At that time, the famished ate the shoots of beanseeds growing in the fields and many kinds of herbs unseasoned with salt, also thistles, which, being not well cooked because of the deficiency of firewood, pricked the tongues of those eating them; also horses, asses, and camels, and dogs and rats. The poorer ones ate even the skins of the beasts and seeds of grain found in manure.160
Eventually, the situation became so intolerable that the Crusaders were forced to mount foraging parties to secure food. Harassment from the Turks hampered their ability to find food, which tied up critical manpower as the Crusaders were forced to forage in well-armed groups.
The Crusaders were in the worst possible position: trapped in between the walls of the city and the impending arrival of a Muslim relief army. To many, the situation looked hopeless. Desertions, even by well-known personages, became rampant. Even Peter the Hermit, who had joined this group of Crusaders when they arrived in Constantinople, deserted the cause at Antioch, although he was later arrested and forced to return to the camp. In order to stem the desertions and improve morale a series of temporal and spiritual regulations were promulgated and enforced. Bishop Adhemar instituted penitential fasting, processions, almsgiving, intercessory prayer, and celebration of special Masses throughout the Crusader camps in order to beseech God to end their suffering.161
Liberation!
The rapidly deteriorating situation, the desire to end the months-long siege, and news of a relief army under Kerbogha, the
commander of Mosul, on its way to Antioch, prompted Bohemond to craft a plan to liberate Antioch.
An Armenian convert to Islam named Firuz al Zarrad, who was a captain of one of the tower guards near the St. Paul gate, began negotiations with Bohemond—whose ability to speak Greek facilitated the exchanges—to allow his troops into the city. Before Bohemond allowed the operation to commence, he approached the other Crusade leaders and asked their permission to keep and rule the city should they liberate it. The only leader who balked at Bohemond’s bargain was Raymond of Toulouse, who reminded the leaders that Antioch was imperial territory and their oaths demanded return of the city to Emperor Alexius. The discussion was heated but eventually Raymond agreed to allow Bohemond to rule the city until the emperor came in person to claim it.
Secure in his position, Bohemond worked with Firuz on the operational details of entering Antioch. The plan entailed a commando-type raid involving sixty knights climbing a ladder to Firuz’s tower just before dawn. But only a few knights successfully made the climb before the ladder broke. Adapting to the situation, the knights in the tower discovered a small, undefended gate, which they opened to allow the main body of troops into the city. Once inside, the Crusaders fanned out while the remaining Turkish troops retreated to the citadel. Yaghisiyan, the ruler of Antioch, managed to escape the city in the chaos and confusion (he was later discovered by a group of local Armenian Christians and beheaded).162
The liberation of Antioch, brought about through the skilled negotiations of Bohemond, was a miracle. Achieving their objective of returning the ancient Christian city of Antioch to the Faith was a momentous and happy occasion for the Crusaders. But their joy was soon forgotten when the forces of Kerbogha arrived.
From Besiegers to Besieged
Kerbogha had assembled a large allied force to relieve Antioch and crush the Crusaders. On the march to Antioch, he diverted his force to Edessa in the hopes of taking that city from Baldwin of Boulogne. Baldwin’s defense of Edessa during the three-week siege bought time for the Crusaders at Antioch. Kerbogha’s expedition to Edessa proved a costly mistake, as he failed to capture the city and only arrived at Antioch on June 4, 1098—one day after the Crusaders had entered the city.
The Crusaders who had been the besiegers now became the besieged. They were caught between the Muslim forces inside the citadel, which still held out and proved a nuisance for the Christians, and the forces of Kerbogha outside the walls of the city. Once again the situation looked hopeless.
The Crusaders were dealt another blow when Count Stephen of Blois deserted. Stephen and a detachment of Crusaders were north of Antioch when the city was liberated, and when they marched back to the city they saw Kerbogha’s forces outside the walls and the citadel still in enemy hands. This situation led Stephen to believe that the Crusaders would soon be crushed, so he decided to leave the Holy Land. On the march home he stopped at Philomelium, where Emperor Alexius was encamped. He described for the emperor the dire situation at Antioch and expressed his belief that all was lost. Alexius agreed and took his army back to Constantinople. Upon returning to France, Stephen was berated and shamed by his wife. The guilt of leaving the Crusade and failing to fulfill his vow (certainly exacerbated by Pope Paschal II’s (r. 1099–1118) excommunication of those who had deserted during the siege of Antioch163) weighed heavily on him. He later returned to the Holy Land in the minor Crusade of 1101, and was killed.
News of Alexius’s return to his capital was received in Antioch with anger. The Crusaders now firmly believed that Alexius had betrayed them and their oaths were null and void.164
The Visions
Trapped between the forces in the citadel and the forces of Kerbogha, the Crusaders began to despair. The Lord, as he had done throughout the expedition, came to the rescue.
Peter Bartholomew, a layman, told the Crusaders that St. Andrew had recently appeared to him and revealed the location of the Holy Lance of St. Longinus, the Roman legionary who pierced the side of Christ on the Cross. Debate raged among them over the veracity of Peter’s vision. Bishop Adhemar was highly skeptical, primarily because he had seen the purported Holy Lance in Constantinople. Others, including Raymond of Toulouse, believed.
A search was conducted in the church of St. Peter to find the Lance. The Crusaders dug for hours throughout the morning but did not find anything, and as the day wore on everyone began to lose hope. Just when the search was about to end, a worn lance head was found. The Crusade leaders, in a letter to Pope Urban II in September 1098, wrote, “We were so comforted and strengthened by finding it, and by many other divine revelations that we, who before had been afflicted and timid, were then most boldly and eagerly urging one another to battle.”165 The finding of the Holy Lance greatly improved Crusader morale and “transformed the army’s mood from terrified inertia to awed encouragement.”166
Victory at Antioch
The time was at hand to deal with Kerbogha’s relief army. To spiritually prepare for battle, the Crusaders proclaimed a three-day fast. They conducted processions to the churches within Antioch and received the sacraments of confession and the Eucharist.
Once more the Crusaders turned to the military genius of Bohemond, who organized the disparate troops into four divisions of two squadrons of infantry and knights in two lines each. Bohemond’s plan was for each division to advance out of the city gate in a column but then in the open field perform the complex maneuver of changing formation from column to line. This tactic was brilliant, for it allowed each division to face the enemy ready to attack and covered the deployment of each subsequent division. Bohemond also took advantage of geography, using the Orontes River on the right and high ground on the left to cover the Crusader flanks. This arrangement avoided the trap of encirclement and mitigated the Turks’ main battle tactic.
Another key to the Crusader victory over the numerically superior Muslim forces outside the walls of Antioch was Kerbogha’s crucial mistake of allowing the Crusaders to march out of the city unopposed. This gave the Crusaders time to organize into their battle formation. Apparently, Kerbogha had been informed of the Crusader advance but could not be troubled to interrupt his chess game.167
The Crusaders then engaged the Turks and slaughtered them. Those Muslim troops not killed by the Crusaders fled the field in a panic. Witnessing the destruction of their only hope, the defenders in the citadel surrendered and finally, after almost eight months of siege and constant combat, the Crusaders were victorious.
/> Part of the reason for the overwhelming success of the Crusaders against Kerbogha was their faith in Christ and the deep conviction that they were fighting and suffering for love of him. The Crusaders were “sustained by faith and determination, by that driving religious enthusiasm which was the motor of the crusade, they fought for the chance to live.”168
Another reason was the miraculous appearance of a heavenly army of angels, saints, and the ghosts of dead Crusaders, as recorded in the Gesta:
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 recognized the aid of Christ, whose leaders were St. George, Mercurius, and Demetrius. This is to be believed, for many of our men saw it.169
The victory at Antioch solidified the First Crusade and drove it to ultimate victory later at Jerusalem. Although thousands of miles from home, the Crusaders had persevered through intense suffering and proved to be one of the finest fighting forces in history. The liberation of Antioch has since been well remembered in Christendom as “a terrible struggle, a military epic indeed, the success of which was more than adequate demonstration that their journey was the work of God.”170
Departure for Jerusalem
After the defeat of Kerbogha’s army, the Crusaders rested and replenished their supplies while they planned for the eventual assault of Jerusalem. During the rest, internal politics among the leaders once more returned to dominate the Crusade. Unfortunately, Bishop Adhemar, the papal legate and the chief mediator among the personality conflicts of the nobles, died of typhoid fever on August 1, 1098. The loss of Adhemar was a huge blow to the Crusade that “further fractured the expedition’s cohesion and direction by removing the one accepted figure of moral authority and religious stature who transcended factional and regional divisions.”171
As any field commander recognizes, it is extremely difficult to keep an army on the march or in the field for an extended period of time without a mission or objective to accomplish. By the fall of 1098 the rank-and-file soldiers were restless and eager to march on Jerusalem.
Cannibalism
While the Crusaders waited to march on Jerusalem, they decided to try and consolidate their hold on Antioch by liberating territory near the city. In late November 1098, the forces of Godfrey and Bohemond besieged the city of Marra, which “was neither a large nor an important place and its defenses were not strong.”172 The siege of Marra provided one of the most infamous events in Crusading history: cannibalism by Crusaders. Fulcher of Chartres records what happened:
Here, when the siege had lasted twenty days, our people suffered excessive hunger. I shudder to tell that many of our people, harassed by the madness of excessive hunger, cut pieces from the buttocks of the Saracens already dead there, which they cooked, but when it was not yet roasted enough by the fire, they devoured it with savage mouths.173
Most accounts indicate that only a small minority of Crusaders, perhaps a group of landless knights known as the Tafurs, engaged in cannibalism, and only due to their state of near starvation. The awful event illustrates the extreme situations Crusaders encountered throughout their journey—situations that the vast majority of Crusaders endured without resorting to desperate acts.
The Siege Begins
In January 1099, the order was given at last, and the Crusaders departed for the Holy City. Raymond of Toulouse began the 450-mile journey barefoot and dressed as a humble pilgrim.
From an original force of 6,000 to 7,000 knights and 60,000 fighting men, the total that left Antioch was only 1,200 knights and 12,000 infantry; the events of the Crusade had certainly taken their toll.174 In May they entered Fatimid territory north of Beirut and marched by the cities of Sidon, Tyre, Acre, and Haifa, each of which gave the Crusaders provisions in exchange for safety.
In early June the lead elements of the Crusade army reached the inland road to Jerusalem, their objective within reach, a full two years after the liberation of Nicaea. A great sense of relief combined with the expectation of much suffering ahead must have pervaded the armies. By the time they arrived at the walls of the Holy City on June 7 they were certainly aware that the liberation of Jerusalem was not an easy proposition. The city had double walls, along with moats. The defenders were not as numerous as the attacking Crusaders, but they were well supplied.
Iftikhar al-Dawla, the Fatimid governor, took extra steps to make conditions for a long-term siege intolerable to the Crusaders. He ordered all animal herds driven from the environs of the city in order to deny the Crusaders easy access to food. He also poisoned the wells near the city, forcing the Crusaders to haul water from the Jordan River and other sources that were miles away.
Almost a week after their arrival on June 13, the Crusaders, despite the lack of proper siege equipment, decided to attack the city. Utilizing only one scaling ladder, they managed to breach the outer wall of defense. They were unable to surmount the inner rampart, however, and after heavy losses were forced to retreat.
While the Crusaders pondered how they could possibly gain entry without proper siege equipment, the Lord once again provided a solution. On June 17 six Genoese and English ships sailed into the port city of Jaffa. The ships carried not only provisions and wood for siege equipment but personnel who could construct proper siege engines and towers.
Arrival of the ships and construction of the siege equipment came at the perfect time, for in early July the Crusaders discovered that a Fatimid relief army was on the march from Egypt and would arrive at Jerusalem within a month. The Crusaders, as they had been at Antioch, were now engaged in a race against time.
Imitating Joshua
The death of Bishop Adhemar almost a year earlier at Antioch was still keenly felt, but the papal legate returned once more to exhort the Crusaders to complete their pilgrimage. The priest, Peter Desiderius, announced that the spirit of Adhemar had appeared to him and rebuked the Crusade leaders for their personal quarrels:
“Speak to the princes and all the people, and say to them: ‘You who have come from distant lands to worship God and the Lord of hosts, purge yourselves of your uncleanliness, and let each one turn from his evil ways. Then with bare feet march around Jerusalem invoking God, and you must also fast. If you do this and then make a great attack on the city on the ninth day, it will be captured. If you do not, all the evils that you have suffered will be multiplied by the Lord.’”175
The Crusaders heeded the advice of Adhemar in Peter’s vision. They fasted for three days, and on July 8 they processed around the city, barefoot and unarmed, singing prayers and bearing relics, including the Holy Lance from Antioch. The Muslim defenders
mocked the Crusaders’ imitation of Joshua and the Israelites at Jericho by hitting and abusing crosses that they hanged over the city walls.176 Miraculously, the defenders never sallied forth from the city to engage the Crusader host while it was the most defenseless. The great procession ended at the Mount of Olives where Raymond d’Aguilers, Arnulf of Choques, and Peter the Hermit encouraged the warriors of Christ with their preaching.
The Final Assault
The Crusaders attacked Jerusalem on July 13, using siege towers and battering rams at two locations. Godfrey had positioned his tower at a northern area of the city near Herod’s Gate and the church of St. Mary Magdalene; this crucial placement ended up catching the defenders by surprise. As the city’s occupiers struggled to repair the wall, they desperately fired catapults at the attacking Crusaders.177 Raymond’s army in the south met with less success; they had placed themselves near Zion Gate, a location that could be defended by nine of the city’s fourteen catapults. Raymond’s warriors suffered heavy causalities.
Although the two army groups were separated, they maintained cohesion of attack by communicating with signalers who used reflectors that had been placed on the Mount of Olives.178 At three o’clock in the afternoon, the hour of Crucifixion, on F
riday, July 15, the Feast of the Dispersal of the Apostles, the Crusaders achieved their final objective and entered the Holy City. 460 years from its initial capture by the forces of Mohammed, Jerusalem was once again in Christian hands.
The “Massacre”
As was common in medieval warfare, in Christendom as well as in the Islamic world, a city that refused surrender found itself at the mercy of the attacking army once it forced its way in, which is the reason why many leaders came to terms with an attacker rather than risk a siege.179 Most attacking armies preferred the city’s surrender since it spared the army from causalities and prevented destruction of the city. Once inside Jerusalem, the Crusaders went on a rampage and killed many Muslim troops as well as noncombatants. This event has been described as the “Massacre of Jerusalem” and is used as a weapon for attacking the Crusades and the Church. Detractors, without attempting to understand the historical context of warfare at the time, reference this “massacre” to cast doubts on the morals and motivations of the Crusaders. Many even point to this event as a reason for the recent attacks by Islamic terrorists on the West. Former President Bill Clinton did so in a speech at Georgetown University on November 7, 2001:
Those of us who come from various European lineages are not blameless. Indeed, in the First Crusade, when the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem, they first burned a synagogue with 300 Jews in it, and proceeded to kill every woman and child who was Muslim on the Temple Mount. The contemporaneous descriptions of the event describe soldiers walking on the Temple Mount, a holy place to Christians, with blood running up to their knees. I can tell you that that story is still being told today in the Middle East, and we are still paying for it.180
The Glory of the Crusades Page 7