RECRUITMENT AND FINANCE
Recruitment and finance formed part of a single process of converting enthusiasm into action. The assemblies at Geddington in February and Paris in March 1188 discussed arrangements for taking the cross and the administration of the Saladin Tithe together. The source of funding influenced the construction of the armies. In Germany, Frederick tried to insist that each crusader should pay his own way, placing the emphasis for organizing recruitment and recruits firmly in the hands of local magnates and urban communities beyond the king’s own extensive military entourage, for which he paid out of his own resources, possibly supplemented by a tax on Jews and a form of hearth tax levied on royal lands.46 However, the bulk of his huge force, which some estimated at 20,000 knights and 80,000 infantry, was not raised or funded directly by the crown, perhaps a factor in its disintegration when Frederick himself died before the Holy Land was reached. Similarly, the failure of Philip II of France to collect the Saladin Tithe and his limited authority outside his own royal lands restricted his personal contingent to the 2,000 knights and squires for whom he negotiated a transport contract with Genoa in 1190. The rest of the large French contribution came from provincial nobles and other lords. By contrast, Richard I’s access to large sums from the Saladin Tithe and his own fundraising ploys in 1189–90 allowed him to command a royal army numbering perhaps 6,000, while subsidizing a fleet of over 100 ships that may have carried almost 9,000 soldiers and sailors, some of whom, at least, were in the king’s direct pay, ‘retained’, as one of Richard’s officials later put it.47 Just as an English expatriate in France, Ralph Niger, noted the difference in the nature and level of fundraising between the German and western monarchs, so a German observer paid tribute to the lavish scale of the English king’s preparations and finances.48 The ability before and during any crusade campaign to convert what in theory constituted a volunteer army into a paid or retained force added enormously to its cohesion and the authority of the paymaster. Philip II increased his hold over the disparate French contingents at Messina at Christmas 1190 when he provided large subsidies to the duke of Burgundy (1,000 marks) and the count of Nevers (600 marks). On arrival in the Holy Land in 1191 Richard I and Philip II competed in offering wages to unattached troops, Richard’s deeper pockets winning the day. This secured Richard’s dominance of the ensuing Palestine campaign, for which he financially bailed out the count of Champagne and slipped 5,000 marks to the commander of the remaining French troops, Duke Hugh of Burgundy.49
The Saladin Tithe exerted another direct impact on patterns of recruitment. As the tax was designed to aid crucesignati, they were exempt. Hearing this, claimed Roger of Howden, himself a crucesignatus, ‘all the rich men of his (Henry II’s) lands, both clergy and laity, rushed in crowds to take the cross’.50 In addition to the now customary crusader privileges, they could expect not just the tax exemption but also the proceeds from their non-crusading vassals and tenants. These could be lucrative and consequently could become subject to legal dispute. An East Anglian crucesignatus, Robert of Cokefield, unsuccessfully tried to appropriate the tithe from two manors he held as a life tenant from the abbey of Bury St Edmunds. The abbot may have been especially alert to the legal niceties as he had been refused permission to take the cross in February 1188 by Henry II despite appearing before the king brandishing a cloth cross, needle and thread.51 For the non-crusader, the Saladin Tithe was bitterly resented, partly because of its unprecedented rate of 10 per cent on movables (i.e. surplus income after essentials had been paid for). Partly, too, because it fell equally on church as on lay lands, challenging vociferous ecclesiastical sensitivities over immunities and separation from the secular state. Given the lack of immediate moves to set off for the east, some taxpayers suspected the eagerness of the habitually rapacious Angevin government to collect the tax; it was no coincidence that the Saladin Tithe provided a model for subsequent lucrative extraordinary taxes. Collectors’ misappropriation and individual peculation left a sour taste.52
In most regions of Europe, no such direct incentive existed. Even in France, Philip II, despite gaining agreement to the Saladin Tithe from the large assembly of clerics, nobles and knights at Paris in March 1188, was forced to cancel the grant the following year and even apologize for having introduced it in the first place.53 Some tax collection did occur. The count of Nevers, the king’s cousin, imposed a levy of 12d a house in his lands, but this may not have been part of the Saladin Tithe. It was a fixed-sum, not fixed-rate, tax, was imposed only after negotiation with the local clergy and nobility and made no mention of exemption for crucesignati.54 Here, as in most places, the material pressures to take the cross operated in line with lordship, kinship and community. Although the surviving evidence overwhelmingly derives from the propertied classes, those lower down the economic and social scale were unlikely to be able to fund themselves. One English crusader assumed that those who set out shared their tears with ‘their household servants (familiaribus), relatives and friends’.55 The provisions of Gregory VIII’s bull, the Saladin Tithe and the French debt and mortgage ordinance of March 1188 assumed that crusaders, typically ‘clerks, knights and sergeants (servientes)’, had property to dispose of, otherwise the details about raising money would be redundant. Under the Saladin Tithe, crusaders were to receive the tithe receipts from ‘their lands and their men’.56 Frederick Barbarossa’s insistence on his followers being of a certain material sufficiency suggests the same. Not only did the poor not take the cross, lacking the economic or legal freedom to do so, many who did were prevented from departing by subsequent poverty. An inquiry into the non-fulfilment of crusade vows conducted in Lincolnshire in England a decade after the Third Crusade found that for twenty out of twenty-nine named crucesignati the cause of default was poverty.57 So, whether or not tax avoidance was available, the reality of crusade recruitment rested on the ability to pay or be paid for, from monarchs down to prosperous peasant farmers and urban and rural artisans.
This failed to do much to inhibit the scale of recruitment. From the Baltic to the Mediterranean observers noted the extraordinary response. ‘Enthusiasm for the new pilgrimage was such that already [1188] it was not a question of who had received the cross but of who had not yet done so.’58 Recruiting fanned out from the great assemblies at Gisors, Mainz and Paris early in 1188, mainly propelled by the lords and their retinues, with the active encouragement of secular clergy and monasteries which, as on earlier crusades, supplied important financial resources in the way of cash in return for gifts and mortgages of property. While preaching provided the focus, in towns, cities and the courts of nobles, rumour and word of mouth created a public mood, the Dauphinois crusader’s ‘great movement’ (‘magna mota’).59 Peer group pressure and the fear of shame inevitably acted as effective recruiting officers. Poets cast those who failed to answer the call as ‘recreants and cowards’. Chroniclers, perhaps in similarly imaginative vein, noted that waverers received ‘wool and distaff’ as a hint that any who remained ‘were only fit for women’s work’.60 Wives and mothers added their voices to the chorus, perhaps the most persuasive of all. As a sign of commitment, some recruits wore hair shirts (often, like Abbot Samson of Bury, making sure that everybody around them knew), abstained from meat and followed the simple dress code laid down by the sumptuary laws instituted by Gregory VIII’s bull and repeated in sermons and local legislation during the following three years. While reflecting an element of theatrical showing-off, such sartorial demonstrations helped create and sustain the atmosphere of engagement.
That said, it must be recognized that the impression of, in Arnold of Lübeck’s words, ‘rich and poor as one’ demonstrating a universal adherence to the crusade may mislead.61 Many who took the cross in 1188 out of sudden emotion or careful calculation abandoned their vows ‘having saluted Jerusalem from afar’, as one English monk acidly observed.62 Many others did not take the cross at all, including William Marshal, who famously made a whole career out of the pur
suit of courtliness and chivalry. He preferred to remain at home with his new, rich wife and a job in Richard I’s regency government. In mitigation, he had only recently returned from two years in Outremer (1184–6). However, his failure to sign up in 1188–9, when he was close to Henry II, points to the exercise of common sense in response to the crusade. Especially in the entourage of monarchs, such a defining commitment was not undertaken indiscriminately. Life and politics in western Europe were not suspended. In Germany and Italy, Barbarossa’s son and viceroy, Henry VI, vigorously pursued his claim, through his wife, to the kingdom of Naples and Sicily, while his opponents, led by adherents of the exiled duke of Saxony, Henry the Lion, encouraged revolt. In France and England, despite crusade preparations beginning in the first months of 1188, deteriorating relations between Philip II and Henry II increasingly took precedence in 1188–9. This culminated in a damaging war over the succession to Angevin lands between Henry and his son Richard of Poitou, vigorously supported by Philip II. All three were crucesignati. Once Richard departed on crusade in 1190, his brother John schemed to control the government, which was being run by bureaucrats, many of whom had taken the cross in 1188 only to be released by the pope in 1189 on account of their important civil office.63 The king’s crusade failed to prevent a sharp tussle for power that led to the overthrow of Richard’s Chancellor, William Longchamp, in 1191. Although the personal involvement of ruling monarchs drew with them much of their ruling elites and many of their officials, many remained. Central and local administration continued. The bulk of the lay and clerical populations stayed put. The crusade was profoundly interesting for some; a matter of indifference to others. Not all contemporary chroniclers appeared obsessed with it. In England, monastic writers such as Gervase, sacrist of Christ Church Canterbury, or Jocelyn of Brakelond at Bury St Edmund’s, only recorded concern with the crusade when it impinged on their religious houses. Gervase was, in retrospect at least, positively hostile, blaming Archbishop Baldwin, a particular bête noire, for the onerous Saladin Tithe and portraying his Welsh tour as a jaunt devised to avoid facing messy litigation with the Canterbury monks. Gervase gave events in the east in 1190–92 short shrift and, with hindsight, described the whole venture as ‘unfortunate’.64 Commitment to the crusade was frequently proportionate rather than consuming.
Recruitment for the Third Crusade was distinguished by the leadership of monarchs and their ability to secure their nobilities behind the enterprise to a degree surpassing even the Second Crusade. Secular governmental power in each kingdom – royal, comital and urban – reinforced or subsumed the ecclesiastical mechanisms for recruitment, most notably in the Angevin lands, especially in England. There, from an early stage, the relatively centralized royal administration took over all aspects of crusade planning and operation. The commitment of monarchs, while facilitating recruitment and material provision, extended the notion and traditions of good lordship to the enterprise, a visible expression of the moral dimension of rule that lay at the heart of consensual authority. Lacking coercive force, twelfth-century kings relied on their subjects’ acceptance of the mutual benefits of their rule. Leadership of such an unequivocally praiseworthy and virtuous cause as the crusade enormously enhanced the scope for kings to display the transcendent aspects of their position and, thereby, demand the respect and support of their subjects. Practical limits remained. Frederick Barbarossa could use the crusade to demonstrate his pre-eminence in German politics and impose a national peace on political factions, represented by the negotiated exile of the dissident Henry the Lion. However, in return he was expected to subsidize his own crusade himself. Similarly, Philip II of France could command the almost universal support of the church and the regional counts of France in 1188 for the crusade as such, but he could not impose the Saladin Tithe. Suspicion of novel fiscal exactions proved stronger than political trust. An essential ingredient in establishing moral leadership was the public, personal obligation created by taking the cross. That was why the ceremonies at Gisors and Mainz were so important. They bound the royal crucesignati to the crusade in a contract with church and people that only action could fulfil or papal absolution untie. Henry II of England well understood the implications of such a commitment, which was one reason he had avoided it for twenty-five years.
The tangible result of royal participation was early demonstrated in Sicily. To William II’s rapid action in sending a fleet to the Holy Land in 1188 some attributed the survival of the remaining Christian outposts. Yet despite his display of formal grief and mourning on hearing of the catastrophe of Hattin, William did not take the cross. Although he may have discussed a joint enterprise with his brother-in-law Henry II, William seemed not to have organized his nobility for the crusade. By his death, in November 1189, no firm undertakings had been reached by the king or his nobles. In the ensuing power struggle, his eventual successor, his dwarfish illegitimate cousin Tancred of Lecce, recalled the Sicilian fleet from the Levant. The only residual Sicilian involvement in the crusade lay in William’s lavish, if perhaps fanciful, bequest to Henry II of grain, wine, money, gold plate and a hundred galleys equipped for two years. This may have represented what William imagined he would contribute to the crusade. In the event his legacy provided a source of conflict and an opportunity for extortion for Richard I when he arrived in Sicily in the autumn of 1190.65 The contrast between the Sicilian experience and that of Henry II’s Angevin lands was sharp. Even if dissipated in the succession war of 1188–9, by the time of his own death in July 1189, Henry’s preparations had raised men and money. Perhaps more importantly, they had committed large sections of the nobility on both sides of the English Channel to the crusade through the collective action of taking the cross. His successor Richard was one of them. Continued Angevin royal and noble interest assured sustained dedication to the crusade. Without the king’s lead, the movement would have lost cohesion and drive, as happened in Sicily.
The depth of Angevin engagement was impressive.66 The inner circle of recruits was drawn from the political and administrative elite; representatives of the higher clergy, led by Archbishop Baldwin and Justiciar Glanvill’s nephew, Hubert Walter bishop of Salisbury; powerful nobles such as the earls of Leicester and Ferrers, Nigel of Mowbray and Richard of Clare; former sheriffs, such as Roger Glanvill; ministers, such as Roger’s brother, the Justiciar Ranulf, whose sacking in 1189 allowed him to fulfil his vow; royal friends, agents, household officials and government bureaucrats, a number of whom, including Gerald of Wales and the future Justiciar Geoffrey FitzPeter, had their vows absolved unfulfilled. Compared with France or Germany the list of great magnates is short, a reflection of the political structure of the Angevin regime but also a matter of chance; a number of English earldoms had lapsed; others were held by minors. The core of the Angevin recruitment centred on the king’s court. Beyond the immediate circle of royal patronage or acquaintance, the characteristic crucesignati were local aristocrats, knights and gentry, many with close links to the higher nobility. Fifty-nine crucesignati named in the government financial records as exempt from a levy to pay for defence against the Welsh were men of substance from across the whole kingdom, from Sussex to Yorkshire, Wiltshire to Suffolk. For convenience, such knights tended to travel in groups based on tenurial, political, geographic or family association. The collective enthusiasm of taking the cross could persist in action. According to one Yorkshire observer, the massacres of Jews during Lent 1190 at King’s Lynn, Stamford and York were led by bands of young crusaders acting together. No less than the followers of the great, local networks survived from recruitment to campaign. At the siege of Acre in 1191, the royal judge and chronicler Roger, the parson of Howden near the Humber in the East Riding of Yorkshire, found a group of fellow countrymen from the region of his parish: John of Hessle, Richard and Berengar of Legsby, the parson of Croxby, Robert the Huntsman of Pontefract.
Urban as well as rural associations lent structure to recruitment in England as in the rest of west
ern Europe. Ships from London formed a distinct part of the large north European fleet that assembled at Dartmouth in May 1189, taking Silves in Portugal from the Moors that September. The next year at least one ship carrying eighty Londoners followed. These were led by figures from the city’s merchant oligarchy, such as Geoffrey the Goldsmith and William FitzOsbert, nicknamed Longbeard, as well as members of the chapter and clergy of St Paul’s cathedral. A further source of unity lay in the adoption by these citizens of Thomas Becket, a fellow Londoner, as their patron saint, an illustration of how crusading fed off wider streams of contemporary spirituality. The leading role of beneficed secular clergy among the Londoners was mirrored elsewhere. According to some sources, even monks caught crusade fever, in contradiction of their vows: ‘a great number went from the cloister to camp, threw off their cowls, donned mail shirts, and became knights of Christ in a new sense, replacing alms with arms’.67
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