Prince of Legend (26 page)

‘I see us plagued with too many Peters,’ Tancred opined, on his way to the pavilion in which the council met, well aware of what was to be discussed. ‘There must be some pile of ordure out of which they do not crawl.’

Flanders, who felt the same way, laughed. ‘Perhaps, one day, we will truly be granted a miracle.’

‘If there was one thing my Uncle Bohemund taught me it was that it was folly to even think the Lord might actually intervene in a battle. He saw it as the stuff of the deluded.’

‘Even after Antioch?’

Tancred patted his right arm. ‘That was won with these, Robert – it was not due to some flaming vision that we triumphed, regardless of what our divines say.’

Yet for all their doubts regarding that to which they were about to be exposed, both men knew that lip service had to be paid to such notions when they came from such preaching sources. They believed with all their hearts in the divine oversight of God the Almighty and were sure he did play a part in their endeavours. When they celebrated Mass it was in the sure knowledge that he could see into their hearts and judge their motives, and if at times they were less than pure, then all they could do was seek his all-encompassing forgiveness.

To kill was a sin, yet they did it as a vocation, sure that the slaying of God’s enemies would be seen not with condemnation, but as a route to salvation. It was in the manifestation of that forgiveness and insight that they held doubts: the Holy Trinity, the Blessed Virgin and all the saints would bless their sword arm as they used them to press home the true faith, but did such messages as might be sent to them come as a flaming horseman riding to their support on the field of battle, as had been claimed so many times, or through the certainties of preachers like Desiderius or Bartholomew?

‘The meaning of my dream was obvious,’ Desiderius insisted. ‘Adémar demands that we find harmony in our endeavour and he seeks this in death just as he did in life.’

‘Amen,’ intoned Narbonne, crossing himself, an act and expression dutifully followed by all present.

‘Therefore he insists we must fast, we must look into our inner souls and see what is there. Is it truly that we are here before Jerusalem in the service of our Lord God, or are you great lords here merely to add lustre to your names and riches to your strongbox? Alms must be donated to show that is a false accusation, yet some of the host are so sinful, as are the pilgrims who look to me for guidance, that nothing short of scourging by whipping will cleanse them.’

‘Harmony we need,’ Godfrey exclaimed, his eyes alight with a genuine fervour that aroused nothing but admiration in those observing. ‘Tell us, Peter Desiderius, how it is to be found.’

The solution, according to the preacher, was a procession in which all would participate regardless of rank. This would be carried out barefoot and in solemn and continuous prayer, each man examining his own soul for the sins that resided there, for no man was without it. Trumpets and horns would blow and perhaps, as at Jericho, the walls would crack and tumble.

‘Will it be so,’ cried Godfrey, with such passion he seemed about to go into a frenzy.

Desiderius seemed to realise he had gone too far and the offer of crumbling walls was withdrawn on the grounds that Jerusalem was not Jericho and he was not Joshua. But there would be feet washing, with noble dukes and counts, as well as high church divines emulating Jesus Christ, who did not so fear to humble himself with the lowly.

Such supplications agreed, the procession set out on a sunlit morning to march round the walls to the Mount of Olives, threatening the jeering garrison with what weapons they bore, there to watch Godfrey very willingly, Raymond reluctantly and the rest of the lords with manufactured zeal, wash the feet of the meanest pilgrim peasants Desiderius could identify. Mass was said on the spot of Christ’s
resurrection and the nobles were called forward to make peace with each other in the sight of his grace.

To much rejoicing Godfrey, expression alight, embraced Raymond who then shook arms with Tancred, both men vowing to aid the other to the point of death if need be, an undertaking repeated to Normandy, Flanders and Gaston of Béarn. All around, anything that smacked of enmity was being put aside, Apulians swearing loyalty to Provence and vice versa, the pledging of their souls and their blood by both to the knights of Lotharingia.

Shriven and feeling bolstered by the obvious grace of God, the procession made its way back to their lines. The Fatimids showed how much they cared for what had taken place and how much such obvious faith affected them by showering the march with arrows and catapulted rocks, killing several of the worshippers, including several priests.

‘Two days hence,’ Godfrey swore, ‘you will pay for that insult to us and to God.’

‘We will strip the skin off their bones,’ Raymond added, his arm clasped in that of his so recent rival. ‘They cannot see into our souls, but we will see into theirs.’

T
he Fatimids knew the Crusaders were coming long before dawn, just from the noise of their preparations, added to the amount of darting torchlight that had illuminated their night-time activity. They were at their places while it was still dark, sweating on what was a hot and humid mid-July night, nervously awaiting the final sound that would bring on the assault – the sound of the battle horns blowing the advance.

First the sky took on a hint of grey, which failed to provide enough light to show the ground before the walls or the great hulking silhouettes of the towers before the Quadrangular Tower and the Zion Gate. The gradual increase in the level of daylight did begin to touch the upper frame of the siege engine built by Raymond of Toulouse.

But the men facing the expected attack from the contingents led by Godfrey de Bouillon were confounded by the absence of what they expected to see, until it became obvious that before the Quadrangular
Tower the ground was completely clear – Godfrey’s siege engine had disappeared and so had his entire encampment; all that was now visible was the clear pathway along which the defenders had anticipated the siege tower would advance.

News was swift to arrive that the very construct was now being hurriedly assembled before the St Stephen’s Gate, a story initially disbelieved by every Fatimid commander from Iftikhar ad-Daulah down, for what they were being told was that the impossible had occurred. Only the man on the spot knew it to be the undoubted truth for he could see the very same lengths of timber being put together by a positive army of willing hands furiously wielding hammers.

In employing Gaston of Béarn, the Lotharingian Duke Godfrey had been gifted a craftsman of genius, a man who had built siege towers many times before in his life and thought long and hard on ways to improve their efficiency. The better axles he had designed made it possible to move it more quickly – not that it was ever swift – giving the defence less time to interdict its progress, but that did not obviate the major tactical flaw, the need to move it in a straight line from its start position to its final deployment.

Try as he might Gaston had never been able to come up with what he so keenly sought, a way of turning off a true course an engine that weighed several tons, for the leverage to change direction was beyond human endeavour. But in Godfrey he had found a magnate willing to experiment and had been given leave to put together a tower that, in the space of a dark night, could be dismantled to its very base, the last part of which was of a weight that men were able to manoeuvre.

Since it was put back together with like speed it was now taking proper shape opposite a section of the walls of Jerusalem ill-prepared to receive it, and at the same time, protected by framed wattle
bombardment screens, men, women and children, no doubt the pilgrims so eager to see the Holy City fall, were progressing forward, levelling out, by clearing and filling, the new ground over which the tower must now pass, which led directly to the easternmost tower that framed the St Stephen’s Gate.

Before the sun was far above the rim of the horizon the engine itself was on the move, the great wheels grinding across the earth to send forth a terrifying sound, yet it was halted well before it came within range of the defences, the hope being that by seeing it so close it would instil greater fear, this while the mangonels, also moved from before the Quadrangular Tower, moved well forward of the tower and began to fire their deadly missiles to subdue what was a scratch defence, given Iftikhar ad-Daulah had yet to sanction the movement of the men needed to meet this shocking development.

The only part-protection they had, set to either side of the St Stephen’s Gate, was a low curtain wall that made any approach to the main fortifications impossible and to counter that Godfrey was about to employ the great battering ram. The Fatimids would have assumed it to be used to pummel against one of the wooden gates, to the mind of such men as Gaston uselessly, given gates had been buttressed since time immemorial to withstand such a weapon.

Now its purpose was clear, if not its progress, for it was a beast of an edifice to move; where the huge wheels of a siege tower could, by their sheer dimensions and the numbers employed in moving it, overcome obstacles, the smaller orbs on the battering ram meant even the most minor impediment, even a small stone, was a problem. Yet as the men on that struggled forward, the inner walls and undermanned ramparts were peppered with missiles – rocks and balls
of burning sulphur and pitch bound with wax, designed to make any counterstroke hazardous.

With a supreme effort, and this by heavily muscled knights more accustomed to wielding personal weapons, the ram was brought close enough to the outer curtain to be employed. Eschewing protection the men pushing got it up to the speed of a fast walk, so that when the metal tip hit the stonework, secured only by mortar, it went crashing straight through, filling the intervening space with rubble into which the defence, fearful of being immediately overcome, poured their own incendiaries, that wasted as an effort at killing since none of the Crusaders could cross the area due to the fallen stonework.

What it did do was set the ram alight: the great single block of timber would have needed a great deal of time and inflammables to cause it to catch fire, but it was full of staves driven through from one side to the other, this the means by which it had been pushed forward. Those lighter pieces of timber went up quickly and threatened to carry the fire to the inner part of the ram, which had the alarmed Crusaders rushing to douse the whole with water before the massive tree trunk could ignite, this being carried out under a constant rain of arrows.

The Crusader effort proved fruitless even if the flames were doused. The aim was to repeat the battering exercise against the main wall and likewise drive that in to make a breach, which would, when the siege tower was employed, further divide the defence, given men would have to man both the upper parapet and breach in a situation that would make mutual support impossible.

Yet not only was the head of the ram buried by masonry, the very success of the initial effort had made any further forward movement impossible. Try as they might, and most of the rest of the day was thus employed, there was no amount of force which could get those
small wheels over the mound of debris and it was clear that if it was left there it would be right in the path of the siege tower when that was employed.

Orders were sent forward to set alight a weapon the flames of which the men who had been pushing it had only just managed to extinguish, which led to what many saw as a farce. With Crusaders seeking to set it alight, the Fatimids, who wished it, for obvious reasons, to remain an obstacle, sought by throwing great tubs of water over it to snuff out the flames. So it became a battle to keep it burning, this finally achieved when the whole was so much ablaze that no amount of drowning could put out the conflagration.

That accomplished, Godfrey’s men withdrew, the fight being over for the day. If there was disappointment, the employment of the ram had been a positive, for the under-resourced defence had used against it weapons that would have been better employed against the real and soon-to-be-employed threat, Gaston of Béarn’s siege tower.

Raymond of Toulouse had, unbeknown to him or his knights, always had the harder task, given that the Fatimids had assumed his attack to be the main effort, while that on the formidable and easily defended Quadrangular Tower was seen as a diversion, which proved that if they had got wind of Crusader dissension, they had failed to make sense of it. These leading magnates were men who were barely talking to each other with civility, never mind leaders coordinating a winning strategy.

Godfrey’s surprise had thrown that notion to the winds, yet on the previous assumption the Provençals were attacking the best and most comprehensively organised resistance, with the walls well protected by ropes and filled sacks against the rock-throwing ballistae and
sharpened baulks of timber protruding from the fortifications at the point at which they knew for certain Raymond’s siege tower must come upon the ramparts.

Here also the Fatimids had concentrated the mass of their mangonels and the majority of their archers and they were targeted on what was a very narrow field of battle, the known line by which Raymond’s siege tower would progress. That he had a clear run to the main defence – there was no outer curtain wall to impede him here – proved a small positive against such a ferocious attempt to counter his advance.

High-fired stones rained down on the heads of those pushing the tower as well as the men following behind it, the engine itself, once within range, being hit by flaming arrows and burning bolts, soon added to this wooden hammers wrapped in pitch-soaked straw and studded with nails so that they would adhere to whatever they struck. Those fighting men not on the tower were advancing under an endless bombardment but it was the siege engine, and those at the very top, that would decide the fate of the attack.

Raymond’s main weapon was placed under such relentless bombardment that following several hours of pushing it had still not reached the wall alongside the Zion Gate and, despite all the precautions to avoid it happening, it was alight in many places, so much so that Raymond ordered his men to pull it back out of danger so the fires could be dealt with – without the presence of their main assault weapon that meant a withdrawal of the whole of his forces.

That night it was hard to find anyone not too exhausted to stand guard, this being a must lest the Fatimids sortie out in a surprise raid, even harder to find those willing to risk their lives by going forward
in torchlight to clear as much as possible of the larger pieces of rubble that had fallen into the path of the siege tower from that destroyed curtain wall.

Every captain and fighting man, as well as those who were mere labourers, was weary from the efforts of a day of combat and, even if it was kept to mumbles of disgruntlement around their cooking fires, alarmed at the ferocity of the defence they had faced. It was the task of leaders like Tancred, despite his own fatigue, to move amongst his men and point out that if they were dispirited, so must be their enemies, well aware that the coming dawn would see the attack renewed.

In Godfrey’s camp there was no gratification to hear that their Provençal confrères had fared worse than they, suffering more casualties and an even more spectacular reverse. For the men before the St Stephen’s Gate it was to be hoped they would succeed if for no other reason than to make easier their own assault. Yet there was true fellow feeling to add to that – the whole could not enjoy any triumph if one part failed.

Before dawn they were awakened to eat a breakfast of gruel and to say their prayers, many seeking out a priest to bless them as a habit before battle. Then, as the light again touched the eastern horizon, the horns blew and Godfrey’s men took their places around Gaston’s great siege tower, which would, this day, either prove its worth or, like Raymond’s, miserably fail.

In its favour, Gaston’s tower was a much more formidable construct, three storeys in height and with a few more of his innovations, which would only prove their worth when tested. Godfrey de Bouillon would not hear that any other man should take the lead, so he was on the top level, under the golden cross banner so beloved by the
faithful, when the tower began to slowly grind forward again, before them, again under bombardment screens, a mass of people clearing the last of the rubble as well as the ashes and charred remains of their battering ram.

In choosing to move to the St Stephen’s Gate there had been several considerations much discussed by Godfrey and his fellow magnates, the two Roberts and Tancred. First it was a relative weak spot in an otherwise stout defence, but it was also, on the reverse side of the walls, a place much crowded with buildings and one in which the streets were really alleyways, too narrow to allow the Fatimids to deploy their mangonels.

This meant these weapons could only be employed on the actual ramparts and right below the fighting parapet, which entailed them sending most of what they discharged in a high arc, which of necessity reduced their range. More important to the advance of the siege tower, that range was fixed, so that once it covered a certain amount of the intervening ground it would be impossible for the defence to employ large objects to impede its progress.

Raymond of Toulouse attacked again at dawn, just like Godfrey, for the second day pushing forward his tower and in receipt of the same response; in fact, if anything the defence was even more ferocious, an indication that the Fatimids knew that the slightest breach could lead to destruction. Every man that Iftikhar had, it was expected, would be on the walls and now in both places they would be required to engage in a test of will as much as warfare; the Crusaders could not fight without respite and another day of reverses might kill off their fervour for the battle.

The same anticipation lay within the besiegers; these were the men who had defended the walls of Antioch against Kerbogha and
they knew only too well how debilitating that could be, a constant daily effort that sapped both the will to fight and the degree of faith they reposed in the spirituality of their cause. What they had once experienced would apply to those defending Jerusalem; all that was needed was that the Crusade impose its will.

For Raymond the second day was an even greater debacle than the first; again he and his men advanced into a hail of stones and arrows, the rocks from the Muslim mangonels large enough to crush any shield as well as the man holding it up as protection. Drop the shield a fraction to see what was coming and there were sharp-eyed archers skilled enough to choose a now exposed target, a task made easier the closer the attack came.

But again it was Raymond’s siege tower that bore the brunt of the retaliation, the same methods employed as the day before to set it alight in so many places that it see-sawed back and forth, dragged just out of range of more fire so that those already alight could be doused. That achieved it was pushed forward once more, but another difficulty began to manifest itself.