patron saint of France. In Aquitaine, the bees were busy in the olive blossom and the water pastures were green in Poitou when Eleanor ended her recruiting drive and set out on the road north at the same time as the pope was crossing the Alps. Their paths converged inside Suger’s glorious new basilica, where Eugenius blessed the assembled banners that would serve as rallying points for desperate men in the press of battle. He handed a pilgrim’s staff and scrip to Louis, who was clad in a simple tunic devoid of decoration. Then the pope lifted from the altar the oriflamme symbolising the saint’s protection and consecrated it to the holy purpose.
Although Eugenius’ bull proscribed luxuries like fine clothes and cosmetics – along with swearing, gambling, camp followers, concubines, falcons and hounds – so long was the ladies’ baggage train that they and their retainers were sent ahead after the ceremony to ensure that the numerous ox-wagons would not impede the marching foot-soldiers and mounted knights. Abbot Suger’s thoughts on seeing France’s glamorous queen and so many other ladies thus fortuitously leading the crusade against which he had fought in vain are not recorded.
In his hands he held Louis’ crown, entrusted to him as regent for the duration of the crusade or until the king’s death – whichever came first. Despite the continual enormous drain on the finances of state, the abbot of St Denis governed well, showing himself an enlightened, far-sighted and humane ruler, enacting new and fairer systems of taxation and even passing conservation laws to protect the forests under threat. Prefiguring the attempt of that other younger brother – John Lackland – to usurp Richard Coeur de Lion’s throne during his absence on the Third Crusade, a group of nobles did conspire to set on the throne of France Louis’ younger brother, Count Robert of Dreux, when he returned from the Holy Land several months before the king. Invoking the threat of excommunication for this defiance of the protection afforded to every crusader, Suger put down the rebellion before it got started. Undermining his influence on Louis was the greatest disservice Eleanor did to her first husband during their marriage.
The polyglot Frankish host, including Bretons, Poitevins, Gascons, Normans and Burgundians, all speaking their own languages, rendezvoused in the Moselle Valley at Metz, the capital of Lorraine.If the knights and barons were motivated by a mixture of religious fervour and desire for adventure, many of the poorer crusaders were there simply for food. Dependent on Eleanor for daily handouts, thousands of her subjects had been starving at home and would have signed on for any enterprise that guaranteed food in the belly. Others were robbers, rapists and murderers for whom Abbé Bernard had procured pardon conditional on their taking the cross. To Suger’s objection, he had replied that it was a wondrous demonstration of the love of God that France should be thus rid of its scum and paupers while they in turn would be rewarded with paradise, from which they would otherwise be excluded. 17
By this time Conrad’s smaller army was far ahead in the Danube Valley. After securing the election of his son Henry as his successor under the guardianship of the archbishop of Mainz, the emperor had not waited for the French to arrive. For one thing, it would have been logistically impossible to feed the combined armies off the land in the same areas at the same time. Even travelling separately, the sanitary problems caused by 100,000 men and women on the move in conditions of zero hygiene defies the modern imagination. In addition there was the excrement of their animals; each knight had at least one destrier or warhorse and two palfreys for general riding – plus the thousands of draught and pack mules and oxen.
Except for the outbreaks of plague, disease was to some extent contained during the feudal period by the immobility of
Although Eugenius’ bull proscribed luxuries like fine clothes and cosmetics – along with swearing, gambling, camp followers, concubines, falcons and hounds – so long was the ladies’ baggage train that they and their retainers were sent ahead after the ceremony to ensure that the numerous ox-wagons would not impede the marching foot-soldiers and mounted knights. Abbot Suger’s thoughts on seeing France’s glamorous queen and so many other ladies thus fortuitously leading the crusade against which he had fought in vain are not recorded.
In his hands he held Louis’ crown, entrusted to him as regent for the duration of the crusade or until the king’s death – whichever came first. Despite the continual enormous drain on the finances of state, the abbot of St Denis governed well, showing himself an enlightened, far-sighted and humane ruler, enacting new and fairer systems of taxation and even passing conservation laws to protect the forests under threat. Prefiguring the attempt of that other younger brother – John Lackland – to usurp Richard Coeur de Lion’s throne during his absence on the Third Crusade, a group of nobles did conspire to set on the throne of France Louis’ younger brother, Count Robert of Dreux, when he returned from the Holy Land several months before the king. Invoking the threat of excommunication for this defiance of the protection afforded to every crusader, Suger put down the rebellion before it got started. Undermining his influence on Louis was the greatest disservice Eleanor did to her first husband during their marriage.
The polyglot Frankish host, including Bretons, Poitevins, Gascons, Normans and Burgundians, all speaking their own languages, rendezvoused in the Moselle Valley at Metz, the capital of Lorraine.If the knights and barons were motivated by a mixture of religious fervour and desire for adventure, many of the poorer crusaders were there simply for food. Dependent on Eleanor for daily handouts, thousands of her subjects had been starving at home and would have signed on for any enterprise that guaranteed food in the belly. Others were robbers, rapists and murderers for whom Abbé Bernard had procured pardon conditional on their taking the cross. To Suger’s objection, he had replied that it was a wondrous demonstration of the love of God that France should be thus rid of its scum and paupers while they in turn would be rewarded with paradise, from which they would otherwise be excluded. 17
By this time Conrad’s smaller army was far ahead in the Danube Valley. After securing the election of his son Henry as his successor under the guardianship of the archbishop of Mainz, the emperor had not waited for the French to arrive. For one thing, it would have been logistically impossible to feed the combined armies off the land in the same areas at the same time. Even travelling separately, the sanitary problems caused by 100,000 men and women on the move in conditions of zero hygiene defies the modern imagination. In addition there was the excrement of their animals; each knight had at least one destrier or warhorse and two palfreys for general riding – plus the thousands of draught and pack mules and oxen.
Except for the outbreaks of plague, disease was to some extent contained during the feudal period by the immobility of
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