Armies of Heaven

by Jay Rubenstein

  That is at least what Frankish writers liked to believe. The crusaders wouldn’t have cut off so many heads if the Saracens had not forced them to do so. About a slightly later battle fought outside Antioch, the chronicler Guibert of Nogent recounted that Bohemond ordered his followers to hang up one hundred severed heads before the city walls to demoralize the defenders. But then Guibert felt that some further explanation was needed: “For this is the custom of the gentiles”—a biblical term for non-Jews that Latin Christians regularly applied to Muslims—“they typically set aside severed heads and display them as a sign of victory.” By inference, the Franks would not have done such a thing if the Turks had not taught them, or forced them, to do so (perhaps starting at Nicomedia, where they had left unburied the headless bodies of Peter the Hermit’s followers). Other writers similarly stressed that this style of execution was fundamentally Turkish, lamenting that the enemy had decapitated local Christians and flung their heads into the Franks’ camp or else that after one skirmish before the city gates the Turks had snuck out in the night to cut off the heads of dead Christians so that they could fling them back into the camp the next morning.10

  St. Denis holds his own head in his hands, from the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. (Archive Timothy McCarthy/Art Resource)

  How useful for the Franks were such practices? As with modern debates about torture, people disagreed. Baudry of Bourgueil, a worldly, urbane writer who never traveled to the East but who based his chronicle in part on eyewitness testimony, described the decapitations as pointless. They rendered the citizens “more savage,” inspiring them to seek new heights from which to rain down arrows on the Franks. Specifically in response to this incident, they shot a Frankish woman dead, directly in front of Bohemond’s tent.

  Another writer working at the same time, Robert the Monk, saw the decapitations as legitimate. After Bohemond’s savage gesture, it became easier for the soldiers and pilgrims to travel around the area—in part because of the discovery of the Turks’ hiding place at Harim but also in part because of the fear that the executions had inspired.

  Yet another European writer described the decapitations approvingly and mentioned elsewhere that Bishop Adhémar of le Puy, the Franks’ spiritual leader, offered twelve denarii for each Saracen head brought to his tent so that he might stick it on a post. Like Bohemond, the bishop hoped that such a spectacle would frighten the city into surrender. Becoming “holy warriors” required that the crusaders on some level change their identities. And part of that change was that they learned to enjoy or appreciate the value of mass decapitations and desecrations of the enemy dead.11

  At about the same time (according to a historian writing about seventy-five years later), Bohemond promised his fellow leaders that he would deal with their other major problem—the Antiochene spies in the crusader camp. After some careful thought, he ordered executioners to cut the throats of a handful of Turkish prisoners and then to have their bodies roasted on spits and prepared as if for a feast. Should anyone ask what was happening, Bohemond ordered his men to reply that henceforth anytime the army’s leaders captured Turkish soldiers or spies, the cooks would roast them and serve them for dinner. All spies, naturally, fled the camp and spread word to Antioch and all over the region: “This people, for brutality, surpass not just all other nations, but even wild animals. It is not enough for them to rob their enemies of cities, castles, and all their wealth; it is not enough to cast them into chains, to torture them more cruelly than their enemies would do, and even kill them! No, they also fill their bellies with their enemies’ flesh and grow fat off their lard!” The spy problem was thus solved, and the Turks had learned a terrifying lesson about who their enemies were and what it meant to be both a Christian and a warrior.12

  Thanks to the giant Bohemond, then, the poor pilgrims were safer from Turkish attacks, but no less hungry. The springs of charity from the aristocracy must have begun to dry up fairly early into the siege as the warriors realized that they needed to conserve their own resources. Traveling too far beyond the camps to forage for food would have been a dangerous proposition. Resources had to be conserved, which meant that the poorest elements in the crusade host faced starvation.

  Eventually—we do not know how early or late into the siege—the commoners may have begun to think on Bohemond’s pantomimed feast and to see within it the easiest possible response to their situation. “There were some who nourished bodies with bodies, feeding on human flesh, but far away and in the mountains, lest others take offense at the smell of cooked meat.” Cannibalism remained, at least at Antioch, a point of shame for the armies. Mass beheadings and desecration of the enemy dead, on the other hand, were becoming routine.13

  The Crusade in Winter

  Despite the ever-increasing levels of brutality, at the end of November the army remained optimistic. It had turned back challenges from the Antiochene defenders, and it had received its first major infusion of supplies from the Genoese ships. This included not just food but also building materials, thereby enabling the construction of further siege equipment to complement the bridge of boats over the Orontes.

  The next major project, undertaken after Bohemond had roasted but did not eat—probably did not eat—Turkish prisoners, was the building of a wooden tower on a hill on the northern side of the city. The containment of Antioch was far from complete, but such a tower would at least enable the Franks to keep a closer watch on their enemy and even to look over Antioch’s walls. They called the structure, appropriately, “Malregard”—roughly, “Evil Eye.” Well supplied, thus far victorious, and continually extending and tightening their encirclement of Antioch’s walls, the crusaders might well have imagined themselves on the verge of a relatively quick victory.14

  But December was a long and uneventful month, with little further progress after the completion of Malregard. As Christmas approached, so, too, did fears of mass starvation. The countryside had been picked bare. The friendly Christian populations had run out of food or else were hoarding supplies to get through the winter. Supply expeditions grew evermore wide-ranging, with pilgrims traveling forty or fifty miles from camp in search of nourishment. How many Franks were surreptitiously slipping into the mountains with bodies and body parts of the recently deceased is anyone’s guess.

  Some of the crusaders, including princes, temporarily abandoned the siege. Robert of Normandy, for example, headed toward the Byzantine coastal city of Latakia late in December, apparently invited to stay there by Anglo-Saxon mercenaries who were serving on Alexius’s behalf. Other pilgrims left the siege and never returned. Godfrey of Bouillon stayed but fell ill again, and camp conditions turned steadily unbearable: “Then the starving people devoured the stalks of beans still growing in the fields, many kinds of herbs unseasoned with salt and even thistles which, because of the lack of firewood were not well cooked and therefore scraped up the tongues of those eating them. They also ate horses, asses, camels, dogs, and even rats. The poorer people devoured the hides of animals and the seeds of grain found in dung heaps.” On Christmas Day the crusaders as much as possible stayed in their tents for a furtive celebration. After a promising six weeks, the situation had become hopeless.15

  The leaders, at least those who were still present and healthy, developed two responses—one rooted in this world and one aimed at the next. On a practical level, Bohemond and Robert of Flanders agreed to lead a major foraging expedition just after Christmas. On an idealistic level, probably at the instruction of Adhémar of le Puy, they decided that the army had to take responsibility for its own plight. Fulcher of Chartres, who had abandoned the main army with Baldwin of Boulogne a little over two months earlier, wrote with a certain comfortable priggishness, “We felt that misfortunes had befallen the Franks because of their sins and that for this reason they were not able to take the city for so long a time. Luxury and avarice and pride and plunder had indeed impeded them.” This suffering served in effect both as punishment and purification. The cr
usaders were being burned like gold in a furnace, cleansed of sins through suffering and made all the mightier as warriors of God. The leaders further declared, in consultation with bishops and priests, that “all injustice and corruption” would be driven from the camp. Only fair prices would be charged, moneychangers would be strictly regulated, no theft would be tolerated, and anyone caught committing adultery, or just having sex, would be severely punished. “A man and a woman were found committing adultery there and were paraded nude before the army. With their hands tied behind their backs, men with lashes whipped them severely, and then the couple was forced to walk around the army so that everyone could see their severe wounds and be deterred from committing a similar wicked crime.” Just in case deterrence did not work, all of the women were temporarily exiled. It was time, apparently, for holy warriors to earn the right to the title.16

  The new moral code no doubt focused the crusaders’ sense of purpose, but it did not feed them. Neither, unfortunately, did the foraging expedition. Accounts of what happened are vague, probably deliberately so. On Monday, December 28, Bohemond and Robert of Flanders set out with about two hundred knights and, probably, one thousand infantry, heading into Syria. Their goals were twofold—to gather as much plunder as possible and to clear the roads of Turkish armies so that the Frankish poor might be able to wander about and gather food in peace.

  For three days the plan worked, and the armies seem to have captured enough food to supply the camp for weeks to come. But Bohemond and Robert did not realize that a Turkish relief force had finally answered Yaghi-Siyan’s calls for help. Led from Damascus by the Seljuk amir Duqaq, these warriors were marching toward Antioch when, unexpectedly, they walked almost directly into the middle of Bohemond and Robert’s expedition. According to one account, the Turks took flight almost immediately, realizing they could not hope to defeat Bohemond. According to another, the Turks caught the Frankish expedition completely unawares, as Bohemond was blissfully sleeping the night away. When he and the others awakened, they panicked. All of the knights, at least, escaped, but the foot soldiers, who were guarding the supplies, were massacred. Robert of Flanders eventually recovered a small portion of the plunder, but owing to the giant’s carelessness and cowardice, the foraging expedition had come to naught.17

  The situation was perhaps worse at the city. A significant number of the knights were away from the camps. Most of those who stayed didn’t have horses and thus were reduced to the status of infantry. Godfrey of Bouillon was sick, and Robert of Normandy and his followers were away at Latakia. The crusader camp was badly undermanned, and the defenders of Antioch knew that a relief force was imminent. On December 29 they attacked. Count Raymond, according to his chaplain, crossed the bridge of boats and gave chase to the Turks, killing two of them. The sight of the count’s courage inspired his foot soldiers to boldness, or perhaps foolishness. They abandoned their stations, threw down their standards, and followed the count to the Bridge Gate, throwing spears, rocks, and whatever else they could find at their enemies. The Turks then started to push back, both on the bridge and at a nearby ford in the Orontes.

  It was close combat of the sort that should have favored the Franks, but something went wrong. According to the chaplain Raymond, a Provençal knight, who was trying to ride around the Frankish infantry and engage the Turks more directly, was thrown from his horse. The horse then wheeled around and sensibly tried to flee, causing several knights to pursue it lest the animal escape—warhorses were a precious commodity. The infantry, who had no banners and no real leaders, thought that the knights had surrendered and the day was lost, and began a panicked retreat. It could have been worse. According to Count Raymond’s chaplain, no more than fifteen knights and twenty foot soldiers were killed, among them Bishop Adhémar of le Puy’s standard-bearer. But in the chaplain’s eyes, they made a pathetic sight. The defeat was a “palpable shame” for the army, a punishment from God intended to call to true repentance the minds of the knights, whose thoughts were otherwise adulterous and bent on plunder.18

  The armies at the gate were humiliated. Leadership was in disarray. Raymond of Saint-Gilles once more fell ill and withdrew to his tent. Catastrophe and the end of the crusade seemed suddenly inevitable.

  Then God spoke. The day after the retreat from the Bridge Gate, there was an earthquake—a great trembling of the land. The same night, shortly after sunset, “the heavens turned so red in the north that it seemed like dawn was ushering in the day.” Fulcher saw it, too, from wherever Baldwin’s army had camped in Syria: “At that time we saw a wondrous red color in the heavens; we also felt a great earthquake, which made us not a little frightened. Many then saw another sign, in the shape of a cross, white in color, cutting a path straight for the east.” The visionaries in Fulcher’s army could not have viewed these signs in a positive light. They had abandoned the road to Jerusalem in the name of some vaguely defined goals in Syria. The meaning of a heavenly cross flying quickly to the East (in brief: “You are going in the wrong way!”) would have been obvious. As for the other signs, an educated cleric like Raymond or Fulcher would have likely turned to the Bible, perhaps to the book of the Apocalypse, where he would have read, or half-remembered, the description of the breaking of the sixth seal: “Lo! There was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth, and the moon became as blood.” The stars would soon fall from the heavens, and the kings, the great men, the rich men of the earth would retreat to the mountains and hide, begging for rocks to fall on them and kill them. Or they might have read the signs more simply, as did an observer in the Syrian city of Edessa: “It was an omen of bloodshed.” The celestial activity was also visible in Europe. In Normandy people looked at the sky and shouted, “The East fights!” All agreed, as if with one voice, that signs in the heavens pointed toward war and blood on earth.

  What the Lord’s verdict about the siege of Antioch was, no one clearly understood. But everyone in the world had heard, or seen, Him speak.19

  A Visionary’s First Nightmare

  That same night, a starving, barely literate pilgrim named Peter Bartholomew (not to be confused with the more famous crusade visionary Peter the Hermit) fell asleep and into a dream that would eventually remake the crusade. After the initial earthquake, he ran into a little hut he had set up with some friends. Alone now and terrified, he just kept saying over and over again, “God help me. God help me.” The aftershocks continued into the night, and Peter grew still more terrified until finally he fell asleep or else slipped into a trance. Two men stood before him. One was older, with red and white hair, a long bushy beard, and black eyes that seemed to suit his face. The other one was younger, taller, strikingly handsome.

  The old man spoke first. “What are you doing?”

  Peter, fearful and confused, answered with a question, “And who are you?”

  “Get up,” he said, “and don’t be afraid. Listen to what I’m about to say: I am the apostle Andrew.”20

  What made Peter Bartholomew think of St. Andrew in this crisis is uncertain. Andrew was the brother of St. Peter, who had been bishop of Antioch before leaving for Rome. As the crusaders would later discover, some of Andrew’s bones were kept inside the city. If Peter had been one of the ones lucky enough to be allowed into Constantinople, he could have prayed before some of Andrew’s relics as well.

  But there may have been a more immediate reason to associate this apostle with the siege of Antioch. Several apocryphal events from Andrew’s later life had grown into a grand tale of adventure popular among medieval audiences. The settings and the characters were exotic enough to qualify it as a knightly romance. Andrew’s most famous exploit involved his rescue of the apostle Matthew, who had been taken prisoner in the East in the land of the Mermedonians, a race of cannibals. It was in such a place, populated similarly by cannibals, in a campsite decorated by severed heads stuck on spears, that Peter Bartholomew found himself in February 1098 as the earth trembled and the skies turned blood-red.
Perhaps in his dreams he fantasized that Andrew might be for him, like Matthew, a saintly liberator from a world inhabited by flesh-eating men.21

  But St. Andrew had not come to rescue Peter Bartholomew. Rather, he wanted to charge him with a mission that, if carried out, could save the army. First, Peter was to call a meeting of the Provençal leaders, including Count Raymond and Bishop Adhémar, and he was to reprimand Adhémar for failing at his most crucial job. “Why does he not preach to the people and scold them and bless them daily with the cross he carries? It would benefit them greatly.” But then Andrew changed tone altogether. “Come,” he said, “I want to show you the lance of our father Jesus Christ, and you are going to give it to Count Raymond, as indeed God has intended to do since Raymond’s birth.”