William the Carpenter
Encyclopedia
William the Carpenter viscount
Viscount
A viscount or viscountess is a member of the European nobility whose comital title ranks usually, as in the British peerage, above a baron, below an earl or a count .-Etymology:...

 of Melun
Melun
Melun is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. Located in the south-eastern suburbs of Paris, Melun is the capital of the department, as the seat of an arrondissement...

, was a French noble
Nobility
Nobility is a social class which possesses more acknowledged privileges or eminence than members of most other classes in a society, membership therein typically being hereditary. The privileges associated with nobility may constitute substantial advantages over or relative to non-nobles, or may be...

man who participated in the Reconquista
Reconquista
The Reconquista was a period of almost 800 years in the Middle Ages during which several Christian kingdoms succeeded in retaking the Muslim-controlled areas of the Iberian Peninsula broadly known as Al-Andalus...

in Spain and on the First Crusade
First Crusade
The First Crusade was a military expedition by Western Christianity to regain the Holy Lands taken in the Muslim conquest of the Levant, ultimately resulting in the recapture of Jerusalem...

. He was notorious for defecting from the army both in Spain and on the crusade, but he was also known for his strength in battle, whence he earned his nickname "the Carpenter." He returned to the Holy Land after the crusade, and nothing further is known of his life or death.

Life

Succession

His specific origins are unclear; according to the seventeenth-century genealogist Père Anselme
Père Anselme
Père Anselme was a French genealogist.He was born in Paris in 1625. As a layman his name was Pierre Guibours...

, he was the son of Ursio I, viscount of Melun, a town about 50 kilometres outside Paris in the Brie region of the French Vexin, which was later known as the Île-de-France
Île-de-France (province)
The province of Île-de-France or Isle de France is an historical province of France, and the one at the centre of power during most of French history...

. Anselme believed William succeeded his father in 1084, and was later succeeded by his own son, Ursio II. However, in the nineteenth century, Adolphe Duchalais showed that Anselme misread the charter
Charter
A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified...

s he was using; all that is known for certain is that Ursio was viscount in 1085 and William was viscount in 1094. There is no definite record of an Ursio II, and after William there is no viscount known until Adam, who married the daughter of the previous, unnamed viscount in 1138. William was presumably related to Ursio but his specific relationship to him and the other viscounts is unknown.

According to twelfth-century chronicler Robert the Monk
Robert the Monk
Robert the Monk or Robert of Rheims was a chronicler of the First Crusade. He did not participate in the expedition, but rewrote the Gesta Francorum at the request of his abbot, who was appalled at the 'rustic' style of the Gesta....

, William was "of royal stock" and was related to Hugh I, Count of Vermandois and Hugh's brother King Philip I of France
Philip I of France
Philip I , called the Amorous, was King of France from 1060 to his death. His reign, like that of most of the early Direct Capetians, was extraordinarily long for the time...

.

Military exploits

According to twelfth-century monk Guibert of Nogent
Guibert of Nogent
Guibert of Nogent was a Benedictine historian, theologian and author of autobiographical memoirs. Guibert was relatively unknown in his own time, going virtually unmentioned by his contemporaries...

, William was "powerful in words, but less so in action...a man who set out to do things too great for him." William was a member of the French contingent which marched into Spain in 1087 to assist Alfonso VI of Castile
Alfonso VI of Castile
Alfonso VI , nicknamed the Brave or the Valiant, was King of León from 1065, King of Castile and de facto King of Galicia from 1072, and self-proclaimed "Emperor of all Spain". After the conquest of Toledo he was also self-proclaimed victoriosissimo rege in Toleto, et in Hispania et Gallecia...

 with the siege of Tudela
Tudela, Navarre
Tudela is a municipality in Spain, the second city of the autonomous community of Navarre. Its population is around 35,000. Tudela is sited in the Ebro valley. Fast trains running on two-track electrified railways serve the city and two freeways join close to it...

 against the Almoravids
Almoravids
The Almoravids were a Berber dynasty of Morocco, who formed an empire in the 11th-century that stretched over the western Maghreb and Al-Andalus. Their capital was Marrakesh, a city which they founded in 1062 C.E...

. He may have been one of the leaders, along with Eudes I, Duke of Burgundy
Eudes I, Duke of Burgundy
Odo I , also known as Eudes, surnamed Borel and called the Red, was Duke of Burgundy between 1079 and 1103. Odo was the second son of Henry of Burgundy and grandson of Robert I. He became the duke following the abdication of his older brother, Hugh I, who retired to become a Benedictine monk...

, who was the nephew of Alfonso's wife Constance
Constance of Burgundy
Constance of Burgundy was the daughter of Duke Robert I of Burgundy and Helie de Semur-en-Brionnais. She was Queen consort of Castile and León by her marriage to Alfonso VI of Castile. She was the granddaughter of King Robert II of France, the second monarch of the French Capetian dynasty...

. The French army never made it to Tudela and withdrew with little success. Guibert says that William "retreated like a wretch, leaving countless men stranded by his flight." William's actions in Spain may have been the inspiration for the character of Ganelon
Ganelon
In the Matter of France, Ganelon is the knight who betrayed Charlemagne's army to the Muslims, leading to the Battle of Roncevaux Pass. His name is said to derive from the Italian word inganno, meaning fraud or deception....

 in the Chanson de Roland, which was possibly written in the early twelfth-century, based on similar events that had occurred during the reign of Charlemagne
Charlemagne
Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800...

 centuries earlier.

In France, Guibert says he engaged in petty warfare against other nobles and "criminal looting" of the countryside, in contravention of the Peace and Truce of God
Peace and Truce of God
The Peace and Truce of God was a medieval European movement of the Catholic Church that applied spiritual sanctions in order to limit the violence of private war in feudal society. The movement constituted the first organized attempt to control civil society in medieval Europe through non-violent...

. In 1096 he joined the First Crusade, and "took from his poor neighbors the little that they had to provide himself shamefully with provisions for the journey." He participated in the attacks on Jews at Mainz
Mainz
Mainz under the Holy Roman Empire, and previously was a Roman fort city which commanded the west bank of the Rhine and formed part of the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire...

, led by Emich of Flonheim
Emicho
Count Emicho , was a count in the Rhineland in the late 11th century and the leader of the "German Crusade" in 1096...

. Emich's army later battled against the Hungarians
Kingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary comprised present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia , Transylvania , Carpatho Ruthenia , Vojvodina , Burgenland , and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders...

, during which William "beheaded the chief of the Hungarian army, who was a member of the [King Coloman's] counsel, a distinguished man with dazzling snow-white hair." After the dispersal of Emich's army following this battle, William and the other French leaders joined the army of his relative Hugh of Vermandois
Hugh of Vermandois
Hugh I , called Magnus or the Great, was a younger son of Henry I of France and Anne of Kiev and younger brother of Philip I. He was in his own right Count of Vermandois, but an ineffectual leader and soldier, great only in his boasting...

. Hugh's army marched south into Italy, and at Bari
Bari
Bari is the capital city of the province of Bari and of the Apulia region, on the Adriatic Sea, in Italy. It is the second most important economic centre of mainland Southern Italy after Naples, and is well known as a port and university city, as well as the city of Saint Nicholas...

, Hugh sent William across the sea to Dyrrhachium as an ambassador to the Byzantine
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...

 governor of the city. William then travelled to Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

 with Hugh, and he was among the men who came to meet Godfrey of Bouillon
Godfrey of Bouillon
Godfrey of Bouillon was a medieval Frankish knight who was one of the leaders of the First Crusade from 1096 until his death. He was the Lord of Bouillon, from which he took his byname, from 1076 and the Duke of Lower Lorraine from 1087...

 when Godfrey arrived at the city later in the year.
No further mention of William is made until the Siege of Antioch
Siege of Antioch
The Siege of Antioch took place during the First Crusade in 1097 and 1098. The first siege, by the crusaders against the Muslim city, lasted from October 21, 1097, to June 2, 1098. The second siege, against the crusaders who had occupied it, lasted from June 7 to June 28, 1098.-Background:Antioch...

 in 1098. The crusaders had successfully taken the city, but were then besieged themselves by a large Muslim army led by Kerbogha
Kerbogha
Kerbogha was Atabeg of Mosul during the First Crusade and was renowned as a soldier. He was a Turk who owed his success to his military talent. In 1098, when he heard that the Crusaders had besieged Antioch, he gathered his troops and marched to relieve the city. By the time he arrived, around...

 of Mosul
Mosul
Mosul , is a city in northern Iraq and the capital of the Ninawa Governorate, some northwest of Baghdad. The original city stands on the west bank of the Tigris River, opposite the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh on the east bank, but the metropolitan area has now grown to encompass substantial...

. The crusaders suffered from lack of supplies, and there were many desertions; William fled Antioch in January 1098, along with the French monk Peter the Hermit
Peter the Hermit
Peter the Hermit was a priest of Amiens and a key figure during the First Crusade.-Before 1096:According to Anna Comnena, he had attempted to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem before 1096, but was prevented by the Seljuk Turks from reaching his goal and was tortured.Sources differ as to whether he...

, who had led his own army to Constantinople before the main crusaders arrived there. William was probably a member of Bohemond of Taranto's army at this point, because Bohemond sent his nephew Tancred
Tancred, Prince of Galilee
Tancred was a Norman leader of the First Crusade who later became Prince of Galilee and regent of the Principality of Antioch...

 to find them, and they were brought back to Bohemond's camp. Robert the Monk assumes that William fled because "he had never before experienced such suffering from hunger." William "spent the whole of the night...in Bohemond's tent, lying on the ground like a piece of rubbish." Bohemond rebuked him as a "wretched disgrace to the whole Frankish army", and mentioned his desertion of the French army in Spain in 1087. The other leaders asked Bohemond to spare him and William suffered no further punishment. However, William was so ashamed that he deserted the army again.

Albert of Aachen says William's second desertion occurred in June of 1098, along with William of Grand-Mesnil, a relative of Bohemond. On the road away from Antioch, they joined Stephen of Blois
Stephen II, Count of Blois
Stephen II Henry , Count of Blois and Count of Chartres, was the son of Theobald III, count of Blois, and Garsinde du Maine. He married Adela of Normandy, a daughter of William the Conqueror around 1080 in Chartres...

, another leader of the crusade who had also fled the siege. They travelled back towards Constantinople, but on the way met Emperor Alexius I Comnenus, who was advancing to Antioch with a relief army. They convinced him of the futility of the crusader siege and the emperor turned back to Constantinople.

William apparently returned to the Holy Land in the Crusade of 1101
Crusade of 1101
The Crusade of 1101 was a minor crusade of three separate movements, organized in 1100 and 1101 in the successful aftermath of the First Crusade. It is also called the Crusade of the Faint-Hearted due to the number of participants who joined this crusade after having turned back from the First...

. The First Crusade had successfully conquered Jerusalem, and those who had returned home before completing the journey were often shamed into going on crusade a second time; some of them, like Stephen of Blois, were killed on their second journey. William, however, survived to participate in the politics of the newfound Kingdom of Jerusalem
Kingdom of Jerusalem
The Kingdom of Jerusalem was a Catholic kingdom established in the Levant in 1099 after the First Crusade. The kingdom lasted nearly two hundred years, from 1099 until 1291 when the last remaining possession, Acre, was destroyed by the Mamluks, but its history is divided into two distinct periods....

; he was among the men who petitioned King Baldwin I
Baldwin I of Jerusalem
Baldwin I of Jerusalem, formerly Baldwin I of Edessa, born Baldwin of Boulogne , 1058? – 2 April 1118, was one of the leaders of the First Crusade, who became the first Count of Edessa and then the second ruler and first titled King of Jerusalem...

 to restore Daimbert of Pisa as Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem
Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem
The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem is the title possessed by the Latin Rite Catholic Archbishop of Jerusalem. The Archdiocese of Jerusalem has jurisdiction for all Latin Rite Catholics in Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Jordan and Cyprus...

. He was also present at Baldwin I's siege of Ascalon
Ashkelon
Ashkelon is a coastal city in the South District of Israel on the Mediterranean coast, south of Tel Aviv, and north of the border with the Gaza Strip. The ancient seaport of Ashkelon dates back to the Neolithic Age...

 in 1102. William may have settled in the north, in the crusader Principality of Antioch
Principality of Antioch
The Principality of Antioch, including parts of modern-day Turkey and Syria, was one of the crusader states created during the First Crusade.-Foundation:...

 as a vassal of Bohemond, because he appears as a witness in a charter from Antioch in 1101.

Nickname

William's actions at the Siege of Antioch are known from the Gesta Francorum
Gesta Francorum
The so-called Gesta Francorum or in full De Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum is a Latin chronicle of the First Crusade written in circa 1100-1101 by an anonymous author connected with Bohemund I of Antioch.It narrates the events of the First Crusade from the inception in November...

, an anonymous chronicle written by an Italo-Norman
Italo-Norman
The Italo-Normans, or Siculo-Normans when referring to Sicily, were the Italian-born descendants of the first Norman conquerors to travel to the southern Italy in the first half of the eleventh century...

 eyewitness. The Gesta was very popular in Europe after the crusade, but was considered crudely written by more refined readers. It was later rewritten and expanded by more educated writers, including the French monks Robert and Guibert, both of whom were eager to add information about French crusaders like William. According to Robert, William "acquired the name of 'Carpenter' because nobody wanted to take him on in battle—-there was no breastplate, helmet or shield which could withstand the shattering impact of his lance or sword." Guibert says that he "was called the Carpenter, not because he was a craftsman in wood, but because he prevailed in battle like a carpenter, by cutting men down", and has Bohemond ask: "what kind of Carpenter did we have, who, like a construction-worker with a pick-axe, hacked away, with lances and swords, at the backs of the Gentiles?" Christopher Tyerman interprets this as William's "skills as a battlefield butcher". Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon was an English historian and Member of Parliament...

, apparently misunderstanding Guibert, thought the nickname came "from the weighty strokes of his axe
Battle axe
A battle axe is an axe specifically designed for combat. Battle axes were specialized versions of utility axes...

".
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK