Yet despite the care Alexios took in welcoming the Crusaders, things did not always go according to plan. The situation became uncomfortably tense following Godfrey of Bouillon’s arrival near Constantinople shortly before Christmas 1096. Despite repeated requests, the Duke of Lorraine refused to cross over the Bosphorus, plunging the emperor into ‘an ocean of worry’, as he was deeply concerned about the presence of a substantial body of experienced knights in close proximity to his capital.64 When Alexios’ efforts to encourage and cajole Godfrey to cross over had little effect, he resorted to more direct methods. A heavily armed squad was dispatched under the command of his son-in-law, Nikephoros Bryennios, with orders to use force to move Godfrey and his men away from the city to their designated quarters on the eastern side of the Bosphorus.65
It was not long before the Byzantine troops and Godfrey’s men engaged. ‘Roaring like a lion’, the duke himself killed seven members of the imperial force, while Bryennios’ unerring aim as an archer marked him out as an equal to Apollo himself – at least in his wife’s eyes. The significance of the encounter, however, lay less in the prowess of those who fought and more in the fact that Alexios had to resort to force to make the Crusaders obey his instructions.66
To start with, these efforts to dislodge Godfrey had little effect. His men ransacked the grandest properties on the outskirts of Constantinople, causing extensive damage to the city and its citizens.67 When the military response did not work, Alexios decided to withdraw supplies and he ‘removed barley and fish from sale, then bread to eat, so that the duke would be forced in this way to agree to see the emperor’.68 This was a bold move, which risked escalating the situ ation. But it worked. Godfrey backed down and agreed to meet with the emperor in person after Alexios offered his eldest son, still not ten years old, as a hostage in yet another attempt to win over the duke.69
Godfrey and his followers arrived for their meeting splendidly attired, in ermine and marten robes lavishly fringed with purple and gold – clothing that was symbolic of their power and status.70 Terms were finally agreed between the two sides, with Godfrey consenting that his men be transported across the Bosphorus to join up with the other knights at the designated holding camp near Kibotos. In return, he was rewarded with heaps of gold and silver, purple robes, mules and horses.71 Alexios got what he wanted. While largesse, bribery and brute force had failed, the withholding of supplies served to underline that Alexios held the upper hand in his relations with the Crusaders. As one westerner noted candidly, ‘it was essential that all establish friendship with the emperor, since without his aid and counsel we could not easily make the journey, nor could those who were to follow us by the same route’.72 Stopping provisions was an effective way of driving the message home.73
The use of force was a last resort; in most cases, the handling of affairs by the imperial administration in 1096–7 was remarkably successful and the arrival of the western knights was managed calmly and smoothly. This was partly due to the attention and generosity that the emperor showed to the expedition’s leaders. But other, more practical steps helped minimise the threat to the capital. For example, access into the city itself was strictly controlled and westerners were only allowed through the forbidding walls in small groups. According to one source, only five or six people per hour were let into the city.74
Alexios’ priority was to get knights to cross the Bosphorus to Kibotos, where arrangements had been put in place to receive and supply large numbers of men. This was a matter of urgency, as the emperor’s efforts against Godfrey of Bouillon showed. As we have seen, when the Crusaders approached Constantinople, a sense of foreboding had spread through the city. Some speculated that the expedition’s real target was not Jerusalem but the Byzantine capital itself. The Crusaders, wrote Anna Komnene, were ‘of one mind and in order to fulfil their dream of taking Constantinople, they adopted a common policy, which I have often referred to before: to all appearances they were on pilgrimage to Jerusalem; in reality, they planned to dethrone the emperor and seize the capital’.75 This view was not just confined to Byzantines, who tended to be suspicious of the hidden agendas of foreigners. Other observers, like Michael the Syrian, writing on the periphery of the empire, also believed that the Crusaders had not only skirmished with the Byzantines but had launched an outright assault on Constantinople.76
The fears of the capital’s inhabitants were heightened by the attacks of Godfrey of Bouillon. Anxiety was greatest among those closest to the emperor. Alexios’ few remaining allies in Constantinople believed that hostile factions within the city would take advantage of the arrival of the Crusaders to rise up against the emperor. Some wanted to settle scores going back to seizure of power by the Komnenoi, and there were also more recent grievances in the wake of the Diogenes conspiracy. According to the Alexiad, at one point the emperor’s followers rushed to the palace to mount a desperate last stand against the disaffected inhabitants of the city, whom they expected to rise at any moment. The emperor was urged to put on his armour and prepare for a fight to the death, but Alexios remained impassively on his throne in an admirable display of theatrical sangfroid.77
Rumours of plots to overthrow Alexios continued to circulate both inside Constantinople and beyond its walls. Mysterious strangers approached at least one of the western leaders when he reached the capital, warning that the emperor was devious and wily, and urging him not to trust Alexios’ promises and flattery.78 Add to this suspicions about the Crusaders and their intentions, and moving the Crusaders on to Kibotos was essential for the security of Alexios’ regime.79 The presence of large numbers of armed men so close to Constantinople was dangerous in itself; but there was the additional concern that those in the city might look for help from the newly arrived cohorts, or simply take advantage of the edgy situation, to make a move against the emperor.
Alexios had considered this in advance. Although he had brought all the principal western leaders to Constantinople ahead of their men to entertain them and win their goodwill, he also sought to bind them to him formally. One way he did so was by adopting them as his sons. This was an old tradition whereby Byzantine emperors established a spiritual and paternal relationship with foreign magnates. The Crusaders did not seem to have thought this strange; it was the emperor’s custom to adopt high-ranking foreigners, wrote one chronicler, and the leaders were happy to acquiesce.80 Another simply noted without comment that Alexios adopted all the western leaders as his sons.81 But sensitive to the fact that adoption was a uniquely Byzantine custom, Alexios reinforced the bond with the main leaders in terms that they would certainly understand: Bohemond, Godfrey, Raymond of Toulouse, Hugh of Vermandois, Robert of Normandy, Robert of Flanders and Stephen of Blois were all asked to swear an oath of fealty to the emperor.
Fealty was a key element in the feudal structure and well established in western Europe by the time of the First Crusade. It created a relationship with specific legal implications between a vassal on the one hand, and a master on the other.82 Paying homage, the vassal committed to serve his lord and not harm him by swearing an oath over the Bible or another suitable religious object, such as a sacred relic, in front of a cleric. It was this loyalty that Alexios Komnenos sought to extract from the visiting Crusaders. As Anna Komnene later put it, the emperor was asking each leader to become his ‘anthropos lizios’ – his liegeman.83