THE FIRST CRUSADERS

Urban judged that these knights, termed in Latin milites, possessed of martial prowess, financial resources and an active sense of devotional obligation, offered the best hope of transforming his crusading ideal into a living reality. Above all else, he knew that for the expedition to succeed it would need to be powered by a ferocious fighting force, and knights, the elite warriors of eleventh-century Europe, were the obvious choice. Urban himself explained in a letter that ‘we were stimulating the minds of knights to go on this expedition, since they might be able to restrain the savagery of the Muslims by their arms and restore the Christians to their former freedom’.⁹

Knights in the eleventh century

Skilled as they were, knights were not part of a full-time standing army. They were soldiers, but they also had other roles, as lords or vassals, landholders and farmers. In any one year they might expect to be engaged in warfare for no more than a few months, and even then not necessarily by fighting in a familiar, established network, group or formation. We should not envisage the knights of the First Crusade as grand, chivalric warriors, riding into battle astride giant warhorses, clad in splendid Gothic plate armour and wielding massive lances. It would be more than a century before advancements in technology and custom combined to bring the concept and practice of medieval knighthood into full flower. But, for all this, the knights of the eleventh century were the best fighters available to Pope Urban.

In 1095, the knightly class was still at an embryonic stage of development. The rising costs associated with functioning as a knight, primarily related to equipment and training, made it increasingly difficult for men of less affluent backgrounds to operate asmilites, although, as yet, the class was not the exclusive preserve of the aristocracy. Virtually all male members of the lay nobility were expected to carry out the duties of a knight, and most wealthier lords retained the service of a number of milites as vassals, under contract to protect and farm their lands in return for military service. This enabled poorer individuals to attain the status of a miles, acquiring the tools of the trade through employment.

By the time Urban preached the crusade at Clermont, the key characteristics of knighthood – a distinct range of equipment and a consequent style of warfare – were coalescing across Latin Christendom. What really marked out a knight was his ability to fight as a mounted warrior. In the eleventh century, warhorses were, by modern standards, quite small, perhaps on average twelve hands in height, what would today be classified as little more than a pony. Nonetheless, they were prohibitively expensive to purchase and even more costly to maintain, requiring feed, horseshoes and quite probably the constant care of what would later be called a squire. Buying a warhorse was the equivalent of today taking out a mortgage on a house, with all the pain of the initial outlay, followed by a lifetime of upkeep payments. This was made all the worse by the fact that most knights also had to keep at least one other, lighter mount upon which to travel.

But these precious warhorses seem to have given warriors a distinct edge in combat, offering the advantages of speed, mobility and force. The exact nature of mounted warfare at the time of the First Crusade is unclear. Military practice was struggling to incorporate and exploit technological advancements, but the pace of change was often slow. As late as 1066, Anglo-Saxon warriors rode to the Battle of Hastings, but then promptly got off their horses to fight on foot because they were not used to mounted combat. The adoption of the stirrup, giving the rider greater stability, allowed knights to employ increasingly heavy spears or lances, couched under the arm. In time, this led to the development of the most famous feature of knightly warfare: the heavy cavalry charge, in which tightly packed groups of knights rode into enemy formations at speed, delivering the dreadful ‘shock’ impact of their lances and ripping their opponents to shreds. To be effective, this type of manoeuvre required considerable expertise, demanding trust and social cohesion, and in 1095 its use was still being refined. The First Crusaders deployed massed cavalry charges, and the expedition’s finest generals experimented with the tactical possibilities of this ‘weapon’, but we should not imagine that the knights who marched off to Jerusalem were used to fighting in tight, disciplined formations, nor that they could be controlled in battle with chesspiece-like precision. On the whole, fighting on the crusade was a bloody, ragged affair, characterised by chaotic close-quarter combat. Under these conditions, it was the Latin knights’ ruthless brutality that made them such a potent force.

The knights targeted in Pope Urban’s preaching were typically also equipped with an array of arms and armour. Most would have worn a conical steel helmet, perhaps over a mail hood or coif, and a thigh-length mail shirt over a padded jerkin. These would not have been capable of resisting a solid cut or thrust, but did offer protection from glancing blows. In one hand, knights generally would have carried a more formidable defence: a large, usually kite-shaped, wooden shield, sometimes bound with iron. In the other, they would have held one of a selection of mêlée weapons. Chief among these were the lance or spear, which could be couched or thrown over arm, and the sword, usually of the one-handed variety, measuring around eighty centimetres in length, a heavy, but finely balanced, blunt-tipped bludgeoning tool. Mastering these weapons of war required long hours of dedicated training (time that was often available only to the wealthy), an abundance of physical energy and a steely nerve. It was not uncommon for nobles to spend the majority of their youth honing their martial skills – one prominent crusader, Godfrey of Bouillon, was already noted as an accomplished warrior at the age of sixteen – but rigorous military instruction carried its own inherent dangers, and knights were frequently injured, maimed or even killed in training.

Late-eleventh-century knights were almost always accompanied by at least four or five support crew, men who could act as servants, tending to their master’s mount, weaponry and general welfare. Pope Urban knew that each knight he attracted to the crusading cause would bring additional manpower with him, men who could, when necessary, add to the ranks of the second major type of medieval warrior: the infantryman. From a historical standpoint, this group, known simply in Latin as pedites (literally, those on foot), represents a far more amorphous, indefinable mass. The composition of the infantry component of a typical Latin army was extremely fluid, being made up of an unpredictable combination of knights’ followers, peasants and even, as became common on the crusade, knights who had lost their mounts. We know far less about their standard equipment, although we can guess that they employed a similar assortment of hand weapons – spears and swords, as well as daggers, clubs and axes. Perhaps the greatest challenge faced by any medieval general was to achieve a successful amalgamated strategy, employing knights and infantry in concert. During a campaign both groups might be expected to move at an equal pace; after all, even knights would have spent most of their time walking alongside their mounts. But it was in combat that the real problems of co-ordination arose, because soldiers on foot were simply incapable of traversing the battlefield at the same speed as horsemen. The danger, evidenced by the events of the crusade, was that exploiting the rapid manoeuvrability of a cavalry force might isolate and expose the infantry.

One additional form of weaponry available to both knights and infantry was the bow. Archers, generally operating longbows of about two metres in length and capable of delivering arrows to a distance of 300 metres, were a common feature of most infantry forces. Being cheap to make, relatively easy to maintain and useful as a hunting tool, these simple bows were a mainstay of the poorer elements within an army, but at the same time they represented an extremely valuable military resource. If deployed with care, a group of archers could unleash wave upon wave of arrows, each capable of piercing almost any type of body armour, wreaking havoc among enemy forces. Bowmen were the particular scourge of the otherwise well-protected knight, and contemporary writers occasionally describe, in awe, how proud horsemen were annihilated by a rain of missiles, their bodies so peppered with arrows as to be likened to hedgehogs. By 1095, some warriors were also using a simple form of crossbow. Expensive, cumbersome and terribly slow to reload, this weapon could, nonetheless, propel a heavy quarrel with such force that at close distance it might penetrate seven centimetres into solid wood. The potential impact of a crossbow bolt upon an armoured knight was so devastating that the papacy sought, in the twelfth century, to ban their use in an early form of arms treaty. But this weapon is known to have seen some action during the First Crusade, most notably in the hands of Godfrey of Bouillon.

In spite of the fact that Pope Urban lavished praise upon the knights of France, celebrating their martial virtues, the reality was that the type of warfare generally practised by the warriors of Europe did not actually mirror the varied demands of his proposed expedition to Jerusalem. Late-eleventh-century Latin knights and their followers were accustomed to short-term campaigns and small-scale skirmishing. Most were ill prepared for the strategic and logistical exigencies of long-range marches across foreign soil. Many would never have participated in a grand setpiece battle, because these massive, unpredictable engagements were usually avoided at all costs. But there was one form of military engagement with which European armies were familiar and in which they could boast considerable expertise that might be applicable to the coming crusade: siege warfare.

By 1095, castles and fortifications were a military mainstay of Latin Christendom’s socio-political landscape. In a land subject to violence and disorder, the physical protection offered by strongholds enabled the ruling classes to maintain strategic, economic and administrative control of their territory. Castles, serving as nails to hold together the fabric of medieval society, were almost ubiquitous, while virtually every town or city was, to one degree or another, fortified by the likes of walls or a citadel. In the prevalent atmosphere of acquisitive internecine conflict, it was common for forts, castles and towns to face regular attack. Indeed, with kings and princes seeking to control their subjects, and local lords struggling to carve out and retain their own semi-independent territories, the ebb and flow of politico-military conflict was expressed in almost seasonal recourse to siege and counter-siege. As technology improved and the use of stone became more prevalent than that of wood, and walls and towers became higher, thicker and stronger, so the bickering potentates of western Europe sought to develop ever more ingenious and effective ways to overcome them.

When the First Crusade was preached, most Latin knights were intimately acquainted with the techniques and technology of siege warfare. Among the weaponry that they were accustomed to employ was a range of large-scale projectile weapons. These stone-throwing devices, usually powered by either torsion or counterweights, could vary considerably in size and power. The smallest might only be able to catapult a five-kilogram rock some seventy-five metres, while massive engines might be capable of sending large boulders or even, under more gruesome circumstances, whole human bodies the same distance. All of these machines were, however, difficult to construct and relatively immobile once erected. Harking back to ancient Roman terminology, eleventh-century writers used a variety of words, such as petraria, mangana and mangonella, to refer to these weapons, but, as yet, no uniform vocabulary of warfare was in place, and it can thus be very difficult to know what type of machine was being described.¹⁰

The leading crusaders

Pope Urban II set out to attract the fighting manpower of Europe, dominated by the mounted knight and skilled in vicious skirmishing and siege warfare, to his crusading cause. To tap into this pool of military manpower and expertise, he directed his preaching, first and foremost, at the lay aristocracy. Urban knew that, with the nobility on board, retinues of knights and infantry would follow, for even though the crusade required a voluntary commitment the intricate web of familial ties and feudal obligation bound social groups in a common cause. In effect, the pope set off a domino effect, whereby for every noble who took the cross a chain reaction was initiated, with that principal vow standing at the epicentre of an expanding wave of recruitment.

If he was really to capitalise upon the pyramidal hierarchy that held sway in medieval Europe, Urban needed to attract recruits from the highest echelon of western society. But it is a striking fact that not a single Latin monarch participated in the First Crusade. In the past, historians have suggested that this ‘failure’ was actually part of the pope’s master plan; that he deliberately sought to discourage the involvement of kings in the hope of more readily maintaining papal control over the expedition. In reality, Urban did go some way towards courting the enthusiasm of the European monarchy. Given the recent history of conflict and hostility between the Gregorian papacy and the king of Germany, Urban must have known that Henry IV would reject the crusading ideal. In England, William the Conqueror’s son and heir William Rufus was embroiled in a struggle to subdue his realm and could ill afford a protracted absence on crusade, but he did lend the expedition considerable financial support. It was the king of France, Philip I, who came closest to joining the enterprise.

Far weaker than either his English or German counterpart, Philip had enough trouble controlling the region around his capital city of Paris, let alone trying to manifest his will throughout the territory we would think of today as France. His participation in the crusade might, nonetheless, have proved fortuitous, given his ideological status and fiscal resources. Philip certainly showed some enthusiasm for the proposed campaign, presiding over a council to discuss its prosecution on 11 February 1096, attended by his brother, Hugh of Vermandois, and a selection of his nobles. That same night saw a spectacular but disturbing lunar eclipse, during which the moon turned blood red, a phenomenon which seemed a portent of the king’s future. The problem was that, officially at least, Philip was in bad odour with the pope. Four years earlier, the king had fallen in love with Bertrada of Montfort, wife to the powerful Frankish magnate Fulk IV, count of Anjou. In a scandal of international proportions, Philip abandoned his own wife, entering into a bigamous marriage to Bertrada. When he sought to extract an official recognition of this illicit union from the bishops of France, Rome decided it could no longer turn a blind eye and promptly excommunicated the king. This shameful predicament rumbled on up to the council of Clermont and beyond. Negotiations towards a resolution proceeded throughout Urban’s grand preaching tour of France; indeed in July 1096 he was assured that a repentant Philip was now willing to renounce Bertrada. But in the end the king’s amorous heart got the better of him and, as an excommunicate, being in no position to take the cross, the opportunity to crusade passed him by.¹¹

The First Crusade may not have attracted the participation of kings, but the cream of western Christendom’s nobility was drawn to the venture, members of the high aristocracy of France, western Germany, the Low Countries and Italy, from the class directly below that of royalty. Often bearing the title of count or duke, these men could challenge or, in some cases, even eclipse the power of kings. Certainly they wielded a significant degree of independent authority and thus, as a group, can most readily be termed ‘princes’. Raymond of St Gilles, count of Toulouse, who had expressed his intention to join the crusade so soon after the sermon at Clermont, was among the mightiest of their number. His age and financial resources placed him in a strong position to challenge for the position of overall military commander of the crusade.

But Raymond was not the only prince to take the cross. In the summer of 1096 the southern Italian Norman, Bohemond of Taranto, committed himself to the expedition in a theatrical public ceremony. In the course of the eleventh century, Norman adventurers had, through dogged resolve and martial skill, forced their way on to the southern Italian peninsula, carving out independent territories that eventually coalesced to form a Norman kingdom of Sicily. Bohemond was fathered by one of the chief architects of this process, Robert ‘Guiscard’, that is Robert ‘the Wily’. Some forty years of age when he took the cross, Bohemond was a striking figure. One Byzantine eyewitness described him in rather fanciful language:

Bohemond’s appearance was, to put it briefly, unlike that of any other man seen in those days in the Roman world, whether Greek or barbarian. The sight of him inspired admiration, the mention of his name terror . . . His stature was such that he towered almost a full cubit over the tallest men. He was slender of waist and flanks, with broad shoulders and chest, strong in the arms . . . The skin all over his body was very white, except for his face which was both white and red. His hair was lightish-brown and not as long as that of other barbarians (that is it did not hang on his shoulders) . . . His eyes were light-blue and gave some hint of the man’s spirit and dignity . . . There was a certain charm about him [but also] a hard, savage quality in his whole aspect, due, I suppose, to his great stature and his eyes; even his laugh sounded like a threat to others.¹²

His arresting physical attributes were married to a formidable personality, driven by unquenched ambition and empowered by martial genius. Bohemond joined the crusade already a gifted and experienced military commander, one near-contemporary describing him as ‘second to none in prowess and in knowledge of the art of war’.¹³ Bohemond learned his trade in the brutal struggle to secure Norman control of southern Italy. In this, his chief opponents were the Byzantines, the most persistent challengers for possession of the region. To counter their meddling, Bohemond’s father in 1081 launched an audacious, pre-emptive expedition against the empire’s holdings along the eastern shores of the Adriatic, designed to establish a new Norman lordship in the Balkans. In the four years that followed, Bohemond, acting initially as lieutenant to his father, and then for long periods as overall commander-in-chief, fought a protracted, but ultimately unsuccessful, campaign against the Greeks.

The trials of this dogged conflict furnished him with an invaluable military education. He garnered some knowledge of leadership from the stern example set by his father – on the eve of the first major battle against the Byzantines, Robert reportedly burned his fleet, closing the door to escape in order to harden the resolve of his wavering troops. Participating in the seven-month investment of Durazzo, the chief Greek outpost on the Adriatic, exposed Bohemond to the realities of siege warfare. Having surrounded the city from June 1081 to February 1082, enduring a bitter winter, the Normans appeared to be making little progress. It was not until Robert Guiscard orchestrated a betrayal from within that Durazzo actually capitulated – a lesson on the merits of bribery and deceit that would influence Bohemond’s conduct on crusade. Then, between the spring of 1082 and the winter of 1083, he personally led a daring expeditionary raid across the Balkan wilds, securing notable victories in two pitched battles against the Byzantine emperor Alexius. The prolonged trans-Adriatic campaign also taught Bohemond the value of naval support and supply.

In the end, the Normans overstretched their resources and the Greeks were able to reoccupy the Balkans. But, for Bohemond, this practical experience of war, encompassing generalship, battle tactics, campaign strategy and military logistics, served as an outstanding preparation for the rigours of the First Crusade, not least because it brought him into contact with Muslim mercenaries employed in the Byzantine army and gave him an excellent working knowledge of the Balkans. There was, of course, a price to pay for this schooling. The 1081-5 campaign caused an almost irreparable fracture in Norman-Byzantine relations. Bohemond was left nursing frustrated territorial ambitions in the eastern Adriatic, while the Emperor Alexius developed a deep-seated distrust of the Norman princeling.

Already petering out, the Balkan expedition came to a decisive end with the death of Robert Guiscard in July 1085. This proved to be a severe blow to Bohemond’s prospects. Although he was Robert’s eldest son, his father had, soon after his birth, divorced his mother on grounds of consanguinity and remarried an Italian princess with whom he sired a second son. Named Roger – he was later given the appellation ‘Borsa’, meaning ‘Moneybags’, because he reputedly loved nothing more than to count coins – Robert, in honour of his new wife, designated him rather than Bohemond heir to southern Italy. Upon his father’s death, Roger Borsa moved quickly to claim his inheritance, cutting a costly deal with his uncle, the count of Sicily, in return for confirmation of his status as Robert Guiscard’s sole successor. With Roger in control of almost all of southern Italy, Bohemond suddenly found himself virtually penniless.

For the next decade, Bohemond fought an extended, sniping war to scrabble back control of some territory in the regions of Apulia and Calabria. One of his earliest successes was the occupation of Taranto, the town with which historians traditionally associate his name, though the real jewel of his hard-won lordship was the major port of Bari. By 1095, Bohemond had managed to establish a significant foothold in the extreme south of the Italian peninsula, but the full range of his ambitions was still largely held in check by the machinations of his brother and uncle. His restless energy and martial expertise seemed to make him an ideal candidate for crusade recruitment.

Bohemond was acquainted with the expedition’s architect, Pope Urban II. The southern Italian Normans had been intermittent allies of the Reform papacy throughout the second half of the eleventh century and, at the start of his pontificate, Urban cultivated their support. Given that his sister was a fidelis beati Petri, familial connections may have brought Bohemond into the Reform circle. He certainly met Urban on at least three occasions, first at the council of Melfi in September 1089, and twice in 1092–3, when the pope actually visited Taranto.¹⁴ And it is quite possible that he attended the council of Piacenza in March 1095, at which the initial appeal from the Greeks was announced.

The problem was that Bohemond’s past history of bitter conflict with the empire did not sit well alongside Urban’s espoused policy of détente with Byzantium. The Norman may have been well suited to meet challenges of a long-distance campaign to the Holy Land, but it must have been obvious to all that he might find it difficult to sustain a co-operative alliance with his old enemy Alexius. When Bohemond did eventually take the cross, many suspected that he was actually planning a renewed offensive against the Greeks, and one contemporary even circulated the fantastical suggestion that the entire crusade was a plot, cooked up by Urban ‘on the advice of Bohemond’, who hoped that the expedition would facilitate his plan for a new Balkan campaign.¹⁵

In reality, Bohemond’s recruitment was a mixed blessing. His gift for generalship promised to give the crusader host a much-needed edge in battle, but his presence threatened to undermine the critical Latin–Byzantine coalition. Bohemond did, however, bring one further asset to the cause. His decision to take the cross prompted an experienced, if not especially numerous, band of southern Italian Normans to join up, and among their number was a young man who would become a renowned champion of the crusading cause – Bohemond’s own nephew, Tancred of Hauteville. Barely twenty years of age, possessed of limited military experience, but apparently able to converse in Arabic, Tancred quickly assumed the position of second-in-command of the loose contingent that followed Bohemond into the East. Tall, blond and powerfully built, Tancred was profoundly ambitious and untiringly energetic.¹⁶

It is a striking testament to the power of the crusading message unleashed by Urban II that it also stirred the hearts of men who, before 1095, had been avowed enemies of the Reform papacy. One such, Duke Godfrey of Bouillon, from the region of Lotharingia, stood entirely outside the network of papal supporters who formed the backbone of crusade recruitment. He had no history of collaboration with the Reform party, nor any known connections to the fideles beati Petri. In fact, he was openly hostile to the First Crusade’s grand patron, Matilda of Tuscany. A staunch ally to Henry IV of Germany, Godfrey had actually participated in the siege of Rome. In spite of all this, he took the cross.

Godfrey was said to have been ‘tall of stature, not extremely so, but still taller than the average man. He was strong beyond compare, with solidly built limbs and stalwart chest. His features were pleasing, his beard and hair of medium blond.’¹⁷ He was born around 1060, the second son of the count of Boulogne, and could trace his lineage back to Charlemagne, a connection much romanticised by later commentators on the crusade. With the county passing to his elder brother, Godfrey faced limited prospects, but gained the title of duke of Lower Lotharingia when designated heir to his childless uncle and namesake, Godfrey the Hunchback, the estranged husband of Matilda of Tuscany.

In reality, the volatile region of Lower Lotharingia proved almost impossible to govern, his ducal title rather hollow, but he did control one significant stronghold – the castle of Bouillon, in the Ardennes, some seventy kilometres north of Verdun. Godfrey had some experience of warfare, but none of command, and no particular reputation for personal piety, being a known despoiler of Church land. It has been suggested that, in joining the expedition to Jerusalem, he was merely following the fashionable practice of his more esteemed northern French neighbours.

For all this, Godfrey demonstrated unbending dedication to the crusading ideal. The later tradition that he swore never to return from the crusade was probably false, but he did prove to be among the least self-serving of the Latin princes, and the most committed to completing the pilgrimage to the Holy Land.¹⁸ Godfrey was joined at the last minute by his brother, Baldwin of Boulogne, a figure who, like Tancred, would emerge from relative obscurity in the course of the crusade, demonstrating a bullish tenacity in battle and an almost insatiable appetite for advancement. Baldwin was apparently darker haired but paler skinned than his brother and was said to have a piercing gaze.¹⁹

These five princes – Raymond of Toulouse, Bohemond of Taranto, Godfrey of Bouillon, Tancred of Hauteville and Baldwin of Boulogne – shaped the course of the First Crusade. It was they who stood at the heart of this astonishing expedition, whose skill, ambition and devotion drove the enterprise, and by turns threatened to rip it apart, and they whose lives were utterly transformed by the crusading experience.

The other princes

Other Latin princes answered the pope’s call to arms as well. Among these, the pre-eminent figure in terms of lineage was Hugh of Vermandois, brother of King Philip I of France, to whom historians have sometimes appended the rather misleading appellation ‘Magnus’ (the Great). Hugh was certainly proud of the royal blood flowing through his veins, but the actual physical resources at his command were quite limited. The small county of Vermandois seems to have furnished him with a relatively meagre fortune, and he managed to attract only a small contingent of followers to join him on crusade.

Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy, was also well connected, being the eldest son of William the Conqueror and brother to William Rufus, king of England. Although apparently possessed of an easygoing geniality, he later gained a reputation for indolence and a fondness for the finer comforts of life, but this probably owed more to his ineffective governance of Normandy than to any innate flaw of character. As duke, Robert faced almost constant harassment from his acquisitive brother, who pursued the reunification of his father’s cross-Channel realm with dogged determination. In the years leading up to 1095, with the region beset by ‘terrible disorder’, Robert found it increasingly difficult to maintain control. One twelfth-century observer actually maintained that the duke took the cross only to escape the pressures of rule, but this seems unlikely given that Robert appears all along to have planned to return to Europe upon completion of the journey to Jerusalem.

Robert of Normandy began the crusade in the company of two other princes, Stephen, count of Blois, his brother-in-law, and Robert II, count of Flanders, his cousin. Together, this tight-knit kinship group led a large northern French contingent of First Crusaders. Stephen was reputed to have been one of the richest lords in France, but little is known of his career before 1095, save that he was married to one of the most formidable women of the age, Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror. Robert of Flanders may have been inspired to take the cross by the example of his sadistic father and namesake who, less than a decade earlier, had completed a pilgrimage to Jerusalem as penance for his brutal and exploitative rule. Along the way, he had established a relationship with the Greek emperor Alexius, to whom he later sent 500 knights to aid in the defence of Byzantium.²⁰

Almost all of these princes had experience of battle, but only Robert of Normandy and Bohemond had commanded large armies, and Bohemond alone had any familiarity with the Muslim world of the eastern Mediterranean. With Raymond of Toulouse’s ambition to be recognised as commander-in-chief of the expedition still unfulfilled by the end of 1096, the First Crusade began without any obvious or accepted secular leader. Contrary to all the precepts of military convention, its armies would have to function without a single authoritative voice of command.

The challenge of controlling thousands of crusaders was going to be immense, all the more so because they were not drawn from a uniform or united source. Each prince who committed to the expedition brought with him a small party of his closest intimates, including members of his household – perhaps a seneschal, marshal or constable – his servants, a chaplain and even his huntsman. Major princes, like Godfrey of Bouillon, Bohemond of Taranto and Robert of Normandy, also attracted much looser, more fluid bands of followers, based on the bonds of lordship and family and perpetuated by common ethnic or linguistic roots. Stephen of Blois’ party, for example, drew in many knights from his homeland region of Chartrain, some of whom were his vassals, but others simply informal supporters who were often powerful lords in their own right. The concept of national identity had little force in the eleventh century, but like-minded crusaders tended to club together. Four relatively distinct contingents evolved: the northern French under the two Roberts and Stephen; an array of Lotharingians and Germans travelling with Godfrey of Bouillon; the southern French and Provençals under the direction of Raymond of Toulouse; and Bohemond’s company of southern Italian Normans. Evident tension, even open antipathy, persisted between the northern and southern French; they did, after all, have a history of enmity and spoke different languages, Languedor and Languedoc.

The First Crusade was thus a cellular, organic entity. It would be unrealistic, in 1096 at least, to speak of a single crusading army, because the Latin forces were actually made up of a disparate, even divided, array of contingents, between which there was considerable potential for conflict, and within which there were frequent opportunities for mobility through transferral of allegiance. Not surprisingly, contemporaries found it nearly impossible to estimate the size of such a diffuse force with any accuracy. Many resorted to wildly improbable figures of 500,000 or more. By our best estimate some 7,000 knights took the cross and were accompanied by perhaps 35,000 armed infantry. A horde of anywhere between 20,000 to 60,000 non-combatants attached itself to this militarised core. The not inconsiderable task confronting the crusader princes was to enforce some semblance of unity and direction upon this shifting mass. Their one advantage was that this somewhat haphazard host shared a powerful, unifying goal.²¹