Victory in the East

by John France

  On 15 July 1097 a Genoese fleet of thirteen ships, twelve galleys and one hybrid oared ship, a sandanum, filled with armed men and equipment left for the East. It put into St Symeon, the port of Antioch, on 17 November 1097. A few days later, on 23 November, the leaders resolved to build a fortress on the mountain called Malregard.53 On 4 March 1098 an English fleet put into St Symeon, bearing Bruno of Lucca, and the very next day the leaders decided to build the fort outside the Bridge Gate which would be known as the Mahommeries Tower.54 On 17 June 1099, as the crusaders were besieging Jerusalem, a fleet of six ships put into Jaffa, amongst them two Genoese vessels. Immediately the leaders dispatched a strong armed escort to bring the supplies to Jerusalem, and when an Egyptian fleet threatened, the sailors burned their boats and went to Jerusalem where William Ricau served as the engineer who built the siege tower and other machines of the count of Toulouse.55 On this last occasion our sources stress the shortage of wood in the area. An early assault on the city had failed because only a single assault ladder could be built. It would seem that the fabric of the dismantled ships, the lumber they were carrying and above all the skills of the sailors must have been absolutely vital for the building of machines. Albert also reports that, because there was a lack of wood during the siege of Antioch an effort was made to build a fort by the St George Gate with stone and earth.56 This remarkable sequence demonstrates the close connection between supplies coming by sea and siege activity. Sailors were used to spars, masts, lashings and all the paraphernalia which was needed to build siege equipment – their coming meant not just raw material but much needed skills. It is worth remarking that at Nicaea Henry of Esch had built a machine which had collapsed in use, probably because of his lack of know-how.57 Fleets, therefore, provided a vital element of support for the crusader army and it is difficult to see how they could have succeeded without such naval support. The connection with Cyprus was probably essential during the long siege of Antioch, and this was kept open by a continuous Greek and western naval presence. They were fortunate that the Turks had no fleet, though corsairs and the like could easily have cut their communications with Cyprus if there had been no naval forces to protect them. Once they attacked the Fatimid lands the Egyptian fleet made itself felt, which underlines the importance of the crusader negotiations in neutralising it.58 Sea power was a vital element in the success of the crusade, but unfortunately it is very poorly chronicled and the particulars of its exercise are hidden from us. We know that a Genoese fleet of thirteen ships came into Levantine waters in November 1097, but we do not know how long it stayed or whether the two ships which appeared at Jaffa during the siege of Jerusalem were part of it or had come later. Pisan and Venetian ships are mentioned only in passing and we are given some highly confusing information about the English.59 We are very poorly informed on the question of ports.

  During the siege of Antioch three major channels of supply are mentioned: the ports of Cilicia, Mamistra (Misis), Alexandretta (Iskenderun) and Tarsus, Laodicea (Latakia) on the Syrian coast, and St Symeon which was the port of Antioch some twenty-seven kilometres away at the mouth of the Orontes (see figs 2, 4 and 7). St Symeon port was by far the most convenient of these, for it was very close to Antioch, but the road passed in front of the Bridge Gate and so the Turks could easily attack people travelling down to the sea. Caffaro of Genoa has a vivid description of the fighting on the road to Antioch in November 1097, when a Genoese fleet of thirteen ships put into St Symeon.60 Alexandretta was more than sixty kilometres away, and to reach it involved a march over the Ammanus range via a road which Ralph of Caen described as very difficult; it also lead from the Bridge Gate so the early stages of any journey would be difficult. Laodicea was over eighty kilometres distant, and was not materially nearer to Cyprus than St Symeon.61 We know that the cities of Cilicia were captured by the forces of Baldwin and Tancred, but the question of how and when St Symeon and Laodicea fell to the crusaders is much more difficult. There is no mention of them being captured by any element of the army. Raymond of Aguilers tells us that when the army left ‘Akkār in May 1099 they were joined by a number of English sailors who burned their nine or ten vessels, all that remained of the thirty with which they had come originally. According to Raymond they had responded to the appeal for the crusade and ‘captured’ the ports of Laodicea and St Symeon even before the crusader army arrived at Antioch. His word obtinuerunt has recently been translated simply as ‘arrived at’, for which there is warrant though the sense of acquisition would be more frequent and more natural.62 However, we can be quite sure that Laodicea was captured by the time that the crusaders arrived at Antioch because Kemal ad-Din tell us that twenty-two ships came from Cyprus on 19 August 1097 and seized it, though he does not say to whom these ships belonged. In a letter written early in the siege, Anselm of Ribemont says it was captured at the same time as Tarsus, which tends to confirm Kemal ad-Din and Raymond of Aguilers that it had fallen before the army arrived at Antioch. The Florinensis Brevis Narratio Belli Sacri suggests that Laodicea fell after Nicaea.63 The sources are less precise on St Symeon, but they all seem to assume that it was in crusader hands from the moment of their arrival at Antioch without ever mentioning its capture. Moreover, within a fortnight of the start of the siege on 20 October 1097 Adhémar was in Cyprus with Patriarch Symeon of Jerusalem, and within a month a Genoese fleet could put into this harbour.64 There seems, therefore, good reason to believe that both St Symeon and Laodicea were captured from the sea before the crusaders reached Antioch, and every reason to accept Raymond of Aguilers’s statement that this was the work of an English fleet originally some thirty ships strong. This was clearly quite different from the English fleet which brought Bruno of Lucca to the East seven months later in March 1098.65 The existence, therefore, of an English fleet which arrived in the east before the crusade and continued through to the bitter end is established, though how it related to the English who brought Bruno of Lucca is unknown – and what did they do in the meantime? Some light is cast on this matter by Ralph of Caen who says that during the siege of Antioch Laodicea was held by the English who were sent by the Emperor Alexius. After the Norman Conquest of England many Anglo-Saxons took service with Alexius, perhaps with the consent of William, and formed a permanent element in the Byzantine forces. Amongst them was a fleet which probably helped to save Constantinople in 1091 under Sigurd or Siward Barn. It is entirely possible that it was just such a force which took Laodicea. Finding themselves threatened from landward attack, these English appealed to Robert of Normandy as in some senses their natural lord and he came to the city where he found life so easy that it was only much later, and after three appeals for help, that he was persuaded to abandon it, for it was well supplied from Cyprus. However, he did send generous supplies to Antioch. Ralph gives no dates, but his suggestion that Robert was absent from the siege is supported by the fact that the sources do not often mention any activity of his during much of the siege, and Raymond of Aguilers says that by December 1097 Robert was absent.66 The implication of Ralph’s statement is that the capture of Laodicea, and perhaps St Symeon also, was the result of co-operation from the emperor, presumably based on Cyprus. It does not precisely contradict Raymond’s statement that the English had come from their own lands for we know of another English fleet which came in March 1098 and Raymond may have muddled the two. It would be remarkable if the departure of an English fleet to the East had not attracted some attention from native chroniclers, and Ordericus Vitalis records that during the second siege of Antioch (June 1098) Edgar Aetheling led a fleet with 20,000 men from England and the other islands and seized Laodicea, which he afterwards gave to Robert Curthose who left a garrison there during his march to Jerusalem. However, the Greek protospatharius Ravendinos drove out the Franks.67 Now much of this story was clearly confused. Laodicea was conquered long before the second siege of Antioch. In late 1097 Edgar the Aetheling was engaged in imposing his nephew on the Scottish throne so it is unlikely that he join
ed the crusade. Moreover his actual pilgrimage to Jerusalem is very precisely dated to 1102 by William of Malmesbury.68 In any case, it is hard to believe that if Edgar had come to the East the fact would have escaped the attention of crusading chroniclers, simply because he was of royal blood. Ordericus’s evidence strengthens the suggestion that Robert of Normandy held Laodicea at some time, as does Guibert’s remark that the citizens of Laodicea revolted against Robert and abjured the use of the money of Rouen.69 But Ordericus does add something more – that after Robert Laodicea passed to the Greeks. Ordericus’s story was told in order to explain Bohemond’s siege of the port which was definitely held by the Greeks in September 1099 at the time when the main army was returning from Jerusalem.70 Caffaro of Genoa, who had been in Syria early in the twelfth century, records that at the time of the final capture of Antioch the city was held by Eumathios Philokales, duke of Cyprus.71 As Robert Curthose quite definitely fought against Kerbogah in June 1098 this suggests that he relinquished the city to the Greeks – who, after all, are portrayed as the masters of the English – either because of revolt in the city or because of repeated calls from the other leaders, as reported by Ralph of Caen, to come to Antioch or indeed possibly because of both factors. It is very likely that the Greeks were in control of Laodicea by the autumn of 1098 at the latest, because Raymond of Aguilers reports that at the end of the siege of ’Akkār after a vision, Raymond of Toulouse sent Adhémar’s brother to recover the dead bishop’s cross and mantle which had been left at Laodicea.72 Raymond would surely only have left such valuable things at Laodicea in the care of friends – and after the fall of Antioch he was in close alliance with the Byzantines. However, the story of Laodicea and the English fleet is immensely complicated by the very different stories told by Albert of Aix.

  According to Albert, when Baldwin was at Tarsus during the Cilician expedition he suddenly saw a fleet ‘whose masts of wondrous height were covered in the purest gold and shimmered in the rays of the sun’. The sailors were commanded by Guinemer of Boulogne, their caput et magister who had been a man de domo comitis Eustachii a close associate, therefore, of the house of Boulogne. They explained that they were men of Flanders, Antwerp and Frisia who had been living for eight years as pirates and had landed in order to divide their loot, and they asked Baldwin and his friends what they were doing. On hearing of the crusade they agreed to join it. Three hundred of them joined with two hundred of Baldwin’s men to garrison Tarsus, while the rest reappear in the suite of Tancred as he seized fortresses in Cilicia and the port of Alexandretta.73 Subsequently, just as he is about to tell us of the Lake Battle in February 1098 Albert says that Guinemer, after he had left Baldwin and Tancred at Mamistra, took once more to the sea and captured Laodicea, but got no support because he contributed nothing to the army. His guard was lax and the Greeks managed to take the citadel of Laodicea and threw him into prison, from whence he was later liberated after the victory at Antioch at the special request of Godfrey of Bouillon.74 This is all very odd and is further complicated by a quite separate story which Albert tells later. At the end of the crusade the returning armies found Bohemond and Daimbert of Pisa besieging Laodicea, which, Albert says, had been captured from the Saracens by Guinemer with a fleet manned by the same people as before, but this time including Danes, and allied with the men of the lands of Raymond of Toulouse. After the fall of Antioch, Guinemer handed the city over to Raymond of Toulouse; after this he was captured and imprisoned by the Greeks and freed at the request of Godfrey. When Count Raymond marched south, faithful to his oath to Alexius, he turned the city over to the Greeks.75 The contradictions in these stories are evident. In one story Guinemer seems to have been thrown into gaol during the siege of Antioch, while in the other he appears as holding the city until the summer of 1098 when he turned it over to Raymond, and was then put in gaol. In the earlier story he is clearly stated to have been freed at the request of Godfrey shortly after the victory over Kerbogah when Yaghisiyan’s wife was being ransomed – but this date was not possible in the later story. In the second story the Danes are added to the list of people in the fleet and the Provençals suddenly appear as allies, apparently as a result of early contact with them. Furthermore, the passage about the masts of the fleet has a very poetic ring and Albert is known to have used poetic source material including that which underlay the Chanson d’Antioch.76 However, we need not dismiss Guinemer altogether, for such wanderers were not so very unlikely. Robert the Frisian, a younger son, was given money and a fully equipped boat by his father, Baldwin V of Flanders, in order to make his fortune and, although the stories which accrued later about him were fantastical, the simple core of the story indicates how adventurous people could travel afar.77 It seems likely that some of the Anglo-Saxons who fled England after the conquest were accommodated in the distant Crimea and there was probably an important English presence at Constantinople.78 When we consider the range of western mercenaries serving the Byzantine emperor and the Zirids of North Africa at this time, we ought perhaps to see Guinemer as a real person, and it should be noted that his story does not appear to derive from the Chanson d’Antioch and that Albert does break into lyrical passages from time to time, as in his description of Godfrey’s army rushing to the relief of Bohemond at Dorylaeum.79 Albert was not generally interested in fleets at all – his sources were apparently men of the army, generally incurious about maritime matters. It is remarkable that, although he gives us a very detailed account of the capture of Jerusalem, he never mentions the arrival of ships in Jaffa whose importance we have noted; it was the Provençals who provided their escort from the coast and the men of Godfrey were not involved.80 The great exception to his disinterest, and probably that of his informants, was Guinemer and the reason for that is obvious – he was a close connection of the house of Boulogne. Guinemer probably did help in Cilicia as indicated, but Albert attributes the capture of Laodicea, by a northern fleet, to him. Albert was then faced with different accounts of his activities, probably given to him at different times, which he could not reconcile. The essential difference between the two stories as they concern Laodicea is the influence of the count of Toulouse in the later version and the different dating which, by implication, this imposed. Guinemer, after helping in Cilicia, was captured by the Greeks, perhaps held at Laodicea, and released at the request of Godfrey. Laodicea was captured on 19 August 1097 by an English fleet either acting on Alexius’s orders or in conjunction with Byzantine forces in Cyprus, which then based itself in the city to which it invited Robert of Normandy. His departure, almost certainly at the time of Kerbogah’s march to Antioch, saw the city fall to the power of the Byzantine Governor of Cyprus, who may well have co-operated with Raymond of Toulouse before the latter’s departure south. After the siege of ’Akkār the English sailors abandoned their now useless ships and joined Raymond who, after the crusade, took possession of the citadel of Laodicea with 500 men in the name of the emperor.81 At some time after the main army had gone home, Alexius ordered Raymond to hand over Laodicea to Andronicus Tzintziloukes.82 The matter of Laodicea is important, for it shows us the degree of co-operation between Byzantium and the crusaders. The early arrival of the English fleet in Byzantine service in August 1097 prepared the way for the crusader army, for whom its activities protecting the route to Cyprus were very important. Of the other English fleet which arrived in March 1098 we hear no more, but it is possible that elements of it joined the English already in the East and based at Laodicea. The Genoese fleet which arrived in November 1097 also seems to have left ships behind, or perhaps was followed by others, and they too plied to the islands as we know from Raymond of Aguilers. Bauldry of Dol mentions Venetian ships, as does Raymond of Aguilers, and also Pisans – which probably refers to Daimbert’s fleet.83 Of the Venetians’ activities we know nothing, but then there seems to have been quite a settlement of sailors and traders at port St Symeon, and small contingents like that of Guinemer must have arrived from time to time to play a ro
le.84 This great maritime endeavour, led and supported by the Byzantines, was one of the key factors which enabled the crusader army to survive the bitter nine-month siege of Antioch and to triumph over their enemies.