A History of the Crusades-Vol 2 (5 page)

It should have been possible for the two Dukes
to have caught up with the Count of Nevers and have strengthened their army by
the inclusion of his forces. But the Count of Nevers wished to unite with the
Count of Burgundy, and Duke William could not be expected to combine with an
army led by his old enemy, the Count of Toulouse, while Welf of Bavaria, an old
enemy of the Emperor Henry IV, probably had little liking for Henry’s
Constable, Conrad. The Count of Nevers hastened ahead to Ankara, while the
Aquitano-Bavarian army waited for five weeks by the Bosphorus, then moved
slowly along the main road to Dorylaeum and Konya. By the time that it reached
Dorylaeum the Nivernais army had already passed through the town on its return
journey and was well on the way to Konya. The passage of another army along the
road a few days previously did not make things easier for the Aquitanians and
the Bavarians. The small available supplies of food had already been taken; for
which, characteristically, the Crusaders blamed the Byzantines. Like the
Nivernais, they found the wells dry or blocked. Philomelium was deserted, and
they pillaged it. The Turkish garrison at Konya, which had withstood the
Nivernais, abandoned the city before this larger army; but before they left
they collected and took with them all the foodstuffs there and stripped bare
the orchards and gardens in the suburbs. The Crusaders found little to refresh
them. It was about this moment that a hundred miles ahead Kilij Arslan and
Malik Ghazi were massacring the men of Nevers.

1101: The Battle
of Heraclea

The Crusaders struggled on from Konya, hungry
and thirsty, through the desert towards Heraclea. Turkish horsemen now appeared
on their flank, firing arrows into their midst and cutting off foraging parties
and stragglers. Early in September they entered Heraclea, which they found
deserted as Konya had been. Just beyond the town flowed the river, one of the
few Anatolian streams to flow abundantly throughout the summer. The Christian
warriors, half-mad from thirst, broke their ranks to rush to the welcoming
water. But the Turkish army lay concealed in the thickets on the river banks.
As the Crusaders surged on in disorder, the Turks sprang out on them and
surrounded them. There was no time to reform ranks. Panic spread through the
Christian army. Horsemen and infantry were mixed in a dreadful stampede; and as
they stumbled in their attempt to flee they were slaughtered by the enemy. The
Duke of Aquitaine, followed by one of his grooms, cut his way out and rode into
the mountains. After many days of wandering through the passes he found his way
to Tarsus. Hugh of Vermandois was badly wounded in the battle; but some of his
men rescued him and he too reached Tarsus. But he was a dying man. His death
took place on 18 October and they buried him there in the Cathedral of St Paul.
He never fulfilled his vow to go to Jerusalem. Welf of Bavaria only escaped by
throwing away all his armour. After several weeks he arrived with two or three
attendants at Antioch. The Archbishop Thiemo was taken prisoner and martyred
for his faith. The fate of the Margravine of Austria is unknown. Later legends
said that she ended her days a captive in a far-off harem, where she gave birth
to the Moslem hero Zengi. More probably she was thrown from her litter in the
panic and trampled to death.

The three Crusades of the year 1101 had come
each of them to a disastrous finish; and their disasters affected the whole story
of the Crusading movement. The Turks had avenged their defeat at Dorylaeum.
They were not, after all, to be ejected from Anatolia. The road across the
peninsula remained unsafe for Christian armies, Frankish or Byzantine. When the
Byzantines wished later to intervene in Syria, they had to operate at the end
of communication lines that were long and very vulnerable; while Frankish
immigrants from the west were afraid to travel overland through Constantinople,
except in vast armies. They could only come by sea; and few of them could
afford the fare. And instead of the thousands of useful colonists that the year
should have brought to Syria and Palestine, only a small number of quarrelsome
leaders who had lost their armies and their reputations on the way penetrated
through to the Frankish states, where there was already a sufficiency of
quarrelsome leaders.

Not all the Christians, however, had cause to
regret the disasters of the year 1101. To the Italian maritime cities the
failure to secure the land-route across Asia Minor meant an increase in
influence and wealth. For they possessed the ships that provided an alternative
means of communication with the Frankish states of the East. Their co-operation
was all the more necessary; and they insisted on payment in commercial
concessions. The Armenians in the Taurus mountains, particularly the Roupenian
princes, welcomed circumstances that made it difficult for Byzantium to
re-establish its Empire over the districts where they lived; though the
Armenians farther to the east had less cause for rejoicing. Their chief foe was
the Danishmend emir, whose triumph soon encouraged him to attack them. And the
Normans at Antioch, who, like the Roupenians, feared the Byzantines more than
the Turks, were given a useful respite. Bohemond still languished in captivity;
but his regent, Tancred, took full advantage of the situation to consolidate
the principality at the Emperor’s expense. Fate soon placed a trump-card in his
hand.

1102: The Arrest
of Count Raymond

The Duke of Aquitaine, the Count of Bavaria and
the Count of Nevers had already arrived with their few surviving comrades at
Antioch by the autumn of 1101; but the leaders of the Franco-Lombard Crusade
were still at Constantinople. Alexius found it hard to forgive them their
follies. Even Raymond, on whom he had built great hopes, had disappointed him.
At the end of the year the western princes decided to continue their
pilgrimage, and Raymond asked leave to rejoin his wife and his army at
Lattakieh. The Emperor willingly let them go and provided ships to convey them
to Syria. About the new year Stephen of Blois, Stephen of Burgundy, the
Constable Conrad and Albert of Biandrate disembarked at Saint Symeon and
hastened up to Antioch, where Tancred gave them a warm welcome. But Count
Raymond’s ship was separated from the others and put into the port of Tarsus.
As he stepped ashore, a knight called Bernard the Stranger came up and arrested
him for having betrayed Christendom by his flight from the field of Mersivan.
Raymond’s small bodyguard was powerless to rescue him. He was taken away under
escort and was handed over to Tancred.

CHAPTER III

THE NORMAN
PRINCES OF ANTIOCH

‘
These all do
contrary to the decrees of Caesar’
ACTS XVII, 7

Bohemond’s defeat and capture by Malik Ghazi
the Danishmend, alarming though it had seemed at the time, had not been without
its compensations for the Frankish princes. Antioch was in need of a regent;
and Tancred was the obvious candidate to take his uncle’s place. King Baldwin
was thus enabled to rid himself of his most dangerous vassal in Palestine;
while Tancred was glad to extricate himself from a position that was
embarrassing and insecure and to move to a sphere that offered greater scope
and independence. Tancred left Palestine in March 1101, only stipulating that
if his uncle returned from captivity within three years and Antioch needed him
no more, his fief of Galilee should be restored to him. It was therefore to
Baldwin’s interest as well as to Tancred’s that Bohemond should not be released
from his prison too soon. No attempt was made to negotiate with his captor.

1101: Tancred
and Byzantium

Tancred was a correct regent. He did not assume
the title of Prince of Antioch. Though he struck coins, the legend, written in
bad Greek, merely entitled him the ‘servant of God’; and at times he called
himself the ‘Grand Emir’. It is probable that public opinion in Antioch would
have restrained him had his ambitions carried him farther. The Normans still
regarded Bohemond as their leader; and Bohemond had a loyal friend in the
Patriarch whom he had appointed just before his captivity, the Latin Bernard of
Valence, in whose favour he had ejected the Greek, John the Oxite. Tancred’s
policy was the same as Bohemond’s, internally to consolidate the administration
of the principality and to Latinize the Church, and externally to enrich
himself at the expense of the Byzantines and of the neighbouring Moslem
princes. But his ambitions were more local and less world-wide than his uncle’s.

His first preoccupation was to guard himself
against any attack from Byzantium. The disastrous Crusades of 1101 greatly
helped him; for the resurgence of the Anatolian Turks meant that the Emperor
could not venture for some time to send an army right across the peninsula to
the far south-east. Tancred believed that attack was the best defence. So, in
the summer of 1101, probably as soon as the news of the battle at Mersivan
reached him, he sent troops into Cilicia to recapture Mamistra, Adana and
Tarsus, which the Byzantines had reoccupied three years before. The local
Byzantine forces were not strong enough to oppose him. When William of
Aquitaine and Hugh of Vermandois arrived as fugitives at Tarsus at the end of
September they found Tancred’s lieutenant, Bernard the Stranger, in command of
the city.

Next, Tancred turned his attention to
Lattakieh, the Byzantine port that the Normans had long coveted. It was more
formidable; for its Byzantine garrison was reinforced by Raymond’s Provencal
troops and was protected by a squadron of the Byzantine navy. Before he dared
attack, Tancred negotiated to secure the aid of Genoese ships. Meanwhile he
occupied the hinterland, and attempted to capture Jabala, to the south.
Bohemond had sent a small unsuccessful expedition against Jabala in the summer
of 1100, in the course of which his Constable had been taken prisoner. Tancred’s
expedition in the summer of 1101 was equally ineffective. But it induced Ibn
Sulaiha, the qadi of Jabala, to hand the city over to the atabeg of Damascus;
and he himself retired to Damascus to enjoy a quiet old age. The atabeg,
Toghtekin, sent his son Buri as Governor. But Buri was an unpopular ruler; and
the citizens of Jabala after a few months ejected him and put themselves under
the protection of the Banu Ammar of Tripoli. Tancred then withdrew his troops
from the district.

His capture of Raymond’s person enabled Tancred
to resume his scheme against Lattakieh. He had incarcerated Raymond at Antioch;
but the Patriarch Bernard and Raymond’s Crusading colleagues were shocked by
his behaviour. At their request he set him free; but Raymond had first to swear
an oath that he would never again interfere in northern Syrian affairs. On his
release Raymond marched southward, to attack Tortosa. In conformity with his oath,
as he passed by Lattakieh he gave orders to his troops and to his Countess to
evacuate the town and join him. The Byzantine garrison was left without
Provencal support. Then, in the early spring of 1102 Tancred advanced on
Lattakieh. But its walls were strong and the garrison fought well, while units
of the imperial navy ensured their supplies. The siege lasted for nearly a
year; but during the first weeks of 1103 Tancred, who had by now hired ships
from the Genoese with which to interrupt communications between Lattakieh and
Cyprus, lured the men of the garrison by a stratagem outside the city walls and
there fell on them and made them prisoners. The city then capitulated to him.

1102: The
Malevolence of Bishop Manasses

Such actions did not please the Emperor
Alexius. He had already been angered by the exile of the Greek Patriarch of
Antioch, John the Oxite, and by the news that all the higher Greek clergy were
now being dismissed and replaced by Latins. Early in 1102 he received a letter
from King Baldwin, who had heard the rumour that Byzantine non-co-operation had
helped to wreck the Crusades of 1101, and who wrote to beg the Emperor to give
his full support to any subsequent Crusade. The letter was conveyed by a Bishop
called Manasses, who had gone to Palestine with Ekkehard in 1101 and was
returning from Jerusalem. It seems to have been courteously worded and was
accompanied by gifts; and Alexius therefore thought that he could talk frankly
to the Bishop and tell him all his grievances. But herein he misjudged his man.
The Bishop was a better Latin than Christian, and had no sympathy with the
Greeks. At the Emperor’s request he went on to Italy and reported to the Pope
everything that had been said to him; but he did so in such terms that the Pope’s
fury was roused against Byzantium. Had Pope Urban II still been alive, no harm
would have been done; for Urban had large views and no wish to quarrel with
eastern Christendom. But his successor, Paschal II, was a smaller man,
short-sighted and easily influenced. He readily fell in with the vulgar
Frankish view that the Emperor was an enemy. Alexius obtained no redress.

Tancred next attempted to interfere in the
affairs of the kingdom of Jerusalem. King Baldwin banished the Patriarch
Daimbert in 1101. Tancred at once welcomed him to Antioch, where he put the
Church of St George at his disposal. When, a few months later, Baldwin was
defeated by the Saracens at Ramleh and asked for help from the princes in the
north, Tancred refused to come unless Daimbert were reinstated at Jerusalem.
Baldwin agreed; and Tancred’s reputation was thereby enhanced. But it fell when
Daimbert was condemned by a council and exiled once more. Tancred again offered
him hospitality but did not continue to press his cause.