They found their comrades deep in gloom. The
disastrous battle on the night of the 29th had been followed next day by a
severe earth-tremor, which was felt even at Edessa; and that evening the aurora
borealis illuminated the sky. During the next weeks torrential rain poured down
incessantly, and it grew steadily colder. Stephen of Blois could not understand
why anyone complained of excessive sunshine in Syria. It was clear that God was
displeased with His warriors, for their pride, their luxuriousness and their
brigandage. Adhemar of Le Puy ordered a solemn fast for three days; but with
famine already approaching the fast made little difference; and now the failure
of the foraging expedition would mean starvation for many. Soon one man in
every seven was dying of hunger. Envoys in search of food were sent as far as
the Taurus mountains, where the Roupenian princes consented to provide what
they could. Some supplies came from the Armenian monks settled out on the
Amanus mountains; while local Christians, Armenian and Syrian, collected
everything edible that they could find and brought it to the camp. But their
motive was not philanthropy but gain. For one donkey-load of provisions eight
bezants were charged; and these were prices that only the wealthiest soldiers
could afford. The horses suffered even worse than the men, till only some seven
hundred were left with the army.
Peter the Hermit
Attempts to Desert
A more generous helper was found in the island
of Cyprus. The Bishop of Le Puy, acting no doubt on Pope Urban’s instructions,
had been assiduous in establishing good relations with the Orthodox Church
dignitaries of the East; whom he treated with a respect that belies the theory
that the Pope envisaged the Crusade as a means for bringing them under his
control. For the Patriarch of Antioch, imprisoned within the city, this
friendship was as yet of little value; for the Turks would from time to time
put him in a cage and hang him over the walls. But the Patriarch Symeon of
Jerusalem, who had retired from his see when Ortoq’s death made life there too
insecure, was now in Cyprus. As soon as communications were opened, Adhemar
made contact with him. Symeon was no friend of Latin usages, against which he
had published a firm but moderate treatise; but he was glad to co-operate with
the western Church for the good of Christendom. Already in October he had joined
with Adhemar in sending a report on the Crusade to the Christians of the West.
Now, hearing of the plight of the army, he regularly dispatched across to it
all the food and wine that the island could spare.
The Patriarch’s food parcels, plentiful though
they were, could do little to alleviate the general misery. Pressed by hunger,
men began to desert from the camp to seek refuge in richer districts or to
attempt the long road home. At first the deserters were obscure private
soldiers; but one January morning it was found that Peter the Hermit himself
had fled, accompanied by William the Carpenter. William was an adventurer with
no desire to waste his time on a hopeless Crusade; he had already deserted an
expedition in Spain; but why Peter should have lost his nerve is hard to
understand. The refugees were pursued by Tancred and brought back in ignominy.
Peter, whose reputation it was advisable to preserve, was pardoned in silence;
but William was kept standing all night in Bohemond’s tent and in the morning
received from him a harsh and menacing lecture. He swore that he would never
leave the army again till it reached Jerusalem; but he later broke his oath.
Peter’s prestige inevitably suffered; but he was soon to be given a chance to
redeem it.
With the army daily diminishing from famine and
from flight, Adhemar considered that a strong appeal for reinforcements must be
made to the West. To give it the utmost authority, he drafted it in the name of
the Patriarch of Jerusalem, whose permission he had presumably secured. The
language of the appeal is significant for the light that it throws on Adhemar’s
ecclesiastical policy. The Patriarch addresses all the faithful of the West as
leader of the bishops now in the East, both Greek and Latin. He entitles himself
‘Apostolic’; he takes it upon himself to excommunicate any Christian who fails
in his Crusading vows. It is the language of an independent pontiff. Adhemar
could never have put it into the mouth of one who was intended to be made
subject to the Bishop of Rome. Whatever Urban’s ultimate plans might be for the
government of the eastern Churches, his legate was not preaching papal
supremacy. We do not know what response the Patriarch’s letter evoked in the
West.
While the Crusaders showed a proper respect for
the hierarchs of eastern Orthodoxy, their relations with its lay overlord
deteriorated. Early in February the Emperor’s representative Taticius suddenly
left the army. He had accompanied the Crusade from Nicaea with a small staff
and a company mainly of guides and engineers, and had apparently been on good
terms with its leaders. At Comana and at Coxon they had correctly handed over
their conquests to him; and he in his reports paid generous tribute to their
fighting qualities. Several explanations were given at the time for his
departure; but there is no need to reject the story that he told on his return
to Constantinople. According to him, Bohemond sent for him one day, when it was
already known that the Turks were about to make another effort to relieve
Antioch, and told him in strict confidence that the other leaders believed the
Emperor to be responsible for encouraging the Turks and were plotting to
revenge themselves by taking his life. Taticius allowed himself to be
convinced. Indeed, the temper of the army at this moment was such that a
scapegoat might well be desired. Besides, he believed that the Crusaders,
weakened and demoralized by hunger, could not now hope to take the great
fortress. His advice that it should be starved into surrender by the occupation
of the castles that commanded its more distant approaches had been ignored. He
therefore announced that he must return to imperial territory to arrange for a
more satisfactory system of revictualment and took a ship at the port of St
Symeon for Cyprus. To show that he intended to return, he left most of his
staff behind with the army. But as soon as he was gone Bohemond’s propagandists
suggested that he had fled from cowardice in face of the coming Turkish attack,
if not from actual treachery. When the Emperor’s representative acted so
dishonourably, surely the Crusade was freed from any obligation towards the
Empire. That is to say, Antioch need not be restored to it.
Bohemond
Threatens to Desert
Next, Bohemond put it about that he was himself
contemplating his departure from the army. He could not much longer ignore his
obligations at home. Hitherto he had played a leading part in all the military
operations of the Crusade; and, as he calculated, the prospect of losing his
aid at this critical juncture terrified the army. He therefore allowed it to be
understood that if he were given the lordship of Antioch it would compensate
him for any losses that he might suffer owing to his absence from Italy. His
fellow-princes were not taken in by these manoeuvres; but among the rank and
file he won much sympathy.
Meanwhile the Turks were massing again for the
relief of Antioch. When Duqaq failed to bring the aid that he had promised,
Yaghi-Siyan turned again to his former suzerain, Ridwan of Aleppo. Ridwan by
now regretted his own inaction that had permitted the Franks to penetrate to
Antioch. When Yaghi-Siyan readmitted his suzerainty, he prepared to come to his
rescue, assisted by his cousin, Soqman the Ortoqid, from Diarbekir, and by his
father-in-law, the Emir of Hama. Early in February the allies reoccupied
Harenc, where they assembled for their attack on the Crusaders’ camp. On
hearing the news, the Crusading princes held a council in Adhemar’s tent, where
Bohemond proposed that while the infantry should remain in the camp to contain
any sortie from the city, the knights, of whom there were only seven hundred
now fit for service, should make a surprise onslaught on the invading army. His
advice was taken. On 8 February, at nightfall, the Frankish cavalry slipped out
across the bridge of boats and took up its position between the river and the
Lake of Antioch, from which it could fall on the Turks as they advanced to
cross the Iron Bridge. At daybreak the Turkish army came in sight; and at once
the first line of the Crusaders charged, before the Turkish archers could be
formed into line. The charge could not break the mass of the Turks; and the
knights withdrew, luring the enemy to their chosen battleground, where the lake
on the left and the river on the right prevented the great numbers of the Turks
from outflanking them. On this narrow terrain the knights charged again, this
time in full force. Before their weight, the more lightly armed Turks broke and
fled, spreading confusion in the packed lines behind them. Soon the whole of
Ridwan’s army was in full disorderly retreat back to Aleppo. As they passed
through Harenc, its garrison joined the fugitives, leaving the town for the
native Christians to hand back to the Crusaders.
While the cavalry were winning this spectacular
victory, the infantry were fighting a harder battle. Yaghi-Siyan made a sortie
in full strength against the camp; whose defenders were beginning to lose
ground, when, in the afternoon, the triumphant knights were seen approaching. As
they drew near Yaghi-Siyan understood that the army of relief was beaten. He
called his men back within the walls.
The Battle on
the Road to St Symeon
The defeat of the second relieving army, though
it raised the morale of the Crusaders, did nothing to improve their immediate
situation. Food was still very short, though supplies were beginning to arrive
at the port of St Symeon, coming largely from Cyprus, where the Patriarch
Symeon, and probably also the unappreciated Taticius, collected all that was available.
But the road down to the sea was perpetually raided by parties slipping out of
the city, who ambushed the smaller convoys; while the city itself received
provisions through the still unguarded Gate of St George and across the
fortified bridge. To control the bridge and so to make the passage to St Symeon
safe, Raymond proposed to build a tower on the north bank close by. But the
project was held back owing to the lack of materials and of masons. On
4
March a fleet manned by Englishmen and commanded by the exiled claimant to the
throne, Edgar Atheling, sailed into St Symeon. It brought pilgrims from Italy,
but had called on its way at Constantinople, where Edgar had joined it, placing
himself under the orders of the Emperor. There it had been loaded with siege
materials and mechanics, whose arrival was very timely. The fact that they were
provided by the Emperor was carefully disregarded by the Crusaders.
Hearing that the fleet had put in, Raymond and
Bohemond set out together, neither trusting the other alone, to recruit as many
fighting-men as possible from its passengers and to escort the mechanics and
material up to the camp. On 6 March, as they were returning laden along the
road from St Symeon, they were ambushed by a detachment from the garrison of
the city. Their troops were taken by surprise and fled in panic, leaving their
loads in the hands of the enemy. A few stragglers rushed into the camp and
spread the rumour that both Raymond and Bohemond were killed. At the news
Godfrey prepared to go out to rescue the defeated army, when the Turks made a
sudden sortie from the city against the camp, to provide cover under which the
ambushers, now heavy with booty, could reach the gates. Godfrey’s men, already
armed to set out along the road to the sea, were able to hold the attack till
Raymond and Bohemond appeared unexpectedly with the remnant of their forces.
Their arrival, weakened though they were, enabled Godfrey to drive the Turks
back into the city. The princes then united to intercept the raiders as they
returned. Their tactics were entirely successful. The raiders, handicapped by
their loads, were outmanoeuvred and massacred as they struggled to reach the
bridge; and the precious building materials were recovered. It was said that
fifteen hundred Turks were slain, many of them drowned while trying to cross
the river. Among the dead were nine Emirs. That evening members of the garrison
crept out to bury the dead in the Moslem cemetery on the north bank of the
river. The Crusaders saw them and left them in peace, but next morning they dug
up the corpses for the sake of the gold and silver ornaments that they wore.
Negotiations
with the Fatimids
The result of the Crusaders’ victory was to
complete the blockade of Antioch. With the workmen and materials now provided
the planned fortress was built to command the approach to the fortified bridge.
It was built close to a mosque by the Moslem cemetery and was officially called
the castle of La Mahomerie, from the old French word for ‘mosque’. But when the
leaders debated in whose charge the castle should be placed, Raymond, whose
idea it was to erect it, claimed its control for himself; and it was usually
known as the castle of Raymond. The building was finished by 19 March. It soon
proved its value in preventing any access to the bridge-gate. But the Gate of
St George was still open. To bring it too under control it was next resolved to
build a castle on the site of an old convent on the hill that faced it. The
construction was completed in April and the castle entrusted to Tancred, who
was allowed the sum of three hundred marks for his expenses. Henceforward no
convoys of food were able to reach the city, nor could its inhabitants send, as
had been their custom hitherto, their flocks to pasture outside the walls.
Individual raiders could still climb over the walls on Mount Silpius or through
the narrow Iron Gate, but could no longer attempt an organized sortie. While
the garrison began to suffer from hunger, the Crusaders’ problem of
commissariat was eased. The better weather as spring came on, the possibility
of foraging without the risk of sudden Turkish attacks and the readiness of
merchants that had hitherto sold their goods at high prices to the garrison to
do business now with the camp made more provisions available and raised the
morale of the Franks. Soon after his castle had been built Tancred had captured
a huge consignment of food destined for Yaghi-Siyan and conveyed by Christian
merchants, Syrian and Armenian. Such successes led the Crusaders to hope that
Antioch might now be starved into surrender. But it must be done quickly, for
the terrible Kerbogha of Mosul was gathering his forces.