The World of the Crusades

by Christopher Tyerman

  It is incontestable that the culture of the crusade encouraged the range of disparagement of the Jews. During the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries, increased official alarm, academic contempt and political violence aimed at religious unorthodoxy and dissent, coupled with, in promoting the crusade, greater emphasis on the figure of Christ Crucified, placed those branded as enemies and killers of Christ in an ever more precarious position. Material exploitation was matched by deliberate social alienation in the name of faith, witnessed equally by formal discrimination, such as the legislation passed by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, and the emergence of blood libels from the mid-twelfth century (the first, invented in the 1150s by monks at Norwich cathedral priory, concerned an unsolved murder in 1144 of William an apprentice tanner). While the crusades did not create anti-Semitism, crusading’s ideology and practice highlighted some if its core sources, from financial resentment in a cash-strapped but increasingly monetised society to the promotion of an exclusive religion as marker of social identity. For those encouraged to think that their intent to fight the infidel represented an ultimate laudable ambition, Jews made awkward neighbours.32

  The muster of the armies at Nicaea encouraged field cooperation and unity in a host numbering many tens of thousands speaking many different languages. During the siege (May–June 1097) the leaders had to coordinate their actions consensually and pool resources: a common assistance fund was created, paying, among other things, for siege engines and engineers. The need for unity became even clearer after the fall of Nicaea (19 June). On 1 July, only a few days after setting out towards Syria, the expedition narrowly escaped disaster when its vanguard under Bohemund and the Byzantine general Tatikios became separated from the rest of the army and was attacked by a substantial Turkish force. Only the timely arrival of the main army saved the day and led to a sweeping victory, known subsequently as the battle of Dorylaeum. There followed a painfully slow march (perhaps between 5 and 11 miles a day for up to 800 miles) in harsh summer conditions. A number of Turkish-controlled towns and cities capitulated. Casualties from heat, hunger and disease were high. In September, at Heraclea, facing the barrier of the Taurus Mountains, the army divided. The main force followed a northern route through potentially friendly Armenian territory, approaching Syria from the north-west. Smaller contingents under Tancred of Lecce and Baldwin of Boulogne turned south, competing against each other as they swept up coastal towns in Cilicia before reuniting with the main army to besiege Antioch in October. This pincer strategy had probably been devised on Greek advice to maximise Armenian Christian support in the Taurus region and Cilicia while cutting off Antioch from the resources of its hinterland.

  Antioch 1097–8

  The crusade’s third stage, the siege of Antioch, followed by a six-month hiatus in the expedition’s progress, established the crusaders’ independence from Byzantium, at the same time forging within the army a distinctive identity. Battered by disease, hunger, fear, anxiety, uncertainty, heavy casualties and battle trauma, the crusaders apparently developed a fierce sense of providential community in adversity, encouraged by stories of heavenly assistance, visions and miracles. Genuine demotic impulses were exploited by the high command to keep the beleaguered army intact, fostering the crusaders’ image as the new Israelites, specially chosen, tested and protected by God, in death as in life. This provided a defining template for subsequent crusades. With the departure of the Greek regiment and the subsequent much -publicised and highly controversial failure of Alexius to help the crusaders, Antioch transformed the crusade from a subordinate mercenary army into the fiercely independent, self-conscious army of God.

  24. Antioch in the 1830s showing the fortifications on Mount Silpius behind the city.

  The first siege lasted from 21 October 1097 until the city fell on 3 June 1098. The crusaders then immediately found themselves besieged by a large relief army from Mosul. This second siege lasted until the breakout of the crusader forces on 28 June, which achieved a surprising but decisive victory. Antioch in 1097, a city of Greeks, Armenians, Arabs and Turks, was ruled as a semi-autonomous dependency of Aleppo by its governor Yaghi-Siyan. Throughout the first siege, the crusaders had been unable to surround Antioch completely or prevent the city being supplied and reinforced. Despite defeating relief armies from Damascus (late December 1097) and Aleppo (February 1098), and constructing a number of siege forts around the city, Antioch only fell to them through the treachery of a disaffected local commander who helped spirit a small force under Bohemund over the walls at night (2/3 June). Even then the citadel remained untaken, only surrendering after the victory of 28 June. The concentration of tens of thousands of besiegers created severe problems of supplies, provisions being sought from as far away as Crete, Cyprus and Rhodes as well as the northern Syrian hinterland. As the winter of 1097–8 progressed, famine and disease became endemic. Desertions mounted, ironically assisted by the arrival in Syrian waters of fleets from Italy, Byzantium and possibly northern Europe. Morale sagged. Privations deepened. With the threat of Turkish relief forces undimmed, to stiffen resolve the leadership began to circulate stories of heavenly soldiers and saints fighting for the crusaders, and of visions and dreams that confirmed the providential nature of their cause and the certainty of paradise for fallen comrades.

  The departure of Tatikios in February 1098, possibly to secure more supplies and troops, allowed some, notably Bohemund, to suggest treachery and dereliction from the agreements sworn between the crusaders and Alexius in Constantinople. These oaths, which can only be reconstructed from subsequent special pleading from all parties, seemingly implied that, in return for his active assistance, Alexius would receive the allegiance of crusader conquests, at least as far as Syria. What was envisaged for acquisitions further south is wholly unclear, except that some form of imperial overlordship would probably have been expected by the Byzantines. By the time they reached Antioch, the crusaders may well not have worked out how to organise a political settlement for Jerusalem. Their early contact with the exiled Greek Patriarch Simeon of Jerusalem may have alerted them to the complexity of implementing their slogan of liberation for Palestinian Christians.34 The destiny of Antioch, by contrast, presented a more clear-cut objective. It is possible that Alexius had offered Bohemund a role as client ruler of a buffer province in Cilicia or northern Syria. However, buoyed up by his success in leading the defeat of the Aleppan army in February 1098, Bohemund developed an independent strategy to establish his own principality, a move eased by Tatikios’s departure. As the crusaders stayed outside Antioch, foraging across the region, political options opened up. Fatimid negotiators appeared in the crusaders’ camp in February and March 1098. A splinter group under Baldwin of Boulogne, who had again left the main army in October 1097, had offered service to Armenian lords in the upper Euphrates region, a move culminating in Baldwin’s assuming control of the city of Edessa in March 1098. As commander of an alien elite military corps in control of a Near Eastern city, Baldwin was adopting a role similar to a Turkish emir or atabeg. In doing so, he showed his former comrades what was possible.

  The outcome at Antioch assumed regional significance. With the crusaders still receiving supplies from Byzantine territory, naval reinforcements from the west presented a threat to the ports of northern Syria. In the wake of the failures of the rulers of Damascus and Aleppo, the atabeg of Mosul, Kerboga, assembled a large coalition, drawing allies from southern Syria, northern Iraq and Anatolia. His spring offensive in 1098 sought to impose his rule from the Jazira region of Syria to the Mediterranean. Antioch formed only one part of this strategy, as was apparent from Kerboga’s unsuccessful three-week attempt to capture Baldwin of Boulogne’s Edessa in May. This delay saved the crusade itself as Kerboga’s army reached Antioch only hours after the westerners had entered the city and gained the protection of its walls. Bohemund’s own parallel ambitions had also become clear. By the end of May, he had persuaded his fellow leaders to agree to his keeping An
tioch if he could capture it and if no help came from Alexius. Four days later, on 2 June, a possible rival, Stephen of Blois, who only two months earlier had been boasting of his appointment as the expedition’s ‘lord, guardian and governor’, conveniently fled the siege.35 Once he had gone, Bohemund revealed to his remaining colleagues his plan to enter the city with the assistance of an Armenian commander of one section of the walls.

  Timing was crucial for Bohemund. Not only was Kerboga’s army fast approaching from the east, but he may have got wind that Alexius, accompanied by thousands of new crusaders, was slowly advancing across Anatolia to consolidate the rapid gains the Byzantine-crusader army had secured the previous year. While it is unlikely that Alexius, a cautious commander and more concerned with western Asia Minor than northern Syria, had firmly decided to advance as far as Antioch, his caution was compounded by learning of the crusaders’ plight directly from Stephen of Blois in late June at Philomelium (Asksehir). The emperor withdrew westwards as a precaution against being cut off by renewed Turkish incursions. While it would stretch the evidence to suggest that Bohemund had planned Stephen’s departure and loaded him with forecasts of doom in order to persuade Alexius to withdraw, Stephen’s absence and the emperor’s failure to proceed to Syria suited Bohemund’s purpose. It left him free to demand Antioch and provided a very effective weapon of propaganda to excuse the crusaders’ breaking their obligations to the emperor on the grounds of Alexius’s own supposed breach of contract.

  The sensitivity of the issue was reflected in the attention it received from later commentators, both Latin and Greek, who identified it as a pivotal moment in subsequent Byzantine relations with the western principalities in the Near East and later crusade expeditions. However, despite the mutual polemics, the breach was not total. Negotiations over Greek military help only finally ended in April 1099. Food still came from Byzantine territories; diplomatic contacts with Armenians and Fatimids, brokered by the Byzantines, were maintained; some crusade commanders, such as Raymond of Toulouse, still acknowledged Byzantine primacy and accepted Greek assistance. However, the removal of Byzantine direction in 1098 transformed the First Crusade into an independent player in Near Eastern politics whose uncomfortable ideological ambitions challenged regional expectations. The crusaders’ increased autonomy was further supported by western fleets that allowed them independent access to supplies from across the eastern Mediterranean, naval protection for the land operations, and direct material aid, their presence arguably tipping the military balance towards the crusaders.

  None of this would have mattered without victory at Antioch. After the occupation of the city on 2–3 June 1098, now themselves besieged by Kerboga, with Antioch’s citadel still in Turkish hands, and the impossibility of defending the whole circuit of the walls, the crusaders plumbed new depths of desperation. Lack of food, high prices and illness sapped the army’s physical strength. The vital supply of horses fell dangerously low. Morale was corroded by fear and helplessness at the only too visible prospect of imminent brutal death. Collective nerve snapped in a night of mass panic and flight (10–11 June). The expedition was saved by deft deployment of the carefully fostered sense of providential and eschatological purpose developed over the previous six months. In the days after the night of panic, supportive visions of Christ and the Apostles were reported to have been received by members of the Provençal army. One vision usefully indicated that the Holy Lance that had pierced Christ’s side on the cross was buried in Antioch’s cathedral. Despite general scepticism, the claim was tested and on 14 June an object appropriate for the Lance (or rather its spear-head) was unearthed. The leadership reinforced the consequent positive change in mood with mass rituals of solidarity and penance and by imposing puritanical rules of behaviour. However, visionary politics failed to alter grim military reality. An embassy to negotiate with Kerboga in late June, led by the neutral figure of Peter the Hermit, may have sought a negotiated surrender to permit the crusaders to withdraw.36 If so, it failed, leaving the crusaders little option but to chance survival on battle.

  The crusader victory against the odds at the battle of Antioch (28 June 1098) saved the expedition and created a new political context. Effectively recreating under new management the former Byzantine province of Antioch lost to the Turks in 1084–5, perhaps a Byzantine strategic aim all along, the crusaders were now firmly established in northern Syria, with control over the lower Orontes valley and access to Mediterranean ports, a position consolidated over the following six months as more towns were captured. The beginnings of western administrative rule emerged in Antioch and elsewhere; a Latin bishopric was created at al-Bara. Urgency dissipated, as the army enjoyed novel peaceful prosperity while their commanders jockeyed for power in Antioch and exploited regional resources. The death of Adhemar of Le Puy (1 August 1098) removed a unifying and purposeful influence. With Bohemund successfully defending his hold over Antioch, Raymond of Toulouse, no less eager to secure a Near Eastern principality for himself, led raids that secured a swathe of territory to the south of the city, including Ma’arrat al-Numan, taken in December 1098 amidst stories of desperate crusaders’ cannibalism. In early January 1099, Raymond attempted to assert supreme command by offering to take Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert of Normandy, Robert of Flanders and Tancred into his paid service. Only Tancred, the youngest and poorest of them, seems to have accepted, separating his fortunes from those of his uncle Bohemund, who was intent on staying in Antioch.37 Revival of the crusade’s momentum only came from the mass of crusaders gathered at Ma’arrat al-Numan whose purpose remained fixed on Jerusalem and not on their commanders’ lucrative land grabs in northern Syria. Raymond’s own Provençal followers dismantled the walls of Ma’arrat, leaving the town indefensible and forcing Raymond to accede to their demands to set out to Jerusalem. The rank and file’s suspicions of the leadership, sometimes collectively discussed in formal consultative assemblies, had simmered ever since victory at Antioch; now they determined the course of the campaign.38

  Jerusalem 1099

  25. Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, a watercolour by Edward Lear, 1859.

  Raymond’s departure from Ma’arrat al-Numan on 13 January 1099 opened the last act of the crusade. Rapid progress south, between mid-February and mid-May, was halted as Raymond, still determined to gain territory of his own, besieged Arqah, fifteen miles inland from the port of Tripoli on the route from the interior of southern Syria to the coast. Once joined by all the other leaders, except Bohemund, Raymond’s strategy collapsed. Godfrey of Bouillon emerged as the spokesman for the mass of disgruntled crusaders, exploiting a new set of visions calling for an immediate assault on Jerusalem. The credibility of the Holy Lance, and by association Raymond who was using it as a talisman, was questioned after its advocate and finder, the Provençal visionary Peter Bartholomew, underwent an ordeal by fire (8 April) from which he died (20 April). Godfrey of Bouillon broke up the siege of Arqah on 13 May. Simultaneously, a Fatimid offer of free access to Jerusalem by unarmed Christians was refused. From Arqah progress was swift, the collapse of negotiations with the Fatimids making speed essential. Following the coast road from Tripoli, shadowed by western fleets, the crusaders encountered minor opposition from Sidon; Tripoli, Beirut and Acre agreed treaties; Tyre, Haifa and Caesarea put up no resistance; Jaffa was abandoned by the Fatimids, who, under the active vizier al-Afdal, had recently reasserted control in Palestine, in 1098 regaining control of Jerusalem from the Ortoqid Turks. At Ramla in early June the crusaders briefly toyed with a direct attack on Egypt. This was rejected. Soon crusade detachments fanned out across the Judean hills. On 6 June, Tancred entered the largely Christian town of Bethlehem where locals overcame initial suspicion in welcoming the crusaders.

  4. The siege of Jerusalem, June–July 1099.

  The siege of Jerusalem began on 7 June and lasted until a final assault breached the walls on 15 July, leading to a sustained massacre in the hysteria of success, followed three days’ late
r by a more cold-blooded mass killing, a move prompted by shortage of food and fear of the approaching Fatimid army.39 The Fatimid garrison had clearly counted on relief from Egypt, adopting oddly passive tactics before, seeing the city was lost, quietly surrendering and being allowed to depart. Both sides appeared mindful of events at Antioch, the garrison hoping to sit it out behind Jerusalem’s double walls until rescue appeared, the invaders determined not to be caught in a vice between the city and a relief army.