The Army of Godfrey of Bouillon

Thanks to a throwaway line from Professor Childermass, we tend to think of Godfrey de Bouillon as “our soupy old friend.” While this epithet makes me think of a soap opera or a poorly-titled Charles Dickens parody (sorry turtle fans), it does make me realize I don’t know much about Godfrey.

Until now, thanks to Alan Murray's recent article at Medievalists.net:

The army led in the First Crusade by Godfrey of Bouillon, duke of Lower Lotharingia, set off on its journey to the Holy Land about the middle of August 1096. It marched up the Rhine, down the Danube and through the Balkans, arriving at Constantinople on 23 December. Only at this point did the army encounter other groups which had travelled through Illyria or over the Adriatic from Italy, as well as those crusaders traditionally, if somewhat inaccurately referred to as the ‘People’s Crusade’, who had arrived the previous summer and remained in Asia Minor since their defeat at the hands of the Turks at Nicaea on 21 October. From this point these diverse groups constituted a united Frankish army, but nevertheless each of the original contingents, usually described as exercitus by the writers who wrote about the crusade, clearly retained its separate identity within it, and continued to function as the basic military unit in battle and on the march at least until the capture of Jerusalem in the summer of 1099.