Джеймс Миченер - The Source

The retaliation was inexorable. If the raiders of Hungary had been remorseless, those of Bulgaria were worse, and on the afternoon of July 15, 1096, a barefoot crowd of peasants swept down and isolated the contingent in which Count Volkmar and his family traveled, taking some seven hundred Germans prisoner. To his horror the count watched as the Bulgarians started methodically to chop off the heads of all, but he was saved by a knowing peasant who cried, “For this one and his family we can get ransom.” And Volkmar was led away to prison at Sofia.

In some ways this was the best thing that happened to him during the Crusade, for while he languished in jail with his wife and daughter, waiting for Wenzel to appear with the ransom money, Gunter and his knights struggled and slaughtered their way through Bulgaria, losing almost a third of their army. And when they finally did reach Constantinople they found their way barred by the great wall of that city.

“Open the gates, or we’ll tear the city down!” Gunter blustered, whereupon the Byzantine Christians dispatched a skilled army which punished the Germans badly, killing off another nine hundred. Much chastened, the Crusaders were admitted to the marvelous capital of the east just in time to join up with Peter the Hermit as he boarded a small fleet which would ferry him from Europe to Asia. With deep emotion Gunter stood in the bow of his boat, waiting to leap ashore in Asia and start the real march to Jerusalem. Of the sixteen thousand pilgrims who had started with him from the Rhine less than nine thousand remained, but as the boats touched shore these cried with great voice. “It is God’s will! Let us crush the infidel.” The Crusade was formally under way.

On October 1, long after Gunter had crashed into Asia, Wenzel of Trier returned to Sofia with a bag of ransom money, and as the governor of the prison accepted it he told the priest, “If all Crusaders had been like your Count Volkmar we Bulgarians would have given them no trouble.” With seeming regret he bade the count and his family farewell and dispatched an armed escort to lead them to the capital. “May you destroy the infidel,” he called as the little convoy headed for Constantinople.

They reached the massive walls on October 18, 1096, and Volkmar ordered the escort to halt so that he could examine the impressive fortifications, and he found that where his castle wall at Gretz had a thickness of four rows of stone, the Byzantine had twenty. “I should not like to be assaulting this fort,” Volkmar remarked to the priest.

“Sire,” the Bulgarian guard interrupted, “this is not the fort. This is only the outer wall.”

With growing astonishment the Germans entered the city, and when they came at last to a real fort Volkmar said flatly, “From an outside assault this could not be taken,” and the Bulgarian told him, “The forts held by the Turks in Asia are stronger by far, and you will have to take them if you wish to reach Jerusalem.” For the first time Volkmar sensed the kind of struggle he was engaged in.

He continued, wide-eyed, to where the roadway offered a view of the Golden Horn, with many ships moored to its twisting, resplendent shores, and he caught sight of the opposite bank, teeming with shops and merchandise. This was no rural Rhine; this was the heart of a great empire; and then he saw to the right the many-domed splendor of Sancta Sophia, radiant beside the sea, and he knew how special the city was.

When he was delivered to the underlings of the emperor he asked where his fellow Crusaders were, and was told, “We have word that Godfrey of Bouillon will arrive shortly and Robert of Normandy is coming.”

Relieved to hear these impressive names, Volkmar explained, “I meant Gunter of Cologne and Peter the Hermit.”

The man’s face darkened and he said, “Concerning them you must ask others.”

Later Wenzel prowled about the market and found that Gunter and the Germans had crossed into Asia in August and were already engaged in fighting the Turks. The news depressed Volkmar, not because he was afraid that his brother-in-law would get to his dreamed-of realms before he, Volkmar, could catch up, but rather because if fighting were at hand all men of honor should attend, and he voiced his disappointment to Matwilda. But the next day Wenzel returned with the rumor that the rabble in Asia had stumbled upon the Turkish army and had been annihilated.

For three gloomy days conflicting reports ricocheted across the shores of the Golden Horn, and at last Gunter of Cologne was ferried back from Asia, so gaunt and hollow-eyed that his sister hardly knew him. The once ebullient fighter had lost forty pounds and his blond hair was matted. His tunic was shredded and the brave cross of blue was torn half away. He was pleased to see Volkmar, but only so that he could collapse onto a brocaded bed, where he asked for water, refusing to speak.

During the first full day the haggard German slept and said nothing, then finally he stared at Wenzel, who had waited patiently by the bed, and said, “Seven of us got back.”

Wenzel called for the count, repeating to him and Matwilda what the Crusader had muttered.

“Only seven knights got back?” Volkmar asked.

“No knights but me,” Gunter replied, twisting his shoulders as if to avoid interrogation. “Of the rest, six peasants.”

“Where did you leave the women?” Matwilda asked.

Her brother lifted his head to look at her, then broke into a thin-lipped grin. “The women?” he repeated. “Have you ever watched a band of Turkish foot soldiers rush a camp of children and horses and women?” He flicked his right hand four or five times, indicating sword thrusts. He continued to grin stupidly, his face out of control.

“They were all lost?” Volkmar asked.

“Brother,” the shaken knight replied, “of all who marched with us, seven survived.”

The priest knelt beside the bed and began to pray, while Volkmar tried to visualize the small army that had marched past Gretz only five months before. Ultimately it had contained more than twelve thousand men plus three or four thousand women and children, and Gunter had lost all but seven. “Merciful God,” Volkmar prayed, “what kind of crusade is this?”

Then Gunter insisted upon talking: “It wasn’t always defeat. Oh no! We had one stirring victory. We were marching inland from the sea and came upon a village from which issued a small army of men well armed and dressed in flowing robes. With great cries we fell on them and killed them all.” He began to giggle nervously—a great blond man behaving as if he were a child, so that Volkmar and Priest Wenzel looked at each other in consternation, but after a moment he regained control and said, “When all were dead we discovered from their women that they were Christians marching to join us. But they looked like Turks … the long robes …” He half sat in bed and pleaded with Volkmar: “What right has a Christian to wear a turban?” No one spoke and he fell back on his pillow, staring at the ceiling. Where had his knights gone? the lovely women? dumb Klaus clutching his donkey hair? But Volkmar could see only chinless Gottfried, grinning vacuously that first morning at Gretz. It was he who best represented the sixteen thousand dead.

Volkmar recalled that the monks who had preached the Crusade had honestly warned, “We are going to fight for the Lord and some will die, but all who surrender their lives in the great attempt will be granted remission of sin,” so it had always been understood that there would be losses; furthermore, Hagarzi had warned that of a hundred who left not more than nine would return. The count therefore had known that the proud venture entailed the risk of death, and as a man in his late forties—an advanced age for that day—he was prepared for his own; but he was not prepared for only seven survivors out of an army of sixteen thousand. Now it was his throat that was dry.