Soldier of Crusade (2 page)

‘My people are good simple folk, Your Eminence, easily led astray.’

They are not all that, Alexius thought, though he was too much the diplomat to say so. There are murders, rapists, thieves of every sort included in your rabble and they are beyond control even by a saintly fellow such as yourself. That was not a criticism of Peter, who saw only good where other men saw a less palatable truth, and
the evidence of his error had reached imperial ears long before his followers saw the walls of the city.

Peter’s so-called ‘People’s Crusade’ had left a swathe of destruction all across the lands of middle Europe – the Jews in their path had suffered most, with much slaughter of those who refused to convert added to the burning of synagogues. It had even led to armed conflict once they were inside the boundaries of the empire as they ravaged the countryside through which they passed. On coming to Constantinople they had posed a threat to the city itself and even more to the public peace, added to which Alexius had been required to feed them while they committed arson as a cover for their manifest transgressions.

He was still doing so but now at a pleasing distance; recognising that matters would not improve he had them shipped across to the town of Civetot, on the southern shores of the Gulf of Nicomedia where their depredations were out of his sight as well as those of the inhabitants of his capital. Yet it was far from being without concern given their continued dismal behaviour; he felt a responsibility, if not for their well-being at least for their survival, and the reports he had told him that their conduct had not changed – they were doing to northern Bithynia what they had been stopped from doing within the walls of Constantinople.

Having made his statement in support of the masses he had led here, Peter was obliged to wait for a spoken response – that was the way it should be: no man, however saintly, had the right to hurry a Roman emperor in his musings.

‘It concerns me,’ Alexius said finally, ‘that your people do not confine themselves to the area around Civetot that I have granted to them and in which they may reside till the crusading armies arrive. They raid out from the lands around the port and risk, in their
foraging and, dare I say it, plundering, to upset the Turks of Nicaea, who will not sit idly by and let the lands they control be ravaged.’

‘
Your
lands, Eminence, Christian lands.’

Tempted to underline the nature of possession, Alexius demurred; Peter held a simple view that all lands were the property of his Christian God, while the Emperor knew that the sword of Islam held greater sway.

‘While the supplies you send us are adequate,’ Peter continued, ‘and you are to be thanked for your Christian charity in providing such, there are those who have come to expect, given they are set upon God’s work, that they deserve more.’

‘What is it you require, Peter?’ Alexius asked suppressing a sigh. Tempted to tell Peter to go to the devil he knew that bribery was so much easier than condemnation.

‘More grain, a better supply of meats and also wine.’ Peter was about to go on, when the noisy arrival of a high Byzantine official obliged him stop; the fellow, a much trusted aide and close imperial advisor called Manuel Boutoumites was obviously intent on speaking to the Emperor without delay, which he did when signalled to speak.

‘Majesty, news has come from Xerigordos. A party of knights has attacked the town and taken the fortress there. It is reported they intend to use it as a base to raid deeper into the Sultanate of Rüm.’

If Peter the Hermit was astonished at the language such news produced and from a man said to be as pious as Alexius, it was a measure of the shock and anger the Emperor felt, even if this had been something he feared. Xerigordos was well beyond the range of any previous raid, and worse, it was a Turkish fortress, if not a very important one. Such an act was both premature and dangerous: the last thing Alexius wanted was to stir up trouble on his borders when
he was too weak to easily contain it and the military aid he expected from Europe was yet to arrive. He did not count the knights who had come with the People’s Crusade to be that, a fact Alexius made plain to the Hermit once he had established the size of the force engaged, a mere five hundred men in all, the majority foot soldiers.

‘The Turks will not let that stand.’

Peter was taken aback and it was plain on his face. ‘Can you not support them, Eminence?’

‘No I cannot, so it falls to you, good man, or a messenger sent by you, to tell them to withdraw at once.’

I
t had all started so well for the men who took the Castle of Xerigordos, as it had for the whole People’s Crusade. The fertile northern plains of Bithynia seemed entirely clear of any defence and Kilij Arslan, the Turk who had taken to himself the title of the Sultan of Rüm, remained within the formidable walls of Nicaea and seemed passive regarding the arrival of these thousands of pilgrims as well as indifferent to their activities.

Having settled around Civetot it was only days before marauding parties set out from the coastal town to bring mayhem and destruction to the surrounding countryside, in much the same manner as they had done on the way to Constantinople. Much of that pillaging, in terms of distance, was constrained by the lack of suitable transport for the mostly foot-bound and untrained host, but that did not apply to parties led by well-armed and mounted knights, most notably those raiding under the banner of Reinald the Alemanni.

Ranging further afield they had enjoyed complete freedom to despoil any settlements they found while paying scant attention to the religious or vassalage ties of their victims; it mattered not whether they were Christian Greeks or Turks and infidels. They represented booty for men who had come to the East seeking to gain profit from the Crusade as well as forgiveness. Finally the old and badly repaired fortress of Xerigordos, as well as the town that had grown around it, fell to Reinald and so easily that he, as well as the force he led, saw it as divine approval. The desire to partake of the fruits of that capture led to their downfall.

Three days of feasting, some pleasant slaughter of the menfolk and violation of the women, ended when a force of Kilij Arslan’s Turks appeared that outnumbered them three to one, the men Reinald led forced to take refuge in the run-down castle. There was no time to gather supplies of any kind, not that the town could provide much after it had been pillaged, but the real difficulty came when the Crusaders found that there was no water supply within the walls, a crippling handicap in a part of the world where, even in early October, the temperatures could be scorching.

Such a debilitating predicament was not aided by the need to constantly man the walls and, over several days, fight off well-coordinated attacks, which meant hails of deadly arrows from the numerous archers to which the defenders, with only lances and swords, had no way of replying. Reinald’s casualties, for that reason alone, had been bad from the first day of siege and had worsened since, till the number of shallow graves multiplied. Men became too weary to bother to bury their dead, and bodies, thrown over the parapet, were now rotting at the outer base of the castle walls.

Then there was the choking smoke, behind which Turks advanced
to the very walls to set ladders against the parapet and engage in close combat – to a man already suffering from thirst, that on the lungs had a doubly nauseating effect, yet despite such tactics they repulsed assault after assault by deeds that would have been valorous in a better cause. But the need for liquids was the greatest drawback; after eight days, when the blood of their now dead horses was no longer available to ease their thirst, when they were reduced to dropping their leather girdles into the sewers then sucking them for a modicum of relief, or using what little urine their bodies produced to try to assuage their rasping throats, it was time to talk.

‘Do you think they know how badly we are placed?’

Reinald croaked this to one of his knights, a Lombard called Argyrus who, having served with the Normans, knew the Frankish tongue, as he watched his enemies prepare another assault. Really the question was: can you think of anything by which we can negotiate that I might have missed?

‘It was their castle, Reinald, they must know. That was why the garrison was too small to hold out against us, why we found it so easy to capture in the first place.’

‘There is no sign that anyone is coming to our relief.’

‘Do they even know we are under siege?’

Reinald conjured up enough saliva to sound as he had done a week before, arrogant and angry. ‘They must know, Argyrus, but they do not care.’

‘What will you offer?’

‘Only our swords, it’s all we have. Prepare a truce flag.’

The man in command of the Turks, a general called Elchanes, came within hailing distance, but he was not so trusting of Christians that 
he would come close enough to be struck down by a lance – not that the defenders had many of those kind of weapons left; too many had been cast at the men seeking to overcome the walls – with what followed being long-winded and confusing.

Elchanes had a Greek interpreter who could communicate with the likes of the Lombard Argyrus; he, in turn, had to translate for Reinald, though in truth there was little to discuss. To stay inside the walls was to die; to leave their protection was to rely on the word of the Turkish commander who seemed willing to accept them into military service as long as they came as a body.

Yet if Reinald was the leader of his small force it was far from homogenous – his men came from many different lands and nor was he so respected that he could issue orders and demand they be obeyed. They had a say in their fate and that led to a great deal of argument, with many reluctant to take up arms against their co-religionists, the very people with whom they had traversed many hundreds of leagues in order to seek salvation, set against those who were prepared to set that aside for a chance to live, on the very good grounds that their all-seeing God would observe they had no choice and thus forgive them their sin. A few even claimed that having come on Crusade, they enjoyed prior absolution.

‘And let me see a way to escape, brothers, and, with God’s aid, I will take it.’

That cry from a lone voice swayed the meeting and gave Reinald the right to offer them into the service of Kilij Arslan, a message Reinald sent from the walls just before he ordered the gates to be opened and for all of his men to stay gathered in the castle courtyard where they had debated their fate. The Turkish archers, who fought on both foot and mounted, trotted in on their small, fleet ponies heading right and left, an arrow nestled in each bow and eyes on the gathering that
meant the slightest untoward move would result in a swift release.

Once they had fully encircled the Crusaders their general entered, surrounded by men with drawn swords, and Reinald, dragging Argyrus with him, walked forwards to execute a low bow. A hand signal from the Turk brought forward a man bearing a skin of water from which, much to the chagrin of their watching followers, the two men greedily drank. There was no sympathy in the act; Elchanes wanted them to be able to speak clearly.

‘He wants to know why we have come to this place, Reinald,’ Argyrus said, when the first words were spoken.

Reinald was looking at Elchanes, without his metal and leather helmet now, so his dark eyes, being unshaded, were visible. There was not much of an expression in either those or on his round and dark-skinned face, with skin heavily marked by pox. The lips were close to being as black as those eyes, thin and unsmiling.

‘He must know that already.’

‘I suggest,’ Argyrus replied, ‘that it would be wise to humour him.’

‘Tell him that we came to save our souls from eternal damnation.’

That was twice translated and the reply came back. ‘Such a wish is a simple matter, all you have to do is acknowledge the Prophet.’

‘We are Christians.’

That needed no translation and by saying it Reinald got a clear reaction, a look of real hate crossing that cratered Turkish face. The shout that came from Elchanes had every bow up and pointing, each archer picking a target, and Argyrus was obliged to tell Reinald that the order had come to lay down their weapons on the ground.

‘Weapons with which we have offered to serve the Sultan.’

Those words had no effect; the reply came back to do as they were commanded or die. While most complied, a goodly number declined
only to suffer immediately as each took at least one arrow in the upper body and many of them several, which hastened those who had hesitated. The Turkish general then yelled a command accompanied by a huge sweep of the arm for the Christians to move out through the gate that rendered translation superfluous.

Bereft now of swords, daggers and shields, Reinald led his men out of the gate to where the main body of the Turkish force, weapons at the ready, was stretched out facing the curtain wall, against which the captured Christians were obliged to line up, the archers from within the fortress taking station on the parapet above their heads. Elchanes rode though the gate and yelled out another order, which had Argyrus, once it was given to him in Greek, crossing himself as he spoke.

‘We have a choice, Reinald, to convert to Islam or to die where we stand.’

‘He accepted our terms.’

‘Look at his eyes, Reinald. If he ever did, he does not do so now.’

What followed was horrible to observe. One at a time men were dragged forward and asked to forswear the religion into which they had been born. Those who accepted were spared, had their hands tied and were led away, those who refused immediately had their throats cut to the neck bone with a dying prayer on their lips, their bodies dragged away to be thrown onto a rising mound of dead flesh. Reinald and Argyrus, when their turn came, took the same course as the majority and forswore.

‘Ask what is to become of us, Argyrus, now that we have converted to Islam?’

The reply came back, once translated, with an accompanying laugh, to tell the survivors that the Sultanate of Rüm always had need of slaves.

Word reached Civetot within two days, and if the fact that men had died was enough to enrage the multitude, the forced conversions to Islam were even more maddening to the more vocal priests and the deeply religious amongst the host, preachers every bit as inspiring as Peter the Hermit. A council was immediately called with the general opinion, much pushed by the divines, being that such an infamy could not be allowed to pass. The whole of the People’s Crusade in their thousands should shoulder their weapons and move out to attack the city of Nicaea, many loudly acclaiming that they had stayed passive long enough.

A few voices demurred, but they were wiser than the mob or the priests, for they tended to be the men who knew about warfare, mounted knights, amongst whom the most vocal and respected was the Frenchman, Walter Sansavoir. He pointed out that the city they were proposing to assault had repelled several attempts by the armies of Byzantium to overcome its formidable walls. Those who disagreed with him, and some of them shared his fighting experience, argued that by moving they would oblige those very same Byzantine forces to come to their aid and the combination must overwhelm the defences.

In the end it was the prospect of plunder that swung the vote towards action, indeed the very nature of many of the people that made up the People’s Crusade. Stark indeed was the truth when set against what had gone before, which was in too many cases no more than rank religious hypocrisy designed to mask naked greed, this from adventurers who had thought of nothing since setting out from their European hovels and manor houses other than the fabled riches of the East. The more honest pilgrims were souls with no fear of death; had not Peter the Hermit promised that if they perished on this venture their entry to heaven was assured? So overwhelming was the sentiment to march that those who disagreed could not stand against it.

The host that set out next day was indeed formidable if seen from a distance and spread across the landscape: three hundred plus mounted knights trained in the art of war, at least the same number who at some time in their lives had borne arms in battle as
milities
, able to use pikes for defence and axes as well as sharp daggers in close combat. The remainder, and they were several thousand in number, were stave- and pitchfork-carrying peasants so fired by their faith to be sure that when they came to the walls of Nicaea, they would, like those of Jericho, tumble to the sound of their combined prayers.

In such a ragged army there was scant discipline and if Walter Sansavoir had agreed to take the lead, he did not have anything like overarching control; what he had was dispute if he even attempted to issue an order, so that midway through the second day, as much due to heat as disorderliness, the host utterly lacked any kind of cohesion and that was exposed when before them they could observe, on an open plain with no protection from a flank assault, a large force of disciplined Turks advancing to meet them and one of which they had gained no prior warning.

‘We should have tried to withdraw,’ reported a Lombard knight called Sigibuld, his torn, cross-bearing surplice still covered in his own blood, mixed with those with whom he had fought, the whole overlain with dirt of a battlefield and a long and dangerous flight. ‘Many suggested it but Walter Sansavoir asked how it could be done with a rabble over which we had little control when advancing.’

‘The enterprise was foolish,’ Alexius replied, his voice weary. ‘You should never have gone beyond Civetot.’

‘We did not expect to meet Kilij Arslan in open battle,’ Sigibuld protested.

‘The Sultan led them in person?’

‘They cried out his name when they attacked.’

‘What a price to pay for a lesson known to every soldier,’ said Manuel Boutoumites, titled
Curopalates
and thus high enough in rank as a trusted advisor to speak unbidden in the presence of his Emperor. ‘Never underestimate your enemy.’

Alexius nodded and a lifted finger was a signal for Sigibuld to continue, which he did in a voice devoid of emotion.

‘We tried to form up as best we could. Walter had we knights take up position to the front, mixed with the men who knew how to use weapons so that we could present a defence, the aim to let the Turks know that any attack would cost them dear. The rest we sought to keep to the rear but they would not listen, so convinced were they, egged on by the priests, that God would surely smite their enemies before they even came within longbow shot. I think they expected bolts of lightning to come from the sky.’