God's War: A New History of the Crusades Page 20
The defeat of Kerbogha prompted the Muslim garrison in the citadel to surrender, leaving the Christians to squabble over control of the city. To seek aid, Hugh of Vermandois was dispatched to Constantinople. A few days later, on 3 July, the princes decided to postpone any further advance south until 1 November 1098, possibly to await Greek reinforcement, apparently unaware of what many later saw as a pivotal moment in the First Crusade. Around 20 June, at Philomelium in central Anatolia, the Emperor Alexius, with a substantial Greek force accompanied by thousands of western troops, encountered the deserters from Antioch led by Stephen of Blois. Persuaded by the renegades of the hopelessness of the Christian position at Antioch and fearful of exposing his army to any Muslim counter-offensive, Alexius withdrew westwards. His daughter later insisted that Alexius had intended to assist in the conquest of Syria, although, given his necessary caution and greater strategic interest in western Anatolia, this was unlikely. However, his withdrawal, when known by the army at Antioch, was interpreted as a cowardly abandonment of his allies. More than any other single event, Alexius’s perceived refusal to relieve Antioch, coupled in hindsight with the earlier withdrawal of Tatikios, was exploited as the defining moment of treachery, providing those who desired one with the perfect excuse to tear up their agreements with the emperor. The consequences for relations between eastern and western Christendom were profound.38 Yet the betrayal was more apparent than real. Constant Greek naval aid had been vital at Antioch, providing materials, reinforcements and supplies. Negotiations with the emperor over the direction of the expedition continued into the spring of 1099. Some, such as Raymond of Toulouse, persisted with the Greek alliance long after the fall of Jerusalem. Later crusaders in 1101 received and accepted Greek hospitality at Constantinople. Yet immediately, the tone of the letter to Urban II of 11 September 1098, written by the princes led by Bohemund, was bitterly hostile to Alexius and the Greeks; subsequent decisions on strategy, settlement and rule ignored the fealty to the emperor sworn in 1097.39
This threw open the ownership of Antioch. By swift exploitation of events before and after the city’s capture, Bohemund revealed his determination to keep the city for himself. His role in its capture and preservation lent him a strong hand; as early as 14 July he issued a charter granting the Genoese privileges in Antioch in exchange for promises of military assistance.40 His rule was contested by Raymond of Toulouse. Although sometimes portrayed as holding more elevated motives than his Italian-Norman colleague, in his desire for personal territorial gain and leadership of the expedition, Raymond displayed material ambition of some intensity, his failure to raise greater opposition to Bohemund’s seizure of Antioch reflecting his own political isolation rather than the other’s lack of spirituality. In sharp contrast to the personally and physically charismatic Bohemund, Raymond failed to inspire warmth or alliances. As displayed at Constantinople, exaggeratedly conscious of his status, the count was older than most of the leaders; in poor health during the siege of Antioch, his native southern French tongue, langue d’oc further distancing him from the rest, who spoke the langue d’oil. His resentments and self-interest no less than those of his colleagues threatened the enterprise with collapse.
The death of Bishop Adhemar further fractured the expedition’s cohesion and direction by removing the one accepted figure of moral authority and religious stature who transcended factional and regional divisions, the appointed representative of Urban II whose leadership in council and camp had been matched in battle at Dorylaeum and Antioch. The leaders and their knights spent the summer and autumn of 1098 consolidating their possessions in Syria and Cilicia or seeking employment with Baldwin of Boulogne at Edessa. The princes’ letter to Urban II in September invited him to take personal command of the expedition, indicating an aimless prevarication over the invasion of Palestine. However, while baffling to the increasingly restless poor soldiers, this delay possessed some advantages. Negotiations with the Fatimids continued, the Egyptian embassy at Antioch being accompanied back to Cairo by Christian ambassadors. The defeat of Kerbogha had helped the Fatimids recapture Jerusalem in July 1098 from his allies, the Ortoqids, radically reconfiguring the diplomatic and political map. Instead of making common cause against Turkish interlopers, the westerners’ ambition now threatened the integrity of Egyptian conquests in Palestine. Negotiations continued until May 1099, with Christian envoys even celebrating Easter 1099 at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.41 After the experience of Antioch, the last thing the western commanders would have wanted was an opposed attack on Palestine. Moreover, the lotus-eating months of 1098 extended western rule in northern Syria, laying the foundations of permanent settlement, as in the creation of a Latin episcopal see at al-Bara, some twenty miles south-east of Antioch. This suited the acquisitive habits of western lords and knights as well as the princes, each of whom vigorously pursued their own territorial aggrandizement.
Out of these material conquests and consequent political rivalries emerged the crisis that precipitated the assault on Jerusalem. On 1 November 1098, the leaders almost came to blows. Bohemund, with the tacit support of most of the other princes, claimed the whole of Antioch, while Raymond, still clinging to parts of the city, concealed his own ambitions behind an appeal to honour the agreement with Alexius. Only the newly vocal pressure from the mass of the troops forced the leaders to an uneasy peace; ‘discordant’ was the frank appraisal of one eyewitness.42 Having failed to win his point in Antioch, Raymond of Toulouse tried his luck further south. With Bohemund’s help, he captured Ma ‘arrat in December 1098, but disputes over control of the town led to the collapse of the November treaty. Early the following month, with Bohemund back in Antioch expelling the Provençals, Raymond attempted to assume command of the rest of the expedition by offering the other princes money in return for service: only Robert of Normandy and Tancred accepted. Excluded from Antioch, Raymond’s policy of expediency was increasingly driven by ordinary crusaders. At Ma ‘arrat, their plight received striking witness in the stories of apparent cannibalism practised by a daredevil but starving group called the Tafurs, whose leader was alleged to have been a Norman knight fallen on hard times.43 For months popular demands for a resumption of the march to Jerusalem had been articulated by the visionaries. Now the troops acted for themselves. While Raymond was trying to bribe his way to leadership, his followers began dismantling the walls of Ma ‘arrat to force him to leave for the south. With Antioch held against him, Raymond had little choice but to place himself at the head of this popular element, hoping, no doubt, to attract rank and file followers of his princely rivals skulking further north. In a striking gesture of piety, humility and commitment, Raymond of Toulouse led his troops out of Ma ‘arrat on 13 January 1099 barefoot as a penitent, surrounded by praying clergy, while behind him the town was fired on his orders, a symbolic burning of the boats.44 The divisions and delays of the previous six months had resolved themselves into a brave choice. Politics and the lack of options placed Count Raymond at the head of the grizzled zealots, united and justified by divine approval and the unalterable ambition to liberate the Holy Sepulchre. If only by constant refrain, this desire, coloured by visions and miracles, none more compelling than the experiences of the campaign itself, assumed a totemic driving force which gathered strength as the leaders dallied. Even so, Raymond was gambling that his rivals would bow to similar forces and rally to him.
The gamble paid off. Marching south from Ma ‘arrat, Count Raymond, accompanied by Tancred and Robert of Normandy, was granted safe passage by the alarmed rulers of Shaizar and Homs. At the end of January, this modest force of perhaps only 7,000 decided to strike west, towards the coast, partly to gain access to shipping and supply lines to Cyprus. After capturing the fortress of Hisn al-Akrad, later the site of the famous Crac des Chevaliers, in mid-February, Raymond, hoping for rich pickings, began to invest Arqah, even though its ruler, the emir of Tripoli, appeared willing to come to terms. Lasting three months, the siege witnessed the final c
onfluence of the expedition’s remaining disparate contingents. By the end of February, Bohemund, Robert of Flanders and Godfrey of Bouillon had assembled at Lattakiah on the coast twenty-five miles south-west of Antioch to observe developments further south. There, Bohemund left his colleagues, returning to secure his power in
4. Palestine 1099
Antioch. Tentatively, Count Robert and Duke Godfrey moved down the coast to besiege Jubail (2–11 March), before desertions from their own troops and false rumours of a relief army threatening the Provençals persuaded them to join Count Raymond at Arqah, which they reached about 14 March.
The reunification of the combat armies reignited rivalries and feuding. Tancred of Lecce stirred up trouble by angling to desert Raymond’s service for that of Duke Godfrey, who now emerged as a powerful independent political force. Count Raymond, champion of the ordinary soldier only a few weeks before, appeared stubborn in his insistence on perpetuating what was now a strategically irrelevant siege rather than marching south. His loss of popular support was reflected in the trial and death in early April of Peter Bartholomew, now regarded as the count’s catspaw rather than the inspired voice of the people. A new series of reported visions pressed the case for an immediate attack on Jerusalem, Godfrey of Bouillon placing himself at the head of the popular agitation. Diplomatically, events clarified the crusaders’ options. A Greek embassy early in April led to weeks of wrangling over whether to delay an assault on Palestine by waiting for the promised arrival of the emperor. On 13 May, Godfrey broke up the siege of Arqah by moving towards Tripoli, taking with him many Provençals, ending the lingering pretence of a Byzantine alliance. At this moment, the ambassadors from Egypt returned with al-Afdal’s proposal for limited access to Jerusalem by unarmed Christians. While the westerners may have agreed to partition Palestine, leaving them control of the Holy City, this offer was impossible.45 Original plans to liberate local Christians had long since been paralleled by the aim of acquisition, by conquest if necessary. It was later alleged that Urban II had offered this inducement at Clermont. Social and political reality in Syria and Palestine had revealed to the westerners that, with the fracturing of the Byzantine alliance, there was no fraternal Christian ruling class in church or state to whom the Holy Places could be entrusted. This subtle but profound shift from a war of liberation to one of occupation represented a portentous development in Urban II’s schemes, one forged by the experience of the campaign.
With Byzantine aid rejected, an Egyptian alliance refused, the army of God left Tripoli on 16 May 1099 with one aim in view: the seizure of Jerusalem in as short a time as possible, a race against time and an Egyptian counter-attack. With religious symbols prominently displayed, the army reverted to type, the siege of Arqah, so far from consolidating Count Raymond’s command, provoking a reversion to collective leadership. Despite its fractious nature, the army made rapid progress, covering the 225 miles from Tripoli to Jerusalem in just twenty-three days. On the often narrow coast road, shadowed by the now dilapidated English fleet that had joined the expedition at Antioch a year earlier,46 speed dictated a diplomatic approach to the cities the army passed. Treaties were negotiated with Beirut and Acre; Tyre, Haifa and Caesarea presented no opposition, while Sidon provided only minor resistance. Signalling their inability to organize a military response, the Fatimids dismantled and abandoned Jaffa, the port nearest Jerusalem. At Arsuf, the Christian army turned inland, capturing the evacuated town of Ramla on 3 June. After resting for a few days and leaving a bishop with a garrison at nearby Lydda, on 6 June the Christians, rejecting a suggestion, possibly from Count Raymond, to attack the Fatimids directly in Egypt, climbed up into the Judean hills towards Jerusalem, camping that night at Qubeiba, ten miles from the Holy City. That evening Tancred left the army to occupy the Christian town of Bethlehem, a few miles south of Jerusalem. Although one account describes the locals as initially unsure who these invaders were, fearing more Turks, the westerners were soon welcomed, Tancred’s diversion being a tribute to local intelligence and friendly contacts with co-religionists as much as to his own desire for dominion. Other elements from the army fanned out across the Judean hills, securing local villages and strongpoints. There was nothing quixotic about the march to Jerusalem. At Ramla voices had been raised warning of the dangers of besieging Jerusalem in high summer, chiefly lack of water. However, emotion and strategy compelled an immediate assault. The only hope of survival lay in capturing the city before the arrival of the Fatimid army. More than strategy drew the pilgrims on; one of them later recalled that in the final approach to the Holy City ‘a few who held God’s command dear marched along barefoot’; another summed up the general mood of the battered host at this climactic moment: ‘rejoicing and exulting’.47
On Tuesday, 7 June the Christian army, numbering perhaps fewer than 14,000 fighting men, arrived at the walls of Jerusalem. The object of their quest reached, the ultimate trial began.48 Given the threat of a Fatimid attack, the arid countryside, the impossibility of relief and the inability of such a small army to enforce a complete blockade, there was
5. The Siege of Jerusalem, June–July 1099
no question of repeating the slow strangulation of Antioch. Prosecution of the siege was hampered by lack of water, necessitating elaborate schemes of water-carrying over large distances; illness, at least one of the leaders, Tancred, suffering from a bout of dysentery; the unavailability of sufficient wood for ladders, siege engines and towers; and a still divided command. While Godfrey, his new ally Tancred and the dukes of Normandy and Flanders maintained their separate camps outside the northern walls, Raymond of Toulouse initially established himself opposite the Citadel and the western walls before moving after a few days to blockade the Zion Gate in the south, almost as far removed from the northerners as possible. Thereafter, except for moments of communal ritual or planning the final assault, the two sections of the Christian army operated separately. A first, abortive attack on 13 June did not involve the Provençals at all. After the arrival of Genoese mariners who had put in at Jaffa on 17 June, with large timbers and skilled engineers, siege towers could be constructed, but each contingent made their own arrangements. Raymond, paying the construction artisans out of his own pocket, employed the Genoese William Ricau to build his tower, while the northerners, acting in concert, paid the workers out of a common fund, as at Antioch, and had Gaston of Béarn, himself a southerner from the Pyrenees, as their construction supervisor. Early in July, there were heated exchanges between the leaders over Tancred’s opportunistic claim to lordship over Bethlehem and the issue of the future rule of Jerusalem. Tancred and Raymond were formally reconciled only a week before the final assault. Bitterness was probably exacerbated by the defection to Godfrey of a number of prominent Provençals before or during the siege. In such circumstances, victory was little short of miraculous.
Behind the strong obstacles of double walls, moats and natural contours, the garrison facing the westerners, commanded by the Fatimid governor Iftikhar al-Dawla, was small and surprisingly passive. Made up of professional troops from Egypt and local militias, including troops from the Jewish community, it launched no disruptive forays and scarcely challenged the building of siege machines in the later stages of the investment. Its tactics appear to have been to await help, a policy encouraged by promises from al-Afdal which reached the city via the unguarded eastern side. The prospect of an Egyptian relief force thus forced one side to aggression, the other to inertia.
To capitalize on the surge of enthusiasm at having finally arrived at Jerusalem, on 13 June, allegedly at the promptings of a hermit living on the Mount of Olives, the northern leaders launched a speculative attack between the Quadrangular Tower in the north-west corner of the city and the Damascus Gate. Relying on only one ladder, even when the outer walls were breached, no concerted attack on the inner rampart was possible, the first man up, Raimbold Croton from Chartres, losing his hand in the attempt. Losses were heavy and, although the outer walls wer
e damaged, the defences held. This failure persuaded the leaders, at a meeting two days later, that the next assault required more careful organization and the participation of all contingents. Over the next few weeks the region was scoured for supplies; the Genoese, with their vital timbers cannibalized from their ships, were escorted to the siege and the engineers set to work. As the material preparations reached fruition, it was agreed on 6 July to hold a solemn religious procession around the walls of the city, in imitation of Joshua at Jericho. The planning and execution of this morale-boosting ritual encapsulated the expedition’s spiritual history. The inspiration, some recalled, came from a vision received by Peter Desiderius; the decision to hold the procession was reached at an assembly summoned by William Hugh of Monteil, Adhemar of Le Puy’s brother. After a three-day fast, on 8 July the whole army, led by the clergy bearing the growing collection of relics, processed barefoot around the walls of Jerusalem, ignoring the taunts of the locals. On completion of the circuit, the host was addressed on the Mount of Olives by Raymond of Aguilers, for the Provençals, Arnulf of Choques, the smooth-talking chaplain to the duke of Normandy, and Peter the Hermit, now under the patronage of Godfrey of Bouillon and the Lorrainers. Count Raymond and Tancred were publicly reconciled.49 The political and religious threads of the expedition were thus drawn tightly together in a public demonstration that recognized the regional diversity of the enterprise while insisting on its single identity, shared experience and common goal. As at Antioch, it was hoped that such rededication would ignite a willingness to hazard all in a last throw of fate. News of al-Afdal’s large relief army leaving Egypt had reached the Christian camp. It was now or never.