King of the North Wind: The Life of Henry II in Five Acts. Claudia Gold
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safest place from attack, together with the unarmed pilgrims and the other women. The cavalry were at the front. One of Eleanor’s vassals, Geoffrey of Rancon, led the army with Louis’ maternal uncle, Count Amadeus II of Maurienne. But the different parts of the army, as a result of poor communication and poor leadership, became separated as Geoffrey and Amadeus continued on without waiting. The Turks then ambushed, and they struck at the most vulnerable part of the crusader army – the baggage train. Hundreds fled, and many hurtled down the cliffs to their deaths; the Turks slaughtered those they caught. Louis and his guard rushed to defend the baggage train, but the Turks murdered Louis’ personal guard, forcing him to scramble up a rock and defend himself.
Louis survived, and the remnants of his army gradually came together again. But he was humiliated, and William of Tyre wrote: ‘That day the glorious reputation of the Franks was lost through a misfortune most fatal and disastrous for the Christians; their valour, up to this time formidable to the nations, was crushed to the earth. Henceforth, it was as a mockery in the eyes of those unclean races to whom it had formerly been a terror.’183
Now, however, Louis realised the imperative for discipline, although those whom the majority believed had led them to disaster – Eleanor’s vassal and Louis’ uncle – went unpunished. Louis would not reprimand his own uncle, but all the Poitevins, including the queen, were tarnished by association, and Odo of Deuil wrote that Geoffrey of Rancon ‘earned our everlasting hatred’.184 The small force of about 130 men brought by the Knights Templar were the most effective part of his army, and now Louis ceded control and allowed them to lead.
Supplies were scarce and the army was starving. It was bitterly cold as they picked their way across the mountains in mid-winter. The army limped on. Battered and demoralised, it took them nearly a month to reach Attalia, where they hoped to replenish their supplies. But the town was poor and there was nothing to buy – no horses, little food, no clothes, and certainly no ships to take them to the Latin Kingdom. Louis and Eleanor decided to set sail for Antioch with a small force, leaving the army to travel by land to meet them. Less than half the army they left behind would make it, and most of the pilgrims starved to death or were murdered by the Turks. Thousands died.185
Finally, on 19 March 1148, Eleanor and Louis arrived at the port of Saint-Simeon at Antioch. Here at the court of Eleanor’s paternal uncle, Prince Raymond, they stayed for nearly two weeks, recuperating and planning.186
Raymond was ruler of Antioch by right of his marriage to Constance, daughter of Bohemund II, a marriage facilitated by Fulk, now king of Jerusalem. Raymond was only a few years older than Eleanor, born in 1115. He welcomed his niece and the French with generosity and hospitality. Antioch must have appeared incredibly exotic to the Franks. Prince Raymond served Middle Eastern dishes, including sugar; hot baths and even soap were available.187 Eleanor and Raymond were delighted to see one another and spent hours talking privately. The chronicler William of Tyre describes him as ‘a lord of noble descent … the handsomest of the princes of the earth, a man of charming affability and conversation’.
Raymond was keen to impress Eleanor and Louis, hoping the arrival of a French crusader army would help him increase his power in northern Syria. William of Tyre speculated on Raymond’s motives: ‘he felt a lively hope that with the assistance of the king and his troops he would be able to subjugate the neighbouring cities, namely Aleppo, Shaizar and several others. Nor would this hope have been futile could he have induced the king and his chief men to undertake the work.’188 The plan was self-serving; but it made sense for both Raymond and the French crusaders. Louis’ original intention was, after all, to take back Edessa, which would be made easier by the capture of Aleppo first.189
Louis, however, may have feared for the poor state of his army, ravaged and depleted by the months it had taken them to cross Anatolia. He refused to fight alongside Raymond. William of Tyre wrote that he had changed his mind about taking Edessa, deciding he did not want to delay his visit to the Holy Land any longer; he ‘ardently desired to go to Jerusalem to fulfil his vows’.190 But Eleanor disagreed. Speed was now important; Suger, acting as regent in the royal couple’s absence, was sending alarming reports of an uprising by Louis’ brother, Robert of Dreux, and begged the king to return.
Eleanor’s intense conversations with Raymond may well have included discussion as to who would inherit Aquitaine. As she and Louis had no male heir, it is imaginable that Raymond put his own claim to Eleanor. Eleanor and Louis, fundamentally disagreeing on the direction of the crusade and possibly on the inheritance of Eleanor’s own duchy, had a vicious fight which ended in Eleanor refusing to accompany Louis to Jerusalem, threatening to withdraw her vassals, and asking for a divorce.
It was Eleanor who first told Louis that their marriage was ‘incestuous’ during their ferocious argument in Antioch. John of Salisbury wrote: ‘[W]hen the King made haste to tear her away, she mentioned their kinship, saying it was not lawful for them to remain together as man and wife, since they were related in the fourth and fifth degrees. At this the king was deeply moved; and although he loved the queen almost beyond reason he consented to divorce her if his counsellors and the French nobility would allow it.’191 Eleanor, it seems, knew that there had been some problems when they married, but John suggests that Louis did not, and that Eleanor was the first to tell him.
But the sources go further. She was later accused by some contemporary chroniclers of having an adulterous – and incestuous – affair with her uncle Raymond.
These sources are William of Tyre and John of Salisbury. Both were contemporaries, but both wrote about Antioch many years later – John after a period of fifteen years, and William twenty to thirty years later. William was in France when Eleanor and Louis were in Antioch, but he professed to have followed the crusade closely.192 And although John was with the papal court in Tusculum (Frascati) at the time, he was with the royal pair and their entourage when they stopped at Tusculum on their way back to France, and he must have heard the gossip. John wrote that:
the most Christian king of the Franks reached Antioch, after the destruction of his armies in the east, and was nobly entertained there by Prince Raymond … He was as it happened the queen’s uncle, and owed the king loyalty, affection and respect for many reasons. But whilst they remained there … the attentions paid by the prince to the queen, and his constant, indeed almost continuous conversation with her, aroused the king’s suspicions. These were greatly strengthened when the queen wished to remain behind, although the king was preparing to leave, and the prince made every effort to keep her, if the king would give his consent.193
William of Tyre claimed that an embittered Raymond was behind Eleanor’s anger towards Louis:
Raymond had conceived the idea that by [Louis’] aid he might be able to enlarge the principality of Antioch … When Raymond found that he could not induce the king to join him, his attitude changed. Frustrated in his ambitious designs, he began to hate the king’s ways; he openly plotted against him and took means to do him injury. He resolved also to deprive him of his wife, either by force or by secret intrigue. The queen readily assented to this design, for she was a foolish woman. Her conduct before and after this time showed her to be, as we have said, far from circumspect. Contrary to her royal dignity, she disregarded her marriage vows and was unfaithful to her husband.194
This is a damning portrait of Eleanor. She is parodied as a ‘foolish’ woman, easily influenced to commit adultery with her uncle. Later writers, taking their cue from William and John, believed that the queen’s behaviour had been, at the very least, ‘scandalous’. Gervase of Canterbury told of ‘discord’, and wrote, tantalisingly,