A History of the Crusades-Vol 1 (17 page)

Barely three miles from the camp, where the
road to Nicaea entered a narrow wooded valley, by a village called Dracon, the
Turks were lying in ambush. The Crusaders marched noisily and carelessly, the
knights on horseback at their head. Suddenly a hail of arrows from the woods
killed or maimed the horses; and as they plunged in confusion, unseating their
riders, the Turks attacked. The cavalry, pursued by the Turks, was flung back
on to the infantry. Many of the knights fought bravely, but they could not stop
the panic that seized the army. In a few minutes the whole host was fleeing in
utter disorder to Civetot. There in the camp the daily round was just
beginning. Some of the older folk were still asleep in their beds. Here and
there a priest was celebrating early mass. Into its midst there burst a horde
of terrified fugitives with the enemy on their heels. There was no real
resistance. Soldiers, women and priests were massacred before they had time to
move. Some fled into the forests around, others into the sea, but few of them
escaped for long. Others defended themselves for a while by lighting bonfires
which the wind blew into the Turks’ faces. Only young boys and girls whose
appearance pleased the Turks were spared, together with a few captives made
after the first heat of the fighting was over. These were taken away into
slavery. Some three thousand, luckier than the rest, managed to reach an old
castle that stood by the sea. It had long been out of use, and its doors and
windows were dismantled. But the refugees, with the energy of despair,
improvised fortifications from the wood that lay about and reinforced them with
bones, and were able to beat off the attacks of the enemy.

The castle held out; but elsewhere on the field
by midday all was over. Corpses covered the ground from the pass of Dracon to
the sea. Amongst the dead were Walter Sans-Avoir, Rainald of Breis, Fulk of
Orleans, Hugh of Tubingen, Walter of Teck, Conrad and Albert of Zimmern and
many other of the German knights. The only leaders to survive were Geoffrey Burel,
whose impetuousness had caused the disaster, Walter of Breteuil and William of
Poissy, Henry of Schwarzenberg, Frederick of Zimmern and Rudolf of Brandis,
almost all of whom were badly wounded.

The Failure of
the People’s Crusade

When dusk fell a Greek who was with the army
succeeded in finding a boat and set sail for Constantinople, to tell Peter and
the Emperor of the battle. Of Peter’s feelings we have no record; but Alexius
at once ordered some men-of-war, with strong forces aboard, to sail for Civetot.
On the arrival of the Byzantine battle-squadron the Turks raised the siege of
the castle and retired inland. The survivors were taken off to the ships and
returned to Constantinople. There they were given quarters in the suburbs; but
their arms were removed from them.

The People’s Crusade was over. It had cost many
thousands of lives; it had tried the patience of the Emperor and his subjects;
and it had taught that faith alone, without wisdom and discipline, would not
open the road to Jerusalem.

CHAPTER II

THE GERMAN
CRUSADE

‘Ah Lord God!
wilt thou destroy all the residue of Israel?’
EZEKIEL IX, 8

Peter the Hermit’s departure for the East had
not ended Crusading enthusiasm in Germany. He had left behind him his disciple
Gottschalk to collect a further army; and many other preachers and leaders
prepared to follow his example. But, though the Germans responded in thousands
to the appeal, they were less eager than the French had been to hurry to the
Holy Land. There was work to be done first nearer home.

Resentment
Against the Jews

Jewish colonies had been established for
centuries past along the trade routes of western Europe. Their inhabitants were
Sephardic Jews, whose ancestors had spread out from the Mediterranean basin
throughout the Dark Ages. They kept up connections with their co-religionists
in Byzantium and in Arab lands, and were thus enabled to play a large part in
international trade, more especially the trade between Moslem and Christian
countries. The prohibition of usury in western Christian countries and its
strict control in Byzantium left them an open field for the establishment of
money-lending houses throughout Christendom. Their technical skill and long
traditions made them pre-eminent also in the practice of medicine. Except long
ago in Visigothic Spain they had never undergone serious persecution in the
West. They had no civic rights; but both lay and ecclesiastical authorities
were pleased to give special protection to such useful members of the
community. The kings of France and Germany had always befriended them; and they
were shown particular favour by the archbishops of the great cities of the Rhineland.
But the peasants and poorer townsmen, increasingly in need of money as a cash
economy replaced the older economy of services, fell more and more into their
debt and in consequence felt more and more resentment against them; while the
Jews, lacking legal security, charged high rates of interest and extracted
exorbitant profits wherever the benevolence of the local ruler supported them.

Their unpopularity grew throughout the eleventh
century, as more classes of the community began to borrow money from them; and
the beginnings of the Crusading movement added to it. It was expensive for a
knight to equip himself for a Crusade; if he had no land and no possessions to
pledge, he must borrow money from the Jews. But was it right that in order to
go and fight for Christendom he must fall into the clutches of members of the
race that crucified Christ? The poorer Crusader was often already in debt to
the Jews. Was it right that he should be hampered in his Christian duty by
obligations to one of the impious race? The evangelical preaching of the
Crusade laid stress on Jerusalem, the scene of the Crucifixion. It inevitably
drew attention to the people at whose hands Christ had suffered. The Moslems
were the present enemy; they were persecuting Christ’s followers. But the Jews
were surely worse; they had persecuted Christ Himself.

Already in the Spanish wars there had been some
inclination on the part of Christian armies to maltreat the Jews. At the time
of the expedition to Barbastro Pope Alexander II wrote to the bishops in Spain
to remind them that there was all the difference in the world between the
Moslems and the Jews. The former were irreconcilable enemies to the Christians,
but the latter were ready to work for them. But in Spain the Jews had enjoyed such
favour from the hands of the Moslems that the Christian conquerors could not
bring themselves to trust them.

In December 1095 the Jewish communities of
northern France wrote to their co-religionists in Germany to warn them that the
Crusading movement was likely to cause trouble to their race. There were
reports of a massacre of the Jews at Rouen. It is unlikely that such a massacre
in fact occurred; but the Jews were sufficiently alarmed for Peter the Hermit
to bring off a successful stroke of business. Hinting, no doubt, that otherwise
he might find it difficult to restrain his followers, he obtained from the
French Jews letters of introduction to the Jewish communities throughout
Europe, calling upon them to welcome him and to supply him and his army with
all the provisions that he might require.

About the same time Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke
of Lower Lorraine, began his preparations to start out on the Crusade. A rumour
ran round the province that he had vowed before he left to avenge the death of
Christ with the blood of the Jews. In terror the Jews of the Rhineland induced
Kalonymos, chief Rabbi of Mainz, to write to Godfrey’s overlord, the emperor
Henry IV, who had always shown himself a friend to their race, to urge him so
forbid the persecution. At the same time, to be on the safe side, the Jewish
communities of Mainz and Cologne each offered the Duke the sum of five hundred
pieces of silver. Henry wrote to his chief vassals, lay and ecclesiastic, to
bid them guarantee the safety of all the Jews on their lands. Godfrey, having
already succeeded in his blackmail, answered that nothing was further from his
thoughts than persecution, and gladly gave the requested guarantee.

The First
Massacres

If the Jews hoped to escape so cheaply from the
threat of Christian fervour, they were soon to be disillusioned. At the end of
April 1096, a certain Volkmar, of whose origins we know nothing, set out from
the Rhineland with over ten thousand men to join Peter in the East. He took the
road to Hungary that ran through Bohemia. A few days later Peter’s old disciple
Gottschalk, with a slightly larger company, left along the main road that Peter
had taken, up the Rhine and through Bavaria. Meanwhile a third army had been
collected by a petty lord of the Rhineland, Count Emich of Leisingen, who had
already acquired a certain reputation for lawlessness and brigandage. Emich now
claimed to have a cross miraculously branded on his flesh. At the same time, as
a soldier of known experience, he attracted to his banner a greater and more
formidable variety of recruits than the preachers Volkmar and Gottschalk could
command. A multitude of simple enthusiastic pilgrims joined him, some of them
following a goose that had been inspired by God. But his army included members
of the French and German nobility, such as the lords of Zweibrucken, Salm and
Viernenberger, Hartmann of Dillingen, Drogo of Nesle, Clarambald of Vendeuil,
Thomas of La Fere and William, Viscount of Melun, surnamed the Carpenter
because of his huge physical strength.

It was perhaps the example of Peter and of Duke
Godfrey that suggested to Emich how easily religious fervour could be used to
the personal profit of himself and his associates. Ignoring the special orders
of the emperor Henry, he persuaded his followers to begin their Crusade on 3
May with an attack on the Jewish community at Spier, close to his home. It was
not a very impressive attack. The Bishop of Spier, whose sympathies were won by
a handsome present, placed the Jews under his protection. Only twelve were
taken by the Crusaders and slain after their refusal to embrace Christianity;
and one Jewess committed suicide to preserve her virtue. The bishop saved the
rest and even managed to capture several of the murderers, whose hands were cut
off in punishment.

Small as was the massacre at Spier, it whetted
the appetite. On 18 May Emich and his troops arrived at Worms. Soon afterwards
a rumour went round that the Jews had taken a Christian and drowned him and
used the water in which they had kept his corpse to poison the city wells. The
Jews were not popular at Worms nor in the countryside around; and the rumour
brought townsfolk and peasants to join with Emich’s men in attacks on the
Jewish quarter. Every Jew that was captured was put to death. As at Spier the
bishop intervened and opened his palace to Jewish refugees. But Emich and the
angry crowds with him forced the gates and broke into the sanctuary. There,
despite the bishop’s protests, they slaughtered all his guests, to the number
of about five hundred.

Massacres at
Mainz and Cologne

The massacre at Worms took place on 20 May. On
25 May Emich arrived before the great city of Mainz. He found the gates closed
against him by order of Archbishop Rothard. But the news of his coming provoked
anti-Jewish riots within the city, in the course of which a Christian was
killed. So on 26 May friends within the city opened the gates to him. The Jews,
who had assembled at the synagogue, sent gifts of two hundred marks of silver
to the archbishop and to the chief lay lord of the city, asking to be taken
into their respective palaces. At the same time a Jewish emissary went to Emich
and for seven gold pounds bought from him a promise that he would spare the
community. The money was wasted. Next day he attacked the archbishop’s palace.
Rothard, alarmed by the temper of the assailants, hastened to flee with all his
staff. On his departure Emich’s men broke into the building. The Jews attempted
to resist but were soon overcome and slain. Their lay protector, whose name has
not survived, may have been more courageous. But Emich succeeded in setting
fire to his palace and forced its inmates to evacuate it. Several Jews saved
their lives by abjuring their faith. The remainder were killed. The massacre
lasted for two more days, while refugees were rounded up. Some of the apostates
repented of their weakness and committed suicide. One, before slaying himself
and his family, burnt down the synagogue to keep it from further desecration.
The chief Rabbi, Kalonymos, with about fifty companions, had escaped from the
city to Rudesheim and begged asylum from the archbishop who was staying at his
country villa there. To the archbishop, seeing the terror of his visitors, it
seemed a propitious moment to attempt their conversion. This was more than
Kalonymos could bear. He snatched up a knife and flung himself on his host. He
was beaten off; but the outrage cost him and his comrades their lives. In the
course of the massacre at Mainz about a thousand jews had perished.

Emich next proceeded towards Cologne. There had
already been anti-Jewish riots there in April; and now the Jews, panic-stricken
by the news from Mainz, scattered themselves among the neighbouring villages
and the houses of their Christian acquaintances, who kept them hidden over Whit-Sunday,
1 June, and the following day, while Emich was in the neighbourhood. The
synagogue was burnt and a Jew and a Jewess who refused to apostasize were
slain; but the archbishop’s influence was able to prevent further excesses.