Armies of Heaven (25 page)

Then God spoke. The day after the retreat from the Bridge Gate, there was an earthquake—a great trembling of the land. The same night, shortly after sunset, “the heavens turned so red in the north that it seemed like dawn was ushering in the day.” Fulcher saw it, too, from wherever Baldwin's army had camped in Syria: “At that time we saw a wondrous red color in the heavens; we also felt a great earthquake, which made us not a little frightened. Many then saw another sign, in the shape of a cross, white in color, cutting a path straight for the east.” The visionaries in Fulcher's army could not have viewed these signs in a positive light. They had abandoned the road to Jerusalem in the name of some vaguely defined goals in Syria. The meaning of a heavenly cross flying quickly to the East (in brief: “You are going in the wrong way!”) would have been obvious. As for the other signs, an educated cleric like Raymond or Fulcher would have likely turned to the Bible, perhaps to the book of the Apocalypse,
where he would have read, or half-remembered, the description of the breaking of the sixth seal: “Lo! There was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth, and the moon became as blood.” The stars would soon fall from the heavens, and the kings, the great men, the rich men of the earth would retreat to the mountains and hide, begging for rocks to fall on them and kill them. Or they might have read the signs more simply, as did an observer in the Syrian city of Edessa: “It was an omen of bloodshed.” The celestial activity was also visible in Europe. In Normandy people looked at the sky and shouted, “The East fights!” All agreed, as if with one voice, that signs in the heavens pointed toward war and blood on earth.

What the Lord's verdict about the siege of Antioch was, no one clearly understood. But everyone in the world had heard, or seen, Him speak.
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That same night, a starving, barely literate pilgrim named Peter Bartholomew (not to be confused with the more famous crusade visionary Peter the Hermit) fell asleep and into a dream that would eventually remake the crusade. After the initial earthquake, he ran into a little hut he had set up with some friends. Alone now and terrified, he just kept saying over and over again, “God help me. God help me.” The aftershocks continued into the night, and Peter grew still more terrified until finally he fell asleep or else slipped into a trance. Two men stood before him. One was older, with red and white hair, a long bushy beard, and black eyes that seemed to suit his face. The other one was younger, taller, strikingly handsome.

The old man spoke first. “What are you doing?”

Peter, fearful and confused, answered with a question, “And who are you?”

“Get up,” he said, “and don't be afraid. Listen to what I'm about to say: I am the apostle Andrew.”
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What made Peter Bartholomew think of St. Andrew in this crisis is uncertain. Andrew was the brother of St. Peter, who had been bishop of Antioch before leaving for Rome. As the crusaders would later discover, some of Andrew's bones were kept inside the city. If Peter had been one
of the ones lucky enough to be allowed into Constantinople, he could have prayed before some of Andrew's relics as well.

But there may have been a more immediate reason to associate this apostle with the siege of Antioch. Several apocryphal events from Andrew's later life had grown into a grand tale of adventure popular among medieval audiences. The settings and the characters were exotic enough to qualify it as a knightly romance. Andrew's most famous exploit involved his rescue of the apostle Matthew, who had been taken prisoner in the East in the land of the Mermedonians, a race of cannibals. It was in such a place, populated similarly by cannibals, in a campsite decorated by severed heads stuck on spears, that Peter Bartholomew found himself in February 1098 as the earth trembled and the skies turned blood-red. Perhaps in his dreams he fantasized that Andrew might be for him, like Matthew, a saintly liberator from a world inhabited by flesh-eating men.
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But St. Andrew had not come to rescue Peter Bartholomew. Rather, he wanted to charge him with a mission that, if carried out, could save the army. First, Peter was to call a meeting of the Provençal leaders, including Count Raymond and Bishop Adhémar, and he was to reprimand Adhémar for failing at his most crucial job. “Why does he not preach to the people and scold them and bless them daily with the cross he carries? It would benefit them greatly.” But then Andrew changed tone altogether. “Come,” he said, “I want to show you the lance of our father Jesus Christ, and you are going to give it to Count Raymond, as indeed God has intended to do since Raymond's birth.”

The object to which Andrew referred was “the Holy Lance”—the weapon with which a Roman soldier, traditionally named Longinus, had pierced Christ's side during the Crucifixion. It was one of the most celebrated relics of the Passion—along with the True Cross, the Crown of Thorns, and the nails of the Crucifixion—and like those other relics, multiple churches (and both the Western and Eastern emperors) claimed to possess it. No tradition survived of Christians venerating the Holy Lance at Antioch, but, of course, Peter Bartholomew would be able to claim a source for his story higher than any mere book.

St. Andrew then guided Peter, wearing only a nightshirt (like so many dreamers, he was out in public in his pajamas), away from his hut and over the city walls. Together they approached a church—one Peter had
obviously never seen while awake but with which he would grow familiar later on—and entered through its north door, passing through a “Mahomerie,” or mosque, that the Saracens had built in the entryway. Inside the church two lamps were burning. Andrew guided Peter to a column near the high altar and said, “Wait here.” He then ascended the steps and approached the altar from the south side. As he did, Peter noticed the apostle's younger companion standing silently by. Andrew reached toward the ground, his hands miraculously sinking beneath the earth, and then suddenly, magically, he pulled forth a long and exotic-looking spear. “Behold!” he said, “the lance that tore open Christ's side, from which salvation rained down on the earth.” Andrew placed the Holy Lance in Peter's hands, and Peter wept copiously, promising to take it to Count Raymond.

But December was not the time, Andrew informed him. Peter would have to wait until the army had actually captured the city. Then he could guide Count Raymond, Bishop Adhémar, and twelve chosen men into the church. If they dug in the exact place that Andrew had indicated, they would find the Lance and be victorious against the Saracens. Andrew then reburied his treasure, guided Peter Bartholomew back into the city, over the walls, and to the camp, and left him in his little hut, bleary-eyed, won-derstruck, and more than a little frightened. Alone, Peter meditated on his dream. He looked at his own poor, ragged clothes and then thought about how magnificent Raymond and Adhémar always appeared as they paraded among the troops. And he feared to go to them. The story of the Lance would remain secret, at least for a few months longer.
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Two days later Bohemond's troops started to return, first with no food at all, then with the pitifully small collection of supplies that Robert of Flanders had been able to secure. An unknown number of soldiers had died. The army continued to starve. Armenian merchants, distastefully pleased at the crusaders' plight, began to engage in price gouging, unmoved as poor pilgrims fell dead in front of them from starvation. Bishop Adhémar, lacking guidance from St. Andrew, did not bless the troops with his cross. Rather, he declared a fast. For three days the starving soldiers would have to avoid food. And one starving pilgrim, Peter Bartholomew, kept his fearful secret to himself.
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Peter's caution was justified. It was a bad time to be a prophet in the army. God was angry, the poor were dying, and the leaders were little by little disappearing. Robert of Normandy had temporarily deserted the army, Raymond and Godfrey were ill, and now even the giant Bohemond had begun making noise that he might have to abandon the expedition since he could not bear to witness the suffering of his men. It was enough to make a person believe that God was not, in fact, on the Franks' side or, even worse, that the army's sins were so great that there was no point in seeking absolution. And thus the most visionary of all the pilgrims—the other, more famous Peter, called “the Hermit”—decided that he, too, had been wrong, and on the night of January 20 he snuck away from camp, taking with him as a companion that artist with the ax, William the Carpenter, who had joined the expedition because of the wild promises of Emicho of Flonheim that he would establish a new kingdom in Jerusalem, from which he would rule the world and do battle with Antichrist.

Rumor of their departure quickly reached Tancred. He had both the Hermit and the Carpenter hunted down and brought back to his tent. It was a high-level desertion and would require an appropriately severe and public response. Tancred therefore called in his oversized uncle Bohemond, who directed his rage, as far as we can tell, mainly against the Carpenter. A warrior's desertion probably seemed to Bohemond and Tancred a more serious matter than did that of a crackpot preacher. “Oh, you sad and disgraceful man, shame of all France,” Bohemond thundered. “You Gallic outrage! The earth suffers no more wretched man than you! Why did you flee so outrageously?” William promised not to do it again, and after many of his friends begged for his life, Bohemond reluctantly agreed not to do William physical harm. Nevertheless, the giant branded him with the mark of Cain: “For the rest of the days of your life, you shall be held as a disgrace throughout the lands.” William's promises were for naught as it turned out, for a few days later he deserted for good, this time without Peter. Furious, Bohemond ordered the Carpenter's tent turned into a latrine.
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Peter the Hermit stayed with the army, but at least a few of his critics must have taken delight at the stories of his near desertion. “As stars seemed to fall from the heaven in the book of the Apocalypse,” one of them later wrote, “so that Peter, a most famous hermit, gave into foolishness and departed.” Perhaps the apocalypse Peter had once hoped to ignite was beginning to fail as well.
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W
hile the rest of the army was starving, Baldwin of Boulogne, brother of the still-ailing Godfrey, was creating what would become known as the first of the “crusader states.” His activity in Syria would eventually provide real, tangible benefits to the main army, bogged down as it was in the long siege of Antioch. But he was probably not moving with any real sense of urgency or purpose, apart from seeking opportunity for himself. That he would find in abundance in February and March when he miraculously transformed into a Syrian count.

About the early stages of this process, the historical record is hazy. Between his departure from the crusade in October 1097 and his reemergence in the historical record in February 1098, his chaplain, the much-admired historian Fulcher of Chartres, observed only that Baldwin captured several cities, some by guile and some by force. He did so with the help of an Armenian advisor named Bagrat, whom Baldwin eventually rewarded with the possession of a grand fortress called Rawandan. The two men subsequently had a falling out when other Armenian lords warned Baldwin that Bagrat was conspiring against him with the Turks. Baldwin had Bagrat thrown in irons and threatened to tear him limb from limb unless he willingly returned his possessions. Once Bagrat's son surrendered control of Rawandan, Baldwin released the father and continued
his restless travels, “everywhere conquering the land and subjecting it to his power.”

These brief bits of information allow us to see, if nothing else, that Baldwin was continuing to do in Syria what he had tried to do in Cilicia: play politics and, through intimidation more than actual force, assert his authority over as many people and places as possible. This time he was able to do so with no interference from Tancred, and he seems to have found several petty local lords willing and anxious to work with him as a way to advance their own careers. His activities were not exactly the glamorous stuff of holy war, but they were profitable, and Baldwin was proving himself astonishingly adept at working within the Armenian system.
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Around February 1 his fortunes took a turn that even he could scarcely have imagined. An embassy arrived from T‘oros, the Armenian prince of the city of Edessa, asking Baldwin for military assistance. In return, T‘oros offered immediate financial reward, indicating that he might even cede to Baldwin some more permanent authority. Possibly, the ambassadors added, given that T‘oros had no children of his own, he might even name Baldwin his heir.

It was a proposal as attractive as it was unexpected. Edessa was a wealthy, well-fortified city, blessed with abundant vineyards, fruit trees, and olive groves, as well as established industries in cotton and silk cloth. Edessa's history stretched back into myth. Muslim tradition held that it was the birthplace of Abraham. Between Abraham's birth and 1097, all of the major Western and Eastern civilizations had conquered it—Greeks, Arabs, Romans, and Persians, to name a few. In the fifty years preceding the crusades, the Byzantines, the Turks, and the Armenians had held it at different times. T‘oros, in fact, had only established himself as leader there in 1095, after driving out a Turkish governor who in turn had only recently wrested the city from Armenian rule. Surrounded by independent Armenian warlords and aggressively expanding Turkish princes, T‘oros needed all the help he could get, and Baldwin of Boulogne had in a short time put together an impressive résumé.
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