Byzantine Negotiations during the First Crusade, Part 1
This is going to be the first part of a multi series on negotiations during the First Crusade.
This is going to be the first part of a multi series on negotiations during the First Crusade. The intent is to analyze the negotiation itself and the tactics used by several players during the First Crusade. This will be specifically about the negotiations between Emperor Alexios Komnenos of the Eastern Roman Empire and several Crusades leaders.
Back then they did not see themselves as “Crusaders,” instead they saw themselves as “armed people going on a pilgrimage.” Which brings me to my next point, the need to look at the mentality and getting into the heads of people that think differently from you is one of the first steps of negotiation. This article is a good way to start doing that, by going into the heads of people that lived almost 900 years ago.
This article was adapted from a 15 page paper I had to do for my MBA negotiations class. The prompt was to create a 10 to 15 page paper and speak about a high level negotiation and identify specific techniques, tactics and other insights about that negation that we learned from the class. Examples that Professor Chris Erickson encouraged us to do include the camp David accords, mergers between corporations, or any high-level negotiations we were personally involved in during our careers. I chose to talk about the Crusades simply because it was so different than what my other classmates were doing and it was an example on how people in ages past were not that different from us. I would like to show how human beings are the same no matter what era they lived in, and no matter the societal context.
The general format of the series will be the following:
The first part of this article will give a general background on the First Crusade and the geopolitical context that led to the Crusade happening in the first place.
Once that is out of the way, I will give a summary of the negotiation of an individual negotiation as well as some takeaways from it. I will sprinkle in both the concepts that was covered in the class, as well as some takeaways from my personal experience.
Without further ado here is the first part of:
Byzantine Negotiations during the First Crusade
The First Crusade took place during an interesting time in history with major geopolitical changes occurring during the late 11th century. It was a time of massive social changes in both the eastern and western Christian world, as well as the western part of the Islamic world that led to the perfect storm for a movement like the Crusades to happen.
This article is not about First Crusade in general, but rather specifically the negotiations between the Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire Alexios Komnenos, and the various army leaders of the First Crusade. For the average person who is not familiar with the First Crusade, many are unfamiliar with the fact that despite the sheer numbers of the crusaders and their camp followers were enough to cover miles of roads and often takes days to pass a single town, there was no single leader of the entire operation. In fact there were several armies from various places in Europe, and they all spoke different languages and had different customs and cultures.
While not apparent at the time, these negotiations will determine not only the nature of how the “great armed pilgrimage” and its leadership structure will function, but also how the future geopolitics of the region will develop.
The so called “People’s Crusade” will not be discussed since there were no negations with such a disorganized massive mob and the Empire just quickly ferried them over to Asia Minor without any negotiations.
The negotiations between Emperor Alexios and the leaders of the Crusaders were often overlooked in the public perceptions of the First Crusade, and this paper will describe the tactics used, and most importantly the outcome of such a massive movement that will shape the course of history that is still being felt to this day.
An Overview
Before we talk about the negotiations we need to talk about the nature of the Latin Crusaders and how they came from a variety of locations in western Europe and often spoke completely different languages and have different customs from each other.
Emperor Alexios Komnenos’ was the original impetus of the First Crusade since his original call for help from the west created a chain reaction that ultimately created this mass movement. What began as a calling for assistance from Pope Urban II for warriors to help him retake Anatolia (modern day Turkey) from various Turkic peoples eventually led to the Council of Clermont where Pope Urban called for a cessation in Western Christendom to stop fighting each other and instead help out a fellow Christian state in the East who had lost more than 70% of its territory over the past four hundred years, and was only left with the rump territories of modern day Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Istanbul (Constantinople)—this state was only hanging on by a thread in a struggle for existence.
Pope Urban II called for a “great armed pilgrimage” (the term “Crusade” was a later invention) that will help out the Eastern Christians. While much can be said about the conditions of the various people and regions, this series will focus on the negotiations, as well as the conditions, stakes, and tactics used between Emperor Alexios and a few leaders of the Crusade: Hugh of Vermandois, Godfrey De Bouillon, Bohemond of Taranto, and Raymond de Toulouse.
While there was traditionally a count of eight armies with eight respective leaders that negotiated with the Emperor, we will be focusing only on the first four that arrived to Constantinople not only because it laid the groundwork for the negotiations from the others, but the negotiations with the latter three, Godfrey of Bouillon, Bohemond of Taranto, and Raymond de Toulouse were arguably the most difficult ones and the aftermath led to more leverage towards Emperor Alexios. The later leaders apparently swore fealty to the Emperor without too much incident.
General Geopolitics
Before we jump into the actual negotiations, we need to look at the general geopolitics of the Eastern Mediterranean which changed remarkably during the late 11th century following the defeat of the Eastern Roman empire at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. After that battle, the geopolitics of the entire region was altered. What we know as modern-day Turkey was then known as Anatolia, and the eastern provinces were the easternmost remnants of the Eastern Roman Empire, which used to also consist of Egypt, Syria, and the western portions of Modern Day Iraq—all lost to the Arab Muslim invasions four hundred years earlier.
After that battle, the formerly secure eastern provinces were penetrated by nomadic Muslim Turks from the Turkish Seljuk Empire (who at this point conquered Persia and Mesopotamia (modern day Iran and Iraq) but could not penetrate Anatolia due to a secure defensive screen that the Eastern Roman empire created on several mountain ranges that separated Anatolia from the other side (Iraq, Syria, and Persia).
After the Battle of Manzikert, Turkish nomads were free to simply migrate into Anatolia with no opposition and the general demographics of the region changed from a Christian Greek speaking region to an Islamic Turkish speaking one.
One Turkish leader even took over the city of Iconium (modern day Konya in Turkey), settled down and declared himself “the Sultan of Rome” and created the Turkish “Sultanate of Rum.” Decades of civil war followed the Eastern Roman Empire, and it was a very chaotic time to be in Anatolia—which was the perfect setup and for a new status quo.
Map of the Byzantine Seljuk Wars, from Wikipedia
After decades of civil war, Alexios Komnenos ultimately won the civil war through a series of compromises (which is worthy of a negation paper unto itself) and became the sole Emperor of what was left of a diminished Eastern Roman Empire but simply lacked manpower and army strength to rectify the situation in the east.
His general plan was to reconquer the southern coast of Anatolia starting with Nicaea (present day Iznik), and ending with Antioch (present day Antakya) which was the major city and traditional stronghold against the Muslims in Syria. From there he could move against the more entrenched Sultan of Rum and retake the Anatolian hinterland.
The southern route was also the traditional trade and pilgrimage route to Jerusalem and had better infrastructure, was easier to resupply via sea, and was easier to reconquer compared to the flat plains of Anatolia which ironically resembled the vast steppes of Turkestan and favored the traditional fighting style of Turkish Steppe Nomads.
However, in order to accomplish all of this Alexios needed more manpower than the exhausted Eastern Roman empire could provide after decades of civil war and Turkish Invasions.
Aftermath of the Battle of Manzikert and the following Civil War:
Courtesy of Wikipedia:
Background Of Emperor Alexios Komnenos
Before we go any further, we need to look at the Position of Emperor Alexios Komnenos, the current Emperor of the Eastern Romans, and the person who knocked the first domino that eventually cascaded into the arrival of the Crusade at the gates of Constantinople.
The first thing to note is that position of Roman Emperor at this time was not an absolute monarchy. Alexios himself was technically a “usurper” that won his throne in the previous Civil War that engulfed the Roman Empire after the disaster at Manzikert.
While his family, the Komnenoi, were in charge of the Imperial Throne and the civil apparatus of the empire, they had to make a lot of compromises with their former opponents, including various factions within and without the empire. Again, this complex process that the Komnenoi created is worthy of several negation articles unto themselves but the most important takeaway is that this was NOT the secure absolute monarchy that previous Emperors of the Roman Empire enjoyed and keeping this position was in no way guaranteed.
Not only that, the cosmopolitan empire’s various factions also had various contacts throughout the known world as well, including the Latins (a catch all for the Italians, French, Germans,English, etc), the Slavs up north (including the powerful Rus of Kiev), and even amongst the Islamic polities as far away as Baghdad, Egypt, Syria and Turkestan. Diplomacy was always used in the empire and Alexios Komnenos was no stranger to it, which is how he became the purple clothed Emperor to begin with.
It is also important to note that the records, we have of this meeting came from a myriad of sources, which were often written decades after the fact, which were written from different perspectives. The main sources that I will use for the facts of the meeting are the following: The Alexiad by Anna Komnene, the daughter of Emperor Alexios, the Writings of Albert of Aachen, who wrote these sometime later based on the accounts from returning veteran crusaders, the Gesta Francorum (author unknown but definitely a Frankish source), and William of Tyre's History (Deeds done Beyond the Seas).
Each of these sources are incredibly biased since most were written from different perspectives (For example: Anna Komnene was Alexios’ daughter, and the Latin Chroniclers favored their own “side”). These sources often contradict each other due to the fact that they were not only written decades after the events but also written with hindsight in order to justify the falling out that each side had during the latter part of the First Crusade (specifically during the siege of Antioch when both sides claimed that the other side broke their respective agreements during this specific negotiation). I will recreate the most likely story of what happened based on my own interpretation of what happened and my own commentary of it. A complete list will be listed in a separate article so you can come up with your own conclusions.
The next article will dive into the actual negotiations. It is important to know the entire background before analyzing the nature of each one since jumping in will simply cause a lot of confusion. Next time, the first Crusader Army will arrive at Constantinople, the City of the World’s Desire.