The Dream and the Tomb (10 page)

One more factor needs to be mentioned: they had Byzantine advisers, for Byzantine officers accompanied them. Manuel Butumites, a seasoned general, who knew Nicaea well, acted as the emperor's representative while the emperor himself remained at Pelecanum. Butumites could call upon the emperor for supplies or ammunition or whatever was necessary.

Bohemond, the first to arrive on the scene, took up a position to the north of the city, Godfrey and the Lotharingians to the east, and the Count of Toulouse with the Provencals on the south. The troops of Robert of Normandy did not come up until much later. There was no commander in chief, but the princes met frequently and coordinated their plans. Butumites and Byzantine staff officers offered their advice. Probably Bohemond, Godfrey, the Count of Toulouse, and Butumites formed a quadrumvirate, which decided on all important issues. What is certain is that Butumites knew at every moment what the Crusaders were doing. His engineers had brought siege engines with them, and they were to play an important part in the seven-week-long siege.

When the Crusading armies reached Nicaea, they were exhausted by a long and difficult climb through the mountains. On the way, near Civetot, they passed close to the place where Peter the Hermit's ragged army had been massacred; huge heaps of bones lying by the roadside were a reminder of Turkish ferocity. Supplies gave out during the journey to Nicaea. Butumites was informed; supplies were rushed up just in time; and the troops were grateful to an emperor they half despised, because he represented in their eyes the luxury and decadence of Constantinople. According to one of the chroniclers it was the emperor himself who advised Godfrey to move cautiously over the mountains, to send scouts and engineers ahead, and to mark the track they cut through the scrub oaks with wooden crosses for the benefit of future pilgrims. The emperor also presented the Count of Toulouse with two thousand light-armed infantry under the command of Taticius, one of his most famous generals.

The first Turkish relief force to arrive on the outskirts of Nicaea found the city completely blockaded. The Count of Toulouse's army had just arrived in force and met the brunt of the attack. In a short, sharp skirmish, the Turks were hurled back, and many were killed. The Turks regrouped, attacked a second time, and were again hurled back. The Provençals discovered a cart filled with ropes and an interpreter explained that the ropes were intended for the Crusaders. They would be bound together and carried off to remote Khorassan. The chronicler of the
Gesta Francorum
wrote that the Turks were merry (
letantes
) as they came down the mountains, but their merriment was brief. “As many of them as came down remained in our hands,” he wrote, “and their heads were cut off. Then we threw the heads by means of a catapult into the city, and thus wrought great terror among the Turks.”

For some time the Count of Toulouse had been eyeing one of the great southern towers of the city. He decided to mine it and bring it down. His sappers advanced under a testudo, dug down to the foundation of the wall, cut away some of the stones, inserted beams and wooden joists, and then set fire to them. The sappers and crossbowmen retreated to a safer place and had the pleasure of watching the tower crumbling. By this time it was dark, and it was impossible to make an entrance into the city amid the rubble of a broken tower. In the morning when they awoke, they were surprised to see the tower standing straight and tall. The Turks had worked through the night, and they had somehow built a new tower.

Such labors testified to the determination of the garrison troops to hold out and resist to the uttermost. They, too, had advantages. Hemmed in on three sides, they were able to bring in supplies on the fourth side. The west wall, facing the lake, was provided with watergates through which passed an endless supply of food, fodder, fish, wood, and building materials. There were fishing vessels on the lake and a small fleet. The princes consulted with Butumites, and it was agreed to send messengers to Pelecanum to beg the emperor to send ships to the Ascanian lake. This meant assembling a fleet in the harbor of Civetot (which was just outside Nicaea) and then carrying the ships on bullock carts over the mountains and through the dense forests.

The emperor at once gave the order for the ships to be assembled, and in a surprisingly short time, at a secret hiding place on the shores of the lake, the ships were all brought together and prepared for launching. The launches took place at night. At dawn, from their high towers, the Turkish guards of Nicaea saw the Byzantine fleet sailing across the lake, every ship filled with soldiers. Drummers and trumpeters filled the air with their music. The ships advanced relentlessly. Raymond of Aguilers, who saw them, wrote that the appearance of the ships did more than anything else to inspire fear in the defenders and bring about the surrender.

The surrender, however, did not come about immediately. Butumites himself entered the city secretly under a safe-conduct, offering terms of surrender that were unusually generous. The emirs, the high officials, and the court nobility would receive handsome gifts from the emperor; they would be given pensions and honors according to their rank. Some of the emirs were smuggled out of the city and taken to Pelecanum, where the emperor greeted them cordially and reaffirmed that the lives of all the garrison troops would be spared and no Turk would be harmed if they surrendered. A few details of these negotiations were known to the Crusading
princes but not all of them. The garrison commander held out, believing that the sultan might yet come to his aid. Butumites decided upon a show of force. A general assault was ordered. The towers with their grappling hooks were brought closer to the walls; the siege engines were brought forward; the armies took up their stations. But on the morning the assault was to begin, the Crusaders saw imperial banners waving over the city. During the night Nicaea had fallen to the negotiator.

At first the Crusaders felt cheated. They had hoped to gather up all the treasure of Nicaea and carry it with them to Jerusalem. The soldiers were hungry for loot and women. The princes, forgetting that they had sworn on oath to respect the emperor's interest in the cities that had formerly belonged to his empire, felt injured by the emperor's generosity to the garrison troops and all the Turks in Nicaea. Raymond of Aguilers calls the emperor “false an iniquitous” for permitting them to leave unharmed. It would be more accurate to say that, at Nicaea, the emperor was demonstrating his mastery of psychological warfare.

To the Crusaders the emperor was more than generous. Every Crusading soldier received a gift of food. The princes were invited to Pelecanum where they were lavishly entertained and were presented with gold and jewels from the sultan's treasure chamber.

After these ceremonies the emperor bade the Crusaders farewell. Taticius was ordered to accompany them on their march through Asia Minor. The next stage of the march would be supremely dangerous because Kilij Arslan commanded immense forces and it was inevitable that he would attempt to take revenge against the Crusaders for the fall of Nicaea and the loss of his treasury.

At a village called Leuce, on the road to Dorylaeum, the princes held a council of war and decided to divide the army into two parts. It was a dangerous move. There were now two armies marching a day's journey apart, the first led by Bohemond, who was already seeing himself as the leader of the Christian host, and the second by the Count of Toulouse. The first army was composed of the Normans of southern Italy and northern France, with Stephen of Blois and the Count of Flanders and the detachment of Byzantine troops under the command of Taticius. The Greeks provided engineers, scouts, and guides, and since many Greeks knew the country well and many of their countrymen were still living in the lands conquered by the Seljuk Turks they were able to send spies into the hinterland who returned with accurate reports. The second army, under the Count of Toulouse, was composed of Provençals and the Lotharingians under Godfrey. There was also a small French force under Hugh the Great. Godfrey and the Count of Toulouse became close friends, aiding one another whenever it was possible.

The Sultan Kilij Arslan had been following the movements of the Christian army ever since it left Nicaea. On June 30 his well-hidden army
was waiting for the Crusaders in the valley of Dorylaeum. Bohemond's army was encamped on the plain on the other side of the hills. At sunrise on the following day the Turks swooped down the hills, making the loud and frightening noises that always accompanied an attack; and above these noises there could be heard very clearly the battle cry,
“Allah Akbar”—
“God is great.”

Bohemond was now in extraordinary danger: his army was outnumbered by the enemy and was a day's march from the army of the Count of Toulouse. He ordered his men to form a hollow square, the knights facing outward, the infantry behind them, and the women and noncombatants at the center of the square where, as it happened, there were fountains of fresh water. “The women of our camp were a great comfort to us that day,” wrote theauthorof the
Gesta Francorum
, “for they brought water for our soldiers to drink and they were always vehemently encouraging those who were fighting for them and defending them.” From the hillside the Turks were showering arrows into Bohemond's army in such numbers that the sky darkened. The Turks were well trained at saturation firing on a massive scale, something the Crusaders had never experienced before.

Bohemond sent a messenger to the second army to make all speed to the battlefield, and it arrived just in time to save the camp from being overrun, but Bohemond was beginning to fear whether even with the two armies joined together he had the manpower to resist the endless waves of Turks who came over the mountains. He had almost lost hope when he saw a relief force, led by Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy, come over another mountain to take the Turks from the rear. The sudden appearance of a fresh army at their rear threw the Turks into a panic. They fled, leaving behind them a vast amount of booty in gold, silver, horses, camels, oxen, and sheep. Until sunset, the Turks ran, and the Christians ran after them.

At the end of the day Bohemond had to reflect that a battle he almost lost was saved by the Bishop of Le Puy, who had thought out his stratagem without help from any soldier. He had found the guides to take his troops over the mountain, and he had somehow timed his intervention in a way that would have the greatest effect on the course of the battle.

In the battle at Dorylaeum the Crusaders for the first time fought the Turks on an enormous scale, whole armies pitted against whole armies. Here they took the measure of the enemy, admiring his courage and steadfastness. The author of the
Gesta Francorum
noted that the Turks threw 360,000 men into the battle. No doubt this is how many they seemed to be. Clearly, they were worthy opponents. Taticius and his guides continued to work with the Crusaders, giving advice on the roads to be traveled and the villages where they were likely to find supplies. But supplies were running low and soon the journey across Asia Minor became a nightmare. They entered a land of salt marshes and thornbushes; they could not drink the marsh water and thornbushes were very nearly inedible.
Many of their horses fell and were eaten. Some of the knights were reduced to walking on foot; others rode on oxen; sheep, goats, and dogs were employed to pull the baggage carts. It was high summer; in the pestilential heat so many fell ill that it sometimes seemed that the Crusade would have to be abandoned somewhere in the heart of Asia Minor. The Count of Toulouse was so sick that the Bishop of Orange gave him extreme unction. Godfrey, who had a passion for hunting, was wounded by a bear he had obviously hoped to eat. Even falcons and hunting dogs were eaten. Bread and water had given out. Crusaders were seen walking with their mouths open in the hope that a breath of air would cool their parched tongues. Occasionally they came upon patches of sugarcane; they squeezed out the sweet liquid and drank it ravenously.

Then the rains came, and they were more unhappy and bewildered than ever. The rain lasted for four or five days, a cold rain that numbed their senses. The animals were also numbed by it and could not move. But as they neared Iconium, the modern Konya, they came to fertile valleys and friendly villagers. Apparently there was no Turkish garrison at Konya and they entered it freely, the inhabitants helping them in every way. The author of the
Gesta Francorum
remembered that the people were especially concerned that the Crusaders carried no waterskins. They showed how the waterskins could be made, and thereafter the Christian army was never without them.

At Heraclea, the next important town on their journey, a large Turkish garrison was waiting for them. The Christians had overwhelming numbers and decided to attack immediately. Bohemond commanded the assault force, and the Turks fled, says the chronicler, “as quickly as an arrow shot by a strong hand flies from the bowstring.” Here the Crusaders rested for four days. During this time they argued violently about the route to be followed to Antioch, far away in the southeast, defying the most elementary law of all armies: united they stand, but divided they fall. The divisiveness that was to become characteristic of the Crusaders had made its first appearance.

Both Tancred and Baldwin were far less interested in the Crusades than in acquiring great estates, cities, and farmlands that would produce wealth and a submissive peasantry. Tarsus, the birthplace of St. Paul, was within easy distance, and they decided independently to take possession of the city and establish themselves there. Tancred, with a hundred knights and two hundred infantry, lightly armed and therefore capable of great speed, set out from Heraclea about September 14, to be followed a few hours later by Baldwin, his cousin Baldwin of Le Bourg, and about five hundred knights and two thousand infantry. Tancred hoped to win Tarsus by speed, surprise, and sheer effrontery, while Baldwin hoped to smash the Turkish garrison troops with his heavily armed cavalry, leaving the infantrymen to mop up the survivors and take physical possession of the town. Tancred
and Baldwin, both junior members of princely families, had much to win and little to lose in these dangerous adventures.