God's War: A New History of the Crusades

The orderliness of Peter’s forces stands in contrast with what followed. In mid-May, his lieutenant Walter Sans Avoir, marching only days ahead of him, negotiated a safe-conduct with the new Hungarian King Coloman, including access to markets, an important privilege as the early summer, before the harvest, were the hungriest months in the middle ages. There was trouble at Semlin on the Hungarian border over purchases of arms. Once they were across the Byzantine frontier, the hazards of early summer campaigns were exposed, Walter being refused market facilities at Belgrade, causing an affray in which sixty pilgrims died. However, the Byzantine military authorities recognized Walter as an ally and, to prevent further pillaging, provided food and an escort to Constantinople, which he reached about 20 July 1096 to await Peter. It says much for Alexius’s involvement in the project that he was so accommodating, not least as he must have been expecting the westerners to arrive some months later, when local provisions would have been more plentiful.

The speed in conveying Water Sans Avoir to the imperial capital shows the Greeks knew that Peter the Hermit’s larger force was only days behind, presenting a potentially dangerous competition for food. Although his regime rested on recent military success against the Pechenegs in the Balkans and some moderate successes in Asia Minor and the Aegean, Alexius I had witnessed too many political coups, one of them his own in 1081, to feel entirely secure. In 1094–5 there was a Balkan invasion across the Danube by Cumans, trouble in Serbia (directly on the crusaders’ line of march), stirrings of a tax revolt and a dangerous conspiracy in the army to replace Alexius by Nicephoras Diogenes, son of the Emperor Romanus IV (1068–71), the loser at Manzikert. Pressure on food in the strategically vital Balkan provinces and, still more, in the capital itself, could erode Alexius’s precarious support.⁷ Alexius needed western aid but could not allow it to disrupt his delicate political arrangements. A hungry, resentful population in Constantinople would have been very dangerous. Alexius determined to push the crusaders into Asia as quickly as possible to minimize the risk. It was less, as his daughter Anna Comnena claimed half a century later, that the emperor feared a western attack, more that he was wary of food riots or dissident Greeks recruiting the foreigners to overthrow him. From the first Alexius attempted to control his unexpectedly numerous allies through a mixture of hospitality, generosity and firm direction, careful always not to commit too many of his own stretched resources to their cause.

Peter the Hermit’s army left Cologne on 20 April. It was large, perhaps as many as 20,000 including non-combatants; the line of march in the Balkans was at least a mile long. Its passage through central Europe was rapid, averaging over seventeen miles per day, with twenty-five miles on good roads.⁸ Most of the pilgrims walked or rode, Peter apparently on his talismanic donkey, although some travelled down the Danube by boat. At Regensberg on 23 May, Peter’s followers orchestrated a mass forced baptism of the city’s Jews in the Danube. Unsurprisingly in view of the expedition’s propaganda, crusaders adopted a belligerent attitude to any who stood in their way, physically or ideologically. This emerged starkly when Peter’s army sacked Semlin in the second week of June after concerted assaults led by heavily armed knights and Godfrey Burel’s infantry. Again, the trouble arose from disputes over supplies – apparently rumours of the ill-treatment of Walter’s followers and an argument over the purchase of a pair of shoes sparked a riot that led to armed intervention – and anxiety over the prospects of help across the frontier in Byzantium. Although capable of storming a city and accompanied by carts full of treasure, under pressure Peter’s army lacked discipline.