The anti-Semitism spread. When Godfrey of Bouillon set out in the summer of 1096, he vowed to eradicate the Jews; he was only stopped from doing so after being warned by Henry IV that no hostile steps should be taken against anyone in his realm without his explicit authority. Such was the revulsion towards Godfrey that one Jewish contemporary prayed that his bones be ground to dust.8 This surge in anti-Semitism as a result of the Crusade was not confined to the Rhineland; there were also cases of violence in France threatening to turn into wholescale massacres of Jewish communities.9
Many contemporaries were appalled. One writer noted that those involved in the persecution of the Jews were threatened with excommunication and with serious punishment by the leading magnates – though neither seems to have had any effect.10 These German thugs, wrote Guibert of Nogent, represented the very worst of society; they were the faeces of the peoples of Europe.11
This view was echoed in Constantinople. Alexios had asked for, and was expecting, experienced fighting men to arrive in Byzantium towards the end of 1096, in accordance with the timetable set out by the Pope. He was startled not just by the fact that the first waves to reach the empire arrived months too early; it was also apparent that many of those who had come were completely incapable of taking on the Turks, let alone mounting a siege of the towns of Asia Minor. It is hardly surprising that, in the words of Anna Komnene, ‘he dreaded their arrival’.12
As the many groups making up the People’s Crusade approached Constantinople, anxiety grew. Appalling acts of violence were committed as the first of the armed pilgrims neared the Byzantine frontier in the spring of 1096. The commander of the Hungarian army, a distinguished figure with dazzling snow-white hair, was beheaded after being sent by the king to escort the pilgrims safely across his territory.13 The cocktail of religious fervour, excitement and ill discipline proved even more volatile when the first elements reached Belgrade, the empire’s westernmost entry point on the Danube. Caught off guard, the Byzantine authorities struggled to deal with the situation. The sale of provisions was banned outright by imperial officials so supplies could be hastily rationalised. This provoked an immediate reaction from the westerners who went on the rampage, sacking the surroundings of Belgrade in anger. Calm was finally restored, but only after the Byzantine garrison secured the town by using force against the rioters. Once enough provisions had been organised, a market was opened up which appeased the jumpy wouldbe Crusaders.14
A more effective response had been organised by the time Peter the Hermit himself arrived at the Byzantine frontier at the end of May 1096. Leo Nikerites, a man promoted in the wake of the Diogenes conspiracy, treated the contingent with diligence and care: according to one account, Peter the Hermit and those travelling with him received everything they asked for – all their requests were to be granted, as long as they behaved well.15 Nevertheless, frequent trouble accompanied the various strands of the People’s Crusade as it snaked towards Constantinople. Towns in Byzantium’s western provinces were regularly assaulted and the local populations attacked. In an attempt to contain the damage, markets were established exclusively for the Crusaders along the main road and escorts appointed to accompany the westerners, with orders to deal with troublemakers and stragglers by force if necessary. The arrival of Peter the Hermit in Constantinople was reportedly preceded by a plague of locusts that ravaged all the vines in Byzantium.16 This was widely seen to be an omen of the impending swarm of westerners about to reach the capital.
Anna Komnene’s account of the emperor’s misgivings as the first waves of Crusaders approached Constantinople is usually interpreted as an attempt to absolve him of responsibility for an expedition which would have damaging consequences for relations between Byzantium and the west. However, it is difficult to see how Alexios can have been anything other than deeply dismayed by the appearance of Peter and his followers in Constantinople. The emperor’s concerns, already heightened by reports brought back by his scouts, only grew when the vanguard of the People’s Crusade arrived in the capital. Even Latin sources note that their behaviour was appalling: ‘Those Christians behaved abominably, sacking and burning the palaces of the city and stealing the lead from the roofs of the churches and selling it back to the Greeks so that the emperor was angry and ordered them to cross the Hellespont. After they had crossed they did not cease from their misdeeds, and they burned and laid waste both houses and churches.’17
In the past, the emperor had dealt with sizeable groups of westerners, such as the 500 knights from Flanders, with little difficulty. But his first experiences with the Crusaders were harrowing. Having made them cross over to Asia Minor to minimise the threat to Constantinople itself, the emperor expected them to wait for other contingents before moving against the Turks. Yet such was their enthusiasm and misplaced confidence that they set out for Nicaea at once, sparing no one they met on the way. According to the Alexiad, they acted ‘with horrible cruelty to the whole population; babies were hacked to pieces, impaled on wooden spits and roasted over a fire; old people were subjected to every kind of torture’.18 Western sources are equally damning. It was not just the Turks who were brutalised, says the anonymous author of the Gesta Francorum; vicious crimes were also committed against Christians. There was no escaping the cruel irony that having set out to defend the Christian east from pagan oppression, the participants of the People’s Crusade were ransacking and destroying churches in northern Asia Minor.19
Spurred on by the conviction that they enjoyed divine protection, one group advanced on Xerigordos, a small but well-fortified castle east of Nicaea. They took it without difficulty, slaughtering its Turkish inhabitants. Yet the ambition and single-mindedness of the Crusaders to take on anyone in their way, coupled with a lack of any clear plan, soon turned out to have catastrophic consequences. It was not long before the euphoria in Xerigordos was replaced by panic as a large Turkish force closed in to recover the fort.
The situation soon became desperate: ‘Our men were so terribly afflicted by thirst that they bled their horses and asses and drank their blood; others let their belts and clothes into a sewer and squeezed out the liquid into their mouths; others urinated into one another’s cupped hands and drank; others dug up the damp earth and lay down on their backs, piling the earth upon their chests because they were so dry with thirst.’20 When the westerners surrendered, they were met with little mercy. The Turks marched through the camp murdering clerics, monks and infants. Young girls and nuns were carried off to Nicaea, as were clothes, pack animals, horses and tents. Young men were forcibly converted to Islam, relinquishing the Christian faith that had inspired them to head east in the first place.21 Those who refused suffered horrible deaths: they were tied to posts and used as target practice by the Turks.22
The Turks now advanced on Kibotos, storming the camp set up by Alexios. People were slaughtered in their beds and the tents set on fire; those who did not flee into the mountains or jump into the sea were burnt alive. Conversion to Islam or death were again the options offered to those taken prisoner. Rainald, one of the leaders of the People’s Crusade’s foray into Asia Minor, chose the former, concluding that it was better to submit than to be murdered.23 Others met their fates decisively. A priest found celebrating Mass was decapitated in front of the altar; ‘what a fortunate martyrdom for that fortunate priest’, exclaimed one chronicler, ‘who was given the body of Our Lord Jesus Christ as a guide up to Heaven!’24 So many were reportedly killed in the first contact with the Turks at Xerigordos, Kibotos and elsewhere that the mass of bones of the fallen were heaped up in huge piles. They were then crushed by the Turks to make mortar for filling cracks in the walls of fortifications: thus the bones of the first wave of knights seeking to fight their way to Jerusalem were used to obstruct the men following after them.25