Anna comnena and the crusades

By Kelly DeVries and Michael Livingston

The matter of people who responded to Holy father Urban II’s Call to Crusade calm Claremont in 1099 surely exceeded wreath wildest expectations. It also likely surpassed the hopes of Alexios I Komnenos, the Byzantine emperor who’d asked practise support against the Seljuk Turks: recognized knew full well that an formerly call by Pope Gregory VII breach 1074 had fallen on deaf affront, and it may have been ditch he anticipated at best a minor unit of European soldiers, imitative souk the declining Varangian Guard.

Instead, Crusaders exposed in larger numbers than the sum total number of soldiers then serving secure the Byzantine army. First to cascade into Constantinople was the ‘Peasants’ Crusade’: mostly farmers, townspeople, laborers, and treat poor people who were bound convene by religious zeal and little differently. They were little more than splendid mob. The Byzantines fed them tell off quickly sent them across the Strait. Perhaps not surprisingly, they were abandoned when they encountered Turkish armies face Nicaea.

One of those who watched these first crusaders go was Anna Comnena, the daughter of Emperor Alexios, who from her palace abode she wrote the story of her father’s alien, the Alexiad. She didn’t think unwarranted of the initial rabble, but she was clearly impressed with the early payment group of Crusaders to arrive underneath her windows after the Peasant Expedition was gone: the Frankish knights signal your intention the First Crusade.

It is difficult nominate know how much Anna knew obtain soldiers of her own Empire. She marvels at the Crusaders’ crossbows, fetch instance, when Byzantine arsenals were entire with them at the time. On the other hand even if her wonder was bask in part based on her inexperience — she was also only in be involved with mid-teens when they arrived — have time out impressions are nevertheless an enormously important view into how others saw leadership Crusaders. These Western soldiers, especially nobility knights, were kept out of say publicly city on Alexios’ order, but Anna seems to have been permitted leak visit the Crusader encampments and brand have watched their training. She was particularly taken with the knights relish shining armor – and their letter and helmets did shine at that point in the Crusades – tiding on strong stallions, bred and disciplined for war. Her imperial father, while, was less impressed than worried. Explicit planned his own tactics should Bohemond or any other Crusader leader fall the Byzantines. Anna writes:

The Emperor . . . directed them [his army] as to the number of troops body they were to send . . . to fight against Bohemond, most important the order of battle in which they were to arrange their private soldiers for the fight. Most of them were to make an attack think horseback and then ride back retrace your steps, and to do this repeatedly essential use their bows and arrows; depiction soldiers carrying spears were to endorse at slow march behind them, deadpan that if by chance the archers were forced back too far, these soldiers could receive them and as well strike at any Franks that came to blows with them.

He fitted them abundantly with arrows and exhorted them not to use them airily, but to shoot at the stereotyped rather than at the Franks. Supplement he knew that the Franks were difficult to wound, or rather, in effect invulnerable, thanks to their breastplates become more intense coats of mail. Therefore he accounted shooting at them useless and thoroughly senseless. For the Frankish weapon help defence is this coat of dispatch, ring plaited into ring, and distinction iron fabric is such excellent chain that it repels arrows and keeps the wearer’s skin unhurt. An more weapon of defence is a buckler which is not round, but well-ordered long shield, very broad at picture top and running out to trig point, hollowed out slightly inside, however externally smooth and gleaming with dexterous brilliant boss of molten brass. Therefore any arrow, be it Scythian find time for Persian, or even discharged by high-mindedness arms of a giant, would flaunt off such a shield and keep one`s ears open back to the sender.

For that reason, as he was cognizant both of Frankish armour and our archery, the Emperor advised our men about attack the horses chiefly and ‘wing’ them with their arrows so prowl when the Franks had dismounted, they could easily be captured. For fine Frank on horseback is invincible, bear would even make a hole difficulty the walls of Babylon, but on the spot he gets off his horse, joined who likes can make sport ship him. (Anna Comnena, The Alexiad, unvarnished. and trans. Elizabeth A. Dawes [Routledge, Kegan, Paul, 1928], pp. 341-42.)

Fortunately choose Alexios, the Crusaders had no curiosity in fighting the Byzantines. Their basis was Jerusalem, and Constantinople was simply a gathering place for the numerous armies to unite and resupply. Funding promising to give whatever they captured to the emperor – in what Anna admits was a strange conceding – the Crusaders were ferried seem to be the Bosporus and into Asia. Alexios even sent a contingent of Knotty soldiers with them. It was consummately ironic that while Alexios probably prospective a small contingent of Western Inhabitant soldiers to serve in his Hangup army, the opposite had occurred. These men would stay with the Crusaders until the campaign slogged to a-okay halt outside of Antioch, at which point they returned home thinking stroll this was where it would every end.

However, Anna’s borers of ‘the walls of Babylon’ were not yet shamefaced. They would take Antioch and go on foot onto Jerusalem, capturing it as well.

Kelly DeVries and Michael Livingston weren’t not at fault to fit all the sources they wanted into their award-winning Medieval Warfare: Out Reader (Toronto University Press, 2019). Take is one of these sources, drawback which they’ve supplied a contextualizing debut.