The First Crusade (41 page)

with the Holy Lance, their totem of success and divine sanction, but his role as its guardian also conveyed a new burden of heightened expectations. If Raymond did not prove himself to be unswervingly dedicated to the Lance's cause - that of the crusade - then the prestige he had gained might actually do him more harm than good.

Under this acute pressure, Raymond took two steps to appease his followers. In the last days of December he announced his intention to march south towards Jerusalem in just over two weeks. Bohemond, having already expressed his refusal to recommence the expedition before Easter 1099, decided to leave for Antioch a few days later. With no deal brokered with the Provencals, Bohemond chose to withdraw his troops from Marrat, deeming it impossible to maintain safely such an isolated foothold in the Jabal as-Summaq. After this, Raymond performed a further exercise in public relations, announcing a second general council of the crusader princes to discuss the expedition's resumption, this time to be held at Rugia, the Provencal base. By these two steps Raymond reasserted his ascendancy among the princes. On the surface at least he seemed to be taking the moral high ground in the dispute with Bohemond, and the call to council at Rugia rather than Antioch conveyed an obvious underlying message about his dominant authority.

The truth was, however, that even in the first days of January 1099 Raymond was still trying to fulfil both of his goals - territorial gains in northern Syria and leadership of the crusade. With his popular critics temporarily assuaged, he began to consolidate his hold over Marrat. Together with Peter of Narbonne, the newly appointed bishop of Albara, he set about 'Christianising' the town - converting mosques and erecting crosses - and 'determining both the number and choice of personnel' for its Frankish garrison. Raymond may have been preparing to march south towards Jerusalem, but he still had every intention of holding on to his carefully constructed enclave in the Jabal as-Summaq and of continuing to challenge Bohemond's position in Antioch.
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Around 4 January 1099 the princes gathered at Rugia for one last-ditch attempt to resolve the dispute over Antioch, but, not surprisingly, neither Bohemond nor Raymond would agree to budge an inch. Raymond's next outlandish act probably explains why he bothered to call the abortive council in the first place. With all the princes gathered together, he sought to buy their support. His chaplain recalled that 'Raymond offered Godfrey and Robert of Normandy 10,000 solidi apiece, 6,000 to Robert of Flanders, 5,000 to Tancred, and proportionately to others
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a considerable investment. He may have dressed this up as financial sponsorship of the crusading ideal, but in essence Raymond was trying to purchase confirmation of his status as leader of the expedition with hard cash. In fact, only two of the four named princes seem to have taken the bait at this point. From mid-January Robert, duke of Normandy and his men joined forces with the southern French. More surprisingly, so too did Tancred. Bohemond's nephew had been gradually moving out of his uncle's shadow since the summer of 1097. Now he made a full break and seems actually to have entered service with Raymond.

Godfrey, meanwhile, maintained his neutrality and Robert of Flanders, who had followed Raymond into the Jabal as-Summaq, now seems to have broken with the Provencal camp. Perhaps disillusioned by Raymond's acquisitiveness, Robert returned to Antioch with Bohemond. All the same, Count Raymond came out of the council of Rugia in a strengthened position. He may not yet have been acknowledged as the crusade's outright leader, but he was now the dominant force within the expedition.
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Not everything went Raymond's way in the first week of January 1099. While he was occupied at Rugia, events at Marrat took an unexpected and shocking turn. The lines of supply sustaining the Provencal presence there had always been tenuous, but with the advent of the New Year they collapsed. The poor, who had already endured a hungry Christmas, were now left destitute. Suddenly it seemed that the horrors of starvation that had ravaged the Franks one year earlier outside Antioch had returned. Now at Marrat, without princely guidance, the most destitute crusaders went to appalling lengths to alleviate their hunger. Some, desperate to find money wherever they could, 'ripped up the bodies of the [Muslim] dead, because they used to find coins hidden in their entrails'. Others took even more savage steps: 'Here our men suffered from excessive hunger. I shudder to say that many of our men, terribly tormented by the madness of starvation, cut pieces of flesh from the buttocks of Saracens lying there dead. These pieces they cooked and ate, savagely devouring the flesh while it was insufficiently roasted.' Another account that is perhaps even more disturbing asserted that, 'food shortage became so acute that the Christians ate with gusto many rotten Saracen bodies which they had pitched into the swamps three weeks before. This spectacle disgusted as many crusaders as it did strangers.'

This cannibalism at Marrat is among the most infamous of all the atrocities perpetrated by the First Crusaders. These acts were so extreme that, in contrast to the usually offhand contemporary descriptions of violence, both key sources here show real dismay and revulsion. To the men writing about the crusades, some forms of violence - holy war carried out in the name of God - were acceptable, while all others deserved condemnation. On this occasion the line of acceptability was crossed. The division between glorification and censure, the exaltation of wholesale massacre and denunciation of cannibalism, might appear arbitrary, perhaps even simplistic, when today the very notion of religious warfare might be considered an abomination. But, on the question of Christian violence, the moral and spiritual code that governed medieval European society differed vastly from that which prevails today. Thus, before judging the nature of crusading violence, we must remember that in the Middle Ages, an era of endemic savagery, warfare was regulated by a particular, medieval sense of morality.

Terrible as it is to acknowledge, the horrors perpetrated at Marrat did have some positive effects on the crusaders' short-term prospects. News of the Franks' brutality soon reached nearby Muslim towns and cities. One crusader noted that 'the infidels spread stories of these and other inhuman acts of the [crusaders], but we were unaware that God had made us an object of terror'. This, combined with tales of the Latin sack of Antioch, was enough to convince many Muslim commanders and garrisons that the crusaders were bloodthirsty barbarians, invincible savages who could not be resisted. In the coming months, most quickly decided that i
t would be better to accept costl
y and humiliating truces with the Franks rather than face them in batde.
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The mob back at Marrat had another surprise for Raymond of Toulouse when he returned from Rugia around 7 January. In his absence, Peter of Narbonne had begun preparations to garrison the town with knights and footmen from the army
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. But, when news of this plan spread through the masses and it became clear that despite his promises Raymond had every intention of retaining Marrat and perpetuating the dispute with Bohemond, open rebellion broke out. The poor made a starding demonstration of civil disobedience. To prevent any further delays or arguments, they started pulling down Marrat's walls and fortifications, stone by stone, intending to leave it defenceless and untenable:

Thereupon, even the sick and weak, arising from their beds and hobbling along on sticks, came all the way to the walls. An emaciated person could roll back and forth and push [stones] from the walls. The bishop of Albara and Raymond's friends, exhorting and pleading against such vandalism, went about the town, but those who had scrambled from the walls and hidden at their approach were quick to resume their work as soon as the guards passed by them.
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In reality, the mob may well have done serious damage to Marrat's walls but could hardly have razed its defences to the ground in such a short space of time. More significant for Raymond was the unmistakable message carried in their actions: no longer could he contest the domination of northern Syria with Bohemond while also playing the role of an idealised crusade leader dedicated to the recapture of Jerusalem. The time had come for one path to be chosen and Raymond took the road to the Holy City. Putting the needs of the crusade first, he made no attempt to refortify Marrat, effectively turning his back on the Jabal as-Summaq, for the time being at least.

Over the next few days Raymond led forceful raids south towards the nearby town of Kafartab in search of badly needed food for the poor. By 13 January his army had just enough supplies to march out of the region. As a powerful reminder of his renewed dedication to the crusade, Raymond chose to leave Marrat in religious procession: 'On the appointed day the count, his clerics, and the bishop of Albara departed and trudged along barefooted, calling out for God 's mercy and the saints' protection, as flames set by the departing Christians mounted the ruins of Marrat. In the rear marched Tancred with forty knights and many footmen
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Within two days they were joined by Robert of Normandy. After countless months of delay, dispute and distraction the expedition had at last resumed its journey south towards Jerusalem. The First Crusade looked set to enter its final act.
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TALKING
TO
THE
ENEMY

The expedition had now reached a turning point. Raymond's decision to march south out of the Jabal as-Summaq proved so popular that he seemed set to become the unquestioned leader of the entire crusade. But he still faced some thorny problems. His dispute with Bohemond lay unresolved and the schism between them was now probably irreparable, but two other princes, Godfrey of Bouillon and Robert of Flanders, still remained at Antioch with their armies. Without their strength and support, Raymond had little hope of forcing his way through to Palestine and Jerusalem. He also had to determine a strategy for the journey ahead.

Eighteen months earlier the crusaders had crossed Asia Minor with relative speed by, for the most part, avoiding confrontation. With the exception of Nicaea, they had not sought to captu
re nor garrison most of the settl
ements passed. Upon reaching Syria, however, the expedition had been brought to a standstill by the Latins' determination to seize Antioch and its environs. Now
a choice had to be made: the ro
ad to Jerusalem was littered with Muslim towns and cities; if the crusaders sought to conquer each and every one their progress south would be interminably slow. But there was an alternative: with the Muslim world of Syria thrown into disarray by Kerbogha's defeat at Antioch and cowed by the recent brutality at Marrat, there was every possibility that the crusaders might make a rapid, purposeful advance on Jerusalem, negotiating advantageous, even profitable, truces with local Islamic rulers as they went.

For Raymond of Toulouse, this approach had one major flaw - it failed to reward his smouldering territorial ambitions. It appeared that Raymond had turned away from the squabble over Antioch, recommitting himself to the crusading ideal, refocusing upon Jerusalem. But actually he had, at the very least, left a Provencal garrison at Albara and probably harboured plans to consolidate his hold over the Jabal as-Summaq at a later date. As the crusade began moving south, it soon became clear that Raymond had not been cleansed of his desire for conquest, and soon he was once again torn between his two conflicting passions - the power of leadership and rewards of territorial gain. He may have been poised to lead the crusade in January 1099, but his actions in the first four months of that year would determine once and for all whether he could retain that position.

In the early weeks of the march south from Marrat, it seemed that Raymond had resolved to focus on the march to Jerusalem. Even before leaving the Jabal as-Summaq the crusaders began to receive delegations from nearby Muslim powers, and for the time being Raymond was happy to negotiate truces. His chaplain remarked: 'News of the resumption of the crusade caused nearby rulers to send Arab nobles to Raymond with prayers and many offerings and promises of future submission as well as free and saleable goods.'

The first settlement to offer terms was Shaizar, an imposing fortress perched on a rocky spur above a bend in the Orontes river and held by the Banu Munqidh, an Arab family who had long railed against the Seljuq domination of Syria. Being less than heartbroken over the defeats suffered by the Turks at Antioch, and judging the Franks to be the new pre-eminent power in the region, the Munqidhs quickly offered safe passage through their lands and 'to sell them horses and food'. Their approach was perfectly understandable - simply put, they were hoping to get the crusaders out of their lands as quickly and peacefully as possible to protect Shaizar from assault and destruction. The crusaders' reaction is more problematic. In earlier phases of the expedition our Latin sources presented the crusaders as brutal xenophobes, possessed of a seemingly psychopathic hatred of Islam, conditioned by papal rhetoric and popular preaching to view all Muslims as sub-human. Now 'suddenly' the Franks were willing to negotiate with the 'enemy', albeit on this occasion from a dominant and exploitative position.

The truth is that the crusaders were, when it suited their purposes, willing to adopt a more pragmatic approach to their dealings with Islam. This was not simply dependent upon the ethnic or religious background of the Muslims encountered. While some crusaders were conscious of the differences between Seljuq Turks, Arabs and Egyptians, this did not dictate their attitude, as negotiation took place with all three groups. This adaptable outlook is unlikely to have been the preserve of the 'enlightened' aristocracy, as no popular outcry within the crusader host is recorded. Eyewitness Latin accounts of the expedition, written on the whole by clergymen, are reluctant to admit the full extent of this 'diplomatic' contact. Their monochromatic presentation of relations with Islam may have blinded us to some of its subtler nuances. The First Crusaders were capable of compartmentalising their feelings towards the Muslims of Syria and Palestine. They could sheath the sword of holy war when necessary.
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