The part played by Count Étienne was at first less noble. He had married Adèle, daughter of William the Conqueror, and, like his wife, he was distinguished in this age of the sword by a love of art and letters. He wrote poetry, and Hildebert, Bishop of Le Mans, rashly compared him to Vergil. ‘Gentiz homme, noble barun,’ so Robert Wace describes him.
Summoned from more congenial pursuits, he sailed with Robert, Duke of Normandy, to join the army which was then encamped before Nicæa. In a letter to his wife he described the hospitality with which the Emperor Alexis received him at Constantinople. ‘He treated me with so much distinction,’ he says, ‘that I could only tear myself away from him with tears.’ He proceeded to amass booty both before and after the taking of Nicæa, and his letters acquaint his wife with his increasing wealth and his military preferment, but he grows anxious to return to France with his enormous loot. His cowardly retreat from Antioch and the treacherous representations by which he dissuaded the Emperor Alexis from relieving the Crusaders, who were now pressed by the army of Kerbogha, gained him a poor welcome in France when he returned. The subsequent taking of Jerusalem exposed the deserting Crusaders to unlimited contumely, and filled them with remorse. French irony expressed itself in biting _sirvente_, short satirical poems by fighting troubadours like Bertram de Born, the Provençal nobleman, who gave to Richard Coeur-de-Lion his nickname of Yea-and-Nay. Those faint-hearted knights who had stolen back to their baronial halls were denounced with cutting invective.
‘Marques, li monges de Clunhie Veuilh que fasson de vos capadel O siatz abbas de Cystilh, Pus le cor avetz tan mendic Que mais amatz dos buous et un araire A Montferrat qu’alors estr’ emperuieur.’[49]
Stung by such taunts, Count Étienne seized an opportunity which was given him of making a fresh expedition against the Turks. On this occasion he amply redeemed his reputation, and after many deeds of heroism he laid down his life for the cause whose sign he bore. Before setting out he had secured the blessing of the bishop by two interesting concessions.
It was a long-established custom of the town and a right by usage of the Counts of Chartres that, on the death of a bishop, his palace should be sacked. To S. Ives, when his new palace was finished, Count Étienne now granted a charter renouncing this barbarous practice. But none the less Thibault, his son, sacked the bishop’s palace upon the death of S. Ives. The other concession made by the Count was with regard to the liberty of the cloister, which, the canons maintained, was outside all secular jurisdiction. The quarrel which sprang from this question of the rights of the cloister was destined to last for three centuries. For the present it was forgotten in the more absorbing interest of the Crusades.