Catastrophe followed; Raoul was branded an ‘adulterous tyrant’ by Bernard, and the newly-weds were excommunicated by the pope, who placed France under an interdict. In an age where religion was all-pervasive, a papal interdict meant that no religious rites could be performed – no baptisms, no marriages, no burials. It was a dreadful punishment. The pope described the king as ‘a boy who must be instructed’ in how to behave, and Stephen’s brother, Theobald IV of Blois-Champagne, promptly went to war with Louis over their repudiated sister. This war resulted in a massacre at Vitry, where Louis ordered the burning of the church where 1,300 people had sought sanctuary. All were burned alive and the town became known as Vitry-le-Brûlé – Vitry the Burned.173 In a strange accident of history, the town’s Jews, who had not sought sanctuary in the church, survived, and Louis spared them. For some time after the horrific slaughter, this small town in Champagne hosted a largely Jewish population.
Louis’ delayed horror at his own behaviour led to feelings of enormous guilt and grief. He turned once more to his old mentor, Abbot Suger. On 11 June 1144, Suger’s magnum opus, the marvellous cathedral of Saint-Denis, was complete. At the dedication ceremony, Louis gave away Eleanor’s wedding present, the rock crystal vase, to his old friend. Eleanor may well have taken this as a sign that her marriage was in trouble. Suger, though, was delighted and commissioned an inscription for the base of the vase. It read: ‘As a bride, Eleanor gave this vase to King Louis, the king to me, and Suger to the saints … as a tribute of his great love.’174
But despite war, lost battles and family discord, Eleanor’s greatest problem was her inability to conceive. The marriage was under strain, and the chronicler Robert of Torigni tells us that as early as 1143 ‘a dislike had sprung up’ between Eleanor and Louis.175
The failure to produce an heir was a disaster for any medieval queen. Eleanor’s primary purpose was to bear sons to succeed their father. When Bernard of Clairvaux promised her she would conceive if she helped bring about a peace between Louis, the pope and Theobald of Champagne, a desperate Eleanor agreed. Within a year Bernard’s saintly intercession and the queen’s prayers appeared to have worked – or at least partially – when she gave birth to a daughter, and not the wanted son and heir, in 1145. She was named Marie, possibly in tribute to the Virgin Mary, to whom Bernard and Eleanor had prayed for a child.176
At the first Christmas court after Marie’s birth, Louis, in an uncharacteristically ebullient mood fired by religious fervour and the hope of absolution for the slaughter at Vitry, proposed a crusade. A year earlier, in late December 1144, Christendom had watched in horror as the emir Imad ad-Din Zengi (or Nur-ad-Din, meaning light of the religion), Muslim ruler of Aleppo, seized the crusader state of Edessa, based around the city of Şanlıurfa in southern Turkey. An appalled pope and the Christian kings of western Europe demanded ‘infidel’ blood. Now Louis determined to take back the city for Christendom.
It was Bernard, however, who pushed the initiative as the uncharismatic and weak Louis was unable to fire up his nobility for a crusade. Four months later at Easter, in March 1146, the spiritually irresistible Bernard preached the Second Crusade at Vézelay Abbey, appearing before a massive crowd and crying, ‘Hasten then to expiate your sins by victories over the Infidels, and let the deliverance of the holy places be the reward of your repentance.’ Louis, inspired as always by his powerful mentor, vowed to take the cross to protect the Holy Land for Christianity.
Eleanor would accompany him. She was the first queen of France or England to venture on crusade.
Why did Eleanor choose to go? The journey, she knew, would be hazardous. She may well have preferred to stay behind in France. Despite later entirely false claims that Eleanor was thirsty for battle, leading a battalion of bare-breasted women into war, dressed as the Amazonian Queen Penthesilea, it is doubtful that Eleanor wanted to travel thousands of miles from home. It would be hot, uncomfortable and dangerous. But she had no choice. As queen, Eleanor’s primary role was to conceive, and now in her mid-twenties and with only a daughter, she could not afford to be parted from Louis for the two or more years he would be away from France.
William of Newburgh lamented Eleanor’s presence on crusade as providing the opportunity to ‘sin’: ‘The king, whose love for his young wife was a jealous one, thought he should not leave her behind and decided to take her to war. Many other nobles did likewise and brought their wives along. And as the wives could not do without their serving women, a whole host of women found their way into that Christian camp where chastity should have reigned. And this was an occasion for sin in our army.’177 Nevertheless, at the great church of Saint-Denis on 11 June 1147, both Eleanor and Louis received the papal blessing and departed overland for Constantinople.
Their journey would irrevocably change her attitude to her marriage, and fix in the popular imagination for evermore the ‘black legend’ of Eleanor of Aquitaine – the image of the queen of France as incestuous, a nymphomaniac, an adulteress, a ‘jezebel’ and a ‘whore’.178 The legend endures; as late as 2002, a French historian accused Eleanor of being ‘a real bitch who could think about nothing but power and sex.’179
VIII
It took Eleanor, Louis and their army of crusaders four months to reach Constantinople. They arrived on 4 October 1147, where they were welcomed by the emperor, Manuel Komnenos, who offered Eleanor and Louis the use of his hunting lodge, the Philopatium.180 They stayed for a week and a half, sightseeing and attending banquets, and departed on 15 October.
Meanwhile the army of Louis’ crusading partner, Conrad III of Germany, had been devastated by attacks from the Seljuk Turks. The German crusaders were overwhelmed by completely unknown warfare – exceptionally swift horses, whose riders quickly deployed bows and arrows – and unable to retaliate effectively as they were encumbered by their heavy armour, typically consisting of a chain-mail hauberk and helmet.
Louis now joined his army to the remains of Conrad’s, and the pair departed along the coast, bound for Ephesus. They arrived on 20 December, where they were warned by Manuel Komnenos’s ambassadors that a huge force of Turks awaited them, and advised them not to continue.
Conrad, who had suffered injuries in the attacks on his army, chose to accompany the ambassadors back to Constantinople. Louis, however, insisted on pressing on, ‘forewarned in vain’, along the coast of Anatolia.181 He and his army were not lucky. They were relentlessly harassed by the Seljuk Turks, the terrain was hostile, supplies were scarce, and they suffered attack after attack. The first was on Christmas Eve. The most severe was a few days later, on 6 January 1148, while they attempted to cross Mount Cadmus. This was an enormous army of thousands of soldiers and pilgrims, reaching up to six miles in length, snaking its way through the Anatolian mountains.182 Louis brought up the rear with his guard. The baggage train and foot soldiers were in the middle; presumably Eleanor was here, the 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