Armies of Heaven (27 page)

The siege of Antioch would by no means settle the question, but it would bring back to the fore the army's prophetic, apocalyptic sensibilities. The prophets' fortunes, temporarily suppressed, would soon be revived as more and more pilgrims fixed their hopes not just on the end of their journey at Jerusalem but also on the end of time, which they intended to bring about.

Barely ten days after Tetigus's departure, on February 9, 1098, the Frankish armies received word of impending disaster. Ridwan, the ruler of Aleppo, had at last assented to the pleas for help from Yaghi-Siyan, governor of Antioch. His brother, and enemy, Duqaq had sent the relief force at the end of December that stumbled onto Bohemond's foraging expedition. Now it was Ridwan's turn to help. His goal was not so much to drive the Franks from Syria as it was to pull Antioch more firmly under his control in the ongoing conflict with Duqaq. But whatever his ultimate purpose, the immediate task was to destroy the crusade.

The Franks were, at best, dimly aware of these larger questions of Turkish politics. When they heard about the relief force, they developed a simpler explanation about its origin: A Christian deserter named Hilary had fled to Aleppo and there had embraced the Saracen faith. To win the trust of his new co-religionists, he had promised the amir, Ridwan of Aleppo, that if he attacked the Franks right away, he would find them defenseless. There would be only women and poor people to resist. Ridwan would also win for himself silver, gold, horses, mules, and various treasures brought from Gaul. Hearing this wondrous news, Ridwan rejoiced and summoned all of his followers, while Hilary spread news of the crusade's imminent collapse to other Turkish capitals—Damascus, Tripoli, and Caesarea.

The story of Hilary is, to say the least, highly improbable, and if true, the Franks could not possibly have known about it. As troubles multiplied,
it was likely reassuring to blame an imaginary traitor rather than to acknowledge how overwhelming the odds were against capturing Antioch, not to mention how infinite was the number of enemies whom they faced. Already Ridwan and his army had reached Harim—the fortress that Bohemond had attacked in November.
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Upon learning of Ridwan's arrival, Bohemond tried to seize the initiative. He believed, as it rightly turned out, that he was the only one who could save the army. Even so, his options were not good. If the Franks set up defenses around their camps, they would be trapped between the city and the attackers, and they could not possibly survive a coordinated attack. The only other option, besides surrender and retreat, was to try to intercept the Aleppan army before it reached Antioch. Most obviously, they could return to the Iron Bridge, about ten miles from the city, and force a standoff at the Orontes. But that would potentially turn into a long, drawn-out battle. In the meantime the soldiers left at the camp would be vulnerable to attack from the city. A divided Frankish army fighting simultaneously against two enemies stood little chance of survival. It was an impossible situation and hence a good time for Bohemond to try to regain his reputation for military genius.

“Lords and oh so wise knights,” he said before a meeting of the princes, “what are we going to do? We are now so few that we can't very well fight in two places. But do you know what we're going to do? We are going to divide into two parts! One part, the foot soldiers, are going to stay put and guard the tents and do what they can to check the city. The other part, the knights, are going to come with me and are going to meet our enemies, who are camped not far from here, in the castle Harim, just beyond the Iron Bridge.”

The rest of the princes accepted Bohemond's plan and seem to have placed him in charge of the battle arrangements as well. (According to one chronicler, writing somewhat obsequiously, Bohemond's followers on this occasion said to him, “You are wise and shrewd, you are great and magnificent, you are strong and victorious, you are a master of battles and a judge of conflict! Do this! All this is on you!”) Owing to a dearth of men and horses, Bohemond could gather together only about seven hundred knights—and many of these were reduced to riding packhorses or mules. Undaunted, they left at night, to conceal their purpose from the citizens
of Antioch. Perhaps still afraid of spies, Bohemond also hid his intentions from the soldiers, presumably letting them believe they were on some sort of foraging mission rather than about to confront an expeditionary force from one of the major Turkish capitals in the region.
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They stopped about six or seven miles from the city, choosing a site just behind a hill overlooking an open plain. It was also near the river and a lake. As with Dorylaeum, Bohemond aimed to prevent the Turks from employing their primary tactic of encirclement on the battlefield. He also hoped to surprise them. Very likely the Turks would have expected the Franks to try to cut them off at the bridge, but Bohemond had decided instead to attack them after the crossing, when they would be expecting a clear road to Antioch and a standoff at the city—and thus, perhaps, combat deferred for another day.

Bohemond also hoped to surprise them with the size of his army. Lacking sufficient numbers, he planned to create the illusion of a great host, and indeed one eyewitness said that when the Franks attacked, they appeared six times as numerous as they actually were. Specifically, Bohemond ordered the seven hundred knights to divide into six divisions. The first five groups would attack quickly, presumably in waves, one after another from behind the hill, trying to draw the enemy into close combat on the plain. The sixth group, under Bohemond's command, would wait in reserve. At the moment the battle seemed to turn against the Franks, Bohemond's warriors would enter the fray and, if all went according to plan, create chaos and force the Turks into a panicked retreat.

It was a risky scheme. Bohemond would not have known exactly how many enemies he was facing—only that his men were badly outnumbered. Latin historians estimated Ridwan's army at anywhere between 12,000 and 30,000 men. A number at the lower end of the scale seems likely, but that still leaves the few remaining Frankish knights outnumbered by more than ten to one. Rather than think about the odds, the soldiers passed the night singing songs, perhaps recalling the feats of Roland, “as if they took the imminent battle to be a game.”
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The next morning Bohemond sent out scouts to locate the Turks' position. Within a short time—apparently shorter than expected—they found the enemy marching up from the river valley toward the plain. “Look! Look! They're coming!” the scouts shouted, riding back up to their
camp. “Come on and get ready, because they are already here!” Before the Turks could order themselves, Bohemond sent the first wave of soldiers over the hill. “The clash sounded up to heaven. Everybody fought against one another at once. A storm of spears darkened the sky.” After the initial clashes, in spite of Bohemond's careful plans, the Franks started to give way. The Turks' numbers were simply too great. And when Bohemond, that “most learned man,” saw his lines beginning to collapse—even with his last division still in reserve—he started to weep. Turning to his constable, summoning up the rhetoric of holy war (perhaps such language came easily to him—battlefield descriptions make him sound more like a preacher than a general), he cried, “Go as swiftly as you can! Be a strong man and fierce to aid God and the Holy Sepulcher. For you truly know that this war is not carnal but spiritual! Be Christ's strongest athlete. Go in peace! The Lord is with you!”

Bohemond charged into the fray along with his final division, his giant frame advancing so quickly that within moments his blood-red banner was flying over the heads of the Saracens. Perhaps it was this last unexpected shock that frightened them. Perhaps it was the sight of this freakishly large man careening down on top of them. Whatever it was, their lines broke and the hoped-for panicked retreat began. The Franks—even the ones riding mules and donkeys—sped down into the valley in pursuit. Presumably there was a general massacre near the Iron Bridge as the Turks tried to cross to safer ground. Some of the Frankish knights even pursued them from there, riding all the way to Harim—which they found abandoned and burned out.
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As for the fictitious Hilary, the Franks took some delight in imagining his fate. According to legend, when word of the slaughter reached (presumably) Caesarea, where the traitor was staying, his hosts upbraided him: “You son of a bitch! You would have led us right into the Franks' hands! And if we had gone to their tents, what would have become of us? If we had been found there, hardly any of us here would be alive! They would have killed our brothers, our relatives, and our friends. You—you don't get to live any longer!” And they cut off his head.
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In the real world, meanwhile, the Franks were cutting off a few heads of their own. While much of the army stayed on the battlefield collecting horses, weapons, and treasures, a few crusaders began, as they had done
at Nicea, sawing off the heads of the dead and wounded and tying them to their horses as saddle decorations. By some counts there were as few as one hundred heads and by others as many as one thousand. Many of these heads (two hundred, by one count) were put onto the ends of spears and paraded about the city walls before being planted into the ground. Others the Franks catapulted into the city “to worsen the Turks' grief.” As had been true before, some of the warriors felt ambivalent about these tactics. But the clerics reassured them that their deeds were just. After all, in an earlier siege the Turks had captured a banner embroidered with an image of the Blessed Virgin and had turned it upside down and driven its point into the ground. “Thus it happened that the sight of these severed heads might cause them to think twice about making fun of us again.”
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Presumably, the Egyptians in the Franks' camp took a different attitude toward negotiation after the Franks had successfully dispatched the once-mighty army of Aleppo. A few of the Egyptian ambassadors had accompanied Bohemond to the battlefield. They were surely astonished, and strangely pleased, at what they saw. A few of them even joined in the festivities, finding dead or dying Turks, cutting off their heads, and tying them to their saddles. The crusaders offered several dozen other heads to the Egyptians as gifts. Some contemporaries imagined that they did so as another exercise in intimidation—wanting to frighten the Egyptians as surely as they hoped to terrify the Antiochenes—but there is no reason to think so. Offering a tribute of skulls was one of the customs of Eastern diplomacy that the Franks had learned during the course of the war. Nine months earlier during the siege of Nicea, they had sent a similar gift to Alexius, and the emperor was said to have rejoiced at the sight. The Fatimid caliph would presumably have had a similar reaction to the spectacle of his political and confessional enemies' skulls laid out before him.
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Everything else about these diplomatic overtures toward Egypt is hazy. The writers who described them usually did so with distaste, none more so than Robert the Monk. The legates arrived, he said, in March (though they had obviously been there since early February), identifying themselves as servants of the amir of Babylon, but then the chief ambassador
added, “At the court of the King of Persia and of Our Lord a great council has been called because of you”—as if Persia and Egypt were the same thing. Whoever these legates were, they reprimanded the Franks for fighting while pretending to be pilgrims—a criticism not without merit. The Babylonians also wanted to make a deal. If the Franks laid down their weapons, then the Babylonians would allow them free passage to Jerusalem. They would even supply the knights with fresh horses and the poor with food. Once at Jerusalem the Franks could stay in peace for as long as a month. The crusaders responded belligerently, outlining their property rights in unequivocal terms. “Since God has given us Jerusalem, who can take it away?” The Egyptians left disappointed, and with the Franks' permission they entered the city of Antioch.
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Other writers give us a better sense of what transpired. The Egyptians probably offered to give the Franks control of certain neighborhoods in Jerusalem in return for their continued opposition to the hated Seljuk Turks. The vizier of Egypt, al-Afdal, may have suggested as well that he would give serious consideration to the tenets of Christianity, which some in the army took as a promise to convert or at least the first step toward conversion. In his initial overtures, then, al-Afdal proposed something like a truce, if not a full-fledged declaration of peace. At least that is what some in the army believed. The letter-writing knight Anselm of Ribemont boldly claimed that “the king of Babylon, through messengers sent to us, said that he will obey our will.” As a result, he concluded, the doors of the Holy Land now stood open.

Not everyone was so bullish. About the same time, Stephen of Blois wrote to his wife, Adela, somewhat more cautiously, “The emperor of Babylon sent his Saracen messengers to our army with letters and through them confirmed an alliance with us as well as his affection.” Stephen was likely heavily involved with the diplomatic outreach, for as he told his wife in the same letter, the princes had just elected him as “their lord and overseer and governor of all their actions.” Stephen would have been especially qualified for the job. While in Constantinople, he had spent a great deal of time with Alexius, learning the intricacies of Middle Eastern politics. He was now one of the few sane, sober voices capable of carrying on negotiations with the adversarial faith. As leader of the army, he was also something of a compromise selection—someone who did not share the
ambitions of Bohemond and Count Raymond and thus had less of a personal stake in the outcome of the siege of Antioch.
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