A History of the Crusades-Vol 1 (21 page)

The Success of
the Emperor’s Organization

The army spent a fortnight at Constantinople
before it was transported to Asia. Even the crossing of the Bosphorus pleased
Stephen, who had heard that the channel was dangerous but found it no more so
than the Marne or the Seine. They marched along the Gulf of Nicomedia, past
Nicomedia itself, to join the main Crusading armies, who were already beginning
the siege of Nicaea.

Alexius could breathe again. He had wished for
mercenaries from the West. Instead, he had been sent large armies, each with
its own leaders. No government really cares to find numbers of independent
allied forces invading its territory, particularly when they are on a lower
level of civilization. Food had to be provided; marauding had to be prevented.
The actual size of the Crusading armies can only be conjectured. Medieval
estimates are always exaggerated; but Peter the Hermit’s rabble, including its
many non-combatants, probably approached twenty thousand. The chief Crusading
armies, Raymond’s, Godfrey’s and the northern French, each numbered well over
ten thousand, including non-combatants. Bohemond’s was a little smaller; and
there were other lesser groups. But in all from sixty to a hundred thousand
persons must have entered the Empire from the West between the summer of 1096
and the spring of 1097. On the whole the Emperor’s arrangements for dealing
with them had succeeded. None of the Crusaders had suffered from lack of food
when crossing the Balkans. The only raids made to secure food were those of
Walter Sans-Avoir at Belgrade and Peter at Bela Palanka, both under exceptional
circumstances, and of Bohemond at Castoria, when he was travelling in midwinter
along an unsuitable road. Petty marauding and one or two wanton attacks on towns
had been impossible to prevent, as Alexius had insufficient troops for the
purpose. But his Petcheneg squadrons, by their blind uncompromising obedience
to orders, irritating though it must have been to the Crusaders, proved an
efficient police force; while his special envoys usually handled the western
princes with tact. The growing success of the Emperor’s methods is shown by the
smooth passage of the last of the armies, composed of northern Frenchmen, who
were not a well-disciplined people and were led by weak and incompetent
leaders.

At Constantinople Alexius had obtained an oath
of allegiance from all the princes except Raymond, with whom he had achieved a
private understanding. He had no illusions about the practical value of the
oath nor about the reliability of the men that had sworn it. But at least it
gave him a juridical advantage that might well prove important. The result had
not been easy to achieve; for though the wiser leaders, such as Bohemond, and
intelligent observers, such as Fulcher of Chartres, saw the necessity for
co-operation with Byzantium, to the lesser knights and the rank and file the
oath seemed to be a humiliation and even a betrayal of trust. They had been
prejudiced against the Byzantines by the chilly welcome that they had received
from the countryfolk, whom they thought that they were coming to save.
Constantinople, that vast, splendid city, with all its wealth, its busy
population of merchants and manufacturers, its courtly nobles in their civilian
robes and the richly dressed, painted great ladies with their trains of eunuchs
and slaves, roused in them contempt mixed with an uncomfortable sense of
inferiority. They could not understand the language nor the customs of the
country. Even the church services were alien to them.

The Emperor’s
Interest

The Byzantines returned their dislike. To the
citizens of the capital these rough, unruly brigands, encamped for so long in
their suburbs, were an unmitigated nuisance; while the attitude of the
countryfolk is shown in a letter written by Theophylact, Archbishop of
Bulgaria, from his see of Ochrida, on the Via Egnatia. Theophylact, who was
notoriously broad-minded towards the West, speaks of the trouble caused by the
passage of the Crusaders through his diocese, but adds that now he and his folk
were learning to bear the burden with patience. The opening of the Crusade did
not augur well for the good relations between East and West.

Nevertheless, Alexius was probably not ill
satisfied. The danger to Constantinople was over; and the great Crusading army
had set out to fight against the Turks. He intended genuinely to co-operate
with the Crusade, but with one qualification. He would not sacrifice the
interests of the Empire to the interests of the western knights. His duty was
first to his own people. Moreover, like all Byzantines, he believed that the
welfare of Christendom depended on the welfare of the historic Christian
Empire. His belief was correct.

BOOK IV

THE WAR AGAINST THE TURKS

CHAPTER I

THE CAMPAIGN IN
ASIA MINOR

‘And thou shalt
come from thy place out of the north parts
,
thou
,
and
many people with thee
,
all of them riding upon horses, a great company
,
and a mighty army.’
EZEKIEL XXXVIII, 15

However much the Emperor and the Crusader
princes might quarrel over their ultimate rights and the distribution of
conquests to come, there could be no dissension about the opening stages of the
campaign against the infidel. If the Crusade was to reach Jerusalem, the roads
across Asia Minor must be cleared; and to drive the Turk out of Asia Minor was
the chief aim of Byzantine policy. There was complete agreement on strategy;
and as yet, with a Byzantine army by their side, the Crusaders were willing to
defer to its experienced generals on matters of tactics.

The first objective was the Seldjuk capital,
Nicaea. Nicaea lay on the shores of the Ascanian lake, not far from the Sea of
Marmora. The old Byzantine military road ran through it, though there was an
alternative route passing a little further to the east. To leave this great
fortress in enemy hands would endanger all communications across the country.
Alexius was eager to move the Crusaders on as soon as possible, as summer was
advancing; and the Crusaders themselves were impatient. In the last days of
April, before the northern French army had arrived at Constantinople, orders
were given to prepare to strike the camp at Pelecanum and to advance on Nicaea.

Asia Minor at the
time of the First Crusade

The Crusade
Assembles before Nicaea

The moment was well chosen; for the Seldjuk
Sultan, Kilij Arslan I, was away on his eastern frontier, contesting with the
Danishmend princes for the suzerainty of Melitene, whose Armenian ruler,
Gabriel, was busily embroiling the neighbouring potentates with each other.
Kilij Arslan did not take seriously this new menace from the West. His easy
defeat of Peter the Hermit’s rabble taught him to despise the Crusaders; and
perhaps his spies in Constantinople, wishing to please their master, gave him
exaggerated accounts of the quarrels between the Emperor and the western
princes. Believing that the Crusade would never penetrate to Nicaea, he left
his wife and children and all his treasure inside its walls. It was only when
he received news of the enemy concentration at Pelecanum that he sent part of
his army hurrying back westward, following himself as soon as he could arrange
his affairs in the east. His troops arrived too late to interfere with the
Crusaders’ march on Nicaea.

Godfrey of Lorraine’s army left Pelecanum on
about 26 April, and marched to Nicomedia, where it waited for three days and
was joined by Bohemond’s army, under the command of Tancred, and by Peter the
Hermit and the remains of his rabble. Bohemond himself stayed on for a few days
at Constantinople, to arrange with the Emperor for the provision of supplies to
the army. A small Byzantine detachment of engineers with siege engines
accompanied the troops, under the leadership of Manuel Butumites. From
Nicomedia Godfrey led the army to Civetot, then turned south through the defile
where Peter’s men had perished. Their bones still covered the entrance to the
pass; and, warned by their fate and by the advice of the Emperor, Godfrey moved
cautiously, sending scouts and engineers in front, to clear and widen the
track; which was then marked by a series of wooden crosses, to serve as a guide
for future pilgrims. On 6 May he arrived before Nicaea. The city had been
strongly fortified since the fourth century; and its walls, some four miles in
length, with their two hundred and forty towers, had been kept in constant
repair by the Byzantines. It lay on the eastern end of the Ascanian Lake, its
west walls rising straight out of the shallow water, and it formed an uneven
pentagon. Godfrey encamped outside the northern wall and Tancred outside the
eastern wall. The southern wall was left for Raymond’s army.

The Turkish garrison was large but needed
reinforcements. Messengers, one of whom was intercepted by the Crusaders, were
sent to the Sultan to urge him to rush troops into the city through the south
gates, before its investment was complete. But the Turkish army was still too
far away. Before its vanguard could approach, Raymond arrived, on 16 May, and
spread his army before the southern wall. Bohemond had joined his army two or
three days sooner. Till he came, insufficient provisions had weakened the
Crusaders; but, thanks to his arrangements with Alexius, henceforward supplies
flowed freely to the besiegers, coming both by land and by sea. When Robert of
Normandy and Stephen of Blois arrived with their forces on 3 June, the whole
Crusading army was assembled. It worked together as a single unit, though there
was no one supreme commander. Decisions were taken by the princes acting in
council. As yet there was no serious discord between them. Meanwhile the
Emperor moved out to Pelecanum, where he could keep in touch both with his
capital and with Nicaea.

The Battle
Outside Nicaea

The first Turkish relieving force reached
Nicaea immediately after Raymond, to find the city entirely blockaded by land.
After a brief, unsuccessful skirmish with Raymond’s troops it withdrew, to
await the main Turkish army which was approaching under the leadership of the
Sultan. Alexius had instructed Butumites to establish contact with the besieged
garrison. When it saw its relief retreating, its leaders invited Butumites
under a safe-conduct into the town, to discuss terms of surrender. He accepted;
but almost at once news came that the Sultan was not far away; and negotiations
were broken off.

It was on about 21 May that the Sultan and his
army came up from the south and at once attacked the Crusaders in an attempt to
force an entrance into the city. Raymond, with the Bishop of Le Puy in command
of his right flank, bore the brunt of the attack; for neither Godfrey nor
Bohemond could venture to leave his section of the walls unguarded. But Robert
of Flanders and his troops came to Raymond’s aid. The battle raged fiercely all
day; but the Turks could make no headway. When night fell the Sultan decided to
retreat. The Crusader army was stronger than he had thought; and, man for man,
his Turks were no match for the well-armed westerners in the open ground in
front of the city. It was better strategy to retreat into the mountains and to
leave the city to its fate.

The Crusaders’ losses had been heavy. Many had
been killed, including Baldwin, Count of Ghent; and almost all the surviving
participants in the battle had been wounded. But the victory filled them with
elation. To their delight they found among the Turkish dead the ropes brought
to bind the prisoners that the Sultan had hoped to take. To weaken the morale
of the besieged garrison they cut off the heads of many of the enemy corpses
and threw them over the walls or fixed them on pikes to parade them before the
gates. Then, with no more danger to fear from outside, they concentrated on the
siege. But the fortifications were formidable. In vain Raymond and Adhemar
attempted to mine one of the southern towers by sending sappers to dig beneath
it and there to light a huge fire. The little damage that was done was repaired
during the night by the garrison. Moreover it was found that the blockade was
incomplete; for supplies still reached the city from across the lake. The
Crusaders were obliged to ask the Emperor to come to their help and to provide
boats to intercept this water route. Alexius was probably well aware of the
position but wished the western princes to discover how necessary his
co-operation was to them. At their request he provided a small flotilla for the
lake, under the command of Butumites.