The First Crusade (32 page)

The
Gesta Francorum,
whose author followed Bohemond to the foot of the walls, provides palpable evidence of the dangers involved. He described how Bohemond encouraged his men, saying: 'Go on, strong in heart and lucky in your comrades, and scale trie ladder into Antioch, for by God's will we shall
have it in our power in a trice.
but then shrewdly decided not to join the first wave of attack himself. Eventually, men began to climb. A knight from Chartres named Fulcher (not to be confused with his namesake, the crusade chronicler), the son of Fulcher fitz-Gerard, a canon of Notre Dame de Chartres, was the first to mount the walls. But now, in their panicked desperation not to be caught in mid-climb, too many crusaders rushed up the ladder and, overburdened, it toppled, killing some and injuring others:

The people of God shook with horror at this, thinking all these things had happened by Turkish trickery, and that now all those sent in had undoubtedly perished. No sound, no outburst was heard in the city nor on the ramparts, even though those who fell made a great noise. Lord God raised a strongly blowing wind that night. [Firuz], obedient to the vow he had made to Bohemond concerning the betrayal of the city, once again let down the rope to draw up the ladder.
²⁷

At last, the remaining men reached the wall top and the most dangerous moment of the entire assault. Speed and silence were essential, for had the general alarm been raised the entire attack might have been thwarted. Amazingly, the crusaders managed to kill the patrolling watchmen and the sleeping guards of the nearest three towers without an outcry' being made, although in their haste they did mistakenly hack to death Firuz's own brother. Back on the ground Bohemond's remaining troops became impatient. The author of the
Gesta Francorum,
who was in among this group, vividly recalled that 'there was a [postern] gate not far from us to the left, but it was shut and some of us did not know where it was, for it was still dark. Yet by fumbling with our hands and poking about we found it, and all made a rush at it, so that we broke it down and entered
.
²⁸

Up to this point the attack had been based on stealth and silence. Now, suddenly, that changed. With the breach made, Bohemond sounded bugles so that by prearranged signal Godfrey and Robert would know to begin their attack on the citadel. All at once, Bohemond's men began shouting and screaming to terrify the Antiochenes, calling out their rallying cry, 'God's will! God's will!' again and again. Every eyewitness account remarks on the abrupt and overwhelming outburst of noise. One remarked that 'at
this moment the shrieks of countl
ess people arose, making an amazing noise throughout the city'. Another reported: 'The crusaders killed all whom they met, and at daybreak they cried out in such terrifying screams that the whole city was thrown into confusion and women and children wept.'
²⁹

In those crucial first minutes the combination of surprise, the confusion of darkness and fear of the crusaders' unrestrained brutality paralysed the defenders. As soon as he was within the city, Bohemond ordered his banner, blood red in colour, to be raised from the walls near the top of Mount Silpius. His intention was clear - to stake an unquestionable claim to the city - but, according to one eyewitness, his act had a more immediate impact: 'Now as dawn broke our standards flew atop the southern hill of Antioch. Panicked by the sight of our troops on the overhanging hill, some of the Antiochenes rushed through the gates while others leaped from the walls. The Lord threw them into such chaos that not a single one stood and fought.'
³⁰

At the same time, some of the native Christians still living within the city decided to turn on the Muslim garrison and began opening the city's remaining gates. This chaotic reaction to Bohemond's assault sealed Antioch's fate. Had Yaghi Siyan moved quickly to staunch the breach in the south-eastern quarter and maintain a tight guard over the city's other gates, he might have averted disaster. As it was, with the way open, the remaining crusaders began pouring into the city. What followed was a chaotic and bloody massacre, fuelled by eight months of suffering, starvation and stored aggression. Although some pockets of Muslim resistance remained, these were quickly overwhelmed. In the half-light of dawn the slaughter was indiscriminate: 'They were sparing no Muslim on the grounds of age or sex, the ground was covered with blood and corpses and some of these were Christian Greeks, Syrians and Armenians. No wonder since [in the darkness] they were entirely unaware of whom they should sp
are and whom they should strike.
After the city had fallen an eyewitness noted: 'All the streets of the city on every side were full of corpses, so that no one could endure to be there because of the stench, nor could anyone walk along the narrow paths of the city exce
pt over the corpses of the dead.
³¹

The Muslim garrison had only one success. In the first wave of fighting Godfrey and Robert of Flanders failed to break into Antioch's formidable citadel. With panic sweeping the rest of the city, Yaghi Siyan's son rallied what few troops he could find and struggled up the slopes of Mount Silpius to find refuge in the fortress. Isolated high above the city, the citadel remained in Muslim hands. Yaghi Siyan himself proved less cool-headed. Believing the citadel to have fallen already, he took flight, perhaps out of the Iron Gate, with his personal bodyguard. He managed to get some distance from the city, but was then thrown by his horse and left for dead by his men. A few hours later, his battered body was discovered by an Armenian butcher who promptly decapitated it and presented the head to the crusaders.
³²

After eight tortuous months of ineffective military investment, the crusaders finally overcame Antioch's fortifications by means of intrigue and bribery. Once within the city they unleashed a ferocious wave of carnage before which the Muslim garrison could not stand. Repellent as it was, the appalling violence perpetrated by the Latins during the sack of Antioch did in fact improve the crusade's prospects of success. Their willingness to butcher the city's garrison gave them a reputation for absolute ruthlessness, and in the coming months other Muslim cities on the road to Jerusalem considered negotiating with the Latins rather than face wholesale destruction.

Perhaps inevitably, the crusaders' bottled-up bloodlust was matched only by their hunger for booty. Indeed, one contemporary recalled that, once inside Antioch, 'our rabble wildly seized everything that they found in the streets and houses. But the proved soldiers kept to warfare, in following and killing the Turks.' The truth was that most of the city's resources had been exhausted:

[The crusaders] patrolled the city looking for provisions, but they discovered few. They found many purple garments of different kinds, also pepper and very many spices, the gentiles' clothes and tents, gaming pieces and dice, also some money but not much. No wonder, for during the long siege, the many thousands of gentiles assembled in that place had used it all up.
⁵³

Raymond of Toulouse did, however, capitalise upon his position in front of the Bridge Gate. When fighting began on 3 June his men overran this entrance and seized all the buildings in the area, including the Bridge Gate itself and the Palace of Antioch. Thus, while Bohemond raised his banner above the city, Raymond simultaneously established a powerful Provencal foothold in Antioch. It looked as though Bohemond was not going to claim possession of the city quite as easily as he had hoped.
³⁴

The crusaders had stolen and battled their way into Antioch, but their success came not a moment too soon. On the very next day, 4 June, Kerbogha's army began to arrive; the crusaders were soon surrounded. Suddenly the besiegers had become the besieged.
³⁵

7

TO THE EDGE OF ANNIHILATION

In June 1098 the First Crusaders found themselves ensnared in a bizarre predicament. Having spent some eight months battling to gain entry to Antioch, they now suddenly found themselves trapped within its walls. The advance scouts from Kerbogha's immense army began to arrive outside Antioch. They soon struck an early blow against the crusaders. The Muslim scouting party, made up of 300 cavalry, initially made a cautious approach, sending ahead a detachment of thirty men to reconnoitre the city. The sight of this seemingly isolated force approaching Antioch proved too much to resist for Roger of Barneville, a powerful southern Italian Norman knight renowned for his martial prowess and skill as a negotiator. In a moment of foolhardy bravery he charged out against them with only fifteen of his most capable men and, when the Muslims fled, raced on in pursuit. In spite of all his military experience, Roger had been lured into a fatal error of judgement and fallen foul of the Muslims' favourite tactic -the feigned retreat. As he was drawn away from the safety of the city, the remainder of the Muslim scouting force suddenly poured out of a hidden valley. The Latin chronicler Albert of Aachen described how Roger, facing odds of twenty to one, turned tail, making a desperate break for the city:

The Turks on galloping horses drove on the fleeing [crusaders], until Roger drew near the town-wall and almost escaped across the shallows of the Orontes with his men. But luck was against him and in full view of all those who were standing around the ramparts the noble champion was beaten by a Turkish soldier on a faster horse. An arrow pierced his back and penetrated his liver and lung, and so he slipped from his horse and breathed his last.

In full sight of the cowed and horrified onlookers within Antioch, his body was decapitated and his head stuck on the end of a Muslim spear as a trophy of victory. Albert of Aachen imagined this scouting party gleefully reporting to Kerbogha that the crusaders would offer little resistance. Roger's body was recovered and buried with full honours by Adhemar of Le Puy and all the princes in the doorway of the St Peter's basilica. Even so, the crusaders saw the death of so prominent a knight as a dreadful omen. One of their number remarked that with the loss of this 'most illustrious and beloved knight
...
sorrow and fear gripped our people'. Their ultimate nightmare had come to fruition - thousands of kilometres from home, already exhausted by months of battle and suffering, they were about to be surrounded by an overwhelming force from which there was seemingly no escape.
¹

The crusaders quickly decided that they were in no position to meet this new threat in a full-scale battle, as they had done with Ridwan's army in February. Kerbogha's force was much larger -outnumbering their own by as much as two to one - and, more importantly, the crusaders themselves were now critically short of cavalry, having run out of horses. Albert of Aachen believed that this explained why the Franks failed to respond when Roger of Barneville was ambushed:

Hardly 150 horses remained to the [crusaders], and those were enfeebled by shortage of fodder; the Turks' horses, however, were fat and not worn out. As many as 400 Turkish horses were found and captured in the city of Antioch, which they had not yet begun to tame for riding to their custom, or taught to turn about in pursuit of the enemy and urge on with spurs.
²

Under these circumstances, the princes chose to fall back on Antioch's immense fortifications and took up defensive positions within the city. On 5 June Kerbogha's main army reached the Iron Bridge, the key crossing of the River Orontes, twelve kilometres north of the city. The crusaders had left a garrison to protect the bridge, but it was quickly overrun and slaughtered. Only the Frankish commander was spared, left in chains to rot in one of the bridge's towers.
³

The way forward to the city now lay open, but Kerbogha continued to exercise caution. He chose to establish his main camp some three kilometres north of Antioch, at the junction of the Orontes and its smaller tributary, the Kara Su - giving himself time to assess the city's defences and make contact with the Muslims still holding its citadel. Almost immediately, his attention turned to La Mahomerie, the siege fort built by the crusaders in front of Antioch's Bridge Gate. The Franks seem to have abandoned their two other forts - Malregard and Tancred's Tower - but were determined to retain control of the strategically crucial zone around La Mahomerie. During their own attempts to besiege the city this area had proved to be a vital battleground, and now it controlled access to the crusaders' sole surviving line of supply, the road to St Simeon. For the next three days Kerbogha set about testing Frankish resolve, throwing 2,000 men against the siege fort's makeshift defences. For some reason the job of resisting this vicious onslaught fell to Robert of Flanders, even though Raymond of Toulouse had, before the fall of Antioch, jealously guarded his position as commander of La Mahomerie. Now Robert made a valiant attempt to hold on to the fort with just 500 men, and for three days he resisted wave after wave of Muslim attack. Eventually though, on the night of 8/9 June, with the futility of his position clear, he moved his troops back into the city under cover of darkness and set fire to La Mahomerie, destroying the fort to prevent it falling into enemy hands.
⁴

In this same period, Kerbogha made contact with Yaghi Siyan's son, Shams ad-Daulah, now in command of Antioch's citadel. There may, at first, have been some brief discussion between these two about rights to the city, but ad-Daulah quickly realised that he was in no position to negotiate. Kerbogha put one of his own commanders in control of the citadel and, around 8 June, began massing forces in and around the fortress on the eastern, more gentle slopes of Mount Silpius. Further troops were deployed to blockade the Gate of St Paul in the north of the city. By 10 June Kerbogha was ready to unleash an almighty assault upon the crusaders. The Franks themselves had spent months struggling to overcome Antioch's defences, but Kerbogha now had one tremendous advantage - control of the citadel. From this position he could threaten the entire length of the walls running atop Mount Silpius and, even more significantly, he might gain access to the small path that wound its way down to the main city below. The crusaders were exhausted, outnumbered, isolated and horseless, but, even so, had they had possession of the citadel they might have had some slender hope of holding out against Kerbogha. As it was, they knew that there would be no long-drawn-out rerun of their own siege. This struggle would instead be swiftly settled by bloody combat.