The First Crusade (35 page)

Not surprisingly, Kerbogha simply laughed in their faces, warned that death or captivity awaited unless they surrendered immediately and converted to Islam, and sent the envoys back to Antioch empty handed. In reality, the crusade princes would have known that such unrealistic demands were virtually guaranteed to be rejected out of hand. Of course, our sources were not really trying to portray this as an episode of serious negotiation, but rather to show the crusaders as wildly defiant in the face of extreme adversity. Perhaps this was the truth of the matter - the envoys
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mission may simply have been a propaganda exercise. Other Latin writers who were not present at Antioch presented the embassy in slightly more realistic terms:

They announced to the Turks through a certain Peter the Hermit, that unless they peacefully evacuated the region which at one time belonged to the Christians, they would surely begin war against them. But, if they wished it to be done otherwise, war could be waged by five or ten or twenty, or by 100 soldiers chosen from each side, so that with not all fighting at the same time, such a great multitude would not die, and the party which overcame the other would take the city and kingdom freely without controversy. This was proposed, but not accepted by the Turks, who, confident in their large numbers and courage, thought that they could overcome and destroy us.
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This suggestion of a champions' trial by battle is intriguing, not least because Fulcher seems to imply that, even in this crusading context, the avoidance of excessive bloodshed was morally desirable. Nonetheless, it was still basically an unrealistic proposal, because Kerbogha had no reason to risk giving up his numerical superiority. In fact, if we accept the testimony of the crusader sources, we must conclude that the princes were not here engaging in genuine diplomacy. Peter's embassy could then be variously explained as a morale-boosting exercise, a spying mission to gauge the strength and disposition of Kerbogha's forces or perhaps simply a delaying tactic.

Only in less partisan, non-Latin sources do we receive any hint that something much more serious might have been going on behind the scenes. Matthew of Edessa, an Armenian Christian near-contemporary, described what he believed happened in June 1098:

[Kerbogha's] army arrived [at Antioch]. Being seven times larger than the Frankish force, their troops violently besieged and harassed it. Then the Franks became threatened with a famine, because provisions in the city had long become exhausted. More and more hard-pressed, they resolved to obtain from Kerbogha a promise of amnesty on condition that they deliver the city into his hands and return to their own country.

A later Arabic source would seem to corroborate this story, recording that 'after taking Antioch, the Franks camped there for twelve days without food. The wealthy ate their horses and the poor ate carrion and leaves from the trees. Their leaders, faced with this situation, wrote to Kerbogha to ask for safe conduct through his territory, but he refused, saying: "You will have to fight your way out
.
"
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This evidence has been widely discounted by historians on the assumption that the crusaders, their morale buoyed up on a rising wave of pious fervour after the discovery of the Holy Lance and already committed to battle, would never have seriously considered seeking terms of surrender. But, in fact, the decision to take the risk of sending Peter the Hermit on an embassy to Kerbogha makes more sense if we accept that he was dispatched to explore the real possibility of negotiating a surrender. On 24 June the crusader princes found themselves trapped in a corner - isolated and exhausted, their armies had finally been brought face to face with the spectre of defeat and extermination. They had marched across the known world not to conquer Antioch but to recover the Holy City of Jerusalem and perhaps now, in desperation, their leaders, at least, were prepared to consider any option that might allow them to reach Palestine alive. Had they given up Antioch, but been permitted to leave northern Syria, this still might have been possible.
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When Kerbogha, from his position of strategic dominance, refused to accept anything short of unconditional surrender, that door closed. The crusaders were left with a clear choice: fight or face death or captivity. Albert of Aachen, who based his account on the personal recollections of men who lived through the second siege of Antioch, recorded:

The Christian people were besieged and began to suffer from shortage of supplies and lack of bread. They did not have the strength to suffer these things any longer, so great and small consulted together, saying it was better to die in battle than to perish from so cruel a famine, growing weaker from day to day until overcome by death.
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As the last days of June approached, the crusaders did, without doubt, make a profoundly courageous decision - to face Kerbogha's horde in open battle. Looking back with hindsight, the partisan crusade writers may well have judged it inappropriate to record that before this they contemplated surrender.

The controversial suggestion that the Franks were not primarily or directly inspired to fight Kerbogha by the discovery of the Holy Lance is potentially unsettling, because it threatens to undermine a cornerstone in our accepted image of the First Crusaders. The remarkable impact of the Holy Lance has long been held up as a fundamental proof of their overwhelming religious devotion. Historians have argued that it was only the inspirational power of the crusaders' faith - their unshakeable conviction that they were acting with divine sanction - that stirred them from anxious slumber. If the Franks did indeed spend much of the period between 14 and 28 June in an agony of fearful indecision, and perhaps even sought to negotiate the surrender of Antioch, then we are left looking at a subtly different species of crusader: one for whom spiritual devotion was still an extremely powerful motivating force, but perhaps not an all-conquering inspiration. Blind, ecstatic faith did not send the crusaders running into battle. Instead, with all other options exhausted, trapped in an intolerable predicament, their strength failing, they decided to place their trust in their God and risk everything in one last-ditch effort.

THE
GREAT
BATTLE
OF
ANTIOCH

By 25 June 1098 the crusade leaders had made their choice. They elected to pursue a bold, aggressive and extremely dangerous strategy - to break out of the city and confront Kerbogha's army head on. Bohemond was elected temporary commander-in-chief of the entire army. Raymond of Aguilers put this down to 'the Turkish threat, the illness of Count Raymond and Adhemar and the flight of Stephen of Blois', but in reality Bohemond may have been chosen primarily because he had a proven track record as a general. The Franks also decided to undertake a regime of spiritual purification before going to battle: Three days [were] spent fasting and in processions from one church to another, our men confessed their sins and received absolution, and by faith they received the body and blood of Christ in communion, and they gave alms and arranged for masses to be celebrated.'
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On 28 June 1098 they were ready to fight, and at first light they began marching out of the city while clergy lining the walls offered prayers to God. The crusaders staked the fate of the entire expedition upon this desperate strategy, yet historians have only recently begun to provide a convincing explanation for the astounding outcome of the battle that followed.
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In choosing to confront Kerbogha the Franks faced a number of immense obstacles. They were proposing to engage a numerically superior and largely cavalry-based enemy, albeit one that was divided into those actually encircling Antioch and Kerbogha's main army encamped about a kilometre to the north and east of the Orontes river. In contrast, the rather tattered crusading force - perhaps numbering 20,000 including non-combatants - was now mainly infantry based. Virtually every single horse brought from Europe had died during the arduous journey to northern Syria and the long siege of Antioch. By June 1098, the crusaders could muster no more than 200 steeds trained for war, and many were reduced to riding into battle on pack animals. The German Count Hartmann of Dillingen, who had helped to design a strange siege engine at Nicaea, was said 'to have ridden a donkey to the battle and held merely a Turk's round shield and sword on the day'.
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Even princes had trouble finding a decent mount on 28 June -Godfrey of Bouillon was given one by Raymond of Toulouse, while Robert of Flanders actually had to beg to collect enough money to purchase his. Those horses that were available were in a feeble state. In the preceding weeks many crusaders had sought to sustain themselves by drinking blood drawn from their steeds. Now on the eve of the battle, in a determined attempt to ensure that they did not simply collapse in the midst of the fighting, Bishop Adhemar ordered every crusader in possession of a mount to feed it with every scrap of grain they could muster. For the majority, though, no steed, however poor, could be found, and so hundreds of knights were forced to fight on foot. One Latin contemporary bemoaned this fact, remarking that 'our knights had been forced to become footmen, weak and helpless', but this development was not a complete disaster. The crusaders had been reduced to a battle-hardened core - their army was dominated by an increasingly elite infantry force of well-armed, ferocious knights. The power of the crusading army had not been broken, but reshaped into a different type of weapon - one that fought on foot rather than from horseback. The Franks could no longer rely upon the force of a heavy cavalry charge to carry the day.
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What was needed now was a general capable of adjusting his battle-tactics to the tools at hand, and that commander was Bohemond.

He faced a seemingly insurmountable task. First, the crusaders would have to break through the Muslim cordon surrounding Antioch and avoid being cut to pieces during what would inevitably be a painfully slow, piecemeal deployment outside the city. There was every possibility that the first wave of crusaders might be stopped in its tracks and decimated before the full weight of the Frankish army could even get out of the city. Once arrayed on the plains of Antioch, they would then, somehow, have to overcome the enemy. On the face of it, the odds were not in their favour. Kerbogha did, however, have a few potential problems of his own. In order to encircle Antioch he had been forced to disperse his troops quite widely, making it difficult to concentrate his resources quickly in one place. More importantly, while the crusaders enjoyed the bond of a desperate common cause and the experience of fighting side by side for months, Kerbogha's massive army was cobbled together from disparate elements. Drawn from cities across northern Syria and held together only by a veneer of unity, this force needed an extremely firm hand to guide it. One Muslim chronicler believed Kerbogha lacked this quality: 'Thinking that the present crisis would force the Muslims to remain loyal to him, [Kerbogha] alienated them by his pride and ill treatment of them. They plotted in secret anger to betray him and desert him in the heat of batde.' Should the Muslim host face a crisis, these deeply submerged fractures might bubble to the surface with disastrous consequences.
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Bohemond's battle plan was outstanding, its execution exceptional. The Bridge Gate was chosen as the sally-point, placing the Latins on the western bank of the Orontes. This limited the number of enemy troops initially encountered because the physical barrier of the river hampered any approach by the besieging Muslim forces stationed at the other gates. Hugh of Vermandois was selected to lead a squadron of archers in the first wave of attack out of the gate. He rushed headlong across the bridge, unleashing an intense volley of arrows that beat back the first line of Muslim troops. The way out of the city now lay open. Bohemond's plan was to deploy his remaining forces on to the plain of Antioch in the immediate wake of Hugh's shock attack, throwing his infantry to the front, and then close with the mounted enemy, to cut down their ability to manoeuvre or use missile weapons.

In order to move through the Bridge Gate with relative speed and to present their full weight of arms to the enemy as rapidly as possible, Bohemond laid down a masterful plan of action. To provide cohesion even in the midst of battle the army was divided into four clear-cut contingents: the northern French under Robert of Normandy and Robert of Flanders; Godfrey of Bouillon commanding the Lotharing-ians and Germans; and Adhemar of Le Puy leading out the sou
thern French. As in earlier battl
es, Bohemond himself held the final, largest group - here mostly made up of southern Italian Normans - in reserve, so that he could meet any sudden threat or plug gaps that might appear in the crusader lines. Only Raymond of Toulouse, once again complaining of illness, was left in the city with
200
men to hold back any assault from the citadel. Before they left the city 'heralds scurried through Antioch urging each man to fight with his leader' so that each group might hold its formation. Once the Bridge Gate was cleared, the first contingent - the northern French - marched in column behind Hugh's force and then deployed to his left. Each division followed suit, fanning out leftwards in a rough semi-circle. We should not imagine this manoeuvre taking place with the precision of a Roman legion, rather that it was rough and ready, but extremely effective. The disposition of these troops was the finest expression of Bohemond's military genius, but even with all his careful planning, the crusaders might have been crushed as they exited the city had Kerbogha reacted differently.
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