A History of the Crusades-Vol 1 (23 page)

Starting out on 3 July in one continuous body,
to avoid a recurrence of the risk run at Dorylaeum, the army toiled
south-eastward across the Anatolian plateau. It could not keep to the old main
road. After passing through Polybotus it turned off to Pisidian Antioch, which
had probably escaped devastation by the Turks, and where supplies could
therefore be obtained. Thence the Crusaders crossed over the bare passes of the
Sultan Dagh to rejoin the main road at Philomelium. From Philomelium their way
ran through desolate country between the mountains and the desert. In the
relentless heat of high summer the heavily armed knights and their horses and
the foot-soldiers all suffered terribly. There was no water to be seen except
the salt marshes of the desert and no vegetation except thorn-bushes, whose
branches they chewed in a vain attempt to find moisture. They could see the old
Byzantine cisterns by the roadside; but they had all been ruined by the Turks.
The horses were the first to perish. Many knights were forced to go on foot;
others could be seen riding on oxen; while sheep and goats and dogs were
collected to pull the baggage trains. But the morale of the army remained high.
To Fulcher of Chartres the comradeship of the soldiers, coming from so many different
lands and speaking so many different languages, seemed something inspired by
God.

In the middle of August the Crusaders reached
Iconium. Iconium, the Konya of to-day, had been in Turkish hands for thirteen
years; and Kilij Arslan was soon to choose it as his new capital. But at the
moment it was deserted. The Turks had fled into the mountains with all their
movable possessions. But they could not destroy the streams and orchards in the
delicious valley of Meram, behind the city. Its fertility enchanted the weary
Christians. They rested there for several days to recover their strength. All
of them were in need of rest. Even their leaders were worn out. Godfrey had
been wounded a few days earlier by a bear that he was hunting. Raymond of
Toulouse was gravely ill, and was thought to be dying. The Bishop of Orange
gave him extreme unction; but the sojourn at Iconium restored him, and he was
able to march with the army when it moved on. Taking the advice of the small
population of Armenians living near Iconium, the soldiers took with them
sufficient water to last them till they reached the fertile valley of Heraclea.

At Heraclea they found a Turkish army, under
the Emir Hasan and the Danishmend Emir. The two Emirs, anxious for their
possessions in Cappadocia, probably hoped by their presence to force the
Crusaders to attempt to cross the Taurus mountains to the coast. But at the
sight of the Turks the Crusaders at once attacked, led by Bohemond, who sought
out the Danishmend Emir himself. The Turks had no desire for a pitched battle
and swiftly retired to the north, abandoning the towns to the Christians. A
comet flaring through the sky illuminated the victory.

It was now necessary to discuss again the route
to be followed. A little to the east of Heraclea the main road led across the
Taurus mountains, through the tremendous pass of the Cilician Gates, into
Cilicia. This was the direct route to Antioch; but it offered disadvantages.
The Cilician Gates are not easy to cross. At times the road is so steep and so narrow
that a small hostile party in command of the heights can quickly cause havoc to
a slow-moving army. Cilicia was in Turkish hands; and the climate there in
September, as the Byzantine guides could report, is at its deadliest. Moreover,
an army going from Cilicia to Antioch must cross over the Amanus range, by the
difficult pass known as the Syrian Gates. On the other hand, the recent defeat
of the Turks opened the road to Caesarea Mazacha. From there a continuation of
the great Byzantine military road led across Anti-Taurus to Marash (Germanicea)
and down over the low broad pass of the Amanus Gates into the plain of Antioch.
This was the road that traffic from Antioch to Constantinople had mainly taken
in the years before the Turkish invasions; and at the moment it had the
advantage of passing through country held by Christians, Armenian princelings,
for the most part nominal vassals of the Emperor and likely to be well
disposed. It is probable that this latter route was recommended by Taticius and
the Byzantines, but their suggestion was opposed by those of the princes that
were hostile to the Emperor, led by Tancred. The majority decided to take the
road through Caesarea. But Tancred, with a body of the Normans of southern
Italy, and Godfrey’s brother Baldwin, with some of the Flemish and of the
Lorrainers, determined to split from the main army and to cross into Cilicia.

On the Borders
of Anatolia

About 10 September Tancred and Baldwin set off
by two separate routes for the Taurus passes, and the main army moved
north-eastward towards Caesarea. At the village of Augustopolis it caught up
with Hasan’s troops and inflicted another defeat on them; but, wishing to avoid
delay, it did not attempt to capture a castle of the Emir’s that stood not far
from the road; though several small villages were occupied and were given to a
local Armenian lord, by name Symeon, at his own request, to hold under the
Emperor. At the end of the month the Crusaders reached Caesarea, which had been
deserted by the Turks. They did not stop there but moved on to Comana
(Placentia), a prosperous town inhabited by Armenians, which the Danishmend
Turks were engaged in besieging. At their approach, the Turks vanished; and
though Bohemond set out to pursue them he could not establish contact. The
citizens gladly welcomed their rescuers; who invited Taticius to nominate a
governor to rule the city in the Emperor’s name. Taticius gave the post to
Peter of Aulps, a Provencal knight who had first come to the east with Guiscard
and then had entered the service of the Emperor. It was a tactful choice; and
the episode showed that the Franks and Byzantines were still able to co-operate
and to carry out together the treaty made between the princes and the Emperor.

From Comana the army advanced south-east to
Coxon, the modem Guksun, a prosperous town full of Armenians, set in a fertile
valley below the Anti-Taurus range. There it remained for three days. The
inhabitants were very friendly; and the Crusaders were able to secure plentiful
provisions for the next stage of their march, across the mountains. A rumour
now reached the army that the Turks had abandoned Antioch. Bohemond was still
absent, pursuing the Danishmends; so Raymond of Toulouse at once, without
consulting more than his own staff, sent five hundred knights under Peter of
Castillon to hurry ahead and occupy the city. The knights travelled at full
speed; but as they reached a castle held by Paulician heretics not far from the
Orontes, they learnt that it was a false rumour and that on the contrary the
Turks were pouring in reinforcements. Peter of Castillon apparently rode back
to rejoin the army; but one of his knights, Peter of Roaix, slipped away with a
few comrades, and, after a skirmish with the Turks of the locality, took over
some forts and villages in the valley of Rusia, towards Aleppo, with the glad
help of the local Armenians. Raymond’s manoeuvre may not have been intended to
secure the lordship of Antioch for himself but only the glory and the loot that
would accrue to the first-comer. But Bohemond, when he returned to the army,
learnt of it with suspicion; and it showed the growing breach between the
princes.

The journey on from Coxon was the most
difficult that the Crusaders had to face. It was now early October, and the
autumn rains had begun. The road over the Anti-Taurus was in appalling
disrepair; and for miles there was only a muddy path leading up steep inclines
and skirting precipices. Horse after horse slipped and fell over the edge;
whole lines of baggage animals, roped together, dragged each other down into
the abyss. No one dared to ride. The knights, struggling on foot under their
heavy accoutrement, eagerly tried to sell their arms to more lightly equipped
men, or threw them away in despair. The mountains seemed accursed. They took
more lives than ever the Turks had done. It was with joy that the army emerged
at last into the valley that surrounded Marash.

The Crusaders
and their Greek Guides

At Marash, where again they found a friendly
Armenian population, the Crusaders waited for a few days. An Armenian prince
called Thatoul, who had been formerly a Byzantine official, was ruler of the
town and was confirmed in his authority. Bohemond rejoined them there, after
his fruitless pursuit of the Turks; and Baldwin came hurrying up from Cilicia,
to see his wife Godvere, who was dying. After her death he departed again,
making now for the east. Leaving Marash about 15 October, the main army
marched, strengthened and refreshed, down into the plain of Antioch. On the
20th it arrived at the Iron Bridge, at three hours’ distance from the city.

Four months had passed since the Crusade had
set out for Nicaea. For a large army, with a numerous following of
non-combatants, travelling in the heat of summer over country that was mainly
barren, always liable to be attacked by a formidable and swiftly moving enemy,
the achievement was remarkable. The Crusaders were helped by their faith and by
their burning desire to reach the Holy Land. The hope of finding plunder and
perhaps a lordship was an added spur. But some credit too must be given to the
Byzantines that accompanied the expedition, whose experience in fighting the
Turks enabled them to give good advice, and without whose guidance the route
across Asia Minor could never have been traced. The guides may have made some
errors, as in the choice of their road from Coxon to Marash; but, after twenty
years of neglect and occasional deliberate destruction, it was impossible to
tell in what state any road might be. Taticius had a difficult part to play;
but, till the army reached Antioch, his relations with the western princes
remained friendly. The humbler Crusading soldiery might be distrustful of the
Greeks; but, in so far as the direction of the movement was concerned,
everything still ran smoothly.

Meanwhile the Emperor Alexius, who was to be
responsible for the maintenance of communications across Asia Minor, was
consolidating the Christian position in the rear of the Crusade. The success of
the Franks had reconciled the Seldjuks with the Danishmends, thus creating, as
soon as the shock of the first defeat was over, a strong potential Turkish
force in the centre and east of the peninsula. The Emperor’s policy was,
therefore, to recover the west of the peninsula, where, with the aid of his
growing maritime power, he could open up a road to the south coast which it
would be possible to keep under his permanent control. After refortifying
Nicaea and securing the fortresses commanding the road to Dorylaeum, he sent
his brother-in-law, the Caesar John Ducas, supported by a squadron under the
admiral Caspax, to reconquer Ionia and Phrygia. The main objective was Smyrna,
where Chaka’s son still ruled over an emirate that included most of the Ionian
coastline and the islands of Lesbos, Chios and Samos, while vassal Emirs held
Ephesus and other towns near the coast. Phrygia was under Seldjuk chieftains,
now cut off from contact with the Sultan. To impress the Turks, John took with
him the Sultana, Chaka’s daughter, for whom arrangements had not yet been made
to join her husband. The combined land and sea attack was too much for the Emir
of Smyrna, who promptly surrendered his states in return for permission to
retire free to the east. He seems to have escorted his sister to the Sultan’s
court, where he disappears from history. Ephesus fell next, with hardly a
struggle; and while Caspax and his fleet reoccupied the coast and the islands,
John Ducas marched inland, capturing one by one the chief Lydian cities,
Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea. The province was in his hands by the end of
the autumn of 1097; and he was ready, as soon as the winter should be over, to
advance into Phrygia, as far as the main road down which the Crusaders had
travelled. His aim was probably to re-establish Byzantine control of the road
that led from Polybotus and Philomelium due south to Attalia, and thence along
the coast eastward, where sea-power would give protection and junction could be
made with the Armenian princes that were now settled in the Taurus mountains. A
route would thus be ensured by which supplies could reach the Christians
battling in Syria, and the united effort of Christendom could continue.

CHAPTER II

ARMENIAN
INTERLUDE

‘
Trust ye not
in a friend.’
MICAH VII, 5

The Armenian migration to the south-west, begun
when the Seldjuk invasions made life in the Araxes valley and by Lake Van no
longer secure, continued throughout the last years of the eleventh century.
When the Crusaders arrived in eastern Asia Minor there was a series of small
Armenian principalities stretching from beyond the middle Euphrates to the
heart of the Taurus mountains. The ephemeral state that the Armenian Philaretus
had founded had crumbled even before his death in 1090. But Thoros still held
Edessa, where he had recently managed to eject the Turkish garrison from the
citadel; and his father-in-law, Gabriel, still held Melitene. At Marash the
leading Christian citizen, Thatoul, was recognized as governor by the Byzantine
authorities to whom the Crusaders restored the town. At Raban and Kaisun,
between Marash and the Euphrates, an Armenian called Kogh Vasil, Vasil the
Robber, had set up a small principality. Thoros and Gabriel, and probably
Thatoul also, had been lieutenants of Philaretus and like him had started their
public careers in the Byzantine administrative service. Not only did they
belong to the Orthodox Church, and not to the separated Armenian Church, but
they continued to use the titles that they had received long ago from the
Emperor; and, whenever possible, they re-established relations with the court
at Constantinople, reaffirming their allegiance. Thoros had, indeed, received
from Alexius the high tide of curopalates. This imperial connection gave to
their government a certain legitimacy; but a more solid base was provided by
their readiness to accept the suzerainty of neighbouring Turkish chieftains.
Thoros played off these potential suzerains one against the other with
surprising agility; while Gabriel had sent his wife on a mission to Baghdad to
obtain recognition from the highest Moslem authorities. But all these princes
were in a precarious position. With the exception of Kogh Vasil, they were
separated by their religion from most of their compatriots and hated by the
Syrian Christians who still were plentiful in their territories; and all were
distrusted by the Turks, whose disunion alone enabled them to survive.