Armies of Heaven (29 page)

The details about how the Saracens were defacing the cathedral probably grew less out of knowledge of what was going on in Antioch and more out of earlier experiences on the road. Unaware of Muslim distaste for figural representations of religious subjects, the Franks had nonetheless seen how Saracens had vandalized Christian churches before turning them into mosques. In Syria the crusaders had passed through several religious buildings where the images on the walls had been scraped away, where the eyes had been cut out, and where the pictures appeared to have been shot with arrows. The Saracens, a later historian observed, often attacked paintings “as if they were living persons, digging out their eyes and mutilating their noses.”

From his prison, when Patriarch John heard rumor of such vandalism, he sent a sternly worded message to Yaghi-Siyan and demanded that, whatever else he might do, he must not touch one particular image of Christ, a painted icon hanging high above the ground in the cathedral's apse. It was a work beyond price, so carefully rendered that the Savior Himself seemed to gaze down from it—so realistic that He appeared on the verge of speech. Such icons were almost unknown in Europe, but the Franks by this time would have grown accustomed to them. On the payment of five hundred
soldi
, Yaghi-Siyan agreed to John's demand.
²⁴

Later, probably after the river battle and as panic began to fall over the city, the Turks held a war council. They could feel the Savior's cold, angry stare burning into them from above. It caused them to lose their self-control, and they began to shout at the rafters, “Hey, peasant! What are you doing up there? Your men on the outside are besieging us, and you want to watch us in here, too? Well, we don't want to have anything to do with you or your men! Come down from there now! Either you come down, or else we're going to shoot you down with arrows!” The picture gazed impassively.

Archers opened fire. None of the arrows “dared approach the image of the Lord, and if one did get close, it immediately was broken by the Lord's power and fell at the Turks' feet.” Still the Turks refused to accept the miraculous power of God. They believed instead that their bows did not have the range needed to hit Christ's face. Yaghi-Siyan therefore ordered one of his men to climb to the roof and with his own hands throw the picture to the floor. As the poor hapless Saracen approached the image, walking along the rafters, the structure gave way, and he crashed to the ground, his neck and limbs snapping in two. And the amir and his advisors gazed in wonder at the terrible face of the Lord.
²⁵

Nothing could rattle the Franks' confidence. They tightened their siege works, basked in the glory of successive victories against the Turks, and more and more felt themselves to be instruments of God, striding boldly through a world of myth and epic. They were prepared for almost any strategy the enemy might throw against them, except, perhaps, for what Yaghi-Siyan did next. He declared a truce. Unexpectedly, unimaginably, peace broke out.

 

 

 

 

S
iege warfare had rules. They were written in the Bible, in Deuteronomy 20. Composed for a nomadic, tribal desert society, they did not always fit comfortably when applied to the more populous and prosperous eleventh-century world. According to Deuteronomy 20:10–15, if the Children of Israel intended to attack a city, they were obligated first to offer it peace. If the city accepted, its inhabitants would be spared but enslaved. By entering into negotiations, Yaghi-Siyan had raised the possibility of this sort of outcome for the siege of Antioch.

He would abandon the city to the Franks and recognize their lordship over it, and the citizens would become the crusaders' (or perhaps Alexius's) serfs. As Deuteronomy specified, if negotiations failed, the Israelites were to lay siege to the city, capture it, kill all of the men, and claim everything else therein—women, children, and livestock—as plunder. That was potentially the alternative for Antioch. But Deuteronomy describes a third possible outcome: “In the cities of the nations that the Lord God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them.” Antioch had once been the episcopal see of St. Peter. In the eyes of many crusaders, it would have fallen into the category of “special Christian inheritance.” In that case negotiations would be altogether unacceptable. Only the destruction of the population and
purification of the city would suffice. These were real choices faced by the theologians and moralists who might be advising the military leaders. For a time negotiation seemed likely to win out. If the truce failed, the more unforgiving laws of Deuteronomy might then be brought to bear.

What exactly sparked the truce or when it began is unclear. In hindsight, no one wanted to talk much about it. Probably the truce started around May 1, 1098. By this time the Mahomerie tower was complete, effectively shutting down the Bridge Gate and the Turks' easiest access into the crusader camp. Tancred had established another stronghold near the Orontes River at the southern end of the city in a monastery's tower, keeping a close watch on the St. George Gate—a service he offered in exchange for four hundred marks of silver from the army's other princes. Almost immediately upon settling there, he captured a supply train of Syrian Christians who were trying to make their way into the city with grain, wine, barley, olive oil, and other such goods. The blockade was by no means perfect, but from April on it was good enough to make life uncomfortable for Yaghi-Siyan. He had to begin thinking about surrender. And after more than six months of siege warfare, many of the Franks were willing to listen.

But we know little about the talks that ensued. The only contemporary historian to describe this period in detail was Robert the Monk, who said that sometime in April Antioch's defenders had grown weary of the fight. They threw open the city gates, and the Franks and Saracens began to mingle together around the walls.

Predictably, the truce ended badly. According to Robert, a certain Walo of Chaumont-en-Vexin, constable to the king of France, happened to be wandering alone through a pleasant meadow, probably inside Antioch. He was “trusting too much in this faithless people.” Suddenly, “armed dogs attacked him while he was defenseless and with wretched cruelty tore him limb from limb.” Walo's wife, Humberge, now his widow, burst forth with a poetic lament addressed to Christ her king. Forgetful of “womanly shame,” she threw herself to the ground, tore at her skin with her nails, ripped out handfuls of her golden hair, and decried her husband's dishonorable and senseless death—perhaps in the process attacking the rationale
behind any attempts at negotiation: “Why did Walo deserve to die without battle? Oh ye, begotten of a virgin mother, cleanse the sins of Walo, whom you saved from death in so many other battles, and whom you have now permitted to be martyred.” After this deliberate violation of the truce, “the gentiles” sealed themselves back inside their “walls and towers and caves” and the Christians resumed their siege operations, realizing that it was not a proper warrior's death to be murdered in peacetime.
¹

If Robert were our only source for the story, we might be inclined to reject the entire episode. But a letter from Anselm of Ribemont, written during the crusade, confirmed the existence of a brief cessation of hostilities when the leaders of Antioch and the Franks seriously discussed a peaceful handover of the city. In retrospect, Anselm believed the Turks never intended to surrender. Their real purpose was to lay traps for the Franks, resulting in the deaths of Walo and certain other unnamed soldiers. But during that time, “they so deceived us that they received many of our men in their city and many of them came to us.”
²

Although the truce failed, it did give Franks and Turks unusual opportunities to communicate with each other, helping to explain this somewhat surprising scene: “The people who were there tell how when this city was being besieged, and when the attackers and the citizens were mixing together in frequent encounters, the men on both sides would often cede ground, reason and council restraining the urge to fight. On those occasions, troops of boys would march forth, some from the city and some the sons of our men; and they would fight together in a worthy and admirable fashion.”

These play armies included orphaned children who had attached themselves to particular princes and depended on their sponsor's charity for survival. The orphans also appointed leaders for themselves, whom they named after their patrons: One was a Bohemond, one a Hugh the Great, one a Robert of Flanders or a Robert of Normandy. “Such and so wondrous an army often attacked the city children, holding long reeds as spears, their shields woven from twigs, throwing darts and stones each according to his ability. And so these boys and the city's children would come together in the field, as their elders watched from either side, the citizens from the walls and ours from their tents. There you would have encountered the clash of battle, bloody blows without any danger of
death.” As the grown-ups saw children's bodies, all puny and helpless, bearing wounds for their cause, they would order the youngsters from the field, ready to renew their own more deadly combat. At heart, neither side seems to have wanted détente.
³

And Yaghi-Siyan likely had a particular reason for ending the truce—a piece of news so good that it inspired him to order a hit on a prominent soldier like Walo. Word had reached him that a massive relief army was now only a few days' march from Antioch. It had originated in Mosul, along the Tigris River (in modern-day northern Iraq), but it encompassed many of the major factions in Syria. For about three weeks, this new army had camped outside of Edessa, then in the possession of Baldwin, collecting reinforcements from Damascus and elsewhere before beginning the long march to Antioch. Surely, this army would easily crush the Franks before the city walls and finally bring the crusade to an end.
⁴

The only way out of this dilemma was ugly. Our source for the truce, Robert the Monk, began preparing his readers for the measures that the crusaders would take in May 1098 when he first described Antioch. The city “could not be captured by strength, but only by strategy, through cunning and not through combat.” To tell this story required finesse. Antioch was the central victory in the crusade. It was also morally suspect, a moment of conquest that potentially called into question the Franks' claim to be warriors of God. The situation was freighted with enough ambiguity that no writer who described it agreed with any other on exactly what happened, making it impossible to know when certain events occurred or why certain actors behaved as they did.
⁵

A few days after Walo's death, probably around May 25, 1098, Armenian spies, likely dispatched by Baldwin from Edessa, reported to the Franks that this third and greatest Turkish relief force was fast approaching Antioch. Unsurprisingly, the leaders' initial reaction was to follow the strategy they had used in February, when under Bohemond's leadership they had ambushed Ridwan of Aleppo near the Iron Bridge. This time Godfrey and Robert of Flanders would lead half the army against the relief
force, while the others would stay behind at Antioch to try to keep what remained of Yaghi-Siyan's garrison trapped behind city walls. Based on what the Armenian spies reported, however, this new relief force was much more formidable than the Aleppan one had been. If true, the Franks could only “put all their hope in Lord Jesus and pray in God's name that they would end their lives there as martyrs.” To confirm these dreadful stories and, if possible, settle on a final strategy, the princes sent their own spies to gather and bring back reliable information. If the reports proved accurate, they agreed, they would need to keep the truth hidden from the majority of the warriors. Rumor of the new army's approach was already causing some common soldiers to desert, and at least one prince was thinking of doing so as well.
⁶

Throughout these discussions Bohemond remained strangely calm, even chipper. His face was serene, his thoughts apparently untroubled. When he finally spoke, he did so lightly, almost jokingly. “Wise men, knights, see how terribly poor and miserable we all are! The greater and the lesser among us—there's no difference. And we don't have any idea how to make things better. Okay—if this seems to you like a good and honorable idea, let's elevate one of us above the others. And if, by any means or device he can acquire this city or engineer its capture, by himself or with others, let's all agree with one voice to give him the city as a gift.”

No one liked the idea. The city, the princes responded, belonged to no one. They had all labored equally for its conquest, and they should share equally in its possession. One or two of them likely reminded Bohemond of the oaths they had sworn to Alexius—indeed, Bohemond had insisted that they do so at the time. The city ultimately should be returned to the emperor. Or at least that's how they felt while the size of the approaching army was unknown. As for Bohemond, he left the room, his smile now a little forced, though he perhaps tossed off a bon mot: “Woe to a city serving so many lords!”
⁷

About three days later, right at the end of May, word came back from the scouts that the relief army from Mosul was indeed nearby and that it was as large, if not larger, than initial reports had suggested. By one estimate it numbered over 400,000 men. They would be at Antioch in less
than a week. The desperate strategy Bohemond had used against Aleppo in February would not work a second time.