The Crusade of 1101: Hugh of Vermandois and Stephen of Blois, the Men Who Went Back

Two counts who left the First Crusade early returned in 1101 to keep their vows. One died of wounds at Tarsus, the other fell at Ramla in 1102.

9 October 2026 · Part of The Crusades — a guide to 16 articles →

In 1101, two of the most prominent men who had abandoned the First Crusade turned around and went east again, and neither came home. Hugh of Vermandois, brother of the king of France, died of his wounds at Tarsus in the autumn of 1101. Stephen of Blois, one of the richest counts in Europe, was killed at Ramla the following spring. Their deaths belong to a forgotten campaign, the Crusade of 1101, that is usually dismissed as an epilogue to the capture of Jerusalem. This article follows the two counts through it, and says plainly where the chronicles stop talking.

Why they were going back

Both men had taken the cross in 1096, and both had left before the goal was reached. Hugh led the French royal contingent and had travelled ahead to Constantinople as an envoy. He was later sent from Antioch to Alexios I Komnenos and did not return to the army. Stephen was the more notorious case. During the long siege of Antioch in 1098 he withdrew, officially because he was ill, and on the road home he met the emperor Alexios and reported that the crusaders were doomed, a report that helped persuade Alexios to turn his relief force back. Antioch then fell to the crusaders and held, and Stephen's reputation never recovered.

A man who returned home with his vow unfulfilled was in an awkward position. Church teaching treated the crusade as a vow, and in 1100 Pope Paschal II was urging those who had turned back to go again. According to Orderic Vitalis, Stephen's wife, Adela of Normandy, daughter of William the Conqueror, shamed him into going. That story is one Norman monk's version and no other chronicle confirms it; it may reflect how contemporaries judged him rather than what was said in the bedchamber. What is not in doubt is that both counts took the cross a second time. Some historians read this as a matter of honour and pressure, and the evidence does not allow a more private motive to be recovered.

The three armies

The expedition was not one army but several, gathering in 1100 and setting out in the spring and summer of 1101. A large Lombard force under the archbishop of Milan went first, joined at Constantinople by Raymond of Toulouse and a Byzantine escort. A Nivernois contingent under William II of Nevers followed, and a third force of Aquitanians, Bavarians and others moved behind them under William IX of Aquitaine and Welf IV of Bavaria. Stephen of Blois travelled with Stephen of Burgundy, and Hugh of Vermandois marched with the French element.

The plan was to cross Anatolia by the route the First Crusade had fought along, then press south to Antioch and Jerusalem. The First Crusade had succeeded because it moved as one body and was fed by a Byzantine and Armenian network of supply. The second wave did neither. Against it stood Kilij Arslan I of Rum, who had learned from the first passage, and the Danishmend emirs of the north.

Chronology

The sources disagree on some of the months of the Anatolian battles, as is common for this campaign, and the table gives the broad sequence rather than days.

Hugh at Tarsus

By the late summer the picture was grim. The columns, marching separately, were picked off one after another in the dry interior, short of water and under constant mounted attack. Hugh's death came out of the Aquitanian disaster at Heraclea. Albert of Aachen's account, which the dataset cites for him, records him dying of wounds at Tarsus in Cilicia, to which he had struggled after the fight. In the dataset record this is listed as "Died of wounds", and the place of death, Tarsus, is the one point on which the sources are not in conflict.

Beyond that the chronicle is thin. It does not say who tended him, and it gives no deathbed scene that can be trusted. Later writers tell of his burial at Tarsus; the detail rests on the same few sources. For a count who had stood close to the French crown, the record of his end is short, and the text should not be padded to hide that.

Stephen at Ramla

Stephen's story is better attested because Fulcher of Chartres was in Jerusalem. Having been separated from the main losses, Stephen reached Antioch and then Jerusalem, where he spent Easter 1102. He then took part in the defence of the new kingdom. Baldwin I, king of Jerusalem, rode out to meet an Egyptian army near Ramla in May 1102 with a small force and, by Fulcher's telling, underestimated the enemy. The crusader cavalry was overwhelmed. Stephen of Blois was killed in the fighting. The dataset lists him as "Killed in action" and cites Fulcher II.19, and this record follows that. Fulcher is sympathetic to Baldwin and wrote with hindsight, so how far the king bore the blame for the defeat is something modern historians weigh, not something the chronicle settles.

Stephen thus did what he had once failed to do: he saw Jerusalem and died fighting for it. Our record of these operations places both counts under the heading "Expedition of 1101", even though Stephen's death falls in 1102, because the dataset sorts men by the crusade they had joined rather than by calendar year.

What the failure changed

The 1101 expeditions are often called the crusade of the faint-hearted, a label that fits the participants' reputation more than their record: tens of thousands set out, and few arrived. The defeat showed that the road through Anatolia could not be crossed by a mob any more than by an army, a lesson already paid for at Civetot in 1096. It also showed that the success at Antioch and Jerusalem had been fragile. Future crusades preferred sea routes, and the Genoese and Venetian fleets became part of how Latin settlement was supplied, a development that eventually carried a crusade as far as Constantinople in 1204.

The sufferers were not only the counts. Pilgrim columns included women and non-combatants, whose fate the chroniclers rarely trouble to name, a gap explored in the role of women in the crusades. For the settlers who held the coast, the arrival of reinforcements was always uncertain, and the military orders such as the Knights Templar would in time fill the gap that these failed relief efforts exposed. Disease also carried off leaders on earlier campaigns, as the death of Adhemar of Le Puy at Antioch shows, and the same ledger of lords who died away from home runs through the later siege of Acre in 1291.

Conclusion

Hugh of Vermandois and Stephen of Blois are remembered, when they are remembered, for what they gave up. The second campaign is the more honest measure of them. Both went back, one died on the road and one at the gates of the kingdom he had helped to win, and the chroniclers who recorded the deaths left several questions open. Where the sources are silent, whether on Hugh's last days or on the exact day of Stephen's, they should be left open.

Frequently asked questions

Why did Hugh of Vermandois and Stephen of Blois join the Crusade of 1101? Both had left the First Crusade before Jerusalem and were under pressure to fulfil their vows. Orderic Vitalis says Adela of Normandy pushed Stephen to go, though that account is not independently confirmed.

How did Hugh of Vermandois die? Albert of Aachen, the source the dataset cites, records that he died of wounds at Tarsus after the defeat of the Aquitanian column in Anatolia. The chronicle gives few further details.

How did Stephen of Blois die? He was killed at the battle of Ramla in May 1102, fighting alongside Baldwin I against an Egyptian army. Fulcher of Chartres, who was in Baldwin's household, is the main source.

Why did the Crusade of 1101 fail? The armies marched separately through Anatolia, without the unity or supply of the First Crusade, and were defeated one by one by Turkish cavalry. The details of each battle are disputed.

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