Victory in the East

by John France

  Fig. 14 The defeat of Kerbogah

  Turkish bowmen routed by Hugh of Vermandois

  1 and 2: Godfrey and the North French attack the Turks by the Bridge Gate

  3: South French under Adhémar, attempting to outflank the enemy, are engaged by piecemeal attacks

  4: Bohemond’s forces act as a reserve and engage only when the enemy wavers

  5: Renaud of Toul’s force holds off the enemy in the rear

  6: The Count of Toulouse continues to blockade the Citadel

  7: Kerbogah with his main force advances from the base camp, then turns back as he sees the rest of his army breaking up in defeat

  The Islamic sources tend to attribute the defeat of this great army to divisions in its own ranks. According to Ibn al-Athir there had been a lot of friction which came to a head in the debate over whether to attack the crusader army as it emerged from Antioch and as a result most of the army took flight out of sheer irritation with Kerbogah. Kemal ad-Din is rather more specific. According to him, Kerbogah opened negotiations with Ridwan of Aleppo during the siege, annoying Duqaq while Janah ad-Daulah of Homs feared vengeance for his part in the murder of a rival, Youssef ben Abiks, and the nomad Turks disliked Ridwan.69 There is a sense in which this is making excuses. After all, if the fortune of battle had gone the other way doubtless the nascent disputes between Raymond of Toulouse and Bohemond would have been blamed for the defeat. This is not to say that friction within Kerbogah’s coalition was not a factor, but it was only a factor. Kerbogah’s army was very large, as even the Islamic sources admit, but the dispersal of its forces and its commander’s hesitations meant that its power was never brought to bear. It is possible that he had always intended to allow the Franks to exit from Antioch, counting on his 2,000 archers to exact a heavy toll of their numbers, and so was surprised by the speed with which this force was brushed aside. But he also seems to have hesitated over plans and this was fatal. By contrast the Franks knew what they wanted, to engage the enemy rapidly and in this they succeeded by a well-planned and swift exit. Battle was therefore joined on the river bank between only a part of Kerbogah’s army and a very large proportion of the Franks, and despite the initiative of a Turkish force which tried to attack from the rear, there seems to have been a piecemeal commitment of the Islamic army which became disordered under Frankish pressure. As Kerbogah’s main force appeared on the right, his allies’ forces on the left by the river were breaking up while Adhémar’s sizable force was uncommitted. This was the situation in which all the distrusts and frictions in the Moslem army came into play and sauve qui peut became the rule. The Frankish battle plan, which was surely Bohemond’s, was to engage a proportion of Kerbogah’s army closely, while, as far as possible, taking precautions against being surrounded and overwhelmed. It worked because of the dispersal of Kerbogah’s army, his hesitations and the distrust which this unleashed, and also because of another factor. The Franks were desperate for battle by 28 June. It is certain that their spirits had been revived by the finding of the Holy Lance and other divine messages, and the leaders may have noted with interest Kerbogah’s failure to press home his attacks from the citadel in favour of simple attrition. But the army was faced with starvation – they had to fight and win if they were to survive and Albert says that they expressed this view to the leaders.70 Of course, such an experience could have broken them, but sustained by faith and determination, by that driving religious enthusiasm which was the motor of the crusade, they fought for the chance to live. It was a gambler’s throw of all or nothing which their enemies did not fully understand. Some of the Moslems did – the volunteers seem to have fought to the death as the chronicles of Aleppo and Damascus point out.71 But for most of the emirs of Kerbogah’s army this was a war for this or that advantage – that was the tradition in this fractured borderland of Islam. When things went badly distrust flourished, and this vile plant was fed all the more by the military incompetence of Kerbogah. So a combination of factors destroyed this great army, as it has destroyed so many others which were never, as a whole, brought to battle. The great, the rich and the lucky saved themselves – the foot, the women and children and other camp followers were destroyed. Fulcher, speaking of the fate of women in the enemy camp, expresses the true savagery of the crusader spirit: ‘In regard to the women found in the tents of the foe the Franks did them no evil but drove lances into their bellies’.72

  In this great victory we can see the improving military technique of the crusader army. There was no single tactical or technical advance. Its leaders were now very experienced soldiers, and Bohemond was an exceptional commander. By the end of the siege of Antioch the army was cohesive and disciplined. This was the result of working together in shared hardship. The leaders knew that solidity in formation was important before they left the west, and any doubts they may have had would have been dispelled by the advice of Alexius and the experience at Dorylaeum where it is evident they knew what was important but were handling a much less skilled and practised army. It took time for this kind of lesson to percolate through the army as it welded itself into an effective fighting unit. For knowing what is needed and bringing troops to the point where they can achieve it are two different things. Luck was a major factor in their early battles in Asia Minor. It continued to be important, but the army was becoming more cohesive and the Lake Battle and the fight against Kerbogah demonstrated this. There are some indications, especially at the Lake Battle, that the army was using the mass charge with couched lances which is so characteristic of warfare later in the twelfth century, but of which there is little evidence before the crusade.73 The crusaders enjoyed no technical advantage over amongst their enemies though we do not hear of lamellar and scale armour amongst the Franks and it is possible that chain-mail was more widespread amongst them than their enemies and this would reflect their predilection for close-quarter combat. Even the large kite-shaped shield, which is clearly an adaptation to this style of war, was known in the East, though smaller round ones were perhaps commoner. The westerners were adaptable, with the knights, the key element in the army, quite capable of fighting on foot. The real innovation was in command. The near disaster of the Foraging Battle forced them into appointing a single commander and, in the person of Bohemond, they found an able general. The enemy was particularly adept at avoiding close quarter fighting until their opponents were suitably weakened, and used encirclement and ambush to that end. Bohemond turned the tables on the enemy by ambushing them at the Lake Battle, holding his own force as a reserve to reinforce weak points. At Antioch he again sought to bring the enemy to battle at close quarters by a sudden sally against a part of his army, and devised a formation which offered some protection from encirclement to the Frankish force most closely engaged. The hallmark of his dispositions was aggression – he never stood on the defensive and never allowed the enemy to settle his formation. The crusader army was by this time a seasoned and disciplined force fired by religious fervour and the desperate need to win food. The lessons of war were gradually learned, though at enormous cost in lives. The deadly effectiveness of ambush, which might trap a handful of men, or overwhelm a whole army as at the Foraging Battle, was only slowly brought home to the Franks. This continued to be a weakness, as it was of all armies, in part because of poor communications and in part because of weak discipline. Also it is a simple and unavoidable fact that armies, like all organisations, fall into routine or are obliged to do predictable things. At the Lake Battle they ambushed Ridwan; less than a month later Bohemond, who had commanded them and devised the stratagem, was himself ambushed on the St Symeon road but then it was the only road down to the sea and it seems to have been a well-laid ambush. But two clear-cut victories, in February and June 1098, achieved over larger forces in very adverse circumstances, showed an army whose cohesiveness was growing and whose commanders were adapting to new conditions. Franks and Turks were used to different styles of war, and the Franks worked hard to bring their enemy to battle
at close quarters. Theirs were victories of military ability, but also of militant temperament. Their enemies did not, in the main, share that willingness to conquer or die – the very essence of crusading. For the most part they fought for more limited ends without properly understanding the nature of their new adversary. Having said this, we need to recognise that the savagery during the siege of Antioch and the fate of the volunteers outside in the final battle show that a quite different spirit could be engendered in their enemies. It is a fine irony that this supreme triumph of the crusading spirit in the battle over Kerbogah opened the way to a marked change in the way the army conducted itself.

  * * *

  1 AA 407–408.

  2 Runciman, 1. 319; Cahen, Syrie du Nord, p. 217; GF, p. 50, has a vignette of Shams-ad-Daulah reluctantly conceding the citadel to Kerbogah: on the size of Kerbogah’s army see above p. 203: Matthew, pp. 39, 41.

  3 RA, p. 64.

  4 FC pp. 6, 97; RA, p. 77; GF p. 63; AA, 414–15.

  5 J. A. Brundage, ‘An errant crusader: Stephen of Blois’, Traditio, 16 (1960), 388, suggests that the last part of Stephen’s letter to Adela written in late March 1098; Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, p. 152, in which he says that he will see her soon, means that he had already resolved to leave the crusade, perhaps delaying until Antioch was in Christian hands. Even if the passage could be interpreteted in this way it would have been extraordinary for him to persist in such a course of action as Kerbogah closed in on the city. Stephen was a deserter.

  6 GF pp. 56, 61: AA 41; RC, 660–1, says that it was Robert of Flanders who fired the city.

  7 AA, 418; Matthew, 41: GF, p. 59.

  8 AA, 4078; HBS, 198; RA, p. 66.

  9 GF, pp. 50, 51.

  10 The Wadi has now vanished under the concrete of the new city. By June it was probably dry anyway. The Kara Su is the only waterway which could be described as a river.

  11 RA, p. 66; AA, 411.

  12 See below, p. 275.

  13 RA, pp. 66–7: AA, 411–12.

  14 AA, 409–10 is the only source for this event, which he appears to place early in the siege.

  15 Bouchier, Antioch pp. 218–19.

  16 Aleppo Chronicle, 581; Ibn al-Athir, p. 193.

  17 RA, p. 67 Krey, First Crusade, p. 169, has an extremely accurate, almost photograhic description of this battlefield: ‘The Turks who had entered the fortress wanted to go down into the city. For the valley between our mountain and their fortress was not large, and in the middle of it was a certain cistern and a little level place. Nor did the enemy have a path down into the city except through our mountain; wherefore they strove with every intent and all their might to drive us out and remove us from their path.’

  The roughness of the land and the steepness of the gulley must be emphasised. It is possible to pick one’s way down from the citadel and then up the mountainside to the crusader positions, but it is a slow and difficult business for the walls of the gulley are sown with rocky projections often waist-high, with loose shale below, the whole masked by a covering of low scrub. Effectively an attack against or from the citadel can only proceed either along the line of the wall or on the access road – two very narrow fronts.

  18 RM, 806–7.

  19 GF p.561 AA, 411.

  20 GF p. 56; RA, pp. 66–8; Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, pp. 157–60.

  21 GF pp. 56–7; RA, pp. 66–8; Hagenmeyer Kreuzzugsbriefe, pp. 157–65.

  22 GF pp. 56–7, 60–1: PT, p. 67; RA, pp. 67–8; AA, 410–11, 413. On the tower, see above, p. 266; the suggestion is that of Rey, Monuments, pp. 201–2.

  23 AA, 410; RC, 659–60; RA, p. 79.

  24 AA, 411: Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, pp. 157–65; Krey, First Crusade, p. 190, 193; GF, p. 62. Presumably the St George Gate to the south of the city had remained open and this explains the contact between Antioch and St Symeon noted above, p. 211, and below p. 278, after the coming of Kerbogah.

  25 GF p. 68; RA, p. 79; AA, 422.

  26 On the impact of starvation on numbers see above, pp. 132, 133.

  27 The story of the visions of Stephen of Valence and Peter Bartholemew is given in the GF, pp. 57–60. The building of the wall against the citadel, and the initial comments on starvation, occur on p. 57 and are repeated, the latter in vastly expanded form, p. 62. The sense is of a work which has been quite violently chopped around, GF, p. 62–3.

  28 RA, pp. 76–7 may have based his account here on GF.

  29 AA, 412–414, 427.

  30 RA, p. 77.

  31 RA, pp. 72–4; GF, pp. 57–9.

  32 RA, pp.68–75; GF, pp.59–60.

  33 AA, 417.

  34 RA, p. 75; GF, p. 65.

  35 Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, pp. 157–65; Krey, First Crusade, pp. 190, 193.

  36 On the visions see Morris, ‘Policy and Visions’, pp. 33–45 and J. France, ‘Prophet, Priest and Chronicler on the First Crusade’, (forthcoming).

  37 The words of the finder of the Lance, GF, p. 65, clerly refer to the vision as reported on p. 60. This account has been changed a good deal.

  38 RA, pp. 75–8.

  39 RA, pp. 53–4, 74.

  40 AA, 421 and see above, p. 44.

  41 AA, 423.

  42 GF, pp. 65–7; RA, pp. 79, 81; AA, 419–21.

  43 See above, p. 271, n. 7.

  44 RA, p. 50; RC, p. 715; see above, p. 147.

  45 Though useful comments are made by Riley-Smith, Idea of Crusading, p. 65.

  46 Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, p. 157; RA, pp. 49, 51, 53, 55, 77; GF, pp. 34, 62; PT, p. 44;RC, 646–7; AA, 381, 395, 408, 418–19, 426–8; on the figure of 700 in February 1098, see above, p. 281.

  47 GF, pp. 23, 27; in 1984 the author Tim Severin, Crusader (London, 1986), followed the path of the first crusade on horseback and had the greatest difficulty looking after his horses, even with modern aids and the support of motorised transport.

  48 Smail, Crusading Warfare, p. 173, n. 5.

  49 Smail, Crusading Warfare, pp. 173–4, based his reconstruction upon that of O. Heerman, Die Gefechtsführung abendländischer Heere im Orient in der Epoche des ersten Kreuzzugs (Marburg, 1888), p. 41, though he had reservations about his methods notably expressed p. 171, n. 8. Heerman depended heavily upon Raymond of Aguilers. In its main lines, this reconstruction has been followed by modern scholars, notably C. Morris in his computer program published by the HIDES Project of Southampton University, ‘The battle at Antioch’, which provides a sequential representation of the battle.

  50 RA, pp. 79–83; GF, p. 70.

  51 Smail, Crusading Warfare, pp. 173–4.

  52 GF, p. 68; RC, 666; Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzusbriefe, pp. 157–60; AA, 422; FC, pp. 105–6 is entirely dependent on RA for his account of the battle.

  53 Using smoke to confuse and choke the enemy was a well-known device of Islamic armies, employed, for example, at Hattin; Ibn al-Athir, 684. More exotic and even poisonous substances were also sometimes used: A. L. S. Muhammad Lutful-Huq, A critical edition of the Nihayat al-Sul of Muhammad b. Isn b. Isma’il Al-Hanafi, Ph.D thesis, University of London (1955), p. 15.

  54 See above, pp. 281–2.

  55 AA, 427; RA, p. 83; RC, 669–70; Aleppo Chronicle, 583; Matthew, 43.

  56 FC, p. 103.

  57 The origin of the name is suggested by L. A. M. Sumberg, ‘The Tafurs and the First Crusade’, Medieval Studies, 21 (1959), 227–8; on the Tafurs see La Chanson d’Antioche, 11. 2987, 4042, 4049, 4066, 4087, 4100, 4106, 4115, 4118, 4299, 4318, 6395, 6398, 6417, 8251, 8921; GN, 242 says their lord was a Norman knight who had lost his horse.

  58 See above p. 286; on pursuit up the valley see AA, 426; RA, p. 83; RC, 670; GF, p. 70. Other Turkish camps were made at various times; for example, that on Mount Silpius which was soon abandoned, and then down in the plain to the north of the Bridge Gate.

  59 GF, pp. 68–9; RA, p. 80; RC, 667; AA, 426.

  60 See below, p. 293.

  61 RC, p. 667 repeats exactly the same story, telling it, however, as a rumour. It
was probably current in the crusader camp to explain events, and it is worth noting that Mirdalin passed into the corpus of crusader legend: Cahen, Syrie du Nord, p. 215, n. 35.

  62 AA, 423; Aleppo Chronicle, p. 583; Ibn al-Athir, p. 195.

  63 AA, 423; Aleppo Chronicle, p. 583.

  64 The following are the other groups mentioned by Albert:

  a Peter of Astenois* and his brother Renaud III of Toul*, Warner count of Grez*, Henry of Esch-sur Sûre*, all kinsmen of Godfrey, Renaud of Hamersbach and Walter of Domedart.

  b Raimbaud d’Orange, Louis count of Mousson*, Lambert son of Cono of Montaigu*.

  c Hugh of St Pol and his son Engelrand, Thomas de Fé, Baldwin of Bourcq*, Robert FitzGerald, Raymond Peleth, Galon of Calmon, Everard of Puiset, Dreux of Nesle, Rodolfus son of Godfrey, and Conan and another Rodolfus, both Bretons. Albert says they formed two divisions. Robert FitzGerard is surely the standard-bearer of Bohemond who fought with such distinction at the Lake Battle: GF, p. 37–8.