Eleanor of Aquitaine: The Mother Queen (5 page)

The preparations took over a year. Louis appointed Suger as his regent, an inspired choice: the abbot kept excellent order and re-organized the royal finances without increasing the burden on the poor. The king held a final assembly at Etampes in February 1147, debating such matters as the route that the crusaders should take. The lords who attended this council included the counts of Flanders, Toulouse, Dreux and Nevers, the lord of Bourbon and the heir of Thibault of Champagne. In the spring pope Eugenius came to speed the French on their way, meeting the king at Dijon in April. Finally Louis took the oriflamme — the red banner made from St Denis’s cloak, which was unfurled only against the enemies of Christ and of France — and after receiving the pope’s personal blessing left Saint-Denis on 8 June. Eleanor rode with him.

The French army had assembled at Metz and, having been joined by the king and queen, marched by way of Bavaria and Hungary into the Balkans. The author of the
Gestes de Louis VII,
who was there, writes: ‘Anyone watching this multitude of knights, with their shields and helmets gleaming in the sun and their banners waving in the breeze, must surely have believed that they were going to subdue every enemy of the cross and conquer the lands of all the east.’ But it was an army of waggons and camp-followers as well as of soldiers, laden with baggage and provisions. The queen and her ladies proved to be an encumbrance, even to the point of demoralization. They had brought with them a horde of maidservants who were an irresistable temptation to the troops: chroniclers grumble at the licence and lechery of the French encampments. Eleanor obviously made her presence felt, to judge from the Greek chronicler Nicetas Choniates, who seems to refer to her when describing women in the French army, ‘clad as men, riding horses and armed with spears and battle-axes, and who looked like soldiers, as fierce as Amazons’. He says that at their head rode one to whom he gives the strange title ‘lady of the golden boot’. There are similar tales of Amazon-like activities on Eleanor’s part to be found in popular western histories — she is even said to have jousted with her ladies — and although they are almost certainly untrue, they do give some idea of her panache.

Eleanor must have had an anxious and far from comfortable journey through the Balkans. The emperor Conrad and his German crusaders had travelled the same road only a few weeks before; their ravaging and plundering had made the population extremely hostile, and food was in very short supply. Nevertheless, the French kept good discipline and, crossing the Danube at Branitchevo, proceeded to Adrianople and thence to Constantinople, which they reached almost without incident on 4 October.

Eleanor and Louis were first installed at the Blachernae Palace on the shore of the Bosphorus, the principal imperial residence, although later they were moved to the Philopatium just outside the city walls. The emperor Manuel Comnenus exchanged the kiss of peace with the French king. According to the latter’s chaplain, Odo of Deuil, who was present, they seemed like brothers, as they were about the same age and the same height; but one may guess that the Greek in his purple and gold made a strange contrast to the Frenchman in his grey pilgrim’s habit. The crusaders were dazzled by the splendour of the imperial palace: the throne of gold, the columns coated with gold and silver, the pavements of precious marble and the gleaming mosaic pictures. They must have been still more astonished by the ceremonial banquet that followed Manuel’s welcome. They tasted for the first time such delicacies as caviar, and they must have been amazed by the profusion of sauces made with rarities such as sugar, pepper and cinnamon. Above all they had to use such unfamiliar implements as wine glasses and forks. The days that followed were spent in similar banquets, in tours of the fabled city and its palaces and churches and in hunting expeditions on which the Greeks employed tame leopards. The markets, with Chinese and Indian silks, Arabian oils and perfumes, Persian carpets, Russian furs, and every other luxury then known, were overwhelming. Manuel and his lords personally conducted the French leader. Some time was spent in haggling about the future of any likely crusader conquests, but Louis was too charmed not to agree to hand over any former Byzantine territories that he might capture.

The Greek emperor was carefully attentive towards Eleanor, who was also fêted by the empress Irene. The latter was a German lady originally called Bertha of Sulzbach, noted for her boast that she stemmed from ‘an unconquerably warlike breed’; one suspects that Irene was something of a frump. It must have been a humiliation for the French queen to meet with a refinement of manners and elegance that were beyond her dreams; for this was a city where the material civilization of ancient Greece and Rome had never come to an end, where there was still scientific medicine, plumbing and drainage, and central heating, and where ladies had never ceased using cosmetics. Eleanor acquired a taste for Byzantine clothes and it was probably she who brought back to France such fashions as bulbous turbans, tall pointed hats, and shoes like the beaks of birds.

Despite his amiable reception, Manuel wanted to be rid of his French guests as quickly as possible. He genuinely liked westerners, even if they sometimes attacked his empire. But he could hardly be expected to welcome rapacious troops who terrorized his subjects and upset relations with his Turkish neighbours — relations that depended on a complex and subtly balanced diplomacy. He was therefore pleased to be able to tell Louis that he had just heard of a glorious victory won by the emperor Conrad, in which many thousands of Turks had fallen. Anxious to share in his fellow crusader’s triumph, the king left Constantinople after three weeks, no doubt much to Eleanor’s regret. The French army crossed the Bosphorus, camping at Chalcedon before marching on to Nicaea, which they reached in early November.

Frightening news awaited them. Contrary to Manuel’s information, the Germans had suffered a terrible defeat and had been reduced to a tenth of their original strength. The two armies joined forces and, instead of taking the direct route through Cappadocia as they had originally planned, marched down the Anatolian coast inside Byzantine territory and within reach of ports. The French went first, some of them shouting insults at the German remnants who formed the rearguard. Conrad’s health had broken down, so he and his lords sailed back from Ephesus to Constantinople, where he was nursed by Manuel himself.

The French crusaders and the Germans whom Conrad had left behind struggled on, their discipline deteriorating in the winter weather. Eleanor and her ladies travelled in horse-drawn litters whose curtains probably protected them to some extent, but they must have been miserably uncomfortable. On Christmas Day, which was being spent at Decervium, a combination of rain and floods destroyed their tents and baggage and killed many men and horses. Shortly afterwards they began to be attacked by Saracens — Turkish bowmen on fast ponies, who shot from the saddle before closing in with
yataghans
(short sabres). At Pisidian Antioch the heavily armoured French and German knights fought their way across the bridge with difficulty. They were now making for Laodicea in the Phrygian mountains, hoping to shorten the distance to Antioch. In January they found themselves in bleak hill country, the Turks watching from the peaks ready to gallop down and pounce on stragglers. Odo of Deuil tells us that ‘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’. Constant harassment by the enemy, winter storms, shortage of food and suspicion of Byzantine guides were breaking down the crusaders’ morale.

Near Attalia there was almost a disaster that might have destroyed the entire Christian army. One evening, instead of obeying Louis’s orders to camp on the crest of the pass through which they were travelling, the French advance guard went on down into the less exposed valley. (Not at Eleanor’s suggestion, as some contemporaries seem to have suspected.) This enabled the Turks to get between it and the main body of the army, which — after seizing the high ground of the pass — they at once attacked. Desperately the knights charged uphill at them but were beaten back in confusion. Louis had his horse killed beneath him and was surrounded by the enemy; he saved himself by climbing onto a rock and, with his back to the mountain, managed to parry the
yataghans
of the exultant Turks until he was rescued. Probably he owed his life to his plain armour, which prevented the enemy from recognizing him. Many of the crusaders were slain, their comrades being saved only by the onset of darkness.

Next day Louis gathered his battered army together and handed over command to a really experienced soldier, the Master of the Knights Templar, whose contingent was the only one that had kept its discipline. The Templars brought what was left of the army safely down to Attalia. It proved to be a poor place without enough food, and the king decided that his only hope of reaching the Holy Land was by sea. He had to spend more than a month hiring ships, during which time the Turks raided the neighbourhood around the town relentlessly. When the fleet was ready, there was no room for the infantry or the pilgrims, so Louis abandoned them to struggle on by land as best they might, and set sail with his chivalry.

It was a dreadful voyage, made terrifying by seasonal storms. Amid the howling wind and the high waves Eleanor may even have wished herself back in her jolting litter being shot at by Turks. To convert them into horse transports, the ships had had great doors cut in their hulls, which were caulked before sailing, and there was a constant danger that they would be stove in. A century later another crusader, Joinville, wrote: ‘For what voyager can tell when he goes to sleep at night whether or not he may be lying at the bottom of the sea the next morning?’

After three weeks the storm-tossed fleet eventually reached Saint Symeon, the northernmost port of the Latin principality of Antioch, on 19 March 1148. As they disembarked, the French king and queen were greeted by priests singing the
Te Deum
and by the prince of Antioch and his entire court, who escorted them back to the capital. Their arrival at Antioch was celebrated by tournaments, banquets and pageants. It was the brief but enchanting Syrian spring, with gardens and hillsides a mass of flowers, and the sunlight gentle but clear. Antioch, on a mountain slope above the river Orontes, had eight miles of walls, 360 bastions, and countless villas, palaces, and terrace gardens, and was still almost the glorious city of antiquity.

For the crusaders, Outremer must have been no less dazzling than Constantinople. The Latin settlers dressed like Saracens in silken turban and burnous, their ladies’ painted faces veiled against the sun. To a visitor from the primitive west the luxury of their villas seemed sinful; outside there were courtyards, rooftop gardens and fountains and wells with water piped from mighty aqueducts; inside there were mosaic floors, carpets on which to sit, tableware of gold, silver and faience, coffers inlaid with ivory and sandalwood, sunken baths, and beds with sheets. Among the novelties were soap, sugar, spices, fruits — lemons, oranges, pomegranates, persimmons — fabrics such as cotton and muslin, and the miracles of oriental medicine. Obviously the queen enjoyed it all immensely.

During her ten days at Antioch, Eleanor’s dangers and hardships were amply recompensed by such entertainments as picnics on the banks of the river Orontes, with delicacies such as snow-cooled wine and gazelle hunts with falcons. Her pleasure must have been increased by meeting many Aquitainians among the leading settlers; even the patriarch came from Limoges. But Eleanor’s chief diversion was the prince of Antioch himself, her long-lost uncle Raymond of Poitiers, who was still only in his forties.

Much of Raymond’s colourful personality is symbolized by the way in which he acquired his principality. When Bohemond II was slain in battle by the Turks in 1130 his ambitious widow Alice offered to marry her daughter Constance — who was Bohemond’s heiress — to a son of the Byzantine emperor. The horrified Latin barons and prelates of Antioch appealed for help to king Fulk of Jerusalem. Fulk decided that Raymond, being of excellent capabilities and ducal birth but landless, would make a suitable prince, and sent secret messengers to him in England at Henry I’s court. To avoid being arrested en route by the Sicilian king, who also had designs on Antioch, Raymond travelled to the East in disguise, sometimes as a pedlar, sometimes as a poor pilgrim. When he arrived he revealed himself to Alice and immediately proposed marriage. His proposal was accepted but, while Alice was preparing for her wedding, Raymond — with the connivance of the Latin patriarch — surreptitiously married the nine-year-old princess Constance in the cathedral. He was now ruling prince of Antioch by right and the unfortunate Alice had to depart into obscurity.

Raymond I’s ingeniously won principality was a rich and glorious one, but he was constantly threatened by either the Turks or the Greeks and had to spend most of his time on dangerous campaigns or in complicated and hazardous diplomacy. However, he was a brave and resourceful ruler and extremely popular with his Latin, Greek and Saracen subjects.

In addition Raymond was tall and good-looking, with great personal magnetism. Sir Steven Runciman says of him: ‘He was handsome and of immense physical strength, not well educated, fond of gambling and impetuous and at the same time indolent, but with a high reputation for gallantry and for purity of conduct.’ He could bring a war horse to a halt by the grip of his thighs, and was a famous jouster and huntsman. As befitted the son of William IX, he liked to have poems and chronicles read to him.

Unfortunately the immediate liking that sprang up between uncle and niece was so demonstrative that, despite Raymond’s reputation for ‘purity of conduct’, there were actually whispers of incest. But we hear of this allegation only from a chronicler who wrote forty years later. There are other legends of the queen’s immorality that we know to be completely unfounded; she was said to have become infatuated with a Saracen slave, although he was only a boy, and even to have slept with sultan Saladin himself — who at this date was thirteen and whom she certainly never met. Admittedly, Eleanor was quite capable of being unfaithful to a husband as monkish and bloodless as Louis. But reliable contemporary writers such as John of Salisbury and Gervase of Canterbury are plainly convinced of her innocence. There is no evidence that she slept with her uncle, and no serious historian now believes the accusation.