Armies of Heaven

by Jay Rubenstein

  Peter the Hermit seems to have played an important role in inspiring these attacks. He may not have directly encouraged pilgrims to kill Jews, but he stirred up their passions about Jerusalem and turned the thoughts of ordinary men and women to the need to avenge the sufferings of Christ. He also threatened Jews in order to get supplies and, presumably, money from them. At the city of Trier, for example, Peter arrived on April 10, 1096, with a letter from French Jews suggesting that all German Jews would find it in their interest to give his armies full support in their expedition. The “or else” clause of the letter was left to the imagination. But like John the Baptist, Peter prepared the way. Other preachers and knights bore most of the direct responsibility for the massacres. Some of them we can name (Folkmar, Gottschalk, Emicho—whom we will meet again in the next chapter); most of them we will never know.16

  Contrary to popular stereotype, most of the leaders of these pogroms were only secondarily interested in extorting money from the Jews. They were mainly concerned with striking a blow for Christianity, and they were willing to spare the Jews who accepted baptism. For example, outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence in Regensburg on May 23, 1096, and in Trier around June 1, 1096 (about two months after Peter had extorted supplies from them), led to mass conversions rather than mass murder. In the case of Trier, the bishop’s followers apparently imprisoned the Jews and kept a close watch on them lest another series of heroic suicides and martyr-doms occur before they could be converted. The next day the bishop’s followers led the Jews to the churches and forcibly baptized them. In Regensburg the Jews, by this point having heard news of the other pogroms in Germany, resignedly accepted baptism, with no casualties.17

  The primary goal in all these pogroms was thus not the confiscation of funds but the destruction of Judaism. For most of the crusaders—or perhaps we should say simply “for most of the Christians” because many of the attackers would not have been pilgrims to Jerusalem but simple believers caught up in the spirit of the age—the spur to violence would have been a simple desire for revenge. The Jews had killed Christ, they believed, and ought to be punished accordingly.

  For Emicho of Flonheim and his followers, the motive was subtler. More than military, his mission was messianic. According to a Jewish chronicler, Emicho “concocted a story that an emissary of the Crucified had come to him and had given him a sign in his flesh”—presumably a cross (one suspects that Emicho’s tattoo must have been elaborate and detailed to have inspired such fanatical devotion)—“indicating that, when he would reach Byzantium, then He [Jesus] would come to him [Emicho] himself and crown him with the royal diadem and that he would overcome his enemies.” This passage is rife with prophetic meaning. In popular medieval legend, during the Last Days a Christian leader, sometimes called the Last World Emperor, would unite his people in the Eastern and Western worlds before going to Jerusalem to wear his crown. It was this same legend that had inspired Henry IV to consider conquering not just Rome but Byzantium and Jerusalem, too. The Last Emperor legend also caused the unnamed false prophets in 1095 and 1096 to declare that the Emperor Charlemagne had returned from the dead. Perhaps Emicho himself was one of these prophets. Perhaps, more simply, Emicho believed that he himself was Charlemagne. Whatever the case, he told his followers that God had chosen him to liberate and rule Jerusalem, and they responded most immediately by killing Jews.18

  As for the Jews who converted and survived, the outcome was predictable: “In 1096, the Jews of many provinces became Christians, and then walked away from their Christianity.” “Some [converts] later returned to Judaism,” another chronicler observed with palpable regret. This sort of surprise or disappointment is difficult for a modern observer to fathom. If Jews were forced to renounce their faith and accept baptism at sword-point, they most certainly would return to Judaism at the first possible opportunity.

  One explanation for such disappointment is that the writers believed that the legal system had failed them. Church law—although it forbade the use of force to convert Jews—held that baptism was permanent: once a Christian, always a Christian, however conversion came about. But after the fires of 1096 had burned out and the crusaders had left to meet their fates in the East, the Emperor Henry IV overruled custom and law, permitting Jews to abandon Christianity and return to their faith (as the Jews had also done after the pogroms in 1009).19

  But more than a failure in justice, these relapses also represented a failure in prophecy, and in history, too. The Jews had to convert. There was no other fate imaginable for this stubborn remnant of what seemed to eleventh-century Christians an outmoded religion. History, logic, and the Apocalypse dictated it. After all, at the beginning of the Last Days (and surely in 1096 the Last Days had begun) the Jews would finally recognize their error and embrace Christianity. The Last Emperor legend made this point with especial clarity. In the Last Days, the “King of the Greeks and Romans” will arise to conquer all of the kingdoms of the Christians, before taking his fight to the pagans. He will devastate their cities “and destroy the idols in their temples and call all the pagans to baptism, and in all their temples the cross of Jesus Christ will be raised. Whoever does not adore the cross will be punished with the sword, and after 120 years all the Jews will convert to the Lord, and his sepulcher will be made glorious.” Just as predicted, Christ’s anointed king had ridden through Germany, slaughtering the enemies of the faith and leading the Jews to conversion, all in the name of making glorious the tomb of Christ.

  Yet unaccountably, history had failed. The scourge of God had passed, and the Jews had quietly returned to the anachronism that was their religion. And they had done so with the active connivance of a Christian emperor who himself imagined on occasion that he might fulfill the same prophecies.20

  In the summer of 1096, however, there seemed to have been no failure. Quite the contrary, German crusaders left their homelands believing that they had made significant progress toward solving the Jewish problem. In retrospect, twelfth-century historians viewed these pogroms as mistakes and wanted to separate them from the serious, and more successful, business of crusading. They decided, by and large, to blame the killings on commoners, who “had a zeal for God, not founded in knowledge.”

  We must wonder, however, if some of the princes—the respectable crusaders, as it were—were involved as well. Godfrey of Bouillon did threaten to take revenge on the Jews of Mainz and Cologne for their ancestors’ murder of Christ, but the Jews successfully bought him with one thousand marks of silver. He also received a reprimand from Henry IV for his actions. It would be surprising if Godfrey had been the only prince to have tried this ploy. Evidence for pogroms in central and southern France is slight, but not altogether lacking. Count Fulk of Anjou, the man who preferred to stay at home rather than seek Jerusalem, did associate pogroms with his fellow aristocrats and on the model practiced by Emicho of Flonheim. About Godfrey, Raymond, Robert of Flanders, Robert of Normandy, and the rest, he wrote, “In the beginning of such a great journey they compelled whatever Jews they found either to accept baptism or to die a sudden death.” Perhaps if the conversions had proved more enduring, we would now have more evidence celebrating princely attempts to bring an end to Judaism. The future leaders of the crusade would in that case have worked alongside Folkmar, Gottschalk, and Emicho rather than standing to one side and watching with mild distaste as their social inferiors surrendered to these base instincts and brutal prejudices.21

  However widely or narrowly we distribute the blame for the pogroms, the anti-Jewish violence in 1096 was an integral part of the call to crusade. Remaking the world and avenging the crimes against Christ and Christians required a general attack against every possible spiritual enemy, not just Muslims. Removing the perceived stain of Judaism from the earth was thus, in the eyes of many, a necessary first step to reclaiming the rightful inheritance of Jerusalem.

  No one, however, seems to have put much thought into how these same armies might respond to another apparent enemy
of Latin Christendom, a people whom Urban II had intended his armies to assist rather than oppose: the schismatic Byzantine Greeks. Before reaching Jerusalem, the pilgrim masses, all of them on different roads to Constantinople, would have to engage with this other spiritual rival—wealthy, powerful, and cultured enough to be contemptuous of this latest hoard of barbarians to arrive at their gates.

  4

  The Road to Constantinople

  (June 1096–April 1097)

  The plan was to meet at Constantinople. All of the armies seemed to know it, no matter when they departed or where they started or how closely they were connected to the pope. Each aimed for Constantinople.

  All of the armies, too, faced similar challenges in balancing their members’ needs and desires. The various leaders—Raymond, Godfrey, Hugh, and even the more eccentric ones like Peter the Hermit and Emicho of Flonheim—would have had to channel their followers’ apocalyptic enthusiasm and energy into more earthly directions. A successful military campaign needed organization and discipline. Soldiers covered in crosses and Jewish blood expected something apocalyptic at the end of the road, but a successful march to Jerusalem demanded that the armies maintain at least a toehold on earth.

  The first armies to depart were those led or at least inspired by Peter the Hermit, who had begun their pilgrimage by massacring Jews, and they had the most difficulty maintaining a balance between this world and the next.

  The Hermit’s Armies

  The official date of departure for Jerusalem, as far as the pope was concerned, was August 15. But Peter the Hermit’s followers could not wait so long. Or perhaps they had never heard about an official departure date. Many of them had likely been preparing to leave, as we have seen, since well before the Council of Clermont.

  The vanguard arrived with Peter in Cologne in early April 1096. Peter spent a week there preaching, but the French nobles who had accompanied him, notably Walter of Sansavoir and his kinsman Walter of Poissy, could not brook further delay—or else Peter sent them forward to clear a path for him. Whatever the case, the two Walters set forth on the pilgrims’ route to Hungary with a handful of knights, several thousand foot soldiers, and an unknown number of pious and unarmed pilgrims.1

  Because of his name, Walter of Sansavoir—which translates roughly as “without possession”—has often been referred to as “Walter the Penniless.” As such, he seemed an exemplary standard-bearer for the early crusading spirit: a poor man who, drawing inspiration from Peter the Hermit, ascended to a position of great authority and led a massive army. Unfortunately, “Sansavoir” is a toponym, derived from Walter’s homeland in France. Walter himself was an aristocratic warrior. Geography and timing make it likely that his followers were involved in the pogroms in Normandy, but once they left Cologne, Walter seems to have done an effective job reining in the soldiers’ passions. Some time in early May 1096, they crossed over from Germany into Hungary, where they appear to have received a cordial reception from Coloman, the Hungarian king.

  Even at this early stage of the march, there were likely problems with supplies. Unlike in modern warfare, medieval armies did not bring food with them. Rather, they were dependent on markets, hospitality, and their own foraging. The appearance of as many as 15,000 soldiers and pilgrims would have certainly put an unusual strain on local supplies. Hungarians were by this time accustomed to large groups of pilgrims from the West, but serious troubles started near the beginning of June. At that time the crusaders approached the Sava River, which separated the cities of Zemun and Belgrade. It was also the border between Hungary and Bulgaria, at the heart of the frontier region between Latin and Greek Christianity, between Europe and Byzantium.2

  The details of what went wrong are elusive. Apparently, as Walter’s armies prepared to cross the Sava, sixteen of his men decided to barter for weapons with a few local dealers. Then, as now, shopping for arms in a border town could end badly. Words were exchanged, and certain “evil-minded” Hungarians attacked the pilgrims; stripped them of their clothes, money, and valuables; and sent them wandering naked back to Walter’s camp. At the same time, on the other side of the river, the governor of Belgrade refused to give supplies or to open markets for the crusaders.

  Routes taken by the main crusading armies

  Walter responded in typical warrior fashion—by plundering the countryside and trying to round up as much Bulgarian cattle as possible. Several mêlées between Franks and Bulgarians ensued, and in the midst of the fighting about 140 of Walter’s followers sought refuge in a chapel. Churches in Western Europe provided a right of sanctuary to fugitives, although lords and princes did not always respect it. The Bulgarians in this case did not. They set fire to the church, killing about half of the Franks inside and injuring many more. Those who survived somehow found their way back to the main army, and Walter led them all into the woods outside of Belgrade, continuing on to Constantinople.

  At the city of Nish, Walter received a more sympathetic hearing. The Byzantine governor there granted him gifts of weapons and supplies and, more important, letters of safe passage and promises of open markets all the way to Constantinople. Departing Nish and making it about halfway to Constantinople, the army stopped in early July at the city of Philippopolis, named for Alexander the Great’s father, Philip of Macedon, who had conquered this territory in 342 BC. The citizens were willing to extend to the army the courtesy of a market but apparently did not want to have any dealings with particular soldiers.

  As Walter tried to negotiate more favorable terms, his kinsman Walter of Poissy fell ill and died. The cause of death is unknown, but as the army planned a makeshift funeral for him, those preparing his body discovered on it a spectacular cross, apparently painted there recently by the hand of God. The bishop of Nish heard about the miracle and came out of the city to inspect the body himself. So impressive did he find this cross that he ordered Walter carried into the city to receive an honorable burial, the citizens crowding the streets to gaze at the wondrous portent on Walter’s flesh. They also gladly welcomed the rest of the soldiers into the city so that they might purchase supplies as they wished.

  Despite some difficulties and lost lives, Walter of Sansavoir had held his men together for the roughly 1,200-mile journey between Cologne and Constantinople. God was very much on the pilgrims’ side.3

  PETER THE HERMIT was just a few days behind. He had left Germany around April 20 with an army estimated by twelfth-century German historian Albert of Aachen as having 40,000 men. He described it as “countless as the sands of the sea”—an echo of the promise that God had made to the Jewish patriarch Abraham five millennia before: “I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies.” With these words, God had assured Abraham that his children would inherit the land of Canaan, the same land toward which the Franks now journeyed. As if leading the new Children of Israel, Peter the Hermit sought to collect on that promise.

  Peter’s army included men and women, rich and poor, taken from all parts of northern Germany and France, all drawn by the charismatic hermit’s message of redemption and divine mission. Like Walter of Sansavoir’s troops, they seem to have met with relatively little difficulty for the first several weeks of their march, including their crossing into Hungary in late May. Yet King Coloman no doubt was beginning to weary of incursions from the West. Even though he agreed to allow Peter into the kingdom, he required him to swear that he would maintain peace and keep his followers from pillaging the countryside. Peter rejoiced at his good fortune and for a time succeeded in keeping control over his army. Though a prophet, Peter the Hermit had a better grasp of military discipline and organization than historians have often credited him with.4

  But problems began again around Zemun and the Sava. This time rumor reached the Franks that the Bulgarians and Hungarians were conspiring to wipe them out just as they were about to enter Byzantine territory. The plot
was part of an agreement between a local Hungarian warlord named Guz and the Byzantine governor of Belgrade, named Nicetas. Peter the Hermit refused to accept the story. As a true warrior of God, he could not believe that a Christian people would oppose his great spiritual work. But as he neared Zemun, or so the story goes, he saw hanging from the city walls the armor and possessions of the sixteen men from Walter’s army whom the Hungarian weapons dealers had robbed and humiliated. Outraged, Peter instructed his captains to attack the city.

  That was Peter’s side of the story. Not all contemporary historians were sympathetic. One of them, Guibert of Nogent, claimed that the Frankish army, consisting of Germans and “the leftover shit of our own people,” brought disaster on itself. On the way to Zemun, they behaved like prisoners or serfs. When the Hungarians, like good Christians, offered to sell them grain and meat at generous prices, the crusaders responded belligerently. They expected to take what they wanted, and they did not anticipate that the locals would resist. Like madmen, they burned down the Hungarians’ granaries, “raped virgins, dishonored marriage beds by carrying away women, and ripped out or burned the beards of their hosts.”

  Such behavior, on the face of it shocking, was not unheard of among eleventh-century Europe’s warrior class. If a knight felt that his honor had been impugned, he was likely to respond in violent and sometimes imaginative ways. In this case, Peter’s troops had expected the Hungarians to treat them as pilgrims and offer charity as they set about their religious-military endeavors. Instead, their hosts tried to cut business deals as if Peter’s men were ordinary soldiers, or even merchants. By the time this band of crusaders had reached Zemun around June 5, nerves on both sides were frayed, and the frontier lords could certainly have decided to hang some confiscated weapons and armor from the city walls as a scornful sign of welcome.5