Abbreviations

AA	Albert of Aix, Historia Hierosolymitana, RHC Oc. 4
AASS Boll	Acta Sanctorum ed. J. Bollandus, G. Henschenius et al. (Antwerp, 1643– )
AASSOSB	Acta Sancorum Ordinis Sancti Benedicti ed. J. Mabillon, 9 vols. (Paris, 1688–1702)
Aleppo Chronicle	Kemal ad-Din, ‘Chronicle of Aleppo’, RHC Or. 3
Alexiad	Anna Comnena, Alexiad tr. E. R. A. Sewter (London, 1969)
Amatus	Amato di Monte Cassino ed. V. Bartholomaeis (Rome, 1935)
ASC	The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ed. D. Whitelock (London, 1961)
BD	Bauldry of Dol, Historia Jerosolimitana, RHC Oc. 4
BT	The Bayeux tapestry ed. D. M. Wilson (London, 1985)
Damascus chronicle of the Crusades	Ibn al-Qalanisi, Damascus chronicle of the Crusades, extracts ed. and tr. H. A. R. Gibb (London, 1967)
Ekkehard	Ekkehard of Aura, Hierosolymita, RHC Oc. 5
FC	Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, ed. H. Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg, 1913)
GCA	Gesta Comitum Andegavorum, in Chroniques des comtes d’Anjou et des seigneurs d’Amboise ed. L. Halphen and R. Poupardin (Paris, 1913)
GF	Gesta Francoum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, ed. R. Hill (London, 1962)
Glaber	Rodulfus Glaber Opera, ed. J. France (Oxford, 1989)
GN	Guibert of Nogent, Gesta Die per Francos, RHC Oc. 4
GR	William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. T. D. Hardy, 2 vols. (London, 1840)
HBS	Historia Belli Sacri RHC Oc. 3
HGM	Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, ed. P. Meyer, 3 vols. (Paris, 1891–1901)
HH	Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. T. Arnold (London, 1879)
Ibn Khaldun	Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddima: an introduction to history ed. and tr. R. Rosenthal, abridged N. J. Dawood (Princeton, 1967)
Matthew	Matthew of Edessa, ‘Chronique’, RHC Arm. 1
MGH	Monumenta Germaniae Historica MGH Auct. Ant.: Auctores antiquissimi MGH SRG: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum ad usum scholarum MGH SS: Scriptores SS rer. Lanpob.: Scriptores rerum Langobardorum
Michael	Michael the Syrian, Chronique de Michel le Syrien, Patriarch Jacobite d’Antioche 1166–99 ed. and tr. J. B. Chabot, 4 vols. (Brussels, 1963, reprint of 1899–1910 edition)
al-Mulk	Nizam al-Mulk, Traité de gouvernment composé pour le Sultan Malik Shah ed. C. Schefer, 2 vols. (Paris, 1892–3). There is also an English translation, The Book of government or rules for kings ed. and tr. H. Darke (New York, 1960)
OV	Ordericus Vitalis, Historia aecclesiastica, ed. M. Chibnall, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1969–79)
PL	Patrologiae cursus completus, series latina ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols. (Paris, 1844–64)
PT	Peter Tudebode, Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere, ed. J. H. Hill and L. L. Hill (Philadelphia, 1974)
RA	Raymond of Aguilers, Liber, ed. J. H. Hill and L. L. Hill (Paris, 1969)
Ravandi	Ravandi, Muhammad b. Ali b. Sulaiman, Rabat al-sudur wa ayatal surur ed. M. Iqtal (Leiden and London, 1921)
RC	Ralph of Caen, Gesta Tancredi, RHC Oc. 5
RH	Roger of Hovenden, Chronica Magistri Rogeris de Hovenden ed. W. Stubbs, 4 vols. (London, Rolls Series, 1871)
RHC	Recueil des Historiens des Croisades RHC Ar.: Historiens Arméniennes RHC Oc: Historiens Occidentaux RHC Or.: Historiens Orientales
RM	Robert the Monk, Historia Iherosolimitana, RHC Oc. 3
Runciman	S. Runciman, A History of the Crusades 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1951–4)
Setton, Crusades	K. Setton and M. W. Baldwin (ed.), A history of the crusades (Pennsylvania, 1959–89)
Tarsusi	Tarsusi, Murda ben Ali, Tabsira Arbub al-albad extracts ed. and tr. C. Cahen, ‘Un traité d’armurie composé pour Saladin’, Bulletin d’études orientales, 12 (1948), 103–63
Vic et Vaisette	C. de Vic et J. J. Vaisette, Histoire Générale de Languedoc, 5 vols. (Paris, 1743–5)
Wace	Wace’s Roman de Rou et des Ducs de Normandie ed. H. Andresen, 2 vols. (Bonn, 1877–9)
WJ	William of Jumièges, Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. J. Marx (Paris, 1914)
WP	William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi ducis Normannorum et regis Anglorum, ed. R. Foreville (Paris, 1952)
WT	William of Tyre, Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum, RHC Oc. 1

CHAPTER 1

The roots of victory

The capture of Jerusalem on 15 July 1099 was of enormous importance in the history of the Christian West and the Orthodox and Islamic East. It was the culmination of five years of incredible effort which began in November 1095 when Pope Urban II launched the great expedition at Clermont in the Auvergne. For those who laboured on it and survived, the seizure of Jerusalem represented a triumphant consummation. Little wonder that amongst the appalling carnage and slaughter of the sack, in which men ‘rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins’, they believed ‘it was a just and splendid judgment of God that this place should be filled with the blood of the unbelievers, since it had suffered so long from their blasphemies’ and rejoiced. ‘A new day, new joy, new and perpetual gladness, the consummation of our labour and devotion, drew forth from all new words and new songs’.¹ For the papacy, which conceived the idea of the expedition, its victory was a vindication of the pope’s claims to be the leader of the Christian world. In the ideological conflict between empire and papacy, which we call the ‘Investiture Contest’, the victory of the crusade tipped the balance sharply towards the papacy. The capture of Jerusalem and its port of Jaffa began the establishment of a western colony in the east. It was not the first – the crusade had already seized Antioch and Edessa – but Jerusalem was an ideological imperative for the whole of Latin Christendom, a spur which for two centuries would drive men and women on bitter journeys by land and sea to savage war in the distant Levant. That the pope alone could declare such a war established his position as something akin to the Caliph’s as ‘Commander of the Faithful’. For the Christian and Orthodox empire at Constantinople with its long tradition of diplomacy, the arrival of the westerners introduced a new and unpredictable factor into the politics of the Mediterranean. The newcomers were at once Christians and strangers whose attitude to Byzantium was ambiguous to say the least.² For Islam, the crusader victory marked the arrival of an alien force whose beliefs and attitudes were deeply threatening, though this was only slowly recognised. For western traders the victory opened the way for the growth of new enclaves controlled by friendly forces through which to tap the riches of the east, rivals to established centres like Constantinople and Alexandria.³ The victory of the First Crusade precipitated great changes, in the ideological and political conflicts of Europe, in the politics of the Levant, and in the trading habits of the Mediterranean basin. It is not difficult to understand why modern historians have enthusiastically addressed the question of explaining the success of an undertaking which had such momentous consequences.

The story of the crusade is fascinating. Urban created a mass movement; an army of about 50,000–60,000, plus non-combatants, was set in motion in 1095.⁴ Such numbers were unknown in the west. The army with which William, duke of Normandy, conquered England in 1066 probably numbered 14,000 men, including sailors, delivering effectives of about 8,000–9,000 onto the battlefield, of whom perhaps as many as 3,000 were mounted. Twenty years later the Anglo-Saxon chronicler recorded that William mustered ‘a larger force of mounted men and footsoldiers than had ever come into this country’ against an invasion threat. In 1081 Robert Guiscard attempted to conquer the Byzantine empire with an army of about 15,000 fighting men.⁵ Comparisons must take into account the presence, in the crusader army of 1095, of many non-combatants, the elderly, women and children. However, it is evident that the army of the First Crusade was something quite unprecedented in size and, indeed, undertaking. Such a mass movement could not but fascinate later generations, especially since it also appears as David in a contest with the forces of Islam. For the crusade challenged three great enemies, the Turks of Asia Minor, the Sultanate of Baghdad and the Egyptian Caliphate, and to do this travelled great distances. From Cologne to Constantinople via Ratisbon, Belgrade and Sofia is 2,300 kilometres and from Paris via Brindisi and Thessalonika 2,380. On the route followed by the main army Jerusalem is 1,970 kilometres from Constantinople. So the people who set out in 1095 were prepared to walk and ride some 4,300 kilometres.⁶ Conditions on the march were appalling; the arid heat of central Asia Minor and the steep passage of the Taurus mountains took their toll.⁷ To such natural horrors were added the supply problems attendant on feeding an army of such a size. This was most acute during the nine-month siege of Antioch, while there was a tremendous shortage of water during the bitter siege of Jerusalem.⁸ It should be remembered that before the age of modern hygiene and medicine any army reckoned to lose more from disease than from battle. In what appears to be a reliable estimate, the eye-witness chronicler, Raymond of Aguilers, suggested that the army which besieged Jerusalem had only 1,200–1,300 knights and 12,000 foot with an unspecified number of non-combatants and sick. As they marched to Ascalon only a month after the fall of the city, he tells us that the army had shrunk to 9,000 foot and barely 1,200 knights; the siege cost the crusade almost a quarter of its fighting strength. The real casualties may have been worse, for the army mustered for Ascalon included marines and sailors from a Genoese fleet which had not arrived at the start of the siege. The siege of Antioch lasted nine months across a winter, and in that time many battles were fought; the losses must have been horrendous. In the eleventh century long-distance travel was, in itself, a hazardous business. Pilgrims anticipated death on their devotions, while in England a merchant who made three journeys overseas was entitled to the status of thegn. In the light of this appalling attrition it is little wonder that historians have seen the crusade as truly a triumph of the will and have emphasised this as an explanation of its success. What drove men and women through heat, privation and death to the liberation of the Sepulchre of the Lord at Jerusalem? The issue of motivation, seen as the foundation of the morale of the army, has been explored by modern writers and dominated explanations of the success of the crusade.

The impact of the preaching of the great expedition by Urban in 1095, which inspired so many to leave their homes for the east, probably owed something to new and dynamic ideas about war in Christian society which had been formulated in the course of the eleventh century. Urban’s idea of an expedition to the east was a novelty but one whose component elements were already known to his audience. The difficulty of knowing precisely what Urban said at Clermont in 1095 has, of course, complicated discussion, but he probably called for an expedition to Jerusalem which would aid the Byzantine emperor and liberate the churches of the east from the yoke of Islam. He presented the task as a pilgrimage. Fulcher of Chartres’ important account of Clermont does not mention Jerusalem as the objective of the expedition, but the balance of scholarly opinion sees this as an aberration on Fulcher’s part.⁹ To contemporaries, the most astonishing thing about his speech was his offer of ‘the remission of sin’ to all who took the cross. This was not a new idea as it had been offered to those undertaking expeditions to Spain, but it was now widely publicised and clearly linked to the powerful notion of the liberation of the Holy Sepulchre.¹⁰ But why did this idea appeal? Gregory VII had wanted to liberate the Holy Sepulchre and help the Christians of the east in response to a request for aid from the Byzantine emperor, and had written a series of letters to that effect in 1074, evoking little success. Appeals for the Holy War in Spain had even been supported by an offer of indulgence without great responses.¹¹ In 1095 Urban II was very organised in his approach. Before Clermont he consulted with at least one major secular leader who was later to join the crusade, Raymond IV of Toulouse, and acquired the support of a great ecclesiastical magnate, Adhémar of Le Puy. To the Council he called bishops from a considerable area of France.¹² Afterwards he set out on what appears to have been a well-prepared tour of southern and western France, arousing enthusiasm and commissioning preachers to spread the word. He wrote to areas he had not visited in person soliciting their support. But something much more powerful than mere organisation was at work, for, by the time of his letter to Bologna, Urban IPs tone was changing and he was evidently seeking to restrict an enthusiasm which was getting out of hand, and the same feeling comes across in other source material.¹³ Urban probably did not expect Germans to join his movement because of the Investiture Contest, so the participation of Godfrey de Bouillon, duke of Lorraine and an important supporter of Henry IV, must have caused special pleasure. The appeal of Clermont spread like wildfire in the west and such was its moral authority that even the Capetian king, at odds with the pope over his marriage, sent his brother, Hugh of Vermandois to show the Capetian family flag. Clearly at the heart of this spontaneous reaction lay a powerful religious conviction.

It is not difficult to find evidence for a new and deeper religious belief in eleventh-century society. The cult of relics, a devotion which involved all sections of society, reached extraordinary heights. The mass pilgrimages to Jerusalem at the millennia of the Nativity and Passion of Christ, and the contemporaneous wave of church building were clear evidence of a new tenor in Christian society.¹⁴ The spread of reform in the church and the bitterness of the war of ideas, which was an element of the ‘Investiture Contest’, attest to the continuing force of this new spirit whose temper was puritan. A plethora of religious houses endowed by laymen, the popularity of eremeticism and the foundation of Cîteaux all suggest a widespread piety which touched poor as well as rich.¹⁵ In the great crowds of pilgrims along the roads to the shrines of saints, and above all on the road to Jerusalem, we see the forerunners of the crusaders. In the Peace Movement, and the tumults of the Investiture Contest, the church was mobilising the masses in her chosen cause. But the masses were not the primary target of Pope Urban’s appeal for he wanted soldiers, and that meant knights and lords. The kings of the West were preoccupied, but some very important magnates were persuaded to join the expedition. Raymond of Toulouse, Robert of Normandy, Robert of Flanders, Stephen of Blois, Hugh of Vermandois, Godfrey of Bouillon and Bohemond were ‘Princes’, men of the very highest standing, truly quasi-monarchs, and they were followed by significant numbers of their own vassals and others of equivalent rank.¹⁶ It was once fashionable to see them simply as ruthless seekers after land and loot, covering their greed with the cloak of the cross. Recent research has inclined to the view that as participation was costly, the possibility of gain in the East was ‘a stupid gamble’, leading to the conclusion that ‘it is hard to believe that most crusaders were motivated by crude materialism’… It makes much more sense to suppose, in so far as one can generalise about them, that they were moved by an idealism’.¹⁷ It is not difficult to trace the development of a powerful piety amongst the European upper class in the eleventh century. Count Fulk Nerra of Anjou who slew a rival for the royal favour before King Robert’s very eyes, made three pilgrimages to Jerusalem and founded Beaulieu-lès-Loches.¹⁸ Some lay lords were renowned for their piety, while under Cluniac influence a steady trickle, most famously the duke of Burgundy in 1078, joined religious orders.¹⁹

But mere piety has not been regarded as enough to explain mass support. The make-up, the identity of that idealism seen as the driving force of the crusading movement, has been the subject of ever closer examination, in which the ideas of the great German historian Erdmann played a formative role. In essence, historians have come to believe that the crusade was the culmination of a series of impulses by which the church sought to reconcile the heroic and militant ideas of knighthood – chivalry in its crudest sense – with Christian ideology²⁰. The Peace and Truce of God began in France as an effort to control the savagery of the knights and lords who had long usurped the power of a monarch who was confined to the Ile de France. But this was not a merely negative attitude, for in recognising the role of the knights as the bearers of arms in society, the church was giving them a special role – recognising them as an ordo in Christian society, and seeking to direct their brutality to positive ends – to protect the poor and succour the church.²¹ The church had always imposed penances for murder on those who killed in battle, but it had long been felt that soldiers who fought against the enemies of God, pagans and Muslims, were fighting in a cause so self-evidently just that such a punishment could not be appropriate. As the long external onslaught on Europe ended by the year 1000, so this spontaneous notion of righteous war was transferred to reconquest, in Spain and later in Sicily. In the early eleventh century, the Spanish kings began the Reconquista and established close links with the French church. In 1032 Sancho III of Navarre (1000–35) sent the monk Paternus to Cluny and the interest of that great order in Spanish reform must have brought the peninsula more closely into the European consciousness, though Cluny was never a recruiting sergeant for the Spanish wars.²² The papacy strengthened popular notions of the positive value of violence: in 1053 Leo IX led a military expedition against the Normans of South Italy. His successors supported the Spanish and Sicilian reconquests and approved the Norman conquest of England. In the Investiture Contest an entire theology of war was called into being by the papacy – assisted by such thinkers as Anselm of Lucca and Bonizo of Sutri – as Gregory VII tried to create his militia sancti Petri to wage righteous war against Henry IV. In a famous letter to Henry IV before the outbreak of the contest, Gregory sketched a plan for an armed expedition, led by himself, to aid the Greeks after the disaster of Manzikert, in return for recognition of the power of the Holy See, and he even suggested that they should go on to recover Jerusalem, though his proposal lacked the elements of the pilgrim vow and the indulgence added by Urban II.²³ Gregory VII attempted to take the initiative by launching the expedition of Ebles de Roucy to Spain. His claim that lands reconquered there were papal fiefs led to a close alliance between the papacy and the kingdom of Léon which would long endure, giving the Holy See great influence in Spanish affairs.²⁴ Such interventions show the papacy placing a positive value on violence and asserting its claim to direct it. It is significant that it was in the context of the Spanish reconquest that Urban II would first formulate an indulgence based upon the Jerusalem pilgrimage, for the restoration of Tarragona.²⁵

Although there is plenty of evidence to show that the church was changing its attitude to war, and seeking to influence the military classes, it enjoyed little success. The expeditions to Spain were occasional: to Barbastro in 1064–5 and Tudela in 1086. Spiritual benefits were offered by the papacy to those who fought in Spain, though it now seems unlikely that an indulgence was offered by Alexander II.²⁶ Few took seriously the restrictions of war proposed by the church. Ravaging was, and continued to be, an essential element in war. It was an expedient method of destroying the economic base of an enemy and undermining the loyalty of his vassals, a military tactic in an age when war was dominated by castles and an absolute necessity to support armies which had no logistic train. Yet this was war of a military upper class upon the poor and defenceless, and upon the church whose property suffered badly, the very thing against which the church inveighed. If ravaging was not exactly a path to glory for the chivalrous knight, it was no shame to perform this normal part of the business of war. Only those who engaged in horrific torture and gratuitous mass-murder, like Robert of Bellême, attracted the censure of their contemporaries and even horrors like the massacre of Vitry, did not necessarily damage reputations.²⁷ At the end of his life William the Marshal, that very embodiment of medieval chivalry, defended his conduct as a soldier against the reproaches of the church which could hardly be obeyed ‘or else no-one would be saved’. Even the crusading movement had only a fitful effect. Only enormous efforts after the fall of Edessa in 1144 stirred Europe into the Second Crusade, while it took the collapse of the kingdom of Jerusalem after Hattin in 1187 to provoke another effort on behalf of the east. Whole areas, like England, were, for long periods of time, little effected by the crusading movement. Despite this, the appeal of 1095 made an enormous impact which was sustained, though at varying levels of intensity, for centuries. Why was this?

Urban cast his appeal for holy war in 1095 in the form of a pilgrimage whose reward was remission of sin. This may not have been very different from what was promised by Alexander II in about 1063, but it came thirty-two years later, during which time the Investiture Contest and the struggle for reform may well have heightened that fundamental desire around which almost all eleventh century piety had been built – deliverance from the burden of sin. The church had had little luck in influencing lay behaviour by its theology of war for ‘knights stood to gain little temporal profit … from adherence to the moral dictates of the church’.²⁸ They had religious preoccupations – the risks of hell-fire were all too plain – but with a few individual exceptions the political and military pressures upon them counted for far more. That dichotomy between their religious preoccupations and their military direction continued, as the story about William the Marshal would reveal a century later. Chivalry in its essence was already a reality by the time Pope Urban launched his great expedition, but within the notion of the ideal knight as it emerged, there were appalling tensions and contradictions. The warrior ethic was fundamentally opposed to the church’s ideas about the behaviour of the knightly class. In an age when monarchy was weak, the church turned its attention to the ‘conversion’ of the knights and lords, seeking to give a Christian gloss to such vital ceremonies of the military class as the creation of a knight. The ‘sanctification’ of the knightly class, their conversion into a parallel order to the monks, was the goal of the church’s endeavours. The success of the process was uneven to say the least, but this religious ideology of knighthood, devoted to the support of the church and the defense of the helpless, formed a vital base upon which Urban could build, giving it a new and dynamic dimension.²⁹ Such ideas were having an increasing impact upon the life of the upper classes and must have created an enormous tension by their contrast with the reality with which they had to live.³⁰ It must have been made worse by the growing religious intensity of the age. Urban offered the religious sensibilities of the military class neither a solution nor a synthesis, but an escape route. In 1095 Urban created a window of opportunity – for it must be remembered that contemporaries did not know, as we know, that the crusade would have a great and continuing future – an offer to escape from the burden of sin made in the clearest possible terms by exercising that love of war and all its joys which was the central characteristic of a warrior aristocracy.³¹ This was proclaimed in the loudest and most public, possible way. Organisation and publicity cannot make a message popular, but they can make sure that a popular message is broadcast, and that is precisely what Urban II did in 1095. The Investiture Conflict had been a war of ideas, and the church had learned much about propaganda. Urban prepared the way for his appeal carefully, launched it in an appropriate setting ‘a gathering of influential churchmen’ and aimed it at a market he knew well – the French aristocracy to which he belonged. He then prosecuted a vigorous campaign in person and by letter. A message was forged in the simplest terms – ‘Jerusalem, Salvation – Deus Vult’ – and like so many simple messages it came across, it spread, with a momentum of its own creating a more complex phenomenon than that suggested by the description ‘religious enthusiasm’.

Discussion of crusader motivation has too long revolved around a perceived dichotomy between material and spiritual factors, booty and the love of God. This was a crudely (though not a merely) materialistic age whose spiritual perceptions were often seen in very concrete forms – not least the flames of hell. It was in the eleventh century that the person of the devil took shape, while the painful literalness of saints lives and their repeated miracles is proverbial.³² But more to the point is that war and booty were inseparable, for in medieval conditions a leader had to provide opportunities for his followers to plunder. In a modern context we see booty as an extra which the soldier seizes and enjoys on top of his pay. But then it was necessary for subsistence. And the perquisites of war – the ‘extras’ so to speak, were what war was about. The delight in Girart de Roussillon about war and plunder might be dismissed as poetic rhetoric, except that it tells us something of what contemporary knights liked to hear about themselves. Ordericus twice tells us that the prospects of rich ransom extended war and attracted others to join in – in the valley of Beugy in 1083–5 and in the Vexin in 1097. Even in the context of Holy War such considerations were extremely important. The Spanish conflict had drawn northerners since the start of the eleventh century – Adhémar de Chabannes relates how the Norman Roger de Toeni terrorised the Muslims by pretended cannibalism about 1020.³³ In 1064–5 a large number of northerners led by William VIII of Aquitaine (1058–87), and the Normans William of Montreuil and Robert Crispin attacked Barbastro. There seems to have been no overall commander, and when the city was captured the foreigners killed the population, gathering an enormous booty. In 1065 the Muslims recaptured it and massacred its Christian inhabitants. In 1069 the city’s Muslim ruler and Sancho of Pamplona concluded an agreement not to ally with the French or any other foreigners.³⁴ In 1087 another great military expedition led by Odo of Burgundy and Hugh of Lusignan came to the aid of the Spanish kingdoms after the defeat of Alfonso VI (1065–1109) by the Almoravids at the battle of Sagrajas in 1086. It achieved nothing, for the northerners declined to march deep into Spain and preferred to attack Tudela in the Ebro valley, in the hope of booty. Its siege of Tudela may have been betrayed for money by William the Carpenter, viscount of Melun, whose misdeeds were remembered later on the First Crusade.³⁵ Love of booty drove knights far and wide. Robert Crispin, one of the leaders of the Barbastro affair, went to Constantinople and took service with the emperor who eventually poisoned him.³⁶ He commanded a corps of Norman mercenaries which was later led by his fellow-countryman Roussel of Bailleul, who attempted to set up a Norman state in Asia Minor. Anglo-Saxons also sought their fortunes across the sea, even as far away as the Black Sea.³⁷ It would be difficult to overestimate the lust for booty of the military classes of the later eleventh century. The importance of booty to monarchs and followers alike, in early medieval conditions underlines the point made in Girart de Roussillon.³⁸ For those who contemplated Urban II’s appeal in 1095 righteous war offered its rightful reward. The indulgence decree of the Council of Clermont implicitly recognises the magnetism of gain: ‘If any man sets out from pure devotion not for reputation or monetary gain, to liberate the church of God at Jerusalem, his journey shall be reckoned in place of all penance’. It is a statement that can be compared with Glaber’s comment, half a century earlier, on the good pilgrim Lethbaud: ‘Truly he was free from that vanity which inspires so many to undertake the journey simply to gain the prestige of having been to Jerusalem’.³⁹

Loot and glory, such are the lures of war, and in the official decree Urban II was at pains to demand pure and righteous intention for those who would gain a heavenly reward. If, as Robert the Monk suggests, Urban recalled Carolingian glories, the evocation of past conquest would have been as evident to his audience as to him, while there is some evidence that he anticipated the formation of principalities in the East.⁴⁰ As far as the military classes were concerned, Urban II’s endorsement of war against the infidel was also an endorsement of the normal means of war – destruction, death and plunder, and its pleasures. These were inseparable: the church might be concerned about proper intention but for the lay mind such distinctions were too fine: the fate of the Jews in Western Germany, plundered and massacred by departing crusaders who seem to have seen their destruction as an integral part of Urban’s appeal, is evidence of that.⁴¹ Crude materialism and pride were integral to the appeal of the crusade, at least as far as the military classes were concerned. We also need to allow for the considerable social mobility of the age. For the young knight seeking to rise, the expedition to the east offered prospects. Baldwin of Boulogne, Godfrey de Bouillon’s younger brother, was the very type of a young man, albeit of very high birth, on the make. He had entered the church, but left, probably because the new reform temper limited his opportunities for profit, and made a good marriage. He seems to have felt the allure of the east only well after his brothers had taken the cross and subsequently appears as a skillful politician, who rose to be prince of Edessa and later king of Jerusalem.⁴² Perhaps equally important to some, it was an affirmation of the value of war, their chosen means of social mobility.⁴³ Nor should we dismiss the hope of land as a factor in motivating military men to join the crusade. After the victory at Ascalon most crusaders did return to the West, leaving Godfrey with a total military force of not more than 3,000 men, though this fell somewhat, by the spring of the following year to perhaps as low as 300 knights and 2,000 foot or even fewer. Our accounts are, as usual, not very precise, but on this reckoning between 200 and 300 knights of the army which triumphed at Ascalon stayed behind – between a quarter and a sixth of the 1,200 who went to battle at Ascalon (where they suffered some casualties).⁴⁴ This was not an insignificant proportion. They may have been moved to stay by many considerations – amongst which kinship, loyalty and close association with Godfrey were important for many.⁴⁵ But it is remarkable that of those who survived to the end, such a large proportion were ready to stay: perhaps as many as 3,000 settled at Antioch with a substantial number remaining at Edessa, so the settlement of Franks in the east was, in terms of the overall effort, not negligible, and we are entitled to consider this in discussing their motives. According to Ekkehard of Aura, many of the poor in the West Frankish lands may have been excited by false prophets and driven on by famine and plague, presumably in the hope of finding better things in the fabled East.⁴⁶However, general statements about famine and want spurring people on need to be handled carefully, for they were often local phenomena. The lesser crusaders probably had much the same mixed motives as their betters. We may suspect that some groups had very specific motives of a gross material kind. For Italian city states like Genoa the crusade must have seemed to be an extension of their long-standing drive to expel Muslims from the trade routes. As soon as Antioch was in Christian hands, the Genoese sought and obtained from Bohemond a quarter in the city with extraterritorial jurisdiction.⁴⁷ This is not to say that people from the Italian trading cities did not share the enthusiasm for the crusade; the letter of Pope Urban to Bologna reveals its strength there, while the letter of the people of Lucca shows great pride in one of their citizens who participated in the great expedition. It is merely and self-evidently the case that their motives were mixed and that brute material ends clearly loomed large. In the case of Bohemond we see an individual whose first act on the crusade was to negotiate a position for himself. Anna tells us that at Constantinople in 1097 he sought the position of Grand Domestic of the East.⁴⁸ In a crude old world the niceties of proper intention about which the canon of the Council of Clermont was so concerned, and which lay at the heart of Augustine’s theory of Just War and the superstructure which the church had built upon it, went by the board. The appeal to righteous war was a grant of righteous plunder or whatever other advantage was available – Tancred was later to treat the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem as a mere prize of war. The lure of booty, the hope perhaps of land or position in the exotic east, personal or institutional advantage, a whole spectrum of motives drove men to the east.⁴⁹ Without a profound belief in God and a deep-seated fear of His judgment they would never have gone, but the very sanctity of their undertaking also sanctioned gain, and between these impulses they had no sense of dichotomy. Hence when Bohemond’s army was pressed hard at Dorylaeum, the rallying cry went round: ‘Stand fast all together, trusting in Christ and in the victory of the Holy Cross. Today, please God, you will all gain much booty’.⁵⁰

So religious enthusiasm should be recognised as a simplification, a shorthand, for the sense of drive and purpose unleashed by Urban’s appeal, and it should be remembered that large numbers probably had little choice but to go. This explains the fragility of the crusade and the scale of desertion.⁵¹ It was in the end the motivation of many of the upper class who took the cross, but we have tended to see an explanation of motivation as an explanation of why the crusade succeeded. In fact religious enthusiasm had to be controlled and exploited, and buttressed by other solidarities which compounded and interacted with it.

This interaction transformed enthusiasm, itself a thing of fits and starts, into the morale of a fighting army. The crusaders came as the army of God to do His will, but men and women do not live constantly at that level of awareness. The day-to-day business of keeping alive and comfortable, not least perhaps keeping horses alive, tends to erode high purpose as do want, hardship and fear, all factors which gravely effected the army. Many who went were following their masters, and could have had little choice in the matter. Urban, however, had disciplined the enthusiasm he tapped by insisting that those who joined the expedition should take a vow. This was not yet the subject of canonistic refinement, but it was nevertheless viewed by contemporaries as binding, an obligation to which the individual crusader could be recalled.⁵² Moreover, there also existed an authority to recall him. Urban established Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy as his legate on the crusade. There has been much debate as to what exactly his role was, much of it wide of the mark, for it is evident that after his death on 1 August 1098 there was a vacuum in the ecclesiastical leadership of the crusade, as Raymond of Aguilers clearly discerned.⁵³ In January 1098, when the army was struggling in the siege of Antioch and famine stalked the camp, Adhémar proclaimed a fast with masses, processions and prayers, and we find precisely the same measures taken at the second siege of Antioch to prepare the army for the attack on Kerbogha. Similar measures were resorted to later – the barefoot procession out of Ma’arra, and the march around Jerusalem in clear imitation of Joshua’s at Jericho, though by that time the strong will of Adhémar was gone. There was a conscious adoption of the pilgrim custom of walking barefoot the last few miles to the sacred shrine as the army approached Jerusalem. This liturgical aspect of the crusade is very marked – Raymond of Aguilers twice compared the army prepared for battle to a church procession, and such language is a commonplace.⁵⁴ We think of such activities as having a morale-raising effect. Contemporaries conceived their purpose as being to win God’s favour and their effect as objective. Stephen of Valence transmitted the words of Christ to the army in Antioch: ‘they shall return to me and I will return unto them, and within five days I will send them a mighty help’. It was the conviction of Divine favour, stimulated by penance and obedience to His will, which formed the bedrock of crusader conviction.⁵⁵

The importance of Adhémar of Le Puy as the moral arbiter of the crusade is revealed by events after his death. The army fell to quarrelling and many of the leaders seem to have developed ambitions of their own in North Syria. Unless there was a person to mobilise religious enthusiasm, which we are accustomed to seeing as the driving force of the crusade, it was too diffuse and too flaccid to stamp itself on events. But a new and different kind of leadership emerged. A group of Provençal clerics, amongst them the chronicler Raymond of Aguilers, emerged. They were the associates of Peter Bartholemew and the guardians of the Holy Lance which had become the token of the great victory over Kerbogha at Antioch. The visions of Peter Bartholemew are an articulation of the needs of the lesser people, many knights amongst them, who had been left out of the distribution of land and spoils after the fall of Antioch. For them plunder was a necessity impossible in what was now friendly territory in North Syria. Perhaps to their disgust some of the leaders had even taken to making friendly arrangements with nearby Muslim powers.⁵⁶ The economic and religious imperatives of these people were one, and they were mobilised by Peter Bartholemew and the Provençal clergy as a pressure upon the count of Toulouse and the other leaders. In the end, this coalition of forces, of the poor and the ambitions of Raymond of Toulouse, succeeded precisely because its ultimate demand, the liberation of Jerusalem, was shared by everyone and could not be argued against.⁵⁷ The role of Peter Bartholemew and the chaplains of the count of Toulouse indicates how the basic religious enthusiasm – and that term is itself a simplification for a compound of factors – had to be focussed and provided with leadership if there were to be success.

But the religious drive of the crusaders was buttressed by other solidarities. The people who went on the crusade came from all over Western Europe, and they seem to have fallen quite naturally into nations which grouped round their leading members. Raymond of Aguilers carefully explains which people were called Provençals, to distinguish them from the Franks, then in his account of the battle against Kerbogha indicates that everyone fought with his own leader and in his own cognatio, and similar expressions and ideas can be found in every account.⁵⁸ This was not invariable and the course of events changed allegiances. The Bretons certainly seem to have set off with the forces of Robert of Normandy – quite a natural alliance in terms of the Breton contribution to the army of 1066.⁵⁹ Many northerners seem to have entered the army of Toulouse in late 1098 when it was the only force confronting the enemy and preparing the way to Jerusalem, while at Jerusalem Gaston of Beam, whose lands lay in the central Pyrenees, supervised the construction of the North French tower.⁶⁰ In general, however, people travelled with groups from their own nations. This is one of the bonds which held them together and attached them to strong leaders, for quite naturally such groups tended to gather round major figures. And here, perhaps, we come to one of the key reasons for the success of the First Crusade.

The pages of the chronicles are dominated by the ‘Princes’ who went on the crusade. Even for men at the time it was a vague term; William of Poitiers, struggling to explain the position of William of Normandy, expressed both the reality and the difficulties of definition when he commented that ‘Normandy, long subject to the king of France was now almost erected into a kingdom’.⁶¹

Urban appealed for support to the rising military class of Europe as a whole – not to the kings and princes alone but to the whole gamut of lords, barons and knights. At the core of every army were the sworn vassals and household knights of the prince who led it. Probably the key factor which precipitated their decision to go was his. Although they were free agents as far as the matter of decision went – in theory no man could be bound to go on crusade by the decision of his lord – once the decision was made the vassal relationship usually continued. Such men, gathered round their great prince, formed the nucleus of each army. Albert of Aachen makes clear references to sodales, the household knights accompanying Godfrey, while Raymond of Aguilers speaks of the familiares of the count of Toulouse. Bohemond also seems to have had his core following.⁶² The riches and status of this group enabled them to dominate affairs. Urban may have revealed something of his intentions to the count of Toulouse. It was he and others who dominated the discussions with Alexius at Constantinople. The chroniclers tell us time after time that it was the council of princes which made the decisions. But beyond their sworn household followers there were many others only loosely bound, if at all, to them. French society below the level of the princes was dominated by lesser men, counts, viscounts, castellans and of course knights. Such people came as individuals to the crusade, many of them with their own followings. Farald, viscount of Thouars, was evidently in the Provençal contingent for he went with the count of Toulouse to witness Peter Bartholemew’s revelation of the Holy Lance, yet he was a Poitevin whose ancestor had followed William the Conqueror in the Hastings campaign.⁶³ Some of these lesser figures appear briefly in the pages of Anna Comnena who describes how her father took oaths from many of them as well as the Princes. Evidently Alexius appreciated that they were free agents who would not feel bound by the promises of others. He was particularly concerned about Tancred who had slipped across the Bosphorous without taking the oath at Constantinople, and staged another oath-taking at Pelekanum to ensnare him.⁶⁴ There are hints that some of these people may have had influence on events. In the council held on 1 November 1098 to discuss the resumption of the crusade the Gesta reports the dispute between the count of Toulouse and Bohemond, then says that: ‘The bishops, with Duke Godfrey, the counts of Flanders and Normandy and the other leaders (aliique seniores)’ considered their judgment. Who were these ‘other leaders’? Stephen and Hugh of Vermandois, clearly princes, were long gone and there were no others of this rank. Raymond of Aguilers’ account strongly implies that there were many parties to the debate at this point.⁶⁵ This may have been an exceptional occasion, but it warns us against being hypnotised by the princes. Such substantial people maintained their own followings, their own nuclei, to which knights attached themselves from time to time as they did to those of the princes. An obvious example is Raymond Pilet who led a raid into Syria in the summer of 1098.⁶⁶ Generally the ties of nation and propinquity prevailed in such choices but there were anomalies. Some French knights, amongst them Boel of Chartres whose brother Fulcher played a notable role in the capture of Antioch, were in Bohemond’s contingent. They may have come with the unnamed Franks who filtered into South Italy as the crusade got underway, or perhaps they had gone there to make their fortune and decided to press on.⁶⁷ Knights involved in the people’s crusade attached themselves to others after its break-up, while the crisis provoked by the dispute over Antioch produced a lot of realignments, most notably that of Tancred and the author of the Gesta who joined the army of Toulouse. Below the knights there were the lesser crusaders and the non-combatants who in the first place, seem to have followed the main armies simply on the basis of propinquity and nation. Amongst them were the servants and armed followers of the great, but a substantial number of non-combatants were never anybody’s responsibility, and they seem to have suffered appallingly. It is in the context of these extremely fluid relationships that the key role of the princes and perhaps some of the other great lords needs to be understood.

If the basic driving force of the crusade was a compound of greed, pride and religious zeal, cemented by personal, feudal and national bonds, the disaster of the so-called ‘People’s Crusade’ enables us to understand the role of the princes and the great. The same motives influenced those who went on the People’s Crusade, but there was no princely leadership. The army of Peter and the others was divided into nations which proved to be mutually hostile, and the enterprise fell apart. The powerful leaders were the capstone of the whole structure of the First Crusade. They had wealth, position and social prestige, and control of the common fund established amongst them for the general good.⁶⁸ The crusade was made up of free agents who looked after themselves, providing their own food, horses and shelter, relating in different ways to the princes, for whom, however, this was not an entirely novel situation. Medieval armies were gatherings of groups who often stood in an uncertain relationship with their commander who could be surest of his household followers, intimates and mercenaries; quite often these last were the most reliable.⁶⁹ The crusade was certainly an event on a larger scale and overall it was a very fluid body. However, traditional loyalty, prestige, habit, all bound men to a prince. Above all we must remember the strength of fear which was especially strong on such an uncertain enterprise. The crusade was an experience of terrible hardship and we hear constantly of dearth and destitution. The famine at New Year 1098 was so bad that Adhémar tried to raise morale by religious celebrations, Bohemond threatened to leave because he was too poor to finance a long siege and Tatikios, the imperial representative on the expedition, revived the idea of a distant blockade, though this was prevented by the count of Toulouse.⁷⁰ Early in the siege of Antioch Anselm of Ribemont wrote to the archbishop of Rheims asking his prayers for thirteen who had died on the expedition, of whom seven had perished in battle and six by illness. Bishop Adhémar himself would die of plague on 1 August 1098. Stories of illness were commonplace, while at Ma’arra there was actual cannibalism amongst the poor.⁷¹ Knights as well as others suffered from these miseries. Under these pressures, lesser men turned to the princes to sustain them.

The fortunes of individual princes fluctuated. Before the final battle against Kerbogha, Godfrey and Robert of Flanders had to beg horses from the count of Toulouse for themselves, but this should not be taken to indicate simple poverty. For at the same time Godfrey could provide Henry of Esch with commons. Rather, confined as they were in Antioch they could not get horses. Princes were rich and had presumably brought much money with them. They had been given rich presents by Alexius and would have taken the bulk of the loot on all occasions. After the capture of Antioch when the plunder had made them rich they took the poor into their service. During and after the siege of Antioch they obtained bases for themselves, such as that of Count Raymond at Rugia which he had seized at the beginning of the siege.⁷² In an interesting aside Raymond of Aguilers tells us what was expected of a prince: Raymond of Toulouse, he says, had been ill and took custody of the Mahommeries tower to avoid charges of sloth, for it was being said in the army that he was prepared ‘neither to fight nor to pay’.⁷³ The nominally independent elements in the army were drawn into the orbits of the Princes by want and the threat of want, as well as by considerations of propinquity, nation, political preference and military necessity. In the end they had little choice, for the situation in which they found themselves was always threatening and often desperate. It was to the princes that they turned to lead them into battle and to succour them in distress – ‘to fight, to pay’ neatly summarises the role of the princes which bound the army together and made it a dynamic fighting force. When it broke into Antioch but failed to win the citadel, and then was besieged by Kerbogah the army fell into despair. Some refused to fight and had to be burned out of their hiding places, while many fled. In this dark moment of despair Adhémar seized an opportunity to assert the unity of the army. On the night of 10–11 June a priest, Stephen of Valence, had a vision of Christ promising divine aid. Adhémar made the man take a public oath affirming its truth, then obliged the princes to swear that they would not desert.⁷⁴ In this moment of peril the crusaders were assured of God’s aid, and of the presence and leadership of the princes. This affirmation of the solidarities which bound the expedition together was the basis for its recovery from despair.

The princes riveted the elements of the crusade together. By and large they managed to agree amongst themselves until the issue of the future of Antioch, and with it the whole expedition, became acute. Bohemond had been responsible for securing the betrayal of the city and he was promised control of it if the emperor did not come to their aid. Less than three weeks after the defeat of Kerbogah he was acting as ruler of the city, granting a charter to the Genoese on 14 July. When all met to discuss the future of the crusade in November, it was in the knowledge that Alexius had broken off his attempt to relieve Antioch. A letter from the leaders to Urban II, dated 11 September 1098, clearly reflected bitter hostility to the Byzantines, and in these circumstances only Raymond of Toulouse was prepared to stand for the Byzantine alliance.⁷⁵ This quarrel over Antioch, the death of Adhémar of Le Puy on 1 August 1098, and many other doubts and worries led the leaders to hesitate, and it was their uncertainty which stalled the crusade and precipitated the alternative leadership of a visionary, Peter Bartholemew and his clerical associates who, playing upon the driving force of the crusade, supplemented the power of the princes. It was an unstable situation which could not continue, but it reveals how powerful was the basic religious motivation of the crusaders and the influence of the princes. When they diverged the crusade stalled.

There can be no doubt that religious enthusiasm was fundamental to the success of the First Crusade. Participation offered an escape from the certainty of hell-fire, and death in such a glorious cause the consolations of martyrdom.⁷⁶ This was not an unalloyed and pure idealism. The formulations of the church might separate out ‘devotion’ from ‘honour and money’ but for the laity, righteous war invoked rightful reward. Fine distinctions were submerged in a blast of enthusiasm for a skilfully publicised idea which seemed, for a moment, to offer a bridge between the military and religious preoccupations of the European upper classes. But motivation in itself goes only part of the way to explaining the success of the crusade. That enthusiasm was structured by the form of the vow which gave the clergy some influence and, buttressed by national and feudal solidarity, centred on the great princes. The binding role of the princes can easily be underestimated for by modern standards this was a ramshackle army. But contemporary armies were not monolithic and it was of these that the leaders had experience. When they fell to arguing at the very moment that the Papal Legate died, the solidarities which had driven on the crusade almost collapsed. The politics of the crusade after the capture of Antioch are fascinating, but they are important because of what they reveal about the forces which drove the expedition on. The basic morale upon which the fighting qualities of the crusade depended had a complex make-up, but it was sufficiently fierce to lay the foundations of victory in the east. That victory, of course, owed something to other factors, most notably the divisions of the Islamic world, the military consequences of which will be considered below. But in this examination of the history of the First Crusade the emphasis will be upon the military experience of its participants and the way they drew upon and adapted this in the novel experience which brought victory in the east.

¹ Raymond of Aguilers, Liber, ed. J. H. Hill and L. L. Hill (Paris, 1969) (hereafter cited as RA), p. 151, tr. by A. G. Krey, The First Crusade (Princeton, 1921, Gloucester, 1958), p. 261.

² The emperor, Alexius I, had a daughter Anna whose life of her father, The Alexiad, reveals Byzantine attitudes to the crusaders. Her angry belief that the Westerners had broken their promises, made to Alexius in 1096, when they seized Antioch in 1098 is a revelation of the importance attached by the Greeks to that city: J. France, ‘Anna Comnena, the Alexiad and the First Crusade’, Reading Medieval Studies, 10 (1983), 21–8. Anna was at pains to conceal that her father had asked for western help at the Council of Piacenza in March 1095, on which see S. Runciman, History of the Crusades, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1951–4), 1. 103–5.

³ Nor is this hindsight. Genoa responded to Pope Urban’s appeal by sending a fleet and as early as July 14 1098 had concluded a treaty with Bohemond establishing their trading privileges in Antioch: H. Hagenmeyer, Die Kreuzzugsbriefe aus den Jahren 1088–1100 (Innsbruck, 1902), pp. 155–6.

⁴ For a discussion of numbers see below pp. 122–142.

⁵ B. S. Bachrach, ‘Some observations on the military administration of the Norman Conquest’, Battle, 8 (1985), 2–4 speaks of a ‘scholarly consensus’ on the figure of 14,000; The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. D. Whitelock (London, 1961), ‘E’ 1085, 1086. For the campaign of 1081, F. Chalandon, Histoire de la domination normande en Italie et en Sicile, 2 vols. (Paris, 1907), 1. 265–84, accepts the figure of 15,000 suggested by the Little Norman Chronicle, an. 1080, in Amalfi im Frühen Mittelalter, ed. U. Schwarz, but Ordericus Vitalis, Historia aecclesiastica, ed. M. Chibnall, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1969–79) (hereafter cited as OV), 4. 17 suggests only 10,000.

⁶ I am indebted for these figures and for much other geographical information to members of the Geography Department of University College Swansea, Professor D. T. Herbert, Dr A. Parry and G. B. Lewis. Of course we cannot know exactly how far they travelled, but these and other figures represent approximations based on what we know of their route.

⁷ Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, ed. R. Hill (London, 1962), pp. 23, 27 (hereafter cited as GF).

⁸ GF, pp. 28–71, 87–92.

⁹ Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolimitana, ed. H. Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg, 1913) [hereafter cited as FC], pp. 65–67; C. Erdmann, The Origin of the Idea of the Crusade, tr. M. W. Baldwin and W. Goffart (Princeton, 1977), pp. 355–71 tried to reconcile Fulcher’s omission by suggesting that Jerusalem was merely the goal of the expedition’s march and not the object of its endeavour; H. E. Mayer, The Crusades, tr. J. Gillingham (Oxford, 1972), p. 9 n. 6, gives the idea support, but the arguments of H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Pope Urban’s preaching of the First Crusade’, History, 55 (1970), 177–88 supported by J. Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (London, 1986), pp. 22–23 in favour of Jerusalem having always been Urban’s goal seem to me decisive.

¹⁰ The foundation of almost all modern thinking on Urban’s indulgence is Erdmann, Origins, but see also P. Alphandéry and A. Dupront, La Chrétienité el Vidée de croisade, 2 vols. (Paris, 1954–9) 1. 9–80; Riley-Smith, Idea of Crusading, pp. 17–25; Mayer, Crusades, pp. 8–37.

¹¹ E. Caspar (ed.), Das Register Gregors VII, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1920–3), 1.69–71, 75–6, 172–3; on northern crusaders in the Spanish wars of the eleventh century see M. Defourneaux, Les Français en Espagne au xi^e et xii^e siècles (Paris, 1949).

¹² R. Somerville, The Councils of Urban IL vol. 1, Decreta Claramontensia (London, 1972), pp. 9–41; J. H. Hill and L. L. Hill, Raymond IV Count of Toulouse, (Syracuse, 1962), pp. 31–2; on Adhémar see J. G. d’Adhémar-Laubaume, Adhémar de Monteil, légat du pape sur la première croisade (Le Puy, 1910), and L. Bréhier, Adhémar de Monteil, un évêque à la première croisade (Le Puy, 1923).

¹³ R. Crozet, ‘Le voyage d’Urbain II et ses arrangements avec le clergé de France (1095–96)’, Revue Historique, 179 (1937), 270–310; R. Somerville, ‘The French Councils of Urban II; some basic considerations’, Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum, 2 (1970), 56–65; Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, pp. 137–8; A. Becker, Papst Urban II (1088–99) (Stuttgart, 1964), pp. 232–80.

¹⁴ On the growth of religious sentiment and pilgrimage in the early eleventh century see Rodulfus Glaber Opera, ed. J. France (Oxford, 1989) [Hereafter cited as Glaber], pp. lxix–lxx, 96–7, 132–3, 198–203; on the cult of saints there is a huge literature but for an interesting local study see T. Head, Hagiography and the Cult of Saints: the Diocese of Orléans 800–1200 (Cambridge, 1990). See also B. Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind (Philadelphia, 1982).

¹⁵ I. S. Robinson, Authority and Resistance in the Investiture Contest (London, 1978). The life of Robert of Arbrissel illustrates the wide social appeal of the new piety, Vita beati Roberti de Arbrisello, PL 162. 1043–1078; on the context of his preaching V. W. Turner, The Forest of Symbols, (Cornell, 1967). See also H. Leyser, Hermits and the New Monasticism (London, 1984). Glaber, pp. 115–16 noted the rebuilding of village churches as well as those of great institutions.

¹⁶ Of the eleventh century it has been said: ‘Le temps du roi semble passé. Le temps des princes commence.’ J. Fiori, L’idéologie du glaive; préhistoire de la chevalerie (Geneva, 1983), p. 168.

¹⁷ Riley-Smith, Idea of Crusading, p. 47.

¹⁸ Glaber, pp. 106–9, 60 n. 2, 61–5. Fulk has been the subject of much study. For insight into the world of the princes see B. S. Bachrach, ‘A study in feudal politics; relations between Fulk Nerra and William the Great, 995–1030’, Viator, 7 (1976), 111–22.

¹⁹ Caspar, Gregors VII, 1. 423–4; Riley-Smith cites two participants in the First Crusade, Anselm of Ribemont and Arnold of Ardres who were famous for their piety and patrons of monastic houses: Idea of Crusading, p. 10.

²⁰ Erdmann, Origins’, Riley-Smith, Idea of Crusading, pp. 1–12.

²¹ G. Duby, La Société aux xi^e et xii^e siècles dans la région mâconaise (Paris, 1971), pp. 196–204, The Chivalrous Society (London, 1977) pp. 123–33, 150–77, The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined, tr. A. Goldhammer (Chicago, 1980), pp. 296–98; H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘The Peace and Truce of God in the eleventh century’, Past and Present, 46 (1970), 42–67; ‘Genesis of the Crusades: springs of western ideas of Holy War’, in T. P. Murphy, ed., The Holy War, (Ohio, 1976), pp. 9–32; C. Morris, ‘Equestris Ordo: chivalry as a vocation in the twelfth century’, in R. Baker, ed., Religious Motivation: Biographical and Sociological Problems for the Church Historian, Studies in Church History, 15 (Oxford, 1978) pp. 87–96.

²² H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Bishop Ermenford of Sion and the penitential ordinance following the battle of Hastings’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 20 (1969), 225–42; Glaber, pp. 114–15, n. 206–7; H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Cluny and the First Crusade’, Revue Bénédictine, 83 (1973), 285–311.

²³ I. S. Robinson, ‘Gregory VII and the soldiers of Christ’, History, 58 (1973), 169–92, Authority and resistance, pp. 99–102; H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Pope Gregory VII’s “Crusading” plans of 1074’, in B. Z. Kedar, H. E. Mayer and R. C. Smail, eds. Outremer: Studies in the History of the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem Presented to Joshua Prawer, (Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 27–40 (hereafter cited as Outremer); Riley-Smith, Idea of Crusading, pp. 1–12.

²⁴ Defourneaux, Les Français en Espagne, pp. 138–9; D. W. Lomax, The Reconquest of Spain (London, 1978), p. 60.

²⁵ Robinson, ‘Soldiers of Christ’, 169–92; J. Riley-Smith, Idea of Crusading, pp. 18–19.

²⁶ Defourneaux, Les Français en Espagne, pp. 135–7, 143–4. On the supposed indulgence of Alexander II see P. Boissonade, ‘Cluny, la papauté et la première croisade internationale contre les Sarracins d’Espagne: Barbastro 1064–65’, Revue des Questions Historiques, 117 (1932), 237–301, ‘Les premières croisades françaises en Espagne: Normands, Gascons, Aquitains et Bourguignons (1018–32), Bulletin hispanique, 36 (1934), 5–28, and for the evidence against, A. Ferreiro, ‘The siege of Barbastro 1064–5: a reassessment’, Journal of Medieval History, 9 (1983), 129–47, in which, however, the consistent papal support for war in Spain is made very clear.

²⁷ See for example a through examination of chivalric society’s attitudes to war in the Anglo-Norman world: M. J. Strickland, The Conduct and Perception of War under the Anglo-Norman and Angevin Kings 1075–1217, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1989, especially pp. 177–213, 237–80.

²⁸ Ibid, p. 347.

²⁹ J. Nelson, ‘Ninth century knighthood: the evidence of Nithard’, in C. Harper-Bill, C. J. Holdsworth and J. Nelson, eds., Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. Allen-Brown, (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 255–66 has argued for the early existence of ideas of knighthood; J. Fiori, ‘Les origines de l’adoubement chevaleresque’, Traditio, 35 (1979), 209–272; L’idéologie du glaive, pp. 135–57; L’essor de la chevalerie, X–XIII siècles, (Geneva, 1986), pp. 9–42, 223–67; M. Bull, Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade: the Limousin and Gascony, c. 970–1130 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 155–204; Professor J. Riley-Smith is also preparing a book on early crusaders and I am equally indebted to him for information and discussion.

³⁰ On contradictions between the elements of developed chivalry, the warrior ethic, ecclesiastical ethics and courtliness see S. Painter, French Chivalry (Cornell, 1964).

³¹ Here I agree with Riley-Smith, Idea of Crusading, pp. 27–9, that what was on offer was literally ‘remission of sin’.

³² See especially the description of the devil in Glaber, pp. 219–20. On the emergence of the devil see J. B. Russell, Lucifer: the Devil in the Middle Ages, (Cornell, 1984), especially pp. 92–128 and R. Colliot, ‘Rencontres du moine Raoul Glaber avec le diable d’après ses histoires’, Le Diable au Moyen Age (Paris, Aix-en-Provence, 1979), pp. 117–32. On the problem of salvation and its solutions see J. Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, tr. A. Goldhammer (London, 1984). As an example of eleventh-century hagiography see Bernardus Scholasticus, Liber de miraculis sanctae Fidis, PL 141. 127–64.

³³ OV, 4. 49, 5. 217. On ‘Girart’ see below p. 13, n. 38; Adhémar de Chabannes, Chronique, ed. J. Chavanon (Paris, 1897), pp. 178.

³⁴ Ferreiro, ‘Barbastro’, 140–1.

³⁵ Defourneaux, Les Français en Espagne, pp. 143–5; GF, pp. 33–4. William has been identified as one of the sources for the character of the treacherous Ganelon in the Song of Roland, Defourneaux, p. 269, n. 2.

³⁶ De nobili genere Crispinorum PL 150, 735–44.

³⁷ S. Runciman, 1. 62–3, 66–7. On the Normans in Byzantium see also below pp. 87–8, 98–102, 152–3; J. Godfrey, ‘The defeated Anglo-Saxons take service with the eastern empire’, Battle, 1 (1978), 63–74; J. Shepherd, ‘The English in Byzantium’, Traditio, 29 (1973), 53–92.

³⁸ ‘He does not leave a good knight alive as far as Baiol, nor treasure nor monastery, nor church nor shrine nor censer nor cross nor sacred vase: anything that he seizes he gives to his companions. He makes so cruel a war that he does not lay hands on a man without killing, hanging and mutilating him’: Girart de Roussillon, Chanson de Geste, ed. W. M. Hackett, 3 vols. (Paris, 1953/55) and OV, 4. 48–9, 5. 216–17, quoted by M. J. Strickland, Conduct and Perception of War, pp. 1, 104–5; T. Reuter, ‘Plunder and Tribute in the Carolingian Empire’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 35 (1985), 75–94.

³⁹ Somerville, Councils of Urban II, p. 74, author’s own translation; Glaber, pp. 200–201.

⁴⁰ Riley-Smith, Idea of Crusading, p. 40 n. 37 quoting Pflugk-Harttung, Acta Pontificum Romanorum indeita 2. 205.

⁴¹ H. Liebeschütz, ‘The crusading movement and its bearing on the Christian attitude to Jewry’, Journal of Jewish Studies, 10 (1959), 97–9; R. Chazan, ‘The initial crisis for northern European Jewry’, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 38–39 (1970–71), 101–17 points to earlier persecutions in northern France; Riley-Smith, Idea of Crusading, PP. 54–7.

⁴² H. E. Mayer, Mélanges sur l’histoire du royaume latin de Jérusalem, Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 5 (Paris, 1984), 10–48.

⁴³ On social mobility amongst the knights see A. Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages, (Oxford, 1990), pp. 9a 4.

⁴⁴ FC, p. 150; William of Tyre, Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum, RHC Oc. 1 (hereafter cited as WT), p. 392; Albert of Aachen, Historia Iherosolimitana, RHC Oc. 4 [hereafter cited as AA], pp. 503, 507, 517. For discussion of numbers in the armies see above pp. 2–3 and below pp. 122–42.

⁴⁵ J. Riley-Smith, ‘The motives of the earliest crusaders and the settlement of Latin Palestine, 1095–1100’, English Historical Review, 98 (1983), 721–36; A. V. Murray, ‘The origins of the Frankish nobility of the kingdom of Jerusalem, 1100–1118’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 4 (1989), 290–2.

⁴⁶ Ekkehard of Aura, Chronicon Universale, MGH SS 6. 17.

⁴⁷ Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, pp. 155–56. The decision to send a fleet to the aid of the First Crusade was virtually the foundation of the greatness of Genoa: E. H. Byrne, ‘The Genoese colonies in Syria’ in L. J. Paetow, ed., The Crusades and other Historical Essays presented to D. C. Munro (New York, 1928), pp. 139–40.

⁴⁸ Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, pp. 137–8, 165–7; Anna Gomnena, Alexiad, tr. E. R. A. Sewter (London, 1969), (hereafter cited as Alexiad), p. 329; GF, p. 12 says that he was promised a principality around Antioch, though the passage is suspect on which see A. G. Krey, ‘A neglected passage in the Gesta and its bearing on the literature of the First Crusade’, Paetow, Munro, pp. 57–79.

⁴⁹ RA, p. 143.

⁵⁰ GF, pp. 19–20.

⁵¹ See below p. 126–7.

⁵² On those who probably had little choice see below pp. 126–7. On the nature of the vow see J. A. Brundage, ‘The army of the First Crusade and the crusade vow: some reflections on a recent book’, Medieval Studies, 33 (1971), 334–43 and especially 337–9 and more generally his Medieval Canon Law and the Crusader (Wisconsin, 1969).

⁵³ Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, pp. 130–6; RA, p. 152.

⁵⁴ RA, p. 54, 137, 145, 81, 125; GF, p. 67.

⁵⁵ GF, p. 58. On their view of divine intervention see E. O. Blake, ‘The formation of the “Crusade Idea”’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 21 (1970), 11–31.

⁵⁶ Albert of Aix records an early example, though Baldwin of Edessa had already paved the way in his treaty with Balduk; AA, pp. 436, 386.

⁵⁷ J. France, ‘The crisis of the First Crusade: from the defeat of Kerbogah to the departure from Arqa’, Byzantion, 40 (1970), 276–308. See also C. Morris, ‘Policy and Visions. The case of the Holy Lance at Antioch’, in J. Gillingham and J. C. Holt eds., War and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of J. O. Prestwich (Woodbridge, 1984), pp. 33–45.

⁵⁸ RA, pp. 52, 79.

⁵⁹ Bauldry of Dol, Historia Jerosolimitana, RHC OC. 4 [hereafter cited as BD], 28, 33; R. A. Brown, ‘Battle of Hastings’ Battle, 3 (1980), 1–21.

⁶⁰ GF, pp. 12–13; RA, p. 145.

⁶¹ William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi ducis Normannorum et regis Anglorum, ed. R. Foreville (Paris, 1952) [hereafter cited as WP], p. 67. On the ‘Princes’ see J. Dunbabin, France in the Making 843–1180, (Oxford, 1985), pp. 162–222.

⁶² AA, 331; RA, p. 126. Riley-Smith, Motives, pp. 721–36, discusses these groups interestingly but A. V. Murray, ‘The origins of the Frankish nobility’, 281–99, can find only three people who may have been vassals of Godfrey before he went to the east and his kinsman Warner de Grez.

⁶³ RA, p. 75; C. de Vic et J. J. Vaissette, Histoire Générale de Languedoc, 5 vols. (Paris, 1743–5), 2. 309; Riley-Smith, Idea of Crusading, p. 76: Dunbabin, France, p. 202.

⁶⁴ Anna Comnena, Alexiad, on the unknown Count Raoul, pp. 323–4, on unnamed Franks, pp. 324–6 and on Tancred who received rich gifts at Pelekanum, p. 340; GF, p. 13 says that Tancred and Richard of the Principate deliberately evaded the oath at Constantinople.

⁶⁵ GF, p. 76; RA, pp. 93–4.

⁶⁶ GF, p. 73.

⁶⁷ GF, pp. 8, 7; RA, p. 64.

⁶⁸ AA, pp. 325–7 alludes to common funds being used to finance an armoured roof during the siege of Nicaea, and Riley-Smith, Idea of Crusading, pp. 68–9 draws attention to Raymond of Aguilers’ references to something of the sort being used to pay for the Mahommeries Tower at Antioch and siege engines at Jerusalem; RA, pp. 62, 146.

⁶⁹ Strickland, Conduct and Perception of War, p. 381.

⁷⁰ He offered to compensate knights for loss of horses; J. France, ‘The departure of Tatikios from the army of the First Crusade’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 44 (1971), 144–47, and see below pp. 242–5.

⁷¹ Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzusbriefe, p. 145; RA, p. 84, 101.

⁷² GF, p. 72–3, 26; AA, 472–8; Riley-Smith, Idea of Crusading, p. 75 shows that Bohemond held land towards Ciucia, Godfrey and Robert of Flanders towards Edessa, while Robert of Normandy held Laodicea.

⁷³ RA, p. 62.

⁷⁴ GF, pp. 57–9; RA, pp. 724.

⁷⁵ Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, pp. 161–5; GF, p. 75; RA, p. 93.

⁷⁶ J. Riley-Smith, ‘Death on the First Crusade’, in D. M. Loades, ed., The End of Strife, (Oxford, 1984) pp. 14–31 has advanced the idea that the concept of martyrdom was developed during the First Crusade, but J. Fiori, ‘Mort et martyre des guerrieers vers 1100. L’example de la première croisade’, Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévales, 34 (1991), 121–39, establishes clearly that this was already an accepted idea. Fiori has also suggested that the ecclesiastical notion of the crusader ideal was met with some reserve in aristocratic circles in France: ‘Pur eshalcier sainte crestiënte. Croisade, guerre sainte et guerre juste dans les anciennes chansons de geste françaises’, Le Moyen Age, 5 (1991), 171–67.