Armies of Heaven

by Jay Rubenstein

  The letter circulated widely. Over time it became one of the most frequently read descriptions of the crusade in medieval Europe. Godfrey had had no input into its content—he had long since parted company with Raymond—which explains why in this one instance he bore the title “Advocate,” the office that the chaplain Raymond and his party had tried to force upon him at Jerusalem but that Godfrey had refused. And thanks to the wide circulation of this letter, the title stuck. Historians, clerics, and tourists to Jerusalem embraced the idea of Godfrey the Advocate, too humble to be a king. For the first time perhaps since the discovery of the Lance, Raymond had won an argument. He had never liked the idea of a king in Jerusalem, and in history, if not in life, the millenarian had his revenge.20

  20

  Ascalon, the Sixth Battle

  (August 1099)

  The crusade was not yet ended. Near the beginning of August, at about the same time Raymond was bathing in the River Jordan, Tancred and Godfrey’s older brother Eustace learned that a massive Egyptian army—Turks, Persians, Syrians, Agarenes, Arabs, and “the rest of the infidel people from Eastern nations”—was coming together to attack the Franks. Unbelievably, the exhausted soldiers—their numbers greatly reduced by battle, starvation, famine, and desertion—having just secured an astonishing, near unimaginable triumph at Jerusalem, still had one more battle to fight.

  Tancred and Eustace sent warnings back to Godfrey. The Franks, under the king’s leadership, decided to ride out to face the enemy rather than risk being caught in an intractable siege. It was by this point a venerable strategy: Catch a numerically superior foe by surprise while it is still on the march and while its leaders were anticipating a later battle at a fixed location. The Franks would meet the Egyptians at Ascalon, the port city where less than a month earlier Raymond had escorted his ransomed prisoners from the Tower of David. Devising a strategy at this point was relatively easy. The more difficult task would be to re-create the apocalyptic fervor that had driven the crusade to those earlier victories. The pilgrim-warriors had captured their prize. They were ready to go home.1

  For this problem Godfrey, or perhaps his patriarch, Arnulf, employed another well-worn strategy: the discovery of a miraculous relic. Sources in the local Christian community maintained that they had recently possessed a small fragment of the True Cross but that it had been lost. Such a prize would do nicely.

  This time there was no Peter Bartholomew to reveal its whereabouts. Godfrey and Arnulf had to rely on more conventional methods: putting out inquiries among the locals and asking if anyone knew where the relic might be. After several denials a Syrian gentleman reluctantly admitted where to find the True Cross. “It is clear that God has chosen you and delivered you from every tribulation, and that He has bestowed upon you this city and many others, not because of your virtue or strength, but because of His own fury. Your Lord and Leader has opened for you extraordinarily well-fortified cities and through Him you have won fearsome battles. Since we see that God is on your side, by what stubbornness should we hide from you His treasures?” He then led Arnulf to an abandoned house and showed him a darkened corner where the Syrian had a year earlier buried away the sacred treasure out of fear that the Egyptians would destroy it.2

  What they unearthed was a cross-shaped reliquary made of wood and decorated in gold and silver. Inside was a smaller piece of wood—a particle of the True Cross, a particula—also shaped like a cross. There were similar fragments scattered throughout the world—not enough to build a battleship, as conventional wisdom held, but probably enough to build one very big cross. Compared with more significant portions at Rome and Constantinople, this particle must have seemed unremarkable. Because of its location, however, and because of its nearly miraculous delivery from the Saracens, the Franks believed it especially valuable. Quickly, instinctively, they organized a procession to carry it to Mount Calvary and the Holy Sepulcher and then to the Temple Mount, under the leadership of Arnulf and Peter the Hermit, who was now working closely with the new regime.3

  The timing of the battle was advantageous, if not providential. Godfrey’s election as king two weeks earlier had been a divisive process. Not everyone had wished to accept him as leader or obey his commands. A new enemy might at least unite the various factions temporarily and for one last time.

  But not right away. Even the rumor of an imminent Egyptian attack could not move some of the leaders to follow Godfrey into battle—particularly Raymond of Saint-Gilles. He had by now returned to Jerusalem from Jericho and announced that he did not wish to follow Godfrey anywhere. More surprisingly, Robert of Normandy indicated that he, too, would not leave the city until he had proof that the threat was real. Godfrey did not intend to wait. Accompanied by Robert of Flanders and the Patriarch Arnulf of Choques, he led the march toward Ascalon while the others held back. Peter the Hermit stayed behind, too, but he was tending to heavenly problems—organizing processions; encouraging all of the Christians in the city, Greek, Latin, and Syrian, to join together in prayer; collecting alms; tending to the poor; and as best as possible propitiating the wrath of a still-angry God.4

  Outside Jerusalem Godfrey dispatched a party of scouts to gather more information about what the Egyptians were planning. Within a day the scouts had completed the ninety-mile round-trip journey to Ascalon and confirmed that a massive Egyptian army was indeed gathering before the city. With visual confirmation Godfrey sent Bishop Arnulf of Martirano (not to be confused with the Patriarch Arnulf) back to Jerusalem to rouse Robert and Raymond and all of their followers from a self-induced torpor. Arnulf must have arrived on the morning of August 10, exhausted from twenty-four hours of constant travel. Fortunately for him and for Godfrey, Raymond and Robert now believed his story and agreed to leave later that day. Rather than wait for them, the bishop rushed back alone to Godfrey and was never seen again.5

  The Normans and the Provençals finally set out later that day. They caught up to Godfrey the next afternoon, presumably after traveling through the night. Godfrey at this point was riding alongside an Egyptian spy, the prefect of the city of Ramla, located on the road between Jerusalem and the port of Jaffa. The spy was, according to Albert of Aachen, “a faithful man in his intentions, although a gentile,” and was able to warn the Franks about Egyptian tactics. Very likely, he told Godfrey, the Egyptians would attempt to distract the army from thoughts of battle. And perhaps they did. At about the time of day when Raymond and Robert joined the other princes, they came upon a small band of Egyptian soldiers (or perhaps they were just shepherds) and captured from them large herds of sheep, cattle, and camels. Based on what the spy had told them, Godfrey assumed that the vizier of Egypt, al-Afdal, had placed this tempting target before them deliberately. The Egyptian leaders wanted them to focus on plunder and forget about fighting. If that was the case, the ploy failed. The crusaders left the animals alone and continued toward Ascalon. Strangely, the animals followed. They even seemed to arrange themselves in something like military formation, arrayed in wings along the left and right flanks of the army, marching as if of their own accord. It was a miracle—or else the animals found the shiny armor and weapons attractive. Opinions varied.6

  The animals may have been unified, but the people were not. The Provençals were still carrying the Holy Lance of Antioch. Arnulf, riding near Godfrey, was brandishing the True Cross. That night Raymond of Aguilers would deliver a sermon to his people while holding the Lance, just as the Patriarch Arnulf would preach to the rest of the army with his relic. Their message, delivered in different languages and with different emblems of divine authority, stressed the need to set aside, one last time, selfishness. Whoever started to gather plunder before the battle ended would be excommunicated, but if everyone stayed dedicated to the cause, then he could later claim whatever treasure he liked. The soldiers were also encouraged to confess their sins, even the slight ones, and each probably received a blessing as well, touching the Cross or the Holy Lance, as preferred. The ritual complete
, they passed an uneventful and unpleasant night, with no tents, little bread, no wine, but, at least, more meat than they could possibly eat.7

  At daybreak they marched on the Egyptian camps in front of Ascalon. As they did, Albert of Aachen said, they sang together happily, perhaps performing a new song about the battle for Jerusalem, playing flutes, stringed instruments, and bagpipes.

  The prefect of Ramla was amazed at the soldiers’ demeanor. How could they be so cheerful with such a terrible battle looming? Godfrey explained to the prefect that the Franks rejoiced at the thought of dying. They would go to a better place to join their Lord. Pointing to the True Cross, he concluded, “This sign of the Holy Cross, which fortifies us and sanctifies us, will no doubt serve as a spiritual shield against all our enemies’ spears. Because of our hope in the sign, we dare to stand more firmly against any danger.” The cross—and not the lance, Provençals be damned—was now protecting Jerusalem, a spiritual talisman against pagans who would blaspheme the Lord. So impressed was the prefect that he decided to convert to Christianity on the spot, as soon as they could find someone to baptize him.8

  It was this noisy, happy, divided army that marched against “the camps of Mahummeth.” Their enemy was not ready for the fight. The battle began while many of the warriors were still tying flasks of water around their necks, wanting something to drink after pursuing their enemies all day—or so the Franks speculated. In the half-light of dawn, the crusading army seemed numberless, surrounded as it was by hundreds of pack animals marching in a miraculous and orderly fashion. Shocked at the size of the army before them, the Egyptians panicked. Apparently, God struck them blind. “If indeed we are to believe the gentiles, they often said afterwards that they found themselves stupefied. Their eyes were open, but they could barely see the Christians and could not hurt them at all.”9

  The battle-hardened contingent of Franks thus overwhelmed their enemy—unprepared, confused, and possibly blind. After a fight of uncertain duration, they drove the Egyptians back into their own tents and to Ascalon’s gates. Some Egyptians were caught between the army of Raymond of Saint-Gilles and the sea. A few vainly hid in trees. The hero of the day was Robert of Normandy, “a fearless warrior,” who spotted the standard of al-Afdal by the golden apple at its tip. The duke charged at the vizier, drove away his men, and thus broke the entire enemy’s will to resist. Robert later presented the standard before the Holy Sepulcher.10

  The defeat for the Egyptians was total. In one writer’s words, “The fields were bedewed—nay, flooded—with blood, and gradually covered in gentile carrion.” Another chronicler mixed the language of history with that of the Apocalypse, saying, “And in a moment the field was covered with prone bodies, and none of ours could step anywhere except on a corpse. The land everywhere was wet with blood, as if a bloody rain had fallen from the clouds.” “In this battle,” a German writer observed, “the strength of the pagans and of the devil was broken, and the kingdom of Christ and of the church spread from sea to sea.”

  The Christians liked to imagine the Egyptian vizier al-Afdal tearing his hair in frustration, realizing the scope of the disaster: “Whatever may happen, one thing is certain: I will never again rise up against them. Better for me to return to my own country, there to dwell in shame as long as I live.” Another writer, Robert the Monk, imagined that al-Afdal—whom Robert bizarrely named “Clement,” presumably because in Latin it rhymes with “demented”: Clemens demens—screamed vain threats at the Christians: “O Jerusalem, debauched city! Whorish city! If at any time by any chance you should fall into my hands, I will raze you to the ground and destroy entirely the Sepulcher of your corpse!”11

  One contemporary historian, Fulcher of Chartres, took a slightly different tack in describing the outcome. Rather than focus on the amir, he talked about the Egyptians’ wealth. It was vast, including not just gold, silver, and valuable cloth, but also twelve types of precious stone: jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, onyx, sardius, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprase, jacinth, and amethyst. It is a curious and exotic list, until one realizes that it comes from Revelation, where the prophet John lists all of the gems that adorn Heaven’s foundations. The crusaders plundered from Babylon the spoils of heaven, and perhaps with this treasure, their earthly Jerusalem could become a bit more like the heavenly one.12

  Yet climactic as it was, this battle would not be the last. Raymond of Aguilers, in his letter written under the name of Daimbert of Pisa, described Ascalon, in a rather odd system of numbering, as the “sixth battle.” Apocalyptic events tend to happen in sevens. Raymond’s implication was that the final battle, the seventh battle, was still to occur. For Fulcher of Chartres, too, despite the heavenly treasure gained at Ascalon, the war for Jerusalem had not yet ended. But there would come a time six years later when he would believe that the end had arrived—that he had seen Armageddon. The new king of Jerusalem, Baldwin I, Godfrey’s brother, would defeat a combined army of Egyptian and Damascene soldiers. In that battle’s aftermath, a storm struck the Egyptian fleet, destroying Babylon’s seapower as well. It was a fittingly victorious note on which to conclude Fulcher’s book: “This battle occurred, the last of the battles. And this is the end.” The next chapter followed with a brief list of apocalyptic phenomena—a terrifying earthquake, a comet that lit up the skies for seven straight weeks, and, finally, in February 1106, just six months after the defeat of Babylon, two new suns appearing in the heavens, one to either side of the real sun, arced by a four-colored rainbow and creating a splendid and dazzling burst of lights the size of the city. A New Jerusalem, perhaps, descending from the sky to inhabit and revivify the Old—had the final act of Revelation 21 begun? [Plate 11]

  What it all signified, Fulcher said, “we entrust entirely to the Lord.”13

  Conclusion

  The Never-Ending Apocalypse

  On September 7, 1101, a battle occurred between the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem and the armies of Fatimid Egypt near the city of Ramla—the city whose prefect had been so helpful before the battle at Ascalon. In typical fashion the Franks were badly outnumbered, but once they managed to engage the Egyptians at close quarters, they butchered them. The Franks were helped in no small part by the True Cross, which deflected all spears and arrows thrown at it—a heavenly shield covering a small corner of the Franks’army.

  Many esteemed knights from Jerusalem died that day. Among their number was the standard-bearer Galdemar Carpenel, a First Crusader who had elected to stay in the East after Jerusalem’s conquest. He had done so not to build a principality for himself but rather, as the Knights Templar would later do, to protect pilgrims—to be “the guardian and champion of Christians coming and going, especially to that sacred river [Jordan], as much as he could.” King Baldwin I of Jerusalem later took revenge against Galdemar’s killers and managed to recover the body. His friends and followers carefully cut out Galdemar’s intestines and allowed his corpse to dry in the sun before carrying him back to Jerusalem. There, at the command of Archbishop Hugh of Lyon, who had arrived in the Holy Land as a pilgrim that year, he was placed before the Holy Sepulcher, an unusual honor for an ordinary knight and against the practices of the Frankish church. He was later given a solemn burial in that same building, songs and litanies sung before his tomb in Latin, Greek, and Armenian.1

  The night after the funeral, Archbishop Hugh saw in his sleep someone dressed as a deacon who ordered him to step outside. There, beyond the door, Hugh saw the recently buried Galdemar, seated atop a white horse, with one hand shaking a spear, the other holding a blood-red banner. Hugh caught his attention, and they began a simple conversation.

  The archbishop said, “Are you Galdemar?”

  He answered, “I am—honestly.”

  ARCHBISHOP: “How are you?”

  GALDEMAR: “Okay.”

  ARCHBISHOP: “Tell me everything! Where are you? How are you?”

  GALDEMAR: “I’m not allowed to say what I want.”

  ARCH
BISHOP: “Why are you turned away and not looking at me?”

  Galdemar said, “I’m threatening Babylon.”

  The apocalyptic crusade continued. Galdemar, entitled to a heavenly reward, was not yet ready to abandon his comrades in their never-ending struggle against Babylon.2

  FROM OUR VANTAGE POINT, with nine centuries of hindsight, it is tempting to look smugly or dismissively at the dreams and nightmares born of the First Crusade. The expected Apocalypse, after all, didn’t happen. It is a diverting, if at times disturbing, story, but at the end of the day, so what? In the twenty-first century, we expect our history not to have morals but to at least have some sort of connection to the modern world. Important events change the course of history. They lead to discoveries, to inventions, to new ideas. They concern heroic events that can be celebrated, or they tell cautionary tales of what might be if we are so foolish as to repeat past mistakes.

  I have told the story of an idea that ultimately went nowhere. It concluded with what seemed to be the Apocalypse but, inevitably, wasn’t. And even that false apocalypse was eventually forgotten. The whole affair is today remembered as a military and religious victory without the trappings of Armageddon. The war’s greatest heroes, like their apocalyptic dreams, faded into quiet obscurity, their fates serving more as a warning about the world’s dimming glory than providing fodder for further celebration of apocalyptic glory.

  None fell harder than Robert of Normandy, the hero of the battle of Ascalon. He returned home to great fanfare and nearly to a great stroke of fortune as well. In August 1100 his younger brother King William of England, to whom he had mortgaged his duchy in order to pay for his crusade, died in a hunting accident on the eve of Robert’s return from the East. Before Robert could lay claim to both kingdom and duchy, however, his youngest brother, Henry, established himself in William’s place as king of England. Five years later Henry would defeat Robert at the battle of Tinchebrai and would hold his brother, the crusade hero, a prisoner for the remaining twenty-eight years of his life, a man largely forgotten by the time of his death.