But that’s not enough, since Orderic also throws in a typically bitchy aside that the reason Fulk invented long pointed shoes was to hide his deformed feet, and this could simply be a scurrilous story to ridicule a Norman enemy. Still, it is reminiscent of the story about Hadrian growing a beard to cover a scar, something which is possible. The Angevin chroniclers are completely silent on this matter, but perhaps that is natural: fashion was always seen as frivolous by monastic chroniclers, so it would hardly be something they would celebrate, especially if it really were because of their lord’s deformity. We don’t know if Fulk himself might proudly have claimed to be the Manolo Blahnik of the 11th century in the missing part of his history, but it seems unlikely he would have celebrated this for the same reasons as above. We are simply unable to judge whether or not the story is true, but it is an extraordinary claim that must be acknowledged.
The First Crusade
Fulk Réchin lived through the event that marked the climax of the 11th century and shaped Europe for centuries: the First Crusade. The Crusades will now be a constant presence in this book, as indeed they were for the Angevins and all other European rulers. The new movement emerged from key existing themes of the 11th century, the concepts of pilgrimage, penance and holy war against God’s enemies.
It is too important to our story, and too good a story in itself, not to set out in some detail, but there are also very good precedents for a digression here on the First Crusade: Fulk Réchin himself, when he decided to write a history of Anjou, included a history of the Crusade, and of the nine pages of Fulk’s history that still survive, three and a half are occupied by detailing the events of the Crusade. Fulk couldn’t know how important the foundation of the kingdom of Jerusalem would be to his son, but he still found it essential in any history of 11th-century Europe to include a history of the Crusade. William of Malmesbury did something similar in his history of the Norman kings of England, and spent what amounts to forty-seven pages of one modern edition giving a complete account of the First Crusade including one of the best renditions of Urban II’s speech at Clermont that launched the movement.40
The story of the First Crusade is compelling. Urban II had continued his predecessor Gregory VII’s struggle with the German Emperor, and he had actually been expelled from Rome by the anti-pope Guibert, which is why he travelled to France and convened a council at Clermont. Urban had continued Gregory’s reforms, and particularly attempted to implement the Peace and Truce of God, initiatives meant to stop Christians fighting each other by prohibiting violence in certain places (e.g. around churches) and on certain days (e.g. Sunday), and suggested that they should direct their violence towards a worthier goal. He had also received Byzantine ambassadors requesting assistance in the east. The Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comnenus was fighting against the Seljuk Turks, and he needed additional manpower to regain control of lands he had lost in Asia Minor. Finally, on his way to the Council of Clermont, Urban spent time at the abbey of Cluny and would have heard how difficult the pilgrimage to Jerusalem had become. With all this on his mind, Urban spoke at the Council and called for everyone, rich and poor alike, to stop fighting other Christians and march to the east to rescue Jerusalem for Christianity, and assist their Christian neighbours in Byzantium against the Turks.41 Incidentally he also discussed other church business, including confirming the excommunication of King Philip of France for eloping with Fulk Réchin’s wife Bertrada.
There was an immediate and overwhelming response from the audience, both clergy and laymen, and many factors contributed to this. There had been an increase in religious feeling through the 11th century as witnessed by the Peace and Truce of God, the revival of monasticism with the foundation of Cluny and the renewed energy of the papacy. Simultaneously, the growing sophistication of political entities such as Normandy, Anjou and France had moved beyond the disorganized free-for-all of the 10th century and curbed the ability of their nobles to grab land and increase their power, which may have stimulated their desire to look elsewhere.
Urban toured France for a year preaching the Crusade and there was an enormous response. Yet no Angevin representative accompanied the Crusade. Modern historians often point out this absence of Angevin participation, but perhaps this is not surprising, because Fulk Réchin would have been around sixty and his sons Geoffrey Martel II and Fulk the Young would have been too young. Fulk Réchin records in his history that the Crusade was preached by Urban himself in Angers and Tours, and if Fulk can be believed there was certainly no animosity about his failure to respond to the call, for the pope took this opportunity to give him the great symbol of papal favour, the Golden Rose. Indeed, Fulk seems to have taken this honour as the inspiration to write his memoir, and celebrated his own reception of the pope as participation in the work of the Crusade.
Urban’s appeal to the aristocracy had been successful, but the movement he launched took on a further life of its own. Itinerant preachers such as Robert d’Arbrissel, the founder of Fontevraud Abbey, which would later be so dear to the Angevins, preached the Crusade, but the most important among their number was Peter the Hermit. Peter was a monk from northern France who possessed incredible charisma and the aura of supernatural authority. Guibert of Nogent, who knew him personally, said, ‘Whatever he said or did, it seemed like something half-divine.’42 Peter progressed northeast on his preaching tour, and by the time he reached Cologne he had thousands of followers. Vast numbers of peasants joined in, perhaps hoping to escape the harshness of their lives, perhaps lured by millenarian fantasies that they would reach a true Promised Land, and began to march east. This ‘People’s Crusade’ was in contrast to the organized bodies of fighting men the pope had hoped for. In their wake, the religious fervour roused by the Crusade led to massacres of Jews in many German towns and cities, despite the opposition of the clergy. Some of the noble Crusaders, most notably Godfrey of Bouillon – later to be revered as the most perfect knight and one of the great heroes of Christian knighthood, the Nine Worthies – used the unrest to extort money from Jewish communities in exchange for protection. A contingent of German Crusaders spread terror along the Rhine and Moselle and massacred Jews in Worms, Mainz, Cologne, Trier and many other places, before marching to the Hungarian border and being slaughtered by the outraged Hungarian king after they devastated the countryside.
Urban had ordered the organized portion of the Crusade to assemble at Constantinople, and the groups led by Peter the Hermit and other itinerant preachers also reached the city. They were cordially received by the Emperor, who recommended that nothing be done until the arrival of the rest of the Crusade, which would consist almost entirely of fighting men. However, ethnic animosities between the French, German and Italian components resulted in the army splitting into various factions and launching raids into Anatolia. This alerted the Turks to their presence and, more importantly, to their disorganization and lack of military experience, and soon the People’s Crusade was lured into a trap and almost completely destroyed in October 1096.43
The Crusade was thus off to a disastrous start – as many contemporaries, who felt it was a vainglorious and wasteful enterprise, were quick to point out – but the real military forces were about to arrive. The Emperor Alexius Comnenus still hoped for help from the experienced Western armies, and if they were victorious seems to have envisaged them establishing small Christian states on his borders that would be held as fiefs of the Empire. The Crusaders themselves had very different ideas, immediately leading to friction with the Byzantines.
The important contingents of the Crusade included an army from Lorraine led by Godfrey of Bouillon and his brother Baldwin of Boulogne; an army from Toulouse led by Raymond of St Gilles; an army from southern Italy led by the Norman prince Bohemond; and an Anglo-Norman force led by Robert Curthose, eldest son of William the Conqueror and ruler of Normandy. To raise funds for the journey Robert had pawned the duchy to his brother William Rufus for ten thousand silver marks, leading to the reunificat
ion of England and Normandy which would last for another hundred years.
Once all the armies were assembled, the Crusaders set off on their great march across Anatolia. The Turks took a somewhat dim view of the Westerners given the ease with which they had slaughtered Peter the Hermit’s rabble, and they quickly paid for their misconception. The Crusaders crushed a Turkish army at Dorylaeum and now marched on to Antioch. It was not entirely clear which road would be the best to take, and the Crusading armies divided. Baldwin of Boulogne took this opportunity to head east, where he became involved in the politics of Armenia and was asked to assist the Christian city of Edessa. Baldwin agreed, and ultimately seems to have connived in the murder of the Byzantine administrator to allow him to take over the city as Count of Edessa. Thus was founded the first of the Crusader States – a city taken from Christians by treachery and murder, and which wasn’t even in the Holy Land.44
The rest of the Crusaders reached Antioch, but the formidable fortifications of the huge city had been well prepared for a siege. Division among the Muslim rulers of Aleppo, Damascus and Mosul meant that at first the Crusaders could besiege the city without undue fear, but as the siege dragged on for months, and reports spread that Kerbogha, the ruler of Mosul, was about to arrive with a huge relieving army, panic took hold among the Crusaders. Stephen of Blois, whose son Stephen would be the great opponent of the Angevins in the next generation, decided to return home with his men, to his lasting disgrace, and even Peter the Hermit was caught trying to escape. In all this turmoil, one man maintained his singleness of purpose, and this was Bohemond. Bohemond was in negotiations with a traitor within the city, who let the Crusaders sneak into a tower by night and open two of the city’s gates. By the evening of 3 June 1098 the city had fallen, and the Turkish population was slaughtered.
After the Crusaders managed to defeat Kerbogha’s relieving army of Turks and Arabs due to internal divisions between the Muslim forces (or divine assistance, according to contemporary sources), Antioch was secured as the second new Christian state in the Middle East. Now the Crusaders began to argue over what the next course of action should be. When they learned that Alexius Comnenus had turned back and wasn’t coming to join the expedition – this was because the coward Stephen of Blois had convinced him that the Crusaders would be annihilated by Kerbogha and there was no point in continuing – they felt justified in ignoring any nominal authority of the Emperor and carving out new states for themselves. Raymond of St Gilles, the count of Toulouse, who had been one of the first nobles to take the cross and believed that he should lead the Crusade, finally decided to continue the march to Jerusalem, and Robert Curthose and Godfrey of Bouillon, amongst many others, joined him. Bohemond remained in possession of Antioch to rule as his own principality.45
The Crusaders reached Jerusalem on 7 June 1099. Their first view of the city came from a hill nearby that the Christians called ‘Montjoie’ because it was the first place from which pilgrims could see the city. The walls around the city were formidable and a long siege – for which the Crusaders lacked sufficient manpower – seemed inevitable, but there were rumours that the rulers of Egypt, who controlled the city, were sending a large army. The Crusaders began building siege engines, and as news arrived that the Egyptian army was approaching, a timely vision instructed the Crusaders to fast and undertake a barefoot procession around the city, guaranteeing victory if they did.
On 14 July 1099 the Crusaders launched their assault and managed to enter the city. The Muslim commander and his entourage surrendered to Raymond of St Gilles and were allowed to leave, but everyone else was slaughtered, even a group in the Al Aqsa mosque who had surrendered and been offered protection. Reports said that the corpses and rivers of blood were knee-high. The city’s Jewish population fled to their synagogue, which was set alight and all were killed. Stories of this ruthless slaughter have repercussions felt to this day.
Yet some modern historians have questioned these reports, and argue that, just as the size of medieval armies was always greatly exaggerated to indicate how important a battle was, so too the slaughter in Jerusalem might have been exaggerated to emphasize the magnitude of the Crusaders’ achievement. They note that some contemporary sources claim that large numbers of prisoners were taken and the slaughter may not have been so terrible.46 The important historical points about this episode are first, that the Western chroniclers would have believed this kind of violence was somehow praiseworthy, and that the extermination of the Jews and Muslims living in Jerusalem was a necessary and fitting climax to the First Crusade. This forms an even more marked contrast when compared with the exemplary behaviour demonstrated by the Muslim hero Saladin when he re-took Jerusalem in 1187. Second, even if the Western chronicles were exaggerating the extent of the slaughter in Jerusalem, the story that the First Crusaders behaved this way is still generally accepted, and forms a part of the way the Crusades are viewed in our own time.
The First Crusade had succeeded beyond all expectation and against the odds, but what now? The Crusaders wished to elect a king, but there were disputes between the clergy and lay lords, and between different factions of the Crusader army. Of the great lords who had set out, Baldwin of Boulogne and Bohemond had founded their own states, and many others wished to return home. This left Raymond of St Gilles and Godfrey of Bouillon. Raymond had made no secret of the fact that he had wished to be recognized as leader of the Crusade, though he was not popular with the other Crusaders. It was decided that he should be offered the position of King of Jerusalem, but Raymond turned this down, saying he could not wear a crown in the city where Christ was crowned with thorns – a popular view among the Crusaders. Probably Raymond hoped to gain credit for this pious attitude and then be begged to take the leadership anyway, but instead the Crusaders took his refusal at face value and offered the crown to Godfrey. Godfrey also refused to accept a crown, but said he would accept the role of leader, and agreed to take the title ‘Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre’, which was accepted by the Crusaders. Thus in the line of the kings of Jerusalem, Godfrey comes first, though he never used the title.47
Godfrey of Bouillon became a talismanic figure in the later Middle Ages and was hailed as one of the Nine Worthies, the most perfect specimens of chivalry. Indeed, he was the only contemporary man to be thus honoured: the others were the great pagan heroes, Hector, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar; the Jewish heroes Joshua, David and Judas Maccabeus; and Godfrey’s fellow Christians Charlemagne and King Arthur. Yet he accomplished nothing of great note on the Crusade and seems to have been chosen simply because he was of high rank and his personal life had no obvious scandal.
Raymond had fallen into his own trap and left Jerusalem in a fury, ultimately returning to Constantinople to visit his ally, the Emperor. Godfrey almost immediately fell ill and died, leaving Jerusalem to his brother Baldwin of Edessa, who became the first king of Jerusalem to be crowned, on Christmas Day 1100. Within five years of the preaching of the Crusade, the Crusaders had met with complete success and founded Christian states in Edessa, Antioch and Jerusalem. The stage was set for the next 200 years of conflict in the Middle East, conflicts that would involve all of Europe, and particularly the Angevins.
CHAPTER 3 – ANGEVIN KINGS
AT THE BEGINNING OF the 12th century the Angevin fortunes seemed to be in decline. Fulk Réchin had usurped the comital title from his brother but in doing so unleashed forces of baronial unrest that blighted the rest of his reign, and worse, after his daring coup he displayed no energy or creativity and seemed sunk in lethargy, aside from making an uncanonical marriage that alienated the clergy. Elsewhere, the dukes of Normandy had surpassed all their local rivals and the French king himself by achieving the throne of England. William the Conqueror had taken Maine from the Angevins, and his son William Rufus had reunited England and Normandy; on Rufus’s early death, William the Conqueror’s youngest son Henry I had negotiated the difficulties of succession to become the undisputed ruler of a uni
ted England and Normandy. Because of the success of the Normans, the French king now tried to tighten his authority over what remained of France, and things looked bleak for entities such as Blois and Anjou. Worse, the Angevins took no part in the greatest event of the 11th century, the First Crusade, and had been left behind in terms of influence.
Within fifty years of Fulk Réchin’s death, however, the Angevins had concluded marriages that brought them their own crowns and put them at the centre of the Crusading movement by 1131, and the entirety of Western Europe by 1154, in the process taking over the Anglo-Norman realm and effectively ending the importance of Normandy and the Normans for good. How did they achieve this? The pivotal figure was Fulk Réchin’s son, Fulk V.
Fulk V seems to us to possess an energy and determination completely lacking in his father and a prudence alien to his mother, and his contemporaries were not slow to note this. The Gesta states, ‘It is true that “the father will not bear the iniquity of the son nor the son of the father”. Thus it is that after the death of Fulk Réchin, his son Fulk V, count of Anjou, abandoned the ways of his mother and father and led an honourable life, ruling his territory wisely.’1 This is a case in which the conventional sentiments of the chroniclers – Fulk became king of Jerusalem, therefore he must have every good attribute – can be verified, because Fulk did leave Anjou in a considerably better position than he found it.
The Gesta and William of Malmesbury both attribute the same excellent qualities to Fulk’s elder brother, Geoffrey Martel II, though it is difficult to decide whether Geoffrey really was perfect or simply shared in the retrospective reflected limelight of his brother. That seems more likely in the Gesta, which wished to glorify Fulk as King of Jerusalem, but Malmesbury made it clear that he was writing while Fulk was still Count of Anjou – i.e. before 1129, when Fulk gave the county to Geoffrey Plantagenet – so he had no idea of the greatness that awaited him. Malmesbury’s anti-Angevin bias means that he can’t resist another dig at his enemies in his brief comments on Geoffrey Martel II:
Angevin Dynasties of Europe 900-1500 Page 8