The Glory of the Crusades (10 page)

Yet, in the midst of the terrible march, the Crusaders’ mettle was tested in a major battle that proved their fighting capability and united their resolve.

The Battle of Dorylaeum

Kilij Arslan, who you will recall had recently warred against the Danishmends, now allied himself with them in order to destroy the Crusaders in revenge for the loss of his capital city at Nicaea. Forty-five miles southeast of Nicaea, near the town of Dorylaeum, the forces of Kilij Arslan set upon the Crusader vanguard commanded by Bohemond.

Muslim troops were mostly fast-moving cavalry who relied on the bow to pepper the Crusaders with arrows. These mounted archers loosed deadly volleys, then feigned withdrawal in order to entice their enemy to break ranks and advance in pursuit; once the enemy took the bait, the archers moved to attack the enemy flanks and rear with the goal of a complete encirclement and subsequent annihilation.

Kilij Arslan believed the vanguard was the main Crusader body and ordered the attack. Bohemond quickly assessed the situation and ordered his infantry, clerics, and non-combatants to make a defensive camp at a marsh, which also protected their back and right flank. The knights were ordered to line up and advance.

The volleys of the Turks left the knights with so many arrows stuck in their armor that they resembled porcupines. Eventually, the knights were driven back to the defensive camp with the infantry and civilians. Bohemond’s warriors fought alone in this defensive posture for five to six hours before the main body came to the rescue and beat back the Muslim assault.

The Battle of Dorylaeum taught the Crusaders an invaluable lesson: They learned how to fight and defeat the mounted Turkish warrior in open combat by maintaining discipline rather than breaking ranks and pursuing the enemy. News of the Crusader victory spread rapidly throughout Anatolia and caused panic in the Turkish world. Christian populations in towns with a Turkish garrison revolted against their Muslim overlords and welcomed the advancing Crusaders. The Turks now viewed the Crusaders as invincible and did not harass them further on their march to Antioch.

Antioch

The main army groups continued their march through Seljuk territory and arrived at the outskirts of the great city of Antioch on October 20, 1097, ending their grueling four-month march through the Anatolian plain.

Antioch was an ancient city originally founded in 300 B.C. by Seleucus Nicator, a general in Alexander the Great’s army. It grew into a large and important city in the Roman Empire with an estimated population of 300,000.
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After the Catholic Faith arrived in Antioch it was home to St. Peter for a time. In the early second century, the great St. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, was arrested by order of the Emperor Trajan and hauled to Rome so that his execution could serve as an example of imperial policy toward Christians. The city of Peter and Ignatius was conquered by the forces of Mohammed in 637 and held for over 300 years until the Byzantines reclaimed it in 969. The Seljuk Turks returned the city to the sphere of Islam in 1085.

The Crusaders recognized the great challenge ahead of them when they observed the impressively fortified city. Antioch
rested partly on a mountainside with a defensive citadel perched a thousand feet above the main city. The steep slopes of the city were surrounded by seven miles of walls, doubled at the northern end and studded with 360 towers. The size of Antioch was its greatest strength for the defenders and the bane of any attacker, as even a large army was forced to disperse troops around its walls, thereby diminishing its attacking power.
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The siege of Antioch would test the Crusaders in every way, and although they would eventually succeed in liberating the city, it would come at a heavy cost.

First Contact

In the first engagement with the Muslim forces at Antioch, the Crusaders fought the Battle of the Iron Bridge to secure the northern approach to the city. The Iron Bridge was an old fortified bridge, northwest of Antioch, built in the sixth century with two towers, one at either end, across the Orontes River. Holding the Iron Bridge was crucial to any successful siege of Antioch because “possession of this crossing made it impossible for any large enemy force to surprise the crusaders encamped around Antioch and it provided a bridgehead for raids out into Syria.”
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Knowing the northern approach to the city was secure, the Crusaders marched to the walls, formed defensive positions around it, and settled in for the siege. Unfortunately, the Crusaders were ill-prepared for a siege and soon found themselves engaged in a long, drawn-out stalemate of raiding, sallies, and counter-sallies by Turkish forces.

Albert of Aachen recorded the state of affairs and constant attacks by the Turks: “Morning, noon and night every day there were sudden attacks, sallies, scenes of carnage, and endlessly you could hear in the Christian camp always new lamentations over further losses.”
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As the stalemate progressed through the winter, the Crusaders’ sufferings intensified. By Christmas most of the available food near the city was consumed, and knights were forced to kill their horses so that “those who used to carry them . . . they now carried in their stomachs.”
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The rank and file suffered horribly and time was spent not in combat but in searching for food. The lack of food resulted in many deaths in the Crusader camps, and those alive were forced to find and eat small amounts of food even in the most disgusting of places:

At that time, the famished ate the shoots of beanseeds growing in the fields and many kinds of herbs unseasoned with salt, also thistles, which, being not well cooked because of the deficiency of firewood, pricked the tongues of those eating them; also horses, asses, and camels, and dogs and rats. The poorer ones ate even the skins of the beasts and seeds of grain found in manure.
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Eventually, the situation became so intolerable that the Crusaders were forced to mount foraging parties to secure food. Harassment from the Turks hampered their ability to find food, which tied up critical manpower as the Crusaders were forced to forage in well-armed groups.

The Crusaders were in the worst possible position: trapped in between the walls of the city and the impending arrival of a Muslim relief army. To many, the situation looked hopeless. Desertions, even by well-known personages, became rampant. Even Peter the Hermit, who had joined this group of Crusaders when they arrived in Constantinople, deserted the cause at Antioch, although he was later arrested and forced to return to the camp. In order to stem the desertions and improve morale a series of temporal and spiritual regulations were promulgated and enforced. Bishop Adhemar instituted penitential fasting, processions, almsgiving, intercessory prayer, and celebration of special Masses throughout the Crusader camps in order to beseech God to end their suffering.
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Liberation!

The rapidly deteriorating situation, the desire to end the months-long siege, and news of a relief army under Kerbogha, the
commander of Mosul, on its way to Antioch, prompted Bohemond to craft a plan to liberate Antioch.

An Armenian convert to Islam named Firuz al Zarrad, who was a captain of one of the tower guards near the St. Paul gate, began negotiations with Bohemond—whose ability to speak Greek facilitated the exchanges—to allow his troops into the city. Before Bohemond allowed the operation to commence, he approached the other Crusade leaders and asked their permission to keep and rule the city should they liberate it. The only leader who balked at Bohemond’s bargain was Raymond of Toulouse, who reminded the leaders that Antioch was imperial territory and their oaths demanded return of the city to Emperor Alexius. The discussion was heated but eventually Raymond agreed to allow Bohemond to rule the city until the emperor came in person to claim it.

Secure in his position, Bohemond worked with Firuz on the operational details of entering Antioch. The plan entailed a commando-type raid involving sixty knights climbing a ladder to Firuz’s tower just before dawn. But only a few knights successfully made the climb before the ladder broke. Adapting to the situation, the knights in the tower discovered a small, undefended gate, which they opened to allow the main body of troops into the city. Once inside, the Crusaders fanned out while the remaining Turkish troops retreated to the citadel. Yaghisiyan, the ruler of Antioch, managed to escape the city in the chaos and confusion (he was later discovered by a group of local Armenian Christians and beheaded).
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The liberation of Antioch, brought about through the skilled negotiations of Bohemond, was a miracle. Achieving their objective of returning the ancient Christian city of Antioch to the Faith was a momentous and happy occasion for the Crusaders. But their joy was soon forgotten when the forces of Kerbogha arrived.

From Besiegers to Besieged

Kerbogha had assembled a large allied force to relieve Antioch and crush the Crusaders. On the march to Antioch, he diverted his force to Edessa in the hopes of taking that city from Baldwin of Boulogne. Baldwin’s defense of Edessa during the three-week siege bought time for the Crusaders at Antioch. Kerbogha’s expedition to Edessa proved a costly mistake, as he failed to capture the city and only arrived at Antioch on June 4, 1098—one day after the Crusaders had entered the city.

The Crusaders who had been the besiegers now became the besieged. They were caught between the Muslim forces inside the citadel, which still held out and proved a nuisance for the Christians, and the forces of Kerbogha outside the walls of the city. Once again the situation looked hopeless.

The Crusaders were dealt another blow when Count Stephen of Blois deserted. Stephen and a detachment of Crusaders were north of Antioch when the city was liberated, and when they marched back to the city they saw Kerbogha’s forces outside the walls and the citadel still in enemy hands. This situation led Stephen to believe that the Crusaders would soon be crushed, so he decided to leave the Holy Land. On the march home he stopped at Philomelium, where Emperor Alexius was encamped. He described for the emperor the dire situation at Antioch and expressed his belief that all was lost. Alexius agreed and took his army back to Constantinople. Upon returning to France, Stephen was berated and shamed by his wife. The guilt of leaving the Crusade and failing to fulfill his vow (certainly exacerbated by Pope Paschal II’s (r. 1099–1118) excommunication of those who had deserted during the siege of Antioch
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) weighed heavily on him. He later returned to the Holy Land in the minor Crusade of 1101, and was killed.

News of Alexius’s return to his capital was received in Antioch with anger. The Crusaders now firmly believed that Alexius had betrayed them and their oaths were null and void.
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The Visions

Trapped between the forces in the citadel and the forces of Kerbogha, the Crusaders began to despair. The Lord, as he had done throughout the expedition, came to the rescue.

Peter Bartholomew, a layman, told the Crusaders that St. Andrew had recently appeared to him and revealed the location of the Holy Lance of St. Longinus, the Roman legionary who pierced the side of Christ on the Cross. Debate raged among them over the veracity of Peter’s vision. Bishop Adhemar was highly skeptical, primarily because he had seen the purported Holy Lance in Constantinople. Others, including Raymond of Toulouse, believed.

A search was conducted in the church of St. Peter to find the Lance. The Crusaders dug for hours throughout the morning but did not find anything, and as the day wore on everyone began to lose hope. Just when the search was about to end, a worn lance head was found. The Crusade leaders, in a letter to Pope Urban II in September 1098, wrote, “We were so comforted and strengthened by finding it, and by many other divine revelations that we, who before had been afflicted and timid, were then most boldly and eagerly urging one another to battle.”
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The finding of the Holy Lance greatly improved Crusader morale and “transformed the army’s mood from terrified inertia to awed encouragement.”
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Victory at Antioch

The time was at hand to deal with Kerbogha’s relief army. To spiritually prepare for battle, the Crusaders proclaimed a three-day fast. They conducted processions to the churches within Antioch and received the sacraments of confession and the Eucharist.

Once more the Crusaders turned to the military genius of Bohemond, who organized the disparate troops into four divisions of two squadrons of infantry and knights in two lines each. Bohemond’s plan was for each division to advance out of the city gate in a column but then in the open field perform the complex maneuver of changing formation from column to line. This tactic was brilliant, for it allowed each division to face the enemy ready to attack and covered the deployment of each subsequent division. Bohemond also took advantage of geography, using the Orontes River on the right and high ground on the left to cover the Crusader flanks. This arrangement avoided the trap of encirclement and mitigated the Turks’ main battle tactic.

Another key to the Crusader victory over the numerically superior Muslim forces outside the walls of Antioch was Kerbogha’s crucial mistake of allowing the Crusaders to march out of the city unopposed. This gave the Crusaders time to organize into their battle formation. Apparently, Kerbogha had been informed of the Crusader advance but could not be troubled to interrupt his chess game.
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