Soldier of Crusade Read Online Free PDF Page B

well as the determination of the Emperor Alexius Comnenus to bring him to battle on a field of his choosing.
    If there had been many successes, in the end he had been beaten by a combination of factors: campaign weariness after endless forced marches, a dearth of plunder and a lack of reinforcements added to that staple weapon of the enemy he faced – wealth with which to bribe his father’s Apulian subjects as well as Bohemund’s captains in the field. Both led men who fought for no higher cause than their own personal gain, a right his followers had exercised when he had been forced to absent himself from the campaign at the same time as an emissary, a fellow Norman in the imperial service, appeared from the Emperor Alexius laden with treasure, an act which broke the cohesion of a tired army and led to an ignominious retreat.
    Unlike on his previous incursion Bohemund had no desire to push his men in the kind of swift march required to seek and wrong-foot an opponent, he being in no hurry to get to Constantinople. Other large bodies of Christian knights were on the way from Northern Europe and Germany, one of which, from the Duchy of Lower Lorraine, should already be near the capital having taken the route through Hungary. They would join those who had embarked from the ports of Bari and Brindisi under Hugh of Vermandois.
    Bohemund, busy gathering his own forces in the port cities which he controlled, had met to talk with and entertain Vermandois, as well as to seek some measure of his opinions on the forthcoming campaign, only to find himself conversing with a vainglorious fool who had never independently led men in a real battle. This boded ill for the future since, given his royal connection to the King of France, Vermandois saw himself as the leader by right of the wholeenterprise. That was not an opinion Bohemund accepted and he had enough respect for Alexius Comnenus, even if he had never met him, to believe he too would smoke that Vermandois was a dolt.
    It was most certainly not one likely to be shared by the other powerful warlords who would follow in the wake of Vermandois, especially the contingents from Toulouse and Provence, reputed to be commanded by the men who had first responded to a personal plea from Pope Urban. Likewise, those from Normandy, Flanders and England would have men in their ranks who would not readily take commands from another, for they included amongst their number the second son of William the Conqueror. It was good fortune that Count Hugh’s brother, the King, clearly a man of some sagacity, had sent with Hugh his constable, Walo of Chaumont, who was both a good soldier and, being a high official of the French Court, a practised diplomat.
    So, several bodies were reported to be ahead of the Apulians and would thus be earliest to the Byzantine capital, there to meet with Alexius and to have set the terms by which the Western armies would help to reconquer imperial lands, news of which would come to Bohemund before he reached Constantinople. Prior knowledge of what would be asked for would allow the Apulian leader to play a better hand, for, if Palestine was the ultimate aim, that presaged a long, arduous campaign over hundreds of leagues and difficult terrain, fraught with as many difficulties as opportunities.
    Unlike some of the other leaders who would answer Pope Urban’s call to Crusade Bohemund was too experienced a warrior and general to be blinded by the mysticism of the enterprise. If the aim was sacred the task was military and that required those who undertook it to be pragmatic. Added to that he was a near neighbour and recentenemy who knew Byzantium too well to just accord them the kind of Christian brotherhood likely to be spoken of in other bands of warriors, most tellingly its troubled history and endemic lack of stability.
    No one who aspired to or wore the imperial diadem could ever feel safe and that had been too often proved over centuries in a court full of