When Kerbogha, from his position of strategic dominance, refused to accept anything short of unconditional surrender, that door closed. The crusaders were left with a clear choice: fight or face death or captivity. Albert of Aachen, who based his account on the personal recollections of men who lived through the second siege of Antioch, recorded:
The Christian people were besieged and began to suffer from shortage of supplies and lack of bread. They did not have the strength to suffer these things any longer, so great and small consulted together, saying it was better to die in battle than to perish from so cruel a famine, growing weaker from day to day until overcome by death.30
As the last days of June approached, the crusaders did, without doubt, make a profoundly courageous decision - to face Kerbogha's horde in open battle. Looking back with hindsight, the partisan crusade writers may well have judged it inappropriate to record that before this they contemplated surrender.
The controversial suggestion that the Franks were not primarily or directly inspired to fight Kerbogha by the discovery of the Holy Lance is potentially unsettling, because it threatens to undermine a cornerstone in our accepted image of the First Crusaders. The remarkable impact of the Holy Lance has long been held up as a fundamental proof of their overwhelming religious devotion. Historians have argued that it was only the inspirational power of the crusaders' faith - their unshakeable conviction that they were acting with divine sanction - that stirred them from anxious slumber. If the Franks did indeed spend much of the period between 14 and 28 June in an agony of fearful indecision, and perhaps even sought to negotiate the surrender of Antioch, then we are left looking at a subtly different species of crusader: one for whom spiritual devotion was still an extremely powerful motivating force, but perhaps not an all-conquering inspiration. Blind, ecstatic faith did not send the crusaders running into battle. Instead, with all other options exhausted, trapped in an intolerable predicament, their strength failing, they decided to place their trust in their God and risk everything in one last-ditch effort.
THE GREAT BATTLE OF ANTIOCH
By 25 June 1098 the crusade leaders had made their choice. They elected to pursue a bold, aggressive and extremely dangerous strategy - to break out of the city and confront Kerbogha's army head on. Bohemond was elected temporary commander-in-chief of the entire army. Raymond of Aguilers put this down to 'the Turkish threat, the illness of Count Raymond and Adhemar and the flight of Stephen of Blois', but in reality Bohemond may have been chosen primarily because he had a proven track record as a general. The Franks also decided to undertake a regime of spiritual purification before going to battle: Three days [were] spent fasting and in processions from one church to another, our men confessed their sins and received absolution, and by faith they received the body and blood of Christ in communion, and they gave alms and arranged for masses to be celebrated.'31
On 28 June 1098 they were ready to fight, and at first light they began marching out of the city while clergy lining the walls offered prayers to God. The crusaders staked the fate of the entire expedition upon this desperate strategy, yet historians have only recently begun to provide a convincing explanation for the astounding outcome of the battle that followed.32 In choosing to confront Kerbogha the Franks faced a number of immense obstacles. They were proposing to engage a numerically superior and largely cavalry-based enemy, albeit one that was divided into those actually encircling Antioch and Kerbogha's main army encamped about a kilometre to the north and east of the Orontes river. In contrast, the rather tattered crusading force - perhaps numbering 20,000 including non-combatants - was now mainly infantry based. Virtually every single horse brought from Europe had died during the arduous journey to northern Syria and the long siege of Antioch. By June 1098, the crusaders could muster no more than 200 steeds trained for war, and many were reduced to riding into battle on pack animals. The German Count Hartmann of Dillingen, who had helped to design a strange siege engine at Nicaea, was said 'to have ridden a donkey to the battle and held merely a Turk's round shield and sword on the day'.33
Even princes had trouble finding a decent mount on 28 June -Godfrey of Bouillon was given one by Raymond of Toulouse, while Robert of Flanders actually had to beg to collect enough money to purchase his. Those horses that were available were in a feeble state. In the preceding weeks many crusaders had sought to sustain themselves by drinking blood drawn from their steeds. Now on the eve of the battle, in a determined attempt to ensure that they did not simply collapse in the midst of the fighting, Bishop Adhemar ordered every crusader in possession of a mount to feed it with every scrap of grain they could muster. For the majority, though, no steed, however poor, could be found, and so hundreds of knights were forced to fight on foot. One Latin contemporary bemoaned this fact, remarking that 'our knights had been forced to become footmen, weak and helpless', but this development was not a complete disaster. The crusaders had been reduced to a battle-hardened core - their army was dominated by an increasingly elite infantry force of well-armed, ferocious knights. The power of the crusading army had not been broken, but reshaped into a different type of weapon - one that fought on foot rather than from horseback. The Franks could no longer rely upon the force of a heavy cavalry charge to carry the day.34 What was needed now was a general capable of adjusting his battle-tactics to the tools at hand, and that commander was Bohemond.
He faced a seemingly insurmountable task. First, the crusaders would have to break through the Muslim cordon surrounding Antioch and avoid being cut to pieces during what would inevitably be a painfully slow, piecemeal deployment outside the city. There was every possibility that the first wave of crusaders might be stopped in its tracks and decimated before the full weight of the Frankish army could even get out of the city. Once arrayed on the plains of Antioch, they would then, somehow, have to overcome the enemy. On the face of it, the odds were not in their favour. Kerbogha did, however, have a few potential problems of his own. In order to encircle Antioch he had been forced to disperse his troops quite widely, making it difficult to concentrate his resources quickly in one place. More importantly, while the crusaders enjoyed the bond of a desperate common cause and the experience of fighting side by side for months, Kerbogha's massive army was cobbled together from disparate elements. Drawn from cities across northern Syria and held together only by a veneer of unity, this force needed an extremely firm hand to guide it. One Muslim chronicler believed Kerbogha lacked this quality: 'Thinking that the present crisis would force the Muslims to remain loyal to him, [Kerbogha] alienated them by his pride and ill treatment of them. They plotted in secret anger to betray him and desert him in the heat of batde.' Should the Muslim host face a crisis, these deeply submerged fractures might bubble to the surface with disastrous consequences.35
Bohemond's battle plan was outstanding, its execution exceptional. The Bridge Gate was chosen as the sally-point, placing the Latins on the western bank of the Orontes. This limited the number of enemy troops initially encountered because the physical barrier of the river hampered any approach by the besieging Muslim forces stationed at the other gates. Hugh of Vermandois was selected to lead a squadron of archers in the first wave of attack out of the gate. He rushed headlong across the bridge, unleashing an intense volley of arrows that beat back the first line of Muslim troops. The way out of the city now lay open. Bohemond's plan was to deploy his remaining forces on to the plain of Antioch in the immediate wake of Hugh's shock attack, throwing his infantry to the front, and then close with the mounted enemy, to cut down their ability to manoeuvre or use missile weapons.
In order to move through the Bridge Gate with relative speed and to present their full weight of arms to the enemy as rapidly as possible, Bohemond laid down a masterful plan of action. To provide cohesion even in the midst of battle the army was divided into four clear-cut contingents: the northern French under Robert of Normandy and Robert of Flanders; Godfrey of Bouillon commanding the Lotharing-ians and Germans; and Adhemar of Le P
uy leading out the southern French. As in earlier battles, Bohemond himself held the final, largest group - here mostly made up of southern Italian Normans - in reserve, so that he could meet any sudden threat or plug gaps that might appear in the crusader lines. Only Raymond of Toulouse, once again complaining of illness, was left in the city with 200 men to hold back any assault from the citadel. Before they left the city 'heralds scurried through Antioch urging each man to fight with his leader' so that each group might hold its formation. Once the Bridge Gate was cleared, the first contingent - the northern French - marched in column behind Hugh's force and then deployed to his left. Each division followed suit, fanning out leftwards in a rough semi-circle. We should not imagine this manoeuvre taking place with the precision of a Roman legion, rather that it was rough and ready, but extremely effective. The disposition of these troops was the finest expression of Bohemond's military genius, but even with all his careful planning, the crusaders might have been crushed as they exited the city had Kerbogha reacted differently.36
As soon as the Bridge Gate was opened, Kerbogha, encamped some kilometres to the north, was alerted by the raising of a black flag above the Muslim-held citadel. At this moment he was presented with a critical tactical decision: to deploy his main force immediately, attacking the crusaders while they debouched from the city; or to wait and then meet them in a full-scale pitched battle on his own ground. In these crucial first minutes Kerbogha hesitated, undecided. Looking back on the battle, the crusaders simply could not understand why Kerbogha failed to react. One later reflected that 'he could have blocked them', but was distracted because he was in the midst of 'playing at chess within his tent'. The princes themselves later recalled in a letter to the pope that, as they marched out of Antioch, 'we were so few that [the Muslims] were assured that we were not fighting against them, but were fleeing'.37
Writing many years later, the Muslim chronicler Ibn al-Athir invented the following discussion between Kerbogha and his advisers to explain events: 'The Muslims said to Kerbogha: "You should go up to the city and kill them one by one as they come out; it is easy to pick them off now that they have split up." He replied: "No, wait until they have all come out and then we will kill them.'"38 Ibn al-Athir roundly condemned this strategy, but, although it is easy with the benefit of hindsight to criticise such a sluggish response, Kerbogha was plagued by reasonable doubts about the wisdom of rushing into battle. Catching the crusaders in mid-deployment might well have led only to short-lived skirmishing, followed by a Latin retreat within the city and a return to stalemate. It was in Kerbogha's interests to bring the siege to a rapid conclusion. What he wanted was a full-scale confrontation.
In the end, however, Kerbogha made the worst of all decisions. With the chance for a rapid strike gone, he should have held his ground for battle; instead he chose to make a rather panicked, tardy advance. His timing was disastrous, for just as his men approached Antioch the tide of the battle began to turn.
The crusaders, having forced their way on to the Antiochene plains, almost immediately faced a counterattack from the Muslims who had been guarding the Bridge Gate, and this was quickly followed up by troops rushing from their positions before the Gates of St Paul and the Duke. Then, perhaps most dangerously of all, the crusaders were attacked from the rear by a force coming from the blockade of the Gate of St George. At this decisive moment, facing encirclement in open battle, the crusaders held their ground. Reinhard of Toul was dispatched with a squadron of northern French and Lotharingians to act as rearguard. He met the attack coming from the south-east with such ferocity that his opponents fled the field, setting light to the battleground to cover their escape. Reinhard's infantry suffered massive casualties, but the rear had held. At the same time, the Franks at the front line held formation as Muslim attacks swirled around them:
As was their custom, they began to scatter on all sides, occupying hills and paths, and, wherever they could, they wished to surround us. For they thought they could kill all of us in this manner. But our men having been trained in many battles against their trickery and cleverness, God s grace and mercy so came to our aid that we, who were very few in comparison to them, drove them all close together. Then with God's right hand fighting with us, we forced them so driven together to flee, and to leave their camps with everything in them.39
Unable to break the crusaders' resolve, the first wave of attackers -those who had been blockading Antioch - began to panic. With the Franks advancing to press home their advantage, these Muslims turned tail and fled. At that same moment, Kerbogha arrived at the head of his secondary force and ran straight into his own routed comrades. Now in headlong retreat, they shattered the formation of his troops, and soon the entire Muslim army was thrown into disarray. At this moment a commanding, charismatic general might have been able to save the day, but Kerbogha was not up to the challenge. He failed to rally his army, and one by one the contingents that had followed him to Antioch cut their losses and fled the field. In the end, the shock of a sharp, powerful attack and the unwavering solidity of the crusader formation exposed deep-seated fractures within the Muslim army. After only a brief engagement Kerbogha was forced into retreat and ignominious defeat. Disgraced, he returned home to Mosul. One Muslim chronicler wrote in shock: The Franks, though they were in the extremity of weakness, advanced in battle order against the armies of Islam, which were at the height of their strength and numbers, and they broke the ranks of the Muslims and scattered their multitudes.40
Although the Latins had killed only a fraction of his army, the threat posed by Kerbogha had been neutralised. His main camp was overrun and thoroughly ravaged by jubilant crusaders: The enemy left his pavilions, with gold and silver and many furnishings, as well as sheep, oxen, horses, mules, camels and asses, corn, wines, flour and many other things of which we were badly in need. One Latin chronicler reported that, when their women were found in the tents, the Franks did nothing evil to them except pierce their bellies with their lances'. This comment seems extraordinarily callous, but its author was actually trying to tell us that these women were not raped. In the opinion of this clerical writer, slaughter carried out in the name of God was infinitely preferable to the heinous sin of fornication with dehumanised 'infidels'.41
Within hours the Muslim garrison of Antioch's citadel surrendered and the whole city was at last truly and safely in Latin hands. The significance of the Great Battle of Antioch cannot be overstressed. It was, without doubt, the single most important military engagement of the entire expedition. The crusaders had, throughout June 1098, faced the very real possibility of annihilation. The Muslim army was both larger and better equipped than that of the Latins, containing a sizeable cavalry element. The crusaders took an enormous, but arguably necessary, risk in meeting this force. Zealous conviction, gifted generalship and a healthy dose of luck brought them victory against all the odds. To contemporary writers, this achievement was so extraordinary that it could only be explained as a miracle. They argued that the Franks had been saved from certain defeat by only one thing: direct, palpable intervention by the hand of God. Numerous 'miracles' were recorded. Raymond of Aguilers recorded that 'in the beginning of the march out to battle the Lord sent down upon all His army a divine shower, little but full of blessing. All those touched by this were filled with all grace and fortitude and, despising the enemy, rode forth as if nourished on the delicacies of kings. This miracle affected our horses no less.' An eyewitness, who actually fought in the battle, added:
there came out of the mountains, also, countless armies with white horses, whose standards were all white. And so, when our leaders saw this army, they were entirely ignorant as to what it was, and who they were, until they recognised the aid of Christ, whose leaders were Ss George, Mercurius and Demetrius. This is to be believed, for many of our men saw it.42
The crusaders certainly did fight the battle in an atmosphere of fervent spiritual conviction. As they marched out to fight, priests lined the walls of Antioch
reciting blessings. Others, carrying crosses, marched out in the very midst of the troops, 'chanting and praying for God's help and the protection of the saints'. Raymond of Aguilers himself carried the Holy Lance in among the southern French
contingent led by Bishop Adhemar, and it was said that Kerbogha was literally paralysed by the sight of the relic. Religious devotion did have a huge effect on the outcome of the battle. With their resolve reinforced by Christian ritual, empowered by a powerful sense of divine sanction, the .crusaders' nerve held even as they were surrounded by the enemy. A less devout or desperate force might have broken, but, bound together by their steadfast resolve, these men kept formation and so won the day.43
After immense sacrifice and suffering, the crusaders were at last in possession of Antioch. For nine months the city had stood like an impenetrable wall before them, barring their way forward. Now, finally, the road south was open and the Holy City of Jerusalem beckoned.
8
DESCENT INTO DISCORD
In the first days of July 1098 the crusaders could look upon their achievements with some satisfaction. They had just won a seemingly miraculous victory in the Battle of Antioch. That city was now conquered and pacified. Jerusalem, their ultimate goal, lay only three weeks' hard march to the south. No overwhelming obstacles stood in their way. After the brutal sack of Antioch and spectacular defeat of Kerbogha, those Muslim-held cities and towns that did stand on the road to Jerusalem were now terrified of the Franks and unlikely to offer serious resistance.
The First Crusade Page 26