God's War: A New History of the Crusades

The Semlin affair put the Greeks on their guard, evacuating Belgrade, leaving it open to plunder. After a forced crossing of the river Save, the pilgrims reached Nish, the provincial capital, on 27 June, where the crisis of supplies became critical. The Byzantine governor Nicetas negotiated a market for Peter’s men in return for hostages, significantly including the military commanders Godfrey Burel and Walter Fitz Waleran. When this broke down, Nicetas imposed order by force; after a failed attempt to restore peace by Peter, his forces were scattered by a concerted Greek assault. Chastened, Peter led the survivors along the road to Sofia; at the evacuated town of Bela Palanka they regrouped and gathered the local harvest. At Sofia, on 7 July, Peter was met by an escort from Alexius that hurried them towards Constantinople, making sure they never stopped anywhere for more than three days. The battles at Nish, which cost perhaps as much as a third of his force, had been caused by Peter and his commanders losing control, particularly, Albert of Aachen recorded, of the young men.⁹ Communications along the line broke down, a sign of inexperienced leadership faced with such a large and disparate force, lacking the cohesion exerted by wealthy magnates. Exhausting marches; uncertain food supplies; alien territory and people; discomfort, fear and the prospect of hunger soured idealism. Yet, once chaperoned by the Greeks and provided with secure provisions, Peter’s army regained its integrity; Adrianople was reached by 22 July and Constantinople on 1 August, just five months after Peter’s first rallying of pilgrims in the Ile de France over a thousand miles behind.

The shambles in the Balkans served as a prelude to disaster. Alexius advised Peter against pressing forward immediately. Evidently abreast of events in the west, some princes and probably the pope having written to him of their plans, Alexius urged waiting for the arrival of the rest of forces being assembled. Reunited with Walter Sans Avoir and reinforced by some Italian levies, Peter was provided with a well-supplied base that Alexius used for western mercenaries at Kibotos, on the Gulf of Nicomedia just across the Sea of Marmora from the capital. There, the usual difficulty of countering boredom in an army camp was exacerbated by regional rivalries and the proximity of territory controlled by the Seljuk Turks, whose capital in Asia Minor was at Nicaea, only twenty-five miles away. With Peter now reduced to a diplomatic role in negotiating the level and cost of regular supplies with the Byzantine authorities in Constantinople, leadership devolved on to the separate captains in whose interest it was to engage in lucrative pillaging of the locality, regardless of whether the victims were Greek Christians or Muslims. The objectives were food, booty and action. It was a truism of medieval warfare that an armed force was never more vulnerable than when foraging. In September, French raiders penetrated to the walls of Nicaea. Not to be outdone, a contingent of Germans and Italians, under an Italian called Rainaldo, ranged further afield, seizing a castle at Xerigordo near Nicaea. There they were trapped and massacred by Seljuks from Nicaea, allegedly only those who surrendered and embraced Islam escaping to lead lives as captives and slaves, one of them being Rainaldo himself.

Disorderly conduct and confused leadership were not the sole prerogatives of these early crusade armies; a year later the princes fared little better during some of the darker days at the siege of Antioch. The populist nature of the whole enterprise now emerged, not for the last time, as a potent force in tactical decisions. Walter Sans Avoir and most of the other leaders at Kibotos argued against any precipitate response to the Xerigordo disaster, but popular demand for revenge found a spokesman in Godfrey Burel, the majority prevailing over the cautious leadership. The popular agitation provoked the main body of the crusaders to advance from Kibotos towards Nicaea. By now the Seljuk Sultan Kilij Arslan was sufficiently alarmed to take personal direction of his forces. In a series of fast-moving engagements on 21 October, a significant proportion of the Christian knights were isolated and killed, including Walter Sans Avoir, pierced, so Albert of Aachen recorded, by seven arrows, and Reynald of Broyes.¹⁰ With the elite of knights broken, the Christians were either massacred or fled, the Turks overrunning the camp at Kibotos three miles away within minutes. Only the arrival of a Byzantine relief force saved the remnants of the Christian army that had found refuge in a deserted castle on the shore; a large proportion of these would appear to have been knights.