The First Crusade (21 page)

At daybreak there were the boats, all in very good order, sailing across the lake towards the city. The Turks, seeing them, were surprised and did not know if it was their own fleet or that of the emperor, but when they realised it was the emperor's they were afraid almost to death, and began to wail and lament, while the Franks rejoiced and gave glory to God.
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The shock broke the Turkish garrison's will, and within hours they were suing for peace. After holding out for five weeks, Nicaea capitulated on
18
June. It was, however, the emperor's men, Manuel Boutoumites and Taticius, who actually took surrender of the city and raised the imperial standard. After all their efforts, the crusaders were left waiting outside the walls. Byzantine Turcopoles were set to guard the city's treasury and the crusaders were denied any chance of plunder. It was a precarious moment for Alexius' envoys: they may have had nominal authority over the campaign, but they were outnumbered both by the barely subdued Turkish garrison inside the city and by the acquisitive Frankish horde without. Had either side chosen to rebel, the Greeks would have been annihilated. As it was, the crusader princes kept their promise to return the city to the emperor, and the leading members of the Turkish garrison were quickly ferried out in small, manageable groups to Constantinople. There were some complaints among the Latin rank and file, worried that the captured Turks would soon be ransomed and thus free to fight the crusaders on another day, but even these were quickly silenced by the emperor's extravagant largesse. He knew only too well how to keep this 'mercenary' crusading army under control. One Frank recalled that, 'because he kept all [the money from Nicaea], the emperor gave some of his own gold and silver and mantles to our nobles; he also distributed some of his copper coins, which they call
tarantarons,
to the footsoldiers'.
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The fall of Nicaea was a product of the successful policy of close co-operation between the crusaders and Byzantium. The Franks would probably have enjoyed little success without Greek aid, while Alexius had needed the might of t
he Latin army to overcome Kilij
Arslan s capital.* One contemporary, reflecting upon the siege, wrote, 'Now that the storm of war had thus abated
...
the army of the living God spent the day in great rejoicing and exultation right there in the camp, because everything so far had gone well for them'. Their success had, however, been bought at a price. Many crusaders died in battle or from illness during the campaign. An eyewitness in Bohemond's army recalled that 'many of our men suffered martyrdom there and gave up their blessed souls to God with joy and gladness, and many poor starved to death for the Name of Christ. All these entered Heaven in triumph, wearing the robe of martyrdom
.
Even at this early stage in the expedition to Jerusalem it seems that the crusaders believed that fighting and dying in the name of God cleansed them of sin and brought the gift of everlasting life.
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INTO ANATOLIA

Since passing through Constantinople, the leaders of the First Crusade had, in effect, been working for the emperor, fighting on the eastern border of Byzantium to recover Greek territory. With Alexius'

There were other benefits from Nicaea's fall. Scores of Latin prisoners who had been held in the city were released. Among them was an unnamed nun who had followed Peter the Hermit to Asia Minor. She had been captured by a Turk and repeatedly raped by him and a number of other men. Upon her release, she recognised Henry of Esch among the crusader hosts and begged him to help her find some way to purify her soul. At last Bishop Adhemar himself prescribed a suitable penance: 'She was granted forgiveness for her unlawful liaison with the Turk, and her repentance was made less burdensome because she had endured this hideous defilement by wicked and villainous m
en under duress and unwillingly.
Thus it is clear that, in the eyes of the Church, by being raped she had committed a sin. But this was not the end of the story. According to one contemporary, the nun ran back to her Turkish captor on the very next day. The whole tale may well be a product of Albert of Aachen's imagination, and the nun's final change of heart, which he attributes to the innate and overwhelming lustfulness of females, seems particularly unlikely - how was it that her Nicaean 'lover' was not himself now a captive? - but it does serve as a vivid illustration of medieval preconceptions about women and sex.

primary objective achieved - the recapture of Nicaea - one question remained: what would the crusaders do now?

With this in mind, on
22
June the emperor called the Frankish princes to his camp at Pelekanum to discuss their plans. With the exception of Raymond of Toulouse and Stephen of Blois, who remained behind to protect the Latin camp, the cream of crusader aristocracy attended. By this point, most of the Frankish host shared one deep-held and compelling ambition - to march on Jerusalem and recover the Holy City for Christendom. Alexius probably had no idea what this 'barbarian' horde was capable of achieving. So far they had served his purposes well and, for the time being at least, there was no reason for him not to support their expedition. Once again, he seems to have offered the princes valuable advice on the political and strategic realities of the world they were planning to traverse. From this point on, we know that the crusaders discussed their next major goal on the road to Palestine - the vast, ancient city of Antioch, on the border between Asia Minor and Syria. They also followed Alexius' advice and dispatched envoys by ship to the Fatimid caliphate in Egypt, to discuss a possible treaty.
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There was no question in the emperor's mind that the crusaders would remain his servants. A member of Stephen of Blois' contingent pointed put that the Franks left Nicaea only 'once they had received permission from the emperor to depart'. Alexius also took the opportunity presented by the gathering at Pelekanum to reinforce his primacy. The oaths of allegiance given to him at Constantinople were restated, and any members of the crusader nobility who had managed to slip through the net, such as Tancred and Baldwin of Boulogne, were now pressed into pledging their obedience. Alexius' strategy was to assist the crusaders' cause and, as they marched across Asia Minor, follow in their wake mopping up any territory they conquered. To this end, he ordered Taticius, and the troops he had led to Nicaea, to accompany the Latin host. According to a Greek contemporary, Taticius' duty was 'to help and protect them on all occasions and also to take over from them any cities they captured, if indeed God granted them that favour'. Even at this stage, it is very unlikely that the emperor offered any firm commitment to lead Byzantine reinforcements himself in support of the crusade, although the Franks do seem to have been expecting to be joined by a large Greek army at some later date.
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Alexius' plan for controlled, constructive exploitation of the First Crusade had one major flaw. His power and influence over the expedition were almost absolute as it passed through Constantinople and besieged Nicaea, but, with every Frankish step into Anatolia (Central Asia Minor) and beyond, the crusade passed further out of the orbit of Byzantine authority. The spell of co-operation and subservience would continue to hold for months to come, but the level of collaboration experienced at Nicaea was never again repeated.

The Battle of
Dorylaeum

The First Crusade left Nicaea in the last week of June
1097.
By
29
June the entire army had assembled at a staging post one day's march to the south, at a bridge over the Goksu river. Its next major target was Antioch, hundreds of kilometres to the east, but to reach this the expedition would have to overcome two challenges. The first was the enormous size of the crusade. An army of roughly
70,000
people might take up to three days to march past a single point. Moving as one massed force would be incredibly unwieldy and place intense pressure on local resources, given that the Franks intended to continue their practice of foraging for food as they went. Logic dictated that the expedition should break into smaller contingents, travelling just as it had en route to Constantinople. But this approach had inherent dangers. The threat posed by the Seljuq Turks of Asia Minor may have been beaten back at Nicaea, but it had not been extinguished. The crusaders must have suspected that Kilij Arslan would, at some point, attempt a counterattack. By splintering into smaller armies the Latin host would lose its overwhelming numerical advantage.

Faced with a difficult choice, the princes elected to divide their forces in two, but maintain relatively close contact during the march. On
29
June, Bohemond's southern Italian Normans and Robert of Normandy's army crossed the Goksu, trailed at some distance by Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert of Flanders, Hugh of France and the southern French. They intended to rendezvous some four days' march to the south-east, at Dorylaeum, an abandoned Byzantine military camp.
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This was just the opportunity that Kilij Arslan had been waiting for. After his humiliating defeat at Nicaea on
16
May, he realised that every scrap of available manpower would be needed were he to have any hope of defeating the huge Frankish army. Putting aside past quarrels, he negotiated a pact with the Danishmendid Turks of northern and eastern Asia Minor and set off to intercept the crusaders. Even with this new larger army, he could ill afford to risk a full-scale battle against the massed Latin ranks. Instead, he hoped to pick off smaller portions of their army through ambush and guerrilla warfare. On the morning of
1
July
1097
he took his chance.

The first two days of Bohemond's and Robert of Normandy's march towards Dorylaeum had passed without incident. Scouts seem to have reported the presence of a Turkish force in the region as night fell on
30
June, but the princes must have judged this to be a small raiding party, because they took no steps to notify the second crusader force. This proved to be a fateful decision.
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A few hours after dawn on the following day, having just negotiated a small river crossing, the first crusader army reached an area of open ground at the junction of two valleys. Suddenly, a mass of Turkish horsemen appeared. Two Frankish eyewitnesses estimated their number at
360,000,
but this is probably another wild exaggeration. Even so, the size of Kilij Arslan's force may have equalled or even exceeded that of this half of the crusading host. The Franks faced an appalling predicament: isolated and exposed, they were about to have their first, terrifying taste of Turkish horsemen in full flight.
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The crusaders were horrified. One member of Bohemond's army recalled how the Turks began, all at once, to howl and gabble and shout, saying with loud voices in their own language some devilish word which I do not understand
...
screaming like demons'. Bearing down upon the stunned Latins was the very nightmare of which the Emperor Alexius had warned back in Constantinople - a rampaging pack of highly manoeuvrable mounted archers, itching to exploit the open ground, wheeling their nimble-footed horses in an encircling torrent, unleashing a deadly 'cloud of arrows'.

In a moment of extraordinary courage and composure, Bohemond and Robert kept their heads and stayed the pulse of panic rushing through their forces. They realised that, in the face of such an enemy, only steadfast unity offered any hope of survival - if the crusaders broke formation or sought to escape they would be mown down without mercy. As the Turks swarmed towards them, the princes sent an urgent appeal for reinforcement to the second crusader army and ordered a makeshift camp to be set up beside a nearby marsh. Into its centre were placed all the army's heavy gear, horses, women, children and other non-combatants, while the knights and infantry were deployed in a tight-knit defensive formation. One eyewitness remembered how after we had set ourselves in order the Turks came upon us from all sides, skirmishing, throwing darts and javelins and shooting arrows from an astonishing range'. In the race to establish a secure perimeter many of the Frankish peasants following the army were caught in the open and were soon butchered. Taking pity on them, one Frankish knight, Robert of Paris, broke ranks and rushed out to help them, but within seconds he was struck by an arrow and decapitated.

The princes' plan was to hold fast in close formation, stubbornly refusing to be drawn into open battle, while relying upon weight of numbers and superior armour to survive. They were playing a desperate waiting game, always hoping for the second army's arrival. Ranged against them was a seemingly endless, writhing multitude of Turks. One eyewitness believed that 'nearly all the mountains and hills and valleys, and all the flat country within and without the hills, were covered with this accursed folk'. To strengthen their resolve in the face of this swarm, the crusaders passed a morale-boosting phrase down the line: 'Stand fast together, trusting in Christ and the victory of the Holy Cross. Today may we all gain much booty.' At the same time, priests moved up and down the lines offering prayers of encouragement and receiving confessions, while women distributed water to stave off the day's heat.
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