THE NEW SOLDIERS OF CHRIST WERE “SIGNED WITH THE CROSS,” cruce signati. They were exempted from the normal processes of law while they were on their journey to the East. Their possessions could not be seized, no action could be taken against them. Up to that point Christendom had recognized two categories in society: those who belonged to the church establishment and the vast majority who did not. Now those who took the cross stood midway between the two, and over time, military orders of knighthood developed that acknowledged this intermediate status in a more formal manner. But in the “Crusade” launched by Urban’s words, the majority of those who set out for the East were neither of noble birth nor even skilled in arms. Where Urban, both by letter and by a ceaseless round of preaching, roused southern France for the armed pilgrimage, the call for a war to rescue Jerusalem was spread farther north by shadowy figures such as Peter the Hermit, a former monk from northeastern France.
Legend has perhaps exaggerated Peter’s physical characteristics—a heavy accent, a stocky but cadaverous appearance—his filthy clothes, and the aged donkey on which he covered huge distances. But the effect of what he said in villages and towns was electrifying. Guibert of No-gent said that he was constantly surrounded by “great throngs of people,” who used to pluck hairs from his mule, which they treated as holy relics.30 He summoned the people to a war for Christ, and they followed him immediately, bringing with them what weapons or implements they had to hand. From the Low Countries and northern France and the valley of the Rhine, he had gathered about 15,000 followers by the time he arrived with his army at Cologne early in April 1096.
Bands of these poorly armed but wildly enthusiastic soldiers for Christ began to march east.31 When this human mass finally reached the walls of Constantinople, the emperor Alexius greeted them warmly but refused them admission to the city. They were allowed through the gates to see the holy shrines only in parties of eighteen, and under heavy guard. The pilgrims set up a straggling camp below the walls of Theodosius, and lived off the land. They robbed the suburban houses and villas that surrounded the city, especially along the seashore, and even stripped the lead from the roofs of churches.32 On August 6, Alexius provided a fleet of small ships to ferry the pilgrims across the Bosphorus. He was pleased to see them depart: these were not the troops that he had hoped would help him resist the depredations of the Turks. Nor did he believe that this rabble could survive in battle with the Muslims. He would be proved right.
The people’s army advanced south, laying waste the land before them. They achieved some success, capturing isolated castles and amassing a large quantity of plunder. But in October the Turks gathered an army large enough to deal with this increasingly provocative enemy whom they regarded as Byzantine mercenaries.33 Spies lured the pilgrims out of their camp with tales that the largest and richest city in the region, Nicaea, only a few miles away, was ripe for seizure. At dawn on October 21 the entire force—of about 25,000 men on foot and 500 mounted knights—set out for Nicaea. Barely three miles from the camp they were ambushed by the Turks, who had hidden in woodland either side of a river valley. They were showered with arrows, and battered by sudden attacks by the Turkish horsemen, and all order broke down, with knights riding down their own men in an attempt to escape.
The popular Crusades that ended so disastrously were not the pilgrimages that the pope had envisaged when he issued his appeal at Clermont.34 Urban II had stipulated Constantinople as the meeting point for the pilgrims and by the spring of 1097 four columns of knights and men-at-arms, and a mass of armed camp followers, had converged on the city. By early June an army of 50,0–60,0 had been transported across the Bosphorus by the Byzantine navy. This large figure gives a misleading sense of the Crusade’s military strength. Only some 7,000 of this number were heavy armored cavalry, western Europe’s particular contribution to the art of war. Some of the remainder were experienced spearmen and a few archers, but the vast bulk were poor pilgrims, men and women, lured by the cross and the promise of plunder. Each armored knight (miles) was the nucleus of a miniature war band. He was supported by a retinue, some mounted and some on foot, but all well armed and loyal to their leader. In turn, most of the knights owed allegiance to one of the great lords or rulers who were in charge of the expedition. But it was a loose structure with little coherent sense of direction, an army managed by a committee of commanders. In the West, most warfare was local, and while many had been on pilgrimage, only the Normans from southern Italy had any experience of an Eastern way of war. Yet even they had no knowledge of the vast distances in Asia Minor, of the harsh climate, with deserts of salt where nothing could grow, and of a powerful enemy unlike any they had previously encountered.
West and East approached the conduct of war from different perspectives. The Western style was based on close combat, on the impact of an armored knight riding at full speed at his enemy, often with his retinue around him. European warhorses were larger and heavier than those in the East, and while Crusaders normally fought from horseback, with a heavy spear and a long straight sword, the versatility of Christian knights was remarkable. Their heavy chain-mail hauberks, like long shirts, reached to midcalf. An iron cap, often studded and reinforced, would deflect almost any blow. The late medieval image of the lumbering man in armor who had to be winched into the saddle did not apply to these armies. Mounted or on foot, a company of mailed Crusaders could cut a swathe through most Eastern formations.
While Western knights rammed themselves into the heart of the enemy ranks, the Turks usually stood off from their opponents, raking them with arrows and javelins from a distance, before darting in at speed to deliver the coup de grâce. The incomparable Turkish recurved bow was made from layers of horn and sinew; in the hands of a skilled man it could send arrows to punch holes through mail or an iron helmet. One account tells of a Crusader shot in the leg: the Turkish arrow went through two layers of mail and so deeply into the horse’s flank that it dropped dead, with the rider still pinned to its corpse. The Turkish horse archer could fire three shots in a few seconds, while riding at full speed, either charging forward or in retreat. Moreover, the armies of the East possessed specialized troops not yet developed in the armies of the West. Horse archery was the most notable skill of the Turks; the Syrians produced light horsemen (faris) skilled with the lance; the Persian cavalry were heavily armored, man and horse alike.
The Westerners found that the armored knight was not invulnerable. After the First Crusade, a local ruler held a trial combat between champions. In the tourney the Western knight charged his opponent with a heavy spear, aiming at his exposed chest. The Syrian faris threw a javelin into the shoulder muscle of the knight’s horse, causing it to stumble and crash to the ground. The knight was thrown off, but before he could get to his feet, the Arab had knocked him prostrate with his war hammer, and then jumped down to prick the Westerner’s exposed throat with his sword. At that point the mock combat was stopped. However, the Arabs and Turks quickly realized that these men were not like the Byzantines, whom they knew from many battles. An image of these powerful Franks (Franj in Arabic) surfaced in Arabic literature. They appeared as huge clean-shaven men “like leftovers from the race of Ad” or not men at all. They carried stout broad-headed lances or spears of tempered steel.35 The reckless courage and determination of the knights was incomprehensible to their Muslim peers. Usāmah ibn Munqidh, the Muslim paladin, tells a story of eight Arab warriors who met a single Crusader horseman. He demanded that they give him their camels. They cursed him and refused. One by one he killed or disabled four of them. Then he demanded the camels again, saying, “Otherwise I shall annihilate you.” Then he divided the eight camels and led four away. “He drove his four under our very eyes, for we were helpless with regard to him and had no hope for him. Thus he returned with his booty; and he was only one while we were eight men.”36
The first battle of the Crusade clearly showed how dangerous the Western style of war could be to much larger Eastern armies. The
Crusaders besieged the town of Nicaea, which had been the fatal lure for the People’s Crusade. On June 16, 1097, the Seljuq sultan, Kilij Arslan, sent his best troops to relieve the garrison defending the chief city of his domain. The Turks descended from the high surrounding hills, shouting their battle cries and banging on drums. A thin line of Crusaders stood between the Turks and the ramparts of the city. Kilij Arslan’s men rushed at the city’s main gate, expecting to brush the Westerners aside. To their surprise, as they pushed forward, a column of Crusaders struck them a stunning blow to their flank. The Orientalist nineteenth-century painting of the battle by Henri Serrur is highly romanticized, but it captures the sense of a savage melee, with the knights steadily hacking their enemies asunder. In a battle that lasted from dawn to dusk, Kilij Arslan learned the devastating power of the long spears and heavy swords of the Westerners.
The Crusaders, for their part, soon learned to respect the accuracy and rapid fire of the Turkish archers. Little over a month after the fall of Nicaea, the Turks ambushed a Crusader column on its way to the old Roman road junction at Dorylaeum. They killed or wounded many Westerners, but the survivors regrouped, fought back, and then slaughtered the Turks. However great their losses, nothing halted the slow advance of the Crusaders. As they ran out of supplies and the horses died, the knights ended up riding oxen. But still they marched on. They made a huge sweep east and then south, over deserts and across mountains; they were losing men daily, but by October 1097 they stood before the huge city of Antioch, the key to the Levant. A massive urban sprawl, Antioch covered a plain almost three miles long and a mile wide between the river Orontes and Mount Silpius, where the Lebanon and the Taurus mountain ranges meet. Its long lines of ramparts followed the contours of the land, without any obvious weak points. Above the city walls stood a strongly fortified citadel. All through the winter the Crusaders camped before these impenetrable walls, suffering daily the sorties of the city’s defenders. However, the halt before Antioch allowed them to replenish their supplies. Fleets of ships brought food and equipment from Cyprus. Kerbogha, the ruler of Mosul, far to the east in modern Iraq, was also using the winter and early spring to rally a large army for the relief of Antioch. If the Crusaders did not take the city before he arrived, they would be in a dangerous position, caught between the walls of Antioch behind them and a new and confident enemy before them.
But on June 2, 1098, the Crusaders made as if they were striking camp and set off eastward, apparently to confront Kerbogha. Then, after nightfall, they doubled back, and a small band of knights scaled the northwest walls, which had been left unguarded. Inside the city, they met some of the Christian citizens of Antioch, who led them through the tangle of streets to two of the city’s smaller gates. There they cut down the guards and opened the portals. The whole Crusading army poured through into Antioch. In a single day every Turk, male and female, was killed. By nightfall on June 3, according to the Gesta Francorum chronicle, the Crusaders made an attempt, which failed, to take the citadel. They had blockaded Antioch for eight months. One day after they had captured the city (if not the citadel), the first outriders of Kerbogha’s great host appeared before the walls. The whole Muslim army soon arrived and took over the siege works built by the Westerners. Sandwiched between the citadel above them and the encircling army from Mosul beyond the walls, the Crusaders were trapped in a city that contained no food and little water. Men boiled and ate the leaves of figs, vines, thistles, and all kinds of trees. Others stewed the dried skins of horses, camels, oxen, or buffalo.37
They were saved by a miracle. Inside the city, morale deteriorated day by day, until an extraordinary relic was discovered on June 14. The holy lance that had pierced the side of Christ at the crucifixion was unearthed beneath the floor of the ancient Church of St. Peter. Its location had been revealed in a vision. The find was taken as a message of God’s favor.38 Just two weeks later, after endless sermons, prolonged fasting, and the preparation of the fragile relic as a battle standard, the Crusader army marched, with soaring spirits, out of the Bridge Gate over the river Orontes, and headed straight toward the Muslim force encamped before it. The holy lance was held high in the vanguard for all to see. The army moved at a slow walking pace. Only about 200 of its warhorses were left after the long months of siege.39 But the foot soldiers walking before the few remaining mounted knights were not the nondescript muster of ill-equipped and untrained men, stiffened with a few trained spearmen, who had formed the infantry in earlier battles. Most of those in the line were skilled knights in full armor, whom it proved immensely hard to kill. Accounts told of knights bristling like porcupines with arrows, darts, and javelins, but still moving forward and fighting ferociously. While the mounted knight, the epitome of chivalry, possessed great striking power, the Turks had found that his horse was vulnerable. Against armored infantry, fighting in unison, the traditional Turkish tactics proved much less effective. Western knights were trained to fight on foot or on horseback: this versatility was the Crusaders’ salvation on June 28, 1098.
The Muslims gathered before the Bridge Gate were only a fraction of the main army, which was encamped some miles away to the north of the city. When they saw the army of footmen advancing, they perceived a forlorn and desperate attempt of an enemy on the verge of defeat. They had no reason to know of the Crusaders’ new sense of ecstasy. It seemed impossible that this mob of men on foot could prove as deadly as men on horseback. The Turks attacked, showering the Crusaders with arrows. Many of the camp followers were killed, but very few of the knights. They quickly came upon the Muslim foot soldiers who formed the bulk of the besieging force and cut them down in their thousands.40 They then turned north, keeping close to the river on their right so that they could not be outflanked, and advanced at a steady pace. Muslim horsemen charged and charged again, but they were brushed aside. Nothing halted the holy lance. By nightfall, the whole army of Kerbogha had retreated in disorder and the Crusaders had taken possession of its camp. They found a vast amount of plunder and food, numerous camp followers, and Kerbogha’s field treasury.
The God-given victory before the walls of Antioch was the first of a near-unbroken line of triumphs. The Muslim armies melted away as the Crusaders continued their progress south through the Levant to Jerusalem. From Antioch onward, the attitude of Muslims to the Western invader began to change. The Crusaders had made a decisive impact not just on the Seljuq Turks, but on the complex and fragmented political culture of the Levant. The Muslim chronicles now noted how very different the Franj were from the Byzantines: they were completely uncivilized. The Damascus chronicler Ibn Al-Qalanisi called them infidels, or “God-forsaken,” but his main complaint was that they broke solemnly concluded agreements. At the town of al-Ma’arra, “the Franks, after promising [the inhabitants] safety, dealt treacherously with them. They erected crosses over the town, exacted indemnities from the townsfolk, and did not carry out the terms on which they had agreed.”41 He did not include the most terrible occurrence at Ma’arra, which other Muslim and Christian historians recorded. Fulcher of Chartres wrote,
I shudder to say that many of our men, terribly tormented by the madness of starvation, cut pieces of flesh from the buttocks of Saracens lying there dead. These pieces they cooked and ate, savagely devouring the flesh while it was insufficiently roasted. In this way [eating half-cooked meat] the besiegers were harmed more than the besieged.42
This was the behavior of animals and not men, and chroniclers noted example after example of this orgiastic violence. At Antioch, Fulcher recorded that when the Crusaders had captured the Muslim camp, they did not enslave the women that they found there (as Muslims would have done) but “in regard to the women found in the tents of the foe the Franks did them no evil [did not rape them] but drove lances into their bellies. Then all in exultant voice blessed and glorified God. In righteous compassion he had freed them from the cruellest of enemies.”43 A merchant from Ma’arra declared, “I am from a city which God has condemned, my fr
iend, to be destroyed. They have killed all its inhabitants, putting old men and children to the sword.”44 Muslim chroniclers related many acts of treachery and brutality within Islam, but there was something different about the Westerners’ rude animal vigor. The qualities that made them so effective in battle also made them capable of any atrocity.
In Islamic eyes, the most extraordinary example of this viciousness came as Jerusalem was finally captured. When Muslims had first occupied the city, it had been regarded with respect and reverence, and with the exception of the brief period under the Caliph Hakim, Christians, Jews, and Muslims had existed side by side within its walls. But the Crusaders would treat the city like any other place that had offered resistance. Their army finally arrived at its destination on June 7, 1099. What the Crusaders saw came as a shock. Instead of the holy city of their imagination, they were faced by a fortress.45 Unlike Antioch, set on its flat plain and with its long walls, Jerusalem offered opportunities for assault, but the advantage lay with the fresh and well-equipped defenders of the city. Little over a year earlier, the city had been reoccupied by Fatimid troops, who expelled the Turkish garrison. They had worked energetically to improve the defenses and made it clear they would not yield without a fight.46 On the day after its arrival, the whole Christian army, many barefoot and in the clothing of penitents, processed around the city, to derisive shouts from the soldiers lining the walls. Then the army gathered on the Mount of Olives to hear sermon after sermon, which roused their spirits and reminded them of their journey’s purpose. The Crusaders no longer enjoyed the benefit of the holy lance. Its reputation had been tarnished by rumors that it was not a true relic. The monk who had discovered it, Peter Bartholomew, then demanded the right to defend his honor and that of the holy lance through trial by ordeal. Unfortunately, he was “horribly burned” in the flames and died twelve days later.47
Infidels: A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam Page 23