The Normans: From Raiders to Kings

by Lars Brownworth

  When the army decided to move on in the direction of Antioch, Bohemond suggested that they split in half to make it easier to find supplies. He accompanied the advance group while his main competitor, Raymond of Toulouse, the only other crusader of comparable standing, took control of the second wing traveling a day behind. Near the town of Dorylaeum, Bohemond was ambushed, but thanks to his quick thinking, disaster was averted. A message was sent to Raymond to hurry, while the Turks, who mistakenly believed that they had trapped the entire army, repeatedly attacked. When Raymond appeared with a fresh group of knights the Turks fled, leaving the treasury and household goods of their emir behind.

  The victory was credited to both commanders, and the entire army spent a welcome respite among the orchards and streams of the nearby old Byzantine city of Iconium. The Turks made one more attempt to stop them from crossing the Taurus Mountains, but this time Bohemond nearly defeated them by himself, charging straight at the emir and engaging him in single combat. Unnerved, the Turks fled, abandoning any further attempt to block the Crusaders’ path. That night a comet flared in the sky, seeming to symbolize both the victory and Bohemond’s stratospheric prestige.

  The Norman, as always, sensing an opportunity, detached himself from the main army and went off to liberate several neighboring cities. These he discreetly turned over to the emperor as proof of his good faith, and a subtle reminder that he was still available for appointment as Grand Domestic of the East. In his absence, a rumor reached the Crusader camp that Antioch was unguarded, and Raymond of Toulouse, still smarting from Bohemond’s string of victories, quickly dispatched five hundred men to occupy it in his name.

  Unfortunately for Raymond, the rumor turned out to be false, as Muslim reinforcements were pouring into Antioch. His men arrived to find it impregnable, an opinion which the rest of the army shared when they showed up several weeks later.

  Antioch was one of the great cities of the East, and had only been captured from the Byzantines by Muslim forces twelve years before by treachery. The city spread three and a half square miles across the valley floor at the foot of Mount Silpius, and was surrounded by walls built by emperor Justinian more than five hundred years earlier, complete with six major gates and studded with four hundred towers. Inside the circuit of those walls rose a spur of the mountain, at whose thousand-foot summit was a massive citadel. The mountainous terrain made approach from the south, east, or west difficult, while at the same time the sheer length of the walls made a siege virtually impossible. Bohemond had been looking for a suitable eastern capital for himself, and the moment he saw Antioch’s magnificent defenses he realized that he had found it. The stated goal of the crusade was to liberate Jerusalem, but if he could install himself here there would be no need to go a step further.

  The Crusaders constructed three siege towers, and attempted to starve the city into submission, but they simply lacked the numbers to cut it off completely. The Orontes river supplied it with fresh water, and foraging parties easily evaded crusader patrols. Even worse, the Crusaders soon exhausted the surrounding food supply, and were often ambushed by roving bands of defenders. With the winter came earthquakes and freezing snowstorms, while in the night sky the aurora borealis flashed, adding fear to the general gloom. Several desperate attempts to take the city failed miserably and news arrived that an enormous Muslim relief army under the command of the terrible Kerbogha of Mosul was on its way. By the spring, one in seven crusaders was dying of hunger, and mass defections began.

  Bohemond had long since come to the conclusion that Antioch was impossible to take by assault, and if force wasn’t an option, then duplicity was clearly the key. Somehow, he contacted a traitor inside the city who agreed to surrender one of the defensive towers to him. All that was left was for Bohemond to choose his moment.

  First he had to get rid of any rival claims to the city. There was still a small Byzantine contingent with the army that was hoping to take control of Antioch once it was captured. Bohemond summoned its leader into his tent and hinted that there was a plan to murder him, which he of course had regrettably been unable to stamp out. Although false, this rumor was easy enough to believe, and the next day the man abruptly left with his retinue. Bohemond turned around and announced that the Byzantines had left out of cowardice, abandoning them all to their fate. The Crusaders had given an oath that they would return Antioch to the empire, but now that could safely be ignored.

  Bohemond next announced that he was contemplating leaving because of pressing needs in Italy. His words had the appropriate effect. He had played a leading role in every military encounter and the thought of losing him now as Kerbogha was closing in terrified the army. The Crusading princes, of course, saw it for the bluster that it was, but they were powerless in the face of public opinion. When Bohemond then floated the idea that Antioch would be an acceptable compensation to any losses sustained at home, even Raymond of Toulouse had to bow to the inevitable.

  After they had agreed to give him the city, he confided that he had a contact on the inside and told them his plan. The army would break camp and march out as if to confront the approaching Kerbogha. Under cover of darkness they would return and slip into the city through an unguarded postern gate that the traitor would leave unlocked.

  Two hours before dawn, Bohemond led sixty soldiers up a ladder, and quickly took over two nearby towers and the walls between. With the help of the native Christians of the city, a city gate was flung open and the army poured inside. By nightfall there wasn’t a Turk alive. More than seven months after they had first arrived, Antioch was finally in Crusader hands.

  The ordeal wasn’t quite over, however. Although the city had fallen, the citadel was still controlled by the Turks. Bohemond had been wounded in his lone attempt to take it, and (far more seriously) Kerbogha was on his way with an army seventy-five-thousand strong. The first problem was easy enough to deal with. Bohemond built a wall around the citadel to prevent an attack from it, and turned his mind to the defense of his new city. Two days later Kerbogha arrived.

  The Crusaders were in a desperate situation. The seven month siege had depleted the city’s food supplies and there had been no time to restock them. The situation was so dire that some knights resorted to slaughtering their own horses for food. To make matters worse, deserters had informed Kerbogha of the situation. He attempted a ferocious assault against the section of walls that Bohemond was defending, and was only beaten back with the greatest difficulty. Well aware that the Crusaders were on the verge of collapse, he settled back into a siege.

  Only a miracle could save the trapped Christians now, but fortunately for them, a miracle arrived. A French hermit named Peter Bartholomew claimed that a saint had appeared and revealed to him the site of the Holy Lance – the spear that the centurion had used to pierce Christ’s side. Assisted by the hosts of heaven and led by this powerful relic they could put Kerbogha to flight.

  It’s not likely that Bohemond was convinced by this tale, after all he had probably seen the original lance in Constantinople, but he knew the effect it would have on morale, and when Peter dramatically dug beneath the floor of the city’s cathedral and found a rusted piece of metal, he was among the first to declare that it was real. He ordered five days of fasting, and leaving only two hundred men in the city, he marched out behind the lance for an all-out attack.

  The sight of the Crusader army, with many of its starving knights stumbling along on foot, was probably more pathetic than terrifying, but despite that, Bohemond’s charge was well timed. Kerbogha’s own alliance was crumbling. Most of his emirs mistrusted him, and feared that success at Antioch would make him too powerful. So when the Crusaders emerged from the city, they chose to desert. Kerbogha’s remaining forces still outnumbered the Crusaders, but they were unnerved by the size of the Crusader force and set fire to the grass between the armies to delay them. The wind blew the smoke in the Turkish faces, and what had started as a tactical withdrawal turned into a rout. Armenia
n and Syrian herdsmen, meanwhile, seeing the chance for revenge for a decade of oppression, came down from the hills to join the slaughter.

  The victory was complete. The Turkish defenders of the citadel had watched the debacle unfold in front of them and knew that all hope was now lost. Much to Bohemond’s gratification they announced that they would only surrender to him personally, sending one last snub to his old rival Raymond of Toulouse who was ill and had been forced to observe the entire thing from the sidelines.

  Raymond didn’t take the news well. He dug in his heels, refusing to acknowledge Bohemond as master of Antioch. His obstinacy brought the entire crusade to a screeching halt, but there were more than just petty reasons for his stance. Like Bohemond, he wanted to be recognized as the supreme commander of the crusade, and he was shrewd enough to realize that despite any personal distaste for the Byzantines, they were needed if the crusade had any hope of long-term success. Turning over Antioch, one of the empire’s main cities, to Bohemond would permanently sever relations with Constantinople.

  The Crusader leaders were evenly split between Bohemond and Raymond, and they dithered for several months, while a typhoid epidemic hit and morale – euphoric after the victory – once again sank. The rank and file didn’t really care which of their leaders got control of Antioch, in fact they hardly cared about Antioch at all. They had signed on to liberate Jerusalem, and the longer they stayed squabbling in Asia Minor, the angrier they became.

  Finally, with the army reaching the point of mutiny, Raymond and Bohemond came to a compromise. Bohemond would get Antioch and in return he would recognize Raymond as the leader of the crusade. After fifteen months in Antioch, the Crusading army finally marched off, leaving a well-pleased Bohemond behind.

  It was his greatest moment of triumph. His aim in joining the crusade had never been to see Jerusalem, it had been to found his own state, and now he had one of the major cities of the Near East under his control. He was in a position to dominate both the lucrative pilgrim trade to Jerusalem, and the nearby Crusader kingdoms that were being established. When he visited the newly-captured Jerusalem a few months later as Prince of Antioch, he was received as the most important regional power, easily securing the election of his own candidate as patriarch.

  Unfortunately for Bohemond, his triumph was short lived. The very boldness which had won him his wealth and power, proved his undoing. In the summer of 1100 he left his nephew Tancred as regent of Antioch and marched north with only three hundred men to campaign on the upper Euphrates. Blundering into an ambush he was captured and thrown into a Turkish prison. The emperor Alexius offered to pay his ransom if he was delivered to Constantinople, but Bohemond declined, and was forced to spend three years as a captive until Tancred could raise the funds to free him.

  In his absence, Tancred had greatly increased the size of the principality, and as soon as he was free, Bohemond marched south to extend it further, only to be severely defeated again. Antioch was now caught between the twin rocks of Saracen and Byzantine power, and its army was too depleted to hold, much less expand in either direction. Only a massive infusion from Europe could salvage the situation, so in 1105, Bohemond left to drum up support for a new crusade.

  The effort was a dramatic success. In Italy, crowds arrived to greet him wherever he stayed and in France, King Philip offered his daughter in marriage. He was widely seen as the hero of the First Crusade, and his popularity was such that the English king, Henry I, refused to let him land in England for fear that he would enlist too many nobles to his cause. Dazzled by his celebrity status, and finding an easy scapegoat for every misfortune in the Byzantines,38 Bohemond unwisely decided to revive his old dream of taking Constantinople’s throne.

  With a thirty-five-thousand-strong army he invaded the Dalmatian coast and attacked Durrës, the westernmost city of the empire. Unlike his previous two attempts, however, this time the Byzantines were in a position of strength. While Alexius leisurely marched to confront the Normans, he persuaded the Venetian navy to attack Bohemond’s fleet, which it easily destroyed. He then studiously avoided a direct confrontation while plague and the depredations of a siege depleted Bohemond’s strength. With his escape route cut off and a series of disastrous skirmishes sapping morale, Bohemond was forced to conclude a humiliating truce.

  It amounted to an unconditional surrender. Although he was allowed to keep Antioch, it was only as Alexius’ vassal; all captured Byzantine territory had to be returned, and a Greek patriarch of Alexius’ choosing had to be installed in the city’s cathedral.

  After a lifetime of struggle that had seen such recent dizzying triumphs, this last setback was too much. Bohemond refused to even return to Antioch, setting sail for Sicily instead, where he died a broken man three years later. His body was taken to the Italian city of Canosa and interred in a simple mausoleum, where it can still be seen today with the single word BOAMUNDUS marking the spot.

  It was a pitiful end to a remarkable life. Thanks mostly to his nephew Tancred, the principality of Antioch endured, but it would never be the dominant power that Bohemond had envisioned. The energy and daring of the Normans, as well as their great legacy, was further west. Even as Bohemond expired, it was blooming in the sun-drenched island of Sicily.

  Chapter 12

  Dextera Domini

  When Guiscard died, the Norman conquest of Sicily had been left unfinished. His lands in southern Italy convulsed in the usual power struggle between his sons, and it seemed for a moment as if the remarkable Norman advance had at last ended. No obvious leader of Robert’s caliber rose to take his title, and the Sicilian campaign – the most important of the southern Norman fronts – devolved onto the shoulders of Guiscard’s youngest brother.

  Roger de Hauteville was an unlikely conqueror. The twelfth son of old Tancred, he was sixteen years younger than his famous sibling. He had always been a bit different from his brothers, less physically imposing but more thoughtful, displaying a rare talent among the Hautevilles for keeping his temper in check.

  Not much is known about his early life other than the fact that he spent it on the family estate in Normandy. He probably had the same education as his siblings, spending his formative years apprenticed to a wealthier knight. By the time he was twenty-four, all but one of his brothers had left to seek their fortunes in the south. Roger might have been content to stay in the now empty family home had it not been for a chance meeting with the beautiful Judith d’Evreux. Despite a huge gulf in social status – she was related to William the Conqueror – they fell in love, and before long Roger announced his intention to marry her. Unfortunately he had neither land nor wealth, and Judith’s father wasn’t amused by the thought of some lowly knight stealing his daughter away. If Roger wanted her hand he would have to find a suitable dowry, so he left for Italy to find fame and fortune.

  It so happened that Roger’s brother Guiscard was busy trying to subdue Calabria and was glad to make use of his skills. The two made daring raids along the coast and within five years had subdued the region. The experience seems to have given Roger a taste for more and he suggested a richer target. Just across the narrow straits of Messina, less than two miles from the Italian seacoast was the Arab-controlled island of Sicily, now fortuitously in complete disarray.

  The Arabs had first arrived in Sicily in the mid-ninth century from North Africa and spent the next hundred years wresting the island away from the Byzantines. They had finally conquered the last imperial outpost in 965 and settled down to enjoy the fruits of their labour. For a century Sicily was a relatively peaceful part of the North African Muslim Empire controlled by the city of Mahdia on the present-day Tunisian coast. But Mahdia was involved in the power struggles of the Islamic world; war with Cairo abroad and civil wars at home weakened its control over the island. As communications broke down, ethnic tensions in Sicily rose. The first Arab arrivals were resentful of the Berbers who crossed over from Mahdia in increasing numbers, and both groups distrusted the native
Greeks. By the time Roger arrived in Italy, Sicily was split between three rival emirs, and a racial war had broken out between Arab and Berber. It was the perfect time to invade, and surprisingly enough, it was one of the emirs who offered the invitation.

  Ibn Timnah was a rogue even by the standards of the time. He had seized control of Syracuse by killing his predecessor and helped himself to the man’s widow. He then tried to expand into his neighbor’s territory – that of the Emir of Messina who also happened to be his new wife’s brother – with disastrous results. The humiliating treaty he had to sign was bad enough, but he made it worse by getting drunk and taking out his frustrations on his wife. She fled to her brother in Messina and in a rage he swore that he would have Ibn Timnah’s head. The now quite sober emir was chased out of Syracuse and had to flee to Italy for safety. Finding Roger in Calabria he offered to partner with the Normans in exchange for a joint control of Sicily.

  Roger couldn’t have asked for a better invitation. Although it was the middle of winter and hardly the time to start a campaign, he gathered a force of a hundred and fifty knights and crossed the straits. At first all went well. The governor of Messina was tricked into an ambush and killed, and when the garrison rushed out to avenge him they were badly mauled by the Normans. Unfortunately, it was Roger’s youthful enthusiasm that let them down. Seeing the chance to grab Messina, and his own claim to greatness, he led a hasty attempt to rush the walls but was driven back with heavy losses. He retreated to the ships, but when he arrived at the beach he found that a storm had driven his fleet away. For three days the Normans were obliged to camp miserably on the beach fending off the incessant Muslim attacks and trying to stay warm. Finally on the fourth day the Norman ships returned and Roger made his escape.