First Crusade
Author: Cox, Sir George W.
Part I.
1096 - 1099
Religious feeling in the eleventh century rose to a great pitch of
enthusiasm, and led men of various nations, with still more various motives
and aims in worldly affairs, to pursue one common end with their whole heart.
Between the years 1096 and 1270 these attempts of Christian nations to rescue
the Holy Land from the "Infidels," as the Mahometans were called, added a
wholly new character of human enterprise to the world's history.
At the time - in the middle of the eleventh century - when the Seljuks, a
Turkish tribe of Western Asia, had overrun Syria and Asia Minor, throwing the
East into a state of anarchy, Europe was beginning to adopt modes of settled
order. Through the Byzantine empire great numbers of pilgrims for centuries
had passed to visit Palestine. With the improved condition of the western
nations, which led to an extension of commerce in the East, the pilgrimage to
that part of the world acquired a new importance. As early as 1064 a caravan
of seven thousand pilgrims made their way to the neighborhood of Jerusalem,
where they narrowly escaped destruction by the Bedouins, their rescue being
effected by a Saracen emir.
In 1070 the Seljuks took possession of Jerusalem, inflicting hardships on
the pilgrims by intolerable exactions, insult, and plunder. Besides outraging
Christian sentiment, they ruined the commerce of the western nations.
Throughout Europe arose the cry for vengeance, and men's minds were fully
prepared for an attempt to conquer Palestine when their leaders began to
preach the sacred duty of delivering the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of the
infidels.
At the Council of Clermont, in 1094, Pope Urban II depicted the miseries
of Christians in Palestine, and, with a power of eloquence unsurpassed in his
day, called upon those who heard him to wipe off from the face of the earth
the impurities which caused them, and to lift their oppressed
fellow-Christians from the depths into which they had been trampled. He urged
them to take up arms in the service of the Cross, at the same time setting
before them the temporal, no less than the spiritual, advantages that would
accrue from the conquest of a land "flowing with milk and honey," and which,
he said, should be divided among them. He likewise offered them full pardon
for all their sins.
The enthusiasm of his hearers burst all bounds, and with one voice they
cried: "God wills it! God wills it!" To all parts of Europe the fervor
spread. The Pope was powerfully aided by an earnest and eloquent - if
ignorant - monk, Peter the Hermit, of Amiens, who declared that he would rouse
the martial spirit of Europe in the cause, and he himself was the first - with
whatsoever of misguided zeal - to lead the way to the Holy Land.
The crusades are so called from the simple circumstance that the badge
chosen for the movement was the cross, which Pope Urban bade the Christian
warriors wear on their breasts or on their shoulders, as the sign of Him who
died for the salvation of their souls, and as the pledge of a vow that could
never be recalled.
In the enterprise to which Latin Christendom stood committed, the several
nations or countries of Europe took equal parts; or, rather, no nation, as
such, took any part in it at all; and in this fact we have the explanation of
that want of coherent action, and even decent or average generalship, which is
commonly seen in national undertakings. For the crusade there was no attempt
at a commissariat, no care for a base of supplies; and the crusading hosts
were a collection of individual adventurers who either went without making any
provisions for their journey or provided for their own needs and those of
their followers from their own resources. The number of these adventurers was
naturally determined by the political conditions of the country from which
they came. In Italy the struggle between the pope and the antipope went far
toward chilling enthusiasm; and the recruits for the crusading army came
chiefly from the Normans who had followed Robert Guiscard to the sunny
southern lands. The Spaniards were busied with a crusade nearer home, and
were already pushing back to the south the Mahometan dominion which had once
threatened to pass the barriers of the Pyrenees and carry the Crescent to the
shores of the Baltic Sea. About ten years before the council of Clermont the
Moslem dynasty of Toledo had been expelled by Alfonso, King of Galicia: the
kingdom of Cordova had fallen twenty years earlier (1065), and while Peter the
Hermit was hurrying hither and thither through the countries of Northern
Europe, the Christians of Spain were winning victories in Murcia, and the land
was ringing with the exploits of the dauntless Cid, Ruy Diaz de Bivar. By the
Germans the summons to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre was received with
comparative coldness; the partisans of emperors, who had been humbled to the
dust by the predecessors of Urban, if not by himself, were not vehemently
eager to obey it. The bishops of Salzburg, Passau, and Strasburg, the aged
duke Guelph of Bavaria, had undertaken the toilsome and perilous journey: not
one of them saw their homes again, and their death in the distant East was not
regarded by their countrymen as an encouragement to follow their example. In
England the English were too much weighed down by the miseries of the
Conquest, the Normans too much occupied in strengthening their position, and
the King, William the Red, more ready to take advantage of the needs of his
brother Robert than to incur any risks of his own. The great movement came
from the lands extending from the Scheldt to the Pyrenees. Franks and Normans
alike made ready with impetuous haste for the great adventure; and tens of
thousands, who could not wait for the formation of something like a regular
army, hurried away, under leaders as frantic as themselves, to their
inevitable doom.
Little more than half the time allowed for the gathering of the crusaders
had passed away, when a crowd of some sixty thousand men and women, neither
caring nor thinking about the means by which their ends could be attained,
insisted that the hermit Peter should lead them at once to the Holy City.
Mere charity may justify the belief that some even among these may have been
folk of decent lives moved by the earnest conviction that their going to
Jerusalem would do some good; that the vast majority looked upon their vow as
a license for the commission of any sin, there can be no moral doubt; that
they exhibited not a single quality needed for the successful prosecution of
their enterprise is absolutely certain. With a foolhardiness equal to his
ignorance Peter undertook the task, in which he was aided by Walter the
Penniless, a man with some pretensions to the soldier-like character. But the
utter disorder of this motley host made it impossible for them to journey long
together. At Cologne they parted company; and fifteen thousand under the
penniless Walter made their way to the frontiers of Hungary, while Peter led
onward a host which swelled gradually on the march to about forty thousand.
Another army or horde of perhaps twenty thousand marched under the
guidance of Emico, Count of Leiningen, a third under that of the monk
Gottschalk, a man not notorious for the purity or disinterestedness of his
motives. Behind these came a rabble, it is said, of two hundred thousand men,
women, and children, preceded by a goose and a goat, or, as some have
supposed, by banners on which, as symbols of the mysterious faith of Gnostics
and Paulicians, the likeness of these animals was painted. In this vile horde
on pretence was kept up of order or of decency. Sinning freely, it would
seem, that grace might abound, they plundered and harried the lands through
which they marched, while three thousand horsemen, headed by some counts and
gentlemen, were not too dignified to act as their attendants and to share
their spoil.
But if they had no scruple in robbing Christians, their delight was to
prove the reality of their mission as soldiers of the cross by plundering,
torturing, and slaying Jews. The crusade against the Turk was interpreted as
a crusade directed not less explicitly against the descendants of those who
had crucified the Redeemer. The streets of Verdun and Treves and of the great
cities on the Rhine ran red with the blood of their victims; and if some saved
their lives by pretended conversions, many more cheated their persecutors by
throwing their property and their persons either into the rivers or into the
consuming fires.
A space of six hundred miles lay between the Austrian frontier and
Constantinople; and across the dreary waste the followers of Walter the
Penniless struggled on, destitute of money, and rousing the hostility of the
inhabitants whom they robbed and ill-used. In Bulgaria their misdeeds
provoked reprisals which threatened their destruction; and none perhaps would
have reached Constantinople if the imperial commander at Naissos had not
rescued them from their enemies, supplied them with food, and guarded them
through the remainder of their journey. These succors involved some costs;
and the costs were paid by the sale of unarmed men among the pilgrims, and
especially of the women and children, who were seized to provide the necessary
funds. Of those who formed the train of the hermit Peter, seven thousand
only, it is said, reached Constantinople.
Of such a rabble rout the emperor Alexius ^1 needed not to be afraid. He
had already seen and encountered far larger armies of Normans, Turks, and
Romans; and he now extended to this vanguard of the hosts of Latin Christendom
a hospitality which was almost immediately abused. They had refused to comply
with his request that they should quietly await the arrival of their
fellow-crusaders; and consulting the safety of his people not less than his
own, he induced them to cross the Bosporus, and pitch their camp on Asiatic
soil, the land which they had come to wrest from the unbelievers.
[Footnote 1: Head of the Byzantine empire.]
Alexius wished simply to be rid of their presence: they had to deal with
an enemy still more crafty and formidable in the Seljukian sultan David. The
vagrants whom Peter and Walter had brought thus far on the road to Jerusalem
were scattered about the land in search of food; and it was no hard task for
David to cheat the main body with the false tidings that their companions had
carried the walls of Nice, and were revelling in the pleasures and spoils of
his capital. The doomed horde rushed into the plain which fronts the city;
and a vast heap of bones alone remained to tell the story of the great
catastrophe, when the forces which might more legitimately claim the name of
an army passed the spot where the Seljukian had entrapped and crushed his
victims. In this wild expedition not less, it is said, than three hundred
thousand human beings had already paid the penalty of their lives.
Still the First Crusade was destined to accomplish more than any of the
seven or eight crusades which followed it; and this measure of success it
achieved probably because none of the great European sovereigns took part in
it. The task of setting up a Latin kingdom in Palestine was to be achieved by
princes of the second order.
Of these the foremost and the most deservedly illustrious was Godfrey, of
Bouillon in the Ardennes, a kinsman of the counts of Boulogne, and Duke of
Lotharingen (Lorraine). In the service of the emperor Henry IV, the enemy or
the victim of Hildebrand, he had been the first to mount the walls of Rome and
cleave his way into the city; he might now hope that his crusading vow would
be accepted as an atonement for his sacrilege. Speaking the Frank and
Teutonic dialects with equal ease, he exercised by his bravery, his wisdom,
and the uprightness of his life an influence which brought to his standard, it
is said, not less than eighty thousand infantry and ten thousand horsemen,
together with his brothers Baldwin and Eustace, Count of Boulogne.
Among the most conspicuous of Godfrey's colleagues was Hugh, Count of
Vermandois. With him may be placed the Norman duke Robert, whose carelessness
had lost him the crown of England, and who had now pawned his duchy for a
pittance scarcely less paltry than that for which Esau bartered away his
birthright. The number of the great chiefs who led the pilgrims from Northern
Europe is completed with the names of Robert, Count of Flanders, and of
Stephen, Count of Chartres, Troyes, and Blois.
Foremost, by virtue of his title and office, among the leaders of the
southern bands was the papal legate Adhemar (Aymer) Bishop of Puy - a leader
rather as guiding the counsels of the army than as gathering soldiers under
his banner.
A hundred thousand horse and foot attested, we are told, the greatness,
the wealth, and the zeal of Raymond, Count of Toulouse, lord of Auvergne and
Languedoc, who had grown old in warfare.
Less tinged with the fanatical enthusiasm of his comrades, and certainly
more cool and deliberate in his ambition, Bohemond, son of Robert Guiscard,
looked to the crusade as a means by which he might regain the vast regions
extending from the Dalmatian coast to the northern shores of the Aegean. Nay,
if we are to believe William of Malmesbury, he urged Urban to set forward the
enterprise for the very purpose, partly, of thus recovering what he was
pleased to regard as his inheritance, and in part of enabling the Pontiff to
suppress all opposition in Rome. Guiscard had left his Apulian domains to a
younger son, and Bohemond was resolved, it would seem, to add to his
principality of Tarentum a kingdom which would make him a formidable rival of
the Eastern Emperor.
Far above Bohemond rises his cousin Tancred, the son of the marquis Odo,
surnamed the Good, and of Emma, the sister of Robert Guiscard.
In Tancred was seen the embodiment of those peculiar sentiments and modes
of thought which gave birth to the crusades, and to which the crusades in
their turn imparted marvellous strength and splendor.
The miserable remnant of three thousand men who escaped from the field of
blood before the city of the Seljukian sultan found a refuge in Byzantine
territory about the time when the better appointed armies of the crusaders
were setting off on their eastward journey. The most disciplined of these
troops set out with a vast following from the banks of the Meuse and the
Moselle under Godfrey of Bouillon, who led them safely and without opposition
to the Hungarian border. Here the armies of Hungary barred the way against
the advance of a host at whose hands they dreaded a repetition of the havoc
wrought by the lawless bands of Peter the Hermit and his self-chosen
colleagues. Three weeks passed away in vain attempts to get over the
difficulty. The Hungarian King demanded as a hostage Baldwin, the brother of
the general: the demand was refused, and Godfrey put him to shame by
surrendering himself. He asked only for a free passage and a free market; but
although these were granted, it was not in his power to prevent some disorder
and some depredations as his army or horde passed through the country. The
mischief might have been much worse, had not the Hungarian cavalry, acting
professedly as a friendly escort, but really as cautious warders, kept close
to the crusading hosts.
At length they reached the gates of Philippopolis, and here Godfrey
learned that Hugh of Vermandois, whose coming had been announced to the Greek
emperor Alexius by four-and-twenty knights in golden armor, and who styled
himself the brother of the king of kings and lord of all the Frankish hosts,
was a prisoner within the walls of Constantinople. With Robert of Normandy
and Robert of Flanders, with Stephen of Chartres and some lesser chiefs, Hugh
had chosen to make his way through Italy; and the charms of that voluptuous
land had a greater effect, it seems, in breaking up and corrupting their
forces than the delights of Capua had in weakening the soldiers of Hannibal.
With little regard to order, the chiefs determined to cross the sea as
best they might. Hugh embarked at Bari; and if we may believe Anna Comnena,
the historian and the worshipper of her father Alexius, his fleet was broken
by a tempest which shattered his own ship on the coast between Palos and
Dyrrhachium (Durazzo), of which John Comnenus, the nephew of the Emperor, was
at this time the governor. The Frank chief was here detained until the good
pleasure of Alexius should be known. That wary and cunning prince saw at once
how much might be made of his prisoner, who was by his orders conducted with
careful respect and ceremony to the capital. Kept here really as a hostage,
but welcomed to outward seeming as a friend, Hugh was so completely won by the
charm of manner which Alexius well knew how and when to put on, that, paying
him homage and declaring himself his man, he promised to do what he could to
induce others to follow his example.
From Philippopolis Godfrey sent ambassadors to Alexius, demanding the
immediate surrender of Hugh. The request was refused, and Godfrey resumed his
march, treating the land through which he passed as an enemy's country, until
by way of Adrianople he at length appeared before the walls of the capital at
Christmastide, 1096. The fears of Alexius were aroused by the sight of a host
so vast and so formidable: they quickened into terror as he thought of the
armies which were still on their way under the command of Bohemond and
Tancred. Of Godfrey, beyond the fact of his mission as a crusader, he knew
little or nothing; but in Bohemond he saw one who claimed as his inheritance
no small portion of his empire. This gathering of myriads, whom a false step
on his part might convert into open enemies, was the result of his own
entreaties urged through his envoys before Urban II in the Council of
Piacenza; and his mind was divided between a feverish anxiety to hurry them on
to their destination and so to rid himself of their hateful presence, and the
desire to retain a hold not only on the crusading chiefs but on any conquests
which they might make in Syria.
Hugh was sent back to Godfrey's camp; but the quarrel was patched up,
rather than ended. It was easier to rouse suspicion and jealousy than to
restore friendship. But it was of the first importance for Alexius that he
should secure the homage of the princes already gathered round his capital
before the arrival of his ancient enemy Bohemond. In this he succeeded, and a
compact was made by which Alexius pledged them his word that he would supply
them with food and aid them in their eastward march, and would protect all
pilgrims passing through his dominions. On the other hand the crusading
chiefs, as already subjects of other sovereigns, gave their fealty to the
Emperor as their liege lord only for the time during which they might remain
within his borders, and undertook to restore to him such of their conquests as
had been recently wrested from the empire.
The policy and the bribes of Alexius had overcome the opposition of
Bohemond. He was to experience a stouter resistance from Raymond of Toulouse,
who, though he had been the first to enlist, was the last to set out on his
crusade.
The Count of Toulouse scarcely regarded himself as the vassal even of the
French King. He was ready, he said, to be the friend of Alexius on equal
terms; but he would not declare himself to be his man. On this point he was
immovable, although Bohemond tried the effect of a threat (which was never
forgiven), that if the quarrel came to blows, he should be found on the side
of the Emperor. But Alexius soon saw that in Raymond he had to deal with an
enthusiast as sincere and persistent as Godfrey. He took his measures
accordingly, winning the heart of the old warrior, although he failed to
compel his obedience.
While Alexius was busied in dealing with Godfrey and Raymond, Bohemond
and Tancred, he was not less anxiously occupied with the task of sending
across the Bosporus the swarms which might soon become an army of devouring
locusts round his own capital. It was easier to give them a welcome than to
get rid of them: and more than two months had passed since Christmas, when the
followers of Godfrey found themselves on the soil of Asia.
Godfrey's men had no sooner been landed on the eastern side of the
Bosporus than all the vessels which had transported them were brought back to
the western shore. With great astuteness, and at the cost of large gifts,
Alexius in like manner freed the neighborhood of his capital from the invading
multitudes. As fast as they came they were hurried across, and the Emperor
breathed more freely when, on the Feast of Pentecost, not a single Latin
pilgrim remained on the European shore.
The danger of conflict had throughout been imminent; and the danger
arose, not so much from the fact that the crusaders were armed men, marching
through the country of professed allies, but from the thorough antagonism
between Greeks and Latins in modes of thought and habits of life. Nor must we
forget the vast gulf which separated the Eastern from the Western clergy. The
clergy of the West despised their brethren of the East for their cowardly
submission to the secular arm. These, in their turn, shrunk with horror from
the sight of bishops, priests, and monks riding with blood-stained weapons
over fields of battle, and exhibiting at other times an ignorance equal to
their ferocity.
The strength and valor of the crusaders were soon to be tested. They
were now face to face with the Turks, on whose cowardice Urban II had enlarged
with so much complacency before the Council of Clermont. The sultan David, or
Kilidje Arslan, placed his family and treasures in his capital city of Nice
and retreated with fifty thousand horsemen to the mountains, whence he swooped
down from time to time on the outposts of the Christians. By these his city
was formally invested; and for seven weeks it was assailed to little purpose
by the old instruments of Roman warfare, while some of the besiegers shot
their weapons from the hill on which were mouldering the bones of the fanatic
followers of Peter. It was protected to the west by the Askanian lake, and so
long as the Turks had command of this lake they felt themselves safe. But
Alexius sent thither on sledges a large number of boats, and the city,
subjected to a double blockade, submitted to the Emperor, who was in no way
anxious to see the crusaders masters of the place. The crusaders were making
ready for the last assault, when they saw the imperial banner floating on the
walls. Their disappointment at the escape of the miscreants, or unbelievers,
for so they delighted to speak of them, was vented in threats which seemed to
bode a renewal of the old troubles; but Alexius, with gifts, which added force
to his words, professed that his only desire now, as it had been, was to
forward them safely on their journey. Nor had they to go many stages before
they found themselves again confronted with their adversary.
The conflict took place near the Phrygian Dorylaion, and seemed at first
to portend dire defeat to the crusaders. More than once the issue of the day
seemed to be turned by the indomitable personal bravery of the Norman Robert,
of Tancred, and of Bohemond; and when even those seemed likely to be borne
down, they received timely succors from Godfrey, and Hugh of Vermandois, from
Bishop Adhemar of Puy and from Raymond, Count of Toulouse. Still the Turks
held out, and it seemed likely that they would long hold out, when the
appearance of the last division of Raymond's army filled them with the fear
that a new host was upon them.
The crusaders had won a considerable victory. Three thousand knights
belonging to the enemy had been slain, and Kilidje Arslan was hurrying away to
enlist the services of his kinsmen. Meanwhile the Latin hosts were sweeping
onward. Hundreds died from the heat, and dogs or goats took the place of the
baggage-horses which had perished. At length Tancred with his troop found
himself before Tarsus, the birthplace and the home of that single-hearted
apostle who long ago had preached a gospel strangely unlike the creed of the
crusaders. Following rapidly behind him, Baldwin saw with keen jealousy the
banner of the Italian chief floating on its towers, and insisted on taking the
precedence. Tancred pleaded the choice of the people and his own promise to
protect them; but the intrigues of Baldwin changed their humor, and the
rejection of Tancred by the men of Tarsus was followed by an attempt at
private war between Tancred and Baldwin, in which the troops of Tancred were
overborne. So early was the first harvest of murderous discord reaped among
the holy warriors of the Cross. It was ruin, however, to stay where they
were; and the main army again began its march, to undergo once more the old
monotony of hardship and peril.
A very small force would have sufficed to disorganize and rout them as
they clambered over the defiles of Mount Taurus; nor could Raymond, recovering
from a terrible illness, or Godfrey, suffering from wounds inflicted by a
bear, have done much to help them. But for the present their enemies were
dismayed; and Baldwin, brother of Godfrey, hastened with eagerness to obey a
summons which besought him to aid the Greek or Armenian tyrant of Edessa. As
Alexius had done to his brother, so this chief welcomed Baldwin as his son;
but Baldwin, having once entered into the city, cared nothing for the means
which had brought him thither, and the death of his adoptive father was
followed by the establishment at Edessa of a Latin principality which lasted
for fifty-four, or, as some have thought, forty-seven years. Baldwin had
anticipated the unconditional surrender of Samosata; but the Turkish governor
had some of the Edessenes in his power, and he refused to give up the city
except on the payment of ten thousand gold pieces. The Turk shortly afterward
fell into Baldwin's hands, and was put to death.
First Crusade
Author: Cox, Sir George W.
Part II.
Meanwhile the main army of the crusaders was advancing toward the Syrian
capital (Antioch), that ancient and luxurious city whose fame had gone over
the whole Roman world for its magnificence, its unbounded wealth, its soft
delights, and its unholy pleasures. The days of its greatest splendor had
passed away. Its walls were partially in ruins; its buildings were in some
parts crumbling away or had already fallen; but against assailants utterly
ignorant and awkward in all that relates to the blockade of cities it was
still a formidable position. Nor could they invest it until they had passed
the iron bridge - so called from its iron-plated gates - of nine stone arches,
which spanned the stream of the Ifrin at a distance of nine miles from the
city. This bridge was carried by the impetuous charge of Robert of Normandy,
aided by the more steady efforts of Godfrey; and in the language of an age
which delighted in round numbers, a hundred thousand warriors hurried across
to seize the splendid prize which now seemed almost within their grasp.
But the city was in the hands of men who had been long accustomed to
despise the Greeks, and who had not yet learned to respect the valor of the
Latins. Preparing himself for a resolute defence, the Seljukian governor
Baghasian had sent away as useless, if not mischievous, most of the Christians
within the town; and the crusading chiefs had begun to discuss the prudence of
postponing all operations till the spring, when Raymond of Toulouse with some
other chiefs insisted that delay would imply fear, and that the imputation of
cowardice would insure the paralysis of their enterprise. The city was
therefore at once invested, so far as the forces of the crusaders could
suffice to encircle it; and a siege began which in the eyes of the military
historian must be absolutely without interest, and of which the issue was
decided by paroxysms of fanatical vehemence on the one side, and by lack, not
of bravery, but of generalship on the other. Of the eastern and northern
walls the blockade was complete; of the west it was partial; and the failure
to invest a portion of the western wall, with two out of the five gates of the
city, left the movements of the Turks in this direction free.
But the besiegers were in no hurry to begin the work of death. The
wealth of the harvest and the vintage spread before them its irresistible
temptations, and the herds feeding in the rich pastures seemed to promise an
endless feast. The cattle, the corn, and the wine were alike wasted with
besotted folly, while the Turks within the walls received tidings, it is said,
of all that passed in the crusading camp from some Greek and Armenian
Christians to whom they allowed free egress and ingress. Of this knowledge
they availed themselves in planning the sallies by which they caused great
distress to the besiegers, whose clumsy engines and devices seemed to produce
no result beyond the waste of time, and who felt perhaps that they had done
something when they blocked up the gate of the bridge with huge stones dug
from the neighboring quarries.
Three months passed away, and the crusaders found themselves not
conquerors, but in desperate straits from famine. The winter rains had turned
the land round their camp into a swamp, and lack of food left them more and
more unable to resist the pestilential diseases which were rapidly thinning
their numbers. A foraging expedition under Bohemond and Tancred filled the
camp with food; it was again recklessly wasted. The second famine scared away
Tatikios, the lieutenant of the Greek emperor Alexius; but the crusading
chiefs were perhaps still more disgusted by the desertion of William of Melun,
called "the Carpenter," from the sledge-hammer blows which he dealt out in
battle. Hunger obtained a victory even over the hermit Peter, who was
stealing away with William of Melun, when he with his companion was caught by
Tancred and brought back to the tent of Bohemond.
For a moment the look of things was changed by the arrival of ambassadors
from Egypt. To the Fatimite caliph of that country the progress of the
crusading arms had thus far brought with it but little dissatisfaction. The
humiliation of the Seljukian Turks could not fail to bring gain to himself, if
the flood of Latin conquests could be checked and turned back in time. His
generals besieged Jerusalem and Tyre; and when the Fatimite once more ruled in
Palestine, his envoys hastened to the crusaders' camp to announce the
deliverance of the Holy Land from its oppressors, to assure to all unarmed and
peaceable pilgrims a month's unmolested sojourn in Jerusalem, and to promise
them his aid during their march, on condition that they should acknowledge his
supremacy within the limits of his Syrian empire.
The arguments and threats of the Caliph were alike thrown away. The
Latin chiefs disclaimed all interest in the feuds and quarrels of rival
sultans and in the fortunes of Mahometan sects. God himself had destined
Jerusalem for the Christians, and if any held it who were not Christians,
these were usurpers whose resistance must be punished by their expulsion or
their death. The envoys departed not encouraged by this answer, and still
more perplexed by the appearance of plenty and by the magnificence of a camp
in which they had expected to see a terrible spectacle of disorder and misery.
The resolute persistence of the besiegers convinced Baghasian of the need
of reinforcements. These were hastening to him from Caesarea, Aleppo, and
other places, when they were cut off by Bohemond and Raymond, who sent a
multitude of heads to the envoys of the Fatimite Caliph, and discharged many
hundreds from their engines into the city of Antioch. The Turks had their
opportunity for reprisals when the arrival of some Pisan and Genoese ships at
the mouth of the Orontes drew off the greater part of the besieging army. The
crusaders were returning with provisions and arms, when their enemies started
upon them from an ambuscade. The battle was fierce; but the defeat of
Raymond, which threatened dire disaster, was changed into victory on the
arrival of Godfrey and the Norman Robert, whose exploits equalled or
surpassed, if we are to believe the story, even those of Arthur, Lancelot, or
Tristram. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Turks fell. Their bodies were
buried by their comrades in the cemetery without the walls: the Christians dug
them up, severed the heads from the trunks, and paraded the ghastly trophies
on their pikes, not forgetting to send a goodly number to the Egyptian Caliph,
by way of showing how his Seljukian friends or enemies had fared. The picture
is disgusting; but if we shut our eyes to these loathsome details, the truth
of the history is gone. We are dealing with the wars of savages, and it is
right that we should know this.
The next scene exhibits Godfrey and Bohemond in fierce quarrel about a
splendid tent, which, being intended as a gift for the former, had been seized
by an Armenian chief and sent to the latter. But there was now more serious
business on hand. Rumor spoke of the near approach of a Persian army, and the
besieged, under the plea of wishing to arrange terms of capitulation, obtained
a truce which they sought probably only for the sake of gaining time. The
days passed by, but no offers were made; and their disposition was shown by
seizing a crusading knight in the groves near the city and tearing his body in
pieces. The Latins returned with increased fury to the siege: but the
defence, although more feeble, was still protracted, and Bohemond began to
feel not only that fraud might succeed where force had failed, but that from
fraud he might reap, not safety merely, but wealth and greatness. His plans
were laid with a renegade Christian named Phirouz, high in the favor of the
governor, with whom he had come into contact either during the truce or in
some other way. By splendid promises he insured the zealous aid of his new
ally, and then came forward in the council with the assurance that he could
place the city in their hands, but that he could do this only on condition
that he should rule in Antioch as Baldwin ruled in Edessa. His claim was
angrily opposed by the Provencal Raymond; but this opposition was overruled,
and it was resolved that the plan should be carried out at once.
There was need for so doing. Rumors spread within the city that some
attempt was to be made to betray the place to the besiegers, and hints or open
accusations pointed out Phirouz as the traitor. Like other traitors, the
renegade thought it best to anticipate the charge by urging that the guards of
the towers should on the very next day be changed. His proposal was received
as indubitable proof of his innocence and his faithfulness; but he had made up
his mind that Antioch should fall that night, and that night by means of a
rope ladder Bohemond with about sixty followers (the ropes broke before more
could ascend) climbed up the wall. Seizing ten towers, of which all the
guards were killed, they opened a gate, and the Christian host rushed in. The
banner of Bohemond rose on one of the towers; the trumpets sounded for the
onset, and a carnage began in which at first the assailants took no heed to
distinguish between the Christian and the Turk. In the awful confusion of the
moment some of the besieged made their way to the citadel, and there shut
themselves in, ready to resist to the death. Of the rest few escaped; ten
thousand, it is said, were massacred. Baghasian with some friends passed out
beyond the besiegers' lines, but, fainting from loss of blood, he fell from
his horse, and his companions hurried on. A Syrian Christian heard his
groans, and striking off his head carried the prize to the camp of the
conquerors. Phirouz lived to be a second time a renegade, and to close his
career as a thief.
The victory was for the crusaders a change from famine to abundance; and
their feasting was accompanied by the wildest riot and the most filthy
debauchery. But if heedless waste may have been one of the most venial of
their sins, it was the greatest of their blunders. The reports which spoke of
the approach of the Persians were not false. The Turks within the citadel
suddenly found that they were rather besiegers than besieged, and that the
Christians were hemmed in by the myriads of Kerboga, Prince of Mosul, and the
warriors of Kilidje Arslan. The old horrors of famine were now repeated, but
in greater intensity; and the doom of the Latin host seemed now to be sealed.
Stephen, Count of Chartres, had deserted his companions before the fall
of the city; others now followed his example, and with him set out on their
return to Europe. In Phrygia, Stephen encountered the emperor Alexius, who
was marching to the aid of the crusaders, not only with a Greek army, but with
a force of well-appointed pilgrims who had reached Constantinople after the
departure of Godfrey and his fellows. The story told by Stephen drove out of
his head every thought except that of his own safety. The order for retreat
was given; and the pilgrim warriors, not less than the Greeks, were compelled
to turn their faces westward.
In Antioch the crusading soldiers were fast sinking into utter despair.
Discipline had well-nigh come to an end, and so obstinate was their refusal to
bear arms any longer that Bohemond resolved to burn them out of their
quarters. These were consumed by the flames, which spread so rapidly as to
fill him with fear that he had destroyed, not only their dwellings, but his
whole principality. His experiment brought the men back to their duty; but so
despondingly was their work done that but for some signal succor the end, it
was manifest, must soon come. In a credulous age such succor at the darkest
hour, if obtained at all, will generally be obtained through miracle. A
Lombard priest came forward, to whom St. Ambrose of Milan had declared in a
vision that the third year of the crusade should see the conquest of
Jerusalem; another had seen the Saviour himself, attended by his Virgin Mother
and the Prince of the Apostles, had heard from his lips a stern rebuke of the
crusaders for yielding to the seductions of pagan women - as if the profession
of Christianity altered the color and the guilt of a vice - and lastly had
received the distinct assurance that in five days they should have the help
which they needed.
The hopes of the crusaders were roused; with hope came a return of
vigorous energy; and Peter Barthelemy, chaplain to Raymond of Toulouse, seized
the opportunity for recounting a vision which was to be something more than a
dream. To him St. Andrew had revealed the fact that in the Church of St.
Peter lay hidden the steel head of the spear which had pierced the side of the
Redeemer as he hung upon the cross; and that Holy Lance should win them
victory over all their enemies as surely as the spear which imparted
irresistible power to the Knight of the Sangreal. After two days of special
devotion they were to search for the long-lost weapon; on the third day the
workmen began to dig, but until the sun had set they toiled in vain. The
darkness of night made it easier for the chaplain to play the part which Sir
Walter Scott, in the Antiquary, assigns to Herman Dousterswivel in the ruins
of St. Ruth. Barefooted and with a single garment the priest went down into
the pit. For a time the strokes of his spade were heard, and then the sacred
relic was found, carefully wrapped in a veil of silk and gold. The priest
proclaimed his discovery; the people rushed into the church; and from the
church throughout the city spread the flame of a fierce enthusiasm.
Nine or ten months later Peter Barthelemy paid the penalty of his life
for his fraud or his superstition. A bribe taken by his master Raymond
brought that chief into ill odor with his comrades, and let loose against his
chaplain the tongue of Arnold, the chaplain of Bohemond. Raymond had traded
on fresh visions of his clerk; and Arnold boldly attacked him in his citadel
by denying the genuineness of the Holy Lance. Peter appealed to the ordeal of
fire. He passed through the flames, as it seemed, unhurt. The bystanders
pressed to feel his flesh, and were vehement in their rejoicings at the result
which vindicated his integrity. He had really received fatal injuries.
Twelve days afterward he died, and Raymond suffered greatly in his dignity and
his influence.
The infidel was doomed; but the crusaders resolved to give him one chance
of escape. Peter the Hermit was sent as their envoy to Kerboga to offer the
alternative of departure from a land which St. Peter had bestowed on the
faithful, or of baptism which should leave him master of the city and
territory of Antioch. The reply was short and decisive. The Turk would not
embrace an idolatry which he hated and despised, nor would he give up soil
which belonged to him by right of conquest. The report of the hermit raised
the spirit of the crusaders to fever heat; and on the feast of St. Peter and
St. Paul they marched out in twelve divisions, in remembrance of the mission
of the Twelve Apostles, while Raymond of Toulouse remained to prevent the
escape of the Turks shut up in the citadel. The Holy Lance was borne by the
papal legate, Adhemar, Bishop of Puy; and the morning air laden with the
perfume of roses was now regarded as a sign assuring them of the divine favor.
They were prepared to see good omens in everything; and they went in full
confidence that departed saints would, as they had been told, take part in the
battle and smite down the infidel. The fight - one of brute force on the
Christian side, of some little skill as well as strength on the other - had
gone on for some time when such help seemed to become needful. Tancred had
hurried to the aid of Bohemond, who was grievously pressed by Kilidje Arslan;
and Kerboga was bearing heavily on Godfrey and Hugh of Vermandois, when,
clothed in white armor and riding on white horses, some human forms were seen
on the neighboring heights. "The saints are coming to your aid," shouted the
Bishop of Puy, and the people saw in these radiant strangers the martyrs St.
George, St. Maurice, and St. Theodore.
Without awaiting their nearer approach the crusaders turned on the enemy
with a force and fury which were now irresistible. Their cavalry could do
little. Two hundred horses only remained of the sixty thousand which had
filled the plain a few months before. But the hedge of spears advanced like a
wall of iron, and the Turks gave way, broke, and fled. It was rout, not
retreat; and with the crusaders victory was followed by the massacre of men,
women, and children. The garrison in the citadel at once surrendered. Some
declared themselves Christians and were baptized; those who refused to abandon
Islam were taken to the nearest Mohametan territory. The city was the prize
of Bohemond; and in his keeping it remained, although Raymond of Toulouse had
made an effort to seize it by hoisting his banner on the walls. The work of
pillage being ended, the churches were cleansed and repaired, and their altars
blazed with golden spoils taken from the infidel. The Greek Patriarch was
again seated on his throne; but he held his office at the good pleasure of the
Latins, and two years later he was made to give place to Bernard, a chaplain
of the Bishop of Puy.
Ten months had passed away after the conquest of Antioch when the main
body of the crusading army set out on its march to Jerusalem. They had wished
to depart at once, but their chiefs dreaded to encounter waterless wastes at
the end of a Syrian summer, and for the present they were content to send Hugh
of Vermandois and Baldwin of Hainault as envoys to the Greek Emperor, to
reproach him with his remissness or his want of faith. But the miseries
endured by Christians and Turks were the pleasantest tidings in the ears of
Alexius, for in the weakening of both lay his own strength; and he saw with
satisfaction the departure of Hugh, not for Antioch, but for Europe, whither
Stephen of Chartres had preceded him.
Winter came, but the chiefs still lingered at Antioch. Some were
occupied in expeditions against neighboring cities; but a more pressing care
was the plague which punished the foulness and disorder of the pilgrims. A
band of fifteen hundred Germans, recently landed in strong health and full
equipments, were all, it is said, cut off; and among the victims the most
lamented perhaps was the papal legate Adhemar. A feeling of discouragement
was again spreading through the army generally. The chiefs vainly entreated
the Pope to visit the city where the disciples of St. Peter first received the
Christian name; the people were disheartened by the animosities and the
selfish or crooked policy of their chiefs. Raymond still hankered after the
principality of Antioch, and insisted that Bohemond and his people should
share in the last great enterprise of the crusade. More disgraceful than
these feuds were the scenes witnessed during the siege and after the conquest
of Marra. Heedlessness and waste soon brought the assailants to devour the
flesh of dogs and of human beings. The bodies of Turks were torn from their
sepulchres, ripped up for the gold which they were supposed to have swallowed,
and the fragments cooked and eaten. Of the besieged many slew themselves to
avoid falling into the hands of the Christians; to some Bohemond, tempted by a
large bribe, gave an assurance of safety. When the massacre had begun he
ordered these to be brought forward. The weak and old he slaughtered; the
rest he sent to the slave markets of Antioch.
A weak attempt made by Alexius to detain the crusaders only spurred them
to more vigorous efforts. They had already left Antioch, and Laodicea was in
their hands, when he desired them to await his coming in June. The chiefs,
remembering the departure of Tatikios with his Byzantine troops for Cyprus,
retorted that he had broken his compact, and had therefore no further claims
on their obedience. Hastening on their way, they crossed the plain of Berytos
(Beyrout), overlooked by the eternal snows of Lebanon, along the narrow strip
of land whence the great Phoenician cities had sent their seamen and their
colonists, with all the wealth of the East, to the shores of the Adriatic and
the gates of the Mediterranean. Having reached Jaffa, they turned inland to
Ramlah, a town sixteen miles only from Jerusalem.
Two days later the crusaders came in sight of the Holy City, the object
of their long pilgrimage, the cause of wretchedness and death to millions. As
their eyes rested on the scene hallowed to them through all the associations
of their faith, the crusaders passed in an instant from fierce enthusiasm to a
humiliation which showed itself in sighs and tears. All fell on their knees,
to kiss the sacred earth and to pour forth thanksgivings that they had been
suffered to look upon the desire of their eyes. Putting aside their armor and
their weapons, they advanced in pilgrim's garb and with bare feet toward the
spot which the Saviour had trodden in the hours of his agony and his passion.