Victory in the East

by John France

  The figure seems strikingly small only because we have become hypnotised by the huge numbers mentioned in other sources, but it should not surprise us. The army must have suffered appalling losses since it set out. As we have noted, even before it left Europe pilgrims were dying. Nicaea was a major siege with intense and large-scale military activity which must have been costly. During the siege the Christians fought off an enemy relief army and then engaged the Turks of Asia Minor in a major battle at Dorylacum. The siege of Antioch lasted for nine months and during it the army fought off three major relief expeditions, while we hear of numerous minor clashes which we can be sure represent only a fraction of the totality. There followed the savage second siege of Antioch, the attack on Ma’arra and the fighting around ’Akkār. This attrition of battle must have been costly in lives, but there was also starvation, disease and accident. The army had barely started the siege of Nicaea when it was asking for food, while Albert records the deaths of 500 poor due to thirst only a few days after Dorylaeum when even the falcons and hunting-dogs of the rich were dying. By December 1097 the army at Antioch was starving, a state which must have been semi-permanent during the winter which followed.28 The count of Toulouse was desperately ill during the crossing of Asia Minor, during much of the siege and even at the moment of the great battle with Kerbogah in which he was unable to participate. Baldwin of Boulogne’s English wife died at Marasch and a knight of the house of Boulogne, Adelrard of Guizan, in mid-October 1097. Godfrey de Bouillon was mauled by a bear while hunting and suffered a long illness.29 Matthew of Edessa actually says that during the siege of Antioch the Franks lost one in seven of their men to plague.30 But in addition to these obvious attritions of strength there were other factors at work to reduce the size of the army by January 1099. In the autumn of 1098 Baldwin had begun operations in conjunction with native Armenians, in the area of their settlement east of Antioch, capturing many places including Tell-Bashir and Ravendan. In early February Thoros, prince of Edessa, asked for his support and Baldwin gathered 500 mounted troops, only to be repulsed by a Turkish attack. Eventually he got through to Edessa with 200 sociis and by March he had overthrown Thoros and was in complete control of the city.31 It is, of course, difficult to be certain how many of Baldwin’s troops were native Armenians – a group with a strong military tradition – and how many Frankish. Matthew of Edessa says that he had 100 with him at Tell-Bashir and took only sixty to Edessa. Fulcher says that he had only eighty knights with him when he went to Edessa.32 Possession of Edessa was militarily extremely useful to the crusade, but it had to be garrisoned, as had its dependencies, and Frankish troops used for this purpose could not go on to Jerusalem. When Baldwin wanted to complete his pilgrimage at Christmas 1099 he took only a small force and joined Bohemond and Daimbert of Pisa’s bigger force in marching to Jerusalem, but when his brother died on 18 July 1100 he could afford what Fulcher describes as ‘a little army’ of 200 knights and 700 foot, without stripping Edessa.33 At the start of the siege of Antioch Raymond of Aguilers remarks on the number of cities and forts held by the crusaders which had to be garrisoned, with the result that many knights were leaving the army.34 Anselm of Ribemont, writing in November 1097, said that the army held 200 fortresses and cities, while Stephen of Blois, writing late in the first siege of Antioch gave a figure of 165.35 Some of these must surely have been garrisoned by Tatikios’s troops on behalf of Alexius, but even so the Franks seem to have been left with many on their hands and would not have been willing to abandon all. Moreover, there was the question of Antioch and its area which by the winter of 1098 was firmly in the hands of Bohemond.36 The quarrels between the leaders in the summer and autumn of 1098 and the creation of a Frankish dominion in North Syria created a fluid and confusing situation and considerable opportunities for wealth. The leaders took many of the poor into their service.37 We have noted that Raymond of Toulouse stripped Albara of its garrison so that only seven knights and thirty foot were left to hold it, but this very rapidly grew to sixty knights and seventy foot, presumably from stay-behinds. Albert says that immediately after the crusade Godfrey had a force of 3,000 troops in Jerusalem, which fell to 200 knights and 1,000 foot by the following spring.38 It is unlikely that Edessa could have been held by many fewer, though its total forces included good quality native troops and we can assume that Antioch required something like the same numbers to hold it. Quite possibly a lot of these men subsequently made their way to Jerusalem and then returned to the west – accounting for the disparity between the figures which Albert gives for 1099 and 1100. We can reasonably assume that some 300–500 knights and a commensurate number of foot, say about 3,000–5,000, were tied up in the nascent principalities of North Syria and places like Albara, Maraclea and Tortosa, but this may be an underestimate.

  The army also suffered from desertion. Early in 1098 Louis, archdeacon of Toul, left the siege of Antioch for a safer place forty-eight kilometres away, though perhaps he returned. In the second siege of Antioch desertions grew numerous – William of Grandmesnil, Bohemond’s brother-in-law, fled with a group of North French, while most notorious of all was the flight of Stephen of Blois who was ill just before the betrayal of Antioch and seems to have believed that the arrival of Kerbogah had doomed the army. After the capture of the city the leaders sent Hugh of Vermandois to Alexius to see if he would take control of the city; an ambush en route killed his companion, Baldwin of Hainault, and Hugh never returned.39 All these men would have had escorts and companions and their departure was, therefore, a considerable blow to the army. To counter this attrition the crusaders did receive some reinforcements. Fleets put into Port St Symeon, notably the English who took with them Bruno, a citizen of Lucca. He returned to his city in the summer of 1098, but the stream of western ships arriving in North Syria brought others, like the 1,500 Germans from Ratisbon who came to Antioch in the summer of 1098 and died of the plague.40 But it is unlikely that such reinforcements were in any way commensurate with the losses the crusader army suffered, for we hear too little of them.

  It is hardly surprising that the army which captured Jerusalem should have been so small; it was of much the same order as that with which William conquered England in 1066 and Guiscard attacked Byzantium in 1081. Clearly it had started out very much larger: we have Daimbert’s figures suggesting losses of 93.4 per cent which means that only one in fourteen of those who gathered at Nicaea in June 1097 assembled for departure in September 1099.41 Of course, we must remember that many stayed, either permanently or for more or less short periods, in Syria, but that is still a quite staggering loss. Losses in pre-industrial armies could be appalling. In the Seven Years War (1756–63) 135,000 of the 185,000 recruited for the Royal Navy died of disease.42 It has been calculated that 70 per cent of the class of twenty-year-olds called to the colours in France in 1812 became casualties.43 Amongst such losses battle casualties were not the greatest single element. Napoleon’s huge invasion army of 1812 lost 30 per cent of its effectives to desertion and sickness before it fought its first battle at Smolensk on 17 August 1812. Of a total force of 611,000 which crossed the Russian frontier at various times after 24 June 1812, only 107,000 returned; of the rest 400,000 were casualties and 100,000 prisoners but only 74,000 died in open battle.44 It needs to be stressed that most of these losses were not the result of the legendary Russian winter. In the Crimean War 4,285 British soldiers died in battle or of wounds, while 16,422 died of disease. The Union army in the American Civil War lost 96,000 in battle to 183,287 to disease. Even in the First World War the ratio of battle to non-battle casualties was 1:1.3.45 As Daimbert’s letter shows, contemporaries believed that the crusade’s losses had been huge, and our knowledge of the general conditions of war, and the specific hardships of their theatre of battle, tends to confirm this. Is it possible to estimate the number in the army at the start of the campaign – when they prepared to leave Nicaea?

  Raymond of Aguilers suggests that 60,000 died in Asia Minor in the destruc
tion of the People’s Crusade, but he was not well informed about this event and refers to it only in a context of attacking the emperor Alexius whom he blamed for its failure.46 This is a political figure if ever there was one. Albert tells us that 3,000 foot and 200 knights were lost in the German raid on Nicaea, and that the army, which was shortly afterwards destroyed by the Turks, numbered 25,000 foot and 500 knights. He states specifically that the non-combatants were left behind in the camp. So the final strength of the People’s Crusade was 28,000 foot and 700 knights plus non-combatants; of these, 3,000, including a disproportionate number of knights, survived to join the main army.47 These figures do not sound unreasonable for this People’s Crusade was obviously a large-scale and striking affair. It is impossible to suggest how many there were in contingents which never got to the east or to estimate Peter the Hermit’s losses in the Balkans, but if we assume Albert’s figures are somewhat optimistic and should be read to include non-combatants, we can estimate the People’s Crusade at somewhat above 20,000. It is much more difficult to suggest an overall figure for the main armies. We have noted that a figure of 100,000 may well have represented some kind of official guess. The largest ever crusading army was probably that of Frederick Barbarossa which set out from Ratisbon in May 1189 and is generally reckoned to have been 100,000 strong including perhaps 20,000 mounted troops.48 Therefore the figure of 100,000 is not impossible. It should be noted, however, that Barbarossa had immense authority and went to considerable lengths to prepare his way diplomatically and to organise his army. Even so when he died it fell apart. The business of holding together and above all feeding a host of 100,000 would have been enormously difficult and indeed until the era of modern industrialisation, such considerations continued to be a major brake on the size of armies. During the period 1700–1763 only some two million men served in the armies of France, the greatest European power of the day, and there were never more than 200,000 in its forces at any one time. Napoleon’s army in Russia in 1812 collapsed through indiscipline, largely brought about by a scorched earth policy which deprived it of food.49 There are some indications of just such problems on the march across Asia Minor. A day or two after leaving Nicaea the army divided into two with Bohemond, Robert of Normandy, Stephen of Blois and Tancred in the vanguard and the larger part of the army following on.50 Fulcher confesses he did not understand why this was and Raymond of Aguilers blames the rashness of Bohemond, but Albert says clearly that it was the need for foraging which enforced this division. On 1 July 1097 the vanguard was ambushed by the Turks of Anatolia near Dorylaeum, and after their victory the crusader leaders resolved to keep the army together, but not long after, Albert says, they again had to divide for foraging purposes and this time Tancred and Baldwin formed a smaller vanguard.51 Even so the army was in for a fairly grim passage through Anatolia. After Dorylaeum, the army experienced the heat of the Anatolian plateau where in July a daily maximum of 28° centigrade and a minimum of 15° centigrade can be expected. Albert reports that in this arid zone ‘water was in shorter supply than usual’ and 500 died. So terrible were the sufferings that women abandoned newly-born babies and when water was reached some died from excessive drinking. The Anonymous and Fulcher both confirm these problems though without mentioning numbers.52 However, it is difficult to get any sense of the scale of the army’s loss beyond the general feeling that it was very large. What the evidence does permit, however, is a sense of very deep suffering.

  The road across the Taurus Mountains was so steep that knights and others threw away their equipment rather than carry it. At Gaeserea-in-Cappadocia in September mean temperatures of 12–15° centigrade can be expected. By Christmas, as we have noted, food was short but the siege of Antioch began with plentiful food supplies in a pleasant climate. However, the weather gradually became more severe. The temperatures and precipitation during the siege of Antioch were as follows:

  Little wonder that Stephen of Blois commented on the excessive cold and immoderate rain so like winter in his homeland which was so hard on the poor. He had been led to expect heat in an exotic clime.53 By Christmas, as we have noted, food was short and the military expedition of Bohemond and Robert of Flanders, although it fought off a relief force, was unable to improve the situation, and starvation led to a wave of desertions which Adhémar tried to counter with a period of religious celebration intended to improve morale.54 For the main army at Antioch this was a bitter winter and to find food they were obliged to form into groups of 200–300 because of marauding Turks. So frequent were their attacks, however, that the knights were reluctant to protect such groups until the count of Toulouse offered to replace horses lost in such skirmishing.55 On the other hand, the crusaders did receive supplies from Armenian princes and the monks of the Black Mountain and later from Baldwin of Edessa and ships which put into St Symeon Port.56 Further, although the crusaders had decided at the very start of their siege that they would invest Antioch closely, the fact that they had acquired so many cities and fortresses, such as the base established by Raymond of Toulouse at Rugia even before they got to Antioch, meant that the army had bases for foraging and supply. Godfrey and Robert of Flanders seem to have got help from Baldwin at Edessa and to have had forts on the roads leading there. Tancred later had land near ‘Imm and Harem and Bohemond gained Cilicia.57 Indeed, in the summer of 1098, after the defeat of Kerbogah, the Anonymous reports that all the princes retired to their own lands. Ralph of Caen alleges that Robert of Normandy, whom Raymond of Aguilers notes as absent from Antioch by Christmas 1097, spent most of his time at Laodicea and had to be dragged back in the final crisis of the siege.58 The visionary, Peter Bartholemew, seems to have spent most of the winter of 1098 travelling about looking for food. He saw his first vision at Antioch in January 1098, and his second while foraging near on 10 February, while a third occurred at St Symeon port and a fourth at Mamistra from whence he was seeking to sail to Cyprus with his lord. Ralph of Caen gives us a diatribe on the sufferings of the army during the winter.59 In the spring of 1098 as conditions improved the crusader leaders made it a priority to blockade the Bridge Gate from which the Turks were sallying forth and interrupting their communications with St Symeon which was the handiest port for contact with Byzantine Cyprus. So important was it that they were prepared to defeat heavy enemy resistance and later to invest in a big garrison for the new strong-point.60 Thereafter, we hear less of starvation until the second siege of Antioch, when the crusaders found themselves trapped in a city which they had besieged for nine months and then sacked. All our sources are agreed on the horrors of starvation which now overcame the army; Albert, who stresses that the leaders tried to get food into the city before Kerbogah arrived, tells us about the awful camel meat for which Godfrey had to pay so much.61 These appalling conditions were repeated during and after the siege of Ma’arra when the army was desperate for food and there were accusations of cannibalism.62 Thereafter, shortages of food seem to have occurred only momentarily during the siege of Jerusalem where thirst was the major problem for they were attacking the city in June and July when the average minimum temperature is 170 centigrade and the average maximum 290 centigrade.63 In general we can probably assume that disease became more of a problem in the heat of Syria and Palestine. Overall the record is one of suffering and much death. In a letter written early in the siege of Antioch, probably at the end of November 1097, Anselm of Ribemont asked those at home to pray for his dead companions and gave a list of thirteen, seven of whom had died in battle and six through illness.64 We can assume that this was a list of those whom he knew and would be likely to be known to the recipients of his letter; of course, these are men of some substance, knights and in one case an abbot. Given that this list comes at a time before the worst horrors of the siege of Antioch, at a time when Anselm says that food was plentiful, we can see that losses were mounting very steeply indeed. Overall, there seems to have been no sudden holocaust, simply a steady attrition due to disease and hardship which increased
at moments of crisis – Albert’s 500 dying at once from thirst appears to be exceptional. But to this attrition must be added that of fighting and here again the evidence is very limited.

  The sources are very coy about crusader losses in battle. A letter of the leaders to the West refers to 10,000 being lost in the fighting around Nicaea; this is a nice round number but it suggests heavy losses.65 The Anonymous says that during the fighting around this city ‘many of our men suffered martyrdom’, though it must be admitted that he rarely mentions numbers anyway.66 Albert of Aachen says that at Dorylaeum the vanguard suffered 4,000 casualtics, including some knights, and he records the massacre of 300 of Bohemond’s men outside Tarsus.67 There was, however, one occasion when numerous sources took notice of crusader losses – in the fighting on the St Symeon road which followed the decision to build the Mahommeries Tower and so prevent enemy sallies from the Bridge Gate. About 4 March 1098 an English fleet put in to St Symeon and the crusader leaders decided to use the material and reinforcements to fortify a small hill with a mosque which stood outside the Bridge Gate from which the garrison had hitherto been able to interrupt their communications with the sea. On 6 March Bohemond and Raymond returned to Antioch with a great convoy bearing the equipment, food and reinforcements brought by the fleet. They were ambushed and their forces scattered. However, the crusaders rallied and drove the Turks back into the city with heavy losses.68 This was a comparatively small engagement, not on the scale of Dorylaeum or the two battles against the relief forces from Damascus and Aleppo, but it was fought out in the presence of the whole army. For this reason it stood out in the minds of those who witnessed it and they gave figures. Albert says that 500 Christians died, with many wounded and taken prisoner in the initial ambush, but gives no figures for Christian losses in the subsequent fighting. Raymond of Aguilers suggests losses of 300 Christians in the initial battle, but gives no further figures except for enemy losses of 1,500. The Anonymous reports crusader losses of 1,000 and enemy losses of 1,500 and he is followed by many others like Tudebode. In his second letter written in July 1098, Anselm of Ribemont says the army lost 1,000 and the enemy 1,400, while Stephen of Blois suggests 500 foot and two horsemen on the Christian side and 1,230 of the enemy. In the letter of the people of Lucca 2,055 Christian losses are reported and only 800 enemy.69 This was a sharply fought battle but on a limited scale; crusader losses, however, seem to have been well over 500 in all, and perhaps very much higher. This was partly because there were a lot of foot-soldiers in the convoy which was overrun, while the knights could flee to fight again. But there was much fighting of just this kind around Antioch with small forces, 200–300 with mounted escorts setting out to forage; Albert describes one which got into trouble and had to be rescued. Raymond of Aguilers, as we have noted, tells us that these expeditions were so costly in horses that at one stage knights refused to go. Albert and Tudebode describe siege activity which must have been costly in manpower. From time to time there was larger-scale action such as that on 29 December 1097 when the Turks killed twenty knights and thirty foot and captured the standard of Adhémar of Le Puy.70 When we add to this heavy attrition the major battles and the savage and continuous combat which characterised the second siege of Antioch (for none of which, unfortunately, are figures given) the impression grows of very heavy crusader losses. In the end we can only get an impression of battle losses for the evidence is not satisfactory. Taken together with our knowledge of numbers at the end of the crusade which is reasonably certain, we can at least make an educated guess at the size of the army which left Nicaea.