Victory in the East

by John France

  Tancred on his eminence could not always check the enemy. In vengeance for such suffering, Hugh of St Pol and his son Engelrand crossed the Orontes by night and the next day sent a foot-soldier out onto the road before the Bridge Gate as a lure. They killed two of the Turks who pursued him and captured the two others, and the rejoicing in the camp at the sight of these prisoners indicates the strain of the siege.113 On another occasion the Turks were shooting across the river at the Christians; they hoped to inflict losses and to draw any force sent against them into an ambush. Engelrand of St Pol led a force across the Bridge of Boats and killed a Turkish horseman, but he had to be careful not to pursue the Turks into their ambush. The strategy to which the crusaders were committed meant a long drawn-out war around Antioch in which encounters such as this, and the business of blocking roads, raiding and bearing enemy raids, would be the day-to-day experience of the army. Sometimes there were greater deeds. The Anonymous records the attack on Harem. Albert tells us that after the building of the Bridge of Boats, which was about a kilometre upstream of the Bridge Gate, there was a major fracas. A group of 300 knights and foot crossed the bridge to forage when the enemy sallied forth, causing heavy casualties and driving the survivors back to the new bridge. The leaders then launched 5,000 mounted men (the figure is surely a gross exaggeration), mostly in mail shirts, against the enemy, Henry of Esch swam across, though fully armoured, rather than endure the delay to get on the bridge. The Turks retreated, then called up reinforcements who pushed the Franks back to their bridge causing heavy losses, especially amongst the foot-soldiers.114 This kind of warfare must have been nerve-wracking and exhausting to both sides. However, the effect upon the crusaders must have been brutal for they were out in the open while the Turks at least had a secure base.

  Against this background, the advance of the siege by the building of Malregard and the Bridge of Boats indicates a pattern of considerable effort and organisation in the period up to Christmas 1097. As we have already noted, there was a common fund and presumably it was from this that Tancred was paid. The committee of leaders seems to have had real authority. It was their collective decision, as we have seen, to impose a close siege on Antioch, to attack Harem, to build Malregard and to launch the expedition which resulted in the foraging battle of 30 December 1097. In the absence of Adhémar and perhaps Robert of Normandy, the leaders met to decide on dispositions for the Lake Battle on the night of 8 February 1098 and decided on the building of the Mahommeries tower in March and Tancred’s fort outside the St George Gate in early April. The matter of how to deal with the proposed betrayal of the city was debated by them, probably in two meetings at the end of May or early June 1098.115 It is no wonder that, speaking of the decision to launch the foraging expedition of late December 1097, Albert speaks highly of the authority of the Council: ‘For it had been decided from the first that no person, great or small had the right to oppose that which was ordered in the name of the whole army.’116 This committee was probably rather wider than the important princes and it is possible that yet wider assemblies were held for special purposes on occasion. At the start of the siege, all the leaders swore an oath to see the matter through and there was a similar oath taken in the emergency of the second siege of Antioch. The Anonymous’s account of the decision to build the Mahommeries Tower can be read as having been taken in a wider assembly in which all applauded the proposal of the leaders.117 They certainly seem to have run the siege competently. The construction of counterforts like Malregard and Tancred’s more temporary structure by the St George Gate was a familiar part of the repertoire of war as we have seen, but considerable authority, organisation and, above all, harmony would have been needed to achieve it in the difficult circumstances at Antioch.118

  In a general sense they were very experienced in this war of attrition which they were now embarked upon, for it resembled the campaigns so many of them had waged or participated in throughout the west; raiding, destroying, foraging, small-scale conflict, this was what they were used to. But the hit-and-run methods of the Turks, evolved out of the circumstances of steppe warfare, were peculiarly well suited to the circumstances of the siege of Antioch where small-scale skirmishes were the norm, as we have observed and rapid fire very effective. These tactics had been grafted onto Moslem armies generally.119 Albert describes the sallies which killed Adalbero of Metz and Arnulf of Tirs, but stresses that the Turks were always pouncing on pilgrims in the plain, opposite the city, going to St Symeon or looking for food. Raymond of Aguilers, speaking of the fighting outside the city when the Turks had heard of the absence of much of the army on the foraging expedition at the end of December 1097, makes it clear that this kind of thing had become a way of life:

  ‘They repeated their customary assaults. The Count, moreover, was compelled to attack them in his usual manner’.120

  The use of language in this passage is a revelation of military reality.121 But the crusaders did learn from the march across Asia Minor and the dangerous small-scale fighting outside Antioch. Albert reports how Hugh of St-Pol was moved by the losses of the foragers and mounted a revenge attack with his son Engelrand and their following. The garrison then sent out twenty mounted men who turned in their saddles and fired arrows backwards across the river into the camp, hoping to provoke the Franks into a pursuit which could then be ambushed from inside the Bridge Gate.122 This was certainly what happened, according to Raymond of Aguilers, during the absence of the foraging party in December 1097, when Turks sallied out from Antioch and drew the Provençals up to the Bridge Gate where reserves fell upon them. Although it was recognised that the Turks were trying to provoke the crusaders on this occasion, Engelrand of St Pol was again sent out to prevent them from being seen to have gained a victory of sorts by enjoying immunity, but he took care not to pursue the enemy too far, and a general and highly confused mêlée then developed on the plain before the city, with knights and Turks criss-crossing like Spitfires and Messerschmits in a dogfight, and indeed the comparison is apt for in both cases there was a huge audience watching their champions. Albert records evident delight and applause when Engelrand unseated and killed a Turk with his lance, but stresses that he was very careful not to get trapped.123 The crusader instinct, indeed the only sensible tactic in view of Turkish fire-power, was to close with their enemies. When attacked by the army of Damascus during the foraging battle of December 1097, Raymond of Aguilers says that Robert of Flanders charged at them, forcing them to retreat. The dangers of this instinct were all too obvious – they led to heavy losses at ’Artāh and to the loss of Roger of Barneville at the start of the second siege of Antioch as small crusader forces were drawn into ambushes.124 To prevent charging too far, there needed to be clear command in any particular action – supplied by Hugh of St-Pol in Albert’s story, but this was a very difficult problem on a larger scale in an army run by a committee. Another natural response of the crusaders was to close ranks for mutual protection, a tactic we have described used by the Byzantines and the crusaders themselves at Dorylaeum. During the fighting on the plain outside Antioch, at the time of the foraging battle, Raymond of Toulouse organised his footmen into close order and it was with a tortoise of interlocking shields that the Iron Gate was carried. In the spring of 1098, when the Mahommeries Tower had been built, some Provençal knights were ambushed nearby; they formed a circle abutting an old house and so prevented the enemy from outflanking them. A manageable solidity was organised in the cavalry in the Lake Battle by dividing them into squadrons.125 There is every sign that the mass close-order charge of knights with lances couched was being used increasingly. In the disastrous charge at ’Artāh, Ralph says that after initial disorder the Franks organised themselves and charged. ‘At the first shock the lance goes forward, pierces and throws [the enemy] down.’ Describing the relieving charge led by the count of Flanders in the same fight Albert says that the Franks ‘attacked the enemy with their lances held before them’. We have noted that Engelrand of St Pol un
horsed his victim with his lance before killing him, the classic pattern of knightly encounter and in his skirmish the Turks are described as fighting with bows, the crusaders with lances. Baldwin of Edessa fell upon the advance guard of Kerbogah’s attack on his city ‘with the lance of the Franks and the bow of the Armenians’.126 The examples of Hugh of St Pol in the plain outside the Bridge Gate and Bohemond during the attack on Harem show the Franks learning to set ambushes themselves. It was a difficult business, but the disciplines of war were forcing the Franks into methods of countering Turkish tactics, and above all the fire-power upon which they were based.

  We tend to make a sharp distinction between a siege and field warfare, but in reality this is false. A siege was a kind of battle involving most of the general techniques of war in addition to some specialised ones. In the case of Antioch the nature of the crusader strategy – a close blockade without assault – makes the point very clearly. The opening phase of the conflict had seen the crusaders gradually tightening their grip on the city, though at a terrible price. In the next phase they were to be seized by a crisis of supply. One vital aspect of all war – and we have noted Vegetius on the point – was to deny the enemy food. For the crusaders this was easier said than done, for Antioch appears to have been well-stocked. Had it not been, then the siege simply could not have endured. But also food could find its way into the city through the St George Gate and the Iron Gate, even perhaps the Bridge Gate, and, in addition, all the posterns along the mountains. In the end such supply was not satisfactory for a major city, especially one with large disaffected elements – Syrian and Armenian Christians of which the crusaders were well aware. The Anonymous claims that many of them were forced to fight for the Turks because their womenfolk were hostages.127 But it must be repeated that attrition cuts both ways. In any siege the attackers are at least as likely to starve as the defenders – and by Christmas 1097 this situation was hurting the army badly.

  * * *

  1 ’Thus the princelings of Syria, when the crusaders arrived, had for making war only the handful of slaves which the revenues from their meager provinces enabled them to buy.’: Cahen, ‘The Turkish invasion’, 165.

  2 On this theme of God’s delivery of the army see especially Blake, ‘The formation of the Crusade Idea’, 11–31, and the further discussion in Riley-Smith, Idea of Crusading, pp. 91–119.

  3 R. W. Crawford, ‘Ridwan the maligned’, in J. Kritzeck and R. Bagley-Winder, eds. Studies in Honour of P. K., Hitti (London, 1959), pp. 135–9.

  4 Cahen, ‘The Turkish invasion’, 152, 165–7.

  5 B. Lewis, ‘The Isma’ilites and the Assassins’, in K. Setton and M. W. Baldwin, eds., A History of the Crusades, 1. 111; Crawford, ‘Ridwan the maligned’, 135–44 sees his policy purely in political terms. On his relations with the Fatimids see Köhler, Allianzen und Verträge, p. 58.

  6 HBS, 186.

  7 Kemal ad-Din, Chronicle of Aleppo, RHC Or. 3. [herafter cited as Aleppo Chronicle], 577–8; Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, pp. 150–2.

  8 Sivan, L’Islam et la Croisade, p. 18.

  9 Cahen, Setton, Crusades, pp. 165, 322; Aleppo Chronicle, 579; Holt, Age of the Crusades, p. 26.

  10 Aleppo Chronicle, 577.

  11 RA, p. 48; Krey, The First Crusade, p. 127.

  12 Cahen, ‘The Turkish invasion’, 153–4

  13 Ibn Khaldun, pp. 198–201 expounds upon this.

  14 On the iqtâ’ see C. Cahen, ‘Contribution à l’histoire de l’iqtâ’, Annales: économies, sociétés, civilisations, 8 (1953), 25–52 and ‘The Turkish invasion’, 153–60; Bosworth, ‘Recruitment, muster and review’, pp. 59–77; R. G. Smail, Crusading Warfare (1097–1193) (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 65–6.

  15 Nizam al-Mulk, Traité de gouvernement composé pour le Sultan Malik Shah, ed. C. Schefer, 2 vols(Paris, 1892–3) [hereafter cited as al-Mulk], vol. 1. 99, 113–14.

  16 ibn-Khaldun, pp. 146–7.

  17 al-Mulk, 1. 100–1; On the Turks see above pp. 145, 149.

  18 al-Mulk, 1. 102, 103–4, 111; see above p. 198 and Cahen, ‘The Turkish invasion’, 158.

  19 al-Mulk 1. 98; Muhammad ben Ali ben Sulaiman Ravandi, Rabat al-sudur wa ayatal surur, ed. M. Iqtal (Leiden and London, 1921) [hereafter cited as Ravandi], p. 131 – I owe this reference to Professor A. K. S. Lambton.

  20 Alexiad, p. 206; Cahen, Turkey, pp. 79–80, ‘The Turkish invasion’, p. 168, ‘La campagnede Mantzikert’, 629–31. On the numbers at this battle see above pp. 152–3.

  21 See below pp. 359–60.

  22 Aleppo Chronicle, 578, 579, 583–4; Damascus Chronicle of the Crusades, p. 46.

  23 Aleppo Chronicle, 578; AA, 358–60; RC, 669.

  24 Aleppo Chronicle, 579–80.

  25 The Provençal priest Ebrard was at Tripoli seeking food just before the capture of Anitoch: RA, p. 117.

  26 See above p. 180.

  27 Nicolle, ‘Early medieval Islamic arms’, 60.

  28 GF, p. 49. Oddly the Anonymous had twice mentioned these unidentifiable people, pp. 20, 45, without commenting on them in any way; There is a famous second third century graffito of a clibanarius reproduced in P. Brown, The World of Late Antiquity (London, 1971), p. 162; Nicolle, ‘Early medieval Islamic arms’, 34; on Egyptian armies see below pp. 359–60.

  29 ’Djaysh’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2. 506; Ibn-Khaldun, pp. 95, 109, 114, 228 but he is pursuing a general idea that primitive men decay from the luxury of civilisation.

  30 AA, 363, 385; Chanson d’Antioche, 8133; RA, p. 48.

  31 AA, 367–71 for the fighting at the Dog Gate see below p. 228; FC, p. 94.

  32 GF, pp. 41, 29; AA, 397; Holt, Age of the Crusades, pp. 12, 14, 75; J. Hamblin, The Fatimid Army during the Early Crusades, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Michigan 1985, pp. 18–23.

  33 Ibn-Khaldun, pp. 223–30. See also the manual of war studied by G. Tantum, ‘Muslim warfare: a study of a medieval Muslim treatise on the art of war’, in R. Elgood, ed. Islamic Arms and Armour (London, 1979), pp. 187–202. There were evidently many earlier models for this late medieval example.

  34 E. S. Bouchier, A Short History of Antioch (Oxford, 1921), p. 195 who suggests it owed its name to the fact that iron was used in the structure of the towers, a point mentioned by AA, 362. However, the Orontes was called the ‘Far’ – GF calls the Bridge the Ponlem Farreum – but this may have been corrupted to Fer – ‘Iron’: GF, p. 28, n. 1.

  35 He was perhaps the same as Walo the Constable whom Anselm reports was killed towards the end of the siege of Antioch: Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, pp. 157–60

  36 AA, 362–4.

  37 GF, p. 50.

  38 On Harem see Dussaud, Topographie, p. 172; G. Lestrange, Palestine under the Moslems (London, 1890), p. 449; The modern village is dominated by the huge citadel from which one can see the Iron Bridge, the modern Jisr al-Haleb, and to far beyond the modern Syria/Turkey frontier post at Bab al-Hawa beyond which, alongside the Aleppo road, are1.2 kilometres of the Roman road.