The retaliation was inexorable. If the raiders of Hungary had been remorseless, those of Bulgaria were worse, and on the afternoon of July 15, 1096, a barefoot crowd of peasants swept down and isolated the contingent in which Count Volkmar and his family traveled, taking some seven hundred Germans prisoner. To his horror the count watched as the Bulgarians started methodically to chop off the heads of all, but he was saved by a knowing peasant who cried, “For this one and his family we can get ransom.” And Volkmar was led away to prison at Sofia.
In some ways this was the best thing that happened to him during the Crusade, for while he languished in jail with his wife and daughter, waiting for Wenzel to appear with the ransom money, Gunter and his knights struggled and slaughtered their way through Bulgaria, losing almost a third of their army. And when they finally did reach Constantinople they found their way barred by the great wall of that city.
“Open the gates, or we’ll tear the city down!” Gunter blustered, whereupon the Byzantine Christians dispatched a skilled army which punished the Germans badly, killing off another nine hundred. Much chastened, the Crusaders were admitted to the marvelous capital of the east just in time to join up with Peter the Hermit as he boarded a small fleet which would ferry him from Europe to Asia. With deep emotion Gunter stood in the bow of his boat, waiting to leap ashore in Asia and start the real march to Jerusalem. Of the sixteen thousand pilgrims who had started with him from the Rhine less than nine thousand remained, but as the boats touched shore these cried with great voice. “It is God’s will! Let us crush the infidel.” The Crusade was formally under way.
On October 1, long after Gunter had crashed into Asia, Wenzel of Trier returned to Sofia with a bag of ransom money, and as the governor of the prison accepted it he told the priest, “If all Crusaders had been like your Count Volkmar we Bulgarians would have given them no trouble.” With seeming regret he bade the count and his family farewell and dispatched an armed escort to lead them to the capital. “May you destroy the infidel,” he called as the little convoy headed for Constantinople.
They reached the massive walls on October 18, 1096, and Volkmar ordered the escort to halt so that he could examine the impressive fortifications, and he found that where his castle wall at Gretz had a thickness of four rows of stone, the Byzantine had twenty. “I should not like to be assaulting this fort,” Volkmar remarked to the priest.
“Sire,” the Bulgarian guard interrupted, “this is not the fort. This is only the outer wall.”
With growing astonishment the Germans entered the city, and when they came at last to a real fort Volkmar said flatly, “From an outside assault this could not be taken,” and the Bulgarian told him, “The forts held by the Turks in Asia are stronger by far, and you will have to take them if you wish to reach Jerusalem.” For the first time Volkmar sensed the kind of struggle he was engaged in.
He continued, wide-eyed, to where the roadway offered a view of the Golden Horn, with many ships moored to its twisting, resplendent shores, and he caught sight of the opposite bank, teeming with shops and merchandise. This was no rural Rhine; this was the heart of a great empire; and then he saw to the right the many-domed splendor of Sancta Sophia, radiant beside the sea, and he knew how special the city was.
When he was delivered to the underlings of the emperor he asked where his fellow Crusaders were, and was told, “We have word that Godfrey of Bouillon will arrive shortly and Robert of Normandy is coming.”
Relieved to hear these impressive names, Volkmar explained, “I meant Gunter of Cologne and Peter the Hermit.”
The man’s face darkened and he said, “Concerning them you must ask others.”
Later Wenzel prowled about the market and found that Gunter and the Germans had crossed into Asia in August and were already engaged in fighting the Turks. The news depressed Volkmar, not because he was afraid that his brother-in-law would get to his dreamed-of realms before he, Volkmar, could catch up, but rather because if fighting were at hand all men of honor should attend, and he voiced his disappointment to Matwilda. But the next day Wenzel returned with the rumor that the rabble in Asia had stumbled upon the Turkish army and had been annihilated.
For three gloomy days conflicting reports ricocheted across the shores of the Golden Horn, and at last Gunter of Cologne was ferried back from Asia, so gaunt and hollow-eyed that his sister hardly knew him. The once ebullient fighter had lost forty pounds and his blond hair was matted. His tunic was shredded and the brave cross of blue was torn half away. He was pleased to see Volkmar, but only so that he could collapse onto a brocaded bed, where he asked for water, refusing to speak.
During the first full day the haggard German slept and said nothing, then finally he stared at Wenzel, who had waited patiently by the bed, and said, “Seven of us got back.”
Wenzel called for the count, repeating to him and Matwilda what the Crusader had muttered.
“Only seven knights got back?” Volkmar asked.
“No knights but me,” Gunter replied, twisting his shoulders as if to avoid interrogation. “Of the rest, six peasants.”
“Where did you leave the women?” Matwilda asked.
Her brother lifted his head to look at her, then broke into a thin-lipped grin. “The women?” he repeated. “Have you ever watched a band of Turkish foot soldiers rush a camp of children and horses and women?” He flicked his right hand four or five times, indicating sword thrusts. He continued to grin stupidly, his face out of control.
“They were all lost?” Volkmar asked.
“Brother,” the shaken knight replied, “of all who marched with us, seven survived.”
The priest knelt beside the bed and began to pray, while Volkmar tried to visualize the small army that had marched past Gretz only five months before. Ultimately it had contained more than twelve thousand men plus three or four thousand women and children, and Gunter had lost all but seven. “Merciful God,” Volkmar prayed, “what kind of crusade is this?”
Then Gunter insisted upon talking: “It wasn’t always defeat. Oh no! We had one stirring victory. We were marching inland from the sea and came upon a village from which issued a small army of men well armed and dressed in flowing robes. With great cries we fell on them and killed them all.” He began to giggle nervously—a great blond man behaving as if he were a child, so that Volkmar and Priest Wenzel looked at each other in consternation, but after a moment he regained control and said, “When all were dead we discovered from their women that they were Christians marching to join us. But they looked like Turks … the long robes …” He half sat in bed and pleaded with Volkmar: “What right has a Christian to wear a turban?” No one spoke and he fell back on his pillow, staring at the ceiling. Where had his knights gone? the lovely women? dumb Klaus clutching his donkey hair? But Volkmar could see only chinless Gottfried, grinning vacuously that first morning at Gretz. It was he who best represented the sixteen thousand dead.
Volkmar recalled that the monks who had preached the Crusade had honestly warned, “We are going to fight for the Lord and some will die, but all who surrender their lives in the great attempt will be granted remission of sin,” so it had always been understood that there would be losses; furthermore, Hagarzi had warned that of a hundred who left not more than nine would return. The count therefore had known that the proud venture entailed the risk of death, and as a man in his late forties—an advanced age for that day—he was prepared for his own; but he was not prepared for only seven survivors out of an army of sixteen thousand. Now it was his throat that was dry.
“What error did you make?” he asked his brother-in-law.
The young knight looked up at him with astonishment. “Error?” he repeated incredulously. “You mean what one thing did we do wrong so that the Turks won?” He laughed almost hysterically. “What did we do wrong?” he repeated over and over until his sister drew Volkmar and the priest away.
One of the other survivors, a freeman from Gretz, discovered where his count was
staying and came by to submit a more coherent report, and again Volkmar was appalled at the man’s condition, for he was so haggard that he must have been starved for months. “No organized supply,” he growled. “No discipline. Women in the way and guards at night sleeping with the women. Gunter insisting that his two whores get full rations. Priests praying where we needed cavalry.” It was a sorrowful picture relieved by only one report: “In the final battle at Nicaea the few knights we had were marvelous. Gunter killed … how many?” In admiration the freeman recounted the blond knight’s conspicuous bravery: “And after performing all this he cut his way through the Turkish lines, and since I had stolen a horse, I was able to ride after him. But the courage was his, not mine.”
Volkmar fed the man and asked why the Turks were such powerful men, and to his surprise the man became excited: “Sir, the Turks can be beaten. They’re ordinary soldiers with fast horses and good arrows. But I watched … a hundred real knights … you … Gunter …” He was so enthusiastic that he stuttered, but his eyes flashed.
“You think we can win?” Volkmar probed.
“Of course! So does Gunter. All the way back from the battle he kept telling me of how we would fight next time. He spotted every weakness of the Turk.”
“Then why did you lose so horribly this time?” the count insisted.
“Because we had no soldiers, sir. We had only men like me who believed that God would open a way for us and feed us and blunt the sword of the enemy.” He raised his thin face and looked with a certain calm content into Volkmar’s eyes and said, “What we needed in addition to our faith in God was armed soldiers and knights like you to lead them.”
In the next month both began to arrive—soldiers led by Hugh of France, tough, tested warriors obedient to Godfrey of Bouillon. Then came the wiry Normans following their Duke Robert and the insolent northern Franks led by Stephen of Blois. The streets of Constantinople rattled with the armor of these disciplined men, and in the afternoons when they sat together looking across the straits at Asia they did so with well-prepared plans in mind. This was no rabble led by a barefoot priest on a donkey. This was the most powerful army that had ever poised on the edge of Europe, and as the warriors gathered they listened attentively to each detail of Gunter’s disastrous engagement with the Turks. Some of the newcomers were frightened by this dismal account, but most bolstered their confidence as he reported soberly: “We must have a disciplined group, moving in precision, and the best men shall ride at the rear—for that’s where the Turk likes to strike.”
On May 24, 1097, twelve months after his departure from Gretz, Count Volkmar, attended only by his wife, his daughter and his priest Wenzel—for all the rest who had ridden with the sixteen wagons were dead—crossed over from Constantinople into Asia on the first dramatic step of the real Crusade, and as he sat in his small boat, eager to be first ashore on the holy battleground he thought: It’s perplexing. I’ve been fighting for a year and have yet to see an infidel. We have slain so many and all were Christian … except for those first thirty thousand Jews. Sickened by his reflections he turned on the spur of the moment to Wenzel, crying, “Good priest, bless the completion of this venture, for we have begun so poorly.” And he knelt in the boat, a thick-shouldered, heavy-necked, sandy-haired German seeking God; and his wife Matwilda knelt beside him and his daughter Fulda; and that night Wenzel of Trier recorded in his chronicle how the Crusade had started on the edge of Asia:
While the sea was about us, my Lord Volkmar and his lady knelt and I asked upon his pure head God’s blessing, saying, “This is your honest servant Volkmar of Gretz, who has set forth to accomplish Your bidding. Bless him. Keep his arm strong and bring him at last to the gates of Jerusalem for his whole desire is to support You and to destroy Your enemies. Amen.” And when the boat touched land my Lord Volkmar leaped ashore, raising his sword above his head and crying, “Lord, let me be worthy of Your Holy Land.”
In this benediction Gunter did not bother to participate, for nine months earlier he had leaped ashore in similar fashion, burning with equal zeal. This time he stayed in the rear of the boat entertaining a group of French women whom he had acquired from the camp of Hugh, brother to the French king.
… THE TELL
Whenever John Cullinane faced intellectual problems relating to the dig he found inspiration by visiting Akko, where he spent his mornings in the loveliest mosque of Israel, admiring the peaceful courtyard with its numerous date palms and hibiscus bushes. It was a seductive place, a Muslim enclave in a Jewish state, made doubly attractive by the six giant columns that some Turkish robber in the eighteenth century had dragged to this spot from the Roman ruins at Caesarea. In the courtyard surrounding the mosque were half a hundred smaller columns from the same place, and inside the brightly colored building stood many more, and as Cullinane studied them he was able to convince himself that King Herod had known these particular pillars during those years when Caesarea flourished.
Never did the beauty of the Akko mosque fail to assert its subtle dominion over Cullinane, so that if he considered all the Jewish and Catholic remains in Israel—from the superb white synagogue of Bar am to the soaring Franciscan church on Mount Tabor—he derived his greatest pleasure from this Muslim mosque. This was partly because he usually took with him Jemail Tabari, who apparently felt the same affinity for the place, for he used to lounge about the courtyard making acidulous comments which Cullinane enjoyed.
“You come here,” the sharp-witted Arab suggested one day, “because when you stand among the date palms and the pillars you can imagine yourself living with the Arabs. Confess. Isn’t that right? Well, I created quite a stir at Oxford in my second year with a scatterbrained theory I think you ought to consider. I developed—half daydream, half history—the theme that the Crusaders doomed themselves when they failed to establish an alliance with the Arabs. Everybody at Oxford was like you, Cullinane. They thought that Richard the Lion Heart fought his battles against gallant Arabs from the desert. They were quite hurt when I had to tell them Saladin wasn’t even one tenth of one per cent Arab.”
“I thought he was.”
“Pure Kurd,” Tabari said with no further comment. He argued in Arabic with the caretaker of the mosque, who finally admitted the two archaeologists to the minaret, inside whose tightly twisting innards they climbed in darkness until Tabari broke free onto a platform from which they could see the timeless beauty of this remarkable city, and Cullinane had nothing to say. He could only stand and look down at the scarred land. The Turkish walls, so wide that in spots ten chariots could have stood side by side, had in Crusader times contained twenty-two towers, some of whose roots were still visible. Squares and docks and ancient buildings dating back nearly a thousand years stretched in all directions, while to the east rose the silent tell of prehistoric Akka, from which Napoleon had tried in vain to capture the city … a tell as yet unexcavated but containing the mysteries of at least five thousand years. Farther to the east lay Makor, with two gaping wounds in its flanks through which inquisitive men were peering into its secrets, while to the west lay the immortal Mediterranean across whose stormy bosom had come the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans and later the English.
Cullinane was about to make the kind of extravagant statement that archaeologists should avoid, like, “This is my favorite town in Israel,” when Tabari joined him and, pointing down at the vast walls, said, “When King Richard the Lion Heart camped by that tell, trying to capture St. Jean d’Acre, there were damned few Arabs inside the walls trying to stop him.”
“I’m surprised,” Cullinane said, for although he knew the history of the Holy Land better than most, he had not previously heard this thesis advanced, and he suspected that Tabari was wrong.
“Let’s go down to the café,” the Arab proposed, and he led the way to a spot where drinks had been served for some twenty centuries and asked the waiter to fetch a bottle of arrack. As Tabari poured two glasses of the clear anise-flavored stuf
f, he said, “The Crusaders held Acre for about two hundred years, but in that time they rarely fought Arabs, because just before the Christians arrived the Turks had moved in and had crushed us pretty badly. So it was always Turks you fought, never Arabs. As a matter of fact, except for that minor matter of religion, we Arabs were always much closer to you than we were to the Turks. The sensible alliance, of course, should have been the humiliated Arabs plus the resurgent Christians against the upstart Turks.” He shook his head mournfully over the lost chances of history, then surprised Cullinane by saying, “I suppose you know that we Arabs tried time and again to effect such an alliance.”
“I never gave much credence to that thesis.”
“We tried. Repeatedly.”
Cullinane poured a few drops of water into his arrack, watching with pleasure as the clear liquor turned a milky white. Tabari summoned the waiter, explaining in the exaggerated simplicity he would have used with a retarded child, “My friend’s an American. And as you know, Americans must have ice. Don’t stand there like a fool. Fetch some ice for the American.”
“We have no ice,” the waiter protested.
“Find some!” Tabari cried. “He’s an American.”
Then he returned to Cullinane. “When your men finally captured Antioch they were surprised to find Arab ambassadors there, proposing an alliance against the Turks.”
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