Prince of Legend (4 page)

‘Then let us hope that those who wish to deny you that put as much effort into stopping Kerbogha.’

On command the knights present couched and lowered their lances to set up a frieze of points at the rim of the wall onto which the lead attackers must be impaled. Whatever words of faith had inspired them before the attack required more to sustain them and it was clear that the sight of those sharp metal lances brought a palpable amount
of hesitation, yet the Turks were doughty fighters and had proved it many times and not just against this Crusade.

Over a century they had fought and repeatedly defeated Byzantium and the Arabs in their progress west to take and hold the lands they had conquered. So they came on, either through love of battle, a belief in Allah, fear of shame, perhaps Kerbogha, or the sheer pressure of those at their backs, swinging their swords to lop off the lance points while their fellows fired arrows over their heads to disrupt the defence.

Some attackers died from those falling short, others were impaled, this while Bohemund, Tancred, the two noble Roberts and their defenders held their shields over their heads as protection from the falling bolts, where that failed their chain mail deflecting arrows that were losing their velocity. Within a blink it was sword against sword, axe against spear and bloody combat to hold and deny the attackers the way down into the city.

Kerbogha had numbers in abundance; if his losses were high they were a price he was willing to pay for success, no doubt with promises of paradise for those who succumbed and gold for the survivors. That first charge was not repeated in weight, though the assault, if it ebbed and flowed, never let up throughout the whole of the day, the main action taking place across a small depression where the Turks sought to dislodge the defenders from the place where their two points of defence adjoined – the permanent city curtain wall and the drystone and makeshift one.

The women camp followers were as vital as the knights who held the line, fetching water to them in the short pauses between combat to ease throats that had become parched at the very prospect of a fight, the chanting priests encouraging them to pray to God for strength less so. Arms ached from the swinging of great broadswords and heavy
axes, but it was tribute to the Norman way of training, applied in both the homeland and Apulia, that men sustained their ability to keep fighting, killing and maiming.

These were men who, when they were not fighting, practised daily to do so. Time spent in the sand-filled manège day after day and hour upon hour, in mock play of what they were now doing for a purpose, allowed them to keep going when lesser mortals would have succumbed from sheer exhaustion.

Bohemund’s standard flew above his head; along the line to one side fluttered the similar device of Tancred and beyond that those of Normandy and Flanders, while to the other flank, stiff on the breeze, flew the pennant of Robert of Salerno. If he was not a full-blooded Norman – neither was Tancred truly that with his Lombard father – he, like all the Italians who served as knights with the men from the far north, had been induced entirely into their ways.

Danger threatened when, as had been feared, the sheer pressure of Turkish bodies pressing against it led to the collapse of a section of the drystone wall. Bohemund, alerted to the crisis, immediately disengaged and called to the knights behind him who made up a reserve to join in response – if a man fell they were needed to move into and maintain the line. Together they headed towards the breach, which had become a melee of intermingled fighters: paramount was the need to restore the perimeter, and scant consideration had to be given to those engaged.

With his bulk and massive strength the Count of Taranto drove into the crowd, slashing right and left and never stopping to consider he might maim or kill his own, the men he had brought forming a wedge behind him, able by driving hard to push back the Turks and to kill so many that their bodies filled the breech in the wall. To get
to the line of defenders obliged the attackers to now cross a barrier of blood, gore, severed limbs and twitching remains.

Whoever had command, perhaps Kerbogha himself, ordered the horns blown and the Turks retreated, to leave a line of Crusaders too weary to even think of pursuit, thus allowing the enemy to filter back through the inner gate untroubled. Much as he wanted to sink to his knees, as had many of his lances, Bohemund and his fellow magnates had to stay visible, had to raise their swords and emit the first sound of a hoarse cheer, that slowly taken up by the others, to what was far from an outright victory but was enough to tell their enemies that they were of good heart.

Yet they only had to look around to observe the number of their confrères who had either fallen or were groaning and grievously wounded to assess what had occurred: if they had driven off the Turks it had not been without cost.

‘If he attacks the walls at the same time as he sorties out from the citadel we will be on a set of sharp horns, my friends.’

No one at the meeting of the Council of Princes wanted to disagree with Godfrey de Bouillon for the very simple reason he was right. He and Toulouse had held the western walls overlooking the river, but in much diminished strength for such a task, the necessity of holding the higher ground being paramount. Yet if no one responded, all must be wondering at the lack of what they feared: Kerbogha had the strength to do as he wished as well as a clear view of the Crusaders’ lack of means. He could attack in two places at once.

Robert of Normandy, ‘
Curthose
’ by soubriquet because of a pair of short legs, spoke up next. ‘We cannot just let him act as he wishes.’

‘I cannot see how we can stop him.’

Hugh of Vermandois said that with an accompanying look that sought confirmation; what he got was indifference, his view on anything discounted almost by default.

‘We have all agreed we cannot fight outside the walls,’ Bishop Adémar reminded them, ‘but can we not raid a little to disrupt them?’

Bohemund was amused by that; early in the Crusade Adémar had been keen to emphasise that he was a mere cleric, not a military man in any sense, and that he was ever willing to bow to the superior knowledge of his knightly confrères. Yet he had bought a mailed hauberk in Constantinople and had been seen to read the historical Greek chronicles of Herodotus and Xenophon to glean insight into how battles were fought in Asia Minor.

Increasingly, at Nicaea, he had advanced his own theories until, after the city fell, a chance came for the Bishop to show his mettle. At the Battle of Dorylaeum he had led a party of knights with great gusto and had come to see himself after that, albeit with discretion when he spoke, as the tactical equal of any of these men who had led armies. It was a mark of the respect in which he was held that none now disputed it; even if he had got above himself Adémar had a clever mind and a clear sight of necessities.

‘Surely,’ the Bishop continued, ‘the way to counter Kerbogha at the citadel is to attack the men encamped to the rear of the mountains?’

‘Who are,’ Vermandois cried, seeking to latch on to the Bishop’s popularity, ‘more numerous than those actually in the citadel.’

Even stating the obvious got the Frenchman scant attention; at one time Vermandois had been advised by his brother’s constable, he an experienced and well-regarded soldier trusted by the King of France to keep the enthusiasms of his younger sibling in check. That poor fellow had been slain in a most shameful manner, having been sent to
secretly negotiate with a group Turks seemingly willing to surrender one of the gates, in a meeting set up by Count Hugh, who declined to go himself. All Vermandois got back was the poor fellow’s severed head fired from a catapult.

Yet his outburst concentrated minds: the citadel might be formidable but it was not large. It could not possibly hold the number of men necessary for the assault Kerbogha had launched, indeed he had only used a proportion of his available strength so far, almost exclusively Turks, and to march such a host to and fro from the main camp each day was folly. On the rear slopes behind the citadel, visible from the towers held by the Crusaders, lay a satellite camp of some seeming permanence; the enemy were there to stay or at least until Antioch fell.

‘We could launch a night raid,’ Adémar suggested. ‘After all, we have a postern gate nearby that would serve very well by which to exit.’

‘Such an act is not without risk,’ Bohemund responded, as he contemplated the pros and cons.

Toulouse was quick to speak and sharply. ‘What is not?’

His reaction being brought on by rivalry – anything the Apulian said had to be countered by Provence – obliged Adémar to concur with both Toulouse and Bohemund, talking in a way that debarred interruption like Solomon applying his famous wisdom. If it irritated Bohemund it infuriated the man with whom the Bishop of Puy had set out on Crusade: Toulouse fairly spat at the cleric.

‘If the Apulians fear to set foot outside the walls the men of Provence do not!’

The response from Bohemund was delivered in an even tone and quietly, but lost nothing by that; he would hold to his vows if he
could, but there arose times, and this was one of them, when it was required that anyone who insulted him did so at some peril.

‘Have a care, My Lord, about whom you choose to affront.’

‘No slur was intended,’ cried Adémar, a remark that flew in the face of the obvious. ‘But if we could send out a strong party, perhaps a hundred men, we might impose a check on the devil of Mosul.’

‘I will provide fifty,’ Vermandois said, glaring at Bohemund until that was returned in full measure, which had him look away; such a giant was not a man to challenge.

‘And I the rest,’ exclaimed Toulouse.

‘Good,’ Bohemund added, ‘then I need provide no one.’

On a night with little moon, with a heat haze to obscure what light came from the stars, getting out onto the escarpment and doing murder was not hard, the surprise being the way Kerbogha’s soldiers panicked and fled as soon as the Crusaders got amongst them. For every one that died a hundred ran away, using the down slope of the mountains to speed their departure and leaving their entire camp to be looted.

There was much to plunder: weapons, private possessions, especially those of the commanders, whose tents yielded objects of value. Most of all there was abundant food, some of it ready to eat, for hungry men too much of a temptation. It was hard to carry that off, but in their enthusiasm to pillage and gorge, the men in command, French and Provençal captains, did not think to set a piquet to ensure that those who had fled did not return.

Likewise it did not occur to them that the darkness, which had aided their enterprise, was just as likely to favour the enemy. Had they been given warning of the Turkish approach they might have
safely departed, and heavily laden. As it was, the Turks arrived in great numbers and suddenly, so that the panic was reversed: now it was the Crusaders who had to flee, some foolishly seeking to carry with them what they had looted, which slowed their retreat.

Yet that was not the main source of the debacle that followed: the cause was the postern gate by which they had exited. It was narrow, as such entrances have to be, only of a width enough to allow one man passage through at a time, so that the first few were lucky, the rest less so and those at the rear doomed to be slaughtered. In the balance of those slain on both sides, made public at another council meeting, it was moot as to which host had suffered most.

The following morning, as if sending a hard message, the enemy again essayed out from the citadel to do battle and the same men who had fought the previous day were once more desperately engaged. Adémar, who had taken the reverse on his plan badly, was at the same time saying a special Mass for the souls of those who had been lost.

T
he attack from the citadel was repeated over four long days, always by the doughty Turks, sapping strength in both numbers and the ability to keep fighting, so much so that morale plummeted to a point where it began to affect men who claimed to be immune. Escape from besieged Antioch had been, if a dribble, a constant even before the Turks actually arrived, with individual
milities
lowering themselves from the walls at night to make a run for open country or St Simeon, for the nearby small port was unaccountably still not in Turkish hands: such desertions, if not approved, could be ignored.

The depth of creeping despair really struck home when a twenty-strong party of influential knights chose to defect: these were trusted men, cohort leaders from every contingent, including William of Grandmesnil, a relative by marriage and a seemingly dependable captain of Bohemund. It was scant comfort that the act of such a numerous group seemed to activate the normally somnolent Turks.

Alerted by their numbers the enemy pursued them to St Simeon, where, as later reported, they did great slaughter in the town while also setting fire to any ships that had not been quick enough to clear the harbour, the smoke from those still burning vessels visible from the walls at dawn. How many knights got away was unclear; more obvious was the envy generated by the notion that they might have succeeded and survived.

The whole siege was in crisis and this could only make matters worse; if such high-born fellows and indomitable fighters could desert it could only be because they knew the outcome to be decided. Antioch would fall and every Latin, from lowly pilgrim to great nobleman, determined to abide by their faith was likely a dead man.

A rumour swept through the city that even the magnates themselves were about to flee and leave the common folk to face the wrath of Kerbogha. A public display of fortitude had to be arranged, at which each leader swore in turn, in a solemn oath administered by a weary-looking Adémar, not to desert the crusading cause.

The Bishop, once so smooth of countenance that no wrinkle troubled his brow, did not now look well: if the clerical lack of vigour could be explained by the military circumstances, he was finding religion just as debilitating. Hunger amongst the deeply religious pilgrims by nature brought on visions of either an approaching apocalypse or divine salvation. Many of them were simple folk who had come to Asia in droves to seek deliverance and they represented every walk of life in the chequered board that was the Latin Christian heartland.

Some, a very few, had been prosperous merchants, much reduced now, the majority everything from guild tradesmen to shopkeepers, housewives, landless peasants and, it had to be admitted, a strong
contingent of the dregs and feckless of European society, albeit they had one thing in common: they had been led to seek salvation by non-sanctified preachers who promised them not only the remission of sins granted by the Pope, but had raised that to a guarantee of entry to heaven upon death, once they had breached the walls of the Holy City.

If there was rivalry amongst the magnates, called upon to swear their attachment to the cause till death or victory, they could not be outdone by the vicious jealousies that animated the various self-appointed divines. Clerical hierarchy, namely Adémar as the papal legate, could at least keep proper churchmen, the priests, deacons and abbots who had accompanied the great lords, in check. Not so the numerous unconsecrated preachers, who claimed to derive their authority directly from God and would have challenged Pope Urban himself to gainsay their rights.

The most noted of these charismatics was Peter the Hermit: he had set out for Palestine before a single warrior lance had pledged service, leading the first contingent of pilgrims from France and Germany to Constantinople. Twenty thousand strong, they had caused mayhem on the way given, if Peter had spiritual influence, he had no secular control at all.

The People’s Crusade, which it had come to be called, had plundered and looted their way through Bavaria, Bohemia and Hungary, robbing the locals of food and wine, sometimes committing murder and rapine on their fellow Christians while visiting much worse on any Jews they had encountered; they, being deemed Christ killers, had been ritually slaughtered and their synagogues torched, often with the believers inside.

Entering Byzantine territory had not tempered their abuses: imperial
troops had been obliged to engage in pitched battles to contain their depredations and that had not lessened when, strongly shepherded, they came to the capital city of the Roman Empire. One of their lesser crimes was to strip the lead off church roofs to pay for not only food but also the more dubious pleasures of the bazaar. Worse, they robbed the locals at will and were a real danger to the womenfolk.

Fearing riot – the citizens of Constantinople wished to take revenge for the pilgrims desecrations – the Emperor Alexius had shipped them over the Bosphorus to a less-than-salubrious town called Civetot, where he had kept them supplied with food in the hope that they would rest still and content until the fighting Crusaders arrived. He added a strong warning that not to do so would rouse the warlike Turks of nearby Nicaea.

That had been a mistake soon made to appear like folly; those who could walk ravaged the lands near Civetot, caring not for the religion of those they robbed, be they Muslim or Christian, Turk or Greek. Those with horses, knights who had attached themselves to the People’s Crusade, plundered further afield, one party penetrating deep into the littoral to take a small fortress called Xerigordos with the intention of holding it as a fief.

The very thing Alexius feared came to pass: stung by such an act the massively strong Turks of Nicaea set out to deal with these Latin vermin. Xerigordos was soon recaptured and the Crusaders either had their throats cut or were forced to convert to Islam. On hearing this news the rest of the People’s Crusade, or at least those who could bear a weapon and were certain God was on their side, set out in an unruly and impossible-to-control multitude to gain revenge by taking Nicaea.

What they got instead was a massacre in open battle, mounted
Turkish archers making mincemeat out of their so-called host. That was followed by the sack of Civetot itself, now defenceless, in which the Turks of Nicaea butchered every living and mature man and woman. The same fate befell any child they could find and all the bodies were piled in a great mound of rotting flesh. Only the young and comely of both sexes survived: they were led off to do carnal servitude in the brothels of Asia Minor.

Peter had not been in Civetot when the Turks descended – he had been in the capital seeking extra supplies of food and wine from the Emperor – so despite this near total loss and subsequent transgressions, such as a recent attempt to desert the bogged-down siege of Antioch and travel back to Constantinople, he was still highly respected by the pilgrims who had come along afterwards, brought by his reputation – a steady stream to be again now numbered in thousands.

His attempted flight had been kept from the armed host as well as the pilgrims for fear of its effect on morale, while his own belief in his divine mission as well as his powers of oratory had not been in any way diminished; he still preached as if he had a direct connection to the Almighty and seemed to have little difficulty in erasing from his mind any guilt for what had gone before.

Yet Peter was not alone in his hubris and in an atmosphere of heightened superstition it was not hard for such people to prey on the minds of those who believed in an all-seeing God and were in fear of a horrible death at the hands of the infidel – even worse was the notion of forced conversion – so that when such preachers called to their flocks that they should scourge themselves of sin it fell on willing ears.

People who were emaciated with hunger engaged madly in fasts lasting days to purify their souls, while flagellation and bodily mortification for the same purpose was common. All this was
happening as many of the same men were fighting, for religious fervour was not confined to the non-combatants.

One preacher, by the name of Stephen, swore that he had seen a vision of Christ and the Virgin Mary, with an admonishment that the Crusaders should purify their souls by a five-day fast, and his claim was backed up by some of the attendant clerics, Adémar not amongst them. That might have scotched the whole thing but the personal confessor of the highly credulous Raymond of Toulouse chose to believe Stephen and that was enough for his claims to be taken as serious.

Stephen added to his certainties by claiming the appearance of a bright and streaking light in the sky, larger than those that normally filled the summer nights of Syria, was the body of Christ himself come to underline his message of victory and absolution. The meteor came down in a flaming ball of increasingly crimson fire, to crash into the distant mountains, which heartened the defence and, judging by the wailing from without the walls, unnerved the equally superstitious Turks.

If the believers thought to wake to find their enemies gone, they were sorely disappointed; in truth it was worse, for they were finally in the process of undertaking the dispositions that had been anticipated when they first arrived.

‘Kerbogha does not, it seems, believe in divine portents.’

Bohemund was watching the massed ranks of the approaching host, again Kerbogha’s best Turkish troops, deploy for the first time outside the western and northern sections of the defence. Like the Crusaders they targeted the Bridge and St Paul’s Gates, really the only segments they could get to and hope to be effective, thousands of men with siege ladders and the clear intention to press home an assault.
Aware that his uncle was more cynical of visions than he, Tancred crossed himself before replying.

‘It matters if his men do.’

The response was harsh. ‘Look hard at them, Tancred, and tell me if you see a fear that divine fire is about to descend upon them?’

‘As long as our people are of good heart, as long as we believe.’

Bohemund, from his vantage point outside the citadel, looked along the walls, the rear parapet in plain view, noting how thinly they were defended. That would alter as the attack was pressed home, men would coalesce at the points of maximum danger and if they were not too numerous they should prevail. If there were a great many he would have to thin his own ranks to provide support and hope that having decided to change his tactics Kerbogha did not launch a simultaneous assault to those of the proceeding days.

‘Place less faith in visions and more in your sword arm, nephew.’

‘You pray to God before every fight, I have heard you!’

‘I pray that should I fall my soul will gain entry to heaven, not that Christ in person should come to my aid in battle.’

‘Even when, as now, we need such a divine intervention?’

‘What we need is the army of Alexius to press upon Kerbogha’s rear.’

‘Perhaps that is the meaning of the vision?’

‘Citadel gates are opening,’ came the call.

This killed off Bohemund’s reply, which would have been that the need for divine portents did not bring about compliance; if Alexius was even on the way there was no proof of it, and besides, there was no time to speculate on such matters. What he had feared, an attack in many places at once, was about to happen.

‘We are in for a hard day, Tancred. You take what comfort you need from what you believe and allow me to take my own.’

That assessment turned out to be an understatement: when dusk fell no one, certainly not Bohemund, could have told a listener how they had survived such a relentless assault, lasting as it did throughout the daylight hours. Everywhere the Crusaders fought they had lost ground and been obliged to recover it. Sections of the western wall had been taken by the enemy, including the barbican above the Bridge Gate, and in the very short breaks in his own action Bohemund had been able to see the Provençal knights take it back again, which, if he did not admire their leader, laid low and too ill he claimed to take part, did not in any way diminish respect for his men.

Godfrey de Bouillon struggled just as hard at the St Paul’s Gate, where Kerbogha had concentrated his main strength. There, only the narrowness of the area of assault – he was constrained between the River Orontes and the steep slope of Mount Staurin – held him in check, but it was a close run as several times he got substantial bodies of fighting men onto the parapet, where they engaged hand-to-hand with the Lotharingians in a fight that came down to knives, clubs and sometimes nothing but fists or gouging.

Matters were just as desperate outside the citadel and they turned critical when the Turks came close to taking one of the towers along the eastern wall, which would have outflanked the Apulians and rendered their drystone edifice untenable, their efforts scotched
single-handedly
by one knight who held his ground against stupendous odds until reinforced. Dusk fell on a besieged city full of spent men but they had held and that was all that mattered, even if they knew the morning would bring a renewal of the same.

Yet it did not come and some hoped that because Kerbogha had suffered great loss in his assault he was weakening in his resolve, a hope that was not long in being dashed as wiser heads prevailed. The
Atabeg of Mosul knew very well the state of the besieged Crusaders; he had tested them as good sense dictated he must and then made a tactical judgement. Over the next days it became obvious he had decided that to throw bodies at the walls to seek to overcome them was a waste: time and hunger would do for him that which main force would not.

To sit in passive acceptance was neither natural nor wise and Godfrey of Bouillon was most determined to act; two days later, just before dawn, he led five hundred knights out of the St Paul’s Gate to attack the Turkish encampment, first overcoming and slaughtering the small body Kerbogha had kept close to the walls. Emboldened by that and the passion such success aroused in his men, he carried on towards the main camp only to discover that his enemy had taken precautions against just such a sortie. Godfrey and his men walked into a trap and it was only sheer bloody-mindedness that allowed a good half of them to escape, over two hundred left behind as dead, which imposed a salutary lesson to all.