Eleanor of Aquitaine (10 page)

On balance, therefore, it seems likely that she did indeed have an affair with Count Geoffrey, which they managed to keep secret from Louis and the rest of the world. Probably it happened on impulse and was of brief duration, and it may have flourished during one of the Queen's visits to Poitou, possibly the one she made in the autumn of 1146. By then, she may have been having doubts about the validity of her marriage.

After Giraldus wrote his account, discretion appears to have been maintained. Walter Map, a trusted royal secretary, justice, and confidant, would say only that the Queen "was secretly reputed to have shared the couch of Louis with Geoffrey." It was for this reason that Map and others believed that the offspring of Henry and Eleanor were "tainted at the source." How, Giraldus asked, could happy issue stem from such a union?

By the second week of May, 1147, everything was ready for the crusade. The army and royal retinues were assembled and the baggage carts packed; Eleanor's luggage filled a good many of them, for she was determined not to travel without the courtly comforts and luxuries to which she was accustomed. Her luggage included clothes, furs, tents, saddles, harnesses, household plate, jewellery, veils, pallet beds, goblets, washbasins, soap, and food. Other ladies followed suit, and they and the Queen were criticised for taking so much unnecessary gear as well as an excessive number of tirewomen, which would be encumbrances that the crusaders could well do without.

The King and Queen, accompanied by the dowager Queen Adelaide, then went to Saint-Denis, where they lodged on the night of 7 June. That evening Louis dined in the refectory with the monks, while Eleanor and her mother-in-law ate in private in the guest house.

On 8 June, clad in a black pilgrim's tunic emblazoned with a red cross, the King entered the abbey church, which was hung with banners and illuminated by thousands of candles. In the presence of the Pope, he committed his kingdom to the safekeeping of Abbot Suger. Eugenius then delivered to him the red and gold silk Oriflamme of St. Denis to take to the Holy Land. As Louis grasped its gilded pole, the congregation burst out cheering and Queen Eleanor wept with emotion. Finally, Eugenius gave Louis his blessing and handed him the traditional pilgrim's staff and wallet.

It was now time for the departing crusaders to say farewell to their loved ones, many of whom had come to see them off. "The crowds and the King's wife and his mother, who nearly perished because of their tears and the heat, could not endure the delay; but to wish to depict the grief and wailing which occurred is impossible."32 Then the army, which numbered around 100,000 persons-- "an immense multitude from every part of France"33-- set off, ahead of the King, for Metz in Germany, where Louis had arranged to rendezvous with the Emperor Conrad.

Louis had decided to defer his own departure until 11 June, the feast day of St. Denis, in order to invoke the saint's protection, but on that day the press of people around the abbey was still so great that the front door was blocked and the King and Queen were obliged to leave Saint-Denis via the monks' dorter. Then, with Eleanor and her entourage going on ahead of Louis, with her unwieldy baggage train, the royal couple left for Metz on the first stage of their long journey to the Holy Land.

4. "To Jerusalem!"

After traversing Champagne, King Louis met up with the Emperor Conrad at Metz on the banks of the Mosel. In the middle of June 1147, amid cheering crowds and the pealing of bells, the two armies left for the Holy Land, Eleanor looking resplendent in a robe embroidered with the lilies of France and riding a proud horse with a silver saddle and plaited mane; some noble ladies in her entourage carried falcons on their wrists, while a number of lords and knights bore swords with fragments of the True Cross set into their hilts. Marching at a brisk pace, the two armies set off on their separate courses, the French making for Ratisbon (Regensburg) in Bavaria, whence they would follow the course of the River Danube through Hungary and Bulgaria, covering between ten and twenty miles a day. "Anyone seeing these columns with their helmets and buckles shining in the sun, with their banners streaming in the breeze, would have been certain that they were about to triumph over all the enemies of the Cross and reduce to submission all the countries of the Orient."1

Eleanor and Louis travelled with their separate retinues, the King bringing up the rear. He heard mass every morning, and at night Odo de Deuil and Thierry Galan, who acted as the King's bodyguards and were not allowed out of his sight, shared his tent, while Eleanor was relegated to the company of her noblewomen and vassals. Odo praises Louis for the purity of his designs, and it seems likely that, for pious reasons, the King had resolved to abstain from sexual relations. Doubtless he had also taken practical as well as spiritual considerations into account, for if Eleanor became pregnant there would be unnecessary complications.

It was asserted by many later historians that the Queen and her ladies behaved as if they were on a pleasure trip, distracting their male companions from their holy purpose and causing general mayhem, but in fact there is very little contemporary evidence attesting to Eleanor's activities on the journey. Odo de Deuil, for example, does not refer to her at all in the passages of his work covering the first weeks, and thereafter makes only four brief references to her. Some modern historians suggest that his work has been censored by later writers, but there is no real proof of this. Probably Odo did not consider women worthy of much mention.

The King had given express orders commanding his soldiers to behave in a godly manner, but at Worms these were already being flouted:2 a merchant who protested at crusaders plundering food was murdered. After that, it became clear that Louis was ineffective at maintaining discipline, and some of his men even began to desert.

At Ratisbon, Louis was met by two emissaries of the Byzantine Emperor, Manuel Comnenus,3 who, while outwardly committed to supporting the crusade, was nevertheless alarmed at the prospect of such a vast host converging on Constantinople. In particular, he was nervous about the presence of so many Poitevins, for he and Raymond of An-tioch had been deadly enemies since Manuel's brother, the late Emperor John, had established Byzantine suzerainty over Antioch and been savagely treated by Raymond in return. The Emperor therefore asked for guarantees that Louis came in friendship and would not attempt to take any cities or towns belonging to Manuel, and also that he would surrender to Manuel all the territory he took from the Turks. Louis agreed to the two former demands, but not to the latter, saying that he would discuss this with the Emperor when they met.

In Hungary, food was plentiful and spirits were high. Eleanor received letters from Manuel's wife, the Empress Irene, in joyful anticipation of her visit to Constantinople.4

"The Lord is aiding us at every turn," Louis wrote to Suger. But he had spoken too soon.

The imperial army, ten thousand strong, led by Conrad, had marched ahead through Greece, where the German soldiers had plundered, looted, burned, raped, and murdered without check, and had so alienated the local people that they had butchered any stragglers from the ranks. The situation had become so fraught that the Emperor Manuel thought it fit to send a large force to escort the Germans to his capital and prevent them from committing any more violent acts. Conrad took exception to this and quarrelled with Manuel, and when he and his leaders arrived in Constantinople, they deliberately vandalised the quarters they were assigned in Manuel's hunting lodge, the Philopation, located outside the city walls.

The French, having crossed the Danube at Branitchevo, followed through Greece towards Adrianople in September, finding towns and cities closed to them, and such food as the hostile Greeks were willing to sell excessively dear. The decomposing bodies of the Germans still lay unburied and, according to Odo de Deuil, "polluted all things, so that to the Franks less harm arose from the armed Greeks than from the dead Germans." Louis, who wrote complaining to Suger of the "intolerable hardships and infinite dangers" of this stage of the journey, was shocked to receive news that the Emperor Manuel had just concluded a twelve-year truce with the Turks. Many of his advisers feared treachery and urged the King to lay siege to Constantinople, but he refused to consider it, asserting that he had not come to make war on Christian princes but to liberate the Holy Land from the Turks.

On 3 October, a few days after Conrad and his army had left Byzantium for Asia Minor, the French crusaders approached the double walls of the fabled city of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, centre of the Eastern Orthodox Church and guardian of much of the tradition and culture of the ancient Roman Empire. Louis was welcomed by dignitaries sent by Manuel; these, the following day, escorted the King and his advisers to the Boukoleon Palace on the Golden Horn. Here the Emperor, clad in purple and gold, was waiting to receive them and give them the kiss of peace.5 Odo was overawed by the magnificence of the palace, which was "throughout elaborately decorated with gold and a great variety of colours, with marble floors."

Eleanor was not present, but a Greek chronicler, Niketas Choniates, writing about fifty years later, has left what was probably an eyewitness description of the women in the army as they arrived at Constantinople. He marvelled that

even women travelled in the ranks of the crusaders, boldly sitting astride in their saddles as men do, dressed as men and armed with lance and battle axe. They kept a martial mien, bold as Amazons. At the head of these was one in particular, richly-dressed, who, because of the gold embroidery on the hem of her dress, was nicknamed Chrysopus [Golden Foot]. The elegance of her bearing and the freedom of her movements recalled Penthesilea, the celebrated leader of the Amazons.

This was almost certainly Eleanor, who would not have been allowed to dress in men's clothes, and it may be that the so-called legend of her dressing up as an Amazon is really based on fact.

Manuel Comnenus was a highly intelligent man in his late twenties who was renowned for his knowledge of medicine. He extended an outwardly warm welcome to the French, then had Louis and Eleanor escorted to their lodgings, which were either in the opulent Blachernae Palace, Manuel's second residence, which overlooked the Golden Horn, or more probably in the hastily refurbished Philopation, so recently pillaged by Conrad and his men. Here they were to reside during their twelve-day stay at Constantinople. At the insistence of the Emperor, the huge army was confined to its camp outside the city walls.

During the visit, the Emperor royally entertained Louis and his nobles. There was a solemn service in the domed basilica of St. Sophia, followed by a sumptuous reception and banquet in the hall of the palace. At the banquet the guests were served artichokes, stuffed kid, fried frogs, caviare, and sauces flavoured with expensive spices such as cinnamon, pepper, coriander, and sugar. The food was served in silver dishes, the wine in glasses, and forks (unknown in the West) were used to eat with. The floor was a bed of rose petals, and sweet music played throughout the meal; afterwards, the guests were entertained by dancers, jugglers, and mime-artists.

There were hunting expeditions with tame leopards and a day spent watching the races at the Hippodrome. Constantinople, built like Rome on seven hills and surrounded on three sides by water, was a wondrous city, quite unlike anything the French had ever seen, with its spacious squares, fountains, wide streets, and piped water system. Louis was escorted by Manuel to several shrines and shown the sacred relics, claimed by the Byzantines to be authentic, kept in the ancient palace of Constantine: the lance that had pierced Christ's side, the Crown of Thorns, part of the True Cross, a nail that had held Jesus to the Cross, and the stone from His tomb.

We know little of Eleanor's stay in Constantinople. Women in the Eastern Empire were generally kept secluded in the oriental manner, and there is no mention of the Queen accompanying her husband on his public forays. She seems to have been privately entertained by the Empress Irene, formerly Bertha of Sulzbach, a Bavarian noblewoman whose sister was married to the Emperor Conrad III, and who now lived a gilded but restricted existence waited on by slaves and eunuchs.

The common soldiers, confined to their camp, soon became restive and unmanageable, and Louis was forced to resort to stern measures to control them. "The King frequently punished offenders by cutting off their ears, hands and feet, yet he could not check the folly of the whole group."6

Manuel had his own hidden political agenda. His empire had suffered from the inroads of the Turks and he had spent years playing their leaders off one against the other in order to deflect them from further attempts at conquest. It was clear to him that the western princes had little understanding of Middle Eastern politics, and that their crusade, which had already provoked the warring Turkish factions to unite against the West, might further jeopardise the already crumbling Eastern Empire. Manuel was also at war with Sicily, and he had no intention of involving himself in another conflict, especially when it might prove so damaging to himself. He therefore resolved to be rid of Louis and his army as soon as possible, in the hope that the crusaders and the Turks might destroy each other and so leave him in peace.

To Manuel's relief, the King was eager to press on to Jerusalem. On 16 October, rather than follow the overland route through the mountains, which Conrad had taken, Louis sent his army south across the Bosphorus and along the western coast of Asia Minor. He and Eleanor lingered in Constantinople for five days, awaiting the arrival of a supplementary force from Italy, headed by Louis's uncle, the Count of Maurienne and the Marquess of Montferrat. The royal couple then joined the main army at Chalcedon (Kadikoy) on the coast, where the King wasted five more days deliberating whether he should press on to rendezvous with Conrad or wait for news of him. It was a fatal delay, for the army was rapidly consuming its food supplies, and the provisions sent begrudgingly by Manuel were insufficient to replace them.

On 26 October, as an eclipse of the sun darkened the sky-- a phenomenon interpreted by many as an evil omen-- the King gave orders for the crusaders to resume their march south, although he himself returned to Constantinople. Here Manuel, dismayed to see him again and doubtless concerned that he would never get rid of this importunate guest, informed Louis he had received word that the Emperor Conrad had won a great victory at Anatolia (Anadolu), annihilating fourteen thousand Turks. Exhilarated by this news, Louis left the same day to rejoin his army at Nicaea (Izmit) on the Marmara Sea. Manuel had offered to send some guides, or dragomans, to take the crusaders through the inhospitable territory that lay inland, but they never materialised. He had, however, sent guides with Conrad, and some of them arrived in the French camp at Nicaea, bringing further news of the German victory.

At the end of October, the crusaders continued their march south along the coastal lowlands. A day or so later, they met up with several hundred men from Conrad's army, most of them starving, wounded, or dying. They revealed that they were all that was left of the imperial army and that, far from gaining a victory over the Turks, they had suffered a devastating defeat, with more than nine-tenths of their number being slaughtered.? They warned that the Turks were now lying in wait for the French.

Louis was "stupefied with grief,"8 not only at the loss of life but also at Manuel's perfidy, for it was now clear that he had abandoned the crusaders to the enemy for purely selfish reasons, and that his guides had deliberately led the Germans into danger. The King ordered the army to march on, in the hope of finding more survivors, and on 2 or 3 November he finally met up with Conrad, who had suffered a serious head wound, the sight of which made Louis burst into tears.0

The two leaders called their captains to a council of war and debated on the safest route to the Holy Land. They abandoned their original plan to travel through the mountains of Cappadocia in favour of two other options: either they could take the longer way around the coast, most of which was in Byzantine territory, or they could opt for the shorter and more dangerous route overland, through mountainous country infested by Turks. Their food supplies were dwindling, and it was felt that they would have a better chance of replenishing them along the coastal route, and be within reach of the ports.

Throughout November and December the crusaders moved south via the ancient towns of Pergamus (Bergama), Smyrna (Izmir), and Ephesus (nowadays a ruin), which they reached in time for Christmas. Their journey took them through often inhospitable territory, riven with canyons and gorges, and they tried in vain to discover shortcuts to avoid these obstacles; Louis was lost for three days searching for one, and had to be guided back to camp by "rustics."10 Inevitably, supplies were lost along the way, and some of the ladies' gear had to be traded for food, which was scarce. As morale sank lower, discipline slipped and it became obvious that Louis had lost interest in trying to control his unruly troops, some of whom had deserted. The Emperor Conrad was appalled at this, and "found the arrogance of the Franks unendurable."11

At Ephesus, where the crusaders set up camp on the banks of the River Maeander, it became clear that Conrad was too ill to go farther, and he and his barons took a boat back to Constantinople, to take issue with Manuel. Manuel, however, ended up personally nursing Conrad back to health; by then most of the German crusaders had gone home. Meanwhile, on Christmas Eve, the Christians were victorious in their first skirmish with the Turks, cutting down many, driving the rest into the hills, and raiding their deserted camp for gold and food.