Eleanor Of Aquitaine (6 page)

When Louis had taken his cross, Eleanor knelt before the abbé and offered her thousands of vassals from Poitou and Aquitaine. It was a wonder to see the young dynasts, who less than a year before had been so rash and arrogant, upon their knees receiving the symbol of their dedication from the humblest of all their subjects, the poor little brother of Clairvaux. With the queen came, "many other ladies of quality," Sybille, Countess of Flanders, whose half brother was King of Jerusalem, Mamille of Roucy, Florine of Bourgogne, Torqueri of Bouillon, Faydide of Toulouse, and scores of others whom the chroniclers could not afford the parchment to enumerate.

Whatever may have been said secretly behind the palm of the hand, no one appears to have asked publicly what these female warriors were to inflict upon the Saracens. The historians do not well explain why hordes of women took the cross. However, the chronicler Newburgh suspects that in the case of Queen Eleanor, Louis was overborne; she had doubtless, he says, so bedazzled her young spouse with her excellent beauty that, fearing out of jealousy to leave her behind, he decided to take her with him to the wars. The annalist deplores the fact that the queen's example made other ladies intractable, and the policy led in the end to the infiltration of a good many women who had no business to be included in the army.
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It is perhaps more profitable to search the secular poetry upspringing in the time for explanations. Chivalry, we learn from many a troubadour, could not endure the winter-long isolation of the feudal castle. It must move upon the road, drink the sunshine and the racy humors of the mob. Poetry was made upon the pilgrim trail in the springtime of the year. Pilgrimage to the Holy Land had passed the pioneering stage. By the middle of the century it had become the grand tour, a civilizing part of the education of persons of consequence, and a sovereign remedy for ennui. There were facilities — routes as worn as the bed of a river, hostels by the way, money-changers at the frontiers, markets for forage. And there beyond the floods of the Danube rose glorious Byzantium on the Bosporus and beyond Byzantium the fabulous bazaars of Antioch and Tripoli, the incomparable shrines of Jerusalem.

At Vézelay the crosses gave out and still the crowd bore down upon the saintly abbé. The token! The token! A legend tells us that the queen and her ladies disappeared and presently reappeared on white horses in the guise of Amazons, in gilded buskins, plumed, and with banners: that like Penthesilea and her warriors, the queen and her cavalcade galloped over the hillside of Vézelay, rallying laggard knights, tossing distaffs to faint-hearted cavaliers. The tale is in character, and later allusions to Amazons en route, found in Greek historians, give some substance to it.
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This dazzling dramatization of the story of the Amazons, popular in every castle, must have made a sensation and stimulated the recruiting notably. Even the foot soldiers called for the sign that should keep them safe. Other supplies failing, the abbé's white wool cassock was snipped into little crosses, and these he sowed rather than distributed with his blessing among the crowd. As at Clermont fifty years before, the cry rose to heaven in all the dialects of Gaul, "It is God's will."

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Yet in spite of the enthusiasm at Vézelay, Edessa was obliged to languish a full year more before the forces of Europe could be launched against the Saracens. The crusade could be of advantage to the Pope, harried as he was by the, "tyranny of the Romans," and the disaffection of the Holy Roman Emperor, only if his formidable enemies could be involved in the war with the Moslems. But to engage Conrad of Hohenstaufen, the Holy Roman Emperor, in an expedition under papal auspices and under the leadership of the King of the Franks, was to accomplish a prodigy. Only one person alive, and certainly not Pope Eugenius himself, could bring about such a Christian concord. All looked to the Abbé of Clairvaux to bring the miracle to pass. Those who saw Bernard at Vézelay — his flush and pallor, the febrile brilliance of his eye, his wasted frame — believed that death had already laid a finger on him. Indeed, Bernard longed inexpressibly to seal his thoughts forever from the world in the blessed retreat of Clairvaux. But he was summoned again to sound the apostolic trumpet, to carry the call to arms to the remote, the hesitant, the slumbering. Using the daughter houses of his y, the, "hives," that had swarmed from his parent house, he sent the summons far and wide. Within a few months he visited the Low Countries, the Rhine cities, the Alpine provinces, besides all the regions nearer home. Presently he wrote to Eugenius that towns and villages were deserted by those who had taken the cross, so that there hardly remained in all his territory one man for seven women.

It was, however, no easy matter to bring Conrad of Hohenstaufen into the general plan. The abbé circled anxiously about him several times. Bernard's ardor fired the German populace, even though he addressed them through interpreters. When words failed, miracles spoke for him. The deaf heard, the halt walked, the blind saw. But when he approached the emperor, Conrad made self interested excuses for staying at home. His obstinacy became a heavy burden to Bernard, for a crusade that should steady the See of Saint Peter dared not leave the emperor behind. The Christmas of 1146 passed at Speyer and still Conrad demurred. On the 27th of December Bernard celebrated mass in the imperial presence. At a certain moment he felt himself moved, and suddenly, as if with the trump of doom, he called upon the emperor publicly to account before heaven for his stewardship. Taken thus unawares, Conrad withered under the heat of Bernard's spiritual fervor. In the midst of a vast enthusiasm he pledged his person and his men, among them the youthful Barbarossa. Speyer became another Vézelay. Bells rang; the people sang hymns and the
Via Cruets
. Conrad, fearing the abbé would be smothered in the press, wrapped him in his own cloak and carried him from the basilica. The crusade was assure.

All over Europe the taxes fell heavily. Neither sex nor rank nor order was spared. The churches poured out their treasure and the Jews were forced to disgorge the fruits of usury. The queen's provinces of Poitou and Aquitaine groaned especially under the oppression. Arguments about routes to the East and the leadership of the various contingents, some marshaled by barons and some by bishops, were roughly adjusted in conclave. There would be time to discuss military strategy on the long journey, for not all were agreed upon the precise objectives of the campaign.

The king did not forget, in the midst of vast operations, to make the most anxious personal preparation for his pilgrimage. He visited monasteries and lazar houses, distributing alms and bespeaking the intercessory prayers of the most humble and wretched of his subjects. For the journey he put himself under the advice of his wise men and these, in order to hedge him about with the soundest influence, selected his entourage. Odo of Duiho, a monk of Saint Denis, who wrote a chronicle of the expedition, became the king's chaplain and secretary and undertook, as a part of his duty, to lodge by night near the royal tent.
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And Thierry Galeran, a eunuch of the order of the Temple who appears to have opened and closed the coffers of the Franks, engaged to defend the king from sycophants and hangers on.

The lateness of Easter and Pentecost in 1147 determined the Franks to postpone their departure until the fete of Saint Denis on June 11, so that they might leave their homes under the special auspices of their patron saint. Pope Eugemus crossed the Alps to give his blessing to the banners and to bestow upon Louis with his own hands the staff and wallet for his pilgrimage and the martyr-red oriflamme of France, which reposed between wars upon the altars of the y. After the ceremonies the queen and her company were sent ahead so that their baggage wains might not encumber the road for the foot soldiers. Louis dined for the last time sparely with the monks in their refectory and had from each the kiss of peace. The bull of Vézelay had proscribed ermine and vair.
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With the cross alone gleaming upon his pilgrim's tunic, the King of the Franks set his face toward Jerusalem.

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Anyone seeing these cohorts with their helmets and bucklers 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. And this they would doubtless have done if the pilgrimage had been pleasing to God
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Gestes de Louis VII

The final concentration of the hordes that AbbéBernard had marshaled in the west of Europe for the rescue of the Holy Land took place at Metz. The German forces of Conrad, one hundred thousand strong, were already in the valley of the Danube. Having finally cast the die, the emperor moved his hosts without dalliance. The division of the French and German forces was said to have been determined by the impossibility of provisioning the united armies on the journey. But in any case, Conrad had no idea of trailing the King of the Franks into Jerusalem, nor even into Byzantium. He had only a moderate confidence in the Truce of God enjoined by the Pope; he had been overimpressed by Abbé Bernard to set forth; and he despised the military genius of the royal pilgrim from France. He judged it best to be early on the scene to make his own terms with the Emperor of Byzantium, whom he also mistrusted, and with the barons of the Latin Kingdom, whom he suspected of self-interest.

But the host that remained under the banners of France on the banks of the Moselle and the Rhine were legion and as motley as the muster of the Last Judgment. Besides the Franks and the Burgundians with their knights bannerets, and vast contingents from the queen's provinces of Poitou and Aquitaine, there were Normans under the Bishop of Lisieux, Bretons, men from the Low Countries, and belated stragglers from the Rhine and Alpine provinces. The lower ranks dependent upon the king's bounty were abundant, many having been driven by famine to take up their arms. In his recruiting Abbé Bernard had opened the spiritual benefits of crusade to the meanest sinners. "Marvel," he said, "at the fathomless mercy of God. Is it not a heavenly intention and worthy of Him to admit to his service murderers and ravishers, adulterers, the perjured, and other malefactors, and offer them thus a hope of redemption?"
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And later, when he had to raise the spirits of Abbé Suger, he called upon him to admire the operations of a Providence that by one stroke furnished the hope of rescue to Jerusalem, ridded Europe of the burden of its criminals and paupers, and offered these the reward of paradise for their labor or their lives, "There were in the army," says a commentator, "plenty of gallows birds recalled for this enterprise from the gates of hell."

The bull of Vézelay expressly forbade falcons, hounds, and rich habiliments, and it proscribed concubines, troubadours, and other camp followers. Nevertheless, a good many luxuries got across the Rhine after the confusions at Metz,
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and Louis, occupied with the vast operations of departure, had no force left to scourge out the wastrels. We do not learn how Penthesilea and her warriors got themselves and their baggage wains over the river, but they were certainly not reduced to nondescript in the cavalcade, for we hear later of their smart appearance in Byzantium.

The vast movement of the pilgrim soldiers over central Europe was a prodigy. They kept a pace of ten to twenty miles a day by river and by road, for they were but three summer months from Metz to the Bosporus, and they found their forage by the way. The great barons, turn by turn, led the van, and Louis, like a good shepherd, brought up the rear. Having been taught that the crusade of the troubadour Count of Poitou fifty years before had been rejected by heaven and come to nought by reason of the godlessness of the rabble that followed in his tram, Louis maintained a rigorous discipline among the malefactors in his host. He put down pillagers and ravishers with severity and made an example of recreants by cutting off their noses and their ears. But to the needy he showed a liberal compassion. Even in the utmost stress, he began every day with mass and undertook no movement without the guidance of his bodyguard. Odo of Duiho, who slept beside the royal tent, vouches for the blameless purity of all the king's designs.

Eleanor was by some oversight less carefully protected from the impact of the world. The very arrangements for keeping Louis safe were in their nature destined to deprive the queen of the soundest influence and leave her somewhat to the devices of her own heart. Though she doubtless had her chaplain and said her prayers, her entourage was on the whole distinctly secular. She appears to have kept en route to her role of Penthesilea, which, as it is said, had been such a success and inspiration at Vézelay The Greek historian Nicetas, who writes of the crusade, remarks that "there were in the army women dressed as men, mounted on horses 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, that went by the name of the
'lady of the golden boot.' The elegance of her bearing and the freedom of her movements recalled the celebrated leader of the Amazons."

In the course of the expedition Penthesilea, as mistress of the forces of Poitou and Aquitaine, was of necessity thrown much among the barons of her own provinces, old friends and relatives, who naturally made much of her. There were Geoffrey de Rancon the Poitevin, Hugues of Lusignan, and Geoffrey of Thouars, and many another, friends and kinsmen of Raymond of Antioch, all dreaming of glorious and profitable careers in the Orient. These knights were not sustained by the ideology that kept Louis upright. They were, "younger sons of younger brothers," emigrating from the unemployment and the profitless ennui of the old counties south of the Loire, with whom Eleanor could express herself in her native dialect. It is said that, in spite of the bull of Vézelay, there were troubadours among them who, singing of love and beauty, accustomed the queen to moods of grandeur and elation, as the crusaders traversed the plains of Hungary or floated on the bosom of the Danube in the soft summer weather and the moonlit nights, on their way to the holy city of Jerusalem.