The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade (86 page)

In November of 1095, at Clermont in Western Francia, Urban II announced that it was not only time to help Byzantium in its battles against the Turks (as Alexius had asked), but also time to recapture Jerusalem from the hands of Muslims (something Alexius had not mentioned). “As most of you have heard,” he announced, according to the Frankish chronicler Fulcher of Chartres,

All the Frankish noblemen who had been chafing under the restrictions of the Peace and Truce of God could now have something useful to do with their energy. “Let those who have been accustomed unjustly to wage private warfare against the faithful now go against the infidels,” Urban II told his audience. “Let those who for a long time have been robbers, now become knights. Let those who have been fighting against their brothers and relatives now fight in a proper way against the barbarians…. Let those who go not put off the journey…. As soon as winter is over and spring comes, let them eagerly set out on the way with God as their guide.”

Those who eagerly set out would receive the greatest possible reward: “All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins,” Urban promised.
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After the struggles of the last decades, Peter’s heir had finally reasserted his authority—not only over the earthly world, but over the afterlife as well.

“A
S SOON AS WINTER
is over and spring is come,” Pope Urban had told his audience; so in the cold months of late 1095 and early 1096, the quarrelsome aristocracy began to prepare for the journey east. The hope of heaven inspired many, but the chance to earn renown propelled others: “The first to sell his land and set out on the road to Jerusalem was Godfrey,” writes Anna Comnena, “a very rich man, extremely proud of his noble birth, his own courage, and the glory of his family.”
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Godfrey was a German nobleman, the duke of lower Lorraine. He was accompanied on crusade by his brothers Baldwin and Eustace, and the three siblings were followed in rapid succession by Robert Guiscard’s son Bohemund, who left his father’s Norman lands in Italy to answer the call with a smaller army; the Frankish duke Raymond of Toulouse, who brought ten thousand men with him; and Robert, the duke of Normandy. Robert, oldest son of William the Conqueror, had inherited Normandy at his father’s death in 1087, while his younger brother William had become the second Norman king of England.

Scores of others travelled towards Constantinople, discrete bands of armed men all converging on a single point. The first to arrive, according to the twelfth-century account of William of Tyre, was Walter the Penniless, who (as his name suggests) was a Frankish nobleman too poor to hire a large army for himself. He was travelling through the old kingdom of Bulgaria in the early summer of 1096 when his small band of men, unpaid and starving, began to steal from the villages they passed. The Bulgarians retaliated by driving some of the robbers into a nearby church and setting it on fire. It was an unfortunate start to the first Crusade.
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Walter the Penniless arrived at Constantinople in mid-July with his remaining men and was given lodging by the emperor Alexius while they waited for the more prosperous dukes and their larger armies to arrive. But Raymond of Toulouse and the others were still well behind them. The next army to arrive at Constantinople was a force of some thousands (contemporary accounts say forty thousand men or more, but are probably exaggerated) led by a cleric nicknamed “Peter the Little.” On an earlier pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Peter had suffered “much ill-treatment at the hands of the Turks.” He had returned to preach across the Frankish countryside that “all should depart from their homes [and] strive to liberate Jerusalem,” and when Urban II had pronounced exactly the same message, Peter the Little had been delirious with joy.
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Later chroniclers would call Peter’s army the “People’s Crusade,” as though it were made up of farmers and housewives. In fact, it had a full complement of soldiers; it just lacked high-profile aristocrats, who preferred to lead their own private armies. Peter and his troops arrived at Constantinople around August 1 and were welcomed in turn by the emperor, who then suggested that they move on across the Bosphorus Strait and camp near the Byzantine frontier while they awaited the rest of the crusader armies. Alexius was not anxious to add thousands of restless armed men to the population of Constantinople.
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The two forces, waiting in temporary quarters about twenty-five miles from the Turkish-held city of Nicaea, were soon joined by other random arrivals—bands of soldiers without experienced, forceful leadership. Bored crusaders, meeting no serious opposition, raided the Turkish countryside, and the mood of the camp shifted towards aggression. Before long, the entire leaderless force marched out and headed for Nicaea.

The sultan of Rum, Kilij Arslan, sent a detachment of his army out to swat the flies. “Of the twenty-five thousand foot soldiers and five hundred knights who had gone forth from the camp,” writes William of Tyre, “there remained scarcely one who escaped either death or capture.” Walter the Penniless was killed; Peter the Little escaped across the strait and begged the emperor for help. Alexius sent a Byzantine detachment back across the water, and the Turkish army, which was marching towards the camp to annihilate the rest of the ill-organized crusader force, sloped off and went back home.
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At this point Alexius was probably wondering what he had gotten himself into, but the arrival of the disciplined private armies of Bohemund, Raymond, and the others throughout the winter of 1096–1097 reassured him. However, the emperor had gotten a taste of the headstrong crusader mindset. He took precautions; as each duke arrived, Alexius asked him to swear an oath that “whatever cities, countries or forts he might in future subdue, which had in the first place belonged to the Roman Empire, he would hand over to the officer appointed by the emperor.” This First Crusade, Alexius reminded them, was to be fought for the benefit of Byzantium, not for personal gain.
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In the spring of 1097, the united crusader forces poured across the straits into the Sultanate of Rum. They laid siege to Nicaea in mid-May and forced the city’s surrender before the end of June. Accompanied by Byzantine troops under the command of Alexius’s trusted general Taticius, the crusader army then marched southwards, towards the city of Jerusalem. One at a time, the Turkish-held cities fell to them: Smyrna, Ephesus, Philadelphia, Sardis.

The victories came to an abrupt halt at the city of Antioch.

With Godfrey, Bohemund, and Raymond of Toulouse in the lead, the crusaders laid siege to the city on October 21. Antioch was the strongest city in Syria; its ancient walls touched the Orontes river, allowing the defenders a constant supply of water and an easy way to resupply the city with food and arms; and the crusaders, although victorious, were weary from months of fighting. Most of them had never seen Antioch before, and they were unpleasantly startled by the city’s defenses: “We found the city of Antioch very extensive,” the Frankish nobleman Stephen of Blois wrote to his wife, “fortified with incredible strength and almost impregnable.”

The siege dragged on and the nights began to grow colder. By December, the army had stripped the surrounding countryside bare of food and fuel. Provisions dwindled away. A party sent out to forage for food farther away encountered a Turkish detachment, which drove them back empty-handed. The horses, unaccustomed to such poor rations, were dying off; by January, fewer than two thousand mounts were left of the seventy thousand that had started off from Nicaea. “Day by day, the famine grew,” writes William of Tyre. “In addition, the pavilions and tents in the camp had rotted. Thus, many who still had food perished because they could not endure the rigorous cold without protection. Floods of water fell in torrents so that both food and garments moulded and there was not a dry place where the pilgrims might lay their heads…. Pestilence broke out among the legions in the camp, so fatal that now there was scarcely room to bury the dead.”
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Peter the Little, who had accompanied the army this far, deserted and tried to go home; he was hauled back by one of the captains, who forced him to swear that he would remain. In February, the Byzantine general Taticius yanked his men from camp and headed back towards Constantinople. Rumors of an approaching Muslim army disturbed the soldiers who remained.
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The possibility that the whole Crusade might fall apart at Antioch was growing ever more real. The city itself was in better shape than the camp; the contemporary Muslim account, written by the Syrian chronicler Ibn al-Qalanisi, remarks that so much oil, salt, and other necessities went to Antioch by way of the river that it was actually cheaper to buy those staples in the besieged city than outside it. Meanwhile, crusaders who had already abandoned the cause were prospering. Godfrey’s younger brother Baldwin had veered away from the main crusader army and gone to the independent city of Edessa, where the city’s king had first employed him as a mercenary and then adopted him as son and heir; Stephen of Blois had announced that ill health required him to leave, and had gone with his men to more comfortable quarters on the Mediterranean coast.
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On March 4, the crusader outlook took a slight upswing when an English fleet docked on the Mediterranean coast about ten miles from the siege camp. The fleet had stopped at Constantinople for reprovisioning, and the emperor Alexius had ordered siege materials, tools, and workmen loaded onto the ships to be taken to Antioch. The fleet was commanded by none other than Edgar Atheling: the heir to the English throne who had surrendered to William the Conqueror at age fourteen. Now in his thirties, Edgar Atheling had already joined at least two failed wars. He had gone to Scotland in his late teens and had fought with the Scots in a fruitless rebellion against William the Conqueror, and ten years after that had joined a short-lived revolt against William’s son and heir.

Now he was anchored on the Mediterranean shore, ready to aid in the conquest of Antioch. Raymond of Toulouse and Bohemund went together to bring the siege materials back to the camp; the crusaders built additional fortifications that blocked ships from refreshing Antioch’s supplies from the river, and the city began to weaken.
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At last the defenders inside Antioch started to lose heart. Bohemund, who had a reputation for craftiness (“habitual rogue,” Anna Comnena calls him), managed to talk one of the Turkish guards inside the city into a private deal. “Bohemund sent word that he would make him rich, with much honor,” says the chronicle known as
Gesta Francorum
, “and [the guard] yielded to these words and promises, saying, ‘At whatever hour he wishes, I will receive him.’”
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In the dark night of June 2, Bohemund’s informant opened a postern gate, and Bohemund led his men into the city. They killed the guards at the large gate known as the Gate of the Bridge and threw it open from the inside. The rest of the crusader army flooded into Antioch. The frustration of the long siege burst out of them: “The victors roamed at will through places formerly inaccessible to them,” writes William of Tyre, “and, maddened by lust of killing and greed for gain, they spared neither sex nor condition and paid no attention to age…. More than ten thousand citizens were slain that day; along the streets everywhere the corpses of the dead lay unburied.”
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But despite the victory, the crusader army was soon in horrible straits. An enormous Muslim army, commanded by the Turkish general Kerbogha, had been dispatched by the Great Sultan of the Turks in Baghdad, and it arrived at Antioch just three days later. The crusaders swung the city’s gates closed and gave thanks that they were not still in the siege camp outside, but they soon discovered that conditions inside the city were much worse than outside. Antioch was already empty of food; now it was stinking with corpses as well. Disease spread. The crusaders were reduced to digging up dead animals that had been buried weeks before so that they could eat the rotting flesh.
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In a desperate attempt to rally the crusaders, Bohemund (“a supreme mischief-maker,” Anna Comnena adds) announced that God had sent a message of assurance and deliverance. It had come, he explained, to the peasant Peter Bartholomew, who was part of Raymond of Toulouse’s entourage: the Holy Lance, the spear that had pierced the side of Jesus Christ during the Crucifixion, was inside the city. Peter Bartholomew had told the story to Raymond and to the bishop Adhemar, who had accompanied the army of Toulouse as a representative of the pope, and Raymond had believed him.

Adhemar, on the other hand, had called the story “nothing but words.” However, he was willing to see whether the lance would actually be discovered. Bohemund took Peter Bartholomew, Raymond of Toulouse, and a handful of men into the church of St. Peter at Antioch, where they dug a pit in the place that Peter Bartholomew indicated. The pit was empty; Raymond of Toulouse, dejected, left the church, at which point Peter Bartholomew leaped into the pit and then climbed back out clutching the point of a spear.
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Raymond of Toulouse, a devout and honest man, apparently judged others by the yardstick he used to measure himself; he immediately embraced the discovery as genuine, and the bishop Adhemar chose to hold his tongue. The word spread through the crusader army, which took heart at this evidence of God’s favor. On June 28, 1098, the crusaders charged out of Antioch with the “Holy Lance” in their midst and drove the Muslim army into retreat.

Antioch was now in crusader hands, but the city was never turned over to the emperor Alexius. Bohemund had sworn the oath without ever intending to keep it; now he claimed that since the surrender of the city had been arranged by him personally, the city had surrendered
to
him, and was now his. He intended to stay in Antioch as its prince. In this he was following the example of Godfrey’s younger brother Baldwin, who had now inherited the rule of Edessa and was governing it as an independent Christian state: the County of Edessa. Bohemund would be prince of Antioch, ruler of a Christian kingdom in Syria.

Raymond of Toulouse disagreed with him sharply, and the two men quarrelled. In the end, Raymond separated himself from the decision to keep Antioch and left the city. He paid both Robert of Normandy (who was broke, by this time) and Bohemund’s own nephew Tancred in gold to accompany him. Eventually, Godfrey and his men also followed Raymond from Antioch; Bohemund remained, flying his own flag above Antioch’s walls.
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The remaining crusaders, led by Raymond of Toulouse, marched towards Jerusalem. Over fifty thousand men had crossed the Bosphorus Strait into Asia Minor at the beginning of the crusade; now fewer than fourteen thousand remained. Following the army was a throng of pilgrims who had been hoping to reach the holy city for almost three years now—“a helpless throng,” William of Tyre says, “sick and feeble.” On the way, the leading noblemen in the army had demanded that Peter Bartholomew prove his claim to divine revelation; they forced him to undergo an ordeal by fire, walking through flame with the Holy Lance in his hand. Bartholomew had apparently begun to believe his own story. He was dreadfully burned and died after twelve days of agony, and the story of the Holy Lance quietly faded away.