by John France
d Gaston of Béarn, Gerard of Roussillon, William of Montpellier.
On those marked * see Murray, ‘The army of Godfrey de Bouillon’.
65 AA, 424; GF, p. 69; RA, p. 81; RC, 667.
66 AA, 425–6; GF, p. 70.
67 RA, p. 83; Krey, First Crusade, p. 189.
68 AA, 426; Ibn al-Athir, 196.
69 Ib al-Athir, 194–6; Aleppo Chronicle, 582–3.
70 See above, p. 279.
71 Damascus Chronicle of the Crusades, p. 46; Aleppo Chronicle, 583.
72 FC, p. 106.
73 See above, pp. 71–2, 74.
CHAPTER 10
Divisions
* * *
Immediately after the flight of Kerbogah’s army the citadel of Antioch surrendered. According to the Anonymous its commander offered submission to Raymond of Toulouse, but some South Italians suggested that he accept the banner of Bohemond instead, and so the citadel went to the South Italian leader.1 It was a sour note of division after the great triumph, and it set the tone for a prolonged period of conflict within the crusader army. For Bohemond’s ambition to control Antioch triggered a crisis which was exacerbated by other factors and which had a severe impact upon practical military necessity. Bohemond had made contact with Firuz, the betrayer of Antioch, and in the end the other leaders made him a conditional promise of the city: ‘on condition that if the emperor come to our aid and fulfil all his obligations which he promised, we will return the city to him as it is right to do’.2
Immediately after the defeat of Kerbogah the princes met and sent Hugh of Vermandois to Constantinople, presumably to explain the situation to Alexius and ask for his help. It is interesting that even in the emergency, as Kerbogah’s force approached, the majority of the leaders of the crusade stood by their oath to Alexius, but conditions now conspired to undermine that fidelity. Bohemond never regarded Antioch as anything other than his personal possession. Raymond of Aguilers, who says nothing of Bohemond’s role in the betrayal of the city, reports that he seized the citadel, confirming the story of the quarrel told by the Anonymous, and persuaded all the leaders except Raymond of Toulouse to surrender to him the gates and towers they held along the city wall, with resultant internal strife.3 On 14 July 1098 Bohemond made an agreement with the Genoese and granted a charter conceding extraterritorial privileges in return for promises of support. There was no mention of the rights of the emperor in these documents. In the pact the Genoese promised military support against any who attacked the city: ‘But they will not fight against the count of St Gilles; if he wishes to withdraw we will give him council, if not we will remain neutral’.4
It is evident that Bohemond and the count of Toulouse had become rivals in the matter of Antioch even before the final echoes of the great victory had died away and it was probably partly because of this that on 3 July the leaders decided to delay their journey. As the Anonymous says, it was sensible to delay for the army was tired and the summer was not a good season to continue, though Raymond of Aguilers believed that the enemy, terrified by the defeat of Kerbogah, would have offered little resistance. He was probably appalled by the extraordinary decision to put off the journey until 1 November 1098, a delay of four months. Presumably this was to allow plenty of time for an imperial army to arrive – it had, after all, taken the crusaders themselves nearly four months to march to Antioch from Nicaea. For most of the princes a solution to the quarrel was the priority and the coming of the emperor, or at least substantial imperial forces, would provide that. Its failure to materialise swayed them somewhat to Bohemond’s view, however, and this may well have been hastened by matters of personality. Raymond of Toulouse, for reasons at which we can only guess, was evidently not popular as a man. He had suffered various illnesses during the long siege of Antioch, yet had shouldered a considerable burden. He never seems to have been a distinguished soldier but was certainly reasonably competent. Yet he was later accused of being in the pay of the emperor and this is perhaps the key to understanding his position. At a time when it was bound to be unpopular he espoused the imperial cause and this isolated a man who was already somewhat isolated in the ranks of the leaders by his origins and by his age.
If the princes were anxious to appear to be fair to the emperor, there were plenty of others in the army who must have regarded this delay as a disaster. For the poor, and even many of the knights, a halt in what had become friendly territory which they could not ravage was a disaster. For the moment many of the leaders used the vast plunder of Antioch to take men into their service, but the delay must have caused tension, not least because it seemed to be contrary to the spirit of their whole undertaking the ultimate object of which was the liberation of Jerusalem. With Provençals and South Italian Normans holding strongholds in the city – Count Raymond held the Governor’s Palace and the Bridge Gate – there was a real possibility of violence.5 The question of who held Antioch was clearly tied to the wider question of the Byzantine alliance, hence the mission of Hugh of Vermandois in early July 1098. But soon after he left the crusaders must have heard of Alexius’s encounter with Stephen of Blois on or about 20 June 1098.6
Stephen had fled from the siege of Antioch when Kerbogah approached, but he encountered Alexius at Philomelium. Anna Comnena would have us believe that the emperor was there, ‘ready to march to the aid of the Kelts in the Antioch region’. This, however, must be read in the context of Anna’s work where her account of the crusade and relations with the Franks is dominated by the question of Antioch. She constantly accuses the Franks of being oath-breakers, because of Bohemond’s seizure of the city. Her view is that Alexius kept his word to the Franks, while they broke theirs to him and this is the central thesis of the Alexiad as far as the crusade is concerned. Anna’s version of Alexius’s purposes needs to be seen in that light, and it should be remembered that the crusader army had taken well over two months to march from Antioch-in-Pisida, which is just west of Philomelium, to Antioch. Of course, Alexius had a smaller army and need not have taken the long detour of the main crusader army up to Kayseri, but even so when he met Stephen of Blois on or about 20 June 1098 he was at least three to four weeks march from Antioch (see fig. 2).7 Alexius’s movements at this time need to be seen in the light of his general position. According to his daughter, Alexius was at first restrained from rushing to the aid of the Franks at Antioch by the need to defend his western provinces against local emirs, and so sent out a military and naval expedition led by his brother-in-law John Doukas to south-western Asia Minor. Doukas persuaded many enemy outposts to surrender by displaying Tzachas’s daughter, who had been captured at Nicaea, negotiated the surrender of Smyrna and defeated the Turks at Ephesus. He appears to have left his fleet to clear islands like Chios and Rhodes. Doukas pursued the retreating Turks up the Maeandros valley, seizing Sardes, Philadelphia, Laodicea, Lampe and reached Polybotus (modern Bolvadin) near Philomelium on the great road across Asia Minor. Alexius took the field and marched down the Royal Road, perhaps via Dorylaeum to Philomelium where he arrived in mid-June of 1098. This junction of Byzantine forces could hardly have been accidental.8 A glance at the map and the roads shows this to be a sensible plan to profit from the crusade. It was almost certainly with such propects in mind that Alexius and the western princes had made their decisions on the route of the crusade. The loss of Nicaea and the defeat of Kilij Arslan did not destroy Seljuk power in Asia Minor but rolled it back from the western end of the sub-continent. The emirs of western cities like Ephesus and Smyrna were virtually cut off from the support of the Seljuk Sultan, with whom their relations had always been difficult, and Alexius’s campaign in the spring of 1098 with its two axes of advance was intended to follow up this success.9 The Byzantine empire had certainly profited from the victories of the crusader army, just as it had profited from Byzantine support. The question which arises is did Alexius intend to march to their aid as Anna suggests and the crusader chroniclers assumed?
Anna stresses that her father w
as anxious to provide aid to the Franks in person when at Philomelium he encountered William of Grandmesnil, Stephen of Blois and Peter of Aups, whose presence astonished him. They informed him of the desperate situation in Antioch and this increased his anxiety to proceed despite opposition from his own entourage. However, news came of an impending attack by Ismail, brother of Malik Shah. Alexius was also informed, although Anna does not say by whom, that the Franks were planning to surrender. This story is found also in Matthew of Edessa which perhaps reflects a later distortion of the embassy of Peter the Hermit to Kerbogah on 27 June. Alexius was persuaded to abandon his intentions and to retreat, taking with him large sections of the local population who would otherwise be exposed to the vengeance of the Turks. In the midst of this Anna gives a long diatribe about the impulsiveness and untrustworthiness of the Franks and the account ends with a note that Ismail eventually attacked Paipert in north-eastern Anatolia which was held by Theodore Gabras of Trebizond.10 Amongst the Latin writers two make no mention of the episode at Philomelium: Fulcher, perhaps because of his earlier connection with Stephen, and Raymond of Aguilers perhaps out of regard for the susceptibilities of his master the count of Toulouse. Raymond, however, does mention the desertion of Stephen and later at ‘Akkār comments on the emperor’s untrustworthiness and earlier desertion of the army. The Anonymous says that Stephen and his followers fled and met the emperor at Philomelium, but the centrepiece of his account is a speech by Guy, Bohemond’s half-brother who was in imperial service, which is scornful of Alexius (and so could never have been given) and tends to justify ignoring the rights of the emperor: ‘if the word which we have heard from these scoundrels [Stephen and friends] is true, we and the other Christians will forsake thee and remember thee no more’. He adds that many of the pilgrims with Alexius died in the subsequent retreat.11 Ralph of Caen confirms the presence of Guy and adds that Alexius had an army of 100,000 together with 10,000 Frankish reinforcements but his account is brief and includes nothing of the great speech by Guy. Both Ralph and the Anonymous had evidently heard some reliable information about Philomelium for they confirm Anna’s statement that Alexius devastated the land and evacuated the local population. It is possible that Bauldry’s story of some Franks leaving Philomelium for Antioch has some truth in it and that they were the source for this information.12 Albert of Aachen says that the deserters were Stephen of Blois, William the Carpenter and another William, who must have been William of Grandmesnil, and that they fled by sea and met Alexius at Philomelium where he had 40,000 troops and 40,000 new pilgrims and was accompanied by Tatikios. The emphasis of his account, however, is on the treachery of Stephen and the deserters who insisted that there was no point in Alexius pressing on.13 The Latin sources show no insight into Alexius’s intentions and we are left only with Anna’s observations, written long afterwards and unmistakably self-exculpatory in content. Is it likely that Alexius, who had refused to join the crusaders at Nicaea, would now have been prepared to join them in adversity at distant Antioch, especially as it is quite clear that there was no formal obligation upon him to go? Had he actually promised at any stage to come in person, or had it been a condition of the offer made in the embassy of Hugh of Vermandois to Constantinople as the Anonymous suggests, it would have been mentioned and been conclusive in the arguments at the crusader conference of 1 November 1098. It is far more likely that Alexius was prepared to assist the crusaders if conditions were right – if they were already successful. The march of the imperial forces to Philomelium makes sense in terms of liberating western Anatolia. Philomelium was a long way from Antioch and the likelihood is that Alexius was prepared to proceed eastwards only in the most favourable circumstances and when these were not forthcoming he turned back. It must be said that he had assisted the crusaders enormously during their siege of Antioch with naval aid and supplies. He was prepared to help but not to take serious risks. From his point of view this was sensible for as Anna says, if he ventured to their aid, ‘He might lose Constantinople as well as Antioch’. It was sensible, but in its impact upon the alliance with the crusader army, disastrous. It is unlikely that Alexius’s decision to retreat on or about 20 June could have become known to the crusaders in Antioch, but news of it seems to have emerged in the summer and caused a violent reaction, as witness the letter of the Princes to the west dated 11 September 1098 with its vitriolic attacks on the Greeks and the emperor.14
News of events at Philomelium complicated an already difficult situation for the crusader army. The leaders must have recognised that the Byzantine alliance was now in doubt. They had some hope of an arrangement with the Egyptians, as we have noted. They must have been deeply worried about containing the quarrel between Bohemond and Raymond of Toulouse. There was an evident shortage of manpower which could only be worsened by the attractions of Edessa and the need to garrison Antioch.15 But there is an additional factor which resentment against the Byzantine alliance must have let loose. We tend to see the crusade as a movement with a single standpoint, as an ideological movement. This is partly the consequence of crusader historiography which, at least since the work of Erdmann, has focussed on an exploration of the origins of the crusading movement, of the crusading idea. That there was such an ideological unity is undoubted, but it is only one side of the story, for ideology co-existed with many other and individual standpoints. This was the importance of the death of Adhémar on 1 August 1098. He was the only churchman with the authority, personality and standing to insist on Urban’s intentions being carried out, the only one of the leaders to personify the ideological goal of the expedition – the liberation of Jerusalem. Without him there was no clear leadership for their ultimate intention and purpose – no-one of rank who stood for the pure and unallayed spirit of the crusade.16 On his deathbed he is said to have commended the care of the army to Arnulf who, along with Stephen of Blois’s chaplain Alexander, had also been given legatine powers by Urban II. Raymond of Aguilers later says that the Bishop of Orange took up his mantle but died at Ma‘arra.17 The fact was that none of these men had both the status and personal qualities of Adhémar, hence the moral vacuum left by his death. Into it stepped the visionary Peter Bartholemew who tried to influence the conduct of events through the prestige which he had achieved as the discoverer of the Holy Lance. However, his main influence lay with the Provençals and, from another point of view, he could be seen as acting in the interests of the count of Toulouse.18 There can be no doubt that a desire to liberate Jerusalem was common to all who went on the crusade: this was sharpened amongst the poor and the lesser knights for whom delay was an economic disaster but their anxiety was influential precisely because it was shared by all. However, as we have already remarked, unalloyed idealism is rare and the tendency of human kind to identify individual interest with the greater good a commonplace. Moreover, the erosion of the Byzantine alliance was both a practical check to the crusade – perhaps further imperial help would not be forthcoming, and an ideological blow, for it was a keystone of Urban’s intentions, as we have noted. In such a situation many of the leaders and their more important followers may well have felt justified in exploiting present benefits – the lands they already held around Antioch which we have noted – while awaiting developments. Bohemond’s seizure of Antioch and Baldwin’s capture of Edessa set precedents for personal gain and represented only particularly successful efforts amongst a group of leaders all of whom could enjoy similar, if smaller holdings. The temptations of North Syria were all the greater when we consider the weakness of the army and the prospect of challenging the power of Egypt, whose rulers were in any case seriously considering some kind of agreement. Now the pressure was off the crusaders could look about them, and they found that they were in a particular political culture – a culture of fragmentation and division, which was particularly congenial to feudal princes who had lived all their lives in not dissimilar political circumstances.19
We think of Baldwin as coming to the aid of the Armenians of Ed
essa against their enemies – this is how the matter is presented by both Fulcher and Albert of Aachen. However, as Albert’s account makes very clear, the reality was that Baldwin was called in by one faction of Edessans in order to use him against Thoros their ruler.20 This is not to say that Baldwin’s force was militarily insignificant in the local context – Fulcher says he took eighty knights, with him, Matthew refers to sixty and Albert to 200. Indeed, ultimately his acceptability was determined by his military prowess for Edessa was beset with enemies.21 Albert tells us that after considerable dispute with Thoros, in which Baldwin demanded recognition as heir to the city and refused to accept merely a position in his service, he took 200 of his own forces, which presumably means Franks, and all the mounted men and foot he could find in the town on an expedition against Balduk of Samosata. They were attacked by Balduk and there were heavy losses amongst the Armenians, though only six westerners were killed. Baldwin then established a garrison in the nearby village of St John in order to harass Samosata. Undoubtedly the military skill of the Franks had impressed the citizens and Baldwin’s continued bravery, best shown in his bold attack on Kerbogah’s forces, was a vital factor in maintaining his régime as was his conciliatory rule and marriage to an Armenian princess.22 But if we think of Armenians simply as a group distinct from Syrians or Turks we have a mistaken perspective. The Armenians were divided into shifting factions focussed around various princes – Gabriel of Melitene was a former lieutenant of Philaretus and claimed to be a Byzantine official, though he was a vassal of Malik Shah.23 This was an area where fragmentation was a norm and had been for more than a century. The decline of Abassid power and the expansion of Byzantium in the late tenth century had moved the Christian/Islamic boundary eastwards, but Antioch was a border outpost after its recapture in 969 and on both sides of the religious divide political structures were fissured. The coming of the Turks did not radically change this situation, for the nomads of Asia Minor did not build a state but were able to defy the Seljuk Sultans. Even Malik Shah at the height of his power was obliged to create a network of competing emirs through whose divisions he could rule. The collapse of the Seljuk domination freed all the particularist forces of the region, and it was into this maelstrom of competing and often tiny entities that the crusaders plunged. Baldwin had confirmed his reputation by the attack on Samosata, but when he gained Edessa its emir, Balduk, handed over the citadel of Samosata and became his condomesticus et familiaris, appealing to him for aid in subduing the rebellious city of Sororghia. The terrorised inhabitants turned to Balduk for protection but Baldwin prepared for a full scale siege, with engines and mangonels and this forced them to surrender, abandoning Balduk who hastened to make his peace. Subsequently Balduk joined Kerbogah’s army but after its defeat is found once more in association with Baldwin.24 It is hardly strange that Baldwin should have adapted so quickly to this culture of fragmentation, for it was very like the feudal world of the principalities of France. The precedents set by Bohemond and Baldwin, and the proposed treaty with the Fatimids produced a change in mood amongst the crusaders which was intensified by the failure of the summer rest to heal the divisions of the army. Godfrey held Tell Bashir, Ravendan and a dominion in the ‘Afrin valley of Baldwin after he fled the plague in Antioch and was closely associated with Robert of Flanders (see fig. 4). He began to expand this and intervened in the affairs of the Armenians, supporting some monks against Bagrat of Cyrrhus and avenging an earlier insult when this Armenian prince had diverted gifts and notably a tent to Bohemond which had been intended for him. A fort was seized and twenty of its defenders were blinded and shortly afterwards another strong place of Kogh Vasil of Kesoun fell. When Ridwan of Aleppo besieged his troublesome vassal the emir of ‘Azāz, a city on the road to Edessa, its emir appealed to Godfrey who with the help of his brother Baldwin, Raymond of Toulouse and Bohemond raised the siege and established cordial relations with this new ally though only after Ridwan had inflicted losses on their stragglers. Tancred seems to have continued to hold Harem and ‘Imm on the Aleppo road.25 When, in January of 1099, the crusader army began its march south treaties and arrangements with Moslem rulers became common. The rulers of Shaizar and Homs were more than anxious to allow the crusaders supplies, even to purchase badly needed horses, and free passage. The ruler of Tripoli’s similar offers were rebuffed as the army attacked his city of ‘Akkār, but ultimately he came to terms, as did Jabala, Acre and other places (see figs. 4 and 16).26 The pervasive influence of the culture of fragmentation affected the crusaders in that summer and autumn of 1098, adding to the delay and ultimately significantly modifying their methods.