The First Crusade (26 page)

On
17
November, thirteen Genoese ships carrying men and supplies landed at St Simeon. Their arrival seems so well timed as to suggest that the crusaders did indeed lay some plans for logistical support before their departure from Europe. They brought vital craftsmen and materials with which to tighten the blockade of Antioch. After sitting in council, the crusade's leaders decided to use these resources to build a siege fort on the slopes of Mount Staurin, close to the Gate of St Paul. This rather rough-and-ready fortification, which became known as Malregard, effectively secured the northern quadrant of the blockade and protected the besieging troops from harrying attacks.
¹⁵

Around the same time the crusaders decided to deal with the garrison of Harim, who, in the words of one eyewitness, 'were daily killing many of our men who were going back and forth from our army'. Something had to be done, because these attacks were hampering the increasingly important task of foraging for supplies. It would seem, however, that at this point the Franks did not actually know where these Muslims troops were coming from, so Bohemond was chosen to lead a small reconnoitring expedition. He was probably expected to locate the Muslim camp rather than actually eliminate it. Had Bohemond been a less astute commander, this little venture could easily have ended in disaster. Knowing that he had limited manpower, and that he would be traversing unknown territory, he decided to employ cautious tactics. He divided his knights into two groups, sent the first out to search the craggy slopes of the Jabal Talat, and held the second in reserve. The plan appears to have been to locate the Muslim troops, use the first force to draw them out and, by means of a feigned retreat, lead them to where Bohemond lay waiting in ambush. In practice it worked brilliantly: although two knights were killed during the first engagement near Harim, the Muslims were then drawn into the trap. One of Bohemond's followers recalled that The barbarians fell upon our men because they were few, yet [the Franks] joined battle in good order and
many of our enemies were killed.
Had Bohemond led his entire force into the hills he might have been caught unawares, but, as all of his troops appear to have been mounted knights, he adopted a classic Muslim tactic, that of the false retreat, to make use of this extra mobility. Harim may not have fallen, but its threat had been neutralised, and Bohemond had, once again, proved that he had a flair for military command.
¹⁶

It was in the aftermath of this expedition that we first hear of the crusaders employing terror and intimidation as facets of their siege strategy. When Bohemond returned to Antioch, we are told that: '[Those] whom we captured, were led before the city gate and there beheaded, to grieve the Turks who were in the city
.
Just as at Nicaea, the crusaders were keen to use every opportunity to impress their martial ferocity upon the garrison they were besieging. The intended message was clear: the Latins were militarily superior, willing to use extreme ruthlessness to achieve their goals, and would carry out even more terrible acts of savagery when Antioch fell unless the city chose to surrender. Such tactics were, of course, not the sole preserve of the Franks. By mid-November the Muslim garrison was just as willing to carry out atrocities. Fulcher of Chartres recalled: 'Alas! how many Christians, Greeks, Syrians and Armenians, who lived in the city, were killed by the maddened Turks. With the Franks looking on, they threw outside the walls the heads of those killed with their catapults and slings. Thi
s especially grieved our people.

The Muslims regularly dragged the Greek Christian patriarch of Antioch, who had until then lived peacefully in the city, up to the battlements, hung him upside down from the walls and beat his feet with iron rods, in sight of the crusaders. Any captured Latin could expect comparable treatment. Adelbaro, archdeacon of Metz, was caught 'playing a game of dice' with a young woman in an orchard near the city. He was beheaded on the spot, she, taken back to Antioch, repeatedly raped and then killed. The following morning their heads were catapulted into the crusader camp.
¹⁷

These acts may appear to be utterly barbaric by modern standards, but they were a staple feature of medieval warfare and became a consistent theme of the siege of Antioch. In viewing such events, we must try to temper our instinctive judgement with an awareness that in the eleventh century war was governed by medieval, not modern, codes of practice. Within the context of a holy war, in which the Franks were conditioned to see their enemy as sub-human, Christian piety prompted not clemency but, rather, an atmosphere of extreme brutality and heightened savagery.

THE
BATTLE
FOR
FOOD

By the last week of November, however, hunger rather than bloodlust began to dominate the minds of the crusaders. By this point the abundance of food and drink enjoyed upon arrival at Antioch had been exhausted. This predicament was exacerbated by the onset of winter. The crusaders were shocked to discover that, not only did it rain in northern Syria, it might even snow. In a letter to his wife, Stephen of Blois complained: 'Before the city of Antioch, throughout the whole winter we suffered for our Lord Christ from excessive cold and enormous torrents of rain. What some say about the impossibility of bearing the heat of the sun throughout Syria is untrue, for the winter there is very sim
ilar to our winter in the West.

For the next four months, the crusaders became utterly obsessed with the struggle against starvation and the elements. In the past historians have argued that the crusaders suffered at Antioch because, through logistical incompetence, they had made no preparations for a prolonged winter siege. Recent research indicates, however, that they struggled in spite of their best efforts to organise efficient lines of supply. We have already seen that the Franks made some preparations even before the siege began, establishing a foraging centre in Cilicia and forging friendships with Armenian Christians during their march around the Amanus mountains. Once in the region of Antioch, they opened the possibility of maritime supply at St Simeon, and by the end of December they had gained access to the larger port of Latakia, which lay some sixty kilometres to the south and offered even better access to Cyprus. The crusaders probably occupied Latakia for a time, but, once again, the details of crusader contact with the port are unclear. Even with these two ports, naval communication and supply were not always reliable through the winter months.
¹⁸

The Franks also made a concerted effort to subdue the region surrounding Antioch when they first arrived in northern Syria. One crusader noted that at the start of the siege 'regional castles and nearby cities fell to us largely because of fear of us and a desire to escape Turkish bondage'. By March
1098
Stephen of Blois boasted that 'there are
165
cities and fortresses throughout Syria which are in our power'. This process may not always have been driven by the interests of the greater good - individuals or groups of knights did on occasion leave the siege on private plunder hunts - but over time the domination and exploitation of the Antiochene district became increasingly structured. Each crusader contingent concentrated its foraging efforts on a different sector, channelling supplies back to troops at the siege front. Raymond of Toulouse's men, for example, focused their attention on the Ruj valley, while the southern Italian Normans following Tancred exploited the region around Harim. But even this.relatively organised logistical framework could not keep pace with the demands of such a huge army. An Armenian Christian contemporary recalled that in the bleak winter months:

The princes [of Cilicia] sent whatever provisions were heeded to the commander of the Franks. Likewise the monks of the Black Mountains assisted them by sending provisions, and all the faithful acted benevolently towards the Franks. Nevertheless, because of the scarcity of food, mortality and affliction fell upon the Frankish army to such an extent that one out of five perished and all the rest felt themselves abandoned and far from their homeland.
¹⁹

According to a Latin observer, by mid-December the level of suffering was such as to require more direct action: 'The people of God began to run short of rations. With hunger growing daily more severe, and the army dying from want, especially the humble people, wretched groans and laments assailed
[Adh6mar]
and all the princes. So, they conferred about these problems and how the people could be nourished.'

The plan concocted by this council was to send a major foraging expedition into the countryside, under the command of Bohemond and Robert of Flanders. The hope was that such a large force would be able to pillage for desperately needed supplies with relative impunity. This scheme was a calculated gamble, because such a large-scale deployment weakened the crusaders' hold on Antioch. Unbeknown to the crusaders, it was an even more risky roll of the dice, because at the same time Duqaq of Damascus was marching towards Antioch at the head of a large Muslim relief force. After two months, he had chosen that very moment to rescue Yaghi Siyan.
²⁰

On
28
December
1097,
after making a rather grim attempt to celebrate the Feast of the Nativity, Bohemond and Robert of Flanders set out from Antioch with around
400
knights and a larger, but unspecified, number of infantrymen. We have no eyewitness account of this expedition, so our knowledge of its progress is, at best, patchy. The crusaders probably took a route south and then east of the city, through the Ruj valley and on to the plateau known in Arabic as the Jabal as-Summaq. This fertile upland area offered promising pickings, and for a few days they set about gathering all the food they could carry. By the night of
30/31
December, as they camped near the town of Albara, they must have felt that their mission was almost fulfilled. They had, however, made a desperately dangerous error. Either through the confusion of joint command or through straightforward neglect, Bohemond and Robert had failed to post scouts throughout the region. They were, therefore, completely oblivious to the fact that a major Muslim army from Damascus was only a few kilometres away. Duqaq had finally been moved to action by Shams ad-Daulah s entreaties for aid and, in mid-December, had set out for Antioch in the company of his formidable atabeg (general) Tughtegin and his ally the emir of Horns. The Provencal crusader Raymond of Aguilers believed that their troops numbered
60,000,
but this must surely be an exaggeration, and it is unlikely that Duqaq could have raised more than
10,000
men. Even so, this was a considerable force and, had it reached Antioch unhindered, the entire future of the crusade might have been put in jeopardy.

As it was, chance intervened, and the paths of the two armies crossed. In the early morning of
31
December, perhaps while the crusaders were still in camp, Duqaq's army appeared and immediately sought to encircle their enemy. The stunned Franks must have been terrified by this sudden turn of events. Had Bohemond and Robert not taken decisive action, the entire force might have been annihilated. The exact course of the ensuing battle is unclear. Robert seems to have rallied his knights in a frontal attack against the first wave of Muslim troops. Meanwhile, Bohemond held his force in reserve, and was therefore able to head off Duqaq's attempts to surround the crusaders. In the chaotic fighting that followed, both princes broke through the Muslim lines, scattering many of Duqaq's men. With muchpf the Damascene army in disarray, Bohemond and Robert decided to retreat to safety rather than risk pursuit. The mounted crusader knights had escaped, but in their haste they left their slower-moving infantry and all their gathered supplies at the mercy of the remaining Muslim troops. In the end, neither Latin nor Muslim won a clear victory in this battle, both suffered casualties and parts of each army were forced from the field, but it was enough to convince Duqaq to return home. From the crusaders' point of view, the whole expedition had been a debacle. Almost their entire infantry had been lost to death or imprisonment and the whole purpose of their venture - the gathering of food - had been thwarted. Robert of Flanders seems to have returned over the next few days to harry stragglers from Duqaq's force, regaining some supplies, but nowhere near enough to feed the entire army back at Antioch. Some contemporary chroniclers tried to put a brave face on events, others passed over it in silence, but it was obvious to all that the crusaders had been caught unawares and almost defeated.
²¹

At the same time, the main crusading army back at Antioch had also suffered a damaging attack. On learning of the foraging expedition's departure, either through direct observation or via Armenian Christian spies, Yaghi Siyan decided to mount a counter-offensive from within the city. The besieging force was considerably weakened at this point. Not only were Bohemond and Robert of Flanders missing, Robert of Normandy was also absent, perhaps visiting Latakia, and Duke Godfrey was laid low with illness. On
29
December a Muslim force rushed out of the Bridge Gate and raced towards the Bridge of Boats and the Provengal camp. Raymond of Toulouse responded by crossing the Orontes in force, with both knights and infantry, and at first things seemed to go well. The Turks turned tail and fled across the Antiochene plain, and Raymond gave hot pursuit back towards the Bridge Gate. In fact, the Provencals had been drawn into a trap. It seems likely that the initial Muslim attack was simply designed to lure the crusaders across the river. Once the Franks reached the Bridge Gate, 'the Turks regrouped and launched a counterattack by way of the bridge and lower ford
⁷
. Suddenly, the Latins were surrounded by a much larger force, and their attack abruptly turned into a rout. The race back to the Bridge of Boats was utterly chaotic: