A Little History of the World (25 page)

Under the leadership of a French knight, Godfrey of Bouillon, a great army set off along the Danube in 1096, first to Constantinople and then on through Asia Minor towards Palestine. These knights and their followers had crosses of red material stitched to their shoulders and were called ‘crusaders’. Their aim was to liberate the land in which Christ’s cross had once stood. When, after long years of battles and unimaginable hardships, they finally reached the walls of Jerusalem, it is said that they were so moved by the sight of the Holy City, which they knew from the Bible, that they wept and kissed the soil. Then they besieged the town. It was valiantly defended by Arab soldiers, but eventually they took it.

Once inside Jerusalem, however, they behaved neither like knights nor like Christians. They massacred all the Muslims and committed hideous atrocities. Then they did penance, and, singing psalms, proceeded barefoot to Christ’s tomb.

The crusaders founded the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, with Godfrey of Bouillon as its Protector. But because it was small and weak, far from Europe and in the midst of Muslim kingdoms, the little state was forever under attack from Arab warriors. This meant that, back in England, France and Germany, priests were forever urging knights to go on new crusades. Not all of these were successful.

However, one good thing came of the Crusades, although it wouldn’t have pleased the knights at all. In the distant Orient the Christians discovered Arab culture – their buildings, their sense of beauty and their learning. And within a hundred years of the First Crusade, the writings of Alexander the Great’s teacher, the books of Aristotle, were translated from Arabic into Latin and eagerly read and studied in Italy, France, Germany and England. People were surprised to find how similar many of his teachings were to those of the Church and filled heavy Latin tomes with complicated thoughts on the subject. All that the Arabs had learnt and experienced in the course of their conquests around the world was now brought back to Europe by the crusaders. In a number of ways it was the example of those they looked on as their enemies that transformed the barbaric warriors of Europe into truly chivalrous knights.

24

E
MPERORS IN THE
A
GE OF
C
HIVALRY
In these fairy-tale times, full of colour and adventure, there was a new family of knights ruling in Germany. They took their name, Hohenstaufen, from their castle. One of them was the emperor Frederick I, nicknamed Barbarossa by the Italians on account of his magnificent fiery-red beard. Now you may wonder why history should choose to remember him by his Italian name – after all, Frederick I was a German emperor. It is simply because he spent much of his time in Italy and the deeds that made him famous happened there. It wasn’t just the pope and his power to bestow the imperial crown of Rome on German kings that attracted Barbarossa to Italy. He was also determined to rule the whole of Italy, because he needed money. ‘Couldn’t he get money from Germany?’ I can hear you asking. No, he couldn’t. Because in those days in Germany there was almost none at all.

Have you ever wondered why people actually need money? ‘To live on, of course!’ you say. But that isn’t strictly true. Try eating a coin. People live on bread and other foods, and someone who grows grain and makes his own bread doesn’t need money, any more than Robinson Crusoe did. Nor does anyone who is given his bread for nothing. And that’s how it was in Germany. The serfs cultivated their fields and gave a tenth of their harvest to the knights and monks who owned the land.

‘But where did the peasants get their ploughs from? And their smocks and their yokes and the things they needed for their animals?’ Well, mostly by exchange. If, for example, a peasant had an ox, but would rather have six sheep to give him wool to make a jacket, he would exchange them for something with his neighbour. And if he had slaughtered an ox, and spent the long winter evenings turning the two horns into fine drinking cups, he could exchange one of the cups for some flax grown by his neighbour, which his wife could weave and make into a coat. This is known as barter. So in Germany people managed perfectly well in those days without money, since most of them were either peasants or landowners. Nor did the monasteries need money, for they too owned a lot of land which pious people either gave them or left to them when they died.

Apart from vast forests, small fields and a few villages, castles and monasteries, there was almost nothing else in the whole great German kingdom – that is to say, there were hardly any towns. And it was only in towns that people needed money. Shoemakers, cloth merchants and scribes can hardly satisfy their hunger and thirst with leather, cloth and ink. They need bread. But can you see yourself going to the shoemaker and paying for your shoes with bread for him to live on? And in any case, if you aren’t a baker, where will you find the bread? ‘From a baker!’ Yes, but what will you give the baker in return? ‘Perhaps I can lend him a hand.’ And if he doesn’t need your help? Or if you have already promised to help the lady who sells fruit? You see, it would be unimaginably complicated if people who live in towns were to barter.

This is why people agreed to decide on something to exchange which everyone would want and therefore accept, something easy to share out and carry around, which wouldn’t go bad or lose its value if you put it away. It was decided that the best thing would be metal – that is, gold or silver. All money was once made of metal, and rich people went around with purses stuffed with gold coins on their belts. That meant you could give the shoemaker money for shoes, and he could use it to buy bread from the baker, who could give it to the peasant in exchange for flour, and the peasant might then use your money to buy a new plough. He wouldn’t find that for barter in his neighbour’s garden.

However, there were very few towns in Germany in the days of chivalry, so people there had little need of money, whereas in Italy money had been in use since Roman times. Italy had always had great cities and many merchants with bags of money on their belts and even more stowed away in great chests.

Some of these towns were by the sea, like Venice, which is actually in the sea on a cluster of little islands where the inhabitants had taken refuge from the Huns. Then there were other great harbour towns such as Genoa and Pisa, whose ships sailed far across the seas and came back from the Orient with fine cloth, rare spices and weapons of great value. These goods were sold off in the ports, to be sold again inland in cities like Florence, Verona or Milan, where the cloth might be made into clothes, or perhaps banners or tents. These then went to France, whose capital city, Paris, already contained almost a hundred thousand inhabitants – or to England, or even to Germany. But not much went to Germany because there was very little money there to pay for such things.

People who lived in towns grew richer and richer, and no one could give them orders because they weren’t peasants and didn’t belong to anyone’s fief. On the other hand, since no one had granted them land, they weren’t lords either. They governed themselves, much as people did in antiquity. They had their own courts of law and were as free and independent in their cities as the monks and the knights. Such citizens (called burghers in Germany or the bourgeoisie in France) were known as the Third Estate. Of course, peasants didn’t count.

This brings us back at last to the Emperor Barbarossa, who needed money. As Holy Roman Emperor he wanted to be the actual ruler of Italy, and to receive tribute and taxes from Italian citizens. But the citizens would have none of it. They were used to their freedom and didn’t wish to give it up. So Barbarossa took an army over the Alps to Italy, where he summoned a number of famous jurists in 1158, who solemnly and publicly declared that as Holy Roman emperor and successor to the Roman Caesars, he had all the rights his predecessors had had a thousand years before.

The Italian cities took no notice. They still refused to pay. So the emperor led his army against them, and in particular against Milan, the town at the heart of the rebellion. It is said that he was so incensed by their refusal that he swore not to wear his crown until he had forced the town into submission. And he kept his oath. Only when Milan had fallen, and was utterly destroyed, did he hold a banquet at which he and his wife appeared with their crowns once more on their heads.

But no matter how many great and successful campaigns he led, Barbarossa had only to turn his back and head for home for the rumblings of revolt to start up again. The Milanese rebuilt their town and refused to recognise a German ruler. In all, Barbarossa led six campaigns against Italy, but his fame was always greater than his success.

He was seen to be the very model of a knight. He was extremely strong – mentally as well as physically. And he was generous and knew how to hold a feast. Today we have forgotten what a real feast is like. Everyday life, compared to ours, may have been mean and monotonous, but a feast in those days was unlike anything you could imagine. It was indescribably lavish and magnificent, like something out of a fairy-tale. Barbarossa held one in Mainz when his sons were dubbed knights, in 1181, to which forty thousand knights with all their squires and attendants were invited. They stayed in brightly coloured tents and the emperor and his sons had the grandest one of all, which was made of silk and stood in the centre of the encampment. Fires blazed all around with whole oxen, wild boar and innumerable chickens roasting over them on spits. People came from far and wide dressed in all sorts of costumes – jugglers and acrobats and wandering minstrels who sang all the great songs of old in the evening while they feasted. What a sight it must have been! The emperor himself displayed his skills, jousting with his sons, while all the nobles in the land looked on. A feast like this went on for days. Long after it was over the minstrels continued to sing about it.

As a true knight, Barbarossa eventually went on a crusade. This was the Third Crusade, in 1189. King Richard the Lionheart of England and the French King Philip also took part. They went by sea. But Barbarossa chose to go by land and was drowned in a river in Asia Minor.

His grandson Frederick II of Hohenstaufen was even more remarkable, even greater and altogether more admirable than Barbarossa. He was brought up in Sicily, and while he was still a child and unable to rule himself there was a lot of trouble in Germany between the great rival families over who was to be the new sovereign. Some favoured Philip, Barbarossa’s youngest son, while others had elected Otto, whose family was called Welf. This gave people who already couldn’t endure each other yet another reason to squabble. If one was for Philip then his neighbour would side with Otto, and the happy custom of these rival factions – known in Italy as the Guelphs and the Ghibellines – persisted for many years. Even after Philip and Otto were long gone.