Eleanor of Aquitaine (11 page)

On Christmas Day and for the next four days there was torrential rain and sleet, and the river flooded its banks. Gale-force winds wrecked the crusaders' camp, many men and horses were drowned or battered to death on the rocks, and vital food stores and equipment were lost.12 Surveying the devastation, Louis decided that they had no choice but to press on to Antioch without delay, taking the most direct route over the Phrygian mountains to Laodicea and Attalia (Antalya). As they had no guides, they would have to rely on the sun and the stars for directions.

It was no easy journey, for the weather was rough and Turkish raiding parties on fast ponies continually harassed the crusaders, shooting them with bows and arrows or cutting them down with deadly sabres. "The road had become so rugged that sometimes the helmets of the knights touched the sky, while sometimes their horses' hooves trod the very floor of hell."13 For safety, and protection against the weather, Eleanor and her ladies now travelled in horse-drawn litters with closed leather curtains. At night, they were among the few who were sheltered by the remaining tents, sleeping on painted beds.

In January 1148, as the crusaders were crossing table-land on Mount Cadmos in the mountains of Paphlagonia, Louis sent ahead Eleanor's vassal, Geoffrey de Rancon, with the Count of Maurienne, the Queen and her ladies, and the vanguard of the army, to set up camp on the bare plateau before the next mountain pass. However, when he found the chosen terrain to be flat and windswept, Geoffrey, taking the advice of the Count and probably that of Eleanor, as his suzerain, ignored his sovereign's orders and pushed on through the rocky pass, beyond which he found a sheltered and well-irrigated valley, which he considered a much more suitable site for a camp.14

When the main army arrived at the appointed place, they found it deserted. Louis, bringing up the rear, did not arrive until later, his progress impeded by the sheer unwieldiness of his wife's excessive baggage, and he was alarmed to discover that Eleanor and the vanguard were nowhere to be seen. He therefore sent his scouts ahead in the hope that they would catch up with de Rancon's party.15

The Turks, however, were lying in wait at the pass. Having allowed the unsuspecting vanguard to pass, they swooped on the main army and cut it to pieces; many men and horses, attempting to flee, plunged down a ravine to their deaths.16 Geoffrey de Rancon, not being where he was supposed to be, was unaware of what was going on and therefore unable to help. Not only are the Turks said to have killed seven thousand crusaders, but they also ransacked the baggage train and made off with valuable supplies and most of the women's gear. Louis, whose horse was killed beneath him, barely escaped with his life. After his bodyguards had been slain, "he nimbly and bravely scaled a rock" by grabbing hold of tree roots, and held off the Turks with his back to the mountain.17 Soon, darkness fell on the terrible scene of carnage, and the enemy retreated.

Midnight approached, and Odo de Deuil, espying the distant fires of de Rancon's camp, rode towards it. As the evening had worn on, and the main body of the army failed to appear, Geoffrey and his party had grown anxious and sent a party of knights to make a search. They came upon the scene of slaughter and encountered some survivors, covered in blood and faint from exhaustion, wandering towards the pass. When they revealed what had happened, there was much weeping and wailing.

As dawn broke, Louis, also blood-smeared and half-dead with fatigue, arrived in de Rancon's camp, his borrowed horse guided by a monk. Despite his relief at being reunited with Eleanor, he was furious to find her and his vanguard in a vulnerable and exposed position below hills from which the enemy could swoop down at any time. Although he rejected suggestions that Geoffrey de Rancon be hanged for treason, he castigated him severely and, refusing to listen to his excuses, sent him back to Poitou in disgrace. Because it was Eleanor's vassal who had disobeyed orders, many people believed-- perhaps with justification-- that he had done so at her instigation, or at least with her approval, and there was so much bitter feeling against her that her fame was irrevocably tarnished.18 There is no record, however, of Louis reproaching her for what had happened.

Fearing that the Turks were still lurking in the mountains, the King decided that the crusaders should make for the nearest port and complete their journey by sea. Guided by the Knights Templar, the tattered remnants of the army now descended to the port of Attalia, harassed by the Turks and so short of food that they were obliged to kill and eat their horses, a practice normally forbidden to Christians. Nevertheless, "even the wealthy were satisfied with this food."19

On 20 January they reached Attalia, where they would stay for five weeks while their leaders tried to find ships to transport them to Antioch, one of the four crusader states established after the First Crusade. Most of those in the army were in a sorry state, starved and dirty. The ladies had lost most of their clothes, and some bishops went barefoot, having lost their shoes. Many horses had perished and a great deal of equipment was lost. But there was little relief to be found in the town, for the surrounding countryside, which was normally well cultivated, had suffered from Turkish aggression, and its people were short of food themselves. Such food as they had was shipped in, and they would sell it to the crusaders only at a very high price.

Louis was told that the local Greeks were prepared to ferry the army to Antioch-- a voyage that usually lasted three days-- but only at a cost of four silver marks per passenger. The alternative was a forty-day march over hostile and difficult country, but Louis was reluctant to pay so much money. While he haggled, conditions in the crusaders' camp worsened, with wind and rain battering the tents, men and horses dying of starvation, and many people falling sick.

The King insisted they must "follow the route of our fathers, whose incomparable valour ensured them renown on Earth and glory in Heaven,"20 but when plague broke out in the camp and the crusaders began to die at an alarming rate, his chief vassals forced him to hire the ships, saying that those who wished to go with him would pay for themselves. There were many without the means to do so, and seven thousand unfortunate souls were left behind to starve or die of plague; more than three thousand, enticed by offers of food from the Turks, converted to the Moslem faith.21

On 19 March, after a stormy and perilous voyage lasting an incredible three weeks, Louis and Eleanor disembarked at the port of St. Simeon in northern Antioch to the sound of a choir singing the Te Deum. Waiting on the quayside was a great concourse of cheering people, headed by a reception committee sent by the Prince of Antioch and led by its Patriarch, Aimery of Limoges, who gave the crusaders his blessing. Soon afterwards, Raymond himself appeared, having sailed with his courtiers ten miles down the Orontes River from the city of Antioch to meet his niece and her royal husband and escort them to his capital.22

Although its official language was the
langue d'oc,
Antioch was a curious mix of eastern and western cultures, and had once been the third most important city in the Roman Empire. Built on terraces on the slopes of Mount Silpius, it boasted beautiful hanging gardens, pine groves and orchards, colonnaded villas, public baths, amphitheatres, and streets paved with marble. Yet despite the huge encircling walls intersected by no fewer than 360 towers, Antioch's great prosperity and high standard of living were under threat from Nureddin of Aleppo.23

Now aged around thirty-six, the ruler of Antioch, Raymond of Poitiers, was "taller, better built and more handsome than any man of his time; he surpassed all others as warrior and horseman."24 He loved hunting and gambling and possessed extraordinary physical strength, being able to halt his mighty destrier merely by clenching his thighs, or bend an iron bar with his bare hands. Although he could neither read nor write, Raymond was an accomplished conversationalist who was familiar with the troubadour culture of Aquitaine, and in some respects his court resembled that of Poitiers. While he was a popular, pragmatic, and able ruler, he was also impulsive, subject to sudden, terrifying outbursts of rage, and at times rather lazy, although no one doubted his courage. Abstemious in his habits, he was not given to gluttony, drunkenness, or debauchery.25

Raymond had spent his youth at the court of Henry I of England, where he had been knighted and treated by the King as a son. He had arrived in Outremer around 1134, at the invitation of King Fulk of Jerusalem, who, after King Bohemond II of Antioch was killed by the Turks, had "sustained the principality"26 against the Moslem threat and now wished to appoint an independent ruler. Bohemond's widow Alice was acting as regent for his only daughter and heiress, nine-year-old Constance, and Fulk hoped that the landless but nobly born Raymond would prove a suitable husband for Constance. Alice, however, wanted to rule Antioch herself, and preempted the King's plan by offering the hand of Constance to the Emperor Manuel Comnenus. When Raymond arrived in Antioch, having travelled disguised as a pedlar in order to avoid the hostility of the predatory King of Sicily, he paid court to Alice and asked her to marry him. Succumbing to his undoubted charm, she accepted, but while she was making arrangements for their wedding, he secretly married her daughter with the connivance of the Patriarch. Thus by devious means did he establish himself as sovereign prince of Antioch.

Raymond was relieved to see the arrival of the crusading army, anticipating that its coining heralded the recovery of Edessa and the removal of the Turkish threat to Antioch, and he extended a lavish welcome to Eleanor and Louis, sparing no expense. He threw banquets and tournaments in their honour, presented them with jewels, lucky charms, and relics, and had them served wine chilled with mountain snow. They were lodged in his own palace on Mount Silpius, which had such luxuries as glass windows and running water and was lit by perfumed candles. There were also new silk gowns for Eleanor. The Prince "handled everything with the greatest magnificence."27

Raymond also spent a noticeable amount of time alone with Eleanor, with whom he struck up an instant rapport. It was to be asserted, however, that their relationship quickly developed into something beyond that of uncle and niece. John of Salisbury, who in 1149 was a secretary in the papal curia and must have learned the details from Pope Eugenius (in whom Louis and Eleanor confided that year), states that "the attentions paid by the Prince to the Queen and his constant, indeed almost continuous conversation with her aroused the King's suspicions."28

William of Tyre, writing thirty years later, says that Raymond's ultimate ambition was to extend his territory, and to this end "he counted greatly on the interest of the Queen with the Lord King." In fact, like Manuel Comnenus, Raymond had a greater understanding of the politics of Outremer than Louis. He wanted the crusading army to first distract Nureddin by attacking Aleppo and then go on to recapture Edessa and reinforce the defences of Antioch against the Turks,29 and it appears that he managed to convince Eleanor of the wisdom of this. But Louis, suspecting that there was a degree of self-interest in Raymond's schemes, made it clear that he was more interested in pressing on to Jerusalem than in recovering Edessa and assisting Antioch. This made Raymond exceedingly angry, and his attitude changed. Frustrated in his ambitious designs, he began to hate the King's ways. He openly plotted against him and took means to do him injury. He resolved to deprive him of his wife, either by force or by secret intrigue. The Queen readily assented to this design, for she was a foolish woman. Her conduct before and after this time showed her to be far from circumspect. Contrary to her royal dignity, she disregarded her marriage vows and was unfaithful to her husband.30

Gervase of Canterbury stated that he thought it best to remain silent about matters best left unspoken. Giraldus Cambrensis gleefully reiterated the rumours concerning Eleanor's conduct in Antioch, while Richard of Devizes, writing around 1192, commented cryptically, "Many know what I wish none of us knew. This very Queen was at Jerusalem in the time of her first husband-- let none speak more thereof, though I know it well. Keep silent." Odo de Deuil did remain silent on the matter, since neither he nor Louis would have wished the official account of the crusade to be sullied by the sordid tale of the Queen's disloyalty. Diplomatically, he ended his history with the King's departure from Attalia.

The Poitevin troubadour Cercamon, in a song thought to have been composed during the crusade, made what some historians believe to be an oblique reference to Eleanor: deploring the conduct of a woman who lies with more than one man, he says, "Better for her never to have been born than to have committed the fault that will be talked about from here to Poitou."31 This would appear to refer to the rumours that were rampant at the time and for years afterwards-- rumours that would hardly have been so widespread, or so durable, had they concerned any lesser woman than Eleanor.

Other, later writers would tell even wilder stories. Around 1260, the anonymous Minstrel of Rheims, in a highly fanciful account, claimed that Eleanor was "a very evil woman" who carried on a love affair by letter with the future Turkish Emir Saladin, and tried to elope with him on a galley at Tyre, but that the King seized her at the jetty and forced her to return to the palace with him. "You are not worth a rotten pear!" she is said to have screamed at him. The Minstrel omitted to say that Saladin was no more than thirteen at the time. This tale is typical of the legends circulating about Eleanor after her death, legends that doubtless originated in contemporary reports and rumours. Such was her reputation in the thirteenth century that most people would have believed anything said of her.

In the face of all the reliable contemporary evidence, it is puzzling to find that most of Eleanor's modern biographers do not accept that she had an adulterous affair with Raymond, when in fact the sources make it clear that she had tired of Louis and had begun to seek emotional-- and possibly sexual-- satisfaction elsewhere. Although there was a social taboo against relationships between uncle and niece, which were regarded as incestuous, and Raymond was reputedly faithful to his wife and no womaniser, Louis seems, with some justification, to have feared that the Prince was exercising a subversive influence over Eleanor, both politically and personally. Indeed, the relationship between them provoked such an enduring scandal, and so upset the King, that it is entirely credible that there was a degree of sexual involvement. What is certain is that the possibility of an annulment had been on Eleanor's mind for some time.