Knights at the Opera, Part 14 – Postscript

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Published on: Dec 27, 2001

The genuine Crusades were far less romantic -- and bore far from true Christian spirit, in the Golden rule sense -- than their operatic treatments might lead you to believe. Let's see how Godfrey of Bouillon and the Norman knight Tancred really participated in the First Crusade.

Godfrey of Bouillon, who had a sworn allegiance to Henri IV of France, set out on the First Crusade at the urgings of Pope Urban II. Even before he’d embarked upon the mission, rumors were circulating that Godfrey was planning to use the trip to avenge the death of Christ by killing Jews; the Chief Rabbi of Mainz got wind of it and appealed to Henri IV to prevent the knight’s journey. Meanwhile, the nearby European Jewish communities that Godfrey proposed to pass through paid off the knight to leave them alone...and so when Henri asked for his guarantee that he would not harm the Jews, the blackmailer appeared to graciously claim that he would let them be.

Godfrey traveled through Hungary on what was purportedly the same route Charlemagne had taken to the East, arriving in Constantinople in December, 1096. The knight was invited to meet its emperor, Alexius Comnenus, who hoped to extract from him an oath of homage -- the Byzantine ruler was not at all happy to let countless rough Europeans traipse through his lands, and hoped by making nice with their leaders he could get them in and out with the least amount of damage. Godfrey refused to take the oath. When Alexius withheld the supplies he had made contingent upon the knight’s acceptance, the Crusaders retaliated by raiding the local villages. In April, 1097, Godfrey and his men attacked the palace gate itself, but in the end he and his vassals had to admit defeat and take Alexius’s oath to achieve any cooperation from the locals. Even then the Byzantines had to bribe them to be sure they would keep their word to do no further harm to the city.

Now, Tancred, grand-nephew of Roger of Sicily, was part of a large, much-propertied Norman family that joined the Crusade to extend their power and holdings in the East. At Constantinople, Tancred’s uncle Bohemond, with whom Tancred was traveling, tried to work the paying-homage-the-the-emperor angle to his own advantage, asking Alexius to create for him the deputy position of Grand Domestic of the East (even though Alexius had no interest in joining the Crusade, and thus no interest in deputizing anyone to do it for him). The emperor was no fool, and agreed to support the Norman army to be sure they wouldn’t turn against him as Godfrey and his followers had done.

Godfrey met up with Tancred in Nicomedia, en route to the Seljuk [Turkish] capital, and together they confronted the Sultan, who ultimately surrendered to the Crusaders when he realized that his neighbor, Alexium, was financially backing their assaults. Alexium, by rewarding the victorious Europeans, won the loyalty of many of the knights who had formerly balked at giving him their oath. But when he then treated the defeated Turks kindly, having no enmity for them himself, the invaders saw it as a slimy, two-faced move rather than an act of a peace-loving man.

Led by an assortment of European noblemen, the First Crusaders continued East, battling the Turks again and again, caught short by the military skills of their enemy. Their first goal was Antioch, a great fortress held by the Turks. Wearied by their inability to make significant headway and cut off from their supplies by supporters of the Turkish cause who were continually intercepting the transports and raiding the camps, the knights and their horses began to die of hunger. Several deserting leaders, including Peter the Hermit (see Part 1 if you’ve forgotten his part in this), were rounded up and brought back in shame by Tancred. It was decided that they would build a blockade of their own, against the camp raiders, and Tancred was put in charge of its construction. Spirits renewed and better fed, the knights recovered their strength and captured Antioch, slaying all the Turks they could find and pillaging local homes, robbing Christians and Moslems residents alike.

A year later, the Crusaders moved on to Tripoli, accepting now-mandatory hefty payoffs from the inhabitants of Beirut to ensure that they would pass through the city without destroying it. Tancred was eventually welcomed by the natives of Bethlehem, where he installed his family flag over the town over the protests of the clergy and rivaling European noblemen.

The Crusaders then proceeded to their final goal, the walled city of Jerusalem. It was governed by Iftikhar ad-Daula, who poisoned the wells and relocated whatever food supplies he anticipated the approaching army would seize for nourishment; he also sent all the Christian residents away from the area to prevent their aiding the invaders, and gathered together Arab and Sudanese troops to defend the walls of the city. Many of the starving and exhausted knights, after failing time and again to break into the well-guarded town, rebaptized themselves in the River Jordan and went AWOL back to Jaffa to try to pikc up some kind of transportation home. But faith won out for others who, bearing crosses and holy relics, reswore their oaths and built portable wooden siege castles -- medieval cherry-pickers -- from which to assault the fortress. When the Crusaders finally succeeded in occupying Iftikhar’s tower, they allowed the deposed ruler to leave but then celebrated by massively slaughtering the Jewish and Moslem population of Jerusalem.

On July 20, 1099, unbeknownst to the faraway Crusaders, Pope Urban II died in Rome without ever receiving word that, but two weeks earlier, his supporters had completed his holy mission.