Prince of Legend (10 page)

There was no sort of rush; the tactic was one step at a time along the entire line, take on your enemy individually, force him onto his back foot by the ferocity of your assault, then press forward in such a way as to make him take a full step to the rear. That achieved, stand your ground for the counter-assault, then, when that tires, repeat the manoeuvre, all of which was done with shouted orders from every one of the leaders to mark their banners.

There comes a time, having achieved such a success more than once, that fear starts to appear in the eyes of your enemies, not least because this cannot be continued without those forced into retreat beginning to fall either to wounds or death; the Turks, for all their valour, knew they were unable to match on an individual basis the fighting ability and weapon reach of European knights and now that was being relentlessly driven home.

Soon the ability of those in reserve, there to fill the gaps, falters and openings appear as they are too slow to fill in. The first true break, a wide opening, came in front of Godfrey of Bouillon, who looked along the line to the towering figure of Bohemund and yelled of his success.

This had the Count of Taranto, who had already been required to step over six dead bodies, redoubling the strength of his blows, and they were mighty, for of all the magnates he was the most potent as well as the freshest. His one step at a time became two as the enemy melted before his assault, this matched by those at his side, Vermandois included, for if he was a fool he was also a fighter; very soon it was three and four as the Turkish line began to crumble.

‘Blow the horns,’ he yelled, having no idea where now stood those who would do so, but he knew from the reaction of those lining the walls, and their hysterical cheering, that the critical time had come. The priests on the battlements were no longer praying for deliverance, they were shrieking encouragement, waving their crosses to excite and advance with as much vigour as the knights below swung their swords and axes.

The final break was, as ever, sudden, a collective awareness along the whole Turkish line that if they sought to hold they would die. It only took so very few to seek to save themselves for that to multiply and induce panic in even the most stalwart followers of the Prophet. For all the promises of paradise, life becomes more important than faith and that brought for Bohemund the next difficulty: with the enemy breaking before them, how could he control the next phase of the battle?

In truth he could not, and soon, his voice hoarse from yelling, he gave up even trying; the Turks were running, heading up the roadway
that led back to the Iron Bridge, enclosed and narrowed by orchards, the men they had so cruelly tormented in wild pursuit. At the head of that chase Bohemund saw what happened when they clashed with the forward elements of Kerbogha’s host, not least the man himself, busy trying to rally his best and fleeing troops.

His cries were ignored and soon the retreating soldiers were in amongst those coming up to do battle, spreading the thought of defeat by their mere flight. The leading elements of the main host soon turned and fled into the trees, to further infect those at their rear, which turned the whole of the Atabeg’s army into more of a rabble as they sought safety.

For many that was a false hope, they were cut down by Crusader weapons to litter the roadway and fields of fruit trees, while to the rear others, who had failed to make the road, were being forced into the River Orontes, a few to swim to the opposite bank, many more to drown.

To run near a full league is not possible in chain mail and it is far from easy without it, unless panic aids your efforts, the advent of which brought death to many of Kerbogha’s captains, this while their charges now fled in any direction that they thought safe. By the time Bohemund and his fellow magnates reached the main encampment there was not an enemy in sight, from the general himself to the man employed to wipe his arse.

But it was not deserted: it was full of the defenders of Antioch, looting with gusto and not just the valuable objects. There was food in such quantity as had not been seen for an age and, less honourably, the women the host had abandoned suffered as women do in such situations, ravaged before being killed by men suffused with bloodlust.

Some Apulian knights had secured Kerbogha’s black pavilion, very
obvious by his flying standard, and Bohemund, first to the flap, stood aside to let Adémar enter ahead of him, as the papal legate and titular Crusade leader. Even a man who had seen the inside of the Vatican and the palaces of Constantinople stopped, so impressed was he by what he saw. No different to other rich men, the Atabeg of Mosul was a man who travelled with his wealth and there it was for each and every man to help himself if they so desired.

‘Set up a place of collection,’ Adémar instructed. ‘All valuables, all food to be brought to one point for even distribution by rank.’

If the men with him agreed to this they did so with hidden humour: the Bishop had as much chance of getting all the plunder into one surrendered place as he had of flying to Jerusalem. Yet it mattered not: judging by what was in this one pavilion, not least in the chests of gold and silver that Kerbogha had been obliged to abandon, there was enough for all.

When the Crusader army fell back on Antioch, with the light of the day fading away to darkness, they left behind not a single object, not even a tent. Kerbogha’s great encampment had become an empty and barren field and, as a bonus, the only survivor of the men Vermandois had lost at the Iron Bridge – filthy, albeit verminous – had been released from his dungeon.

If Raymond of Toulouse had really been sick, he had mustered enough strength when told of the victory to get himself up to the citadel and demand that they haul down Kerboga’s banner and replace it with his own, prior to being invited to formally surrender the following day. Thus when dawn came the sight of the Occidental flag was plain for all to see, not least to the man who had commanded the triumph of what was already being called the Great Battle of Antioch.

Not long after daylight a furious Bohemund was once more stood with his nephew and Firuz on the narrow bit of flat ground before the citadel where he had first and uselessly called for its surrender, seeking to control his anger at the sight of Raymond’s banner. The man Firuz was obliged to address was not Shams ad-Daulah, who had obviously abandoned his post.

Outside the main walls, to the rear, the camp that had been there was as deserted and barren as the one they had left the night before; the men who had rested there had, like the rest of Kerbogha’s host, taken flight and the place had been stripped bare of everything of value. Yet a token force had been left to hold the citadel and had no doubt been encouraged to martyr themselves for the sake of the safety of their leader.

‘Bohemund, Count of Taranto,’ Firuz shouted, ‘stands before you and asks how that flag you fly comes to be where his should be?’

‘That is not the flag of Bohemund?’

‘Ask him what kind of fool he is?’ Bohemund spat when that was translated.

Firuz, thinking that unwise, merely advised him of the truth, to then be told by the man left in command that had they known it would never have been raised, for they had seen from these very walls to whom the victory had been granted on the Antioch Plain.

‘A lie, of course,’ Firuz suggested, as the Occidental Cross was hurriedly lowered, ‘but a harsh one for which to punish them.’

‘Then tell him the terms are simple, Firuz. He and his men can march unmolested out of the rear gate of the fortress and head east to safety. They may take their weapons but nothing else and they must leave open these gates before us. I give my word not to enter until they are gone.’

Such a message took time to translate but the garrison had no choice but to accept: the citadel might be formidable but it could not hold out for ever without support and that was not going to come at any time in the foreseeable future; to stay was to die. So the answer came back as agreement and it must have been anticipated because the citadel was abandoned before a glass of sand had run through the neck of the timepiece and Bohemund, with his nephew and Robert of Salerno at his heels, marched in.

‘Robert,’ Bohemund said, handing Robert his banner, ‘for the honour of Apulia, set this flying from the staff that is now bare.’

‘Shall I go down and tell Raymond to take his flag off the Bridge Gate too?’ asked Tancred. ‘He cannot dispute Antioch with you now.’

‘Let it fly there, nephew, for it signifies nothing.’

R
aymond was not a man to give up lightly; not only did he hang on to the Bridge Gate and keep his standard flying, he moved quickly to seize the site of the ruined fort of La Mahomerie, the very point from which Bohemund had directed his battle. Thus he controlled the roads to both St Simeon and Alexandretta, which once more meant any supplies thereof.

The banner of the de Hautevilles might fly from the citadel and the battlements of Antioch but the Count of Toulouse was still not prepared to acknowledge Bohemund as the man who held title and that was followed by a display of avarice that staggered many, given his lack of effort: he claimed, and got from Adémar, his full share of the spoils from Kerbogha’s pavilion to fill coffers already bulging from the alms committed to the Holy Lance.

With the roads now open to the north, news filtered through of the way Alexius Comnenus had deserted them, putting his own safety and
survival above the very notion of their existence, retiring all the way to Nicaea and abandoning, indeed scorching, everything the Crusaders had achieved in a year of brutal campaigning. It was telling that while most of his peers despaired of this, and Bohemund actively condemned it, Raymond found ready excuses for the Emperor’s behaviour.

‘He thought us lost, sensed that to come to our rescue would see his destruction as well as that of the Eastern Christian Empire, was fearful of another Manzikert where the imperial army was destroyed. Surely we must allow that such an outcome would not be welcome to anyone who professes faith in Christ the Redeemer.’

‘What I see,’ Bohemund responded, ‘is a man who cares more for his city and his title than he does for his God, his religion or those committed to his aid.’

‘It does not show him in a good light, I grant you,’ wheezed Adémar, who was looking to be in a poor state, unlike Toulouse, who for all his claims of a recurring malady appeared remarkably robust, his face ruddy and his eyes flashing. ‘But who amongst us has not made errors?’

‘Your compassion is admirable, Bishop,’ Godfrey de Bouillon suggested, to a round of nodded agreement.

‘Compassion is one thing,’ Raymond asserted with real force, ‘the rights of the Emperor are another. We are obliged to hand possession of the city over to his control and I will not countenance that we should act in any other way.’

‘So you do not feel betrayed?’

‘You made an oath to Alexius,’ Toulouse barked at Bohemund, before looking around at the others. ‘As did you all, only I declined. Is it irony or bad faith that causes it to fall to me to remind you of what you swore on the holy relics?’

‘I have said it once and I repeat it,’ Bohemund insisted. ‘Alexius swore on the same relics to support us. He has broken his oath and I contend it was one he never intended to keep, which releases us all from whatever commitment we made to him.’

‘Can you say,’ Vermandois asked, ‘that he never intended to keep it?’

‘I can say my family have been fighting Byzantium for decades and never once has their word been worth acceptance.’

‘I do not see that the word of your de Hauteville forbears was any more truthful.’

‘While I am sure, Count Raymond, that the lands around your domains will teem with those who feel your word is meaningless.’

‘My Lords!’ Adémar called, seeking to half rise from his chair and immediately sinking back.

‘Power,’ Bohemund added, ‘attracts such accusations to us all.’

If it was not an apology for insulting Toulouse it was enough to stay him from widening the breach to the point Adémar feared – open conflict between the knights of Apulia and those of Provence – and given that, he was content to let the Count of Taranto continue.

‘Recall how we were greeted as saviours in Constantinople?’

That produced wry smiles, if not from Toulouse, from everyone else; they had been greeted as threatening interlopers and hurried across the Bosphorus for fear they might attack the capital city.

‘We all have reasoned that the Emperor got more for his request for aid against the Turks than he had bargained for, a host so great he came to dread us as much as he feared them. Who amongst us did not expect Alexius to take the field in person and lead us?’

‘His duties precluded it,’ Toulouse protested.

‘Not his duties, Count Raymond, his policy! Alexius was content to use us to beat his long-time enemies but never to trust us, which is
why we had his general Tacitus along with us to ensure that whatever fief we took reverted immediately to an imperial possession. He had no faith we would do so unbidden.’

‘Which seems,’ Raymond sneered, ‘given the discussion we are now engaged in, to be a wise precaution.’

‘I expected him outside Nicaea,’ Normandy growled.

‘And I,’ added Flanders. ‘Yet he never moved from his camp while we laid siege. I cannot see why he failed to join with us, even just to show the numbers the defenders must face.’

Alexius had left the capital but had gone no further than a camp two days’ march from Nicaea. The whole siege and capture of the city was left to the Crusaders, apart from a token force of two thousand men under the aforementioned Tacitus who, in any event, took no part in the fighting. Yet when Nicaea surrendered it was Tacitus and his Byzantines who marched into the city and raised the yellow and black imperial banner.

‘He kept his distance in case we failed, my friends, and if we had he would have made offers of peace to the city and the Sultan of Rüm, perhaps even offered him gold as a payment for allowing us to dare besiege his city.’

‘You cannot say that with certainty.’

‘While I wonder, Count Hugh, why it needs saying at all. Alexius has not been part of our progress at any time. He has lagged behind, securing what fiefs were at one time Byzantine, many not held since centuries past, leaving us to march on and face whatever the Turks decide to put in our path.’

Bohemund paused then, enough to even let Count Raymond object, but he could not gainsay it.

‘When news came of his flight back to Constantinople I asked
the man who brought the message if Alexius had fought any major battles before that and the answer was no. He used his fleet to secure the coast and then proceeded with a caution designed more to achieve the surrender of any towns he passed than to join us and fight off our shared enemy. So we are the stalking horse, the prey who, if we beat the infidel, he will pat on the head and dazzle us with a tiny part of his treasure. If we fail, he will not even stoop to bury our bones. Yet be assured we will see Alexius now, when we have secured a city so prized as Antioch without the spilling of a drop of Byzantine blood.’

‘And much of our own,’ Godfrey de Bouillon commented, though there was no force in the response; it was given more in sorrow than any anger.

‘Yet he will demand we hand it over to him.’

‘An oath is an oath.’

‘It is, Count Raymond, until it is broken. I say here and publicly that the Emperor Alexius has broken his word by failing to support us here and has thus freed me of mine to him and Byzantium, which I suggest applies to all who likewise made their pledge.’

Raymond must have sensed that the mood of the meeting was again not in his favour, so he played what had to be a last card – for all decisions, it had been agreed at the outset, had to be unanimous.

‘While I insist that the Emperor be asked what it is he wishes for the city.’

‘An envoy must go to him,’ cried Vermandois.

Raymond was quick to jump on that and he replied in a sonorous tone that was at odds with his widely known opinion of the scatterbrained, glory-seeking Frenchman.

‘Count Hugh, I can think of no man better qualified to undertake such a mission than yourself.’

‘I am humbled,’ Vermandois responded, though with a manner very much not that: he could not hide the notion that such a mission might add lustre to a reputation he already held to be glowing. ‘But I will only accede if it is the opinion of the whole council.’

‘Count Bohemund?’ Adémar asked, having got nodded assent from the others.

That made the man questioned smile but he too gave silent agreement; Alexius could be asked till he was blue what he wanted of Antioch – without he led an army to back up his wishes they were so much air.

Raymond had thrown delay into the discussion: with that nothing was decided and Bohemund could hold what he had and time was an ally. Yet it was not agreement, nor the peace that Adémar had set out to achieve; Raymond of Toulouse and Bohemund were as far apart as ever, perhaps even more so, and it was with a weary and false expression that he brought the discussion to an end.

‘Good. Count Hugh, I beg you to make ready to go to the Emperor and seek his instructions. Until then, we must put our minds to what progress we can make to Jerusalem.’

That left another more vital point hanging in the air and one that also acted in Bohemund’s favour: no military leader with an ounce of sense would progress south to the Holy City unless he knew Antioch, on his line of communication and his main source of supply, was secure, and to be that someone of ability had to hold it safe.

Not that such a matter was the sole concern of the council: it was still high summer with the hottest month of the year yet to arrive. Having experienced such temperatures the previous year, not one of the leaders saw sense in repeating the horror of what had
so very nearly been a death march across the barren, waterless and deliberately scorched lands of Anatolia.

‘But surely the Holy City awaits,’ Adémar insisted, ‘and after we have humbled Kerbogha what infidel will stand in our way?’

‘General Summer will kill us, not the Turks or the Arabs,’ Normandy responded. ‘Let us wait till the weather cools and the stocks of food will be high in the country we pass through. Then we can move swiftly, in such a way and at such speed I would not be surprised to see Jerusalem surrender as soon as they sight our banners from the Temple Mount.’

That was gilding the lily; their enemies had rarely melted away before them and were unlikely to do so now, but the point left unsaid was the army was not ready for an immediate advance: from brave knights to the lowest
milities
all had suffered privation, desperate battle and an abiding fear of damnation and death, which had only just been lifted. To seek to march them on immediately and in searing heat would be folly.

‘Let us recover our strength and our purpose,’ Duke Robert continued, looking round to ensure he was speaking for all, ‘and let us have time to send word to our homes of our success and to seek men to make up for our losses.’

‘That could take months,’ Adémar protested.

Raymond intervened then, though no one was certain of his motives. Was it to allow time for Alexius to come and take control of Antioch, or was it because he genuinely agreed with what had been said? In the calm months of summer, speedy sailing vessels could get to Provence and back to bring him men and money, though Apulia was even closer, so Bohemund would not be weakened by it.

‘Let it be so, Bishop Adémar. July and August are a furnace and September perhaps still too hot.’

‘October is reputed scarce better,’ added Flanders.

‘Let it be November, then.’ Given it was Godfrey de Bouillon who stated this, it had added weight; he was a hard man with whom to argue when it came to Jerusalem. ‘Then the temperature will be clement, to which we men of the north are more accustomed.’

Seeing the gloom on Adémar’s face, a man who could only advise, not command, Godfrey added with heartfelt enthusiasm, ‘And fear not, Your Grace: before the feast of Christmastide is upon us, you will say Mass in the Holy City.’

Adémar rubbed a weary hand across a heavily creased brow; where now that so flawless countenance which he had brought from his Provençal home? Even if he had donned armour and fought alongside these magnates, they were the men who knew about soldiering. For all his disappointment and the fact that he lacked energy there was real passion in his voice when he announced his agreement.

‘I will not delay past the first day of November, even if I have to go on alone.’

Busy fighting off Kerbogha, the Crusaders had not given any time to the restoration of the Christian faith; they had that now and every church that had been converted into a mosque was reconsecrated. Yet even within that lay dispute: the Patriarch and the local priests, men who had survived a double siege, much persecution and two times the amount of hunger, were adherents of the Greek Creed.

Those who had come with the Crusade were firmly Latin and wished that the places of worship, having been freed by Roman
Christians, should celebrate their liturgy in that rite and that the man appointed Bishop of Antioch should be one of their own.

‘Which I most heartily support, Your Grace.’

‘While I cannot agree, Count Bohemund,’ came the reply from a somewhat restored bishop, and it was not without a barely disguised waspish tone at odds with his habitual diplomacy, ‘when Pope Urban appointed me to this post it was with the express instruction to take back from the infidel those lands and places of worship once Christian. In what we have conquered that means the Orthodox rite and I gave my word to the Emperor Alexius that I would fulfil my task as it was given to me.’

‘I have in mind to meet the wishes of the flock you lead.’

‘While I have in mind the wish to meet the dictates of my conscience.’

As usual, much was not being said: Adémar suspected that Bohemund wanted a Latin bishop for his own advantage; it was part of his ambition to have Antioch as his possession. A Byzantine cleric would owe allegiance to and take his instructions from Constantinople and he would also resist any attempt to turn the population towards Rome. If Alexius Comnenus did appear and demand the city be turned over to him, a Greek Patriarch and a rigidly Orthodox flock would make holding out against him much more difficult.

The Bishop also knew he was on safe ground: this was a matter in which no layman could interfere, however strong his reputation or his determination. Pope Urban was keen to mend the schism that had split the two branches of the faith these last forty years and throughout the reign of half a dozen of his predecessors, arguments on the true interpretation of the Holy Trinity and the status of the Bishop of Rome as head of the Christian faith.