred of Sicily died, German Emperor Henry VI, son of Barbarossa, was crowned the island’s new king. Reigning over both the Holy Roman Empire, and the wealthy, strategically important island of Sicily, his speeches took more Universal tones. It was language usually reserved for popes.
Henry decided he was destoned to finish the business of his father. So, he publicly committed to raising an army himself and returning to the Holy Land to conquer Jerusalem and add it to his collection of kingdoms. To pay for this imperial army, he demanded tribute payments from Byzantium, from Emperor Alexius III – the new ruler of the Greeks, who came to power by dethroning and blinding his brother.
Emperor Alexius succumbed to the bullying from the Holy Roman Emperor and began raising funds through a wildly unpopular tax known as the Alamanikon – The German Tax. The crusade was activated with typical German precision. And for once, Tyerman notes, a crusader army arrived precisely when it needed to, with tens of thousands of soldiers putting in to port on the coast of Acre, just 12 days after the truce with Saladin had ended. But Saladin was now dead. His Empire was now under control of his less inspiring brother, who now had to deal with an enormously well-funded and well-organized invasion army of the Hole Roman Empire that had just secured a beach head. The Imperial army was on its was to join forces with the Henry II of Champagne, the new King of Jerusalem installed by Richard the Lionheart. The Germans, for their part wasted no time in reclaimed the land bridge that connected Tripoli, Tyre, and Acre.
But then God had his say in the fate of this burgeoning crusade. On September 10th, 1192, The King of Jerusalem, Henry II was inspecting his troops from a balcony window when disaster struck. Some stories say the latticework gave way. Others say he slipped and lost his balance. Whatever caused his fall, he died instantly.
Then, just two weeks later, on September 28th, while preparing to leave Sicily to join his grand army, King Henry VI of Germany fell ill with a fever. Some say malaria. Some say poison. No one will ever know. Whatever caused his sickness, the Holy Roman Emperor was now dead.
When news reached Emperor Alexius of Byzantium about the German Emperor’s death, he instantly withdrew his promise of payment from the Alamanikon. When the German nobles already in Judea received word – they immediately abandoned all military engagements and rushed home to protect their territorial claims within the empire. They of course didn’t know it, but this was the beginning of a 20-year German civil war. The new king of Jerusalem, Aimery, brother of Guy, after witnessing the instant collapse of the grand alliance swiftly negotiated a new six-year truce with Saladin’s brother.
German power in Europe crumpled is shocking fashion and its internal politics were turning bloody. To the west, Spain was under siege from the Muslims in the south, losing the hard-won reconquered territories from Islam. England and France had resumed war with each other. Europe was desperate for an unifying factor – that factor would be a man named Lother of Segni.
Lothar was nephew of pope Clement III and was himself elected pope as Innocent III on January 8th, 1198, at the age of 37. I don’t know how many of you have seen HBO’s young pope with Jude Law, but when I think of Innocent III, I tend to think of someone like that character. He was remarkably young for a pope, and naturally brought a disruptive, youthful vigor to the chair of Peter that in 2000 years of Catholic history, we’ve rarely seen.
When ranking popes on a list of their ability to project the power and influence of the papacy, Innocent is right at the top. Like his reformer predecessors, beginning with Gregory VII, he claimed political supremacy over all of Europe’s kings. To support his dominance, he began popularizing an old title for the papacy – The Vicar of Christ. But bringing European princes to heel was just one of his pillars. As second pillar was his ecclesiastical reform through changes in canon law – much of which focused on codifying the increased authority of the papacy. A third pillar would support the other two - a call for a fourth crusade.
If we choose to call crusading a movement, distinct from ongoing and concurrent affairs of Franco-Norman conquest, we can say the movement began with Urban II’s speech at Clermont. This movement then continued in two separate styles as demonstrated by Peter the Hermit and St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Christopher Tyerman labels these two styles apocalyptic, and eschatological, that is, concerning the salvation of one’s soul. By the 13th century, through the organized preaching of the 3rd crusade, the two distinct styles had merged into a singular message from Rome that was both academically precise, and spiritually rigorous. Innocent promoted and spread this blended style of recruitment preaching across Europe both privately through correspondence, and publicly through authorized preaching. He was aiming for nothing short of the institutionalization of crusader-Europe.
I mentioned back in part one that the term crusader didn’t exist for another 500 years or so. But For Innocent to codify a thing, this thing must have a name. So he crafted a term encapsulated all of this business surrounding the crusades. He called it Negotium Crucis – the Business of the Cross.
In a flurry of letters sent to the princes of Europe dated August 15th, 1198, and citing the collapse of the German campaign as well has the fear of a Muslim counter attack, Innocent officially called for his crusade. His tone was that of a political leader rather than spiritual one – calling for those who serve to be held to a minimum of two years on the front lines, with the goal of reversing what Tyerman man called the hung jury of the third crusade, and of course he reiterated the pope’s ultimate authority on all these matters.
Innocent then released a papal bull cheerfully titled Concerning the Misery of the Human Condition. Now, if you read this papal bull, even modern traditional catholic might find themselves a bit, discouraged. It reads as an odd spiritual polemic that leaves little hope for salvation. If you are a Catholic who suffers from scruples, I do not recommend reading it. But the ethos he presented was intentionally grim. To gain salvation, man must metaphorically crucify himself with his own vices and lusts. What better way to crucify oneself than by marching on Jerusalem. He criticized Europe’s princes for failing to act with any resolve concerning he business of the Cross, accusing them of doing injury to each other while failing to see the injury done to them by the Muslims.
Since Pope Urban II, there was no concrete canonical language or authority for any of the business of the Cross. Innocent’s bull was the closest thing yet. Under him, the mass structure changed, inserting newly crafter intercessory prayers for the crucesignati. And when a Mass being offered was specifically for the reconquest of the Holy Land, a bell was rung during the Lord’s prayer.
Networks of crusader preachers were sent out across Europe, focusing, of course on France. They were under direct oversight of the pope, instituting a homogenous, habitual, and carefully crafted provincial liturgical life. Under Innocent, the crusades were no longer reserved to demagogue cardinals or aspiring nobles. His aim was more fundamental. The business of the Cross was the business of Christianity.
One reoccurring problem for crusade organizers was the inevitable buyer’s remorse that would settle in for crucesignati between when they took their vow and the muster date. With every crusade there was a significant fall out rate that hampered the hard work of the organizers. Innocent sought to minimize this problem by giving his preachers the authority to threaten excommunication in these instances. And if excommunication wasn’t enough to spur on courage, there were other options. One who was well off enough could send a proxy in their place. It wasn’t hard to find a desperate peasant willing to fight as a Holy mercenary. In this case both the person going on crusade and the person putting up the cash, would get an indulgence. For many, this seemed like the safest path to remission of sins. Still for some, abject poverty was a barrier to fulfilling their oaths. For these people, Innocent’s fundraising campaign could provide minimal arms and travel.
These legal and financial cooperations between church and state at the behest of the papacy were the result of the past hundred years of learned lessons and what we would call best practices, yet still novel in their scope and breadth. Everything now rolled up to the chair of Peter, and so detailed were the ledgers and correspondence that most of what historians know about the 4th crusade comes directly from these documents.
But Innocent officially instituted another novelty to the business of the Cross. We mentioned that a husband could not take up the cross without the consent of his family, primarily his wife. There are the practical reasons that are common to medieval life – a woman during this time can’t just go get a job in her husband’s absence, and the denial conjugal rights was of primary lest someone to fall into sin. This was both a spiritually and canonically serious matter. A wife left abandoned by a crusading husband was also subject to very real threats, perhaps maybe of a sexual nature but also legal and material. How could she defend against a neighbor trying to seize her lands? How could she provide for her children? Yet the danger could also be homicidal. There’s at least one story of a brother, who, being jealous of his crusading sibling’s land holdings, murdered his sister-in-law in his brother’s absence and threw her body into a quarry. Innocent III officially removed these canonical hurdles by allowing husbands to abandon their vow as a Catholic husband and their duty as a provider without consent of his wife, to go on crusade for the pope.
For this coming fourth crusade, the great kings of Europe had little interest in participating. As we said, France and England were busy at war with each other, and Germany was a nightmare. Innocent instead was forced to rely on the counts and dukes of Europe. The man who ran his propaganda campaign was Fulk of Neuilly, a charismatic priest who was rumored to perform miracles during his recruitment. He was something of a mega-church pastor, once claiming that in a single event he signed up to 200,000 men to take up the cross – it’s a claim that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, but it shows you his reputation for magnetism. Once he confronted Richard the Lionheart about his infamous and unrepented life of sin, allegedly telling the king to finally marry off his three daughters of pride, greed, and lechery. Richard, being the sort he was, replied that we would indeed marry them off appropriately to the Templars, Cistercians, and bishops.
Richard’s words, apocryphal or not, represented a festering undercurrent of resentment building against the perceived hypocrisy of the clergy and military orders – demanding from the laity lives of piety and poverty, while some in the clergy seemed to exude the opposite. For Innocent III, preachers like Fulk of Neuilly were the vanguard of clerical reform movement against this pastoral disorder that came to be called apostolic poverty. Yet even Fulk of Neuilly, the pope’s most prolific preacher was not immune to this hypocrisy according to James of Vitry, theologian and chronicler of this era:
He began amassing a great sum of money from the alms of the faithful which he had undertaken to pay out to poor men who took the cross, both soldiers and other. But through avarice or other base motive, he did not make these payments, and from that time, by God’s hidden judgement, the power and influence of his preaching swiftly declined. His wealth grew, but the fear and respect he had commanded fell away.
Fourth crusade preaching was fizzling out. And Innocent had yet to secure any major European princes to his cause. Yet he was successful in establishing a defined, coherent, legal apparatus of indulgences, extending to anyone who crusaded, anyone who was left behind by a crusader, anyone who donated to the crusades, anyone who paid to remove their vow, or paid another to go in their stead. These alms for arms were powerful tools in the hands of a Vicar of Christ on earth. Despite widespread disillusionment towards Holy War and Jerusalem, Innocent’s proclaimed non-sacramental authority over the condition of the soul inevitably attracted those the pious, the scrupulous, the ambitious, and the profiteers alike.
Richard the Lionheart died on April 6th, 1199, in the arms of his mother, Elanor of Aquitaine. With his death, Phillip no longer needed his nobles for war with England and thus freed them for recruitment into Innocent’s call. For many of these Norman Frankish nobles, crusading was now in their pedigree. Something like a child’s father today who fought in Iraq, whose father fought in Vietnam, whose father and grandfather fought in the world wars. But this time the organization of crusader armies had changed – instead of self-financed, dynastic lords and princes, the army was primarily underwritten by the fundraising efforts of the Church.
With king Phillip acquiescing his knights to go on crusade and the wildly successful fundraising campaign of indulgences, its looked like Innocent was going to get his crusade. But there was one problem - Outremer and the Islamic armies were in the middle of a truce, so any invasion force would not only be unwelcomed but possibly repelled by force of arms by the Christians. So, he arranged for an alternate target – the same target Richard argued for in the last crusade - Egypt. But the same problem with Egypt before still existed now, no one cares about Egypt. Crusading for the strategically important goal of a coastal African country just didn’t have the same ring to it – it certainly didn’t match the grandiose recruitment preaching. So, Innocent and the crusader leadership came up with a remarkably simple solution: they would lie. Preaching for a crusade to the Holy Land remained official marketing campaign, but Egypt became the focus of the military campaign.
Another gordian knot for Innocent was Byzantium. None of this commotion from the West was asked for, hoped for, or wanted by the Byzantine Emperor to the east, and relations between the two lungs of the Church were already at an all-time low. Innocent compounded this problem when he couched his announcement of this fourth crusade to the emperor in a demand the Eastern Orthodox church to return under the dominion of the pope, and further provide material support for the crusades, and in return, Innocent would shower the east with papal indulgences. Emperor Alexius of course rebuked the chair of Peter, reiterated his empire’s independence of Rome, and went on to call that he returns the stolen property of Cyprus – taken by the last round of crusaders.
This stunted attempt at diplomacy officially closed off the land route. The sea route was an easy choice to make not only because the land route was unavailable, but because it was also the least treacherous. It avoided skirmishing with eastern European kings as the crusaders trampled through and completely circumvented any need for aid from the schismatic Byzantines. And there would be no parched parades through Anatolia under constant attack from Turks. With the sea route through the Mediterranean, they could land anywhere they wanted, and besides, they wanted to go to Egypt anyway. But the sea rout is expensive, requiring entire fleets of vessels and the skill to sail them. That’s where the Venetians come in.
The Republic of Venice was a sovereign state in Italy that had grown to be an economic powerhouse recognizing no one above itself, including the pope, preferring spiritual independence through the patriarch of Venice. It dominated maritime trade in the Mediterranean and did business with anyone and everyone. No religion, nationality, or continent was off limits, as long as there was profit to be made.
And so, a delegation was sent to Venice to negotiate the transport of this fourth crusader army. The doge of Venice, the highest-ranking official agreed to meet them. The doge, an old man, and allegedly almost blind, named Enrico Dandolo, loved the idea of helping the crucesignati. Not only would they be paid well for their taxi service, but the Venetians had long fixed their eye on the Egyptian spice trade. It was a lucrative business and entirely monopolized. The pope had recently banned Christian nations from trading for Egyptian spices because they were enemies of the Cross, but an exception was made for the Venetians. If this crusader army could take down the Egyptian regime there were rivers of money to be made. The Treaty of Venice was thus signed, and the crusaders were scheduled to muster for transport on June 29th, 1202, at the Venetian Island of Lido.
One of the members of this Franco delegation was a knight named Geoffrey of Villehardouin. Geoffrey did posterity a favor by keeping a detailed journal of the fourth crusade. He recounts, in glowing language, the signing of their treaty, and the need for secrecy:
I cannot recount to you all the fine and fitting words the doge said, but the matter was settled, and charters were prepared the following day, duly drawn up and set in order. When this had been done our intended destination was kept secret. Cairo had been chosen because it would be easier to destroy the Turks through an attack on Egypt rather than anywhere else, but it was announced simply that we were going overseas.
The military leader chosen for Innocent’s crusade was Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat. His father served in the second crusade and his brother was Conrad, the would be king of Jerusalem allegedly assassinated by Richard the Lionheart. Boniface’s family was the most intertwined bloodline between Outremer and Europe, making him an easy choice. Yet he being Italian, the low level Frankish rank and file not only didn’t know who he was, but didn’t care. This disunity added to the chaos that became the muster at Lido. As these crucesignati made their way into Italy some had no idea about the bait and switch the pope was pulling on them and decided that they would continue to the holy land and wait for the crusading army to catch up with them. Others, scraping by just to travel to the muster found the markets in Italy closed to crusaders. Discouraged, impoverished, and now starving, many turned around and went home.
The hemorrhaging of would be soldiers for Christ almost destroyed the fourth crusade before it ever started. Geoffrey Villehardouin estimates that only a third of the 33,000 knights actually showed up at the muster, and maybe only half the infantry. When Innocent’s legate, Cardinal Peter of Capua arrived he realized that the majority of the people there were either women, sick, or men entirely too poor and destitute to be of any help, and would be more of a burden, and so he dispensed them of their vow and sent them home, leaving behind a skeleton army.
Before long, the Venetians began demanding money for their current hospitality and future taxi service that the crusaders didn’t have. The financial strategy was collapsing along with the muster. There was no more money coming from Rome, France, or Germany. To save the crusade the military brass tried to make each individual crusader pay their own way, violating the terms they signed up under. Realizing they would lose what was left of the army if they tried to enforce this, the nobles ponied up some of their own cash to try and keep the Venetians happy. Some even went into debt to meet the contractual payments to the Venetians. But after everything was counted, it amounted to less than half of what was owed. And winter was looming over a now penniless army on a faraway island.
The Venetians could have simply abandoned the whole operation and wished the crusaders luck on their journey. But the Doge and his compatriots already had a sizeable investment in ship building and preparations to move this army. Many of the Venetian leadership had staked their civic reputations on promoting and aiding the crusade. And Egypt was the prize they kept their eyes on. So, Doge Dandolo proposed a quid pro quo. He offered to put a moratorium on the payments for a short time if, before the crusaders begin their Holy War, they take a small detour across the Adriatic.
Along the Dalmatian coast was a city called Zara, now modern-day Zadar, Croatia, but during these days it was loosely under the control of Emeric, King of Hungary, who was not only a Catholic loyal to the pope, but also was a crusader for him against local heretics. Before placing itself under the protection of Hungary twenty years prior, Zara was under Venetian control, and the Venetians were still bitter about the loss. All the crusaders had to do to postpone the debt payment to the Venetians was to lay siege to Zara and take it back.
In early October, the Venetian fleet carrying the crusaders set sail for Zara. Oddly, their leader, Boniface chose not to go with them. Some historians guess he wanted to keep his hands clean of what was about to happen. But other suggest he was pulling the strings on a larger political goal that we’ll come back to in a little bit. Leaving the Venetian coast, Villehardouin recounts:
Ah, God! What fine warhorses were put on board! When the ships had been loaded with arms and food, and the knights and sergeants had embarked, their shields were hung round the sides and on the ships’ castles alongside their banners, of which there were many splendid ones.
As the cities along the eastern coast of the Adriatic saw this the largest naval fleet since antiquity approaching, they quickly surrendered without a fight. Zara too was preparing to surrender, knowing they were the target of the Venetians, but disgruntled crusaders made their way to the Zaran leadership and convinced them that the rank and file would not go along with any attack on a Christian city. Zara then sent a message to the crusaders, refusing their terms of surrender, and both sides, both Christian, dug in for a siege.
Simon of Montefort, one of the most renowned military commanders of the Middle Ages, was steadfastly opposed to laying siege to Christians. Through his connections he even produced a letter from Pope Innocent III, expressly forbidding an attack on Zara, under pain of excommunication and revocation of all given indulgences for taking up the Cross.
The crusader brass held a meeting where the decision had to be made to become a mercenary army, Holy warriors for hire, or go home. Venetian pressure was intense. And most of the leadership thought the sin of sacking Zara was a means that justified the ends. But Simon of Montefort held his ground, quoted as saying, that he did not come here to kill Christians. When it became clear to him that he was in the minority, he withdrew from the crusader camp and continued on pilgrimage to the Holy Land with his retinue and supporters.
On November 12th, 1202, the siege engines built by the venetians were wheeled up the walls of Zara. By November 24th, the city fell. Some Zarans were killed but most of the population fled, for the victims of the conquering crusaders over the past hundred years had a reputation that preceded them. The booty and plunder were split evenly between the Venetians and the Crusaders, and the army settled in for the winter.
Immediately after the attack, the papal legate, Peter Capua arrived with permission from Innocent to remove the excommunications of those involved so they could carry on with the mission and save face for the pope… if the crusaders repented of their crimes. The Latin crusaders did publicly repent, but the Venetians told Peter where he could put his excommunications – caring not for notions of papal supremacy, and further, they viewed their deal with the crusaders as a secular business arrangement – nothing more. From their perspective, the pope should be thanking them for agreeing to put a moratorium on his crusader’s debts.
As winter settled into the crusader occupied Zara so did discontent. The rank-and-file true believers with nothing but their own thoughts were beginning to feel… used. Open discontent spread against both the Venetians and the Frankish brass. Riots broke out and many disserted. But still for some, the Venetians represented the last best hope to get to the Holy Land and expunge their sins. They still were completely unaware that the Venetians would be sailing them in the opposite direction.
By December, the crusade military leader Boniface finally arrived, but he was closely followed by a delegation from Germany. It is believed that this delegation was what he had been working on while Zara was being taken. The King of Germany, Philip of Swabia had arrived with his brother-in-law Alexius Angelus. Alexius Angelus was the son of the deposed, blinded, and imprisoned former emperor of Byzantium, Isaac II. During the coup, the young Alexius was smuggled out of the empire in into the safety of his sister’s husband in Germany.
Boniface, the King of Germany, and young Alexius had a proposition for these Holy warriors turned mercenaries – that was to help Alexius reclaim the throne to Byzantium which he believed was rightfully his. In exchange for their services, Alexius promised to rejoin the Eastern Orthodox with the Church of Rome, plus make a payment of 200,000 silver marks to aid the army, provide full provisions for every soldier in the army, bolster the crusader ranks with 10,000 Greeks, and station 500 knights in Outremer to help with its defenses. It was an offer almost too good to be true. Christopher Tyerman, among other historians calls the timing of this proposition highly suspect, and at worst out right collusion to take out the emperor of Byzantium by the Venetians. The Venetians hated the Byzantines. Not only were they maritime opponents but tier feud was fueled by an incident about 20 years prior. Inside Constantinople, long percolating tension boiled over into an eastern riot against the Latin quarters of the city, inhabited by Venetians and Genoese. Thousands were killed, countless were raped. The Latin clergy was persecuted. One of the papal legates had his head cut off, tied to the tail of a dog, and dragged through the streets. It was a horrific event. Even the empress of the city, Maria, who was known for having Latin sentiments was executed in the chaos. The Venetians never forgot these events, committed by an empire in decline. If they could supplant the emperor, the vast wealth and monopolized trade between east and west would be convenient fallout alongside revenge.
Alexius Angelus sought to capitalize on the recent Latin mobilization by previously asking Pope Innocent III to help him retake Constantinople. But papal support was flatly denied. So, in Christmas of 1201, Alexius met with Boniface, where the plan for Constantinople was allegedly hatched.
Innocent must have sensed a scheme against Constantinople was in the works. Before the crusaders had even left Italy a few months ago, the leaders received a letter from the pope forbidding them from ever attacking Constantinople. If Innocent bares any guilt in the precipitating events, it lies in his misplaced confidence that threats of excommunication would stop secular war and shines through 800 years of history as a glittering example of the pope’s complete obliviousness of what this army had become. He had lost control of his own crusade.
The Venetians needed no convincing of the Constantinople plot since they probably organized the entire thing. The clergy among the crusaders simply ignored papal threats and instead leaned on just war theory to satisfy the army’s leadership. Many of these disillusioned crucisignati, seeking only remission of their sins, had only now begun learning of their initial, and pending excommunication through rumor. And as news of yet another detour to attack yet another Christian city spread through the crusader rank and file, these true believers utterly abandoned the fourth crusade for good, washing their hands of it all. What remained, was little more than a cold, mercenary skeleton force, soldiers of fortune being transported to a mission of conquest by mercantile sailors in the Church’s anathema.
Pope Innocent again demanded they halt, and begged them not to attack the city, but it was too little too late. By April of 1203 crusaders mustered on the Greek island of Corfu. Young Alexius arrived to proclaim himself the new emperor in front of his new troops. For the next two months the Venetian and crusader mercenaries raided the Greek coasts, weakening them, before landing in Chalcedon, opposite Constantinople on June 24th, 1203. Geoffrey Villehardouin recounts their arrival:
Those who had never seen Constantinople before gazed at it for a long time, barely believing there was such a great city in all the world. They saw its high walls and mighty towers, with which the city was completely encircled, as well as the fine palaces and impressive churches, of which there were so many that none could believe if he did not see it with his own eyes, and they could be seen the length and breadth of the city, which is the sovereign of all others. Know that there was no man there so bold that his flesh did not tremble, which should come as no surprise for never was such a great project undertaken by as many men since the creation of the world.
The crusader brass decided to float a ship in front of the sea facing walls of the great city with Alexius Angelus standing tall and proud to show its inhabitants they had come not to conquer, but to put the rightful emperor back on the throne. But upon seeing the parading of the young man, the Greeks not only had no idea who Alexius was. Despite the way the current emperor came to the throne no one in Constantinople was interested in another destabilizing coup. And more significantly, the legions of Venetian and Frankish nobles behind this proposition did little to reassure the Byzantines that this was not an army of conquest and plunder.
Geoffrey of Villehardouin tells us the crusaders camped across from the great city and readied their weapons for war as the crowds of eastern Christians looked down upon them, wondering, perhaps fearing, why they were here. Eventually emissaries of the emperor came before the crusaders and read the following message, as transcribed by Villehardouin:
My lords, Emperor Alexius informs you that he knows well that you are the best of men among those who do not wear crowns, from the best land there is, and he is deeply perplexed as to why or for what purpose you have come to his lands and to his kingdom. You are Christian, he is Christian, and he well understands that you set out to recover the Holy Land overseas, the Holy Cross and the Sepulcher. If you are poor and needy, he will gladly give you some provisions and some money, and then you can leave his lands. He does not wish to do you any harm, but he has the power to do so. For, if you had twenty times as many men you would not be able to escape if he wished you ill; you would be killed and destroyed.
It was the same tactic the Byzantine emperor had used every time a crusading army was on his doorstep: feed them, give them cash, and keep them moving.
Villehardouin says the Doge of Venice took the lead and gave the response on behalf of the crusaders, saying they would not accept this pretender’s words since he was not the rightful emperor, and that he should step aside and beg forgiveness of his nephew who they intended to install upon the throne of Byzantium. It was a response intended not to be heard. War was the only desired outcome. The very next day Villehariouin and the other barons met upon horseback in the middle of a field where they heard Mass and planned the details of the attack that was to come.
On July 5th, the battle commenced. From Villehardouin:
It was a fine morning, a little after sunrise. Emperor Alexius awaited them with numerous battalions and a vast array of equipment on the other side of the straights. Trumpets were sounded. Each galley was towing a transport ship so that the crossing might be made more easily. Nobody asked which ship should go first, but instead each of them landed as soon as they were able to.
The crusader forces landing on the north side of the peninsula hoping to gain access to Constantinople’s famous natural deep-water harbors. These harbors were protected by an enormous iron chain stretched across the bay. But the Venetians were prepared for this defense and broke through the chains with their ramming ships. Then they concentrated their forces on the golden horn, near the northeast gate of the city, alarmingly close to the imperial palace. From Villehardouin:
The knights came out of the transports, leaping into the sea up to their waists, fully armed, their helmets laced and their lances in their hands. The good archers, the good sergeants and the good crossbowmen did the same, each group going ashore as soon as they reached land. The Greeks made a great show of being ready to resist, but when the knights came to lower their lances, the Greeks turned their backs and fled, abandoning the shore. Know that no one ever made such an audacious landing. Straightaway the sailors began opening the doors of the transports and bringing forward the gangplanks so that the horses could be led out. The knights then began to mount their horses and the battalions to form up in the designated order.
This offensive to take control of the shore lasted over ten days, until on July 17th, the Venetians launched an amphibious assault using scaling ladders from their ships, taking control of a large section of the wall, east of the gate. The Varangian guard - elite forces of the emperor, made up of Anglo-Saxons and Danes were called out to defend Constantinople with battle axes, smashing into the Franks with hand-to-hand combat, driving them back towards the sea.
Villehardouin then tells us that the doge of Venice himself carried the banner of St. Mark into the battle all the way up to a tower upon the walls of Constantinople, rallying all troops to him. It was brave, but they still could not get past the formidable Varangian Guard. And so in a last ditch effort to take the wall, the crusader army set it on fire. But they lost control of it, and the fire turned into an inferno. It spread into the city. Soon it was spreading through 120 acres homes and farms.
The emperor of Constantinople rode out with an army to meet the crusaders along the shore, to engage them directly, hoping to drive them back to the Venetian ships. The Franks and Venetians were enormously outnumbered by the imperial legions. Yet these Franks were still very much Norman, and they welcomed a pitched battle where they could unleash their deadly cavalry charge. At seeing the advancing wall of iron the emperor retreated without a fight, squandering what should have been his moment of victory.
Slinking back to his throne, Alexius III’s reputation was shot. He was deemed a coward. Yet the crusading army had still failed to breech the city, being held at bay the Varangian guard. Tyerman points out that this is an odd moment where the fate of Byzantium was being decided by battle between two western European armies. Despite the resolve of his Varangian guard, Alexius gave into fear and abandoned his throne, driven away, as one of his chroniclers notes, by no one.
The now abandoned leaders of Constantinople decided to free the former emperor, Isaac II, currently imprisoned and blind, and father of the young Alexius with the crusaders. They quickly reinstated him as their ruler and sent new emissaries out to the franks and Venetians letting them know of their… change of heart. In response, the Franks and Venetians sent their own envoys into the city to speak directly with Isaac and ascertain the situation. From Villehardouin:
The envoys were accompanied as far as the gate; it was opened for them, and they got down from their horses. The Greeks had placed Englishmen and Danes bearing battle-axes along the route from the gate as far as the palace. There the envoys found Emperor Isaac, so richly attired that one would seek in vain for a man more lavishly dressed. The empress, his wife, was alongside him. There were so many other high-ranking men and women present… And all those who had been opposed to the emperor the previous day were now subject to his will.
The envoys delivered the promises made to them by Isaac’s son to the reinstated emperor. He agreed to them but acknowledged they would be hard to fulfill. Nonetheless he swore an oath to the crusaders and Venetians. Once everything was signed, the crusaders marched his son into the city and both father and son were installed as co-emperors.
The first step towards fulfilling the monetary requirements of their enthronement was to pay 50,000 marks of silver to the Venetians, 34,000 to pay against the debts of the franks, and 16,000 to venetian bankers holding personal debts of the Frankish nobility. It was the beginning of the long-foreseen windfall for the Italian merchants.
Alexius, the younger emperor, now had an empire to run, but he knew no one inside his own kingdom and his father’s support was feeble at best. It became clear that the survival of this dynasty rested on the mercenary army staying put. Thus, it was further negotiated that the secret attack on Egypt would be put off for another year and they would stay encamped inside Constantinople. For this, the Venetians and crusader brass demanded high fees. Boniface of Montferrat, leader of the crusaders employed himself as the personal paid bodyguard of the emperors.
Everything about this pseudo-occupation by the west was infuriating to the locals. Rumors of scandal and vast exchanges of byzantine wealth were everywhere, and both Eastern Orthodox Christians and Muslim alike despised Roman religious practices and crusader hubris. And the co-emperors of father and son was shaping up to be a disaster. The younger began stripping churches and mosques for their gold and silver claiming he needed the precious metals to pay the high demands of the crusaders and strutted around the city as a drunkard. His father Isaac began publicly accusing his son of engaging in same-sex orgies, while he himself had become something of a recluse, practicing astrology in deep within his halls. Predictably, with such weak governance, riots broke out against the crusaders. The crusaders responded to the riots with brilliant de-escalation tactics such as burning Greek churches and Islamic mosques. These fires set by the westerners again grew out of control and was more destructive than the last. From the golden horn to the sea of Marmara, 440 acres of Constantinople burned to the ground. After the fire, the visceral hatred the local population held against the Latins and Venetians was deadly. The crusaders were increasingly prisoners among a hostile populace. Villehardouin recounts:
None of the Latins who had been resident inside Constantinople, no matter where they came from, dared stay in the city any longer. And they gathered up their wives and children and whatever they had been able to bring out of the fire and they boarded boats and ships to cross the harbor to where the pilgrims were.
The grip doge of Venice and the Latin barons had upon Constantinople had slipped through their fingers like sand. The co-emperors had failed to deliver on their payments and promises, and now none of them were welcome inside the city. A local rebellion of Greeks had sprung up that opposed the emperors and crusaders equally. The leader of this rebellion was a man named Murzuphlus who had mustered a large enough army that the Venetians nearly lost all their ships to his attacks. The Eastern Orthodox Church had now set up its own rival emperor to the throne, a man named Nicholas Kannovos.
To avoid the total unraveling of his regime, Emperor Alexius called of the crusaders to come to his defense. His call for the westerners to march again on Constantinople led to a polarization of opponents against him, resulting in total unified resistance led by Murzuphlus, backed by the byzantine army, the clergy, and civil authorities. A few days later Murzuphlus crowned himself emperor and threw both father and son emperors into prison where the son was strangled to death.
With the death of the young, debouched emperor also died any hope of the streams of wealth from Byzantium to the west. The Venetian ships were in disrepair, the crusader barons were completely broke. They controlled no land and thus had no means to grow food, and now they looked on as Murzuphlus, now known as Alexius V, began reinforcing and repairing his city walls.
Some of the crusader brass considered it may be time to abandon the entire crusade, but the Venetians reminded them of their still present obligations to repay their debt of hundreds of thousands of marks. It was decided then that the best and easiest way to service this debt would be to simply steal it. They decided to sack Constantinople and plunder its riches. Every detail of splitting the winnings and rule of Byzantium was negotiation between the doge and Boniface. The gold, silver and textiles would be split evenly. The new emperor would be a Latin, and the new patriarch would be Venetian. They further agreed that the army would stick together yet another year to hold the new regime together, through March of 1205.
Under pain of excommunication, and after having been misled by the leaders of this enterprise so many times, even the more mercenary minded soldiers among the rank and file were understandably concerned about the moral licitness of this war now being waged upon their Christian brothers, who by this point, were guilty of nothing more than wanting an emperor that had their best interest in mind. The Latin clergy carried the theological water yet again for the nobility. From Villehardouin quoting the cleric:
‘We therefore tell you,’ said the clergy, ‘that this battle is right and just. If you have the right intention of conquering this land and placing it in obedience to Rome, all those of you who die here having made your confession will receive the same indulgence the pope has granted you.’
With permission from the clergy, the crusaders could, in their own minds, deny culpability for what was about to happen. The enemy were schismatics. The new leader had committed regicide and had usurped the throne. Innocent threatened excommunication again, but from the crusader’s perspective, an excommunication revoked, just like at Zara, especially once the glory of the enterprise is revealed. But the bishops went further, appealing to the most based level of medieval Catholic prejudice, calling the Byzantines enemies of God himself, worse than Jews.
Villehardouin recounts the siege towers being readied and the scaling ladders being affixed to the Venetian ships. No outside army had ever taken this great city before. Its walls were thick. Its walls were tall. But the Latins sensed its time had come. And so, all through lent of 1204 the western Christians tirelessly labored to bring the schismatic city to its knees.
On April 9th, a Friday, the attack began on the north shore. The Venetian ships unloaded the men and acted as floating castles right up to the walls of the city. Villehardouin recounts the men exchanging blows on the tops of these towers with the defenders on the tops of the walls, spear for spear, sword for sword. The initial attack failed. Villehardouin blamed the sins of the attackers for their failure.
On Monday the Latins had regroup and concentrated their attacks on individual wall towers, attacking with two ships per tower. Villehardouin says the cries of battle were so great that it seemed the very earth was shaking. But then he tells us that God himself raised a great wind, and by chance drove two Venetian ships by chance toward a tower that they hadn’t planned on attacking. One ship was called the Pilgrim, the other, Paradise. With no other option, these the Pilgrim and Paradise attacked the tower that stood before of them. As the Pilgrim’s ladder reached the tower, the Franks, and Venetians abord climbed up. The defenders abandoned their post, and a foothold was now gained upon the walls of Constantinople.
This shook the confidence of the defenders. They wavered and allowed four more towers to be captured. With a large section of the wall taken the crusaders were able to open the gates. Murzuphlus lead an assault of byzantine warriors against the oncoming deluge. It was exactly what these western knights wanted. They knew their cavalry charges were nearly unstoppable. Murzuphlus turned and ran. From Villehardouin:
Then you might have seen Greeks being struck down… There were so many dead and wounded that they were endless and innumerable. Many of the great men of Greece turned and fled… The hour of vespers had already passed, and the men of the army were wearied by battle and killing.
Aware of their weakness in numbers, the crusaders gathered in the great square of Constantinople and set up a perimeter. A brief resistance was set up against the Latins but quickly scattered. By the 13th of April, because of Venetian brilliance at sea and siege-craft, and Franco-Norman brute force, the city founded by Constantine the Great was lost.
After four brutal days of battle the crusaders commenced indiscriminate slaughter against their fellow Christians, making no distinction between soldier and civilian – enemies of God all… worse than Muslims, worse than Jews. Pillage, violence, rape was everywhere. The number of victims of this Christian-on-Christian horror, by Villehariouin’s own telling, is greater than any man can count. On day two of the despoiling, the systematic plundering of the riches of the city’s capital buildings and Churches began. The Holy sanctuaries were desecrated and pilfered. The ancient Roman and medieval Greek works were either seized or destroyed. The tombs of Byzantium’s emperors inside the St. Apostles church were defiled and looted. Monasteries and convents met the same fate as the churches. The consecrated alters were smashed, their gold and marble stolen. Even the Latin bishops took part in the plunder by lifting ancient relics of the city to take back to the west. When looters could find no more loot, they resorted to stealing things of a more carnal desire from the helpless women of Constantinople. The Venetians, always the professionals, kept their lower appetites in check and let the crusaders carry on this vile terror while they hunted the artistic treasures of the city. A massive bronze statue of Hercules, commissioned under Alexander the Great was stolen. And the famous bronze horses of the hippodrome were eventually sent back to St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, where they still stand today.
The civilian casualties were in the thousands… no one really knows how many died. The estimated plunder was said to equal around a million silver marks. Christopher Tyerman calls it enough booty to fund a western European state for a decade. As news of actions of the crusaders spread, nearly everyone, even those who were loath to criticize the endeavor, were left appalled.
With the cities power and riches that stood for a thousand years taken in three days, the Latins and Venetians now needed to turn to governance. By May, Baldwin of Flanders was elected emperor. A Venetian was elected patriarch. Murzuphlus was captured and executed. The Norman conquerors began settling themselves into new land holdings just as they had done in Jerusalem, Sicily, and England before.
In the years that followed, much like Frankish Outremer, Byzantine purists set up resistance movements throughout Greece. The surrounding nations loathed Latin traditions and quickly lent their support to the resistance. The venetians had soon retracted into insular self-rule as they always had done and the whole Latin-Byzantine experiment began to roll up. Emperor Baldwin was eventually captured in a rebellion along with other Latin leaders. Boniface, military leader of the fourth crusade was killed in an ambush by Bulgarians.
During these years however, the flood of sacred relics, real or unreal, was vast. The True Cross, drops of Christ’s sacred blood, the Crown of Thorns, pieces of stone from sacred sights of Jesus’s life, pilfered from the east and sent to the west. News of miracles associated with the relics began spreading, and naturally tourism exploded around them. Vast sums of cash flowed into the cities that now housed these relics, funding the now necessary expansion of infrastructure to handle these new pilgrims. Some of these improvements are the most famous and beautiful churches we have today.
Christopher Tyerman, in his eloquent pen, sums up this growth much better than me:
Whatever transcendent gains accrued; the relics of Byzantium contributed to patches of economic prosperity across Europe. Some relics could even play a political role. The Crown of Thorns pawned to the Venetians in 1237 and later sold to Louis IX of France prompted the construction of the luminous Sainte Chapelle in Paris and played a significant part in the manufacture of a Capetian religion of monarchy. The acquisition by wealthy nations of the cultural icons of conquered or exploited weaker lands is a staple of world history, as shown by glancing at Ancient Rome, nineteenth-century England or the United States of America in the past century. Byzantium was another prime example, a storehouse of classical and Christian artifacts, many of which had been translated, stolen, or otherwise removed from provinces of the empire.
The Greeks would eventually reclaim their empire from the Latins piece by piece, but they would never fully recover. Future emperors were never able to hold sway over much beyond the walls of the city. The final destruction of Byzantium was complete, if only delayed. 250 years later when Mehmed II finally brought the walls of Constantinople crumbling to the ground under canon fire, he broke open merely a tomb encasing a skeleton of a great Christian empire. While the west is not wholly to blame, since much of Byzantium’s destruction came from myopic self-interest, the physical destruction come upon horseback in western armor aboard western ships.
The sacking of Constantinople by the fourth crusaders is remembered as so complete, so devastating, so historically consequential, and so vicious, that as recently as 2001, Pope John Paul II flirted with a public apology by using phrases like “deep regret” and “heavy burden” when discussing it – over 800 years later.
Historian Steve Runciman called the fourth crusade the greatest crime against humanity – perhaps an over exaggeration, yet if one sees Constantinople’s fall to the Turks two and a half centuries later as one of the greatest disasters in history, then perhaps one may feel justified this feeling.
Then there’s of course the Pope at whose feet lay the entire fourth crusade: the sac of Zara, and the sack of Constantinople lay… Pope Innocent III. He of course excommunicated everyone involved and disowned the entire enterprise, washed his hands of their villainy, and was recorded to say of the Greek church, that they, “now, and with reason, detest the Latins more than dogs.”
Innocent’s papacy and well of energy was far from exhausted, however. The structure with which he raised funds and harnessed the aristocracy of Europe continued when he launched the Albigensian crusades against heretical Christians in France. He now had at his disposal the maturation of coherent legal, liturgical, and fiscal provisions, conceived by his likeminded predecessors that launched the first crusade. Crusade propaganda, now over a hundred years old was now written tradition: service to God, promise of salvation, remission of sins, charity toward oppressed Christians, reclaiming the realm of Christ, a test of one’s religious devotion. Canon lawyers and chroniclers now had the task of backfitting the crusades into just war theory. And with the examples of the ancient Israelites, it wasn’t hard to do.
Vow redemption, more Innocent’s novelty than anyone elses, became a new powerful tool to raise quick cash – donate to the Holy War and have your sins expunged. Indulgences became broader and more common. One could obtain and indulgence now by simply listening to a crusade sermon. Within a hundred years, you could just buy them outright. Papal centralization now expanded beyond just crusading. Preaching was standardized across the bishoprics of western Europe – one could now hear the same sermon in the urban sprawl of London as they could in rural Germany. Manuals and handbooks were published describing how the pope wanted his preachers to preach. Brand new evangelical armies like the Dominicans and Franciscans carried out personal conversion missions of the pope. Within a few decades of Innocent’s papacy, all of Christendom had been divided by Rome and organized into collection regions, with each diocese paying up to Rome. All of this fell under what Innocent III had so often called The Business of the Cross. Being a vehicle for papal reformers like Gregory and Urban to expand their theories into practice, and bring meaningful political power to the papacy, the crusades were wildly successful. For the Norman knight, younger sons left out of inheritances, they were windfalls of conquest, and plunder. For the true believers and peasants, they were largely nothing more than the remission of temporal punishment for sin, and only God can know if this was truly attained.
The onset and then harnessing of Norman methods of conquest simply gave these medievals the means to launch intercontinental Holy War – which is interesting in that, in crusading, almost nothing was done that hadn’t been done before, that is, conquer, pillage, and claim for their own a foreign land. What stood as different is the reasons why they were doing it. And those reasons are as numerable is the crucesignati. Taking of the Cross was not a monolithic ideology like communism or some nationalistic goal of positive and negative outcomes. Therefore, it’s not enough to simply say they were wars of conquest, but also literal, allegorical, moral, and mystical resonations of the soul of the medieval western Catholic.
The problem of defining the crusades was equally difficult for Innocent. Despite his attempts to codify the crusading Church with the authority of the pope, his failure is evident when one examines canon law and finds no conclusions about the pope’s ability to declare war. Innocent’s apologists few years after his papacy naturally needed to define Holy War – the best they could do was theorize on a concept of papal just war. These theories, Christopher Tyerman notes, were arguments borrowed from everywhere but canon law.
Two centuries after Innocentian style papal practices had been entrenched, a Benedictine scholar attempted to ask the question, “By what law or on what ground can war be made against the Saracens?” This Benedictine knowing canon law and history, could only conclude that since sacred lands were occupied by enemies of God, and all crusades occurred under the banner of the pope, they had just cause by just leadership, and therefore engaged in just war – the same theory-tradition used by the Latin bishops before the doors of Constantinople.
With regards to the vow of taking up the Cross, Canon lawyers during and after the crusade never came to conclusions on this act, primarily because taking this vow, under the direction of the clergy constituted and authorization of violence. Thus, the crusader’s vow was fueled by practice, not established canonical law, or theological theory. There was a demand for soldiers, and spiritual and material benefits were held out as a carrot of organized recruitment preaching, naturally followed by developments in financing, resulting in the centrality of bureaucracy overseen by the office of the papacy. On a political level, the crusader vow existed as a grand contract between ecclesiastical authorities and secular commanders.
Yet for all the spiritual novelty, the crusades did not create a new religion. The Catholic faith remained unchanged in dogmatic expression. And taking up the cross did not become a universal prerequisite for the faith. Case in point Ireland, who never took up the cross in any meaningful way and yet never lost their identity as a catholic country. And so then if you look at the engines of the crusading period: European expansionism, Norman militarism, and papal ascendency, the crusades were a reflection and refraction of Latin religious, social, and cultural norms.
Author Robert Bartlett reinforces this idea, saying that the crusades were an extension of developing European culture, one that preceded the nation state. The cross was a badge of universalism, not a dynastic or state symbol. The armies were the hosts of God, the company of God, the host of Jesus. He calls them the common heritage of all Latin Christians. It would be no surprise then that as western Europe grew, changed, matured, and became distracted with other threats, such as the Reformation, crusading as a structure of warfare ceased to be effective towards its geopolitical goals, and as such, ceased to be used.
Academic definitions aside, the difficulty, for me at least, in trying to say what the crusade were lies in the abject sinful means by which they were waged. I’m no theologian. Nor would I dare to presume God’s judgement. Yet when I hear certain chest thumping ideology today that shouts the words “Deus Vult”, I can help but wonder if that same person has the capability of thrusting a cold steel blade through the pregnant belly of a Muslim or Jew.
The shocking and grotesque amount of violence wrapped up in what we call the crusades is impossible to square with the faith Jesus Christ exhorts us too, and yet so few contemporaries, kings, clergy, popes, and laity, found nothing distasteful. And who’s to say that had you or I been transported to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, heard the news of the marches of Islam upon the lands of Christ, heard the sermons calling each one of us to take up the cross and expunge the sins staining our souls, would we not take that opportunity. Would we resist the words of great preachers and future saints like Bernard of Clairvaux when he tells us:
The word had gone round that a new kind of knighthood had arisen… It is a new kind of knighthood, I say, unknown to the ages, for it fights an endless double battle, against flesh and blood and against spiritual wickedness in high places… The knights of Christ fight the battles of their Lord with untroubled minds, fearing neither sin from killing the enemy nor danger in their own death, since there is no guilt and much deserved glory in either bearing death or inflicting it for Christ… The knight of Christ, I say, kills with an untroubled mind, dies with an even less troubled one… a Christian glories in the death of a pagan, since Christ is glorified.
Whether this confidence in just war and killing was an invention of the papacy to an end, or an extension of religious militarism, or some combination, it’s clear the crusades can never be fully defined because they mean something different to the induvial who took up the cross. And through the ages critics and apologists have run the gauntlet of explanations. And there were more crusades than just the four we discussed here. Soon nearly every war in Europe was billed as Holy War, further muddling any attempt at definition. This was a method of pronouncing moral superiority. Call your war a crusade, and then all would know God was on your side. I opened this narrative with words from President George W. Bush, 900 years after the first campaign into Judea, where he invoked the word crusade to frame the coming invasion by camouflaged legions of the west. Islamic radicals still use the word today when exhorting their followers to kill the crusaders.
My goal with this podcast is simply to understand better those periods in Catholic history when it seemed the Gates of Hell came awfully close to prevailing. My intention is not to give scandal to the Church, for the scandal is not upon her but upon the fallen men at her helm. Yet where scandal exists, it is best we understand it in its proper context. In the mobilization of what Innocent called the Business of the Cross, the context is more complicated than I ever imagined. Truly, after all my reading, researching, and contemplating, I find myself still unable to confidently define what the crusades were. I am reassured thought that this at least puts me in good company. Christopher Tyerman reminds anyone who reads his works that in trying to define the crusades, one will always run into historical and contemporary difficulties:
If historical perceptions of the crusades are today fragmented, not united, prosaic rather than epic, in one central respect they follow their predecessors. They paint their canvases in contemporary colours. For almost a millennium writers concerned with Holy Wars which originated in the first campaign to Jerusalem have demonstrated that there are few absolutes in interpreting the past which, as often as not, is the construct of the present. The invention of the crusades began in 1095: it has not ended yet.