By 1095 Alexios had pacified the Balkans, brought peace to the church and
restored sound government.He was in a position to contemplate recovering
Anatolia from the Turks. He moved troops across the Bosporus and using
Nikomedeia as a base created a defensible zone, but it soon became clear
that he did not have the resources to effect a reconquest of Anatolia; his
preoccupation with Europe had given the Turks the opportunity to settle
key parts of Anatolia in depth. Alexios had made the situation still worse
at the very beginning of his reign by withdrawing the remaining Byzantine
garrisons from Anatolia. Paradoxically, the only area where there was
potential support for a Byzantine reconquest was in the Euphrates lands
and Cilicia where the Armenians had retained their independence.
Alexios needed troops. The Byzantines had long appreciated the martial
qualities of the Franks, but had reason to fear their indiscipline and
ambition. The main recruiting ground had been among the Normans of
southern Italy, but a chance meeting in 1089 opened up a new source of
Frankish cavalry. Robert I, count of Flanders, was returning overland from
a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He made a detour to pay his respects to Alexios
I Komnenos, then in winter quarters in Bulgaria. He offered to send
Alexios a force of 500 cavalry and sealed the bargain by taking ‘the usual
Latin oath’ to the emperor. The count was as good as his word and the
Flemish cavalry arrived the next year. They were sent to guard the area of
Nikomedeia, but were then evacuated in 1091 in order to take part in the
campaign against the Pechenegs which culminated in victory at Lebounion.
They were an important addition to Alexios’ forces at a critical moment.
However, Alexios required more than a contingent of 500 Flemish cavalry
if he was to have any chance of recovering Anatolia. He turned for help
to Pope Urban II (1088–99), with whom he had been conducting negotiations
over the reunion of the churches. Their outcome was inconclusive,
but relations remained cordial. Urban II knew that his mentor Gregory
VII (1073–85) had tried and failed to organise a papal expedition, which
was to go to the rescue of Constantinople and then press on to Jerusalem.
Whether Alexios knew about this too is another matter, but he was well
aware of the importance to Latin Christians of Jerusalem. In the spring of
1095 Urban II held a council at Piacenza. Byzantine envoys were present
and made a plea for papal aid against the Seljuqs, although the exact terms
in which this plea was couched cannot now be recovered. Urban then held
a council at Clermont in November 1095, where he made an appeal to
the knighthood of France for an expedition to go to the rescue of eastern
Christendom. The pope linked this with pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the
attendant spiritual rewards.He fixed 15 August 1096 as the day of departure
for Constantinople, which was to be the assembly-point.
The passage of the crusade was to present Alexios with huge problems.
The numbers are not easy to estimate. Modern calculations vary from
30,000 to 70,000 soldiers – over 100,000 if non-combatants are included.
The first contingents started to arrive in the early summer of 1096 with Peter
theHermit. They were perhaps less of a rabble than Anna Komnena would
have us believe. The swiftness of their arrival took Alexios by surprise.
He shipped them over to Asia Minor, where many were killed by the
Turks. Alexios was better prepared for the crusading armies that followed
in the autumn and winter of 1096. These were under the command of
western princes, such as the dukes of Normandy and Lower Lorraine, the
counts of Toulouse, Blois, Vermandois and Flanders, and worryingly, the
Norman Bohemond. Alexios had had time to establish markets along the
main routes to Constantinople. As the crusade leaders came one by one to
Constantinople he was able to persuade them to take ‘the customary Latin
oath’ to him, as the prospective leader of the expedition against the Turks.
Raymond de Saint-Gilles, count of Toulouse, was the leader who gave him
most trouble, refusing to take any oath to the emperor. Of all the crusade
leaders he was the closest to Urban II. The pope had consulted him before
making his appeal at Clermont and he was the first of the princes to take
the cross.He also took a vow never to return from the east. The papal legate
Adhemar of Le Puy was attached to his contingent. Raymond therefore had
some claim to be the military leader of the crusade. The emperor had to
be content with an alliance, whereby each agreed to respect the life and
honour of the other.
The first task was to conquerNicaea, nowthe headquarters of an emirate.
The Turks preferred to surrender the city to the Byzantines rather than face
the fury of the Franks. The fall of Nicaea opened the road leading up to
the Anatolian plateau. Alexios had turned down the proposal made by the
crusade leaders that he should take personal command of the expedition.
But he supplied an important contingent under the command of Tatikios,
one of his most trusted commanders. Alexios’ strategy was to encircle the
Turks: the crusaders were to force a passage across Anatolia and establish
control over Cilicia, the Euphrates lands and northern Syria, where there
was still a reasonable basis for the restoration of Byzantine rule. At first
all went according to plan and the crusaders won a great victory over the
Turks on 1 July 1097 at Dorylaion on the edge of the Anatolian plateau.
By the end of the summer they were encamped in Cilicia and had started
to blockade Antioch. Alexios followed up the victory by conquering large
parts of western and northern Asia Minor and pushing the Turks back to
the Anatolian plateau (see below, p. 710).
But the period of cooperation was soon over. Ostensibly the stumbling
block was control of Antioch, but tensions went much deeper than this.
The hardships of the passage across Anatolia followed by those of the siege
of Antioch transformed the crusade from a joint venture of Byzantium and
the west into an ideology that was fixated on Jerusalem and quickly took
on an anti-Byzantine stamp. Such was crusader hostility that the Byzantine
commander Tatikios abandoned the siege of Antioch and returned to
Byzantium. His withdrawal was taken as an act of betrayal. The crusaders’
distrust of Byzantine intentions was then reinforced by Alexios’ failure to
go to their rescue. He had set out and reached Philomelion, a Byzantine
outpost on the Anatolian plateau, when he was met by two of the leaders of
the crusade who had fled from Antioch in despair. They told the emperor
that all was lost. Alexios therefore turned back. This was the sensible thing
to do, but in fact all was far from lost. Thanks to Bohemond the lower city
was secured at the beginning of June 1098 and on 28 June the crusaders
inflicted a crushing defeat on the Seljuq relief force. Bohemond secured
possession of the city for himself, while the crusade moved on towards
Jerusalem.
World History
