Armies of Heaven

by Jay Rubenstein

  Some observers may have been inclined to write off these ghostly apparitions as desert hallucinations or else as the inventions of Saracen prisoners anxious to curry favor with their captors, but the miracle would receive further confirmation. After the army broke camp at Dorylaeum on July 4 and during the three days that followed, the crusaders continually discovered Saracen corpses and their dead horses littering the roadways of Anatolia in places the Franks had not yet reached, far past the point where they had stopped pursuing the enemy. There could be only one explanation: The saints had kept up the chase and with their heavenly weapons had continued to cut down the enemy. The boundaries between this world and the next were blurring. Again, the farther from Constantinople the armies marched, and perhaps the more earnestly the soldiers prayed and confessed sins, the keener an interest God took in their affairs.8

  Before these miraculous discoveries of Saracen corpses, the Christians rested. They mourned; they sang songs; they picked over their enemies’ bodies, searching for jewels, coins, trinkets, and souvenirs; and they buried their own dead. The battle had left many of the Franks unidentifiable. Were it not for the crosses on their cloaks, the crusaders could not have even been sure which bodies belonged to Christians. They also told stories to one another, celebrating their victory and fictionalizing it at the same time. They imagined, for example, their vanquished foe, Kilij-Arslan, turning tail and fleeing to his masters in the East, warning every Saracen he encountered that the Franks were invincible, that surrender now was the wiser course. Some alternately imagined Kilij-Arslan pretending that he had won at Dorylaeum, proclaiming victory in front of every city that he approached, and then going inside and plundering it of all its goods lest the Franks find anything of value in Anatolian territory.

  The pilgrims also took a moment to marvel at their own achievement. Clerics searched their memories of Scripture and prophecy (and perhaps through whatever portable libraries they had brought with them) to find words that encapsulated what had occurred. One theologically minded writer, looking back with hindsight from 1107, found the answer in Isaiah, the Old Testament prophet best known for forecasting the Virgin Birth. Perhaps Isaiah had also anticipated the crusade: I will make you the pride of the ages, a joy lasting from generation unto generation. You will suck at the breast of many peoples and will drink milk from the breast of kings. And you will know that I am the Lord your God who saved you, the mighty redeemer of Jacob. These words originally described God’s promise to the Children of Israel. The Franks, however, were the new Israel—as many of them believed and would have proudly attested, they had wiped the old Jews from the face of the earth before leaving home. They would drain wealth and power from the kings of the East and establish themselves anew in the original city of God.

  Dorylaeum had been their Red Sea, and with God’s help, they had crossed it. Now they were set to enter the Promised Land.9

  The Slow Road to Antioch

  It took three days of rest and soul-searching, and three more days of joyfully discovering mutilated bodies on the desert sands, before the celebrations petered out. Despite Stephen of Blois’s optimism, Antioch still lay fifteen weeks and several hundred miles in the future. The crusaders were venturing into an unknown and politically turbulent land with no sure allies and relatively few supplies. In these alien climes the wisdom and counsel of Alexius’s man Tetigus doubtless proved essential—a point that would have galled many in the army. As far as some crusaders could tell, there was no real difference among Saracen, Jew, and heretic. They were “equally detestable,” all “enemies of God.” Now, to reach Jerusalem, the crusaders apparently were going to depend on one group of schismatic Christians to negotiate on their behalf with still other schismatic groups, particularly Armenians. The splendid and terrifying example of holy war at Dorylaeum notwithstanding, the crusade was again dependent on the search for allies, and not everyone would adapt well to this new reality.10

  The first few days were especially difficult. The terrain was rocky, barren, practically waterless—apart from what the Franks were able to extract from cactuses—and difficult to traverse. The August sun was murderous. One Saturday, according to Albert of Aachen, five hundred men and women died of thirst, along with countless horses, mules, oxen, and other pack animals. This number sounds like an exaggeration, but Albert stressed that his information came not from hearsay but from the testimony of reliable witnesses, whose recollection caused “the human mind to tremble in horror.” Besides the adult dead, several pregnant women went into labor on the march, many of them prematurely, but so desiccated were their bodies that “they simply abandoned their newborns in the middle of the road for all the world to see.” The morning after this particular horrific Saturday, the army found a river. They charged its banks and fought one another like animals, as if its waters might suddenly go dry. Gratefully and voraciously, and excessively, not realizing the dangers posed by dehydration, they drank and drank, and several of them died on the spot, drowning in open air.11

  The terrain became a bit more bearable after these harrowing experiences. Cities with large Armenian populations tended to welcome the Franks, seeing them either as Byzantine mercenaries out to restore Greek rule or else as simple allies willing to help them drive out Turkish occupiers. After forcing a large garrison of Turks to leave the city of Heraclea in early September, the Franks rested for four days and then decided, despite their bad experience at Dorylaeum, to divide the army in half once again. The larger group followed a long mountainous route to the north, through Cappadocia and eventually to Antioch, hoping to avoid the narrow passes and steep roads that characterized the more direct route through Cilicia. Two smaller groups, led by Bohemond’s nephew Tancred and by Godfrey’s brother Baldwin (who left his wife, an English noblewoman named Godevere, with the main army in his brother’s care), took this latter, shorter route through Cilicia.

  Relatively little is known about how the main army fared, apart from a few anecdotes. Godfrey, while hunting, saw an enormous bear attacking a poor pilgrim. It was “a cunning and wicked animal,” and Godfrey, without hesitation, rushed to the unarmed man’s defense. At first it seemed he might easily drive the bear away, but his cloak got caught up in its claws and he fell from his horse, landing awkwardly on top of his own sword. When Godfrey tried to unsheathe the weapon to stab the bear in the throat, he instead sliced his own leg open. The “poor peasant” he’d rescued was by now screaming wildly, and he managed to draw the attention of one of Godfrey’s men, named Husechin, who in turn charged at the bear with sword drawn. He and Godfrey together killed the beast, but it had barely stopped breathing when the great duke turned pale and collapsed. Doctors were called in to treat him while the rest of his followers carved up the bear among themselves—they had never seen an animal with so much meat on its bones. The doctors did what they could for Godfrey, but it would be months before he fully recovered. For the next several weeks, and during the early stages of the siege of Antioch, he could only stray far from his tent if carried on a litter. By the time he was healthy enough to fight again, his men had deserted him by the hundreds.12

  At about the same time, Raymond of Saint-Gilles fell ill and was confined to bed. His condition was grave enough that Bishop William of Orange stayed nearby, ready to deliver last rites if needed.

  The rest of the army trudged on, “thirsting and burning for the blood of Turks” but finding only Armenians, striking treaties with them to recognize their control of particular castles, or else, on occasion, entrusting a fortification to a Frankish solider. The crusaders found a “hellish” mountain range—the Taurus Mountains, whose peaks rise as high as 12,000 feet—so steep and with paths so narrow that several horses tumbled over the side, as did beasts of burden. One ox would fall over the cliff and drag down the rest of the animals tethered to it. As knights lost their mounts and their servants, their weapons proved too great a burden. They tried to sell them, but the market became so glutted that their armor and swords prov
ed almost worthless. As a result, many men threw away whatever was too heavy to carry and stood gloomily to one side, “wringing their hands in sadness and grief, not sure what to do with themselves.” It was a badly depleted and much poorer army that in mid-October finally reached the foot of the Taurus Mountains and the city of Marash in southeastern Turkey, still about one hundred miles north of Antioch.13

  As for the smaller armies that had ventured into Cilicia, their leaders rapidly abandoned the ethos of holy war in favor of more straightforward conquest and acquisitiveness, revealing in the process fundamental divisions that would later threaten to undermine the entire crusade. But this part of the journey started with a grand triumph for Tancred. He and his men reached the city of Tarsus, a former Roman capital and the birthplace of the apostle Paul. As Tancred assessed things, Tarsus was a place where Turks dominated, Greeks served, and Armenians fought for their liberty while hiding in the mountains. Impressed at the grandeur of the place and determined to make it his own, Tancred engaged in a bit of subterfuge. He dispatched a few Turcopoles—Alexius’s Turkish mercenaries, presumably hired away from Tetigus—who pretended that they were bandits out to plunder the city’s cattle, grazing in the nearby fields. As soon as the defenders charged from the city gates to attack, the Turcopoles retreated, and as the Turks followed, the rest of Tancred’s army rose up from its hiding places. They chased the Turks back to the gates, killing as many as they could before archers atop the ramparts forced them back out of bowshot. During the night Tancred and his men set camp, planning their next attack. At the same time, the Turkish commanders evaluated their situation and thought the better of resisting. In darkness they withdrew from the city, leaving behind a small garrison but turning control of the place back over to the Greek and Armenian citizens. “Liberty had returned to the city because of its enemies—liberty which, because of its citizens, had once perished.”14

  It ought to have been a great crusader victory, but the next day, with Tancred’s men still camped outside the city, another, much larger army marched into view, apparently ready for a fight. This was Baldwin of Boulogne and his men, who from a distance thought they were seeing a Turkish army camped in front of Tarsus. Baldwin and Tancred rejoiced upon recognizing one another, and they managed to celebrate one pleasant dinner together. The next morning, however, Baldwin demanded that Tancred share the spoils of Tarsus with him and his men equally or else turn the entire city over to him. Baldwin’s apparently specious reasoning was that Tarsus had surrendered not out of fear of Tancred but in response to rumors of Baldwin’s arrival. Were it not for his own army, Baldwin continued, without any real justification, the Turks would still be in charge of things. Difficult as it is to believe, the two crusaders were ready for all-out war against each other, but to avoid bloodshed, they agreed to allow the citizens of Tarsus to decide whom they wished to be their prince, Baldwin or Tancred. The leaders of Tarsus answered without hesitation: They preferred Tancred, not because of his innate virtue but because of his uncle Bohemond’s fearsome reputation.

  Baldwin flew into a rage. In the words of Albert of Aachen, “He cared not a wit for the pretension and rank of Tancred and Bohemond, likening them to mud and shit.” For the Armenians’ benefit, he used more measured and diplomatic terms: “You should not believe that Bohemond and this Tancred, whom you so respect and fear, are in any way the greatest and most powerful chiefs of the Christian army, nor that they bear comparison to my brother Godfrey, duke and leader of the soldiers from all Gaul, or any of his kin. For this same prince, my brother Godfrey, is duke of a realm of the great and earliest Roman emperor Augustus, by hereditary right of his noble ancestors; he is esteemed by the whole army, and great and small do not fail to comply with his words and advice on all matters because he has been elected and appointed chief and lord of everyone.”15

  Though not exactly true, Baldwin’s arguments nonetheless carried the day. Bohemond and Tancred were parvenus. Godfrey’s authority, and Baldwin’s own, stretched back to Augustus. Baldwin may then have claimed as well that Godfrey’s sword was the same one that the Emperor Vespasian had carried into battle in 70 AD when he had destroyed the city of Jerusalem and left its streets flowing with Jewish blood. Within a few years at least, the Armenians believed this to be the case. Tancred could not compete with such an imperial pedigree. Or, more prosaically, Tancred realized that he could not win in open combat against the Lotharingians. Whatever the case, he withdrew from St. Paul’s birthplace, and the citizens raised Baldwin’s standards over their walls. The city’s gates were opened, and Baldwin’s men were allowed to enter. Inside, they found a few Turks who had not left the city, and who were in no mood to fight. They had stayed in their towers along the wall, waiting to see what Baldwin and Tancred’s intentions were. If it became apparent that the Franks were going to settle in Tarsus, then they would leave the tower peacefully.16

  They got their answer the next day when about three hundred more Norman soldiers arrived at Tarsus’s gates, presumably to reinforce Tancred’s hold over the city. Baldwin, however, decided not to let them in. In his view, Tancred’s followers were potential enemies, and he already had enough problems with the Greeks and Armenians. So he locked the gates, claiming that no more Christians would enter Tarsus until Godfrey arrived. The Normans, hungry and miserable, set up camp outside the walls. Only the Armenian Christians in Tarsus felt some pity for them; they lowered down live sheep and baskets full of bread, which the Normans received gratefully, happy at least to be able to go to sleep on a full stomach.

  The Turks in Tarsus, on the other hand, probably knew nothing of the internal Christian conflicts. As far as they could tell, the city was lost, and it was time for them to escape and find new places to conquer. Taking all their valuables, all three hundred left Tarsus in the middle of the night, heading toward the mountains. On the way out, they passed through the sleeping Normans’ camp and killed most of them before they had the chance to wake up—decapitating some, eviscerating others, shooting with arrows in the moonlight anyone who managed to get to his feet.

  Such was the spectacle that greeted the citizens of Tarsus the next morning: the fields outside their city littered with Christian corpses. A riot broke out. Crusaders demanded revenge. They wanted blood—Turkish blood, preferably, but there was also talk of killing Baldwin, who barricaded himself in a tower until everyone’s temper calmed. Fortunately for him, a couple hundred Turkish stragglers were left behind—poor workers whom the wealthier soldiers had not had time to bother over. The Lotharingians rounded them all up and cut their heads off. The Christian women of Tarsus also demanded justice for past crimes. The Turks had raped them, they said, and if a Christian woman had resisted, the Turks would cut off her nose or ears. Several women had the scars to prove it. The actual perpetrators had likely already fled, but the Franks were happy to inflict violence on whomever happened to be at hand. “The people of Jesus Christ were more greatly inflamed to hatred of the Turks by this scandal and horrendous accusation and they further increased their slaughter of them.”17

  By this point Tarsus was a bloody mess, inside and out, and Baldwin must have been anxious to move on. A near miraculous turn of events enabled him to do so. A few days after the slaughter of the Turks, a small fleet of ships approached the city’s ports. Baldwin gathered his men together, expecting to find a contingent of Turks who had returned to challenge his rule. Boldly the crusaders approached the port and discovered the ships’ crews instead to be—Belgian. One of them Baldwin had likely met before—a man named Winemer who had once served in the household of Baldwin’s oldest brother, Eustace, now on crusade with Robert of Flanders. The newly arrived sailors said they were pilgrims who had departed from Flanders and Lotharingia eight years earlier, hoping to worship at the Holy Sepulcher. Along the way they had become distracted by the riches, and chaos, of the East and had decided to stay to make their fortunes, temporarily deferring the prospect of prayers at Christ’s tomb. Baldwin straightaway ad
ministered the crusader’s oath to all of them. They had probably been expecting to plunder Tarsus. Instead, they would govern it: Three hundred pirates would stay behind, along with two hundred of Baldwin’s men. The rest would continue with him on the long road to Antioch and Jerusalem.18

  Baldwin was at this point traveling in Tancred’s shadows. Despite the setback in Tarsus, Tancred was moving from one success to another. Baldwin’s men, of course, were not impressed. As they saw it (or as some of them would later repeat back in Germany), the Normans in Cilicia first conquered a castle of girls, then demolished a castle of children, and finally laid low a castle full of shepherds. In reality, Tancred had won control of the Armenian city Mamistra with the help of a local lord called Ursinus. As soon as the Turkish garrison in Mamistra had heard rumor of Tancred’s approach, backed as he now was by Armenian allies, they had abandoned the place. After he arrived, Mamistra’s Armenian citizens lined up to greet him and offer him an alliance. They also presented him with a great deal of the treasure left behind by the Turks, which Tancred distributed magnanimously to his followers. A few days later, Baldwin reached Mamistra and, apparently in a mood for compromise, asked for trading privileges. Tancred was inclined to agree—not to let him into the city but to allow him to barter with his new subjects. But not all of his men were as forgiving. “Ah Tancred!” one of them, Richard, Prince of Salerno, cried, “today you are the most worthless of men! You see Baldwin right there! By his treachery and jealousy you lost Tarsus. Ah! If you have an ounce of manhood left in you, you’ll call up your men and bring down on him the same injury that he caused you!”19

  What happened next is unclear. Whatever occurred, it reflected well on neither side. Either the two armies fought each other—prisoners were taken, and soldiers were killed—or else both sides lined up for battle, but neither was willing to engage the other. Whatever the case, prisoners were taken, and a few soldiers were killed. Barely a month after leaving the main army, Tancred’s and Baldwin’s crusade had become a war of Latin pilgrims against Latin pilgrims, meddling in Armenian and Turkish politics, with no very clear purpose or direction. The two groups may have been dispatched as part of an overarching “Armenian strategy” to secure local support necessary for the rest of the army to cross Anatolia, but they seem to have reverted quickly to stereotype—ill-tempered, small-minded European lords out to defend their pride and advance personal and familial reputations. Holy war was a fragile thing: Once outside the apocalyptic maelstrom of the main army, it was easy to lose sight of heavenly Jerusalem and its eternal rewards.