Manuel I Comnenus: Encyclopedia II - Manuel I Comnenus - The Second Crusade and Raynald of Chatillon

Manuel I Comnenus - The Second Crusade and Raynald of Chatillon

The first test of Manuel's reign came in 1144, when he was faced with a demand by Raymond, Prince of Antioch for the cession of Cilician territories. However, later that year the crusader County of Edessa was engulfed by the tide of a resurgent jihad under Imad ad-Din Atabeg Zengi. With Raymond's eastern flank now dangerously exposed to this new threat, there seemed little option but to prepare for a humiliating visit to Constantinople. Raymond realised that immediate help from the west was out of the question, so swallowing his pride he made the journey north to ask for the protection of the Emperor. After submitting to Manuel, he was promised the support that he had requested, and his allegiance to Byzantium was secured.

However, Manuel was prevented from following up his early successes in the east, for events to the west meant that his presence was urgently required in the Balkans. In 1147 he granted a passage through his dominions to two armies of the Second Crusade under Conrad III of Germany and Louis VII of France. At this time, there were still members of the Byzantine court who remembered the passage of the First Crusade. The Crusade was a defining event in the collective memory of the age and one which had fascinated Manuel's aunt, Anna Comnena, who describes some of the leaders of the Crusade in her Alexiad, a biography of her father, Manuel's grandfather Alexius I Comnenus. Many Byzantines feared the Crusade, and this view was encouraged by the numerous acts of vandalism and theft practiced by the unruly armies as they marched through Byzantine territory. Byzantine troops followed the Crusaders, attempting to police their behaviour, and further troops were assembled in Constantinople, ready to defend the capital against any acts of aggression. This cautious approach was well advised, but still the numerous outbreaks of overt or secret hostility between the Franks and the Greeks on their line of march, for which it seems both sides were to blame, nearly precipitated a conflict between Manuel and his guests. Wisely, by 1148 Manuel had secured an alliance with Conrad, whose sister-in-law Bertha of Sulzbach he had earlier married. But Conrad died in 1152, and, despite repeated attempts, Manuel could not reach an agreement with his successor, Frederick I Barbarossa.

Yet Manuel's attention was to be drawn to Antioch again in 1156, this time as a result of an appalling atrocity: the new Prince of Antioch, Raynald of Chatillon, invaded the Byzantine province of Cyprus. Having ransacked the island and plundered all its wealth, his army mutilated the survivors before forcing them to buy back their flocks at exorbitant prices with what little they had left. Manuel responded to this threat in a characteristically energetic way. He assembled a huge imperial army, and lost no time in marching on Antioch. Indeed, the speed of his advance was such that he managed to surprise the Armenian Thoros of Cilicia, who had participated in the attack on Cyprus. All the towns and cities of Cilicia fell to Manuel immediately, and Thoros himself only just managed to escape into the mountains at the last moment.

News of the astonishingly swift advance of the Byzantine army soon reached Antioch, where it struck terror into the heart of Raynald. Realising that he had no hope of defeating Manuel's formidable army, he also knew that he could not expect any help from King Baldwin III of Jerusalem. Baldwin did not approve of Raynald's attack on Cyprus, and in any case had already made an agreement with Manuel. Thus isolated and abandoned by his allies, Raynald decided that abject submission was his only hope. He appeared before the Emperor, dressed in a sack and with a rope tied around his neck, and begged for forgiveness. Manuel at first ignored the prostrate Raynald, chatting with his courtiers; the Latin historian William of Tyre commented that this ignominious scene continued for so long that all present were "disgusted" by it. Eventually, Manuel forgave Raymond on condition that he became a vassal of the Empire, effectively surrendering the independence of Antioch to Byzantium. The terms of this arrangement demonstrate that from the beginning, Manuel was not only interested in achieving the aim of his father and grandfather in restoring Antioch to the Empire, but was also interested in a broader sense in using the Latins and the West to bolster the Empire's position in the eastern Mediterranean as a whole. This interest was to involve him in Crusading adventures in Egypt later on, a region where the Byzantine Empire had not been active for many centuries.

Satisfied with his efforts thus far, Manuel headed back to Constantinople. On their way back, his troops were surprised in line of march by the Turks. Despite this, they won a complete victory, routing the enemy army from the field and inflicting heavy losses. In the following year he drove the Seljuk Turks out of Isauria.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The Second Crusade and Raynald of Chatillon", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki