After the tragic end of Peter the Hermit and his followers at Civetot, the great European feudal lords —the ones who really mattered— finally answered the call of Pope Urban II. Godfrey of Bouillon, Hugh of Vermandois, Bohemond of Taranto, Raymond of Saint-Gilles, Robert Curthose: all the loudest names of Western nobility set out with their professional retinues toward Constantinople.
Waiting for them was the subtle emperor Alexios I Komnenos, a consummate statesman who needed European mercenaries to recover the Anatolian lands lost to the Seljuk Turks. What he did not expect was to receive a human torrent of forty thousand soldiers with generals who intended to treat him as an equal. The tension between the Byzantine court and the rough Frankish warriors would be a constant of the entire Crusade.
After oaths of vassalage imposed by force, the crusader army crossed the Bosphorus and took Nicaea in June 1097 through a diplomatic move by Alexios himself. Barely a month later, the Seljuk Turkish army attacked the marching Christian column near Dorylaeum: the first real great military victory of the Crusade was achieved through the tactical discipline of the Frankish knights.
But the true ordeal was the march through Anatolia: 1,182 kilometers of scorched wasteland, no water, no pasture for the horses, oven-like temperatures. Thousands of crusaders died of thirst, hunger, dysentery. Some even drank the blood of their own horses. Tancred and Baldwin, the youngest and most ambitious, split from the main body to conquer Cilicia and ended up clashing over Tarsus.
The volume culminates with one of the most audacious masterstrokes of the entire Middle Ages: Baldwin of Boulogne, Godfrey's brother, gets himself adopted as son by the old Armenian ruler of Edessa, Thoros, and months later becomes lord of the city after a timely popular uprising. March 1098: the County of Edessa is born, the first crusader state in history. The Crusade ceases to be a dream and becomes facts on the ground.
