Prince of Legend

B
ohemund de Hauteville, Count of Taranto and leader of the Apulian Normans, stood on the narrow glacis before the massive and forbidding fortress that dominated the skyline. The citadel of Antioch had been the lynchpin of the city during the eight-month siege and a position from which Yaghi Siyan, the Turkish governor, had coordinated every act of the tenacious defence.

Designed for a twin purpose, it formed part of the mighty outer walls of the city but also served as a place to which the garrison could retreat if the mass of Antiochene citizens, Armenian Christians, broke out in revolt. The citadel was a stronghold with its own water cistern and storerooms that they could hold until the time came to reassert control.

Tancred of Lecce, Bohemund’s nephew, stood with him, both Crusaders covered from head to foot in the blood of the numberless victims they had slaughtered in a night of bloody mayhem that had
brought the siege of the city to an end. It had been a sore trial of a contest, in which they had experienced both the abundance of food as well as near starvation, summer heat and winter chill, and fought battles against the near impenetrable walls as well as far to the east in open country, this to drive off two attempts at relief by the Seljuk Turks. Now, finally, the crusading army were inside, if not completely in control.

That last point was one of some importance and it did not merely apply to the Turks: prior to the fall, Bohemund had engaged in a battle of wills with his fellow crusading magnates as to who should have possession of Antioch when it fell, he insisting the law of conquest must apply – that whosoever could first breech the walls then raise their standard above the city, by long custom, should have possession of it.

A proposition originally and vehemently denied, especially by Counts Raymond of Toulouse and Hugh of Vermandois, it had only been acceded to when the position of the besiegers became so desperate that any means of achieving a result, in what was a rapidly deteriorating outlook, must be accepted.

A call went up to the new Turkish leader, who stood on the barbican that protected the gate, the demand simple: that he should open that portal and surrender. Shams ad-Daulah, eldest son of the now deceased governor, spoke neither the Frankish tongue nor Latin and Greek, so these words had to be translated into his own tongue, this carried out by the fellow who had aided Bohemund in the capture of the city.

A Muslim convert called Firuz, he had commanded one of the towers on the southern wall with a body of his fellow Armenians, initially with as much zeal as any of his Turkish contemporaries, only
to find his efforts not appreciated by Yaghi Siyan, who had, to keep him loyal, stripped him of his possessions, an act that had rebounded spectacularly. Firuz had conspired with Bohemund and allowed his tower to be used as the point of entry.

‘You know who I am?’

‘Who could fail to recognise mighty Bohemund?’ the Greek-speaking interpreter replied, following his master’s lead.

There was truth in that; given his height and build, massive even for one of Norman blood, as well as his flaxen-coloured hair, not to mention his fame, he could be identified easily even at a distance. Bohemund stood head and shoulders above his peers, wherever they came from, even those from his father’s Normandy birthplace. Tancred, his mother a de Hauteville and of towering height himself, still conceded half a hand to his uncle.

‘On yonder high battlement you will see my banner.’

The pointed finger was hardly necessary; the huge red flag, with its diagonal bar showing the blue and white chequer of the de Hauteville family, flew stiff in a strong breeze and was easily visible from anywhere on the wide expanse of the River Orontes plain, lit as it was by the blazing morning sun.

‘We have possession of the city and we have the body of your father, who failed to make good his escape. If you wish that to be respected, and if you wish yourself to live, grant us possession of this fortress and march out with all honour.’

Two heads came close and composed the reply, which occasioned much discussion before the interpreter spoke once more. ‘My Lord esteems his father still, but says if he is dead, then his body is of no account, for his soul will surely be welcomed into paradise.’

‘Where your master shall join him,’ Bohemund responded.

This got a furious reaction from Shams ad-Daulah when translated, which his interpreter sought to pass on by a form of shouting strangely devoid of a similar level of passion.

‘Idle boast, Christian, you have got inside the walls of our city, but My Lord holds this citadel. Allah be praised, it is written that you will die here, for an army of the faithful is coming that will crush you like a fly.’

That had Tancred swiftly crossing himself, that being no idle boast: a Turkish relief force, led by a general with a fearsome reputation called Kerbogha, famed across Asia Minor for both the application of terror and military success, was marching towards Antioch, leading an army of such staggering reported numbers that made the notion of meeting them in open battle seem suicidal, given the crusading army was now a much reduced force, fully half the number it had been when they set out from Constantinople.

The Atabeg of Mosul, Kerbogha had, with the active support of the Sultan in Baghdad, united the many disparate elements of the interior, Turkish, Arab and Persian tribes that normally fought each other, melding them into a body large enough to annihilate these troublesome western invaders.

It was the approach of these forces that had prompted swift action from the Frankish princes in both pressing home the siege and accepting the law of conquest, for they feared to be crushed between the anvil of Yaghi Siyan’s stout defence of his city and the approaching host. Yet it was telling, and a testament to the strength of Antioch, that only internal betrayal had provided the key to its fall.

In essence, when it came to Kerbogha, the Crusaders were a victim of their own success: brought east by a plea from Pope Urban to aid Greek Byzantium in its century-old conflict with the Seljuk Turks, the
true task was to proceed on to Palestine and free from the control of Islam the Holy Places of Christendom, visited each year by Christians in their thousands and from which came, regularly, tales of those pilgrims being maltreated – robbed, women molested, both they and their menfolk sometimes killed.

The fury engendered by such tales had come in the wake of yet another entreaty from the Emperor Alexius Comnenus – there had been dozens over the previous decades – claiming that the faith in the east, the Greek Orthodox Church, was in danger of annihilation from these Turkish infidels. Byzantium had gained much from the arrival from Europe of a truly formidable host, the cream of Europe’s fighting men, Alexius Comnenus directing them first to invest that which he saw as the greatest threat to Constantinople, the formidable city of Nicaea.

Turkish held and only three days’ march from Constantinople, Nicaea was a vital bastion that threatened the very heart of an empire that had failed to recapture it in three attempts and had little hand in taking on this occasion. Thanks to the efforts of the Crusader Host, the imperial banner now flew from its battlements, which in turn secured the safety of the imperial capital.

From there the Crusade moved south: originally seen as an irritant when Nicaea succumbed, they had impinged more and more upon the Sultan’s concerns the further they progressed, winning battles and taking possession of populous regional centres without a fight, stinging him especially hard when one of their number, Baldwin of Boulogne, acting independently of the Crusade and keen to line his own purse, had invested and captured the important city of Edessa on the far side of the River Euphrates.

Yet the main body had come to worry the Sultan more: they had
swept aside one attempt to check them at the Battle of Dorylaeum, then, with seeming impunity, had marched across Anatolia and Armenia to invest mighty Antioch, once the third greatest city in the Roman Empire, and this had provoked a spirited reaction. Both the sons of the Sultan had separately tried to relieve Antioch – they hated each other too much to combine – and had been fought off and forced to flee. What was coming now was of a different order of magnitude.

Safety lay with the walls and that had now been achieved, yet if going from months of investing Antioch to possession of the city was change enough, to also turn from besieger to being besieged was singular. To simultaneously be both was the strangest state of all for they must contain this citadel and its garrison, a bane throughout the months of siege, standing, as it did, on such an elevated mountain top location as to give it a clear sight of any preparations being made for an assault on gates or walls.

Likewise, any gathering and movement of mobile forces on the Antiochene Plain had to take place in plain view, allowing the late Yaghi Siyan to send out his mounted archers to counter any threat, or to merely ensure that the gates or section of the walls the besiegers were aiming to attack were both closed and well defended. This made worse what was an already gruelling task, for the defences of Antioch were legendary in their construction.

No pilgrim knight, on the return journey from Jerusalem, failed to mention to his avid home listeners how formidable they were. Sat at the base of two mountains and with the River Orontes on Antioch’s western flank, the walls were held to be impregnable. Not only did they restrict the attacker on the riverside, constricting the area in which a besieger could operate, but the high and multi-towered walls rose up the steep mountainsides in a way that made them impossible
to overcome; the citadel, if it did not enjoy these advantages to the same degree, was nevertheless a redoubtable fortress in its own right.

‘There is no taking this place but by ladders,’ said Tancred, in response to the retort by Shams ad-Daulah, the way that was said testimony to how hard such an assault would be.

The response from his uncle was equally grim in tone. ‘Yet take it we must.’

The truth of Tancred’s assertion was self-evident: the walls were high, the garrison that had escaped into the fort from the lower city likely to be numerous and aware their sole options were surrender or death. From the gate before which they stood ran a winding path that led down into the teeming city and that would need to be held at all costs, while the single piece of flat ground before it was the one on which both these knights stood, the rest being surrounded by
screed-covered
inclines which would not allow for the application of any other form of siege equipment.

Bohemund’s response that it must be taken was just as apposite: the main threat was not from within the walls of the citadel but before the main defences of the city, yet there was no doubt Shams ad-Daulah would essay out to do battle if he were allowed, which meant a split in the forces opposing him.

Those two difficulties were confounded by the fact that Antioch was not in a good state of supply. Eight months of diminishing provisions – slowly the besiegers had increased their stranglehold on the city gates – had left it short of food. In eight months the Crusaders had near stripped the locality bare and with Kerbogha approaching fast there was little time for the Crusaders to forage, of necessity far and wide, and make good that combined dearth.

‘Then let us hope for another betrayal, nephew, that there is
someone within the walls that wants so badly to live that he will deny his faith.’

Bohemund turned to engage the Armenian who had facilitated his entry, a man who spoke good Greek. ‘Firuz, put your best efforts to making contact with someone, anyone inside.’

‘Lord Bohemund!’

That call forced him to face an approaching messenger, clearly intent on delivering a communication of some import judging by the speed of his approach and his concerned expression, as well as his sweaty demeanour.

‘Count Raymond of Toulouse has taken possession of the Bridge Gate and his standard flies above it.’

Bohemund uttered a hissed curse, for if anyone had stood in the way of his claim of conquest it was the aforesaid Raymond. He looked beyond him to see the truth of the words spoken, for the gate was visible from where he stood, as was every feature of the huge city. Then he turned once more to gaze up at the solid and impressive walls of the citadel. Softly he addressed Tancred, who would also know the importance of that information.

‘Not all our fights, it seems, will be here in the coming weeks.’