Map of the Crusades
Of very different stuff was Raymond, Count of Toulouse, the first to volunteer but the last of the Crusading chiefs actually to set out for the East. He was now over fifty years of age, and, declaring that that was the last journey he should ever make, he determined to be well prepared. With the idea of choosing a route as yet untried by his predecessors, Raymond took his way through Lombardy into the desolate country of Dalmatia and Slavonia.
"It was already winter," says a writer of the time, "when Raymond's men were toiling over the barren mountains of Dalmatia, where for three weeks we saw neither beast nor bird. For almost forty days did we struggle on through mists so thick that we could actually feel them, and brush them aside with a motion of the hand." The weak, the sick, and the old suffered terribly from the attacks of the wild natives upon their rear; the bareness of the country gave no chance of even purchasing food, much less of foraging. It was with intense relief that they entered the Emperor's domains, "for here," writes one of the travellers, "we believed that we were in our own country; for we thought that Alexios and his followers were our brothers-in-arms."
In this belief the troops of Raymond found themselves mistaken, for they were harassed on all sides by the Emperor's soldiers. Alexios, as usual, disclaimed all responsibility, and begged the Count to hasten to Constantinople. There, to his disgust, the old warrior found that Godfrey, Bohemond, and the other leaders had all taken the oath of fealty, and were very anxious that he should follow their example. This Raymond emphatically refused to do. "Be it far from me," said he to Alexios, "that I should take any lord for this way save Christ only, for whose sake I have come hither. If thou art willing to take the cross also, and accompany us to Jerusalem, I and my men and all that I have will be at thy disposal."
Meantime came news to the Count that the army he had left when he accepted the call to Constantinople, had been attacked by the troops of the perfidious Emperor, whose aim, possibly, was to frighten Raymond into submission; but he had quite mistaken his man. Furious at this treachery, Raymond called upon his colleagues to join him in an attack upon the capital. But here he met with unexpected opposition. Bohemond, indeed, went so far as to threaten that if an open conflict took place, he would be found on the side of the Emperor, and even Godfrey urged most strongly that he should overlook everything rather than weaken their cause by fighting against fellow-Christians.
Strangely enough, though Raymond accepted unwillingly the advice of Godfrey, his upright character and vigorous simplicity seem to have won the respect and affection of the Emperor more than all the rest. It is true that Raymond refused steadfastly to pay him homage, "and for that reason," says the chronicler, "the Emperor gave him few gifts"; but we read in the record of the daughter of Alexios, who gives us a vivid account of this period, "One of the Crusaders, Count Raymond, Alexios loved in a special way, because of his wisdom, sincerity, and purity of life; and also because he knew that he preferred honour and truth above all things."
By this time such remnants of the army as had lingered in Italy under Robert of Normandy, together with all that was left of the rabble led by Peter the Hermit, had joined the main body of the Crusaders and were ready to advance upon the Turkish stronghold of Nicæa.
The full array of the armies of the First Crusade, before they were decimated by war and famine, must have constituted a truly overwhelming force. Their number must have been about six hundred thousand; in the words of the daughter of Alexios, "all Europe was loosened from its foundation and had hurled itself against Asia." The horsemen wore coats of mail, with pear-shaped shields, each with its own device, and carried a long spear and short sword or battle-axe. The foot-soldiers bore the cross-bow or long-bow, with sword, lance, and buckler. "They were covered," says a Saracen historian, "with thick strong pieces of cloth fastened together with rings, so as to resemble dense coats of mail."