reaching the holy city, Louis decided to press on regardless.
To French and German alike, suspicion of the Greeks came easily. Seen from Constantinople, the situation was very different. Straddling the crossroads between Europe and Asia, it was beset by enemies on all sides, including the Normans pressing in from Sicily and Albania. The son of a Hungarian princess, Comnenus understood very well European territorial ambitions in the Levant. As a Christian owing no allegiance to Rome, he regarded more pragmatically than Louis the possible loss of Jerusalem to Turkish or Arab Muslims. He also had no love for crusader princes like Raymond of Antioch, whose city should have been handed over to Constantinople as part-payment for Byzantine support during the First Crusade after its recapture from the Turks.
Since the Seljuk nomads from central Asia who controlled the formerly Greek territory of what is now Asiatic Turkey would break the fragile truce the moment it was to their advantage to do so, the last thing Comnenus needed was to have on the loose within his frontiers two very large European armies whose leaders might combine forces to plunder his capital as a way of financing the most difficult and costly part of the crusade, which lay ahead. 4 He had therefore separated the French and German forces neatly by exploiting Conrad’s desire to arrive first in the Holy Land and providing every facility for the Germans to leave Constantinople early while at the same time delaying the French with the problems of apparently inadequate supplies.
By the time Eleanor reached Constantinople on 4 October 1147, she had been on the road for three months since leaving Metz. The sophisticated Byzantines looking down from the city walls saw the French army as an exhausted and travel-stained rabble that took several days to assemble. To the mass of the travellers, the golden domes of thelegendary city behind its double wall of fortifications, some dating back to Septimus Severus’ rebuilding of the city in AD 196, was cause for thanksgiving. Was this not the city of Constantine the Great, who had imposed Christianity on the whole Roman Empire?
Known simply as ‘the city’, 5 Byzantium had twice outgrown its extensive fortifications like a snake sloughing off old skin. Those fortifications and the favourable site had enabled it to resist sieges by the Persians and Avars, the Arabs more than once, by the Bulgars and Russians – and more recently by the nomadic Pechenegs. The setting was beautiful, with the Golden Horn dividing the main city from Galata, where the Italian traders from Venice, Pisa and Amalfi lived in their own fortified quarters with the other foreign residents. With a population estimated at 400,000 – nearly ten times that of Paris – the sheer size of Constantinople made it a source of wonder even to the commonest crusader, who would never be allowed to set foot within the gates.
Nor was the emperor of Byzantium a mere western monarch, prepared to sally out and welcome the pilgrim king of the Franks as a brother. Remaining prudently in the Boukoleon palace overlooking the Bosporus, he sent minions to order the foreigners to make camp at the tips of the Golden Horn. If such a welcome was less warm than the promises at Ratisbon, Louis was reassured when a delegation of nobles bearing gifts arrived with an invitation for him and a few companions to enter the gates and wait upon the imperial pleasure within.
Odo’s chronicle was essentially hagiographic, to show his king as a great leader. He skates over the welcome to describe Constantinople as ‘the glory of the Greeks’.
Rich in fame, richer yet in wealth, the city is shaped like a triangular sail and hemmed in on two sides by the sea. Approaching the city, we had the Arm of St George on our right; on our left, an estuary four miles long.
The [landward] side of the city is fortified by towers and a double wall that extends for nearly two miles from the sea to the
To French and German alike, suspicion of the Greeks came easily. Seen from Constantinople, the situation was very different. Straddling the crossroads between Europe and Asia, it was beset by enemies on all sides, including the Normans pressing in from Sicily and Albania. The son of a Hungarian princess, Comnenus understood very well European territorial ambitions in the Levant. As a Christian owing no allegiance to Rome, he regarded more pragmatically than Louis the possible loss of Jerusalem to Turkish or Arab Muslims. He also had no love for crusader princes like Raymond of Antioch, whose city should have been handed over to Constantinople as part-payment for Byzantine support during the First Crusade after its recapture from the Turks.
Since the Seljuk nomads from central Asia who controlled the formerly Greek territory of what is now Asiatic Turkey would break the fragile truce the moment it was to their advantage to do so, the last thing Comnenus needed was to have on the loose within his frontiers two very large European armies whose leaders might combine forces to plunder his capital as a way of financing the most difficult and costly part of the crusade, which lay ahead. 4 He had therefore separated the French and German forces neatly by exploiting Conrad’s desire to arrive first in the Holy Land and providing every facility for the Germans to leave Constantinople early while at the same time delaying the French with the problems of apparently inadequate supplies.
By the time Eleanor reached Constantinople on 4 October 1147, she had been on the road for three months since leaving Metz. The sophisticated Byzantines looking down from the city walls saw the French army as an exhausted and travel-stained rabble that took several days to assemble. To the mass of the travellers, the golden domes of thelegendary city behind its double wall of fortifications, some dating back to Septimus Severus’ rebuilding of the city in AD 196, was cause for thanksgiving. Was this not the city of Constantine the Great, who had imposed Christianity on the whole Roman Empire?
Known simply as ‘the city’, 5 Byzantium had twice outgrown its extensive fortifications like a snake sloughing off old skin. Those fortifications and the favourable site had enabled it to resist sieges by the Persians and Avars, the Arabs more than once, by the Bulgars and Russians – and more recently by the nomadic Pechenegs. The setting was beautiful, with the Golden Horn dividing the main city from Galata, where the Italian traders from Venice, Pisa and Amalfi lived in their own fortified quarters with the other foreign residents. With a population estimated at 400,000 – nearly ten times that of Paris – the sheer size of Constantinople made it a source of wonder even to the commonest crusader, who would never be allowed to set foot within the gates.
Nor was the emperor of Byzantium a mere western monarch, prepared to sally out and welcome the pilgrim king of the Franks as a brother. Remaining prudently in the Boukoleon palace overlooking the Bosporus, he sent minions to order the foreigners to make camp at the tips of the Golden Horn. If such a welcome was less warm than the promises at Ratisbon, Louis was reassured when a delegation of nobles bearing gifts arrived with an invitation for him and a few companions to enter the gates and wait upon the imperial pleasure within.
Odo’s chronicle was essentially hagiographic, to show his king as a great leader. He skates over the welcome to describe Constantinople as ‘the glory of the Greeks’.
Rich in fame, richer yet in wealth, the city is shaped like a triangular sail and hemmed in on two sides by the sea. Approaching the city, we had the Arm of St George on our right; on our left, an estuary four miles long.
The [landward] side of the city is fortified by towers and a double wall that extends for nearly two miles from the sea to the
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