Armies of Heaven (30 page)

Some considered the possibility of retreat—not giving up the pilgrimage altogether, but leaving Antioch behind and continuing on to Jerusalem. Practical voices, however, shut down that avenue of escape. “If we abandon this city, it will not abandon us. It will follow us as a companion, as an adversary blocking our path, attacking from behind and from the front.” Their only hope was that Bohemond had had a specific idea behind his earlier proposal—that they could enter the city before the new army arrived and use Antioch's impregnable defenses to their own advantage. Secure inside Antioch, they could worry about how to defeat the relief force later. They therefore agreed that if Bohemond might acquire Antioch in any way, they would all with one heart offer him complete authority over it. But there was a caveat: Should Alexius finally come to their rescue and fulfill the promises he had made at Constantinople, they would return the city to him according to those earlier agreements. Bohemond agreed to this provision, likely thinking that it would never be an issue. He knew the emperor's mind better than anyone else and knew that there was almost no chance Alexius would show up with his army to fight. And so, at last, having sat by patiently as a very real threat of complete annihilation had hung over the crusade, Bohemond revealed his plan. “Lords, my dearest brothers,” he began, “I have a secret.”
⁸

For several weeks he had been cultivating an inside man in Antioch—a Turk or an Armenian (no one was quite sure) named Pirrus, or Firuz. Pirrus controlled three of the towers on the southern side of the city, near the St. George Gate (where Tancred had been keeping a close watch), and he was prepared to allow the Franks entry. Why he was willing to do so is unclear. Modern historians speculate that Pirrus was an Armenian who had converted to Islam after the Turks had captured the city thirteen years earlier and whose loyalty was suspect. According to twelfth-century rumor, Pirrus's motives were more personal. Bohemond had captured his son during an earlier battle and would free the boy only in return for the entire city of Antioch. Another story held that Pirrus had been an extremely wealthy and prominent citizen before the Turks conquered Antioch, but that as a result of predatory and punitive taxation, he had lost much of his status and was anxious to avenge himself upon Yaghi-Siyan.
The simplest, and perhaps most likely, story is that Bohemond bribed him: “He promised to give him Christianity and see that he became rich and much honored.”
⁹

An even simpler explanation: Pirrus and Bohemond just really liked each other. Indeed, in one version of this story Pirrus seems to have fallen in love with the charismatic giant. During the siege the two men had begun to exchange notes filled with the sort of emotion one would expect to find between lovers. To Bohemond, Pirrus became “my dearest.” He pleaded with him for absolute trust, engaging in affectionate, ostentatious wordplay. “May you never disbelieve me, friend to friend, only one to one and only.” Pirrus in turn promised to give Bohemond the city, saying, “I place my soul in the hands of my one and my only one, and I turn over this city, in faith, to my friend.”
¹⁰

For warriors fighting in God's name and with God's blessing, however, bribery, blackmail, and homoerotic romance were not satisfying explanations of why Antioch fell. A better explanation would involve God, making Pirrus into a sort of “saintly traitor.” Robert the Monk provided it: Bohemond and Pirrus, he said, met during the truce (a likely observation). If it had not been for the truce, if Bohemond had not had the opportunity to exercise his outsized charms on a few of Antioch's disaffected defenders, then the Franks might have stayed stuck outside the city until the relief army arrived. But, Robert indicated, nothing would have come of these meetings had it not been for the wondrous judgments of God. For during one of their first encounters, Pirrus asked Bohemond where the Franks had stationed “the countless luminous soldiers” who had appeared to aid them in almost every military engagement. “By my guardian Mathomos, I swear that if they were all here present, the whole field would not be able to hold them. They all have wondrously fast white horses and vestments and shields and banners of the same color.” Every time Pirrus saw them, he trembled as if caught in a whirlwind. Bohemond, inspired by God, explained that this army was a heavenly host composed of martyrs led by Saints George, Demetrius, and Maurice—the Eastern military saints who had first appeared in the campaign a year earlier at Dorylaeum. They were engaged in battles throughout the world against unbelievers. Their camps were not of this earth. Instead, they rested upon thrones in heaven.

Pirrus's next question was a perceptive one: Why then, if the saintly warriors were in heaven, did they need things like horses, shields, and banners? Bohemond admitted that he didn't know, and he called on his priest, a man familiar with the necessary technical jargon and thus better equipped to explain how God spoke heavenly truths through earthly signs. “They only appear to be armed,” the priest explained, “so as to demonstrate that they are going to help those engaged in warfare.” God transformed material appearances without actually affecting spiritual essences. Once the truce had broken down, and once Pirrus had had a chance to reflect further upon the priest's words, he agreed to give Bohemond the city.
¹¹

Now, perhaps with some distaste, the leaders assented to this treachery—an act possibly inspired by God but certainly made feasible through promises of money and power. Bohemond sent Pirrus the news: “Behold! The time is now! We can bring about whatever good deed we wish. Help me now, Pirrus, my friend!” The message pleased Pirrus, and the next day he sent his son to act as hostage and as a pledge of his integrity (assuming Bohemond had not already captured him in an earlier battle). After one or two more exchanges, they were ready to put their plan into effect. As Bohemond quietly informed a select few leaders—Godfrey, Robert of Flanders, Raymond of Saint-Gilles, and Bishop Adhémar—on June 2, 1098, “Grace of God willing, tonight Antioch will be handed over to us.”

The tension, however, had proved all too much for the man so recently elected head of the entire crusade. Stephen of Blois was overcome with illness, or at least he claimed he was. He withdrew from the siege and traveled to the fortress of Alexandretta, about thirty miles northwest of Antioch, close to the shore and close to escape. He promised to return as soon as he could, but it was the last crusaders ever saw of him.
¹²

That night Bohemond ordered a knight, nicknamed “Evil Crown,” to summon a group of seven hundred warriors to accompany him on a march to nowhere. It was supposed to look like a foraging expedition or else to make Antioch's defenders believe that the Franks had left to confront the army from Mosul before it could reach the city, as they had originally proposed doing. Most of the Franks in this band didn't even know where they were going. Godfrey had told his men that they would be searching for a small group of Saracens camped somewhere in the mountains. The expedition's
real purpose was simple misdirection: to convince Antioch that on this one night, out of all others, it had nothing to fear from the Franks. Because of the continuing problem of spies in camp, as few people as possible knew what the leaders were up to. So secret were the plans that Bohemond's own cousin Tancred later claimed to have known nothing of them.
¹³

When the armies on the march returned to Antioch just before dawn, they approached one of Pirrus's towers, near the southeastern corner of the city. Bohemond sent forward an interpreter, fluent in Greek, to deliver some prearranged signal to Pirrus, who in turn passed down last-second instructions about when to approach the wall. In the meantime the princes and captains at the head of the expedition at last revealed to their men the real point of what they were doing, and they began choosing from the boldest among them the ones who should enter Antioch first. It must have been a terrifying prospect, climbing into the city whose defenses and defenders had so long mocked them and defied their every advance.

Godfrey tried to deliver encouraging words, but his tone, as his followers remembered it, was fairly gloomy. “Remember,” he said, “in whose name you left your country and family, and how your renounced your earthly life, fearing to endure no danger of death on behalf of Christ.” After exhorting them to be faithful knights of Christ, he concluded somberly, “We all must die in some way.”

Silently they made their way to the city and hovered in the darkness. As their interpreter had learned from Pirrus, the night watch had yet to pass by. As soon as they saw the flame of a single torch flickering across the rampart, they approached the wall. A knotted rope fell down from the darkness, and some of Bohemond's men tied a ladder to it. Pirrus raised the ladder up and fixed it to the wall as Bohemond wished his men good luck. The giant stepped back into the shadows, waiting to see what would come of his plan.
¹⁴

The Franks, somewhat gingerly, began climbing into the darkness. But not fast enough for Pirrus. Dawn was threatening, and as far as he could tell, hardly anyone had showed up for the invasion. As the first few pilgrims clambered over the ramparts, he panicked and called out, presumably for the benefit of his Greek interpreter, “
Micró Francos echomé!
” Or, “We have few Franks!” And then, “Where is that fierce Bohemond? Where is that
unconquered man?” In the homoerotic version of their relationship, he added with fulsome despair, “You have lost not only us and the city, but also your friend, who laid bare in your lap all his hope and his very soul!”

The invaders ignored these histrionics. They focused only on seizing the three towers under his command, slipping inside and dispatching the still-sleeping guardians. One band of Franks stumbled onto a night watchman, but before he could call out for help, someone had cut off his head. Whoever crossed their path along the wall or in the towers died at once. Those killed included Pirrus's brother. Like Tancred, he had not been warned of the attack. “Such are the accidents, endless black night, that you bring to us,” the monk Baudry lamented when pondering the unsuspecting brother's demise. “Such are the upheavals, O dark hours, that you cause!”
¹⁵

On the ground no one else, Bohemond included, wanted to go into the city. Indeed, the first Franks on top of the wall had moved so stealthily and quietly that the rest of the army feared some sort of treachery. What if they'd all been strangled? Fifty or sixty men had disappeared into the dark, and no one wanted to join them—until an Italian man slid back down the ladder to report their progress and to see what everyone was waiting on. He called out to Bohemond in particular, “What are you doing standing there, O wise man? Why did you even bother to come here? Look! We've already got three towers!” Everyone rejoiced. They rushed to the ladder. In the darkness and from up above, they could hear screams of agony and shouts of “God wills it!” Saracens were dying, and all of the Franks wanted to be part of the killing. So many men got onto the ladder at once that it broke apart. Some of the other pilgrims on the ground approached the wall and began running their hands over the stonework, searching for a postern gate. They either found it, or one of the Franks atop the wall had made his way to street level and opened it for them. The conquest of the city now could begin in earnest.
¹⁶

Everywhere there was confusion. The killing was complete and indiscriminate. The Franks who had broken through the gate were shouting, “God wills it! God wills it!”—the slogan that Urban II had taught them at Clermont now serving as the signal that the crusaders “were about to undertake some good work!”

“Everybody in the city was screaming at once.” Like the guardians in the towers, many a Turk barely had time to wake up before a Christian
had stabbed him. Some of the Turks were drunk, one contemporary noted with contempt. In the chaos only Bohemond kept his cool. “Impatient of delay,” he ordered his blood-red banner to be raised above the city.
¹⁷

When Christians in the camp heard the noise, they were momentarily confused. The men in Count Raymond's camp, awakened by the screams, initially concluded that the Muslim relief force had already arrived. Others disagreed: “That is not the sound of happy people.” But when dawn broke and they saw their own flags flying over the city, they rushed to join the carnage. “They killed the Turks and Saracens whom they found there,” though some managed to escape to Antioch's massive citadel. A few Turks stationed themselves on the walls and fired arrows, but they hit only the unarmed pilgrims, men and women, who had charged the city late, caught up in the general feeling of victory or else hoping to scavenge a little plunder for themselves while combat distracted the knights. Albert of Aachen estimated the number of Saracens dead at 10,000 and said that the Franks “spared none of the gentiles on the basis of age or gender, as the earth grew covered with the bodies and blood of the dead.” As Raymond of Aguilers hurried to see the killing, he found it “an amusing spectacle,” thinking on how the Turks, who had for so long resisted the Franks, now found themselves with no hope of escape—though he mentioned with sadness the deaths of three hundred horses. “All the public squares were filled with dead bodies,” another eyewitness observed, “so that no one could stand to be there to endure the stench. In truth, no one could walk through the city streets without treading on corpses.”
¹⁸

Only two things detracted from the general celebration. First, a contingent of soldiers led by Godfrey and Robert had attempted to capture Antioch's massive citadel, perched on a mountain and dominating the city. The defenders of the citadel managed to drive away this first attack, and, as noted, it became a refuge for many survivors. During the next month, the presence of this garrison made the Franks continuously vulnerable to attack, even though they had established their control over the rest of Antioch.
¹⁹