by Jack Ludlow
Yet with a complicated and difficult empire to run it was not at the forefront of his thinking until it was brought into sharp focus by the arrival at the city gates of a dishevelled Count Hugh of Vermandois, quickly shown into the imperial presence and Alexius sat on his throne.
‘My Lord of Hainault and I were attacked on the way here, robbed and left without horses, which delayed our bringing to you the news from Antioch.’
‘And where is Hainault?’ Alexius asked in Latin, which Vermandois had used, unwilling to hear that these two men might be the only survivors of an action which he did not think of without a twinge of guilt. If he had been given no choice but to leave the Crusade in dire straits it had not been a comfortable decision to make.
‘Dead, Your Eminence, from wounds he took fighting off our assailants. That too delayed me as I sought to care for him.’
Alexius signalled that Vermandois, whose voice was hoarse, be given something to drink, which was brought to him and greedily consumed. ‘I fear the news you have for me, but I beg you not to be hasty. What has occurred is only a measure of God’s will …’
‘Such a victory can be nothing else!’ Vermandois exclaimed, cutting right across Alexius, which would have got him a glare had the words he used not shocked his listener. ‘Praise be to God.’
Count Hugh began to babble, speaking so quickly that the Emperor, despite his knowledge of Latin, struggled both to keep up and make sense of what was being said. How could it be that the Crusaders had beaten Kerbogha’s mighty host? Was this man before him suffering from too much exposure to the sun? By calming Vermandois down and posing a series of sharp questions he came to realise the truth and it was not news that pleased him, even if those he thought perished were in the main still alive.
Antioch was held by the Crusade, which might have been good; Bohemund held the citadel, which was not, especially when Count Hugh, albeit reluctantly, admitted that the Count of Taranto had felt abandoned, indeed betrayed. The fact that all the lords had felt so was glossed over, for Count Hugh was no partisan of the Apulian leader, even if he had given him an opportunity to add lustre to his name, one he was keen to not only relate but to massively embellish.
‘You do not tell me that your Crusader lords are eager that I should claim my rights to Antioch?’
‘Count Raymond of Toulouse has defended those most assiduously, as do I, which is why I came to inform you that the city is now secure.’
‘But not, it seems, Count Bohemund?’
‘I fear he has ambitions of his own.’
‘Count Hugh, you are weary and in need of rest, not to mention a more fitting set of clothes. I beg you retire to a chamber I shall provide for you to bathe and take sustenance. Then, later, we will speak more of this and you can describe in detail to me this Battle of Antioch and how the crusading army, under your command, achieved your victory.’
When Vermandois had left, Alexius remained in a contemplative state on his throne, yet none of the courtiers observing him could doubt the train of his thoughts, for if they had not, being Greeks, initially understood Count Hugh, the import of his words had soon been made plain.
Antioch was in the hands of the Crusade, the vital citadel held by a man he knew to be an enemy and in abandoning them to their fate he had given that adversary an excuse to repudiate his vows. He would hear tell of the battle and the surprising victory and would nod sagely when Vermandois told him of his astounding generalship, not a word of which he would believe, for if Count Hugh did not know of his limitations, Alexius, a fine commander himself, did.
Perhaps those waiting for their emperor to speak did not quite comprehend the meaning of what had been said, but Alexius had no doubts whatsoever: if he wanted to have control of Antioch it would not be achieved by demanding or even pleading that it be handed over. If he wished to press his claim he could only do so by the threat of force.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The relative ease of life in Cilicia and Northern Syria, making treaties, securing and garrisoning towns only too willing to open their gates, was interrupted when news came of the plague that had struck the region of Antioch, first cleaving through the port of St Simeon, killing a large party of newly arrived German knights come to join the Crusade, soon to spread up the road to the city itself.
If the lowly died in droves it was not a malaise to spare the mighty, for one of the victims was Ademar de Monteil, Bishop of Puy and that presaged a possible crisis, given Robert, Duke of Normandy, had moved his troops out of the city, which left the Apulian garrison of the citadel isolated and at risk of falling to disease.
Returning south, Bohemund, regardless of his concerns, had to be cautious in his progress, holding back — he later discovered his fellow magnates had adopted the same ploy — till the deadly fever had run its course and no more deaths were being reported from its effects.
That allowed them to re-enter Antioch and resume what was bound to be a more troubled negotiation regarding the next phase of the campaign, given the man who had held the peace between the factions was no longer present. It also allowed these princes to consider what had changed regarding their circumstances and assess what that implied for the future.
If the Apulians had indulged in a peaceful attempt to control the territories to the north the same could not be said of Raymond of Toulouse. In company with Robert of Flanders he had attacked the Muslim town of Albara, an ancient settlement, now fortified, surrounded by the near intact remains of both the Greeks and Romans who had occupied it in times past.
There, it transpired, he did great slaughter, sparing no one who was unwilling to convert to Christianity, his boast that he and Robert had shed the blood of many thousands and had also provided the slave markets of Antioch with so many souls of every age and sex that prices had collapsed.
Godfrey de Bouillon returned to the city with his numbers enhanced by the support from his brother Baldwin of Edessa, yet nothing had changed in his demeanour: he still hankered after the relief of Jerusalem with as much fervour as he had demonstrated previously and there remained about him that air of patent honesty which made him trusted whenever he chose to speak.
There was little doubt that the loss of the papal legate complicated matters. After a Mass was said for Ademar’s soul, they assembled once more in the old Governor’s Palace, the obvious need being unchanged: for an acknowledged leader to take control of the march to Jerusalem. Raymond was still by far the man with the most strength in terms of men and money and might have secured that had he not been so previously high-handed and now so boastful of his exploits in taking Albara after a short and bloody siege, as well as crowing of the massacre he had inflicted after his victory.
The town he had garrisoned, but more than that he had installed that which Bohemund had sought for Antioch: a Latin bishop who, if he had been consecrated by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, John the Oxite, nevertheless made it plain that he owed his allegiance to Rome. Every mosque in Albara was converted to become a place of Christian worship, which allowed Raymond to show himself as a representative of the true faith, which would sit well with the Pope should matters regarding leadership remain unresolved.
He was once more parading the Holy Lance around Antioch to raise his standing amongst the faithful, and was again employing bribery to seduce lances and long-serving captains away from his peers, this while he made no attempt to hide his supposition that the command was his by right; never men to willingly bow the knee they would not accede to presumption where even persuasion would have struggled.
Bohemund would not have stood against him if the debate had been open: the notion of getting the man who blocked his control of Antioch marching away with the light of salvation in his eyes was a tempting one. Yet he could not make his position plain for fear of being too direct regarding his own ambitions, not that they were in any way secret. But what might be known in such an arena as the Council of Princes could not be baldly stated: it was enough for the other princes
that he did not put himself forward for them to know his mind.
If no one was prepared to accede to Toulouse he was unwilling to acknowledge the only other candidate, Godfrey of Bouillon, and in amongst all this Antioch was still a running sore that both main protagonists realised could only be settled by that which was anathema to men supposedly crusading on behalf of the Holy Cross.
To the despair of the many pilgrims, whose numbers were now swollen by new and doubly eager arrivals transported to St Simeon, the date set for the march to Jerusalem slipped by: with no leader there could be no Crusade, while again, and for the same reasons as previously — the burden of supply for a large army as well as the risk of some incident sparking fighting between the Apulians and Provencals — the various armed contingents were obliged to disperse.
Once more the Count of Taranto moved north, but stopped short of going all the way back to Cilicia, the situation being too febrile. Yet he maintained about him a seeming air of confidence. No one who knew him, especially Tancred, who was closest of all, could be sure whether it was genuine or contrived.
‘Matters will resolve themselves. Even if still divided, my fellow princes cannot just delay and allow things to fester. They must move south or disperse back to their homes.’
Tancred slowly shook his head; the real point did not have to be stated: time was on Bohemund’s side, and if his nephew was of the opinion it was a less than gallant way to behave, he kept that to himself — he was still dependant on his uncle as his liege lord and that would remain the case until the purpose of the Crusade was reestablished.
‘That they will never do, Uncle — return home having failed, I mean. To do so would gain them nothing but the kind of ridicule heaped on Count Hugh.’
That made Bohemund laugh so loud his horse shied beneath him. With shipping now plying regularly to and from Europe, news had swiftly been borne to Syria of the way Vermandois had been greeted when he returned to France, which he had chosen to do from Constantinople rather than rejoin the Crusade. News of the victory at Antioch had preceded him, as had the name of the true victor, which led to his claims of personal leadership being treated as what they were, downright falsehoods.
Far from being cheered, as he had anticipated, Vermandois had been howled at by the mob as a coward, a liar and a deserter of the Cross. Denied the expected crowns of laurel, his surcoat was instead, it was reported, regularly decorated with clods of horseshit whenever he attempted to ride out, so much so that he never did so without a strong escort of personal retainers. If not clods of ordure, scorn was a fate that had also befallen Stephen of Blois, likewise back in his domains. If any of the other magnates even contemplated such a course, the way these two men had been received as inglorious failures was enough to kill off such a notion.
‘Prepare the men to move at once!’ For a man so normally confident in his demeanour, regardless of circumstance, Bohemund was clearly agitated and was obliged, as his nephew looked at him hard, to add his reasons. ‘Raymond has outwitted us.’
Further explanation had to wait until they were saddled and moving south as fast as their mounts could bear; sure he could leave matters to sort themselves out — that time was his friend — had led Bohemund to underestimate Raymond of Toulouse, who had proved he was not lacking in the kind of cunning for which the de Hautevilles were famed.
Aware that he could not take control of the walls of Antioch, and most assuredly not the citadel, while being utterly determined to deny control to the Count of Apulia, he had decided to secure for himself those regions essential for the supply of food to the city. The Ruj Valley, where he was already in control, was very much that, but only a part of the agricultural belt that fed such a major urban centre.
Antioch needed all that could be harvested from many different areas to keep healthy both the citizenry and any garrison, not to mention, as of now, the mass of newly arrived pilgrims waiting for the military elements of the Crusade to proceed south. Raymond had moved his lances from Albara, with a horde of Holy Lance-adoring pilgrims, on to a hugely fertile plateau called the Jabal as-Summaq.
This was an area the Crusaders, with Bohemund as joint commander with Robert of Flanders, had sought to exploit during their own siege when matters of supply became critical, only to suffer a major reverse, the mounted lances forced to abandon every cart they had with them, as well as the mass of food they had gathered over several weeks and the drovers who controlled their teams of oxen.
Worse had been the need to desert the milities who had accompanied the cavalry to carry out the work of gathering those supplies, which often amounted to exhorting them painfully from the farmers who had hidden food they needed to survive. Caught in open country and taken totally unawares by a Turkish army marching to the relief of Antioch, faced with archers on horseback in overwhelming numbers who they could not outrun, under leaders who lacked the mounted forces required to impose a check on the enemy, it became a bloody massacre.
After the fall of Antioch a knight called Raymond Pilet had detached himself from the Crusade, much in the manner earlier adopted by Baldwin of Edessa, and set off for the same purpose as that reprobate — namely to line his pockets and capture a fief that he could hold as his own. In that he had failed miserably, losing most of his lances and barely surviving the adventure. A fertile plateau it may be but Jabal as-Summaq was, for the Crusaders, also something of a graveyard.
That still rendered a tempting prospect for someone as powerful as Toulouse: no map was required to see that if his Provencal lances kept possession of the Bridge Gate at Antioch and thus access to the coast, then add to that the whole arc of territory that covered the southern approaches and thus deny Bohemund any of its produce, he could make holding the city without his acquiescence close to untenable.
‘I saw his gaze as being on Jerusalem but I should have realised that when he massacred and enslaved all those Muslims in Albara it was for a reason.’
If both Tancred and Bohemund had wondered at that bloodthirsty act, they had not been alone. It had been a tenet of the Crusade, for the very sound reason that it made tactical sense, not to make war on the non-combatant Muslim population outside the need to forage, which often involved inherent cruelties.
But outright butchery was different: enemy soldiers were routinely killed and often made to suffer before they died, that being a reciprocal part of fighting a determined enemy who rarely spared a Christian who fell into their hands. Raymond had, at Albara, broken that convention and it could only have been to spread terror.
‘And now he is moving to besiege Ma’arrat an-Numan, where that terror will prove to be a powerful weapon. It may fall to him for fear of what resistance might mean.’
The city stood on the road between Aleppo and Damascus as well as crossing an old and well-used trading route to the interior and was a wealthy centre of commerce with a mixed Muslim Armenian population. It was reputed to have strong walls, but if mighty Antioch had failed to keep out the Crusaders, then Ma’arrat an-Numan, a much less formidable fortress, would struggle to do so.
Taken, it would finish off the arc of possession that Raymond was seeking to the south of Antioch, giving him a solid line of both land and supply routes from the coast deep into the interior. Given its strategic importance, Bohemund could no more grant him the sole right to that city than Raymond of Toulouse would give him clear title to his own claims.
The country through which they marched, for all its fruitfulness, showed the ravages already of a passing army, with much of the place stripped of food, and given it was now November there was not going to be time for that to be replenished before the next harvest. A peasantry who had suffered before was called upon to feed another transient force of rapacious soldiers, that rendered doubly vicious by what had been extracted from them already, for no delay could be allowed lest the Apulians arrive too late and they must, when they made their goal, to have any security, do so with food of their own.
Throughout the march they c
ame across bands of pilgrims, some on their way from Antioch intent on joining with the man and the holy relic they saw as holding the key to their future. Other pilgrims, and more numerous, began to appear when they got closer to Ma’arrat an-Numan, ragged-looking figures seeking food, for when it came to sustenance the fighting men outside the city were a priority, which left the non-combatants to very much fend for themselves. No succour could be given these unfortunates regardless of their lamentations; the Apulians ignored their pleas with the same disregard as would the men with whom they had set out.
If it was relief to find that Raymond and his army were still camped outside the walls, it was equally obvious that the arrival of this new force was unwelcome and not just by the men in command. Knights and lances who fought for plunder, faced with a prosperous city they fully expected to capture, saw the addition of more lances and milities as a possible dilution of what they might gain from the eventual sack, so it came as no surprise they were greeted with a rate of catcalls, insults and demands that they be gone.
Against that, the forces of Raymond and Robert of Flanders, who had come with him, were making little headway against the Muslim part of the population, determined to resist for the very good reason that they were only too aware of the cost of failure. In terms of professional soldiers what they faced was apparently small, a few dozen at best, who formed the governor’s personal retainers, which should have made the siege a formality, but the opposite was the case.
The city, it seemed, was strong in the desire to resist. Having been offered terms of surrender and turned them down there was no other fate awaiting the Muslim inhabitants of Ma’arrat an-Numan than the ravages of a successful siege. If the lesson of Albara had failed to get them to open their gates, it still had an effect; it made the citizenry that formed the bulk of those opposing them doubly tenacious in defence. Raymond’s terror had worked against, not for him.