In the years that followed, Tancred continued to strengthen his position. Latakia was retaken. Cilicia was resubdued. Increasingly, Antiochene forces made headway into the mountainous region to the south dominated by the Arab-ruled towns of Apamea and Shaizar. In this atmosphere of expansion and rising supremacy, Tancred’s broader objectives slowly crystallized. Militarily, perhaps the most tantalizing goal was Aleppo, the key to northern Syria. It had been riven by infighting for many years and would be a rich prize. Pressed by Edessa from the north and by Antioch from the west, and faced on the east by often-unfriendly Turkish chieftains, its conquest was becoming a realistic goal.
Steadily Tancred began to conquer the city’s satellite towns. Al-Atharib fell in 1110. Zardana, a town lying in the lands between Antioch and Aleppo, was taken the following year. The inhabitants of settlements lying to the east of Aleppo (the opposite side from Antioch) were beginning to flee, fearing the Franks’ advances. When he was not pummeling Aleppo’s hinterlands, Tancred was demanding tribute from its rulers—a strategy that strengthened his position with minimal effort, while keeping his enemies weakened.
Tancred proved himself to be a shrewd conqueror. He recognized the need to work with local powers, whether Christian or Muslim. He was well aware that he needed local support if he was to consolidate his territorial gains in the long term. Consequently, he made sure to defend Armenian interests by seeking the liberation of those who had been taken captive by the Turks. He was so generous toward the Armenians in his lands that after his death the often-acerbic Armenian writer Matthew of Edessa remembered Tancred as a saintly man whose life was characterized by compassion and humility—a remarkable and thought-provoking verdict for so hardened a campaigner.49
Tancred was also careful not to alienate the Muslim farming communities in the area; he needed their cooperation, their labor, and their taxes.50 There were even some important defections to the Christian camp; in 1107–1108 Khotlogh, governor of Azaz, rebelled against Ridwan of Aleppo and sought to hand his town over to Tancred in return for another town.51 One group of Arab refugees is said to have come all the way from distant Basra on the Persian Gulf, seeking Tancred’s protection from the Turks.52 Antioch was in the ascendency, outcompeting its Turkish and Greek rivals. The noose was tightening around Aleppo. The battle for Syria was warming up.
Tancred’s bullish exploits in the north were matched by those of the Frankish lords to the south. Christendom’s interests in that region took a major step forward in 1109 with the realization of Raymond of Toulouse’s long-cherished dream: the conquest of Tripoli. This was a long-awaited advance for the Crusader States, even if the unfortunate Raymond did not live to see it.
Tripoli itself lay on a promontory jutting into the Mediterranean, a location that rendered it unassailable on three sides and created a shelter for shipping. It was a center of trade, with bustling bazaars and a large population crammed into houses up to six stories high.53 On its one landward side, the city was fortified by a great ditch and high walls. There was even an aqueduct providing fresh water. Beyond its iron gates, the land rose steadily up toward the heights of the Lebanese mountains, a range running parallel to the coast and only slightly inland. Irrigated by the plentiful rains that fell when clouds sweeping in from the sea were borne up to cross these peaks, the surrounding country was rich. Sugarcane was grown along the coastline, and the sugarcane plantations were mixed with those of oranges and lemons. Date palms and bananas grew in abundance. The ruler of Tripoli would be both wealthy and well defended.
Raymond did not wait for Tripoli’s fall before founding his county. He set to work almost immediately after laying siege, conquering the surrounding towns and building an encampment outside Tripoli’s walls that soon became a major settlement in its own right. Frankish forces conquered much of the coastline to the south and also pushed northward, around the shoulder of the mountains, and inland into the Homs Gap and toward the Turk-ruled cities of Hama and Shaizar. During the early years of the siege, the Tripolitans put up a staunch defense under the leadership of their qadi (judge) Fakhr al-Mulk and his descendants. Their main source of assistance was Fatimid Egypt. Overland resupply was impossible, given the presence of a besieging army on its landward flank, so the Egyptians reinforced the city by sea.
Despite the mounting pressure, Tripoli’s populace struggled valiantly against the Frankish invaders. On several occasions they sallied out from the walls to assault the crusaders’ siege works. On one occasion in 1105 they managed to penetrate the Frankish lines far enough to start a raging fire within their encampment. Among the structures consumed by the blaze was the building from which Raymond of Toulouse was surveying their attack. When it collapsed, Raymond fell into the conflagration, and he died soon afterward.54 With his death, the struggle was continued by Raymond’s cousin (once-removed) William Jordan of Cerdanya.
Even before the capture of the city itself, the Frankish County of Tripoli was fast becoming a force to be reckoned with. To the north, Tancred of Antioch was well aware of its rising power, and Tripoli’s northern borders were starting to converge with Antioch’s southernmost marches. To the south, Baldwin I of Jerusalem was equally keen to ensure that his interests would not be impeded by this rising power.
The siege came to a triumphant end shortly after the arrival of an army from western Christendom, led by Raymond of Toulouse’s son Bertrand in early 1109. His was a significant fleet of forty ships supported by additional naval squadrons from Genoa and a large war chest donated by the Byzantine emperor; cumulatively Bertrand had enough troops and resources to decisively affect the regional balance of power.55 His arrival should have been an opportunity for the Crusader States, but Bertrand proved to be a divisive figure, and he started to pick fights almost immediately after making landfall at Antioch’s nearest harbor, Saint Symeon.
As soon as Tancred learned of Bertrand’s arrival in the principality, he hurried to greet him. Large fleets of newly arrived Frankish warriors were not a common sight, and he hoped to enroll them in a campaign that would advance Antiochene interests. Bertrand, however, had other ideas. He responded to Tancred’s welcome by demanding that he hand over those portions of Antioch that had briefly been held by his father, Raymond, following the city’s capture during the First Crusade. Tancred’s—and previously Bohemond’s—possession of these sections of the city had not been contested in over ten years (an epoch in the fast-moving world of the Latin East). Nevertheless, Tancred was not ready to lose a powerful potential ally, so he declared that he was prepared to consider the request if Bertrand would help him expand his principality. Such willingness to compromise was not normal for Tancred, but despite his enthusiasm, the talks disintegrated, and the two men parted in anger. Bertrand’s first act in the Levant had been to create an enemy.
Immediately afterward, events escalated into a full-blown crisis. Bertrand set sail for the south, landing at Tortosa. The town was held by William Jordan’s men (Raymond’s successor and the County of Tripoli’s current ruler), but Bertrand summarily took control and demanded that William Jordan cede his lands to him. The implication of his demands was clear: Bertrand wanted the county for himself, and William Jordan should consider himself evicted from power. William demurred; these were his lands and he had defended the county against many perils. He too had rights to the County of Tripoli. Bertrand had made another enemy.
The upshot was that William Jordan turned to Tancred, offering to acknowledge him as his lord if he would lend his support against Bertrand. This request gave Tancred an opportunity both to expand his principality to the south (by becoming overlord to William Jordan’s lands) and to cut the presumptuous Bertrand down to size—a pleasing thought. Tancred assembled his army and headed south.
Bertrand, for his part, was belatedly becoming aware of his acute need for friends in the Latin East, so, like William Jordan, he too appealed for help. He wrote to Baldwin I of Jerusalem, presenting himself as the aggrieved heir to the County of
Tripoli who stood in danger of being denied his birthright. Baldwin agreed to back Bertrand’s claims, and he too assembled his army and headed north. At this point, King Baldwin only inflamed the dispute further by writing to Tancred and accusing him of having stolen estates from the count of Edessa, Baldwin of Bourcq. The Edessan ruler himself was also traveling with an armed force south to the siege works outside Tripoli. All the Frankish leaders were converging on Tripoli, all were angry, and all were coming with troops.
There was the potential in the early months of 1109 for a ruinous civil war within the Latin East that would have been disastrous for the Franks. Fortunately, both Tancred and Baldwin could see the need for diplomacy. They reached a compromise that was sufficiently satisfactory to all parties to deter them from killing each other. Bertrand would receive the bulk of the County of Tripoli, but he would also accept Baldwin I of Jerusalem as his overlord. William Jordan, for his part, would retain those lands he had conquered during his time as ruler. This agreement also pleased Tancred, who became overlord to William Jordan’s estates, which lay just to the south of Antiochene territory. Tancred also received some lands he had formerly held in Jerusalem, but in exchange he was required to return a group of estates he had seized from Baldwin of Bourcq.
Baldwin I of Jerusalem seems to have been the primary peacemaker here. He may have fought Tancred in Cilicia during the First Crusade (eleven years earlier), but those were the acts of his impetuous younger self; experience had weathered him into a wiser and shrewder leader. Tancred was more aggressive. He was prepared to take the field against his coreligionists if he deemed it necessary. Only the previous year, when Baldwin of Bourcq had finally been ransomed following his capture at Harran, he and Tancred had come to blows over Baldwin’s restoration to power in Edessa. That violent encounter took place only a few months before their meeting at Tripoli.
Still, by the time they had assembled at the siege of Tripoli, Tancred too could see the virtue in negotiation, and he supported the proposed resolution. Viewed in hindsight, this agreement was a formative moment in the slow stabilization of the Latin East: four Frankish Crusader States were emerging from the wars, treaties, compromises, and ambitions of the post-crusade world. Even so, among these four powers, Antioch and Jerusalem remained the major players, and the question of which would achieve supremacy had yet to be decided.56
With this agreement in hand, the crusaders were free to turn their attention to the still-untaken city of Tripoli. Their combined armies represented a formidable force, but the Franks’ land army probably was not the biggest cause of concern for the beleaguered inhabitants. The city had weathered many landward assaults, but it had often survived because it could call on Egyptian naval assistance. Now, however, a Genoese fleet completed the Frankish encirclement of the city, barring entry to the port, and adverse winds prevented the arrival of Egyptian reinforcements.
The assault could now proceed in earnest. Frankish siege tactics during this era generally centered on the use of colossal mobile siege towers. Many of the cities that fell to their armies, either during the First Crusade or in its aftermath, were captured by employing these mighty instruments of war. Siege towers typically fell into two categories. The first type was the classic wheeled construction that was rolled against an enemy’s wall to disgorge a horde of fighters onto the ramparts. The second type was an elevated firing platform, generally higher than the enemy’s wall, from which archers and crossbowmen could rain missiles on their enemies, sweeping the battlements of defenders in preparation for a general assault.57 At the siege of Tripoli, the Franks employed the former type, and shortly after they trundled their towers up to the ramparts, the city’s leaders capitulated, surrendering in June 1109 after years of heroic defense. The Franks then entered the city and sacked it thoroughly.
The siege of Tripoli could easily have ended in acrimony and civil war among the leaders of the Latin East. In the long run, however, it marked a substantial milestone in the continued development of the Crusader States. Against all the odds, the scattered territories conquered by the First Crusade had been translated into viable states that could now look to the future with some confidence. The majority of the coastline, with its valuable ports and fertile farmlands, was now in Frankish hands.
The history of the early Crusader States, in the years preceding the Field of Blood, is in many ways a catalog of brutal campaigns, widespread destruction, and burning cities. It is a grim tale, and the individuals who rose to prominence were generally those who displayed personal qualities that matched their environment: ruthlessness, combat effectiveness, shrewd calculation, and ambition. Men such as Tancred had such traits in abundance. Even so, it is too easy to lose sight of the other dimension of this struggle. This was also a profoundly religious war, waged in the name of God. Tancred may have used every ounce of realpolitik at his disposal to defend and expand his principality, but the mere existence of the Principality of Antioch, or indeed of the other Crusader States, speaks of their conquerors’ deep faith. Understanding this spiritual dimension of their behavior is crucial to unlocking their wider worldview.
If these warriors had set out on the First Crusade in search of gold or power, they had chosen the wrong campaign. The Levant was hardly an inviting target. The region was not especially wealthy, and the Jerusalem area itself was neither rich nor conspicuously fertile. During the previous century the land had been withered by prolonged periods of drought and torn by conflict between the Fatimids and the Turkish invaders. Conquerors, like merchants, generally look for opportunities where risks are minimized and rewards maximized, but here the risks substantially outweighed the rewards. The acquisition of worldly power and money does not explain their commitment to the region’s conquest.
Faith provides a better answer.58 Certainly Christendom’s knights had strong reasons for desiring the spiritual rewards promised at the campaign’s outset. Their need to seek remission of their sins was rooted in the moral tensions inherent in their militant vocation. These men had been born and raised into an aristocratic society that required its members to be trained for war. Those who excelled in arms were society’s heroes, held up as icons for others to emulate. Nevertheless, they had also been born into a Christian faith that offered them a radically different role model exemplified in the life of Jesus. His teaching, speaking of the need to love one’s enemies and neighbors, bears little obvious relation to the bellicose noble politics of medieval Europe. The church was well aware of this tension, and in previous centuries many thinkers had advanced theological solutions to the moral problems confronting knights who wished to carry out their bloody vocation while retaining some hope of salvation.59 Some suggested that knights should confess their sins after each battle to avoid damnation, yet it is difficult to seek forgiveness for a sin that one fully intends to commit again. Another solution was to look for inspiration in the Old Testament, with its accounts of epic wars fought by men like King David and Judas Maccabaeus against insurmountable odds. Although aspiring knights certainly called upon these ancient leaders as exemplary figures, relying on the Old Testament did little to reconcile their own actions with the teaching of Jesus. More important, even such Old Testament exemplars did not provide a justification for killing coreligionists, which was frequently demanded in the many wars that fractured western Christendom.
The medieval writer Ralph of Caen, in his account of Tancred’s deeds on crusade, explained the problem very neatly. He observed that Tancred was frequently troubled by his warrior vocation, recognizing that it stood in contradiction to Christ’s command to turn the other cheek to one’s enemies. Moreover, Tancred was apparently concerned that, far from showing Christian charity to their fellow men, soldiers generally stripped the populace of everything they owned. These contradictions apparently caused many sleepless nights for the young Tancred, who was reluctant to abandon the martial life for which he had been raised but was equally challenged by his failure to follow the teachings of Jesus.60
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The First Crusade helped resolve such tensions. Participation was explicitly presented by the church as an act in direct accordance with the will of God. Those who fought in its wars were joining a campaign that could save them from their former sins. This in part explains the vast response to Pope Urban’s call for crusade, and the ready participation of thousands of knights underlines their collective sense of relief that they now had a route to salvation.
The crusading oath was not a license to act as they pleased. They were still required to maintain a high moral standard in all other aspects of their lives. The crusaders were not an unrestrainable barbarian horde unleashed on the Near East. Theirs was morally straightjacketed violence. They destroyed armies and remorselessly slaughtered the inhabitants of many cities, but they were not given to raping the women in the towns they captured (like so many armies throughout history).61 Crusaders who had relations with women out of wedlock were punished severely. Crusading ideology forced their warlike tempers into narrowly defined channels.
This was the context that brought forth commanders such as Tancred and Baldwin. Men of their cadre viewed themselves—and were encouraged to view themselves—as defenders of Christendom and knights of Christ. Their role models were warrior saints like Saint George, and during the First Crusaders’ battle against Karbugha, some combatants actually claimed to have received assistance from a host of mysterious warriors in white led by Saint George, Saint Demetrius, and Saint Mercurius. Later rulers of Antioch were equally admiring of these saintly heroes, and their reverence for Saint George is reflected in some of the coins issued in Antioch, which depict Saint George slaying the dragon.62
The Field of Blood: The Battle for Aleppo and the Remaking of the Medieval Middle East Page 5