Eleanor of Aquitaine
Lady, I'm yours and yours will stay,
Pledged to your service, come what may.
This oath I take is full and free,
The kind of vow that will hold sure:
Of all my joys you are the first
And of them all you'll be the last,
As long as my life endures.
Song to Eleanor by the visiting troubadour Bernard de Ventadour
The Second Crusade may fairly be called the Queen's Crusade, for it was dominated by the character of the Queen of France, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Her story is woven through the lives of thousands of others - men and women, great and small: she is too important to ignore.
Pre-eminent amongst the men and women of her time - more than Suger, Henry II, Barbarossa or St Bernard - she is the spirit of her century. It is all but impossible to search the chronicles of the era without treading the paths she defined.
Eleanor, however, was by no means the first member of her family to embark for Palestine, although she is the best remembered.
Never was there such a brawling, self absorbed, fascinating and arrogantly superior brood as her family. Quite rightly, the Plantagenets - the dynasty she created, along with her second husband Henry II - are more often associated with the Devil than with the opposite end of the Christian spectrum.
And much the same held true with her parental family, the rulers of the Aquitaine. Her ancestors had helped quicken the soul of Europe to the possibilities of Crusade.
It might fairly be said that the blood of Crusaders already ran hot in the veins of the beautiful and passionate Queen Eleanor when she was still the young bride of Louis, King of France.
Her paternal grandfather, William IX of Aquitaine, had set the example. William had belatedly but vigorously joined in the crusades in 1101.
He also seems to have shocked and outraged the more pious residents of Christian Outremer. William was no choir boy: his exploits are described above. They are characterised by a supreme indifference to the rights of others, and particularly the women in his life.Yet, in the most ironical of all twists, he was possibly partly responsible for bringing to France the idea of singing the praises of women. Music had previously been almost totally devoted to the praise of god or of battle (often simultaneously, as in the Song of Roland written c.1050 by a monk).
The Aquitaine was abuzz with that novel idea by the middle of the twelfth century. Within a generation it had ravished the rest of Europe, and still does in various forms to the present.
William IX seems to have been the first well known recipient of these ideas, perhaps garnered during his sojourn in the East, or perhaps infiltrating to his Duchy through the cultural barriers at the borders of reconquered Spain.
William was no milk and water poet, overawed by the beauty of his mistress's brow. Quite the contrary. He boasted without shame that he could earn his living as a lover in any marketplace, and according to William of Malmesbury he planned to build a nunnery of whores at Niort with the most beautiful of the ladies as its abbess.1
A contemporary described him as the most courtly of men in the whole world, as well as one of the greatest deceivers. He could write good poetry and sing well, and was given to wandering the world seducing women.2
Samples of the poems he wrote begin with the boast that he will write of large portions of joy, love and youth.
He is as good as his lusty word. In one such poem, he imagines himself pretending to be half witted. Strolling in the street he meets two married women, who like his looks and try to extract a word from him. He replies in nonsense: they are satisfied that he's just the man for them, so they hide him beneath their cloak and smuggle him into the house of one of them. After a spiced supper, with plenty of wine, they begin to have second thoughts. They decide to test his supposed dumbness. Finding a cat, they command William to undress, and then drag the cat's claws across his back. He had more than a hundred wounds that day, but says not a word. His wounds are soothed in a bath - if he is to be believed, the bathing went on for eight days - and his ardour is tried no less than 188 times.
William is credited with being the first lyric poet in any modern European language. Given that his spirit was Byronic rather than Wordsworthian, he must have caused a stir amongst the ladies of Outremer.
It must be admitted, however, that as a warrior, he was disastrous.
Time and again he and his army found itself in impossible positions in the journey through Anatolia, ambushes and false marches which William only escaped with the
massive loss of life of his followers and superhuman feats of concealment on his part.3
Amongst his accomplishments on his journey was the loss of one of Europe's most famous beauties, Irene the Dowager Margravine of Austria. She joined in his progress apparently as the closing phase of a life of earthly pleasure, seeking the piety of crusade during her autumn years. William's army was defeated by bad planning and dry marches as it crossed the familiar route past Dorylaeum. The Turks fell on the disordered troops as they broke ranks to race for water at the town of Heraclea.
Nearly all were killed or captured. The aged Ida was probably crushed to death in the stampede for water, but legend had it that she was captured and placed in a harem, where eventually she gave birth to the great Moslem warrior Zengi.4
The crusades of William's grandaughter Eleanor were to prove equally spectacular, and equally disastrous for the cause of Christendom in the East. It was a characteristic of the dynasty that it lived the feckless life of the grasshopper.
Unusually for this family, Eleanor's father, William X, did not emulate his father in taking the Cross, but he seems to have shared the family traits of impetuosity and willfullness, dying while excommunicated over a dispute with a local bishop.
THE OUTREMER CONNECTION
The tale of the Eleanor's involvement with crusading has its immediate origins in the melodramatic career of her uncle, Raymond of Toulouse and Antioch.
Raymond was the image of the knight errant: handsome, free spirited, rich and a reckless gambler with his life and the lives of others.
He was also the close friend of Eleanor, long before she became the wife of King Louis of France.
Raymond of Toulouse lived a luxurious life, in keeping with his playboy image. He had charmed Eleanor when she was still a child, growing up in the sunlit courts of southern France. Later, he dazzled the rulers of Europe, as he wandered from domain to domain. He was trained to knight service under the special tutelage of Henry I of England, who gave him the accolade.
But Raymond could not find his place in Europe. It was by a chance, lucky for him but unfortunate for Bohemond II Prince of Antioch, that he found his niche in the colonies of Palestine.
In 1130 Bohemond was killed in a skirmish with the Moslems, his severed head sent back to his widow in his capital.
This widow was the formidable Princess Alice, daughter of King Baldwin of Jerusalem.
Alice's life shows a noble woman very much in control of her own political program, acting as military leader, diplomat and head of state, with ultimately no quarter given in the bloody business of running a country. Her sister was Melisende of Jerusalem, who in 1131 passed her father's throne to Fulk Count of Anjou by an arranged marriage made in May 1129. As described above, Melisende was throughout this time engaged in a notorious love affair with Hugh le Puiset, which was eventually to result in the death of her lover and her subjugation of her husband to her wishes.
But at the moment of Bohemond II's death, all that was in the future.
The widowed Alice showed herself to have been made of the same stern stuff as her sister.
She set out to take over the rulership of Antioch in her own right, with the unquestioning aid of a compliant new husband.
Instead, she had to contend with Raymond, and with the highest officials in the land, who aimed to dupe her out of her inheritance. Like the strong minded lady of Outremer she was, she refused to accept her fate.
Amongst the people she had to fight against was her father King Baldwin, who made it clear he wanted Alice out of Antioch, with a strong man to take her place.
Alice should have waited for the king to appoint a regent, as was his right as overlord. Instead, she immediately intervened personally and took charge of the princedom. People feared for what she might do to her two year old daughter, who had the hereditary right to the throne. These fears may have had justification, for shortly afterwards, Alice tried to give her underage daughter in marriage to the Greek empire in order to secure Byzantium's support for her rule.
Her most desperate step was to send a splendid horse as a gift to Zengi, Saracen ruler of Aleppo, offering to do him homage in return for his support over her claim to Antioch.
Neither ties of family, of motherly affection, nor religious conviction could override her determination for what was hers by right of marriage and inheritance.5
Unfortunately for the envoy in charge of the Princess's gift to Zengi, Alice's father Baldwin and her brother in law Fulk caught him before he had fairly begun the journey: the poor man was hanged.
Alice responded by sealing the gates of her city in her father's face. A distribution of treasure from the city's exchequer seems to have won her the temporary favour of the locals. Unfortunately, her knights were not so easily bought: they opened the gates to her father. She took refuge in a tower, to surrender at last only when guaranteed her safety, and buying her freedom by kneeling shame faced before her father.
He banished her to the lands of her dowry, Lattakieh and Jabala.
King Baldwin died in September 1131: his replacement was Fulk.
But the northern nobles, and particularly Alice, had their reasons not to accept him as the real heir to the throne. They wanted to establish their independence from Jerusalem. For Alice, it meant her chance to seize Antioch back again.
Alice organised opposition to Fulk amongst the northerners, reclaiming the title of regent of Antioch. The court appointed guardian of Alice's daughter Constance was Joscelin of Edessa, who had died a month after Baldwin, so there was a crucial interregnum.
Alice struck.
She negotiated with Joscelin's successor, Joscelin II of Edessa. Joscelin II was in a vulnerable position, as the barons of Antioch refused to confirm his regency, wishing as they did to preserve Antioch's independence. Alice negotiated with Joscelin, offering him the prospect of independence if he supported the break from Jerusalem. Joscelin agreed, and was joined soon afterwards by Pons of Tripoli, who saw his county gaining its freedom if the others were
successful.
Alice continued to gather support amongst a number of lords of Outremer, but a majority of her own barons betrayed her, summoning Fulk and his army from Jerusalem, rather than acceding to a woman's rule.
Meanwhile, Raymond of Toulouse had been selected by the King and the barons of the principality as the ideal replacement for Bohemond: well titled, but landless and without ambition. They expected they could manipulate him and simultaneously keep themselves independent of Jerusalem's direct control. Not all the lords of Outremer agreed of course: some of them considered themselves candidates for the princely crown of Antioch, and they attempted to stop Raymond before he ever reached their land. He had smuggled himself from Europe aboard various ships, and divided his personal following into small parties so they were not easily spotted.
Once in Antioch, with the aid of the Patriarch, he double crossed his proponents and his opponents.
In the time between Raymond being sent for and before his arrival in 1136 in Outremer, Alice had marched back into Antioch and assumed the role of a sovereign, with everybody under her sway. She was supported in this by Melisende, who interceded with Fulk - by now in mortal terror of his queen - not to interfere with her actions. Alice also gained the support of a number of nobles. Meanwhile, the crafty patriarch of Antioch, Ralph, persuaded her that Raymond was to be her future husband, thus securing her favor and influence against his enemies within the clergy. Alice, says William of Tyre, was credulous enough to readily accept this false hope.
Raymond had meanwhile entered into negotiations with the patriarch, promising to swear fealty to him, in return for marrying Alice's daughter Constance in order to secure the principality. It was additionally agreed that if Henry, his brother, should also come to Antioch, the patriarch would endeavor to secure Alice as his bride, together with her two cities and the lands attached to them.
The agreement made, Raymond entered the city.
Alice permitted this, supposing that all the arrangements then being made were for her own wedding. But when he was conducted to the basilica of St Peters, Raymond instead married the Lady Constance. The young princess was not yet of marriageable age - under nine years old - but the cynical patriarch nevertheless bestowed her personally as the bride of Raymond.
Learning that she had been double crossed yet again, Alice surrendered Antioch and retired to her own domains, where she spent the rest of her brief life in fruitless hatred of the new prince.
Raymond, fittingly, in turn double crossed the Patriarch, eventually withdrawing his favour and support, aligning himself with the pontiff's adversaries.
Raymond appears to have been an able politician, spending ten years in profitable rule of his new principality, forgetting all thoughts of his homeland. Like most Franks in Palestine, he adopted his new land. William has left a vivid pen portrait of him: tall, young, handsome, his cheeks still covered with the downy beard of youth when he arrived in Outremer, affable and agreeable in conversation. A patron of letters, he was devoted in religious matters, and after his marriage careful to observe and maintain faithfulness in his conjugal relations - at least until the arrival of Eleanor. He was, however, too fond of gambling, and quick to anger and to act impulsively.
He pursued his interests in Antioch until the neighbouring state of Edessa fell to the Arabs in 1144, exposing both his lands and the whole kingdom to imminent danger.
Now he turned back to his relatives in Europe, sending them many gifts from the bazaars of his state to tempt them into aiding him in defending his lands.7
Not that they needed much tempting. In particular his niece, now eight years the wife of the saintly King Louis was eager to accept the bait Raymond proferred.
THE BORED AND THE BEAUTIFUL
Accounts agree that by the time her uncle Raymond asked for help from the West, the lively Eleanor was thoroughly bored with a husband who spent more than enough time on his knees in church.
Louis himself was ripe for the call to Crusade, troubled as he was by constant visions of a vocation to serve the Church. He volunteered to aid in the defence of Christendom without bothering to secure the assent of all his chief advisors.
The Pope Eugenius III issued the Papal Bull Quantum Praedecessors on December 1 1145. Its stated aim was to recover Edessa, and the Pope called mainly on the French and Italian knights to undertake the task. Non combatants - women - were expected to remain at home.
But to the consternation of counsellors such as Abbot Suger, Queen Eleanor did not share this assumption. She expected to participate actively in the journey.
It was impossible to stop her going - after all, she could raise more troops from her Duchy of Aquitaine than the king could from his lands.
Eleanor also played a vital role in securing the support of the reluctant barons, who muttered of folly and the waste of money and life involved in a crusade. She moved amongst them, cajoling, flattering, and leading the men towards a decision.
So successful was she that once more all of western Europe stirred itself for the great journey.
She was aided in her insistence by St Bernard of Clairvaux, that "honey tongued" preacher, who saw the venture as a task for all, and succeeded through the fire of his sermons in enlisting high and low, male and female, adults and the young for the journey.
The Crusade was launched by St Bernard at Vezelay in Burgundy in the Lenten period of 1146. 8
The basilica of Vezelay was a suitable turning point for such a venture: it combined the old and the new. The western door was crowned by a barely completed sculpture in the romanesque style, an art form which was even then the hallmark of a past era. The carving in antique style showed a departure: a triumphant Christ issuing his apostles forth into the world, just as St Bernard was about to charge anew the knights of Europe with the task of setting forth on the incompleted work of two generations before, the reclamation of the holy places. 9
So great was the immediate response, however, that the existing church proved inadequate. When Bernard of Clairvaux spoke, he did so beneath the limitless vault of Heaven rather than under the stone arches of Mankind, because the church was too small to contain the assembly.
Bernard, pale and shaking from his life of fasting, work and contemplation, rose to give the papal bull: he was flanked by the barons, the bishops, and, in their midst, the shining, newly shriven, king and queen. His words dissolved in the emotion of the
moment, and so did his audience. The king prostrated himself before the saintly abbot, and the barons thronged to imitate him in their eagerness to accept the blessing. After the king came Eleanor, who offered her vassals from Poitou and Aquitaine, and after her, scores of great ladies including the half sister of the King of Jerusalem, Sybille, countess of Flanders, as well as other great ladies such as Mamille of Roucy, Florine of Bourgogne, Torqueri of Bouillon and Faydide of Toulouse.
The male chroniclers who observed these women taking the cross tut tutted the whole idea, considering that the presence of women on the crusade set a bad example for females as a whole. After all, had not the papal bull promulgating the crusade expressly forbade the attendance of concubines?
The queen appears to have been swept away, however, with the adventure of it all, bringing to the crusade a form of theatre a century before the first mystery plays were performed. Crowds of people had gathered to hear and discuss the new great journey. Suddenly, she appeared amongst the faithful, riding a white horse and dressed as an Amazon, shod with gilded sandals and her flaming hair bedecked in plumes. Surrounded by a bodyguard of similarly garbed women, she galloped around the meeting place, urging the faithful to join in the journey. Her attendant ladies distributed white distaffs to the fainthearted.
This theatrical symbolism was maintained throughout the crusade, according to Nicetas, who complained that the women dressed as men, mounted on horses and armed with lance and battle axe, keeping a martial demeanor as bold as the Amazons of legend. Eleanor in particular was richly dressed, and as with knights appearing in disguise at tournaments, she adopted a secret name - the lady of the golden boot. Eleanor was past the blush of girlish beauty for which she had become famous: now she was a magnificent warrior queen, the boldness of her manner combined with the aristocratic elegance of her bearing to make all who saw her think of her as the true Amazon queen, Penthesilea.10
Why did so many great women take the cross? Some commentators speculated that rather than choosing to go, they were forced to, especially Eleanor. Knowing her passionate character, the king feared to leave her behind. More recently, historians have theorised that her zeal was part of the new spirit of the troubadour, in which ladies and their courts were seeking relief from their gloomy castles. Journeys along the pleasant roads to the sunshine of the south were by now common. Pilgrimages had become the excuse for journeys of dalliance and pleasure.
And the ultimate pilgrimage was to the bazaars of Tripoli and the famous shrines of Jerusalem.11
This is perhaps a churlish suggestion, however, and rather demeaning to both the intellectual and spiritual state of Eleanor and her womenkind. It should be recalled that this was also the moment when Hildegard of Bingen was fervently imploring the great people of Europe to undertake a spiritual redemption - and Eleanor was one of those with whom she was corresponding.
The chaos of 1095 was never to be quite repeated in all its immense, dark power. Yet in 1147, it seemed that all of Western Europe was swirling in a tremendous, silver flood towards the Eastern frontier.
According to Odo of Deuil, an eyewitness, Louis had prepared himself for the departure by visiting a leper colony, a sign of abject humility and submission to the will of the Lord.
Eleanor, with the king's mother Adela, had gone ahead from the royal residence in Paris to St Denis on its outskirts. There the army was to be farewelled by the Pope, Eugenius III, and the formidable Abbot Suger, who was to be viceroy in the absence of the crown.
The king took up the sacred standard of France, the oriflamme, from the altar, and was presented with his pilgrim's wallet by the Pope. Then he withdrew into the monastery for private spiritual preparation.
Eleanor and the Queen Mother were left to their own devices in the crowds outside, until they all but collapsed with the heat and the emotion involved in such a departure. While they endured it all, the king dined inside the monastery with the monks.1
For the journey itself, Eleanor and her ladies were better prepared.
Despite the forbidding of falcons and hounds, rich clothes and troubadours, she managed to make sure her army was a cavalacade of riches as it passed over the eastern boundary of the Frankish lands. The ladies had baths drawn for them each evening, and were entertained by the singing of their troubadours. The great assembly of the army had taken place at Metz on the Rhine: somehow, despite the disapproval of her husband, not to mention Bernard and Suger, Eleanor arranged for vast supplies of baggage to be shipped over the barrier of the Rhine.
And in spite of the burden of clothing, tents, luxury goods and camp followers, the army kept up a brisk pace, day after day covering 30 kilometres or more. No doubt this was partly due to the grumbling, headmasterly figure of Louis, who drove the train from behind, like an over eager shepherd. He was eager to catch up with the army of Conrad, the German emperor, who had started well before him. His discipline was severe on everyone but his wife: miscreants who ravished or stole were deprived of noses and ears, and each day's journey began with a formal religious celebration. Meanwhile, Eleanor continued to enact the role of the Amazon queen, surrounded by an admiring throng of landless young knights, the troubadours whose duty and pleasure it was to sing of the beauty and the charms of their ladies, of whom Eleanor was the chief.
The tableau is bizarre: Louis, the clumsy husband well out of it in the dust at the rear: Eleanor, golden, triumphant, and shining in the comfort of the world's eye at the head of the expedition.
The Goddess of Love seemed to shine her lantern over the vast array, as it proceeded with gaiety through the warm plains bordering the Danube, and on to the great city.
It was at Ratisbon that Eleanor had her first direct encounter with the inhabitants of Constantinople. The current ruler was Manuel Comnenus, and it was to the Danube that he despatched his ambassadors.
Manuel, son of Alexius, shared his father's distrust of the Latins, and had seen his brother John humiliated by Raymond during the takeover of Antioch. The Germans who had preceded the Franks had as usual behaved like a locust army, stripping the countryside of its provender. He had no reason to love Louis or his Queen.
Thus, he treated the crusaders with refined courtesy during their stay, while at the same time letting them become slowly aware that he despised the Franks. His dependants closed the doors of their citadels as the Franks passed, but allowed them to buy provisions - at vastly inflated prices - from baskets let down over the walls.
When they arrived at Constantinople on October 4, the voyagers were forced to camp without the city, at the very end of the Golden Horn, in a site where they could see the splendours of copper dome and marbled palace, the beehive throng of the trading centre of the world, but were only admitted entry in small diplomatic parties.
Gifts of the exotic wonders of the East were brought to Louis and Eleanor, and an invitation for them to meet the emperor at the imperial palace.
According to Louis' chaplain, the emperor was struck with the true simplicity and earnestness of Louis, and so he permitted his fellow ruler and his suite to be lodged in the second palace, the Blachernae.
While Louis busied himself with supplying the insatiable demands of his army, Eleanor was free to undergo a transformation.
"It opened her eyes to vast, lofty, undreamed of possibilities for majesty..."2
Here, at the hub of the world, Eleanor had her first taste of delicacies such as caviar, and ate meals in which there was no shortage of sauces made from sugar, pepper and cinnamon. Unfamiliar aids to eating were presented to them, such as wine glasses and forks. Days were filled with banquets, tours of palaces and churches, and hunts in which the coursers were tame leopards. Bazaars were filled with silks, oils, perfumes, carpets and furs from China, India, Arabia, Persia and Russia.3
In all her expeditions, the French Queen was conducted by the empress Irene - actually a warlike German whose original name was Bertha of Sulzbach.
She showed Eleanor the possibilities of eastern life. Not only scientific medicine, plumbing, drainage, central heating, but also cosmetics and exotic clothes such as the turban, which Eleanor may have brought back to France as one of the most significant fashion changes of the epoch. As well, she saw those tall pointed hats and pointed shoes which were to set the fashion for centuries to come.4.
There was simply nothing in northern Europe to equal the palaces which Eleanor experienced. In the Blachernae there were up to three hundred rooms, and more than twenty chapels, all decorated in glittering gold and mosaics, with jewelled chandeliers and magnificent tapestries. Within the immense palace grounds were stocks of animals kept for the hunt.
The chroniclers agree that the chief crusaders were bewildered by the splendour.
Perhaps Eleanor's eyes rested most avidly on the personal splendour of the emperor and his somewhat frumpy empress. She noted that they were surrounded by ranks of courtiers and eunuchs as numberless as the seraphim, flunkeys who did not push to get the scraps from the table, or wipe their noses on their fingers, or dip their fingers in the sauce.
Frankish kings were born, lived and died in the public eye of the vulgar, unlike the empireal Byzantine couple who withdrew into private chambers, and were approached by mighty servants, who prostrated themselves in the presence of majesty.
By way of comparison to the precise order of the emperor's court, Louis himself had taken a stick to beat his unruly courtiers into some sort of order when a riot began during a ceremonial in Paris to mark his departure for the East.
Not all the Crusaders, however, were so overwhelmed by their experience. Odo of Deuil - not enamoured of his Queen - seems to have been of the opinion that the great people had the wool pulled over their eyes by the Greeks, whom he regarded as shifty and decadent. He noted that the palaces of the great people overshadowed the slums inhabited by most of the population.
And he also noted that sections of the great walls around the city were poorly defended and indeed rotting, so that whole pieces collapsed before the critical eyes of the onlookers.
Constantinople, he suggested, was ripe for the plucking - an observation that was to come too sadly reality in the early years of the following century.5
Eleanor's encounter with the splendour of the world lasted only until the end of October.
By then, the Frankish army was once more on the march, Louis having been tricked by Manuel into believing that the German emperor had covered himself in glory during his advance into Turkey.
The French army crossed the Bosphorus into Asia: its members learned almost immediately that they had entered a new and far less pleasant world, and that the truth was far from what Manuel had led them to believe.
It was at the now infamous city of Nicaea that the Franks set up camp early in November, and the horrible reality began to intrude upon them.
The first stragglers that were the remnants of Conrad's army began to arrive. One of these was Frederick Barbarossa, later to become emperor in his turn, who told Louis and Eleanor the truth. The emperor had been defeated by the Turks and his army decimated.
Conrad was himself a fugitive, accompanied by only a few companions, and camping, ashamed, a short distance away.
Through the intermediary negotiations of Frederick, a conference was arranged, and Conrad and his men agreed to join the French army.6
The original line of march was abandoned. Conrad had tried to go straight through Asia Minor: the Turks had humiliated him. Now the monarchs moved circuitously around the coast, always within easy reach of Byzantine ports. The army pressed on, with the French in the lead, the Germans at the rear, and the women in the centre. Rigour and luxury were combined, the queen and her ladies taking shelter from the freezing winter weather in horse drawn litters, sleeping at night in painted beds set in open pavilions. Gone was the gaiety of the Hungarian plains, and the glittering palaces of Byzantium must have seemed a bright dream.
The army itself was hard pressed to maintain discipline, the French hurling insults at the remnant Germans, and Conrad fading with illness and despair, until eventually at Epheseus he left the march altogether and returned to Constantinople. Conrad and Manuel were united not only by their titles, but also through the ties of marriage. Irene was the sister of Conrad's wife, and Irene accompanied Manuel to Epheseus, where they persuaded Conrad to give up the crusade.
"...the emperor showed Conrad very great favour and, at the special request of the empress, lavished gifts upon him and his nobles most liberally."7
Above:Eleanor
The French paused in Epheseus to recuperate from the march. Not all went on: Guy, Count of Ponthieu, an eminent military leader, was one of those who died there.
But the march had to continue.
At the river Meander they met their first serious opposition from the Turks. A sharp fight for the fords ensued, which the Franks won, ending the battle by plundering the enemy camp. That night, they made a pleasant camp amidst the green meadows on the river banks, flushed with battle and counting the rich spoils.
At dawn the journey began again.
In the wilderness, the proud crusaders were reminded once and for all of their mortal status before the almighty powers of nature.
On Christmas Eve, the army lingered in a pleasant valley close to the sea, making a camp to celebrate the nativity. As the travellers slept, and the priests rose to sing the morning service, a violent storm roared in, sweeping away the tents, and swelling the river instantaneously. The camp was deluged, and lives of humans and animals lost, as the baggage washed into the sea.
"The aspect of our tents, which the day before had been so gay, offered a desolating spectacle, showing how great is the divine power, how transitory the delights of men."8
DRAGGLED IN THE MUD
The army, despairing, all its finery lost or draggled in the mud, fled inland once more, clambering over a mountain ridge to the city of Laodicea. Alas, here they found the Greek commander of the city hostile to Franks and friendly to Turks. Their effort lost, the exhausted pilgrims had no choice but to follow their instincts, making their way on south as best they could. If at no other time, fear must having been taking over from rational thought as it became obvious that the journey was now all but beyond the control of the leaders.
It was, therefore, not unexpected that tactical mistakes would be made if the enemy was met, and one was. Most unfortunately, it was committed by the queen's vassal, Geoffrey de Rancon of Poitou, together with the king's uncle the Count of Maurienne. It was their task on a particular day in early January, as the army struggled through precipitous mountain passes near Attalia to conduct the march for that day. They were required to make camp with the vanguard on the top of a mountain, the ascent of which was the day's march. Geoffrey, however, decided to go on a little further once he had reached the summit.
But those behind were not informed of this change of plan, and so the whole army was put in grave danger.
Thinking their journey nearly complete, they lagged a little. The army was therefore critically divided on the ridge. The Turks, ever alert, seized the moment and the ridge. From there they fell upon both parts of the Frankish army, using the confusion and higher ground to their advantage, fighting for once with swords rather than bows.
Those who bore the first brunt of the fighting broke and ran. Those behind were hindered by steep valley walls and the exhaustion of their horses, but at last, stood and fought, literally clinging to rocks as they wielded their weapons.
The Turks pressed on to victory: they took prisoners and inflicted casualties, including Gauchiers de Montjoy, Evrard de Breteuil and Itiers de Meingnac, as well as killing Germans under the leadership of Otto, bishop of Freising.9
The disaster was laid at the feet of Eleanor.
It is speculated that Geoffrey had pressed on from the mountain top towards a more sheltered valley at her insistence. Eleanor was almost certainly in the van with Geoffrey that day, rather than in the middle section of the army, as the records do not show her or her ladies being in danger, and Geoffrey would not have altered the march plan without her consent.10
Whether or not she was responsible, the queen that night at first slept unaware in her tent, while her husband Louis took refuge in a tree, laying about with his sword to prevent capture by the Turks. As the night went on, however, news was brought by Odo of Deuil that all was not well. He begged for men to help the king, but they were unable to help, owing to the darkness of the night, the steepness of the mountain side, and the intervening enemy, who were stoutly braced against rocks and trees, shooting from above.11
"The camp resounded with lamentations, and the troops were torn with anguish. Throughout the entire camp there was not a place which was not filled with mourning for friends and household companions. One sought his father, another his master. Here a woman was searching everywhere for her son, there another for her husband. Those whose search was fruitless passed a sleepless night, burdened with anxious fear lest the worst had happened to the absent ones. During the night, however, there arrived at the camp some of each class."12
Amongst the stragglers who came limping in was the king, half dead with fatigue on a stray nag that someone had captured.
Eleanor had by now apparently tasted sufficiently of the rigours of crusading life, but they were not to end so soon. From this time there was a shortage of provisions, and William of Tyre notes that the regular markets that had been part of the crusading life disappeared. To cap it all, the Crusaders were without reliable guides, and wandered as best they could amongst the steep mountain passes.
With the Turks lurking behind them in the mountains, the Crusaders hastened to the gates of Attalia, reaching their goal early in February 1148.
Attalia itself although fertile was constantly subject to Turkish raids, and so could not supply grain. The famine deepened, so that the poor all but famished with hunger.
Eleanor, Louis, and the other nobles reluctantly decided to cut their losses. They left the foot soldiers and their companions behind - perhaps seven thousand or more - in the care of two veterans, Thierry Count of Flanders and Archimbaud de Bourbon.
Meanwhile Louis, his knights and the women sailed towards Antioch in barely seaworthy hulks - most of the women able to find the ten silver marks required for passage. The deserted generals tried to fight their way south. They were forced by terrain and enemy ambushes to turn back to Attalia. Here, the army took refuge between the inner and outer walls of the city, denied entrance by the Greek commander. Plague broke out: the pilgrims, fearing illness more than battle, plunged into the mountains once again. Here, the Turks took pity on them: they welcomed the wretched survivors into their ranks, where they vanished from historical record.13
The king's company, says William, was favoured with fair winds, sailing into the mouth of the Orontes, on the banks of which stands Antioch, but other sources suggest they were terrified by mountainous seas.14
In fair weather or foul, they landed at St Simeon, some 16 km from Antioch. Inside the city, Raymond had eagerly awaited his allies. When he heard the news of their arrival, he summoned all his chief nobles and went out to meet his niece and her husband, conducting them with the greatest of pomp and ceremony to his home.
Within the city walls of Antioch, Eleanor and her ladies found a new world, in which the dark Europe of pagan superstition and terrifying Christianity had been only lightly grafted on a melange of cultures that drew on the ancient Romans, the Greeks, the Saracens, and every other society that had stamped its footprint on the East.
The shrines of the Christians jostled most unsuccessfully for space next to deities such as Apollo, and Arab traders busied the bazaars with trade cries that were louder than the shouts of any Christian sentry.
The women enjoyed the spring, adopting the eastern customs of silken turban and burnous, their freshly made up faces veiled in Turkish fashion. In this fabled city of the apostles they encountered once again those luxuries which they must have all but forgotten during their journey, as well as new delights. There were sheltered courtyards, gardens on rooftops, water in aqueducts, gilded tables, mosaiced walls, and ivory coffers. They were treated to novelties such as soap, sugar, lemons, oranges, pomegranates and persimmons, and cotton, gauze and muslin garments.15
The ladies hunted and picnicked, and were lavished with pageants and delicacies such as snow cooled wine, and gifts such as the plenteous relics that abounded in Outremer.
Raymond was counting on Louis' aid in expanding his dominion, in which plot he relied greatly on the support of his niece.16
But Raymond's hopes and the cordial relationship between the rulers did not long endure, once Raymond laid his plans before Louis. He had underestimated the single minded devotion of Louis to his pilgrimage, from which neither the ties of flesh nor the chances of spectacular wealth through conquest could divert him.
Refused by the king, Raymond conceived a dark hatred towards his royal visitor, and "...he openly plotted against him and took means to do him injury."17
According to William of Tyre and other enemies of Eleanor, Raymond resolved also to deprive Louis of his wife, either by force or secret intrigue.
"The queen readily assented to this design, for she was a foolish woman. Her conduct before and after this time showed her to be, as we have said, far from circumspect. Contrary to her royal dignity, she disregarded her marriage vows, and was unfaithful to her husband."18
William of Tyre was opposed to Eleanor, perhaps mainly because of her divorce from Louis. Ludicrous rumours sprang up in the years after the crusade, including the
suggestion that the queen had slept with an infidel boy slave, and even Saladin himself, who was thirteen at the time and not within a week's march of Antioch.19
Nevertheless, even Louis himself at the time clearly believed that there was an unhealthy closeness between Eleanor and Raymond that had developed during their ten day stay. Louis was himself not free of the guilt of this coolness. He and his entourage had by this time hardened into suspicion of the Queen's advice, the king bearing in his mind the ghosts of the countless dead on the slopes of the mountains near Attalia.
Eleanor was shut out of his councils by men such as the monk Odo of Deuil, who camped like a mastiff outside his master's door.20
Eleanor was thus forced, both by frustration and her own inclination, into the party of Raymond.
Was she not entitled, both as queen and as the largest contributor of men and material to the journey, to join in council?
Eleanor compounded the situation by defending Raymond's request long and passionately in public. The king responded by announcing he would leave immediately, and reminding Eleanor that her duty as a wife was to accompany him. She replied that she intended to stay, and that as his fourth cousin, she wanted the marriage annulled on grounds of consanguinity: she may have even flung the ribald insult at Louis that he wasn't worth a bad pear.
One of Eleanor's enemies was the Templar Thierry Galeran, whom she had mocked on account of his sexual dysfunction (he was a eunuch). He advised the king to force her to leave Antioch. 21
Louis' men therefore broke into the Queen's rooms in the middle of the following night, and dragged her off to his apartments.
The disconsolate pair departed under cover of darkness, plans for divorce ripe in both their minds. Louis had written to Suger, whose sage advice was to keep the matter a secret to himself (one presumes the army had not noticed the unusual midnight events!) until the king's return to France, when proceedings might go on in a calmer light.22
The pilgrimage had still a year to run: the royal marriage was over.
An eloquent silence settles over the remainder of the Queen's stay in the Holy Land.
No doubt the year she spent in Jerusalem had its interests. All the usual visits to holy sites, the encounters with exotic cultures, the wealth of market life. But the ashes of defeat would have lain bitter in her mouth. Dragged in the king's train to Jerusalem, she had been reminded of her station in the most forceful way.
The only relatively direct suggestion as to what the sojourn must have been like is a legendary account. This has it that Eleanor followed Louis into the basilica of the Holy Sepulchre at its consecration on July 15, 1148, which seems a reasonable assumption.
Suddenly, says the story, the procession stopped. To the horror of everyone, an apparition seemed to spring from the very walls of the building. This terrifying figure was a living ghost, a zombie, fleshless, hollow cheeked, with flashing eyes and resounding voice. Dressed in a hair shirt banded to the body in gyves of steel, an iron band crushing his head, the madman screamed insults at Eleanor, threatening her because of her criminal intercourse with Raymond and her betrayal with Saracen emirs. The account has it that the queen raised a trembling hand to a livid forehead. The king of France half plucked his sword from its sheath, while the royal bodyguard of knights swayed towards the fiend, irresolute. This hesitation was caused by the apparition's intermingled words of love: he called the queen "my daughter", and the king "my cousin." All was revealed. The wild man was in fact Eleanor's father, William, who had become a voluntary recluse in the basilica, and who had been hunted from his cave within th temple by the news of the failure of the crusade. Having chastised his daughter, the hermit then ran off into the mists of legend, to seek his death in the sun baked deserts of Spain.1
Such speculation has no historical basis: it is at best merely suggestive of the emotional state of the royal couple during this long, dark period. It is vaguely possible that the royal entourage was confronted by a hermit of the type who could have lurked within the labyrinthine enclosure of the Sepulchre. Such raving soothsayers appear to have been not uncommon in this age.
Whether the account is entirely imaginary or based on some incident, the Queen was to overcome her present parlous state. Throughout a life of many defeats, Eleanor always exhibited the patience of a lioness stalking its prey, much more so than any of her husbands or her children. She knew her strengths and her weaknesses more with each year, and she was prepared to wait a year, a decade, a lifetime if need be in order to strike at the right moment.
Eleanor was left behind while Louis departed from Jerusalem with the army of Outremer to attack the city of Damascus. She was thus spared the rigours of a pointless and fruitless military venture which has few parallels in military history for sheer ineptitude.
The whole purpose of the Crusade had been to retake Edessa. Instead, Queen Melisende persuaded Louis and the Emperor, who had preceded him to Jerusalem, to attack the Syrian city of Damascus, the allies of her former husband.
The mighty army of the Franks destroyed itself outside the walls of Damascus by choosing to attack that great city via a vast entanglement of orchards worthy of a magic thorny forest in the tales of Arthur's knights.
In the Easter of the following year, the couple and their suites celebrated the most important feast in the Christian calendar together in Jerusalem. Shortly afterwards, they went down to the port of Acre where, significantly, they took ship separately on two galleasses, the two masted, oared ships that lurched uncomfortably across the central sea.
The Crusade was over, but not the drama and adventure that Eleanor seemed to attract simply by existing.
As the ships passed the Peloponnese in the Aegean Sea, Eleanor's ship was attacked by a ship belonging to the Byzantine emperor Manuel. The Emperor was now at war with Roger of Sicily, one of whose ships Louis had just then boarded, in a most bizarre fateful twist. Louis escaped capture by having the Greek flag run up on this ship, but his own ship with all his baggage, and Eleanor's ship with all the women aboard, were carried off by the Greeks. The Sicilians - were they allies or enemies of the French at this point? - then gave hot pursuit, rescuing the queen and the king's effects. But the sea carried the queen and the king apart, so that for two months they wandered separately through the Greek Islands.
Most bizarre of all, perhaps, was that the abstinent king Louis was sick for the loss of his queen, and she was bearing his child in her womb.
Presumably, the child had been conceived during a time of reconciliation in Jerusalem,
perhaps coinciding with Easter. The presence of this infant is a reminder to us that at such a distance, we can never make absolute judgments about people and their relationships to each other.
In any case, Louis finally emerged on July 29 in Roger's territories, all but dead with fatigue, with the loss of his queen, and separation from all his possessions and followers. King Roger was able to reassure him that the queen was safe, albeit too exhausted to continue her journey for the moment. The winds had blown her as far as the Barbary coast, and then back to the port of Palermo in Sicily. Here, she recuperated amidst one of Europe's most splendid, most cosmopolitan, not to say most heretical courts.
For three weeks the couple were reunited, before going to Potenza briefly to meet Roger in person.
Roger was the personification of the collision of cultures that occurred when the Norman invaders settled amongst the Islamic civilization. He had adopted Byzantine robes of purple, but they were embroidered with Islamic writing and images of strange beasts. He kept a harem, but he worshipped as a Roman Catholic. His army was a mixture of Norman knights and Saracen infantry, and his government was a blend of Norman, Byzantine and Arabic systems.2
From Potenza, the remnants of the Frankish train moved north to reach Tusculum on October 9 1149. Here they encountered Pope Eugenius once more, he having fled there, pursued out of Rome by the Emperor's army over yet another of the disputes between Papacy and Empire.
The pope welcomed them warmly, and listened attentively to Louis' outpourings of guilt over the question of the consanguineous marriage.
The pope assured him that there was no further need for concern - everything could be settled if need be by a special dispensation.
Eleanor, however, was not satisfied.
She saw that she had been outwitted by her enemies the monks, who had persuaded the pope to override canonical law.
So be it.
Instead, she poured out her soul to the pope, expressing in passionate terms the real reasons for her unwillingness to stay with Louis: that she hated the adviser Thierry who was poisoning the king's mind against her; that she resented bitterly being carried away from Antioch; and that she was too restricted at home in France.3
As well, she was telling anyone who would listen that Louis was more like a monk than a man, a tendency to celibacy that had been merely heightened by his experiences as a pilgrim.
The pope made a last attempt to reconcile the two, with a gesture that may have seemed suitably fatherly to him, but would have appeared clumsy in the extreme to Eleanor.
He prepared a room for them in which there was only one bed, elaborately decorated with precious brocades of his own. He conducted his spiritual children to the room, and left nature to its healing way.
It was too late, of course. The pope wept as he gave them a farewell blessing before they left for Rome.
The officially reconciled couple experienced the city through a guided tour provided by specially assigned Cardinals. The procession was followed through the streets by crowds of citizens who chanted hymns of praise.4
But it was no honeymoon. For one thing, the mighty ruins of Rome must have seemed dank and desperate compared to the brightness of Antioch, Byzantium, Acre, Jerusalem and Palermo.
From amongst these mouldering reminders of a past glory, the unloving couple rode on over the Alps to Paris.
The arrival home took place in November 1149, their journey having lasted 30 months. They were greeted with one of the bleakest winters on record, during which ice stilled the rivers, a match for the mood of the queen. The utter joylessness of it all must have been compounded by the pain of childbirth which followed soon after the return home. It was not a boy, but a second girl, Alice. The barons harrumphed, their opinions of the fecklessness of the queen confirmed by her oversight in not providing a male heir.
How Eleanor's world had changed during that time.
Eleanor had left a bored, rich young woman, seeking an avenue of escape. She returned an independent woman, rich in the experiences of the world, and laden with the cultural treasures stored in her intelligent mind, ways of living and thinking which she was to introduce to her homeland, and which would change the Europeans forever.
Within two years she had fallen in love with a young count 11 years her junior. Louis, realising the inevitable, called a council of the French clergy which annulled the marriage on March 21 1152.
The story of Eleanor and the Crusades is far from over. A stage in Eleanor's journey was complete: a new one was about to begin.
But the glory days of the Crusades were gone: the next generation was to watch the kingdom born of the blood of their grandparents dry up and be swept away forever.
Eleanor was criticised by contemporaries for the series of military disasters that characterised her Crusade, whereas there was nothing but praise for the courage and endurance of her husband, Louis.
Roger de Hoveden, for example, said that the crusaders set out with the greatest pomp, but were annihilated because God despised them. The particular faults which brought the displeasure of the deity, according to Roger, were the guilt of fornication and manifest adultery, compounded by many other sorts of crime. His implication was clear: women, by their presence, had ruined God's plan.5
Similarly, William of Tyre expresses nothing but contempt for Eleanor and her actions, dismissing her as an empty headed fool whose personal amours put the whole journey in jeopardy.
In defence of Eleanor it should be stated loudly and clearly: all the Crusades were bungled.
Her pilgrimage was no worse - nor indeed, any better - than the others. And for much of the time, the fault for particular details should not be laid at her doorstep, but rather, those of her military chiefs and her husband, who was personally brave but displayed all the practical military insight of a child playing at tin soldiers in a nursery.
In the judgment of William of Tyre, the Crusade marked the effective ebb tide of the kingdom. Within less than half a century, Jerusalem itself was lost, forever, and all that the Crusaders had wrought stood on the edge of its final disintegration.
"From this time, the conditions of the Latins in the East became visibly worse...(The Moslems) no longer feared the Christian forces and did not hesitate to attack them with unwonted vigour."6
As for Raymond, he died in a fruitless battle. The failure of the Second Crusade opened the floodgates to the Arab reconquest, and he was amongst the first to fall.
In 1149, Nurredin invaded the princedom. Raymond led his small army to give battle at the Walled Fountain on June 29.
When most of his men fled from the overwhelming odds, Raymond stood to the last and "...was slain by the stroke of a sword in the midst of the slaughter he had wrought."7
Thus he died as only a preux chevalier could, in the tradition of Roland and Arthur, fighting to the last.
The Turks disfigured his corpse, cutting off his head and his right arm.
The remnant of his body was buried in the same church where he had married his princess in order to secure his rights to the kingdom.
from Graham McLennan
