A History of the Crusades-Vol 2 (7 page)

Amongst the first to be taken prisoner was the
Archbishop Benedict. But, owing either to the compliance of his jailer, a
renegade Christian, or to an Antiochene counter-attack, he was soon rescued.
Baldwin and Joscelin fled together on horseback but were overtaken in the
river-bed. They were brought as prisoners to Soqman’s tent.

Rightly fearing that the Turks would next
attack Edessa, Bohemond and Tancred hastened there to organize its defence.
Once again the misfortune of a colleague turned to Tancred’s advantage. The
knights remaining in Edessa, with the Archbishop at their head, begged him to
take over the regency till Baldwin should be released from captivity. Tancred
gladly accepted the offer; and Bohemond, like Baldwin I four years previously,
was relieved to see him go. Tancred stayed on in Edessa with the remnants of
the Edessene army and with such troops as Bohemond could spare, while Bohemond
himself moved back to Antioch, whose neighbours were preparing to take
advantage of the Frankish disaster.

The battle of Harran was the complement to the
Crusades of 1101. Together, they destroyed the legend of Frankish invincibility.
The defeats of 1101 had meant that northern Syria was deprived of the
reinforcements from the West that were needed if Frankish domination was to be
firmly established there; and Harran meant in the long run that the county of
Edessa was doomed and that Aleppo would never pass into Frankish hands. The
wedge that the Franks had intended to maintain between the three Moslem centres
of Anatolia, Iraq and Syria was insecurely driven in. And not only the Moslems
would benefit. The Emperor was watching angrily in Byzantium and was not sorry
to hear of the Frankish discomfiture.

1104: Bohemond
and Tancred leave Baldwin in Captivity

The immediate consequences were not as fatal as
might have been feared. The alliance between Soqman and Jekermish did not long
survive their victory. The former’s Turcoman troops had obtained most of the
prisoners and the booty; and the latter was jealous. His Seldjuk regiment
attacked Soqman’s tent and carried off Baldwin. The Turcomans were furious; but
Soqman showed sufficient self-control to restrain them from counter-attacking.
He reconciled himself to the loss of his valuable prisoner; but, after reducing
a few small Christian frontier-forts by the simple ruse of dressing up his
soldiers in their Frankish victims’ clothes, he retired to Mardin and took no
further part in the war. Jekermish fought on. First, to secure himself against
Soqman, he overwhelmed the Frankish castles in the Shahbaqtan, to the east of
Edessa, then marched on the capital. Frankish delay had saved Harran for Islam.
Now the Moslems’ delay saved Edessa for Christendom. Tancred had time to repair
the city’s defences and was able to resist Jekermish’s first attack, thanks
largely to the loyalty and valour of the local Armenians. But he was so hard
pressed that he sent urgently to Bohemond for help. Bohemond had his own
problems; but the threat to Edessa must be given precedence. He marched at once
to his nephew’s assistance; but the poor condition of the roads delayed him.
Tancred, in despair, ordered a sortie of his garrison to take place before
dawn. In the darkness his men fell upon the sleeping and confident Turks; and
their victory was completed by Bohemond’s arrival. Jekermish fled in panic,
abandoning the treasures of his camp. Harran was avenged, and Edessa was
preserved.

Amongst the prisoners that fell into Tancred’s
hands was a high-born Seldjuk princess from the Emir’s household. So highly did
Jekermish value this lady that he at once offered either to pay 15,000 besants
to ransom her or else to exchange Count Baldwin himself for her. News of the
offer reached Jerusalem; and King Baldwin hastened to write to Bohemond to beg
him not to lose this opportunity for obtaining the Count’s release. But
Bohemond and Tancred needed money, while Baldwin’s return would have thrown
Tancred out of his present post back on his uncle’s hands. They answered that
it would be undiplomatic to appear too eager to accept the offer; Jekermish
might raise his price if they hesitated. But meanwhile they arranged with the
emir to have the money payment; and Baldwin remained in captivity.

Having thus enriched themselves by sacrificing
their comrade, Bohemond and Tancred turned to meet the enemies that were
pressing round them. Jekermish did not again attempt to attack Edessa; and
Tancred was able to repair the city’s defences. But Bohemond had at once to
face an invasion by Ridwan of Aleppo into the eastern districts of his
principality. In June the Armenian inhabitants of Artah handed over their town
to the Moslems, delighted to escape from Antiochene tyranny. The towns of
Maarrat, Misrin and Sarman on the frontier followed suit; and the small
Frankish garrisons of Maarat an-Numan, Albara and Kafartab, who were thus
isolated, withdrew back to Antioch. Meanwhile Ridwan ravaged the principality
as far as the Iron Bridge. In the far north Bohemond’s garrison at Albistan
only maintained itself by imprisoning the leading local Armenians, who were
plotting with the Turks. The whole of Bohemond’s state might have been
endangered had not Duqaq of Damascus died towards the end of June 1104
whereupon Ridwan’s attention was taken up by the struggle for the succession
between Duqaq’s two sons, Buri and Iltash.

Bohemond’s failure to meet Ridwan’s attack was
due to his preoccupation with Byzantine affairs. The Emperor Alexius was now on
good terms with the Frankish states farther to the south. Raymond of Toulouse
was still his close friend; and he had won the good-will of King Baldwin by
himself paying for the ransom of many distinguished Franks who were held
captive in Egypt. His generosity had been wisely calculated. It was in striking
contrast to Bohemond and Tancred’s behaviour over Baldwin of Edessa; and it
reminded the Franks that he had influence and prestige that the Fatimids
respected. When therefore he took action against Antioch, its prince received
no help from his colleagues. Alexius had already fortified Corycos and Seleucia
on the Cilician coast, to prevent Antiochene aggression into western Cilicia.
In the summer of 1104 a Byzantine army, under the general Monastras, reoccupied
without difficulty the east Cilician cities, Tarsus, Adana and Mamistra; while
a naval squadron under the Emperor’s admiral, Cantacuzenus, which had come to
Cyprian waters in pursuit of a Genoese raiding fleet, took advantage of
Bohemond’s situation to sail on to Lattakieh, where his men captured the
harbour and the lower city. Bohemond hastened with the Frankish troops that he
could muster to reinforce the garrison in the citadel and to replace its
commander, whom he distrusted. But, lacking sea-power, he did not try to expel
the Byzantines from their position.

1104: Bohemond
leaves for the West

By the autumn Bohemond felt desperate. In
September he held a council of his vassals at Antioch, to which he summoned
Tancred. There he told them frankly of the dangers that surrounded the
principality. The only solution was, he said, to secure reinforcements from
Europe. He would go himself to France and use his personal prestige to recruit
the needed men. Tancred dutifully offered to take on this task; but his uncle
replied that he did not command sufficient authority in the West. He must
remain behind as Regent of Antioch. Arrangements were soon made for Bohemond’s
departure. Late in the autumn he set sail from Saint Symeon, taking with him
all the gold and silver, jewels and precious stuffs that were available, and
copies of the
Gesta Francorum
, the anonymous history of the First
Crusade told from the Norman point of view. In these copies Bohemond inserted a
passage suggesting that the Emperor had promised him the lordship of Antioch.

Tancred then took over the government of
Antioch, at the same time taking an oath that he would restore Edessa to
Baldwin immediately on his release from captivity. Meanwhile, as Tancred could
not rule Edessa satisfactorily from Antioch, he appointed his cousin and
brother-in-law, Richard of Salerno, as his deputy across the Euphrates.

Bohemond reached his own lands in Apulia early
in the new year. He remained there till the following September, seeing to his
personal affairs, which needed his supervision after his nine years’ absence,
and organizing parties of Normans to join their fellows in the East. Then he
went to Rome, where he saw Pope Paschal. To him Bohemond emphasized that the
great enemy of the Latins in the East was the Emperor Alexius. Paschal had
already been prejudiced against Alexius by Bishop Manasses and fell in readily
with his views. When Bohemond went on into France he was accompanied by the papal
legate, Bruno, who was instructed to preach a Holy War against Byzantium. It
was a turning-point in the history of the Crusades. The Norman policy, which
aimed to break the power of the eastern Empire, became the official Crusading
policy. The interests of Christendom as a whole were to be sacrificed to the
interests of Frankish adventurers. The Pope was later to regret his
indiscretion; but the harm was done. The resentment of the western knights and
populace against the haughtiness of the Emperor, their jealousy of his wealth
and their suspicions of Christians who used a ritual that they could not
understand were all given official sanction by the western Church.
Henceforward, though the Pope might modify his views, they felt justified in
every hostile action against Byzantium. And the Byzantines, on their side,
found their worst suspicions realized. The Crusade, with the Pope at its head,
was not a movement for the succour of Christendom, but a tool of unscrupulous
western imperialism. This unhappy agreement between Bohemond and Pope Paschal
did far more than all the controversy between Cardinal Humbert and Michael
Cerularius to ensure the separation between the eastern and western Churches.

1107: Bohemond
invades the Empire

Bohemond was well received in France. He spent
some time at the Court of King Philip, who gave him permission to recruit men
throughout the kingdom; and he enjoyed the active support of that eager
Crusader-by-proxy, Adela, Countess of Blois. Adela not only introduced him to
her brother, Henry I of England, whom he saw in Normandy at Easter 1106, and
who promised to encourage his work, but she also arranged for him to make an
impressive marriage-alliance with King Philip’s daughter, Constance, the
divorced Countess of Champagne. The wedding took place in the late spring of
1106; and at the same time King Philip agreed to offer the hand of his younger
daughter, Cecilia, child of his adulterous union with Bertrada of Montfort, to
Tancred. Constance never went to the East. Her married life and widowhood were
spent in Italy. But Cecilia sailed for Antioch about the end of the year. These
royal connections added to the prestige of the Norman princes.

Bohemond remained in France till late in 1106,
when he returned to Apulia. There he planned his new Crusade, which was to
begin uncompromisingly with an attack on the Byzantine Empire. Cheered by the
news that under Tancred’s rule Antioch was in no immediate peril, he did not
hurry. On 9 October 1107 his army landed on the Epirote coast of the Empire at
Avlona; and four days later he appeared before the great fortress of
Dyrrhachium, the key to the Balkan peninsula, which the Normans had long
coveted and had held for a while a quarter of a century before. But Alexius,
too, had had time to make his preparations. To save Dyrrhachium he was ready to
sacrifice his south-eastern frontier; and he made peace with the Seldjuk
Sultan, Kilij Arslan, from whom he hired mercenaries. Finding the fortress too
strong and too vigorously defended by its garrison to be taken by assault,
Bohemond settled down to besiege it. But, as in his earlier wars against
Byzantium, lack of sea-power was his ruin. Almost at once the Byzantine navy
cut off his communications with Italy and blockaded the coast. Then, early next
spring, the main Byzantine army closed in round him. As the summer came on,
dysentery, malaria and famine weakened the Normans; while Alexius broke their
morale by spreading rumours and sending forged letters to their leaders,
devices that his daughter Anna described with loving admiration. By September
Bohemond knew that he was beaten, and he surrendered to the Emperor. It was a
tremendous triumph for Byzantium; for Bohemond was by now the most renowned
warrior in Christendom. The sight of this formidable hero, towering personally
over the Emperor yet suppliant before him and obedient to his dictation, bore
witness which no one could forget to the invincible majesty of the Empire.

Alexius received Bohemond at his camp, at the
entrance to the ravines of the river Devol. He was courteous but cold to him,
and wasted no time in setting before him the peace treaty that he was to sign.
Bohemond hesitated at first; but Nicephorus Bryennius, Anna Comnena’s husband,
who was in attendance on his father-in-law, persuaded him that he had no
option.

1108: The Treaty
of Devol

The text of the treaty is preserved in full in
the pages of Anna Comnena. In it Bohemond first was made to express contrition
for the breach of his former oath to the Emperor. Then he swore with the utmost
solemnity to become the vassal and liege-man of the Emperor and of the Emperor’s
heir, the Porphyrogennete John; and he would oblige all his men to do likewise.
That there might be no mistake the Latin term for liege was employed, and the
duties of a vassal were enumerated. He was to remain Prince of Antioch, which
he would govern under the Emperor’s suzerainty. His territory would include
Antioch itself and its port of Saint Symeon, and the districts to the
north-east, as far as Marash, together with the lands that he might conquer
from the Moslem princes of Aleppo and other inland Syrian states; but the
Cilician cities and the coast round Lattakieh were to be restored to the
Emperor’s direct rule, and the territory of the Roupenian princes was not to be
touched. An appendix was added to the treaty carefully listing the towns that
were to constitute Bohemond’s dominion. Within his dominion Bohemond was to
exercise the civil authority, but the Latin Patriarch was to be deposed and
replaced by a Greek. There were special provisions that if Tancred, or any
other of Bohemond’s men, refused to comply with the demands of the treaty,
Bohemond was to force them into obedience.