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Constantinople's territory, lost in living memory. Again, this may be read as one of the incentives prompting the Pope's call to arms at Clermont.
Alexius' chagrin and horror can be imagined when the promised aid appeared, not in the form of serried ranks of knights, but in a rag tag of footsoldiers, farmers, women and children. His opinion is undoubtedly echoed in the words of his daughter, the historian and chronicler Anna Comnena. In her biography we encounter not only a startlingly fresh account of the Crusaders from an outsider's point of view, but also the writings of a woman.
Anna Comnena (1083-1153) set out to record and celebrate her father's achievements: in so doing she produced one of the most literate, readable and convincing studies of medieval history. Unfortunately, she seems to have no special interest in her fellow women, mentioning them only in passing. The focus of her book is her father the emperor, and later Bohemund of Antioch, the Norman-Sicilian antihero of the Crusades.
"Those people, as though aflame with divine fire, flocked in crowds about Little Peter with their horses, their arms and their provisions...Behind the Celtic warriors could be seen a countless throng of ordinary people with their wives and children, all with the red cross on their shoulders. They outnumbered the grains of sand on the sea-shore....To look at them was like seeing rivers flowing together from all sides...They made up a throng of men and women such as had never before been seen..." 22
The Emperor acted with his usual far sightedness, ordering his army to control the throng, rather than attempt to turn it back. He realised that the fervour of the pilgrims would have made inveitable a bloody conflict at the heart of his empire. Instead, he offered for sale as many provisions as they could use. He also offered wise advice, suggesting that they were too ill prepared to cross the Bosphorus and try conclusions with real soldiers, the Turks.
The pilgrims refused to listen, or to take in good faith that which was offered. Perhaps they had simply grown used to taking what they wanted, or indeed, a kind of mob mentality that no one could hope to quell had taken over, so that their progression eastwards was as inevitable and as mindless as a mighty river, a matter of gravity rather than will.
Rather than buying, the pilgrims simply took. Their initial awe of the mighty city was soon overcome by small minded profiteering. They behaved, says Anna, with the utmost insolence, pulling down the palaces in the town, setting fire to public buildings, and stealing the lead from the roofs of the churches and selling it back to their hosts.
The Emperor's patience was soon tried sufficiently. The pilgrims arrived on August 1 1096. The emperor shipped them across the Bosphorus on August 6.
The countryside changes almost immediately one crosses into Asia from Constantinople. The rolling, semi fertile plains of Europe soon give way to the sheer, rocky walls of the mountains ringing the Black Sea to the north, and the desolate plateaus of the central regions of Turkey. The winters are wet and freezing, the summers scorching and dry. Subsistence is possible, but even today it is a hard life in the outback of Turkey. Without maps, guides, or any real understanding of the countryside or its inhabitants, the peasants were doomed from the beginning.
They were about to clash with a newly arrived culture which might be fairly described as equally barbaric, but better organised and having the advantage of local knowledge. The Turks were a group of nomadic horsemen who had arrived in the region half a century before. Their roving bands of lightly armed horsemen had shattered the remnants of Byzantine military organisation in the region. Now their scouts were to be seen on the shores of the Bosphorus, within sight of the City of Alexius.
Peter advanced as far as the village of Helenopolis, where he pitched camp. By this time, the army was such in name only: if it had ever had any semblance of military discipline, it had long since disappeared. It was no more than a locust like plague, consuming all that it encountered. (Anna claims that a plague of locusts always preceded the pilgrims). Many of the villages they advanced through were Christian: it made no difference to the Christian pilgrims - they plundered all and killed all that they encountered. According to Anna, a body of French crusaders separated from the army and with the utmost cruelty plundered the countryside around Nicaea, the capital of the Turkish emir, Kilij Arslan. She says that they dismembered some babies, and spit roasted others. This outrageous behaviour demonstrates not only the contempt with which the Franks held the pagans, but also the results of the loosening of the bonds of behaviour which accompanied the notion of Crusade. It was to become depressingly familiarin the years ahead.
The elderly captives of the Crusaders were tortured.
The incensed Turks inside Nicaea came to the rescue of their people. The Crusaders won a pitched battle, driving them back and taking to camp a great deal of plunder.23
After this victory, some German pilgrims, confident of God's support, seized the small castle of Xerigordon.
This was the beginning of the end for the peasants.
The local sultan, Kilij Arslan, now sent his army to deal with these troublesome invaders. They surprised the Germans at Xerigordon, killing many and driving the rest into the citadel.
There, the unfortunate Germans endured the hell of thirst, until they were forced to the straits of drinking blood and urine, before surrendering to thier anticipated fate.24
Meanwhile, the remaining peasants had fortified themselves at Civetot. Peter seems to have left them at about this time, to return for further discussions with the emperor at Constantinople. Throughout, he seems to have displayed a remarkable skill at self preservation, a nose for danger that stood him in good stead in many a tricky spot.
Kilij Arslan, knowing that the Franks lusted for gold, set ambushes between Civetot and Nicaea. He then had it rumoured throughout the Frankish camp that Nicaea had fallen and was ready for plunder. 25
At the news of plunder, says Anna, all the men abandoned their women and children and raced towards Nicaea, forgetting all military discipline. The few hundred men who might have been accorded the rank of knight did not even bother to wear armour. The Turks simply shot down the horsemen from ambush, and the rest of the rabble were then slaughtered by hand.
Thus, thousands of peasant soldiers were massacred on October 21 at a place called Drakon: so many died, says Anna, that their collected remains made not a hill, but a mountain.26
Her words might seem an exaggeration, were they not to be confirmed by Fulcher of Chartres, who saw mounds of skulls when he passed through the killing fields the
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