478 – A Fire Sale for the Faithful

Welcome to the British History Podcast.

My name is Jamie, and this is episode 478: A Fire Sale for the Faithful.

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It's September of 1098, and Duke Robert was setting out on Crusade, intent on taking the main pilgrim road to Rome and into Norman Italy.

Joining him were his retainers, soldiers, and supporters, including high-ranked figures like Count Robert of Flanders, Stephen of Omall, who was that forgettable guy that de Mowbray tried to install on the throne of England, and of course, his uncle, Bishop Odo of Bayeux.

But the point I'm getting at here is that this was a very large company.

In fact, even Abbot Giarento, who was the papal legate, was leaving Normandy along with Robert.

So we're talking about a gargantuan force here.

And then shortly before they left Rouen, Hellias of La Flechie arrived, and he wanted to make the company even larger.

Now, Hellias was the Count of Maine and a powerful noble, so he would have been a valuable addition to the Crusaders.

But he was all too aware of who and what Rufus was.

And so, before he went on crusade, he wanted a guarantee of peace from the Red King.

Hellius was more than happy to go and fight for God, but he didn't want Rufus to steal his lands while he was gone.

And Rufus listened to this request and told him, quote, you can go wherever you like, but before you do,

hand over Le Mans

and the whole county, for I am going to have what my father held, end quote.

Hellius was outraged, and he insisted that he held the legal right right to Maine.

But if Rufus wanted to dispute that, he should submit his complaint to the judgment of the nobility.

And Rufus responded with,

that, I will plead my case with sword and lance.

At which point, Hellias says, oh, well, I guess I don't have to go east for a crusade.

I'm just going to mark my horses and arms with a cross and have a crusade right f ⁇ ing here, asshole.

And so then Rufus said, love it.

Tell me where and when, because I am going to recover Le Mans, whether you're cosplaying as a crusader or not.

Basically, things got out of hand immediately.

And so Robert jumped in and he sternly told both men,

look, you two work this out, but Rufus is in charge.

I gotta go.

Thanks, dude.

Great job.

Though, honestly, Robert really did need to go, like, fast, because they were late.

And being late for this campaign wasn't just a faux pas.

It was potentially deadly, because they needed to cross the Alps before the snow set in.

But, despite the urgency of their departure, and the fact that Rufus was threatening war with Maine before Robert had even left Rouen,

Spirits within the group were probably still quite high.

I mean, in addition to the fact that they were going to go and fight for God, which was the 11th century definition of awesome, there was also the added perk that Robert had an incredibly fat purse, thanks to the fact that he leased the duchy to his younger brother for 10,000 marks.

And as Robert was famous for sharing his wealth with his friends and supporters, we can assume that this company was headed off to Holy War in both style and comfort.

But left in Duke Robert's festive wake was King Rufus of England.

And now everyone who stayed behind had to deal with him.

And I can't stress enough how unlikely this situation was and how entirely contingent it was on the First Crusade.

If Pope Urban hadn't given that speech, this lease would not have happened.

And I know, usually I'm a lot more circumspect and say things like probably when talking about counterfactuals.

But in this case, nah, man, Robert would not have leased freaking Normandy for quick cash.

And were it not for the Crusade, I suspect that war between Normandy and England would have continued for much longer.

And perhaps eventually some sort of truce would have been struck.

But what definitely wouldn't have happened was that lease agreement.

Because the first crusade didn't just reshape the East, it detonated the West.

What began as a pious march turned into the largest redistribution of land, power, and cash that Europe had seen in a century.

And it had begun before a single crusading knight reached Byzantium.

And in that chaos, Rufus thrived.

The fact was, going on crusade was expensive as hell.

And so the European nobility were doing whatever they could to raise the funds that they needed to free the Holy Land from,

I guess, the people who were already living there.

And that often meant leasing or outright selling properties that were under their control.

And here's the thing.

The Prince's Crusade, which actually consisted of multiple armies, was gigantic.

It's estimated to have been as large as 160,000 people, with as many as 30,000 knights and a ridiculous number of higher-ranked nobles commanding over them.

And so in order to fund this campaign, a bunch of them were just selling off properties to the folks who weren't going on crusade.

Which means that all of a sudden, the real estate market was flooded.

And it was flooded at the exact same moment that available buyers suddenly shrank, which further crashed the demand for these properties.

And this was already a pretty limited market.

I mean, if you're a noble in Flanders trying to sell a few estates, your best hope is going to be any rich neighbors that you might have, with maybe a few folks with political connections to the area thrown in.

So not a lot of people, even at the best of times.

And historians like Frank Barlow note that this rush to gather funds created a situation where the Crusaders were forced to sell or mortgage their properties incredibly cheaply in order to fund this campaign.

And that's what they did.

But on top of that, here's something else interesting about the First Crusade.

Not a single king marched east.

Now, we're not told why.

Barlow suggests that this might have been a papal policy, but I can't find any clear statement in the record to that effect.

I didn't see it in any of Urban's speeches or other material, and Barlow's assertion lacks any footnotes or citations.

So it's probably just a guess on his part.

And it's just as possible that there were no kings going on crusade because,

well,

it was expensive as hell.

And it created a situation where noble dynasties were fire sailing their properties.

And if you are higher on the social ladder with access to funds, well, that's an opportunity for you to increase your dynasty's long-term wealth.

And after 2008, I feel like this is something we are all too familiar with.

The financial industry crashed the global economy, and average people were forced to sell their property at a loss just to survive.

But

those who were higher up on the economic ladder, many times the people who just happened to have deep links to the financial system that created the crash in the first place, well, they had cash on hand and they were eager to add your family home to their portfolio.

What a wonderfully lucky coincidence for them.

Yeah, like that.

And so, properties were rapidly changing hands, and for prices far below their value.

And even if you weren't selling a property and were just mortgaging it like Robert did with Rufus, it was still well below the price that it normally would have gone for.

So kings and other assorted nobles who had cash on hand and decided to stay home were making out like bandits.

And that's a bit odd given that the church wasn't a big fan of usury at this point in history, and this absolutely smacked of usury.

But the church was letting a lot of things slide in order to get this campaign going, and this money tree-style exploitation was just one of them.

So, not only do I assert that Robert never would have offered a lease if it wasn't for the First Crusade, but even if he did,

he definitely would have charged more than 10,000 marks.

So, do you see what I'm getting at with how unlikely this was and how great it was for Rufus?

Hell, even the manner in which the truce and transfer was conveyed was incredibly unlikely.

I mean, the Pope had agreed that he wouldn't send any papal legates into England.

And yet the man who had carried Robert's offer was papal legate Garento.

And Rufus had just accepted his presence.

Because honestly, this was an offer that was just too good to pass up.

And then, against all odds, the papacy gave Rufus another gift.

Except this one was probably entirely unintentional.

You see, the legate decided to push his luck.

It wasn't enough that he was allowed to come to England without permission.

No, now that he was here, he decided to complain about the state of the English church and King Rufus' role in that.

Perhaps he was expecting the king to go ape, as he had done in the past.

But Rufus was in one of his conniving moods.

And so instead, the king decided to take advantage of what Hugh of Dijon called, quote, the insatiable depths of Roman avarice, end quote.

And he sent the Pope 80 ounces of pure gold in hopes that that would silence the Pope's criticism.

And to the king's delight, it worked.

And this is another hint at how the instability caused by the First Crusade was creating an environment where someone like Rufus could thrive.

Because I wonder if Urban and his allies would have been so quick to accept quick cash were it not for the First Crusade and the still ongoing succession crisis with anti-Pope Clement III.

I'm guessing they wouldn't have, but here we are, and as soon as they accepted that payment, this formed yet another piece of evidence that, at least as far as the king was concerned, the church had just as much moral superiority as the Norman barons who were also on his payroll.

And when you look at Rufus' behavior towards the church, it is plainly apparent how much of an impact these decisions by the church were having upon the king's respect for them, or lack thereof.

So Europe was experiencing a social restructuring as a result of the First Crusade, which was changing property ownership all throughout the West and was also changing the relationship between the church and the public, and also the church and the nobility.

And it was all setting up some long-term problems for the church, not the least of which was Rufus himself, because Rufus was one of the biggest beneficiaries on this land bonanza that their war had kicked off.

I mean, he was able to reunite his father's cross-channel empire, and that was a big issue because the goal for the church, since at least the days of Hildebrand, was for the nobility to be ruling under the church, which Rufus was clearly never going to accept.

So that's not good.

But apparently, that was a problem for future church.

And once the deal was formalized and Normandy was transferred into the king's hands, he surged into action, leaving England to the care of his justiciers and other trusted counselors, and he focused all of his attention on Normandy, because Normandy had been his priority all along.

And now, after multiple failed attempts to seize it through military power, he had finally achieved his goal.

His father's stronghold was his.

And if he played this right, maybe it could stay his.

So, despite all of his bluster at Hellias, Rufus didn't launch a war for Le Mans.

Not immediately, anyway.

I guess he figured there'd still be time to beat up a crusader later on.

And instead, he focused on consolidating his power in Normandy.

And with the church taken off the board, he only needed to focus on secular politics.

Rufus quickly occupied the administrative heart of Normandy and took control of the ducal fortresses.

This move enabled him to assert power over the barons in the short term and potentially assert power over his brother in the longer term.

Now, As we discussed, Rufus had been draining the English coffers for years in his efforts to seize Normandy, largely by bribing Norman barons to switch sides and join him, and of course paying soldiers to fight the barons who refused.

Now, obviously, he didn't get all of the barons to flip, but he did get enough of them to create a nearly constant headache for Duke Robert.

And now that Rufus was sitting in Rouen, All of those bribes had a lucky side effect, because they ensured that a significant chunk of barons were already in his pocket before he even took the ducal throne.

The second half of Rufus' luck was that the Norman barons were not stupid.

And so the loyalists, the ones who had refused the bribes and stuck by Robert's side,

well, a good chunk of them decided that since Robert was going on crusade, They probably should go as well.

And as I mentioned earlier, this included figures that we are familiar with already, like good old Uncle Odo of Bayou.

When Robert announced that he was going east to fight for God, Odo signed right up.

And that makes perfect sense to me.

I mean, Odo was getting pretty old these days, and considering all the things that he had done in his life, and how many of them were things that were expressly forbidden since the burning bush, well, it's unlikely that the big guy was going to be all that that pleased with him when he finally stomped up to the pearly gates.

And so, for Odo, the Pope's offer of absolution couldn't have come at a better time.

And besides, it wasn't like he was going to stick around in Normandy once Rufus took command.

Odo was more than familiar with his nephew and knew exactly how vindictive he was, especially against people who had rebelled against him.

So yeah, time for a road trip.

And Odo wasn't the only Norman noble who made that calculation.

A bunch of them did.

Which means that when Rufus swept into Normandy, he received the duchy without any recorded opposition.

At all.

And this was almost certainly because anyone who would have opposed him was already going on crusade.

And as for the people who remained, most of them were probably on his payroll.

And so the king's efforts at consolidating his power were going remarkably well.

At least in Normandy.

As for England, well, Rufus had left the care and governing of his piggy bank in the hands of his regency council, who were likely Ranolph Lambard, Robert Fitzimo, Bishop Robert Bleuet of Lincoln, Ursa of Abatot, and Bishop Aukellin.

These were the king's loyalists, and Rufus put them in charge because he knew that they would rule more or less like he would have done.

It was the same strategy that his father had used a generation earlier when the conqueror placed Odo and Fitz Osbourne in charge of England while he returned to Normandy.

Now, granted, England was in dire straits at this point, and the council had as difficult a task, if not more so, than the one that the bastard had left for Odo and FitzOsbourne decades earlier.

After all, the kingdom had effectively been looted for this lease on Normandy.

I mean, while Rufus had been able to gain possession at a bargain basement price of 10,000 marks, that was still a lot of money.

It was about a quarter of the total yearly revenue of England.

And that's on a normal year.

And thanks to all the bribes, the construction, and the wars, the coffers of England were already depleted, and a widespread famine was ripping through the country, which these new taxes were making worse.

On top of that, the church was absolutely livid with how they'd been treated, and the nobles couldn't have been much happier either.

I mean, everyone was overtaxed.

No one could afford anything.

Large numbers of people were going hungry.

I'm assuming the price of eggs were probably edging up to like eight bucks a dozen.

And meanwhile, their king was overseas threatening to launch a war against a faraway people who didn't pose them any threat and if he did actually launch this war it would be the english people who would be expected to pay for it that's a mess

And so the Regency Council looked at this situation and decided to bring down the temperature by instituting a series of policies that would bolster the English economy, soothe cultural and class tensions, and rebuild the sense of unity that had been fractured so thoroughly by this regime.

Just kidding.

The council were raising levies from the shires, seizing what little food and equipment remained in order to supply the mustered army, and were preparing to launch an unnecessary and unprovoked war.

Why?

Because these were the king's hand-picked guys, and the king was a belligerent idiot.

Honestly, it would have been weird if they didn't launch a war.

I mean, England's coffers were drained, the church was stripped bare, the kingdom was economically melting down, and the answer to those financial problems-well, the only answer that Rufus was likely to accept-was to go and loot somewhere else.

And the closest somewhere else was Wales.

And so, while Robert and large numbers of European nobles were galloping east to fight for Christendom, Rufus and his chosen regents were galloping west, looking to pillage it.

Hell of a regime.

And as the Anglo-Norman armies were mustering for war, Duke Robert of Normandy and his crew were still traveling east.

Because, you know, it takes a long time to get to Byzantium in the 11th century.

And considering how late their departure was, it took even longer.

Complicating matters, rather than going through Hungary as some of the other crusaders had done, Robert led his forces through Italy, likely because chunks of Italy were now under Norman control.

So, you know, might as well go and visit the extended family.

Now this, it turned out, was actually a luckily wise decision, since the Crusaders who took that northern route and went through Hungary had a bad time, and they took some pretty heavy losses before even reaching Byzantium.

You might recall that the People's Crusade had also gone through Hungary, which meant that by the time that the Prince's Crusade arrived, a lot of folks were thoroughly sick of these fanatics.

And it didn't go well for them.

So, Robert actually made the right call going south through Italy, but he didn't make it through before winter set in.

And so he was forced to camp in Apulia with his forces.

But apparently, Robert's uncle, Bishop Odo, wasn't content to just hang around on the heel of the boot.

He wanted to do a little touring while they were in Italy.

And so he went to Sicily, which is actually in the opposite direction of where they were headed.

But what are you gonna do?

He was old, he was a bishop, and he was the brother of the conqueror.

So you tell him he can't go on a Sicilian vacation.

And while I don't know precisely where he stayed while he was there, I'm imagining that hotel from the White Lotus.

And I'm sure everything's going to be fine.

But while Odo was, I assume, enjoying a cannoli, and most of the rest of Europe was still funneling men into the east, Back in Rouen, King Rufus was taking care of affairs of state, and waiting for this winter to end so he could finally get to the part of rule that he liked best.

The fighting part.

But at some point, messengers began to arrive with news of what had been happening in the wider world.

Now, given the silence in the record, I imagine that the Regency Council in England had tried to keep this quiet for as long as they could.

But eventually, word did reach the king of what was happening in Wales.

The council had sent armies into the region.

Yeah, armies.

Plural.

And this was either some sort of attempt at a pincer attack, perhaps striking the kingdom of Gwyneth in the north and the kingdom of De Highbarth in the south at the same time in order to prevent an organized resistance.

Or these were successive campaigns, just one army after another.

Our sources aren't clear on this.

What they are clear on, though, is that these campaigns were a disaster.

And the scribes actually get nervous when it comes to hard facts here.

So we don't have tactics, deployments, or battle descriptions.

But instead, the Chronicle just starkly reports that they lost many men and gained absolutely nothing in return.

No castles being built, no territories gained, no submission of the Welsh lords.

The only thing the English gained for their aggression was dead soldiers and an even more devastated economy.

And keep in mind that large numbers of knights, soldiers, and peasants had already gone on crusade.

So the failure of the council's multiple campaigns placed England in an even more precarious position than it would have been on a normal year.

But the Anglo-Normans viewed Wales as weak and as an easy win.

And so, given the fundamentals of the English economy in 1096, they probably saw it as a way to easily fix their economic and political problems, as a victory would provide effective propaganda supporting the regime and also provide a surge of income through stolen booty.

But, like Rufus, they had completely underestimated their enemy's strength, while thoroughly overestimating their own.

And it had cost them dearly.

When news of multiple defeated armies reached the king in Rouen, he was not pleased.

He wanted victory.

He wanted a show of force.

He wanted a fresh source of income through territorial acquisition.

But clearly, his council didn't know what the f they were doing.

Which actually strikes me as really funny.

I mean, their task was to rule England the way Rufus would have done.

And picking a fight with the Welsh, only to get his ass kicked, was practically a defining trait of the Red King's reign thus far.

But Rufus wasn't enjoying that particular mirror.

And so he began to make preparations for a return journey to England, intending to be in country by Easter at the latest, because he was convinced that next time will be different.

Next time, he'll have the upper hand.

Next time, he will find victory in Wales.

We'll see how that goes.

And it was around this point when finally Rufus got a bit of good news.

Uncle Odo had died in Sicily.

Now, this probably wasn't white lotus-style shenanigans.

The guy was old and sick, and none of our records indicate any sort of foul play.

He just died, which feels unfair.

After all that he'd done, I feel like he deserved the kind of messy ending that his brother had gotten.

But what can he do?

But beyond being out of Rufus's hair, Odo had also left Rufus a parting gift in the form of an opportunity.

See, Odo held a lot of land.

And since Rufus was currently ruling Normandy, those lands fell into his lap.

And he could use those newly free lands to bolster some alliances and undercut Robert's power in the duchy.

And he had just the ally in mind to make that happen.

Henry.

Now Henry had been keeping his head down ever since his last failed power play, and as such, he's not been a major figure in the story recently.

But that didn't mean he lacked ambition, nor did it mean he was out of the game.

Now he was still very much playing it.

And looking at the situation within his family, Henry determined that his best chances were with Rufus.

At least for now.

And so,

as Orderic and Roger de Tournay note, recently Henry had been making sure to stay very close to Rufus, establishing himself as a loyal and obedient servant to the king.

And in early 1097, that gamble was paying off.

Because the Red King was actively seeking to dig himself into Norman politics.

He had no intention of splitting up their father's empire once again.

And so, on the off chance that Robert actually survived and returned from crusade, he wanted loyalists in positions of power who could help him, you know, honor their father's accomplishments.

And here's the thing.

Although he had been stripped of his lands and titles, Henry had never truly lost power in the Kotentin.

Robert had failed to root him out of there.

And Orderic notes that in recent years, Henry had become a dominant force in the duchy, having gained control of a large part of Western Normandy through his influence and force of arms.

Despite Robert's best efforts, Henry was the de facto ruler of the Cotentin, and he had been getting closer and closer to Rufus.

And so the king decided to solidify that alliance and reward Henry's loyalty by giving him formal control of what he already had informal control of.

And so he declared Henry the Lord of the Cotentin.

And actually, Rufus went even farther, declaring that Henry would now have formal authority over all of Western Normandy, including the Besson, which used to belong to Odo, with the only exception being Bayou and Caen, because Rufus wanted to keep those two two towns for himself.

Henry was back,

no longer a bandit lord, but a formal authority who held so much power that he was now second only to his brother, the king.

And Rufus probably should have paused before granting that authority, and remembered that all those years ago, when he stood on that balcony peeing on Robert and his fellas, Henry was standing right next to him, cutting loose as well.

Because Henry wasn't like Robert.

Henry was like Rufus.

Only he was quieter, colder, and much, much better at playing the long game.

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Thanks for listening.