Turkish tribe of Western Asia, had overrun Syria and Asia Minor,
throwing the East into a state of anarchy, Europe was beginning to adopt
modes of settled order. Through the Byzantine empire great numbers of
pilgrims for centuries had passed to visit Palestine. With the improved
condition of the western nations, which led to an extension of commerce
in the East, the pilgrimage to that part of the world acquired a new
importance. As early as 1064 a caravan of seven thousand pilgrims made
their way to the neighborhood of Jerusalem, where they narrowly escaped
destruction by the Bedouins, their rescue being effected by a Saracen
emir.
In 1070 the Seljuks took possession of Jerusalem, inflicting hardships
on the pilgrims by intolerable exactions, insult, and plunder. Besides
outraging Christian sentiment, they ruined the commerce of the western
nations. Throughout Europe arose the cry for vengeance, and men's minds
were fully prepared for an attempt to conquer Palestine when their
leaders began to preach the sacred duty of delivering the Holy Sepulchre
from the hands of the infidels.
At the Council of Clermont, in 1094, Pope Urban II depicted the miseries
of Christians in Palestine, and, with a power of eloquence unsurpassed
in his day, called upon those who heard him to wipe off from the face of
the earth the impurities which caused them, and to lift their oppressed
fellow-Christians from the depths into which they had been trampled. He
urged them to take up arms in the service of the Cross, at the same time
setting before them the temporal, no less than the spiritual, advantages
that would accrue from the conquest of a land "flowing with milk and
honey," and which, he said, should be divided among them. He likewise
offered them full pardon for all their sins.
The enthusiasm of his hearers burst all bounds, and with one voice they
cried: "God wills it! God wills it!" To all parts of Europe the fervor
spread. The Pope was powerfully aided by an earnest and eloquent--if
ignorant--monk, Peter the Hermit, of Amiens, who declared that he would
rouse the martial spirit of Europe in the cause, and he himself was the
first--with whatsoever of misguided zeal--to lead the way to the Holy
Land.
The crusades are so called from the simple circumstance that the badge
chosen for the movement was the cross, which Pope Urban bade the
Christian warriors wear on their breasts or on their shoulders, as the
sign of Him who died for the salvation of their souls, and as the pledge
of a vow that could never be recalled.)
In the enterprise to which Latin Christendom stood committed, the
several nations or countries of Europe took equal parts; or, rather, no
_nation_, as such, took any part in it at all; and in this fact we have
the explanation of that want of coherent action, and even decent or
average generalship, which is commonly seen in national undertakings.
For the crusade there was no attempt at a commissariat, no care for a
base of supplies; and the crusading hosts were a collection of
individual adventurers who either went without making any provisions for
their journey or provided for their own needs and those of their
followers from their own resources. The number of these adventurers was
naturally determined by the political conditions of the country from
which they came. In Italy the struggle between the pope and the antipope
went far toward chilling enthusiasm; and the recruits for the crusading
army came chiefly from the Normans who had followed Robert Guiscard to
the sunny southern lands. The Spaniards were busied with a crusade
nearer home, and were already pushing back to the south the Mahometan
dominion which had once threatened to pass the barriers of the Pyrenees
and carry the Crescent to the shores of the Baltic Sea. About ten years
before the council of Clermont the Moslem dynasty of Toledo had been
expelled by Alfonso, King of Galicia: the kingdom of Cordova had fallen
twenty years earlier (1065), and while Peter the Hermit was hurrying
hither and thither through the countries of Northern Europe, the
Christians of Spain were winning victories in Murcia, and the land was
ringing with the exploits of the dauntless Cid, Ruy Diaz de Bivar. By
the Germans the summons to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre was received
with comparative coldness; the partisans of emperors, who had been
humbled to the dust by the predecessors of Urban, if not by himself,
were not vehemently eager to obey it. The bishops of Salzburg, Passau,
and Strasburg, the aged duke Guelph of Bavaria, had undertaken the
toilsome and perilous journey: not one of them saw their homes again,
and their death in the distant East was not regarded by their countrymen
as an encouragement to follow their example. In England the English were
too much weighed down by the miseries of the Conquest, the Normans too
much occupied in strengthening their position, and the King, William the
Red, more ready to take advantage of the needs of his brother Robert
than to incur any risks of his own. The great movement came from the
lands extending from the Scheldt to the Pyrenees. Franks and Normans
alike made ready with impetuous haste for the great adventure; and tens
of thousands, who could not wait for the formation of something like a
regular army, hurried away, under leaders as frantic as themselves, to
their inevitable doom.
Little more than half the time allowed for the gathering of the
crusaders had passed away, when a crowd of some sixty thousand men and
women, neither caring nor thinking about the means by which their ends
could be attained, insisted that the hermit Peter should lead them at
once to the Holy City. Mere charity may justify the belief that some
even among these may have been folk of decent lives moved by the earnest
conviction that their going to Jerusalem would do some good; that the
vast majority looked upon their vow as a license for the commission of
any sin, there can be no moral doubt; that they exhibited not a single
quality needed for the successful prosecution of their enterprise is
absolutely certain. With a foolhardiness equal to his ignorance Peter
undertook the task, in which he was aided by Walter the Penniless, a man
with some pretensions to the soldier-like character. But the utter
disorder of this motley host made it impossible for them to journey long
together. At Cologne they parted company; and fifteen thousand under the
penniless Walter made their way to the frontiers of Hungary, while Peter
led onward a host which swelled gradually on the march to about forty
thousand.
Another army or horde of perhaps twenty thousand marched under the
guidance of Emico, Count of Leiningen, a third under that of the monk
Gottschalk, a man not notorious for the purity or disinterestedness of
his motives. Behind these came a rabble, it is said, of two hundred
thousand men, women, and children, preceded by a goose and a goat, or,
as some have supposed, by banners on which, as symbols of the mysterious
faith of Gnostics and Paulicians, the likeness of these animals was
painted. In this vile horde no pretence was kept up of order or of
decency. Sinning freely, it would seem, that grace might abound, they
plundered and harried the lands through which they marched, while three
thousand horsemen, headed by some counts and gentlemen, were not too
dignified to act as their attendants and to share their spoil.
But if they had no scruple in robbing Christians, their delight was to
prove the reality of their mission as soldiers of the cross by
plundering, torturing, and slaying Jews. The crusade against the Turk
was interpreted as a crusade directed not less explicitly against the
descendants of those who had crucified the Redeemer. The streets of
Verdun and Treves and of the great cities on the Rhine ran red with the
blood of their victims; and if some saved their lives by pretended
conversions, many more cheated their persecutors by throwing their
property and their persons either into the rivers or into the consuming
fires.
A space of six hundred miles lay between the Austrian frontier and
Constantinople; and across the dreary waste the followers of Walter the
Penniless struggled on, destitute of money, and rousing the hostility of
the inhabitants whom they robbed and ill-used. In Bulgaria their
misdeeds provoked reprisals which threatened their destruction; and none
perhaps would have reached Constantinople if the imperial commander at
Naissos had not rescued them from their enemies, supplied them with
food, and guarded them through the remainder of their journey. These
succors involved some costs; and the costs were paid by the sale of
unarmed men among the pilgrims, and especially of the women and
children, who were seized to provide the necessary funds. Of those who
formed the train of the hermit Peter, seven thousand only, it is said,
reached Constantinople.
Of such a rabble rout the emperor Alexius[41] needed not to be afraid.
He had already seen and encountered far larger armies of Normans, Turks,
and Romans; and he now extended to this vanguard of the hosts of Latin
Christendom a hospitality which was almost immediately abused. They had
refused to comply with his request that they should quietly await the
arrival of their fellow-crusaders; and consulting the safety of his
people not less than his own, he induced them to cross the Bosporus, and
pitch their camp on Asiatic soil, the land which they had come to wrest
from the unbelievers.
[Footnote 41: Head of the Byzantine empire.]
Alexius wished simply to be rid of their presence: they had to deal with
an enemy still more crafty and formidable in the Seljukian sultan David.
The vagrants whom Peter and Walter had brought thus far on the road to
Jerusalem were scattered about the land in search of food; and it was no
hard task for David to cheat the main body with the false tidings that
their companions had carried the walls of Nice, and were revelling in
the pleasures and spoils of his capital. The doomed horde rushed into
the plain which fronts the city; and a vast heap of bones alone remained
to tell the story of the great catastrophe, when the forces which might
more legitimately claim the name of an army passed the spot where the
Seljukian had entrapped and crushed his victims. In this wild expedition
not less, it is said, than three hundred thousand human beings had
already paid the penalty of their lives.
Still the First Crusade was destined to accomplish more than any of the
seven or eight crusades which followed it; and this measure of success
it achieved probably because none of the great European sovereigns took
part in it. The task of setting up a Latin kingdom in Palestine was to
be achieved by princes of the second order.
Of these the foremost and the most deservedly illustrious was Godfrey,
of Bouillon in the Ardennes, a kinsman of the counts of Boulogne, and
Duke of Lotharingen (Lorraine). In the service of the emperor Henry IV,
the enemy or the victim of Hildebrand, he had been the first to mount
the walls of Rome and cleave his way into the city; he might now hope
that his crusading vow would be accepted as an atonement for his
sacrilege. Speaking the Frank and Teutonic dialects with equal ease, he
exercised by his bravery, his wisdom, and the uprightness of his life an
influence which brought to his standard, it is said, not less than
eighty thousand infantry and ten thousand horsemen, together with his
brothers Baldwin and Eustace, Count of Boulogne.
Among the most conspicuous of Godfrey's colleagues was Hugh, Count of
Vermandois. With him may be placed the Norman duke Robert, whose
carelessness had lost him the crown of England, and who had now pawned
his duchy for a pittance scarcely less paltry than that for which Esau
bartered away his birthright. The number of the great chiefs who led the
pilgrims from Northern Europe is completed with the names of Robert,
Count of Flanders, and of Stephen, Count of Chartres, Troyes, and Blois.
Foremost, by virtue of his title and office, among the leaders of the
southern bands was the papal legate Adhemar (Aymer) Bishop of Puy--a
leader rather as guiding the counsels of the army than as gathering
soldiers under his banner.
A hundred thousand horse and foot attested, we are told, the greatness,
the wealth, and the zeal of Raymond, Count of Toulouse, lord of Auvergne
and Languedoc, who had grown old in warfare.
Less tinged with the fanatical enthusiasm of his comrades, and certainly
more cool and deliberate in his ambition, Bohemond, son of Robert
Guiscard, looked to the crusade as a means by which he might regain the
vast regions extending from the Dalmatian coast to the northern shores
of the Aegean. Nay, if we are to believe William of Malmesbury, he urged
Urban to set forward the enterprise for the very purpose, partly, of
thus recovering what he was pleased to regard as his inheritance, and in
part of enabling the Pontiff to suppress all opposition in Rome.
Guiscard had left his Apulian domains to a younger son, and Bohemond was
resolved, it would seem, to add to his principality of Tarentum a
kingdom which would make him a formidable rival of the Eastern Emperor.
Far above Bohemond rises his cousin Tancred, the son of the marquis Odo,
surnamed the Good, and of Emma, the sister of Robert Guiscard.
In Tancred was seen the embodiment of those peculiar sentiments and
modes of thought which gave birth to the crusades, and to which the
crusades in their turn imparted marvellous strength and splendor.
The miserable remnant of three thousand men who escaped from the field
of blood before the city of the Seljukian sultan found a refuge in
Byzantine territory about the time when the better appointed armies of
the crusaders were setting off on their eastward journey. The most
disciplined of these troops set out with a vast following from the banks
of the Meuse and the Moselle under Godfrey of Bouillon, who led them
safely and without opposition to the Hungarian border. Here the armies
of Hungary barred the way against the advance of a host at whose hands
they dreaded a repetition of the havoc wrought by the lawless bands of
Peter the Hermit and his self-chosen colleagues. Three weeks passed away
in vain attempts to get over the difficulty. The Hungarian King demanded
as a hostage Baldwin, the brother of the general: the demand was
refused, and Godfrey put him to shame by surrendering himself. He asked
only for a free passage and a free market; but although these were
granted, it was not in his power to prevent some disorder and some
depredations as his army or horde passed through the country. The
mischief might have been much worse, had not the Hungarian cavalry,
acting professedly as a friendly escort, but really as cautious warders,
kept close to the crusading hosts.
At length they reached the gates of Philippopolis, and here Godfrey
learned that Hugh of Vermandois, whose coming had been announced to the
Greek emperor Alexius by four-and-twenty knights in golden armor, and
who styled himself the brother of the king of kings and lord of all the
Frankish hosts, was a prisoner within the walls of Constantinople. With
Robert of Normandy and Robert of Flanders, with Stephen of Chartres and
some lesser chiefs, Hugh had chosen to make his way through Italy; and
the charms of that voluptuous land had a greater effect, it seems, in
breaking up and corrupting their forces than the delights of Capua had
in weakening the soldiers of Hannibal.
With little regard to order, the chiefs determined to cross the sea as
best they might. Hugh embarked at Bari; and if we may believe Anna
Comnena, the historian and the worshipper of her father Alexius, his
fleet was broken by a tempest which shattered his own ship on the coast
between Palos and Dyrrhachium (Durazzo), of which John Comnenus, the
nephew of the Emperor, was at this time the governor. The Frank chief
was here detained until the good pleasure of Alexius should be known.
That wary and cunning prince saw at once how much might be made of his
prisoner, who was by his orders conducted with careful respect and
ceremony to the capital. Kept here really as a hostage, but welcomed to
outward seeming as a friend, Hugh was so completely won by the charm of
manner which Alexius well knew how and when to put on, that, paying him
homage and declaring himself his man, he promised to do what he could to
induce others to follow his example.
From Philippopolis Godfrey sent ambassadors to Alexius, demanding the
immediate surrender of Hugh. The request was refused, and Godfrey
resumed his march, treating the land through which he passed as an
enemy's country, until by way of Adrianople he at length appeared before
the walls of the capital at Christmastide, 1096. The fears of Alexius
were aroused by the sight of a host so vast and so formidable: they
quickened into terror as he thought of the armies which were still on
their way under the command of Bohemond and Tancred. Of Godfrey, beyond
the fact of his mission as a crusader, he knew little or nothing; but in
Bohemond he saw one who claimed as his inheritance no small portion of
his empire. This gathering of myriads, whom a false step on his part
might convert into open enemies, was the result of his own entreaties
urged through his envoys before Urban II in the Council of Piacenza; and
his mind was divided between a feverish anxiety to hurry them on to
their destination and so to rid himself of their hateful presence, and
the desire to retain a hold not only on the crusading chiefs but on any
conquests which they might make in Syria.
Hugh was sent back to Godfrey's camp; but the quarrel was patched up,
rather than ended. It was easier to rouse suspicion and jealousy than to
restore friendship. But it was of the first importance for Alexius that
he should secure the homage of the princes already gathered round his
capital before the arrival of his ancient enemy Bohemond. In this he
succeeded, and a compact was made by which Alexius pledged them his word
that he would supply them with food and aid them in their eastward
march, and would protect all pilgrims passing through his dominions. On
the other hand the crusading chiefs, as already subjects of other
sovereigns, gave their fealty to the Emperor as their liege lord only
for the time during which they might remain within his borders, and
undertook to restore to him such of their conquests as had been recently
wrested from the empire.
The policy and the bribes of Alexius had overcome the opposition of
Bohemond. He was to experience a stouter resistance from Raymond of
Toulouse, who, though he had been the first to enlist, was the last to
set out on his crusade.
The Count of Toulouse scarcely regarded himself as the vassal even of
the French King. He was ready, he said, to be the friend of Alexius on
equal terms; but he would not declare himself to be his man. On this
point he was immovable, although Bohemond tried the effect of a threat
(which was never forgiven), that if the quarrel came to blows, he should
be found on the side of the Emperor. But Alexius soon saw that in
Raymond he had to deal with an enthusiast as sincere and persistent as
Godfrey. He took his measures accordingly, winning the heart of the old
warrior, although he failed to compel his obedience.
While Alexius was busied in dealing with Godfrey and Raymond, Bohemond
and Tancred, he was not less anxiously occupied with the task of sending
across the Bosporus the swarms which might soon become an army of
devouring locusts round his own capital. It was easier to give them a
welcome than to get rid of them: and more than two months had passed
since Christmas, when the followers of Godfrey found themselves on the
soil of Asia.
Godfrey's men had no sooner been landed on the eastern side of the
Bosporus than all the vessels which had transported them were brought
back to the western shore. With great astuteness, and at the cost of
large gifts, Alexius in like manner freed the neighborhood of his
capital from the invading multitudes. As fast as they came they were
hurried across, and the Emperor breathed more freely when, on the Feast
of Pentecost, not a single Latin pilgrim remained on the European shore.
The danger of conflict had throughout been imminent; and the danger
arose, not so much from the fact that the crusaders were armed men,
marching through the country of professed allies, but from the thorough
antagonism between Greeks and Latins in modes of thought and habits of
life. Nor must we forget the vast gulf which separated the Eastern from
the Western clergy. The clergy of the West despised their brethren of
the East for their cowardly submission to the secular arm. These, in
their turn, shrunk with horror from the sight of bishops, priests, and
monks riding with blood-stained weapons over fields of battle, and
exhibiting at other times an ignorance equal to their ferocity.
The strength and valor of the crusaders were soon to be tested. They
were now face to face with the Turks, on whose cowardice Urban II had
enlarged with so much complacency before the Council of Clermont. The
sultan David, or Kilidje Arslan, placed his family and treasures in his
capital city of Nice and retreated with fifty thousand horsemen to the
mountains, whence he swooped down from time to time on the outposts of
the Christians. By these his city was formally invested; and for seven
weeks it was assailed to little purpose by the old instruments of Roman
warfare, while some of the besiegers shot their weapons from the hill on
which were mouldering the bones of the fanatic followers of Peter. It
was protected to the west by the Askanian lake, and so long as the Turks
had command of this lake they felt themselves safe. But Alexius sent
thither on sledges a large number of boats, and the city, subjected to a
double blockade, submitted to the Emperor, who was in no way anxious to
see the crusaders masters of the place. The crusaders were making ready
for the last assault, when they saw the imperial banner floating on the
walls. Their disappointment at the escape of the miscreants, or
unbelievers, for so they delighted to speak of them, was vented in
threats which seemed to bode a renewal of the old troubles; but Alexius,
with gifts, which added force to his words, professed that his only
desire now, as it had been, was to forward them safely on their journey.
Nor had they to go many stages before they found themselves again
confronted with their adversary.
The conflict took place near the Phrygian Dorylaion, and seemed at first
to portend dire defeat to the crusaders. More than once the issue of the
day seemed to be turned by the indomitable personal bravery of the
Norman Robert, of Tancred, and of Bohemond; and when even those seemed
likely to be borne down, they received timely succors from Godfrey, and
Hugh of Vermandois, from Bishop Adhemar of Puy and from Raymond, Count
of Toulouse. Still the Turks held out, and it seemed likely that they
would long hold out, when the appearance of the last division of
Raymond's army filled them with the fear that a new host was upon them.
The crusaders had won a considerable victory. Three thousand knights
belonging to the enemy had been slain, and Kilidje Arslan was hurrying
away to enlist the services of his kinsmen. Meanwhile the Latin hosts
were sweeping onward. Hundreds died from the heat, and dogs or goats
took the place of the baggage-horses which had perished. At length
Tancred with his troop found himself before Tarsus, the birthplace and
the home of that single-hearted apostle who long ago had preached a
gospel strangely unlike the creed of the crusaders. Following rapidly
behind him, Baldwin saw with keen jealousy the banner of the Italian
chief floating on its towers, and insisted on taking the precedence.
Tancred pleaded the choice of the people and his own promise to protect
them; but the intrigues of Baldwin changed their humor, and the
rejection of Tancred by the men of Tarsus was followed by an attempt at
private war between Tancred and Baldwin, in which the troops of Tancred
were overborne. So early was the first harvest of murderous discord
reaped among the holy warriors of the Cross. It was ruin, however, to
stay where they were; and the main army again began its march, to
undergo once more the old monotony of hardship and peril.