Geoffrey obtaining the hereditary surname of Martel, ennobled it by his exertions; procuring such peace and tranquillity in those parts, as no one ever had seen, or will see in future. On this account being killed by the treachery of his people …2
Naturally such a perfect prince couldn’t be appreciated by the Angevins!
In 1109 Fulk V married Erembourg, the daughter of Count Hélie of Maine. William the Conqueror had taken Maine from the Angevins under Fulk Réchin, but when England and Normandy were divided after William’s death, and during the subsequent struggles between Robert Curthose, William Rufus and Henry I, Maine regained its independence. This was of only brief duration, since the county passed to Fulk and Erembourg when Hélie died in 1110. Although Maine remained a distinct county, it became part of ‘Greater Anjou’ and with its capital Le Mans became absolutely integral to Anjou; it was in Le Mans that Geoffrey Plantagenet was buried and Henry II was born.
Maine was also of great interest to the Normans, and Henry I retaliated by capturing Alençon and forcing Fulk and his ally Louis VI to sue for peace.3 However, according to the Gesta, which spends pages elaborating on events, it was Fulk who humiliated Henry in a great battle.4 Fulk was heavily involved in Norman politics at this point, particularly the extended dispute over the succession to England and Normandy. As we saw, Robert Curthose pawned Normandy to William Rufus to pay for his participation in the First Crusade, but when Rufus was killed while hunting in the New Forest in 1100, their younger brother Henry I seized the throne and Robert regained Normandy. Robert failed in his attempts to unseat Henry, and ultimately Henry invaded Normandy and defeated Robert at Tinchebray in 1106. Robert remained a captive until his death in 1134, allowing Henry to rule a united England and Normandy. Robert left a son known as William Clito who would be a threat to Henry, and Clito’s existence had a significant influence on Henry’s relations with the Angevins.
Immediately after the battle with Henry, Fulk betrothed his daughter Isabel to William Clito, but then quickly broke off the match on the grounds of consanguinity and betrothed her to Henry I’s heir William Aetheling instead, with Maine as her dowry.5 What prompted this sudden rapprochement with Henry I? The marriage alliance was clearly a prize offered by Henry to detach Fulk from a possible grand alliance with France in support of William Clito, which would also have the advantage of securing Maine for Henry.
Unfortunately this Angevin-Norman alliance led to nothing, since William Aetheling drowned in 1120 in the sinking of the White Ship, the ‘Titanic of the 12th century’. William and a group of other lively young people from Henry’s court, including some of Henry’s illegitimate children, were on the recently fitted-out ship sailing from Barfleur back to England, but the White Ship struck a rock and sank. Young Stephen of Blois, the king’s favourite nephew – and son and namesake of the cowardly Crusader married to William the Conqueror’s daughter – who would later usurp his throne, actually left the ship just before it sailed due to illness; had he died as well this might have altered English history substantially.6 This disaster was an event of European significance at the time, and had grave repercussions for England, Normandy and Anjou. Had William lived, we would expect him to have ruled England and Normandy plus Maine in right of Isabel, and Anjou to have passed to Fulk’s son independently. There would have been no Angevin Empire, but possibly a Norman one. The Normans might also have annexed Anjou if Geoffrey Plantagenet had died young. Yet William, along with all but one of his fellow passengers, did die. Isabel of Anjou, William’s widow, did not remarry, instead becoming abbess of Fontevraud.
With the death of his heir, Henry immediately remarried in an attempt to father another son, but when this failed he was forced to think again of alliances. Fortunately for him, his daughter Matilda’s husband, the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V, had also died, and so he summoned her home to take up the Anglo-Norman succession. Matilda returned in 1125 to England, a land to which she was almost a stranger, having gone to Germany in 1114 at the age of twelve to marry Henry V. She carried the title of Empress, which she retained for the rest of her life, and various treasures including the crown that would be used by her son and grandsons as kings of England, and more importantly the relic of the hand of St James, which carried enormous prestige.7 This relic was eventually given to Reading Abbey, Henry I’s favourite foundation and his resting place, and, after an eventful history, is now found in St Peter’s Church in Marlow.
With the first Norman-Angevin marriage alliance rendered irrelevant by William’s death, Henry turned again to Anjou and now had Matilda marry Fulk’s son Geoffrey Plantagenet. Henry was determined to have Matilda succeed him, and seemed quite clear that Geoffrey as her husband would not be king, which would have been unacceptable to the Norman barons.
The Kingdom of Jerusalem
Meanwhile another king faced succession difficulties: Baldwin II of Jerusalem, who had four daughters but no son. At this period, rules of succession were still being determined and there was no difficulty about succession passing through the female line, but it was acknowledged that the kingdom needed a strong military leader. Baldwin asked the pope and the king of France for a candidate to marry his eldest daughter, Melisende, and after due consideration it was decided that Fulk of Anjou fulfilled the criteria. Erembourg had recently died, so Fulk was a widower in the prime of life, successful in war and of good character. He had also been to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage in 1120 and so had some knowledge of the kingdom. We can still read the letter from Pope Honorius II to Baldwin II discussing the issue, and recommending Fulk to him as a powerful and wise man perfect for the job.8
The history of the new Crusader states in the Holy Land (or Outremer, the land beyond the sea, as it was often known) had been eventful. Though we date the First Crusade as 1095–1099 and treat it as a discrete event, in fact the movement unleashed by Urban II was not quite so tidy. After news of the conquest of Jerusalem reached Europe, a new wave of Crusaders set out. William IX, the Duke of Aquitaine, a powerful noble but also the first known troubadour, and grandfather of Eleanor of Aquitaine, reached Constantinople in 1101 with many other new Crusaders, and even the elder Stephen of Blois returned to make amends for his previous flight. Each of these new expeditions met with catastrophe in Asia Minor, including a German contingent accompanied by Ida the Dowager Magravine of Austria, whom legend said was captured and taken to a harem where she gave birth to the Muslim hero Zengi.9 The destruction that met the Crusades of 1101, in contrast to the success of the First Crusade, was blamed by Westerners on the treachery of the Byzantines, though the Byzantines took the failure of the new expeditions as proof that the Crusaders were faithless opportunists who only wished to grab as much land as possible, and bad soldiers to boot. The divisions between east and west that would have such catastrophic consequences in 1204 were cemented here.10
From the Frankish point of view, Baldwin of Boulogne, first Count of Edessa and then the first crowned King of Jerusalem as Baldwin I, is the real hero of the First Crusade. It was Baldwin who consolidated the kingdom and put it on firm military, political and economic footings. Baldwin’s policy was consistent: he wished to retain the trade from the inland Muslim cities such as Damascus for the Mediterranean ports controlled by the Crusaders to build the economy of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and he saw no difficulty whatsoever in having Muslim vassals and cordial relations with Muslim states when it suited him. Newly arrived Crusaders would find this attitude baffling and insist on attacking all Muslims indiscriminately. Baldwin was also completely pragmatic, and had no qualms about raiding caravans to and from Arabia and intimidating his neighbours with force; in fact, his policy of raiding, castle-building and annexing rich territory is very familiar from what we have seen in Anjou and the rest of France. Though he respected his agreements with Muslims, Baldwin was pitiless to those who resisted him, and in contrast with Godfrey of Bouillon, who reigned briefly enough to be thoroughly idealized, Baldwin appears as a more realistic figure. We are
well informed about these details because the Crusader States produced a great historian in William of Tyre, and we have his detailed and critically astute analysis of events from the early history of the kingdom until 1184.11
Baldwin I left no heir, and when he died there was some thought of passing the kingdom to his (and Godfrey of Bouillon’s) brother, Eustace Count of Boulogne, who actually began the journey to Jerusalem to claim the throne. In the meantime though, the council decided that the throne should pass to Baldwin of Le Bourg, the last of the the leaders of the First Crusade still in the Holy Land, since he was Baldwin I’s cousin and had become the ruler of Edessa when Baldwin I became king. Baldwin II was crowned King of Jerusalem on Easter Sunday 1118.12
The constant need for military support led to the most famous and lasting creation of the Crusader States, the orders of religious knighthood known as the Hospitallers and the Templars. In 1118, Hugh de Payens, a knight from Champagne, arrived in Jerusalem with a revolutionary idea. He established a group of knights who would take the vows of Benedictine monks, but would also use their military skills to keep the road to Jerusalem free of bandits. Baldwin II granted them quarters in the royal palace that was believed to be the Temple of Solomon, and from this they took their name, the ‘Knights of the Temple’ or Templars. The Templars, with the support of St Bernard of Clairvaux, received recognition as a distinct religious order at the Council of Troyes in 1128. The origin of the Hospitallers goes back to 1070, when a hospital and inn was founded in Jerusalem for the use of pilgrims, staffed by monks of the Benedictine Order. After the First Crusade, the hospital was raised to an independent monastic order of its own. Inspired by the Templars, the Hospitallers began to take on military functions by the 1150s or 1160s and became a fully fledged military order in 1179.13
Succession to the crown of Jerusalem (and indeed all the Crusader States) was always a matter of extreme importance, given the peril that surrounded them. As we saw, Baldwin was to be succeeded by his eldest daughter Melisende, and he arranged for her to marry Fulk V of Anjou. Fulk insisted that Melisende be formally appointed heiress to the kingdom before he married her, and Baldwin also promised that Fulk would be crowned king as a full co-ruler of the kingdom, not merely a royal consort.14
With this agreed, and with his son Geoffrey Plantagenet married to Matilda, the heiress to England, and the couple established in Anjou, Fulk was free to take up his role as co-heir apparent to the throne of Jerusalem. He arrived in 1129 and his marriage to Melisende was celebrated immediately. This marriage was, like every marriage among the medieval aristocracy, a political calculation in which personal attraction and desire had no part. This was fortunate for Fulk and his son, since the Empress Matilda was said to despise Geoffrey Plantagenet because he was so much younger (around fourteen), gauche and of only comital rank, despite his great physical beauty, whereas Melisende was said to despise Fulk because he was so much older (around forty), and his appearance (short, wiry, ginger) didn’t help. Her feelings were irrelevant – as were Fulk’s, for that matter, though we can only assume he must have been delighted with the prospect of a crown, the opportunity to fight as a Crusader and a young wife. It was precisely this reality of marriage as a business and political transaction that would lead to the doctrine of courtly love, which praised the purity of a man’s love for an unattainable woman (who was married to someone else), and famously declared that love could not exist in marriage.
Fulk immediately fulfilled the role for which he had been chosen and began to assist Baldwin II in his military enterprises. Baldwin decided to undertake the conquest of Damascus, which would have been a huge prize for the Crusaders. Damascus was in turmoil, having become embroiled in a conflict with the sinister Assassins, a Muslim sect notorious for sending hashish-fuelled killers to murder its enemies (thus giving us the word ‘assassin’, derived from hashish), and a near civil war had broken out. In 1129, with reinforcements newly arrived from Europe, Baldwin and Fulk marched against Damascus, but due to the indiscipline of the newcomers and torrential rain the expedition had to be abandoned.15
Baldwin died in 1131, and had stipulated that Fulk and Melisende should be co-rulers in conjunction with their infant son Baldwin III, which seems to have been an attempt not only to ensure the succession but also specifically to exclude Geoffrey Plantagenet from the crown of Jerusalem.16 Fulk and Melisende were crowned in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on 14 September, but the political situation was by no means straightforward. Baldwin I and II had exercised authority over the other Crusader States through prestige and force of personality, but the actual rights of the king were unclear and it could easily be argued that Fulk and Melisende possessed no authority over the other states. The rulers of Edessa and Triopli immediately rejected the authority of Jerusalem, and Melisende’s sister Alice claimed the regency of Antioch in opposition to the crown. Fulk responded strongly to these challenges and brought an army against Antioch, and although he defeated a party of rebels and reconciled with Edessa and Tripoli, the matter was clearly not at an end, and this disunity would haunt the Crusader States until their fall.17
These important political and military considerations were abruptly overshadowed by a lurid story straight from an Arthurian romance, related by William of Tyre. A young knight and relative of Baldwin II, Hugh of Le Puiset, had inherited lands in Outremer, and had come to live at court where he was close friends with the Princess Melisende. Hugh married a wealthy and much older widow with two sons of her own, and the stepsons hated this young upstart scarcely older than they were. After Melisende’s marriage to Fulk, she continued to spend time with Hugh and gossip began to circulate about them. Finally in 1132 or 1133 Hugh’s stepson openly accused Hugh of betraying the king and, in a story reminiscent of Malory’s Morte d’Arthur or Chrétien de Troyes’ Lancelot, challenged him to single combat to prove his innocence. Hugh accepted the challenge, but on the appointed day he failed to turn up, which was taken as proof of his treason. Hugh fled to the Egyptians at Ascalon and actually returned with a Muslim army to pillage the region around Jaffa, but when Fulk sent a force to oppose them the Egyptians abandoned Hugh and he submitted to the king. Hugh was sentenced to three years in exile, but before he could leave the realm he was attacked and nearly killed by a Breton knight. Suspicion fell on Fulk for organizing the attack, but when put on trial the Breton claimed sole responsibility, and he was executed. Hugh departed for the court of Sicily where he died shortly after, and the sordid affair was at an end.18
I have said this episode could be straight from Arthurian literature, but in fact it predates it and may have inspired some of the stories. The first codification of Arthurian legend in a form that we would recognize was by Geoffrey of Monmouth in around 1140, in his History of the Kings of Britain. Geoffrey included (or invented) Merlin, Uther Pendragon, Uther’s rape of Ygraine in the guise of her husband at the castle of Tintagel to conceive Arthur, Arthur’s nephew Mordred usurping the throne, the treacherous queen Guinevere’s bigamous marriage to Mordred, and the final war against Mordred in which Arthur was victorious, but mortally wounded and taken to the Isle of Avalon to be healed. What is most striking is the lack of any reference to Lancelot and his love for Guinevere, the Holy Grail and in fact any element of romance.
The romantic elements of Arthurian literature developed later in the 12th century under the influence of troubadour poetry, the cult of courtly love and growing Christian mysticism (as we shall see later), but there is also a distinct possibility that real events such as the accusation against Melisende and the challenge for her supposed lover to prove his innocence in combat also had an influence. We shall return to this when we look at Eleanor of Aquitaine, another queen accused of adultery in the Holy Land, but her involvement with Arthurian literature and courtly culture was much stronger than Melisende’s and may have served as a more direct model.
William of Tyre chose to see the episode in personal terms, and believed it confirmed that Melisende cared litt
le for her husband, even being willing to betray him with another man.19 This fits neatly into traditional medieval attitudes about women’s infidelity, and refuses to judge Melisende’s motivations as anything other than emotional. However, modern historians view Hugh’s revolt in different terms. The details surrounding this episode suggest a political dispute, and that Melisende and her supporters among the nobility were challenging Fulk. Hugh belonged to this party, and although in enlisting Muslim support he went too far and caused his own downfall, it seems that Melisende’s party was victorious. Again, William of Tyre chooses to relate this in romantic terms, saying that after the incident Fulk became so uxorious that he would do nothing without consulting his wife first. Yet clearly there had been a struggle and Melisende had successfully asserted her rights as co-ruler.20
Queen Melisende is a fascinating figure. She was in fact the first Angevin queen, though it is typical of the Angevins that the first three Angevin queens were all queens in their own right before they married into the family, and Melisende would certainly have objected vehemently to being characterized this way. Melisende was heiress to Jerusalem and gave Fulk his crown; Matilda was an Empress by marriage and inherited the throne of England, though she failed to be crowned and instead passed the crown to her son Henry II; and Eleanor of Aquitaine was queen of France before marrying Henry II to become queen of England. We have striking stories about Matilda and Eleanor, and can form an idea of their characters, but we know very little about Melisende. What we do know comes from chroniclers who used clichéd images of women that must be treated with suspicion. To them, the role of a queen was primarily to bear legitimate children, to intercede with her husband and show mercy to her subjects, and to devote herself to pious and charitable works. If a queen showed too strong a character she would be accused of ‘meddling’ or dominating her husband in an unseemly way, and if she had powerful friends she was accused of having ‘favourites’. All these things Melisende was accused of doing, not only by contemporary chroniclers but also by modern historians who tend to repeat what the primary sources say. This doesn’t mean that Melisende didn’t have favourites or try to dominate the king, and she might have been selfish, but it is too common for queens to be presented in this stereotypical way for us to rely on these descriptions. William of Tyre chose to describe her after her death as follows:
Angevin Dynasties of Europe 900-1500 Page 9