Armies of Heaven

by Jay Rubenstein

  In any case no one was willing to attack Ma‘arra just yet. The siege would continue for two more weeks—a time spent in part building a massive, wheeled siege tower and several more siege ladders. It was not an inordinately long time compared to the epic ordeal at Antioch, but even so this waiting period had shocking repercussions. The hunger grew intense more quickly, and the radical elements in the army were not willing to bear their suffering. For Jerusalem they might have endured it, but not for Ma‘arra.

  Spurred by the combination of severe hunger and prophetic rage, some members of the army turned to a now familiar, if horrifying, solution: cannibalism. This time they did so proudly, having learned how to use psychological warfare to their advantage. In the words of Fulcher of Chartres, reporting what he had heard from Edessa, “I tremble to say it, but many of our men, seized by the madness of hunger, cut pieces from the buttocks of the Saracens, who were dead at the time, which they cooked and ate, and even if they were barely warmed over they savagely filled their mouths and devoured them.” Another writer said that he learned these details from some of the actual cannibals, apparently proud of what they had done: “Adults were put in the stewpot, and boys were skewered on spits. Both were cooked and eaten.”

  If, as described earlier, Bohemond publicly faked cannibalism at Antioch as a way to flush out Turkish spies, the crusaders at Ma‘arra genuinely indulged in it, hoping to terrify the enemy—a step beyond desecrating Saracen graves or using Saracen heads as saddle ornaments. In the goal of inspiring horror, they were successful: “Indeed the Saracens and the Turks said amongst themselves, ‘Who is able to stand against this people, who are so resolute and cruel that—after a whole year of not being driven away from the siege of Antioch, either by hunger or sword or by any other danger—they now eat human flesh?’” But not all of the Franks were pleased at the result. Some were so shocked that they abandoned the expedition altogether, close to Jerusalem though they were.18

  Crusade chroniclers agonized over this story. One of them, Guibert of Nogent, blamed the cannibalism on a band of poor soldiers he called the “Tafurs.” Not really warriors, they were mainly helpful peasants or poor pilgrims, carrying out useful tasks for the Frankish aristocracy. The Tafurs’ own leader, whom they called a “king,” was reportedly a Norman knight who had lost his horse. In the epic poetry of the twelfth century, the Tafur king and his earnest peasant band would be transformed into savage warriors, hardened by the deprivations of poverty—an imaginative leap made possible by Guibert’s decision to blame them for the cannibalism at Ma‘arra. Modern writers have either followed Guibert’s lead and accused the Tafurs for what went wrong, or they have preferred the testimony of Raymond of Aguilers and the author of Deeds of the Franks, who both placed the cannibalism after the siege had ended and blamed it only on sharp, unexpected hunger. They also were eyewitnesses, and modern historians, like medieval ones, tend to put greater weight on eyewitness testimony.

  As eyewitnesses, however, they were also potentially implicated in the cannibalism. It was in their interest to explain it away. Writers like Fulcher, Ralph of Caen, Guibert of Nogent, and Albert of Aachen, who were well informed about the crusade and who had talked to other participants at the siege of Ma‘arra, had heard too many reports of deliberate, aggressive cannibalism to dismiss it out of hand, including from some men who claimed to have cut their enemies up and put them on spits in full view of the city’s defenders. They weren’t ashamed. For them it would have all been a part of the process of holy war.

  The cannibals, or their confessors, might have even appealed to the Bible to justify their actions since the God of the Old Testament often threatened cannibalism against His enemies, and sometimes against His followers, too. The consumption of human flesh was but one weapon in the divine arsenal. “I will feed your enemies with their own flesh, and like new wine, they shall be drunk with their own blood,” says the prophet Isaiah. “They will eat the flesh of my people,” the prophet Micah says; “they will flay their skin and break their bones and chop them into pieces for the pot, with flesh as if in the midst of the cauldron.” In the book of the Apocalypse, God through an angel commands birds to feed upon the kings of the earth, their servants, and their horses. [Plate 5] And in the Old Testament, He promises a similar fate to the wicked Israelite king Jeroboam: “Dogs will eat those who die in the city belonging to Jeroboam, and the birds of the air will feed on those who die in the country.” Perhaps Albert of Aachen had this passage in mind when he wrote of Ma‘arra, “Christians did not shrink from eating not only killed Turks or Saracens, but even dogs, whom they snatched and cooked with fire.”19

  Peter Bartholomew’s Crusade

  Finally, on December 11, with some soldiers starving, others cannibalizing the dead, and the leaders all but at war with one another, the Franks attacked Ma‘arra from two sides. Priests prayed to God to “raise up Christendom and cast down Pagandom.” Raymond’s men pushed and wheeled their siege tower as close to the city as possible, somehow preserving the structure against Saracen attempts to bring it down with catapults and fire. Atop the tower a knight named Evrard “the Hunter” sounded repeated trumpet blasts and probably tried intermittently to earn his nickname by laying low human prey with his bow. Other knights crowded into the tower’s upper stories and threw rocks onto the wall’s defenders. More effective than arrows, the rocks crashed into their shields and knocked them over into the city.

  Finally, by the end of the day, the sun just beginning to set, the Provençals had cleared out enough of a space on the ramparts to raise a ladder. Protected by their siege tower, as its occupants fired arrows and debris down on the wall’s defenders, a knight named Gouffier of Lastours (later famous for having a pet lion) ascended the ladder, followed en masse by a swarm of warriors anxious to bring this battle to an end. So many crowded onto the ladder’s rungs that it started to split apart, several Franks in full chain mail armor crashing hard to the ground. Gouffier and a few other warriors managed to stake out a place on the ramparts, with Gouffier fighting back Saracens “like a bear beating back a pack of yipping dogs.” The Frankish youth on the ground “forgot about themselves but remembered their friends” and set up another ladder. Soon a few dozen warriors had scrambled up beside Gouffier and were widening their hold on the city’s ramparts. It remained a desperate fight—too much for some men, who jumped off the wall rather than face the continual onslaught of arrows, stones, swords, and fire—until sunset. But by nightfall the Franks had claimed a large portion of the wall and likely a tower or two. They had also broken through one of the city’s gates. In the morning they could expect to capture Ma‘arra easily.20

  A few of the Turkish citizens recognized the impossibility of their situation. Trying to exploit a loophole in the laws of war, they offered to surrender. Their city was all but conquered. Bohemond, as Raymond had at Albara, agreed to their terms. But Bohemond was not as merciful as Raymond had been. The next day he would kill many of the Turks who had surrendered and would enslave the rest. In the meantime, in the dead of night, as Bohemond engaged in stealth diplomacy, or stealth duplicity, several of the poorer knights, maybe the Tafurs among them, scrambled through the breach in the walls and roamed the dark streets, looking for Saracens to kill and wealth to claim. They’d learned from experience; this time they would not risk the aristocrats scooping up all the Saracen valuables. The rest of the army waited till morning, when it could sack the city with impunity.

  The scene that followed would have readily recalled the carnage of Antioch. “No corner was clear of Saracen corpses; you could hardly go anywhere in the city without stepping on Saracen corpses.” According to Arab historians, it was the worst massacre of the crusades. More were killed there than at Antioch or later at Jerusalem. At times the Saracens unwittingly imitated the Jews of the Rhineland, preferring suicide to captivity. They would, for example, offer to lead Franks to hidden storerooms where they might grow rich, but then on the way hurl themselves into wells, “
preferring to pay the price of death rather than to show where their supplies were, or anything else.” Because of their stubbornness, Raymond concluded, all of the defenders died. It was the second time that the crusaders had inflicted upon their enemy the rules of war set down in Deuteronomy 20.21

  Politically, Ma‘arra threatened to turn into a repeat version of Antioch. Bohemond stationed his men in several towers around the city—more than Raymond managed to take—as if to claim Raymond’s prize for his own. Raymond took the high ground, at least formally so, arguing that the city belonged by right to Peter of Narbonne, recently anointed bishop of Albara. Predictably, Bohemond would not give up anything in Ma‘arra until Raymond had first abandoned Antioch.

  With the princes’ squabble on display for the whole army to see, many soldiers were on the verge of open rebellion. The march to the Holy Land had begun years ago, they argued, and yet each day it seemed to start anew, so irksome were the princes’ delays. But Bohemond was not intimidated. In light of current circumstances, he announced, he did not expect to leave for Jerusalem until Easter, and on December 29 he withdrew to Antioch. Let Raymond clean up the mess they had made at Ma‘arra. And all the while, more and more pilgrims continued to desert.22

  The people still put their hope in Count Raymond and recruited Bishop Peter of Albara (whose interests Raymond was claiming to defend against Bohemond) as spokesperson. Peter, surrounded by an entourage of commoners and knights, approached Raymond to express their frustrated longing for Jerusalem. The laypeople all knelt around the bishop as he spoke. Count Raymond, Peter said, should depart immediately. God had chosen him as His special instrument by giving him the Holy Lance. He had no need of the other princes. If, however, he preferred to stay at Ma‘arra, he should at once hand the Lance over to the people, who, leaderless, would march on to Jerusalem without him.

  Bishop Adhémar’s worst fears had been realized. The eccentric vision of Peter Bartholomew had taken hold of the Provençal contingent. Count Raymond had put too much trust in him. Despite all his military achievements and money, he was about to lose his army to a peasant. He had one last chance to stem the tide of deserters and to regain control of his followers: a council to be held at nearby Rugia, midway between Antioch and Ma‘arra, on January 4, called to try yet again to settle his dispute with Bohemond. The people were willing to give him that much time, but again, at Rugia, neither side was willing to budge. Bohemond returned to Antioch, planning to forcibly expel the Provençals from the city. Raymond hired more knights and headed back to Ma‘arra. With the help of his new subjects, or mercenaries, he would begin to fortify the city as the new capital of his own Syrian principality—a rival and enemy to Bohemond’s capital at Antioch.23

  But even before Raymond’s return, the army’s poor took control of the situation. They had either heard how badly the council at Rugia was going or they simply didn’t care. They said among themselves, “Huh. Quarrels because of Antioch and quarrels because of Ma‘arra, and in every other place that God would give us, our princes fight and the army grows smaller. Certainly there will no more be a fight about this city.” And they began to dismantle the walls. As the demolition progressed, it seemed yet another miracle. The weak and the infirm pushed away rocks so large that three or four pairs of oxen could not have moved them. The bishop of Albara, recoiling at the forces he had let loose, ran among the people trying to convince them to stop. The vandals hid when they saw him approach with his guards, but as soon as he had departed, they left their hiding places and returned to methodically destroying the city.

  Once Raymond arrived, he flew into a new rage at what was happening. When he had heard how the bishops and the nobles had been unable to deter the people from their purpose, however, “he understood that there was something godly there,” and he ordered the men who had come with him, originally to fortify the place, instead to destroy the walls completely. He had given up, temporarily, dreams of a Syrian principality and was now embracing anew his mission to guide and protect the poor. In preparation for leaving, he announced that he would lead one more foraging expedition through Syrian territory for the benefit of his starving people—food other than the rotten bodies of the dead, upon which the Franks had continued to dine, with varying degrees of secrecy.24

  During this series of raids around Ma‘arra, the Provençals killed many Saracens, though on their return a Turkish raiding party dispatched six or seven of the poor. Remarkably, the chaplain Raymond observed, each of these poor men was found to have a cross branded onto his right shoulder. Word of this sign spread back to the garrison in the city, but not everyone believed it. Another faked miracle? To prove the story true, the count sent to the city “one of the dead who was still breathing.” His body was so battered and torn that “he had barely enough of it left to cover his soul.” But he survived for several days and convinced the doubters of the miracle: Christ alone had burned this sign onto his body.

  The crusade was still on track. Raymond had maintained the goodwill of his followers, though he had now tied his prestige even more closely to the poor and to the dreams of Peter Bartholomew. At last, on January 13, 1098, the Provençal army processed solemnly out of Ma‘arra, believing that Jerusalem was only a few days ahead. Count Raymond was a barefoot penitent. It was still his army, but it was Peter Bartholomew’s crusade. And the crusaders’ sense of purpose had, if anything, grown stronger from having slaughtered and feasted on the enemy.25

  16

  Trial by Fire

  (January 1099–April 1099)

  Raymond had no intention of going to Jerusalem without the other princes. Indeed, the next three months of the crusade would look very much like the previous three. The armies stayed divided, and the princes continued to pursue their own ends, sometimes in competition with each other. The armies did move more deliberately to the south, keeping close to the coast, but the focus of the leaders remained on acquiring cities and territories in Syria rather than making a quick advance on Jerusalem.

  This seemingly aimless period grew out of an ongoing crisis in leadership. Without Adhémar of le Puy, no one could effectively unite the different regional and linguistic divisions within the army. But another struggle was occurring at the same time. It grew out of the princes’ personalities and the increasingly conspicuous rifts between the Provençals and the northern Europeans, but it also transcended politics and regional identity. At heart it was a debate about what the crusade meant. This conflict had dogged the expedition from its beginnings, with Pope Urban II and Peter the Hermit offering competing visions about Jerusalem and why Christians needed to go there. The more radical ideas of Peter the Hermit and Emicho of Flonheim had survived the disasters that befell the first wave of crusaders and perhaps had helped inspire the increasingly frenetic followers of Raymond of Saint-Gilles. In the months between the cannibalism of Ma‘arra and the final march on Jerusalem, the number of visionaries would increase, and the content of their visions would grow ever more radical until—finally—the leaders would force Peter Bartholomew, the most extreme of these visionaries, to undergo, quite literally, a trial by fire, where the Franks would turn directly to God and ask for an immediate verdict as to the truth of the apocalyptic crusade.

  Rendezvous at Arqa

  The day after Raymond left Ma‘arra, his followers crossed paths with a contingent of Normans led by Duke Robert and Tancred. For a brief moment, it must have seemed to everyone that all parts of the crusading host were finally reassembling after the long winter of 1098, ready for Jerusalem. And, indeed, Raymond, Robert, and Tancred did make quick progress. Supplies had suddenly become, if not abundant, sufficient, and even the perpetually dour Raymond of Aguilers noted with approval how the nobles actually were sharing their wealth with the poor. The health of everyone in the army improved markedly. Rumor of the brutalities at Ma‘arra had spread throughout northern Syria, and most cities were now willing to offer terms rather than risk a siege and the attendant consequences. The roads to Jerusa
lem were opening.

  But a minor disagreement arose as the armies marched near the coastal town of Jabala. Raymond’s inclination was to change course and lay siege to it. The rest of the army wanted to press on, and the ordinary soldiers found a surprising spokesperson in Tancred. “God has bestowed his presence on the poor people and us. Should we now stray from the path?” It was impossible, Tancred argued, for so few soldiers to conquer all of the Saracen towns between Antioch and Jerusalem. There were, apparently, only 5,000 men left from the original—as he estimated it—200,000 warriors who had departed Europe. They needed reinforcements. “Do we really expect people to come from our homeland when they hear that we have conquered Antioch and Jabala and the rest of the Saracen cities? But let us go to Jerusalem, our reason for setting out, and surely God will give it to us.” Once Jerusalem fell, the other places would surrender out of fear and awe at what the Franks had done, and then tens of thousands of reinforcements would surely follow, to see the Holy Sepulcher, if nothing else. Tancred’s argument carried the day for a time. The armies continued south.1