The First Crusade (29 page)

This was extremely fortunate for the crusaders because, of all the Muslim powers of the Levant, Egypt alone had a navy capable of hampering the Franks' precious maritime connections with Byzantium and the West. The Fatimids were, for the time being, prepared to enter into a pact of neutrality; for their part, the Latin princes were, in the interests of survival, willing to forget the brutal, undifferentiated abhorrence of Islam demanded by crusader rhetoric. Indeed, Stephen of Blois showed no embarrassment when writing to his wife that The Emperor of Babylon [al-Afdal] also sent Saracen messengers to our army with letters, and through these he established peace and c
oncord with us.
These envoys appear to have stayed in the crusader camp for almost a month and, when they left, were accompanied by Frankish ambassadors. This rather startling episode must have been common knowledge within the crusade and indicates that, even in the midst of their trials at Antioch, the Franks were not, as we might have expected, inspired by blind religious or ethnic hatred.
⁴¹

The crusaders had endured a terrible winter outside the walls of Antioch. Thousands had died from cold, disease, hunger and battle; others had fled; those that remained must have been changed by the experience. The sheer horror of this period clearly etched itself into the memory of those who later wrote about the crusade, but they seem to have rationalised the experience in different ways. From most eyewitnesses one senses that the crusaders were terribly weakened by these months - left utterly exhausted and in constant fear. Fulcher of Chartres, who did not witness the siege in person, took a different view. In his mind, the crusaders had walked through a burning fire of purification to emerge cleansed of sin and ever more assured in their purpose. This might sound like the romanticised imaginings of a distant observer, but there may be more than an element of truth in Fulcher
’
s words. In July 1098, Anselm of Ribemont, a crusader knight who had lived through the Antiochene winter, wrote that the Franks were strengthened by their ordeal: 'Growing stronger and stronger, therefore, from that day our men took counsel with renewed courage
.

The crusaders had, in some awful sense, been cleansed. The weak had died; the fearful had fled; those ineffective in battle had been slain. Now a smaller, but tougher and more experienced core remained. Some 100,000 crusaders had left Europe; now, at best, 30,000 survived, and the siege of Antioch was far from over.
⁴²

6

TIGHTENING THE SCREW

The first days of March 1098 marked an end to the trials of winter and a change in the crusade's fortunes. On 4 March an English fleet arrived at St Simeon bearing supplies, building tools and craftsmen. These new resources were invaluable, but we know very little about the men who brought them to the Levant.* Just as with the Genoese fleet that arrived in November 1097, we are really left to guess whether these English ships were part of a calculated supply system or simply a chance arrival. Certainly the eyewitness crusader sources did not remark that the fleet had been long awaited or expected, but, planned or otherwise, its cargo promised to turn the tide of the siege of

*
As we have seen, the exact nature of the English naval contribution to the crusade is unclear - these sailors may have come from England itself, or they may have been Byzantine mercenaries. The matter is further confused by the fact that two prominent Norman chron
iclers recorded that Edgar the Ae
theling, heir to the throne of England, commanded this fleet. Given that Edgar was still embroiled in a dispute over the succession to the Scottish throne in late 1097, this may be unlikely, if not entirely impossible. We do know that an Italian crusader named Bruno of Lucca travelled east with this fleet, because his fellow citizens were so proud of his adventures that they recorded his journey in a celebratory letter addressed, rather grandly, to every single Christian on earth.

Antioch.
¹

Up to this point the crusaders' encirclement of the city could at best be described as partial. They had blockaded three gates in its north-west quadrant, but the Bridge Gate, the Gate of St George and the less accessible Iron Gate remained unguarded. Efforts had been made to police the roads leading from the Bridge Gate to St Simeon and Alexandretta, but supplies continued to reach the Muslim garrison. Worse still, for the crusaders, their most important line of supply - that leading to St Simeon - was exposed to frequent attack. For the Latins to have any hope of starving the Antiochene garrison into submission, their cordon would have to be tightened and the Bridge Gate area controlled. The arrival of the English fleet offered an opportunity to do just that. As soon as they heard of its appearance, the crusader princes held a council to discuss the best use of these new resources and decided to build a siege fort, similar to the one they had constructed on the slopes of Mount Staurin, in front of the Bridge Gate. This was a risky business on the exposed dead ground between the gate and the Orontes river, so rather than start from scratch they chose to fortify an abandoned mosque that stood on a small hill close to the Bridge Gate.

Before this could happen, the newly arrived craftsmen and materials needed to be fetched from the coast. It is a testament to the value of these commodities and to the potential danger of the journey that two of the crusade's most powerful princes, Bohemond and Raymond of Toulouse, with sixty knights and at least 500 infantry (although we cannot be sure of the total number of infantry), were sent to St Simeon to act as escorts.
²

The return journey took them three days, and in their absence Yaghi Siyan harassed the remaining crusaders with a number of minor sorties. Bohemond's and Raymond's return journey from the coast was particularly perilous because, laden with tools and building materials, they moved at a slower pace. It probably took them the best part of two days to cover the thirty kilometres from St Simeon, and along the way they allowed gaps to appear in their marching order. This was quite a serious failure of generalship on their part marching forces that break formation are inevitably vulnerable to attack - and perhaps indicates a lack of co-ordination between the two leaders. As they neared Antioch, around 7 March, a section of the crusader line, probably infantry, was attacked. The Antiochene garrison had laid an ambush. One eyewitness described the crusaders' abject terror as they were surrounded by screaming Muslim horsemen, fighting much as they had months earlier in the Battle of Dorylaeum:

The Turks began to gnash their teeth and chatter and howl with very loud cries, wheeling round our men, throwing darts and loosing arrows, wounding and slaughtering them most brutally. Their attack was so fierce that our men began to flee over the nearest mountain or wherever there was path. Those who could get away quickly escaped alive, and those who could not were killed.
³

The death toll from this initial engagement - some 500 infantry but, surprisingly, only two knights - indicates the continuing lack of cohesion between mounted and foot troops, and, perhaps, the ability of horsemen to escape danger more quickly. This rout could have spelled disaster for the Franks, but Bohemond - who seems to have been commanding the rearguard - rushed forward with reinforcements, Godfrey of Bouillon led further troops into the fray from the main crusader camp, and a ferocious battle ensued on the ground in front of the Bridge Gate. At this point Yaghi Siyan likewise poured in more troops, and one Latin eyewitness recalled that he closed the Bridge Gate behind them, 'thereby demanding his soldiers to win the fight or perish'. But with the added weight of Godfrey's reinforcements, the crusaders began to gain the advantage. The Muslim troops panicked, turning in headlong flight back towards the Bridge Gate, which Yaghi Siyan now tried to rush open in desperation:

They fled swiftly across the middle of the bridge to their gate. Those who did not succeed in crossing the bridge alive, because of the great press of men and horses, suffered there everlasting death with the devil and his imps; for we came after them, driving them into the river or throwing them down, so that the water of
that swift stream seemed to be ru
nning red with the blood of Turks, and if by chance any of them tried to climb up the pillars of the bridge, or to reach the bank by swimming, he was stricken by our men who were standing all along the river bank.
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Modern historians writing on the crusade have tended to downplay the significance of this battle, but to the Franks it seems to have marked an important turning point Almost every contemporary Latin account provides a detailed description of these events, in language drawn from a grand palette of crusading rhetoric. At points this even outstrips the glorification lavished upon the earlier victories over Duqaq of Damascus and Ridwan of Aleppo. The crusaders who died in the initial Muslim ambush were celebrated as martyrs - 'Our knights or footsoldiers suffered martyrdom, and we believe that they went to heaven and were clad in white robes and received the martyr's palm' - a deliberate contrast to those Muslim dead who, it was claimed, would suffer in hell at the hands of'imps'. Those who then prevailed in the Frankish counterattack were said to have 'invoked the name of Jesus Christ and, being assured of the journey to the Holy Sepulchre
..
. joined in battle with one heart and mind'. To the Latin writers, they were 'knights of the true God, protected on all sides by the sign of the Cross', who held a religious service to give thanks to God as soon as the battle ended. This pious style of description is not unique; indeed throughout the expedition contemporary Latin writers were determined to drive home their belief that the Franks were engaged in a profoundly sacred campaign, fought in God's name and under his direction. What is remarkable is that such a wealth of religious imagery should be squandered on what would appear to be a relatively insignificant battle. We know that skirmishes between the crusaders and the Antiochene garrison took place outside the walls almost daily. The battle of 7 March brought no sudden end to the siege, perhaps it even had no immediately identifiable strategic impact upon its progress, and this is probably why it has effectively been ignored by modern historians. Why, then, was it so important to the crusaders themselves, so impressive a victory that many of the native Christian women still living in Antioch were supposedly prompted to come to windows in the walls, and when they saw the wretched fate of the Turks they clapped their hands secretly?

The crusaders did claim to have inflicted heavy casualties upon their enemy: twelve 'emirs' or commanders were said to have fallen in the battle, 'together with 1,500 more of their bravest and most resolute soldiers, who were the best in fighting to defend the city'. If accurate, these figures would represent a serious weakening of a garrison that had probably numbered 5,000 at best.
Estimates of overall Latin casualties vary between 1,000 and the strangely precise figure of 2,055, so
lo
sses on
each
s
i
de may well have been almost equal.

In fact, the real significance of the Bridge Gate battle lay in its impact upon morale. During the five months that they had lain encamped around Antioch, the crusaders
had survived two major battles against the forces of Damascus and Aleppo, but, to date, this engagement represented perhaps their most decisive victory over the city's garrison itself. Yaghi Siyan had gambled upon deploying a large force to catch Bohemond and Raymond of Toulouse in isolation, but had failed. Eyewitnesses emphasise that this defeat and its aftermath had a marked effect upon the Muslim garrison's state of mind: 'The survivors no longer had the will to howl and gabble day and night, as they used to do
...
henceforth they had less courage than before, both in words and works.' The opposite was true for the crusaders. Those who had survived the horrors of winter and won the recent battle against Ridwan of Aleppo seem to have felt that this latest success presaged a change in the balance of fortune. Raymond of Toulouse's chaplain celebrated the precious booty and much-needed horses captured after the fray: 'Some [crusaders] running back and forth between the tents on Arabian horses were showing their new riches to their friends, and others, sporting two or three garments of silk, were praising God, the bestower of victory and gifts, and yet others, covered with three or four shields, were happily displaying t
hese mementoes of their triumph.
⁵

Even more importantly, the crusaders had succeeded in bringing their prized cargo of tools, materials and craftsmen to Antioch. But, before work began on the new siege fort, a particularly macabre episode took place. At dawn on 8 March the Antiochene garrison stole out of the city to bury their dead in the grounds of the very mosque that the crusaders were planning to fortify. The Franks responded with chilling barbarity:

Together with them [the Muslims] buried cloaks, gold bezants [coins], bows and arrows, and other tools the names of which we do not know. When our men heard [this] they came in haste to that devil's chapel, and ordered the bodies to be dug up and the tombs destroyed, and the dead men dragged out of their graves. They threw all the corpses into a pit, and cut off their heads and brought them to our tents so that they could count the number exactly, except for those that they loaded on to four horses belonging to the ambassadors of the emir of Cairo and sent to the sea-coast.
⁶