The Dream and the Tomb (11 page)

Tancred was, not surprisingly, the first to reach Tarsus, then largely inhabited by Greek and Armenian Christians who were sympathetic to the Crusaders. But the garrison troops had been ordered to stand fast. Seeing Tancred's small column advancing, the Turks took up positions outside the walls and waited. Tancred charged, there was a lot of close fighting, and the Turkish garrison was gradually thrown back on the town. Meanwhile Tancred had summoned reinforcements from Bohemond's army, which was still in Heraclea. He set up his camp outside the gates of Tarsus, and through spies he was able to learn that the Christians inside the walls were doing everything possible to ensure a Christian victory. He was afraid Baldwin would soon be arriving to snatch victory away from him. And in fact, after Tancred had been encamped for three days outside the town, Baldwin arrived and immediately offered to share the town with him. Since Baldwin's troops were far more numerous, the offer could be regarded as a friendly gesture, but it was refused. That night, without engaging in any fighting, the Turks slipped away and the people of Tarsus came streaming out of the gates to welcome the Crusaders. Even as they were being welcomed, Baldwin and Tancred quarreled bitterly; but Tancred, seeing himself vastly outnumbered, had the grace to retire and set off with his small army to capture some castles and towns in the neighborhood, while Baldwin held fast to Tarsus.

About this time the main army at Heraclea began its advance into Lesser Armenia, a province carved out of southeastern Asia Minor only a few years earlier. Armenians forced out of Armenia by the Seljuk Turks had fled under Prince Roupen over the Taurus Mountains and established themselves in an area where they believed they could defend themselves and retain their national culture. At this time Lesser Armenia consisted of many principalities under Armenian princelings who were little more than chieftains busily carving out fiefdoms for themselves. The boundaries were continually changing as the Seljuk Turks made inroads or were fought back. Lesser Armenia was in a state of permanent war with the Turks.

All through the history of the Crusades the kings of Lesser Armenia and their armies played a prominent role. They were devout Christians and superb fighters. Like the Copts and the Abyssinians they were Monophysites, and therefore at odds with both the Catholic and the Orthodox churches.

From the point of view of the Crusaders the southern march of the Armenians toward Cilicia and the areas bordering on the Euphrates was a godsend. The Armenians provided a protective wall to the north of the Holy Land. Lesser Armenia extended deep into Asia, and their farflung outposts enabled them to discern the coming invasions long before the
Seljuks were on the march. The Crusaders advanced into Lesser Armenia without too much difficulty; quite often towns were ungarrisoned. Baldwin, who abandoned Tarsus after placing a handpicked garrison in charge, began to march east, abandoning the army for adventures among the Armenian principalities. Taking only eighty knights with him and perhaps two hundred foot soldiers together with a new chaplain, the historian Fulcher of Chartres, he marched toward the Euphrates with the firm intention of becoming a prince over a principality large enough to offer him ample rewards. The leaders of the Crusade had evidently given him permission to take possession of as many principalities as he pleased on condition that they serve the purposes of the Crusaders. In fact, he obtained the principality of Edessa, one of the largest and most powerful. Baldwin became coprince with Prince Thoros, took charge of the combined army, and then conspired against Thoros, who belonged to the Orthodox Church and owed his position to the Emperor Alexius Comnenus. Historians are agreed that Thoros was unpopular because he was old, childless, did not belong to the Armenian Church, and was a loyal subject of the Byzantine emperor. But it is in the nature of princes to be unpopular, and there is no evidence that he was more unpopular than most. He had fought well against the Turks and served his people for a long time. He did not deserve the fate Baldwin had reserved for him.

Returning from a battle at Samosata that he had lost, Baldwin was determined to retain his power in Edessa. As the historian Matthew of Edessa tells the story, Prince Thoros knew there was a conspiracy against his life, and he had therefore taken refuge with his bodyguard in the citadel, and from there sent a message to Baldwin, begging to be allowed to go free on condition that he resign all his powers and become a simple citizen. Baldwin swore on the Bible and in the name of God, the archangels and the saints that the life of the prince would be spared. Thereupon the prince came out of the citadel but was promptly seized by the mob and stabbed to death. The body was thrown off a parapet and what remained of it was dragged through the streets for all to see. Prince Thoros was dead, and there was now only Prince Baldwin of Edessa.

By capturing Edessa with eighty knights Baldwin had the satisfaction of knowing that he had penetrated more deeply into Asia than any Westerner since the time of Alexander the Great. Edessa lay on an important trade route and had acquired wealth and treasure far beyond the expectation of the knights who so casually made their way to this provincial city. After the death of Thoros, Baldwin found the treasury intact. He became rich beyond his utmost dreams. His citadel was ornamented with Corinthian columns fifty feet high, and at the foot of Citadel Rock were pools once sacred to the ancient goddesses of Mesopotamia. In this exotic place, inhabited by Armenians, Turks, Jews, and merchants from Central Asia,
Baldwin established a Crusader princedom which would serve as the eastern bulwark of the Crusaders for half a century.

Meanwhile the main Crusader army under Bohemond, Godfrey, and the Count of Toulouse continued its march through Asia Minor, having more difficulty with the terrain than with the Turks. The Turks indeed refused battle. Bohemond heard of a powerful Turkish army, went in search of it, and failed to find it. Perhaps it never existed; it is more likely that it simply fled at the approach of the Crusaders, who were gathering momentum and speed for the inevitable attack on Antioch. At Coxon, where the people opened the gates and entertained the Christian army for three days, they heard rumors that the Turkish garrison had been withdrawn from Antioch and the way was thus clear to Jerusalem. The Count of Toulouse held a council of war, and it was decided to send five hundred knights ahead in order to verify the rumor, which proved to be untrue. Antioch was being heavily fortified. The Christians inside the city were being persecuted and the largest church had been desecrated, being used as stables for the reigning emir.

The worst part of the journey lay ahead, for after Coxon the Crusaders had to cross the Anti-Taurus Mountains. It was October, the rains had begun, carts and wagons filled with supplies had to be carried over great heights, horses fell over precipices, and one beast of burden would drag another down with it. The author of the
Gesta Francorum
speaks of the
diabolica montana
, the devilish mountains. They had bad maps, no protection from the weather, and knew nothing about climbing mountains. They lost more men and animals in the mountains than they lost in any battle with the Turks. Dispirited, with half their baggage trains lost, they came at last to the plains near the seacoast. They would have been even more dispirited if they had known that Yaghi-Siyan, the military governor of Antioch, had sent urgent messages to Aleppo, Damascus, Mosul, Baghdad, and as far as Persia, for reinforcements. His aim was to make Antioch impregnable by transforming the city into an armored fortress.

On October 20, four months after the battle of Nicaea, the Crusaders saw the high, biscuit-colored walls of Antioch in the distance. They were awestruck by the power and splendor of the city that stood in their way, defended by walls built by a Byzantine emperor and by a ruthless and well-organized Turkish army. They could not reach the Holy Sepulchre until Antioch was surrendered to them.

ANTIOCH was a city like no other in the Near East. It was once the largest in Asia; under the Romans it was the third largest of the empire; and in the time of the Crusades it was the richest and the most powerful city on the Palestinian coast. The seaport of St. Symeon, twelve miles away, was usually filled with ships, for Antioch was a vast trading center with merchants who came from North Africa, Egypt, Byzantium, from Central Asia and all the emirates in the hinterland. The city clustered at the foot of a mountain called Mount Silpius, and the fortifications extended to the top of the mountain. The river Orontes flowed just outside the city walls, which had originally been built by Justinian. Four hundred towers had been built into the walls, with the result that there was no part of the city that was not under examination by the troops stationed on the walls. Antioch, formidable in its wealth and defenses, and now made even more formidable by the determination of Yaghi-Siyan to hold it for the Muslims, was a city which in the normal course of events could resist a two-year siege without too much difficulty. It could be conquered only by treachery from within.

The military governor of Antioch was well aware that a large force of Crusaders was about to descend upon him, and he put the city in a state of defense. He was a capable commander but the Christians had no lack of equally capable commanders. For once the Christians were not quarreling excessively among themselves, and they settled down to besiege a city that by its very nature could not be completely blockaded, for there was always a way in which supplies could be brought in over those immensely long walls.

The first Christians to arrive on the Orontes River formed a small detachment under Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy. They attacked the Iron Bridge, which was heavily fortified with two huge towers, and when the bridge fell to them in a surprise assault, the road to Antioch lay open. On the following day, October 21, 1097, Bohemond came up with the vanguard
of the army, and soon the entire Crusader army was deployed outside the walls of Antioch.

Even though the Crusaders could not encircle the city, they could set up their camps in places where the Turks were most vulnerable. Bohemond set up his camp opposite the Gate of St. Paul, where the mountains came down to the plain. Raymond of Toulouse, with the largest army, stood opposite the Gate of the Dog, farther to the west, while Godfrey of Bouillon commanded a position opposite the Gate of the Duke, still farther to the west. But there were no Crusaders facing the Gate of the Bridge and the Gate of St. George, and the road to the seaport of St. Symeon remained in the hands of the Turks.

At first the Crusaders simply mounted guard, with a few tentative assaults. They had spies in the city, and they felt it necessary to feel their way, to establish the geography of the place in their own minds. The Count of Toulouse characteristically demanded an immediate general attack. Bohemond, who wanted the city for himself, was more cautious. Least of all did he want an attack that would enable Adhemar and the count to claim the city for the pope. So for two weeks there was a standoff between the Turks inside the city and the Christian army outside.

During that time Yaghi-Siyan went about sending embassies for help to emirs and princes who would realize that the Crusaders must be stopped. The size of the Crusader army had surprised him.

Antioch was still a predominantly Christian city with a large population of Greeks and Armenians who were likely to go over to the enemy at the first opportunity. On the other hand, the Syrian Christians, long established in Antioch, were more loyal to Yaghi-Siyan because they had felt repressed by Byzantine rule. Yaghi-Siyan cultivated them, rewarding them handsomely for any information about the Crusaders. So the Christians within the city remained divided. If Bohemond hoped they would rise up against the Turks, whom they outnumbered, he was mistaken. Antioch would not fall like ripe fruit into their hands.

After a two-week wait Yaghi-Siyan decided to test the strength of the Christians. There were sorties, ambuscades, sudden descents from the hills above Bohemond's camp. There were some severe skirmishes, and the Christians began to lose heart. As winter came, they became increasingly fearful. They had gorged themselves on the sheep and cattle they found in the villages near Antioch; they had captured many granaries; they had taken possession of mills and bakeries; yet they had failed to make provision for the long days ahead. It was decided by the princes in council that they would have to detach some troops and march up the Orontes valley in search of provisions. Bohemond and Robert of Flanders were to lead the expedition, leaving Bishop Adhémar and the Count of Toulouse in command of the army outside the walls of Antioch. According to the chroniclers, Bohemond led twenty thousand Crusaders on this foraging expedition.
This was an astonishingly large number of men to be detached from the main army, and it is possible that Bohemond was aware that a large column under Duqaq of Damascus was coming to relieve Antioch and that it was his duty to destroy it. The Turkish column encountered the column led by Robert of Flanders at Albara. Bohemond held back his forces, waiting for the first onslaught of the Turks to exhaust itself, and then hurled his own troops into battle. Robert's troops were badly mauled, but Duqaq's troops were torn to shreds. Yet there was little booty and there were almost no provisions to be found in the neighboring villages. Bohemond and Robert returned to Antioch, sadder and poorer. They had killed some Turks, and it was unlikely that Duqaq would ever again come to the relief of Antioch, but it was a hollow victory.