The Field of Blood Page 3

  These were the beginnings of a troubled relationship between the crusaders and the Byzantines that would characterize their relations for decades. The emperor needed the Franks’ support, but he feared them as well. On the other hand, the crusaders needed Alexius’s guidance and logistical support, but they also deeply resented the attacks they had suffered from Byzantine war bands during their journey and were annoyed by the Byzantines’ cultivated air of sneering superiority. A particular sticking point was the emperor’s demand that the crusade commanders swear an oath of allegiance to him and promise to return any formerly Byzantine cities that they might capture. Eventually most leaders were corralled, grudgingly or not, into taking the oath, but many resisted.

  The young firebrand Tancred, one of Bohemond’s commanders, was among the most obstinate. When pressed to take the oath, he had the insolence to state that he would only comply if, in return, the emperor would give him the great imperial tent in which Alexius was holding court, provided that it was filled with gold. Alexius was incensed at this impertinent demand and rose from his throne, contemptuously thrusting the young man away. Tancred then had the effrontery to attempt to retaliate physically against the emperor but was subdued by his uncle Bohemond, who shamed him and then forced him to take the oath.9 Tancred submitted willingly to no one, and his stubbornness and single-mindedness were to play a major role in shaping the world of the crusader East in the years to come.

  Despite this friction, enough of a bond was formed between the emperor and the crusaders for them to collaborate in the campaign’s first objective: the reconquest of Nicaea, an important city that had been lost to the Turks in 1081. The Byzantines wanted it back. The siege was a success; the first contingents arrived outside its walls on May 6, 1097, and the city was under Byzantine control by June 19.

  Their next target was the great Turk-held city of Antioch, which lay on Anatolia’s southern margins. This city had been in Byzantine hands as recently as 1084 and represented a formidable obstacle to the crusaders’ goal of reaching Jerusalem. From the crusaders’ perspective, the conquest of Antioch may have been desirable but was probably not essential: it was a long way from Jerusalem, and they could have chosen simply to steer clear of its walls. For the Byzantines, however, Antioch’s return would constitute a substantial advance in their reconquest of Anatolia from the Turks.

  The journey to reach Antioch across Anatolia was torturous in the extreme. Many perished in the inhospitable landscape, succumbing to dehydration, starvation, or exposure. The Turks of Anatolia repeatedly attacked the crusader column, although they were soundly defeated when they risked a pitched battle outside the ruined city of Dorylaion. By the time the crusaders finally reached Antioch on October 20, their numbers were much reduced.10

  Despite their suffering, in the final weeks of the crusaders’ advance upon Antioch they felt a growing sense of opportunism. These lands were ripe for conquest. Both Anatolia and Syria had been seized by the Turks only a few decades earlier, and the local Arab, Armenian, and Syriac peoples bitterly resented their rule. With the advent of the crusade, many local leaders grasped the chance to break into open rebellion against their Turkish masters. The precariousness of Turkish authority was only exacerbated by rivalries between individual Turkish commanders. Their great leader, the Turkish sultan Malik Shah, had died only a few years before, and the Turkish sultanate was in a state of civil war.

  The fragility of Turkish rule became increasingly evident as the First Crusade crossed the Taurus Mountains and as, in city after city, the local Armenian people threw out their Turkish overlords, welcoming or seeking aid from the crusaders. At this stage the Franks may not have intended to seek permanent control of these Armenian cities. They may simply have been preparing for the siege of Antioch by establishing a zone of friendly territory around the city. Nevertheless, the readiness of many people in these Armenian areas to accept Frankish control dangled the possibility of long-term conquest.

  During this phase of the campaign, two ambitious young lords made names for themselves: Tancred of Hauteville and Baldwin of Boulogne. These two commanders, each with a small fast-moving contingent, were dispatched to secure various cities that lay on or near the crusaders’ line of march. Most notably, in the autumn of 1097 these adventurers managed to take the major cities of Mamistra and Tarsus, located in the fertile coastlands of Cilicia, lying to the north of Antioch. They had probably been instructed to claim the cities in the name of the crusading army as a whole, but they clearly saw the conquests as a route to their own personal enrichment.11 At both Tarsus and Mamistra, Tancred and Baldwin quarreled over who should take control. Their disputes eventually escalated into a bitter and bloody skirmish when it became clear that neither would yield possession to the other. After this ugly incident, Baldwin and Tancred had little communication with one another for over three years. Their next encounter took place far to the south when Baldwin traveled to Jerusalem to claim the throne.

  Soon after this incident, Baldwin broke away from the main crusader army. He had in his company an Armenian called Bagrat who had joined him at the siege of Nicaea. Presumably as a result of conversations with him, Baldwin was persuaded to venture eastward, toward the Euphrates River and further into Armenian territory, allying with local Christian nobles and driving out local Turkish garrisons. During this expedition he was approached by the bishop of Edessa, who, representing his master T’oros, the city’s ruler, sought Baldwin’s support against the Turks. Baldwin set out with an escort of eighty knights and was rapturously received, both in Edessa and in the neighboring towns.12 He became ruler soon afterward, following a rebellion against T’oros, and by doing so founded the first Crusader State: the County of Edessa.13

  While Baldwin was busy establishing himself in Edessa, the main army was occupied with the grueling siege of Antioch. After an eight-month standoff, during which the Franks beat off two Turkish relief armies, they finally took the city on June 3, 1098. The leaders’ oath to Alexius obliged them to hand the city immediately back to the Byzantines, but instead, Bohemond of Taranto took it for himself.14

  The basis for Bohemond’s seizure of the city was a promise he had extracted from the crusade’s leaders shortly before the city’s fall. At this point the crusade had been teetering on the brink of defeat; the crusaders were weakening daily, and Antioch’s impressive defenses remained fundamentally intact. To make matters worse, they had just received news that a third colossal Turkish relief army was approaching under the leadership of Karbugha, ruler of Mosul. Moreover, it was becoming increasingly clear that Emperor Alexius had abandoned them to their fate. In desperation and with nowhere else to turn, they agreed to a deal Bohemond proposed: if he could get the crusaders into the city, then he could keep it for himself.

  On June 2, a windy night, Bohemond left the crusaders’ camp and headed away from the city with a force of cavalry, hoping the Turkish garrison would assume that he was marching off to fight the approaching Turkish army, thus lulling the city’s defenders into a false sense of security. After dark, he doubled back, returning stealthily to Antioch’s walls. There, by prior arrangement, an insider lowered a bull’s-hide rope ladder to let the crusaders mount the ramparts. The first warriors to climb did so reluctantly, wary of some kind of trick. But once twenty-five men had made the ascent, the remainder climbed so eagerly that the stone parapet to which the rope was attached crumbled. The ladder fell, and several unlucky climbers were impaled on a row of wooden stakes at the wall’s foot. The small company gathered atop Antioch’s walls quaked at the thought that the city’s defenders might have been wakened by their fallen comrades’ screams. Still, nothing happened; their cries had been drowned out by the sound of the wind. The rope ladder was then reattached, and when sixty fighters had assembled on the wall, they assaulted the neighboring towers and secured control of a postern gate. The crusaders were in.15

  In the bloody aftermath of Antioch’s fall a second Crusader State was born: the Principal
ity of Antioch. Bohemond’s title as ruler of the city would not go uncontested. Two days after the city fell to the crusaders, the first companies of Karbugha’s Turkish army arrived outside its gates; the former Frankish besiegers were now themselves besieged. Karbugha pressed the crusaders closely, and they began to starve; after the lengthy crusader siege, the city was entirely bereft of food. Many deserted. The most famous of those to flee was Count Stephen of Blois, who returned to western Christendom in ignominy and shame. He was later persuaded by his wife to redeem himself by returning on crusade in 1101.16 Eventually, on June 28, Bohemond led what was left of the crusader army out of Antioch’s Bridge Gate. By now they had lost most of their horses, so the starving Christian army marched out on foot to confront an enemy whose forces were both more numerous and better equipped.

  The Turks, who generally fought on horseback, should have been able to rain arrows on the dismounted, slow-moving crusaders without ever needing to engage in hand-to-hand combat. Nevertheless, the steely discipline imposed by Bohemond, coupled with a strong sense of religious euphoria that led some to claim that they had been assisted in battle by a company of white knights led by Saint George, Saint Demetrius, and Saint Mercurius, maintained order in the Christian ranks.17 The crusader army also bore a mighty relic before them: the spear that had pierced Christ’s side at the Crucifixion, discovered two weeks earlier beneath the floor of Saint Peter’s Church in Antioch by a pilgrim named Peter Bartholomew. Not all had believed the relic to be genuine, but many had interpreted the finding of the spear as a sign of divine favor.18

  In the Turkish camp, by contrast, Karbugha struggled to assert control over many of his lieutenants, some of whom were former enemies.19 His forces, dispersed around the long city walls, engaged haphazardly with the crusaders, in part negating their superior numbers.20 Most importantly, the Turks allowed themselves to be drawn into close combat and were cut to pieces by the heavily armed crusader infantry. The outcome was an astonishing victory for the crusaders, one that many believed to be miraculous.

  Returning to the city in triumph, Bohemond then confronted Count Raymond of Toulouse, who challenged Bohemond on the question of who should rule Antioch. Bohemond claimed the city for himself, but other lords, including Raymond, felt that Alexius should be invited to take control. Raymond was eventually frustrated in his design, and after a bitter exchange he set out south with the remainder of the crusade, bound for Jerusalem.

  Increasingly, the crusade leadership was beginning to split between those who had no intention of remaining in the East and wished only to complete their pilgrimage and return home and those who, either out of piety or opportunism or both, wanted to stay and carve out territories for themselves. From this point on, as the crusade headed south toward Jerusalem, leaders began to seize towns and cities in an attempt to assemble a nucleus of territory that could provide the basis for later growth. Raymond of Toulouse, in particular, was especially eager to acquire a foothold in the region, but he was repeatedly thwarted in this attempt.

  Raymond’s greatest humiliation took place at Jerusalem. It was the summer of 1099, and the crusader armies had passed south along the Levantine coast. With Jerusalem just over the horizon, their goal was almost achieved. When they had set out on crusade, the holy city had been a Turkish possession, but while they had been besieging Antioch, it had been conquered by the Fatimid caliphate of Egypt.

  The crusaders harbored little enmity toward the Egyptian Fatimids. Indeed, they had been discussing an alliance with them for almost two years.21 As they advanced upon Jerusalem, they hoped they could persuade the Fatimids to yield Jerusalem in a treaty that would maintain positive relations with this important regional power. But the negotiations collapsed, and the crusaders laid siege to the holy city soon afterward. This began a period of intense conflict that culminated on July 15, 1099, when the city fell. Jerusalem’s conquest was followed by a brutal massacre of the populace—perhaps as many as three thousand people were killed.22

  In the aftermath of the city’s gruesome fall, the question arose of who should be its ruler. Raymond was an obvious candidate, given that he was a powerful and rich commander who was willing to remain in the East. Yet again he was outmaneuvered, and rule was granted instead to Duke Godfrey of Bouillon. Disgraced, Raymond was incensed and departed shortly afterward on a pilgrimage to the River Jordan. Despite his wrath and once again against a backdrop of slaughter and intrigue, a third Crusader State had been born: the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.

  The Crusader States were now taking shape in earnest. To the north, the County of Edessa lay in the craggy regions of southern Anatolia, the only Crusader State without access to the sea. To the southwest of Edessa was the Principality of Antioch, whose territory was already being assertively expanded by its first ruler, Bohemond of Taranto. And far to the south, the Kingdom of Jerusalem lay on the edge of the desert.

  The fourth and final Crusader State was founded several years later by Count Raymond of Toulouse after a series of failed attempts to establish his own state. First, he attempted to establish a lordship around the city of Latakia in northern Syria, an endeavor that angered Bohemond because Latakia was close to Antioch and formed part of its traditional hinterland. He then participated in another large crusade, launched in 1101, that sought to re-create the triumphs of the First Crusade but that met disaster while trying to cross Anatolia. Eventually, he marshaled his remaining forces and in 1103 laid siege to the city of Tripoli (in modern-day northern Lebanon). Raymond would die four years before the conquest of Tripoli in 1109. Even so, his dogged determination in the face of repeated reverses laid the foundation for the establishment of this final Christian territory: the County of Tripoli.

  The challenges confronting the early rulers of the Crusader States were formidable. They suffered deficiencies in manpower and resources, and their newly established titles of “king,” “prince,” and “count” were mere inventions and lacked the centuries of tradition and heritage that gave such noble and royal appellations the sense of permanence and authority they required. Moreover, Jerusalem’s ruler, Godfrey of Bouillon, died a year after taking power, precipitating his brother Baldwin’s speedy journey south to take power.

  These conquerors were also divided among themselves. After Baldwin’s coronation on Christmas Day 1100, he and Tancred of Hauteville were once again at daggers drawn, just as they had been in Cilicia all those years earlier. Tancred had already made it clear that he did not recognize Baldwin as his king, and their dispute was only inflamed by persistent quarreling among the nobility over Tancred’s control over the recently conquered town of Haifa.23 The deadlock, which held the potential for civil war, was finally broken in March when a delegation arrived from Antioch. Its ruler, Bohemond I, was in Turkish captivity, and Antioch’s nobles wanted Tancred to rule in his place. Tancred’s promotion ended the impasse with Baldwin. Tancred was willing to yield his estates in the Kingdom of Jerusalem so that he could secure the prize of ruling the Principality of Antioch. Consequently, he and Baldwin patched up a hasty peace, and Tancred departed for the north.

  In the years that followed, all four of the Crusader States faced grave military threats from their Turkish and Egyptian neighbors. The intensity of this danger compelled their rulers to work together, but it was also never lost on any of them that their Christian coreligionists were as much rivals as they were allies.

  Surrounded by foreign enemies, the Franks’ military policies in their early years were aggressive in the extreme. This was a strategic necessity. Their rulers were critically in need of land and cities to supply the income and manpower necessary to make their fledgling realms tenable in the face of far stronger opponents. The operative principle was clear: expand or be driven into the sea. Moreover, the astonishing victories of the First Crusade had engendered a sense of fear among the neighboring Turkish rulers, which the crusaders were eager to exploit. In the early 1100s both Antioch and Jerusalem frequently played on this fear to d
emand tribute from the Turks in exchange for peace.

  Deliberately instilling a sense of fear in a foe was a weapon commonly used by the Normans of southern Italy—Tancred’s people. One Norman chronicler describes a particularly effective instance of this practice during the Norman conquest of southern Italy from the Byzantines, several decades earlier. He recalled a moment when the Greeks were besieging a Norman castle and had sent a mounted envoy to demand the garrison’s surrender. The envoy was greeted by a Norman knight called Hugh, who took the envoy’s mount and began to stroke its mane. Then he suddenly punched the horse on the neck with his bare hand, killing it instantly, and the Normans threw its carcass over the castle walls. The Byzantine commanders were so appalled at this naked display of strength that they refused to tell their soldiers what had happened for fear they would be reluctant to fight in the coming battle (which they did indeed lose).24 Fear could be a powerful weapon.

  Still, fear needed to be maintained by continued conquests if it was to retain its potency. In the south, Baldwin I’s primary objective was to secure as many ports as possible along the Levantine coast. These harbors were essential to his realm’s survival because they opened up corridors of maritime communication with western Christendom, which could funnel reinforcements and pilgrims to the Latin East (another name for the Crusader States) and bolster their fledgling armies. Moreover, these ports would also give the Franks a stake in the lucrative commercial networks that crisscrossed the Mediterranean, creating opportunities for tax revenue and increased communications.