Courage and Cowardice on the First Crusade,1096–1099

The First Crusade provides rich material for the study of courage and cowardice in medieval warfare, partly for the variation in the types of combat situations experienced by the participants, but mostly because of the relative abundance of the sources. For a study of the First Crusade we have substantial works by four eyewitnesses, several letters from participants, and a flurry of accounts from the decade that followed. No other military campaign of the era provides us with anything comparable. Furthermore, the fact that the 2000 mile march from western Europe to Jerusalem was initiated by the papacy with promise of spiritual reward means that not only do we have material for an investigation of actions that contemporaries considered courageous or cowardly, but we can also can gain some insight into the degree to which the religious beliefs of combatants affected their behaviour in this regard.

The most studied of the sources for the First Crusade is also one about which modern historians still have not resolved a key question, namely, was the person who composed the text a cleric or a knight? The author of the Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum is unknown and the internal evidence of the work is indecisive on this issue.1 I am inclined to agree with those historians who see the author as a knight, mainly because an analysis of his social vocabulary points in that direction. ² But what is not disputed is that this is the work of an eyewitness who travelled from southern Italy with one of the more colourful crusading princes, Bohemond I of Taranto. ³ Bohemond retired from the crusade to consolidate his control of Antioch after the city fell to the Christian army on 3 June 1098, but the author of the Gesta Francorum continued on to Jerusalem and completed his history shortly after the last event that the book describes, the victory of the Christian forces at a major battle near Ascalon against al-Afdal, vizier of Egypt (12 August 1099).

This valuable history, of someone who was in the thick of battle a number of times during the crusade, is a little disappointing with regard to an investigation of cowardice and courage because the author’s narrative style does not bring out the immediacy of the experience of warfare. When it came to describing battles and sieges the author of the Gesta Francorum was terse. He was generally content to describe the expedition as a whole and not comment on the internal dynamics within it, let alone say anything concerning the psychological experience of warfare. The standard point of view he adopted was that given by the first person plural: typically he wrote of how nos viewed a certain event, meaning the whole movement. Consequently, the Gesta Francorum presents rather simplified accounts of conflict between two undifferentiated blocks, Christians and pagans. Nevertheless, the anonymous author was badly frightened at a number of stages in the expedition and these moments, together with his bitter condemnation of those who abandoned the crusade, are probably the most valuable for our purposes.

A second eyewitness, the Poitevan priest Peter Tudebode, used almost the exact same text as the Gesta Francorum for his Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere, having made some changes to it and appended his name to it (a common enough medieval practice more in the spirit of validation than plagiarism). There is a debate – which it is not necessary to rehearse here – about which text is the original, the Gesta Francorum or Peter Tudebode’s. ⁴ For a discussion of courage and cowardice the differences in the two texts are relatively minor, although Peter, uniquely, has an account worth noting of the heroic martyrdom of the knight Rainald Porchet. ⁵

Another cleric, Fulcher of Chartres, was rather better at describing the experience of warfare on the First Crusade, at least at those points where battle was taking place in his vicinity. Fulcher set out with Duke Robert II of Normandy and Stephen, count of Blois and Chartres, ⁶ but during the march through Anatolia joined his fortunes to one of the Lotharingian princes, Baldwin of Boulogne, who around 17 October 1097 detached his forces from the main body of the Christian army and marched towards Tarsus. ⁷ Fulcher stayed with Baldwin after his lord saw a remarkable advance in his fortunes by becoming ruler of Edessa (10 March 1098). This means that Fulcher was an eyewitness to the siege of Nicaea (June 1097) and the battle of Dorylaeum (1 July 1098). At Dorylaeum the outcome of the battle hung in the balance for many hours, and no other open field battle proved to be such a challenge to the Christian army. Fulcher’s testimony as he trembled in his tent during the early part of the battle is frank and absorbing. ⁸ Unfortunately, thereafter Fulcher had to use other sources for his account of what happened to the main body of the Christian army while he was at Edessa, and though he does still provide us with interesting comments, particularly on those who abandoned the expedition, his depiction of warfare lacks the vivacity of his earlier writing.

A priest who stayed with the main contingent of the crusade from start to finish and who wrote a history based on his experiences was Raymond of Aguilers, a canon of the cathedral church of St Mary of Le Puy, in the Auvergne region of France. ⁹ Raymond of Aguilers participated on the expedition with a Provençal contingent, probably that of Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy, the papal legate. ¹⁰ After Adhémar’s death (1 August 1098), like most of the southern French participants, Raymond of Aguilers joined with Count Raymond IV of Toulouse, one of the leading princes of the expedition. ¹¹ Raymond of Aguilers’s Historia Francorum was written very soon after the end of the First Crusade, as with the Gesta Francorum above, some time after the battle of Ascalon. Never quite on the front lines (although he did march out in a very prominent position for the battle between the crusaders and Kerbogha, emir of Mosul, on 28 June 1098), Raymond was nevertheless witness to a great deal of warfare and, perhaps more importantly for this study, devoted some attention to the mood of the Christian army and the rumours that circulated through the camps.

The eyewitness accounts are vastly more important for a discussion of cowardice and courage than the other histories of the First Crusade that appeared within a few years of the fall of Jerusalem. Towards the end of the first decade of the twelfth century, three Benedictine monks of northern France – Guibert of Nogent, Baldric of Dol, and Robert the Monk – decided to write their own histories of the crusade. For them, it seemed that the eyewitness works failed to draw out the appropriate theological lessons. These three authors therefore read the Gesta Francorum and rewrote it to suit their purpose. In doing so they provide us with good evidence of how the contemporary northern French clergy judged the actions of the crusaders, but not of how the army judged itself. ¹² Rather more useful, because he spoke to returned crusaders and because his history was not based on a reading of the Gesta Francorum, is the Historia Iherosolimitana of Albert of Aachen. This long work begins with an account of the First Crusade that recent scholarship suggests was written up in 1102, much closer to events than had previously been appreciated. ¹³ Finally, of some interest is Ralph of Caen’s Gesta Tancredi in Expeditione Jerosolymitana. A little late in composition (c.1113), and very much a panegyric to his former lord, the text is nevertheless of some value as it too is independent of the Gesta Francorum tradition. Moreover it was written by someone living in the newly formed crusader states in the knowledge that it would be read by participants in the First Crusade, and in particular by Arnulf, who was chaplain to Robert I, duke of Normandy, and patriarch of Jerusalem in 1099 and again from 1112 until his death in 1118. Ralph dedicated the Gesta Tancredi to Arnulf, who read over the work before Ralph gave the history its final form. ¹⁴

The material of these authors with regard to courage and cowardice on the First Crusade groups into a number of themes, and easily the most important issue for them and presumably the crusaders as a whole was that of desertion from the expedition. The other themes addressed in regard to courage and cowardice were: that the deliberate placing of oneself in danger, such as by being among the first onto the walls of besieged city, was a courageous act of some note; that bravery can be undermined by material considerations such as the state of food supply; that the leaders of the expedition considered the foot soldiers to be less reliable in battle than the knights; that the Turkish enemy was capable of courageous fighting; and, lastly, that appeals to spiritual beliefs could bolster the courage of the Christians in certain circumstances.

The most explicit discussions of courage or cowardice in the sources arose in the context of our historians commenting on those who abandoned the crusade. Desertion was an issue that was addressed very much more frequently than the combined total of all the other examples of cowardice or courage. For Raymond of Aguilers, in fact, this was one of the major issues that motivated him to write his history. It had reached Raymond’s ears that some of the former participants in the expedition who had left the crusade early were back in Europe and were presenting lies about what had happened. So in order that the friendship and counsel of these ‘unwarlike’ (imbelles) and ‘panic-struck’ (pavidi) deserters be avoided, Raymond set to work on his own account. ¹⁵

Desertion occurred at all stages of the three-year journey. Many pilgrims got no further than Rome. Fulcher of Chartres was with the contingent that had marched from Flanders and northern France, and while praying in the papal city these northern crusaders were much dismayed to find themselves being stoned by opponents of Pope Urban II, the initiator of the expedition. Indeed, Pope Urban’s supporters could only control a very small part of the city and this was sufficiently discouraging, wrote Fulcher, that many gave in to cowardice (ignavi) and returned home. ¹⁶ Again, soon after, on 5 April 1097, while preparing to sail across the Adriatic from Brindisi, the first ship full of crusaders split in two, for no apparent reason, causing hundreds of men and women to drown. At the sight of this disaster everyone else was afraid, and again many who had not yet embarked gave up on the expedition. ¹⁷

The crusading contingent marching from southern France was overwhelmed by similarly ignominious feelings when on arrival in Byzantine territory they found that instead of being welcomed they were constantly harassed by light cavalry, being driven onwards and restricted in their opportunities to buy supplies. As a result, reported Raymond of Aguilers, the whole army lost heart and everyone dreamed of leaving behind all their goods and fleeing camp, abandoning their comrades from the other contingents. Fortunately, Raymond explained, fasting and repentance so revived them that it was embarrassing to recall that desire for flight. ¹⁸

Desertion was a particular problem at the siege of Antioch, which began in October 1097 and was not concluded until the city fell to the Christian army on 3 June 1098. Desperate hunger at the end of winter had caused thousands of crusaders to disperse forty or fifty miles from the siege and recuperate in cities they had captured earlier or to friendly Armenian-controlled villages. Having braved ambush from Turks looking for companies of stray crusaders, in many cases these Christians abandoned the siege entirely. ¹⁹ While Fulcher, who was at Edessa at the time, noted only the phenomenon of desertion arising from the ‘dispersal’ of crusaders, Raymond, at the camp, saw two sides to the practice. On the one hand it did lead to both crusaders and Armenian merchants abandoning the siege as rumours came of the gathering of a large Turkish army. But on the other, skilled knights returning from various fortresses had restored their arms and armour, and so their courage (animositas) and willingness to face all dangers on behalf of their brothers grew as the cowardice (timiditas) of the army ebbed. ²⁰

The author of the Gesta Francorum focused on one particular desertion, that of William ‘the Carpenter’ (named for his hewing down of opponents), lord of Melun. ²¹ On 20 January 1098 William, in company with another person, either Peter the Hermit or Guy II, ‘the Red’, count of Rochfort, seneschal of the king of France, ²² abandoned the siege of Antioch. Tancred, a young Norman prince, nephew of Bohemond, nevertheless raced after them and brought them back in utter disgrace. ²³ William spent the whole of the night in Bohemond’s tent, lying on the ground ‘like a foul thing’ (uti mala res). The next day William stood before Bohemond, red-faced, and received Bohemond’s words: ‘O wretch and disgrace of all Francia, the dishonour and stain of Gallia. O most worthless of all whom the earth bears, why did you flee so shamelessly?’ ²⁴ The author of the Gesta Francorum continued his account of the incident by stating that although the other Franks interceded and spared William any further punishment, William broke his oath once more and fled again – more because he was seized by the greatest shame than for fear of the enemy. ²⁵ Ralph of Caen’s version of the same event makes clear this shame had a very specific cause, with its report that, as a punishment and to publicly display William’s ignominy, the Carpenter’s tent was made into a latrine. ²⁶

Another important desertion, again giving rise to cries of outrage and accusations of cowardice, was that of the contingent of Byzantine troops that had been assigned to the expedition under the command of a general called Tatikios. When, in May 1098, during the siege of Antioch, Tatikios and his men gave up on the crusade and left the camp, Raymond of Aguilers was ferocious in his condemnation, writing that such a decision brought everlasting shame on him and his troops. ²⁷

An even more significant desertion was that by Stephen, count of Blois and Chartres. Claiming sickness, Stephen had left the siege of Antioch and was recuperating in Alexandretta when Antioch fell to the crusaders. That news, however, was more than offset by the information arriving at roughly the same time that Kerbogha, the emir of Mosul, was approaching with an enormous army. It was certain that the Christians would be trapped in the newly conquered city. Having decided that the campaign to reach Jerusalem was doomed, Stephen turned back towards Constantinople and on his journey encountered the Byzantine emperor, Alexios I Komnenos, near Iconium. Alexios was bringing an army to assist the crusaders at Antioch and in order to regain control of the famous city for his realm. The author of the Gesta Francorum, who of course was not present, imaginatively reconstructed the encounter between Stephen, Alexios, and Guy of Hauteville, half-brother of Bohemond, who was in the emperor’s entourage at the time. In this dramatic scene, Stephen persuades Alexios to turn back, because by this time the Christians must be all dead, while Guy having initially given way to laments rallies himself and says: ‘perhaps you believe this foolish semi-grey-haired knight. Truly, I have never heard anyone speak of any military deed this man has performed. But shamefully and dishonourably he retreated, as someone worthless and unfortunate, and everything the wretch reports, we know is a lie.’ ²⁸ The speech is invented, but what is not invention is the anger behind Guy’s words and the sense that Stephen has committed a most shameful action. Insofar as the Gesta Francorum reflected the mood of the army at this point, it suggests a particular bitterness among the knights who had been abandoned by one of the most senior princes on the expedition.

The low point of the crusade brought a whole wave of desertions: this was after 6 June 1098, when the Christian army – only three days in Antioch – found itself trapped in the city by the arrival of Kerbogha. The situation looked desperate for the Christian knights, many of whom now lowered themselves by rope from the walls of the city and escaped under cover of darkness. Specifically, the Gesta Francorum recorded that William of Grandmesnil, Aubrey his brother, Guy Trousseau of Montlhéry, Lambert the Poor, and many others let themselves down from the wall secretly during the night and fled on foot towards the sea. ²⁹ Peter Tudebode added the name of Ivo of Grandmesnil, sheriff of Leicester, to the list and reported that many of the nobles wished to flee from the city by night. ³⁰ Raymond of Aguilers stated that many people did leave, both clergy and laity; ³¹ the rank and file of the army believed there were few princes who did not, in fact, wish to flee to the port. If it had not been for Adhémar of Le Puy and Bohemond closing the gates to the city, ‘very few would have remained’. ³² Fulcher similarly reported that many people wished to descend by ropes at night and escape. ³³ According to Albert of Aachen, when it was discovered that even illustrious lords had fled the city, very many people considered making a similar escape. ³⁴ Worse, there were princes so terrified of the plight of the crusade that, unknown to the commoners, they had formed a conspiracy to leave the city together. ³⁵ Guibert of Nogent, familiar with some of the returned knights, provided the information that Guy Trousseau of Montlhéry was the ringleader of the party of deserters listed in the Gesta Francorum. ³⁶

The fears of those knights who escaped Antioch in such a fashion proved – for reasons that none of the Christians would have appreciated at the time – to be unfounded. Kerbogha’s army was huge, but was deeply split, with figures such as Duqaq, ruler of Damascus, more desirous of a defeat for Kerbogha than that he should rule both Antioch and Mosul. The tormented Christian army achieved what seemed to be a miraculous victory on 28 June 1098, when Kerbogha’s army fell apart at the first serious fighting. Although delighted with their success, the historians of the First Crusade looked back with great bitterness at the desertions in the run-up to the battle. Their attitude became the dominant one in the Christian world. From one end of Europe to the other the Christian knights who fled the city of Antioch became known by the humiliating sobriquet ‘rope-dancers’, as is evident from the subsequent use of the term in the mid-twelfth century by the English monk Orderic Vitalis and the Byzantine princess Anna Comnena. ³⁷

Furthermore, we are in the fortunate position of having an insight into a wider public opinion than the rather exclusive readership of Orderic and Anna. The chanson de geste was a medieval form of entertainment aimed – via performances in the lordly halls of sponsors – at a far wider audience than the scholarly works of the literate. There were versemakers on the crusade itself, whose material was worked and reworked over the subsequent decades, ³⁸ and an important poem that derives from the events of the First Crusade, the Chanson d’Antioche, survives in a late twelfth-century form. While the genuinely historical information in the Chanson d’Antioche is difficult to isolate, subordinated as it is to aesthetic considerations, the poem is extremely valuable evidence for how western European knightly society judged the participants of the First Crusade some three generations later. Naturally, the heroes of the expedition are glamorized in the poem, but equally those who failed the Christians are vilified and Stephen of Blois in particular is given the part of the coward, despite the fact it would have been known he died an honourable death in 1101, in battle against an Arab army, having tried to redeem his reputation by once more journeying to Jerusalem.

Stephen is depicted as trembling all over, twitching from head to foot, when given a banner to hold at the battle of Dorylaeum. ³⁹ One of the brave knights warns the others: ‘My noble knights and lords – whatever you do don’t rely on Count Stephen, because he must be the greatest coward between here and Dijon. When he sees the worshippers of Mahommed coming for him, every last scrap of his courage will turn out to have been left behind at home.’ ⁴⁰ In the middle of the battle Stephen flings down the standard and flees, causing the remaining knights to lament that ‘Lord Stephen of Blois has signed our death warrant.’ ⁴¹ The frightened Stephen meets the other leaders of the crusade and tells them that ‘we are totally crushed’, but fortunately for the Christian cause the princes refuse to believe him and charge into the battle. With Stephen in the chanson representing all those who deserted the First Crusade, it is clear that the crusaders who abandoned the army may have saved their lives, but they did so at the cost of lasting and irreparable damage to their reputation.

Even after the seemingly miraculous crusader victory over Kerbogha had occurred, the majority of the army continued to mistrust the princes, particularly because none of the leaders showed any signs of wanting to lead the expedition onward from Antioch towards Jerusalem in the months that followed. Raymond of Aguilers, who of all the eyewitnesses had his ear most closely attuned to the rank and file of the army, wrote:

[the people] began to speak, first each to his own companion and to his neighbour, later then openly to all: ‘The princes, whether because of fear or because of the oaths they made to the emperor, do not wish to lead us to Jerusalem. Since this is the case let us choose someone courageous from among the knights, so that by performing faithful service to him we can both be safe and can reach Jerusalem with this knight as our leader, if we have God’s favour.’ ⁴²

This kind of hostility directed towards deserters and those suspected of harbouring plans for abandoning the expedition did not arise in regard to the other circumstances in which crusaders showed signs of fear. The eyewitnesses noted that members of the army were afraid on a number of occasions. The author of the Gesta Francorum had to endure terror beyond measure (nimium terror), in fact, while dreading ambush on expeditions to find water during the siege of Jerusalem. ⁴³ And on the day that Jerusalem fell, 15 July 1099, the same historian reported that the fighting did not go well at first and they had a great fear (pavor) that it would come to nothing. ⁴⁴ Raymond of Aguilers similarly acknowledged that on the night of 14 July, when the crusader assault on the walls of the city had been beaten back, the Christians feared that during the night their siege equipment would be attacked and burned. ⁴⁵ Raymond also described the Christian people as being gripped by fear on the day Kerbogha’s arrival at Antioch forced them to burn their own siege castles; to add to their woes, a famous knight, Roger Barneville, had been killed the day before while chasing retreating Turks. ⁴⁶ Anselm of Ribemont, castellan of Bouchain, wrote a letter home, to Manasses, archbishop of Reims, in which he described the vanguard of the Christian army as being ‘seized with fear’ (timore correptis) at the battle of Dorylaeum. ⁴⁷ To experience fear was not necessarily shameful, but to abandon the expedition was another matter entirely.

There were moments in battle during which Christian fighters behaved in a fashion described as cowardly and they were condemned for it: such as certain skirmishes at the siege of Antioch which, reported Raymond of Aguilers, saw the Christian forces ‘shamefully thrown into confusion and put to flight’. ⁴⁸ But Fulcher of Chartres was not embarrassed to describe his panicked flight from the rear of the army to the camp tents during the battle of Dorylaeum. This was the first time that most members of the crusader army had encountered the tactics of the light cavalry armies of the Near East, and the non-combatants were horrified to find that there was no safety behind ranks of knights and foot soldiers: the Turks simply flowed around the formations of armoured soldiers, firing arrows all the while. Ironically, Fulcher and his fleeing companions ran into a camp that was already being looted by Turks. From the perspective of these Muslim troops it seemed as though there were Christian people bravely returning to defend the tents, whereas it was really a consequence of the their ‘great fear’ (pavor grandis). ⁴⁹ Fulcher also reported that during the march through Anatolia, where desperate thirst contributed to the unhappiness of the army, there were many who regretted ever leaving home.

A letter by Anselm of Ribemont to Manasses, archbishop of Reims, quite matter-of-factly mentions two instances when the Christian army suffered defeat and was routed. On 6 March 1098, while Bohemond and Count Raymond of Toulouse were away from the siege of Antioch, those remaining to guard the camp were imprudent in attacking the West Gate of the city and were driven back. When Kerbogha, emir of Mosul, brought his army to Antioch, there was an effort by the crusaders, on 8 June 1098, to prevent his forces entering the city and reinforcing the Turkish troops who had remained in the citadel after the Christian army had entered the city. This battle was a defeat for the crusaders, who were put to flight, and Kerbogha’s troops got inside the walls. ⁵⁰ Even the official letter of the princes to Pope Urban II is not troubled by the admission of their being in a fearful (timidi) state in the face of the arrival of Kerbogha’s army. ⁵¹

These moments of fear, panic, or rout appear in the sources as without attracting a great deal of opprobrium: there is no naming and shaming of individuals who lost their nerve in battle, in marked contrast to the treatment of those who deserted the army when no fighting was taking place. The words attributed to Bohemond by the author of the Gesta Francorum in condemnation of William Carpenter and to Guy in condemnation of Stephen of Blois are extremely passionate and expressive. Yet no battlefield example of cowardice was seized upon for such passages of oratio recta; nor were persons of more lowly status made the subjects of such polemics directed against their cowardice. It was desertion that was the worst act of cowardice on the First Crusade, and the more senior the social standing of the deserter, the more condemned they stood in the eyes of the army.

In a survey of European material stretching from the laws of King Cnut of England at the turn of the eleventh century to early thirteenth-century chronicles and histories, Matthew Strickland investigated contemporary accusations of cowardice. He concluded that ‘the greatest opprobrium was reserved for those guilty of headlong flight’. ⁵² This is a rather different finding to the current study, a difference that draws attention to the context that distinguishes the First Crusade from the pattern of warfare more typical of medieval Europe c.1050–1200. Not only was the crusade of considerably greater duration than other military campaigns, it also led to the army being placed in a very precarious geographical position. As Ralph of Caen put it, in his depiction of Robert of Normandy shouting to rally the crusaders at the battle of Dorylaeum, ‘Apulia is far off, Otranto is far off, hope for each of our Latin borders is far off.’ ⁵³

Moreover, the fact that the crusader sources saw desertion as the greatest form of cowardice was almost certainly a judgement shaped by their theological outlook. For them, the crusade was understood to be a pilgrimage, and those participating in the expedition were much more than warriors, they were men and women who had taken a sacred vow, symbolized by their wearing of a cross. When King Cnut’s warriors ran from the battlefield, they broke the bond between lord and follower, to their shame. When a knight abandoned the First Crusade, he was breaking his bond with God, a far more awful deed.

If desertion was the worst form of cowardice on the First Crusade, then putting oneself in danger was the highest form of courage. The author of the Gesta Francorum did not go into precise details, but he saved his use of the adverbs fortiter (bravely) or acriter (fiercely) for such instances. Those soldiers who pressed the siege of Nicaea did so with bravery and fierceness. ⁵⁴ During the bitterest and most closely fought battle of the crusade, that of Dorylaeum, Christian women displayed bravery in bringing water from the camp to the embattled front lines. ⁵⁵ After Peter of Roaix drove off some Turks in the valley of Rugia near Antioch, the local Armenians surrendered Rusa to him, having seen how brave he was. ⁵⁶ At the crucial moment in what John France terms the ‘Lake Battle’, 9 February 1098, when the crusader cavalry met Ridwan of Aleppo’s army as it came to the relief of Antioch, Bohemond urged his constable, Robert Fitz-Gerard, to commit the reserves and charge the enemy with bravery and ferocity. ⁵⁷ Those who were first onto the walls of Marrat when the crusaders stormed the city on 11 December 1098 were acting bravely, ⁵⁸ as were the Provençal leaders Raymond Pilet and Raymond of Turenne when they attacked Tortosa. ⁵⁹ The same two knights acted bravely again when they took a scouting force from the siege of Jerusalem and encountered 200 Arab troops whom they charged. And Raymond Pilet was once more described as being a brave man when he revenged the death of Achard of Montmerle and some footmen by bravely attacking the Arab force who had killed his comrades. ⁶⁰

In Anselm of Ribemont’s second letter to Manasses, archbishop of Reims, the eyewitness wrote that he could not find the words to describe the courageous manner by which the Christian soldiers attacked the city of Antioch: ‘you should have seen how miraculous was their rushing daily through six gates … in a struggle for their lives’. ⁶¹ Again, therefore, it was the example of warriors putting themselves in danger that most elicited the admiration of the eyewitness.

When Raymond of Aguilers depicted instances of bravery, they too were – on the whole – also examples in which the crusaders chose to put themselves in danger. Although he could have remained safely in the centre of his army as it journeyed down the Dalmatian coast, Count Raymond of Toulouse bravely guarded the rear and was the last to reach camp; it was often after midnight before he was able to do so. ⁶² Raymond the historian was impressed by certain troops of Count Raymond and Adhémar who, after a skirmish during the siege of Nicaea, put themselves in great peril by entering into the range of enemy missile fire in order to try to undermine the base of a tower. ⁶³ While leading an expedition in search of supplies during the siege of Antioch, Bohemond and especially Count Robert of Flanders showed great courage when they unexpectedly encountered a relieving force coming from Damascus and attacked. But the gains from this battle were lost owing to a diminishing of bravery that allowed the Turks to leave the field without pursuit. ⁶⁴

Raymond was very moved by the sight of knights leaving camp to intercept the relieving force of Ridwan of Aleppo (i.e. leaving for the Lake Battle): despite the fact they knew they were vastly outnumbered, these knights were singing martial songs so joyously they seemed to be behaving as if the coming battle were simply a game to them. ⁶⁵ The Provençal contingent took responsibility for building and garrisoning a siege castle to close off access by the inhabitants to one of the main gates of Antioch. This small castle came under attack and just sixty knights at the bridge over the moat showed great courage in meeting arrows and rocks as thousands of Antiochene troops subsequently tried to dislodge them. ⁶⁶ When the crusaders finally captured Antioch it was as a consequence of a brave group of about sixty knights taking their lives in their hands and, after dark on 3 June 1098, climbing up a single rope to reach the walls. There was no certainty that the man lowering the rope, Firuz, would honour his profession of loyalty to Bohemond. And in any case, whether Firuz was reliable or not, all these knights were doomed should an alarm be sounded prematurely. Raymond singled out the knight Fulcher of Chartres – not to be confused with our historian – for his courage in undertaking the climb before all others. Count Robert of Flanders also came in for praise for following closely after. ⁶⁷

When Godfrey was on his way to Antioch with 12 knights, he encountered 150 Turks, and, not the least hesitant, prepared his arms, exhorted his knights, and courageously charged the enemy. But the Muslims, impressed by the daredevil choice of death rather than safety in flight, chose to have some of their men dismount so that the mounted Turks would be assured that their dismounted friends would not desert them. During the long and violent melee, Godfrey’s knights, equal in number to the 12 apostles and secure in their belief the duke was God’s vicar, were brave in charging the enemy. ⁶⁸

Fulcher of Chartres was not given to praising the crusaders for their bravery, and in fact there is only one instance of him doing so. The siege of Marrat in December 1098 proved to be a very difficult one for the Christian army, with such a severe famine arising that some of the crusaders even resorted to eating parts of the bodies of their slain enemies. Those who used the siege machines to cross onto the walls of the city did so in an assault of great boldness (magna audacitas). ⁶⁹ Fulcher was not present at the siege of Marrat and, while he did later live in Jerusalem with participants in that event, his views are most probably a reflection of his reading of the Gesta Francorum. For the anonymous author wrote that Geoffrey of Lastours was the first to get a ladder onto the wall, but the ladder broke, leaving a small number of crusaders trapped on top, assailed by arrows and spears. Some of these men were terrified and jumped off the walls, but a most valiant (prudentissimi) few held on while the wall of the city was undermined by other Christian soldiers, working with the protection of a siege tower. ⁷⁰

Both Raymond of Aguilers and Fulcher of Chartres believed that there was a relationship between material hardship and courage. The lack of markets and harassment by Greek troops noted above demoralized the Provençal crusaders to the point that they wanted to abandon the expedition and return home. At the siege of Antioch, knights ceased going on raids for food because of the fear that they would lose their mounts in a skirmish. This was addressed by Count Raymond forming a fraternity such that whoever did lose a horse would have a new one purchased for him out of the common fund. As a result, said Raymond of Aguilers, ‘our knights were not afraid to encounter the enemy’. ⁷¹ Despite this agreement, the lack of horses again became an issue, reported Raymond. When it looked like the crusade had stalled at Marrat, many people – presumably knights – gave up on account of the lack of horses and the dispersal of the Christian forces. ⁷²

Raymond was attentive to the mood of the poor crusaders as well as the knights, and he wrote that the arrival of Kerbogha’s army to trap the crusaders in Antioch saw the commoners consumed by fear and poverty. ⁷³ And again, even after victory over Kerbogha, the subsequent long wait wore out the poor, who became weary from hunger. ⁷⁴ Poverty did not just breed lethargy and timidity. It was precisely because the poor had nothing to lose and despaired of their lives that at the siege of Marrat they risked entering the city the night after the crusaders had breached the walls, where they found that the defenders had fled. ⁷⁵

Fulcher wrote that the great hunger at the siege of Antioch caused many crusaders to plan in secret to flee by land or sea. ⁷⁶ And again, many of those who were forced by necessity to forage at some distance from the siege abandoned the expedition entirely. ⁷⁷ In general, observed Fulcher, both rich and poor were desolate because of hardship, and, whether from want or cowardice, first some of the poor then some of the rich left the siege. ⁷⁸

What these observations point to is a rather pragmatic assessment of courage. Unlike the characters depicted in the chanson de geste tradition developing in Europe at the time, the participants in the First Crusade were not perceived – by the eyewitnesses at least – as being by nature fundamentally brave or cowardly. You could behave in a manner that deserved praise at some points, but condemnation at others. Even Bohemond and his southern Italian Normans, so often the heroes of the Christian army, are described as beginning to waver at Dorylaeum ⁷⁹ and to perform less than admirably in a battle against the relieving force of Duqaq of Damascus, during the siege of Antioch. ⁸⁰ Similarly, Count Raymond was a model lord at the beginning of the campaign, for being the first to rise and the last to sleep while leading his contingent through Dalmatia, and in constantly giving battle to protect the stragglers. ⁸¹ Later, as a result of illness during the siege of Antioch, he was proclaimed to be a nobody, even by his own followers, because of his shirking. ⁸² But Count Raymond’s star rose again by the time of the siege of Jerusalem, and even the pro-Norman source the Gesta Francorum praised him for the numbers of ‘Saracens’ he killed at the battle of Ascalon. ⁸³ In other words, our eyewitness sources are not overly influenced by poetic traditions requiring some knights to play the part of cowards and others as heroes: their judgement was based more upon case-by-case incidents.

The later crusading sources were inclined to tone down all criticism of knights, who, after all, had achieved what they saw as the miraculous conquest of Jerusalem. But among these sources Ralph of Caen stands out as something of an exception in that there is a much more visible influence on him of the chivalric tradition that was giving birth to works such as the contemporary Song of Roland. The idea that it was a particular mark of courage and honour to strike the first blow in battle is already strong in the Song of Roland, ⁸⁴ and it recurs with increasing vigour over the decades in the chanson tradition. Thus Wace, in his late twelfth-century Roman de Rou, describes the battle of Hastings (14 October 1066) as beginning with the request of Taillefer, a knight and a performer of songs, that he should be granted the first blow of the battle in return for all the years of service he had given Duke William. ⁸⁵ Or again, the early thirteenth-century Histoire de Guillaume le maréchal has a description of the battle of Lincoln (20 May 1217) in which the Norman troops in William Marshall’s army come to him claiming they have the right of striking first in battle, but the earl of Chester too wanted to be the first into the attack and threatened to leave the army altogether if he was refused this honour. ⁸⁶

In a similar vein to these poetic sources, Ralph has Tancred begrudge Count Raymond for being nearest the enemy and thus able to get the glory of the first wound, when the crusading army at Nicaea was attacked by a relieving force of the troops of Qilij Arslan, sultan of Rūm. ⁸⁷ Again, Ralph sees as the height of courage the attack by the Christians on the walls of Jerusalem shortly after their arrival at the city, on 13 June 1099, even though they only had one ladder. There, after Tancred was held back by his reluctant followers, Raimbald Croton earned his family dynasty the symbol of the red hand, a relic of the true cross, and undying fame for daring to be first up the ladder and put a hand on the walls of the city. Even if his hand was cut off and the attack repulsed, Raimbald was a hero, seen as fortunate by every class, from lowest to highest. ⁸⁸

It is possible to search behind the poetic imagery and identify a group of knights whose actions distinguished them as the ‘shock troops’ of the First Crusade. These were the figures who were first onto the walls of besieged cities, who were sent on dangerous missions, such as scouting for the presence of enemy armies, and who were the most ruthless in killing their enemies, military and civilian. Very often this group, composed mostly of unaligned French knights, was termed by the sources iuvenes or tyrones, words that seem to carry not so much a connotation of ‘youth’ (one of them, Albert of Montmerle, was described as being ‘white haired’) but that of knights who had yet to establish themselves as the head of a dynasty, who were without a following of their own, and who were particularly keen to prove their valour in combat. ⁸⁹ In this regard George Duby’s writings on iuvenes are relevant, and what the sources for the First Crusade demonstrate is that long before the literature associated with the tournament and the iuvenes came to its height, knights such as Everard (III) of Le Puiset, Payen of Beauvais, Drogo of Nesle, Thomas of Marle, Clarembald of Vendeuil, and Rainald of Toul were performing the kinds of deeds which were to give the term iuvenes a strong association with the concept of courage. ⁹⁰

The other matters relating to courage and cowardice in the sources receive rather less attention. Only one author commented on the difference between the courage of knights and that of foot soldiers. Raymond of Aguilers reported that the leaders of the army considered the foot soldiers of the expedition to be less reliable in battle than were the knights. When news came to the Christian camp outside Antioch that Ridwan of Aleppo was approaching with a relieving army, the Christian knights departed to create an ambush, while the foot soldiers guarded the camp. The leaders, reported Raymond, ‘were asserting that many of our army, the unwarlike and the fearful, would show examples of fear rather than boldness if they saw a multitude of Turks’. ⁹¹ But although Raymond uncritically reported the judgement of the princes on this occasion, he also wrote very positively about the foot soldiers in the context of actual fighting. In the battle against Kerbogha (a battle in which Raymond himself played a notable role, carrying the Holy Lance), one particular contingent of foot soldiers fought bravely:

When, as we said, we had occupied the whole plain a certain party of Turks had remained behind us, and they met with certain of our foot soldiers. The foot soldiers, however, wheeled about to face the Turks and manfully held back the charge of the enemy. When, then, the Turks found it impossible to drive them off, they kindled a fire around the foot soldiers, so that those who did not fear swords should at least be seized by fire. And therefore the foot soldiers were compelled to withdraw. ⁹²

Three of the eyewitnesses made observations to the effect that their opponents were capable of courageous deeds. The author of the Gesta Francorum wrote that the town of Arqa was defended bravely (fortiter) by its garrison of pagans: Turks, Saracens, Arabs, and Paulicians. ⁹³ In general the Turks were brave people, being of common stock with the Franks and the only other people naturally born to be knights. No one was braver (fortiores) than them. ⁹⁴ Raymond of Aguilers acknowledged that the defence of Nicaea was conducted courageously (viriliter). ⁹⁵ Thirdly, Stephen of Blois, in a letter to his wife, Adela, written while outside Antioch, reported that the bravest (audaciores) Turks from Armenia had hastened to enter the city and help defend it. ⁹⁶

But if Turkish soldiers were held in respect by these authors, the same does not seem to be true of their Egyptian opponents. Raymond reported a curious rumour that al-Afdal, the vizier of Egypt, intended to capture the younger Christian males in order to mate them with Egyptian women, and the younger Christian women to mate them with Egyptian men, so that the lord of Egypt would have following of warlike (bellici) Franks. ⁹⁷ The implication of the notion is that the crusaders saw themselves as inherently more martial than the Egyptians, who therefore designed to appropriate that spirit.

Finally, it is clear that appeals to the crusaders’ spiritual beliefs could assist courageous behaviour. All of the eyewitness accounts are works of people with very strong theological convictions, and it cannot be assumed that in this regard they speak for the whole army. Nevertheless, when the author of the Gesta Francorum states that those who charged with Count Raymond of Toulouse and Bishop Adhémar of the Le Puy outside Nicaea (14 May 1097) trusted in God’s protection, or that the outnumbered knights of Bohemond’s contingent who held on at the battle of Dorylaeum did so by passing along the line a message about trust in Christ and the victory of the Holy Cross, it seems reasonable to accept that the bolstering effect of such beliefs was considerable. ⁹⁸ Similarly, Raymond of Aguilers attributed a major change in spirit in the crusader army to the discovery of a relic at Antioch believed to be the lance that pierced Christ’s side. Having been paralysed by fear and poverty, the excitement of the find led the commoners at least to engage in boisterous acts and speeches in anticipation of battle. ⁹⁹ In an individual action of some personal courage arising from his theology, the knight Rainald Porchet defied Yaghi Siyan, the Turkish ruler of Antioch, after being captured on 6 March 1098. Rainald was led to the walls of the city in order to plead with his fellow Christians outside that they should raise a ransom on his behalf. But instead, when the opportunity arose, Rainald called out as much as he knew about the losses the garrison had suffered and urged on the crusaders by asserting that God was with them. For this action he was promptly beheaded. ¹⁰⁰ And describing the battle of Ascalon, on 12 August 1099, Daimbert, archbishop of Pisa – not an eyewitness but writing a letter on behalf of those who were – wrote that, upon seeing the enemy, the Christian army knelt down and prayed. As a result, God instilled ‘mighty daring’ (audaciae vires) such that anyone watching would have thought the crusaders were falling upon a sluggish stag and not an enemy army. ¹⁰¹

The First Crusade was an extraordinary expedition, lasting nearly three years before reaching a very bloody climax at the storming of Jerusalem on 15 July 1099. Perhaps it should not come as a surprise that the most recurrent context for eyewitness references to cowardice was that of desertion. For a great many of the crusading army, desertion was not an option once they had committed themselves to the march across Anatolia. They had to succeed in conquering new territory in which they could settle, or they would succumb to a Turkish army and death or imprisonment. Consequently, every desertion infuriated those determined to press on to Jerusalem and terrified them with the possibility that the expedition might disintegrate. Against this kind of betrayal, reinforced by the fact it was a betrayal of an oath to God, all other forms of cowardice seemed relatively excusable.