His timing was appalling. The Franks had survived a succession of searing counter-attacks from the Muslim forces that had been blockading Antioch, including a potentially lethal assault from the rear by troops left to guard the southern gateway of St George. Christian casualties were mounting, but Bohemond nonetheless pressed forward to seize the initiative, and Muslim resistance began to collapse. Kerbogha’s main force arrived just as the tide of battle was turning. Unnerved by their failure to overrun the supposedly bedraggled Latin army, the Muslims fighting near the Bridge Gate took flight. They ran straight into the serried ranks of their advancing comrades, causing havoc. At this, the defining moment of the battle, Kerbogha failed to rally his men. With their formation in tatters, one by one the various Abbasid contingents cut their losses and fled the field. The brutal shock of the crusaders’ indomitable resolve had exposed the fractures embedded within the Muslim army. An outraged Muslim chronicler later wrote that: ‘The Franks, though they were in the extremity of weakness, advanced in battle order against the armies of Islam, which were at the height of their strength and numbers, and they broke the ranks of the Muslims and scattered their multitudes.’30
Barely a fraction of his mighty host had been slain, yet Kerbogha was forced into a shameful retreat. Abandoning the riches of his camp, he fled in disgrace towards Mesopotamia. In the wake of the battle the Muslim garrison of Antioch’s citadel surrendered. The huge city was, at last, truly in Latin hands. The Battle of Antioch was a stunning victory. Never before had the crusade come so close to destruction, and yet, against all expectation, Christendom had triumphed. Not surprisingly, many saw the hand of God at work, and an array of spectacular miracles was reported. An army of ghostly Christian martyrs, clad all in white and led by soldier saints, appeared out of the mountains to aid the Franks. Elsewhere, Raymond of Aguilers himself carried the Holy Lance in among the southern French contingent led by Bishop Adhémar. It was later said that the sight of the relic paralysed Kerbogha. With or without such divine intervention, piety played a central role in these events. The crusaders unquestionably fought amid an atmosphere of fervent spiritual conviction, urged on by priests marching among them, chanting and reciting prayers. Above all, it was their shared sense of devotional mission, fused with an almost primal sense of desperation, which bound the Latins together during this terrible confrontation and enabled them to withstand and even repel their fearsome enemy.
DELAY AND DISSIPATION
In the immediate aftermath of this remarkable success, hopes grew of a swift and triumphant conclusion to the crusade. As it was, the expedition lost direction and momentum as its leaders squabbled over the spoils of Syria. The heat of midsummer ignited an epidemic of disease, and many in the army who had survived the terrible privations of the preceding months now died from illness. Even the nobility were not immune and, on 1 August, Adhémar of Le Puy, who in his role as papal legate had been a voice for reason and conciliation, succumbed.
Throughout this period, the expedition was gripped by an embittered dispute over Antioch’s future that stalled any further progress towards Palestine. Bohemond wanted the city for himself and was now strongly placed to press his claim. It was he who had engineered Antioch’s fall in the crusade’s hour of need; his banner that flew above the city walls at dawn on 3 June. Within hours of Kerbogha’s defeat he had cemented his position by seizing personal control of the citadel, despite Raymond of Toulouse’s best efforts to beat him to the prize. Bohemond now sought unequivocal recognition from his fellow princes of his legal right of possession, in spite of the promises they had made to the Byzantine emperor. Mindful of the fact that Alexius had forsaken them at Philomelium, most acquiesced, but once again it was Raymond who offered opposition, trumpeting the expedition’s outstanding obligations to the Greeks. An embassy was dispatched to Constantinople entreating the emperor to lay claim to Antioch in person, but when he failed to appear an impasse was reached.
Bohemond has often been cast as the villain of this episode–his greed and ambition contrasted with Raymond’s selfless dedication to justice and the crusading cause. Although Bohemond undoubtedly had an eye to personal advancement, the situation was not quite so clear-cut. In the absence of Greek reinforcement, one of the Frankish princes would need to stay behind in Syria to govern and garrison Antioch, lest the Frankish blood spilled in the name of its conquest be squandered. From one perspective it could be argued that the crusaders were lucky that Bohemond was willing to shoulder this burden, forgoing the immediate completion of his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. At the same time, Raymond of Toulouse’s altruistic reputation does not bear close scrutiny. He may have been willing to deliver Antioch to Byzantium, but he was also driven by dreams of power. For the remainder of the crusade the count’s behaviour was governed by two entwined, sometimes conflicting aspirations: the desire to carve out a new lordship of his own in the Levant, and a concomitant wish to be recognised as the crusade’s leader.
It was with the latter goal in mind that Raymond cultivated a close association with the visionary Peter Bartholomew and the cult of the Holy Lance. Inspired by what appears to have been authentic devotion to this relic, the Provençal count took Peter under his wing and became the Lance’s chief supporter. In the coming months, as the crusaders looked back over the dramatic events of Antioch’s second siege and their seemingly miraculous victory over Kerbogha, Raymond and his supporters helped to promote the idea that the Lance had played a critical role in securing their survival. At the same time, Peter continued to report an ongoing succession of visions and was soon acting as the self-styled mouthpiece of God. According to the peasant prophet, St Andrew had revealed to him that ‘the Lord gave the Lance to the count’ in order to single out Raymond as the leader of the First Crusade.31
In August, the evolution of the Lance’s cult and attendant promotion of Raymond’s political career took rather macabre turns. In life, Adhémar of Le Puy had expressed doubts about the Lance’s authenticity. But just two days after the papal legate’s death, Peter Bartholomew proclaimed that he had experienced his first visitation from Adhémar’s spirit and the process of appropriating his memory began. The bishop was buried in the Basilica of St Peter, within the very hole in which the Holy Lance had been discovered. The physical fusion of the two cults–a masterstroke of manipulation–was reinforced once Peter began relaying Adhémar’s ‘words’ from beyond the grave, revealing that he now recognised the Lance as genuine and that his soul had been severely punished for the sin of having doubted the relic, suffering whipping and burning. Alongside this apparent volte-face on the Holy Lance, the bishop’s spirit began to back Count Raymond’s political ambitions. Indeed, Adhémar soon ‘declared’ that his former vassals should transfer their allegiance to the count and that Raymond should be authorised to hand-pick the expedition’s new spiritual leader.
As the First Crusade idled away that long Syrian summer, the cult of the Holy Lance took hold and the popularity and influence of Raymond of Toulouse and Peter Bartholomew rose in tandem. Even so, by early autumn the count still had not managed to oust Bohemond from Antioch, nor was he in a position to declare himself outright leader of the crusade. What Raymond needed was greater leverage. From late September onwards he led a series of campaigns into the fertile Summaq plateau region to the south-east. These operations have often been misrepresented as foraging expeditions, even as attempts to initiate an advance on Palestine, but in reality Raymond’s goal was the establishment of his own independent enclave to counter and threaten Bohemond’s control of Antioch.
Part of this process involved the conquest of Marrat, the region’s major town. It surrendered after a hard-fought winter siege and Raymond swiftly initiated a programme of Christianisation and settlement, converting mosques and installing a garrison. But shortly afterwards the Latin lines of supply faltered, and some of the count’s poorest followers began to starve. This moment saw one of the crusade’s most appalling atrocities. According to one Frank:
Our men suffered from excessive hunger. I shudder to say that many, terribly tormented by the madness of starvation, cut pieces of flesh from the buttocks of Saracens lying there dead. These pieces they cooked and ate, savagely devouring the flesh while it was insufficiently roasted.
A Latin eyewitness noted that ‘this spectacle disgusted as many crusaders as it did strangers’. Uncomfortable as it may be to acknowledge, these chilling acts of barbarism–which even Frankish chroniclers saw fit to condemn–did bring the Latins some short-term benefit. Among Syrian Muslims the crusaders’ reputation for savagery now gained currency, and in the succeeding months many local emirs sought to negotiate with their fearsome new enemies rather than risk annihilation.32
Meanwhile, as the months of dispute and inaction ground on and a succession of councils of the Latin princes proved unable to resolve the argument over Antioch, popular sentiment among ordinary crusaders began to harden. Pressure was growing for the princes to put aside their differences and focus instead upon the interests of the expedition as a whole. Events came to a head at Marrat in early January 1099 with an extraordinary outbreak of civil disobedience. Dismayed by the fact that even Raymond of Toulouse, champion of the Holy Lance, preferred to contest control of Syria rather than march on to Jerusalem, a mob of poor Franks began to demolish Marrat’s fortifications with their bare hands, ripping down its walls stone by stone. Facing this protest, Raymond finally recognised that he could not hope to lead the crusade and rule Antioch at the same time. On 13 January he made the symbolic gesture of marching south from Marrat barefoot, clad simply as a penitent pilgrim, leaving the town and his hopes of conquest in ruins behind him. Bohemond, meanwhile, remained at Antioch. The dream of achieving independent rule of the city had at last been realised, but his ambition had contributed to months of destructive delay for the crusade, and more importantly, caused severe and enduring damage to Latin relations with the Byzantine Empire.
Appearing to have prioritised the holy war, Raymond enjoyed a groundswell of support and, for a time, he seemed to become the crusade’s acknowledged leader. He took the rather calculated step of using hard cash to ensure that his new drive towards Palestine received the endorsement of fellow princes. Not all could be bribed–Godfrey of Bouillon, for one, stood aloof–but Robert of Normandy and even Tancred now shifted their allegiance to the Provençal camp for 10,000 and 5,000 solidi (gold coins) apiece. They, and many other Christians, joined the advance south towards Lebanon.
Raymond of Toulouse’s pre-eminence now seemed assured, and it might have remained so had he continued to focus solely upon the task of reaching Jerusalem. In truth, however, beneath the appearance of simple dedication the count still yearned to create a new Provençal lordship in the East. In mid-February 1099 he committed the crusade to an unnecessary and ultimately futile siege of the small Lebanese fortress of Arqa and sought to browbeat the neighbouring Muslim city of Tripoli into submission. Officially Raymond’s excuse was that the expedition needed to pause to allow those remaining crusaders still stationed in and around Antioch, including Godfrey of Bouillon, to catch up. But even when this was achieved the count still refused to press on southwards. After two wasteful months of siege at Arqa, the masses were already restless when Raymond’s prestige was dealt a disastrous blow.
The count’s close association with Peter Bartholomew and the Holy Lance had been instrumental in securing his recognition as commander of the crusade. But as the months passed, Peter proved to be an increasingly volatile ally, given to extreme and unpredictable visionary experiences. By spring 1099 his ravings had become ever more fantastical and when, in early April, he reported that Christ had instructed him to oversee the immediate execution of thousands of ‘sinful’ crusaders, the spell broke. Not surprisingly, doubts were now openly expressed about the self-styled prophet and the relic he purportedly discovered, with the criticism spearheaded by a Norman cleric, Arnulf of Chocques, keen to reaffirm northern French influence.
Apparently convinced of the reality of his experiences, Peter volunteered to undergo a potentially lethal trial by fire to prove his own honesty and the Lance’s authenticity. He spent four days fasting to purify his soul before the test. Then, on Good Friday, before a crowd of crusaders, dressed in a simple tunic and bearing the relic of the Holy Lance, Peter willingly walked into an inferno–blazing ‘olive branches stacked in two piles, four feet in height, about one foot apart and thirteen feet in length’.
There are differing accounts of what happened next. Peter’s supporters maintained that he emerged from the conflagration unscathed, only to be fatally crushed by a fevered mob of onlookers. Other more sceptical observers described how:
The finder of the Lance quickly ran through the midst of the burning pile to prove his honesty, as he had requested. When the man passed through the flames and emerged, they saw that he was guilty, for his skin was burned and they knew that within he was mortally hurt. This was demonstrated by the outcome, for on the twelfth day he died, seared by the guilt of his conscience.
However they were inflicted, Peter Bartholomew perished from the injuries received on the day of his ordeal. His demise shattered belief in his prophecies and left the efficacy of the Holy Lance in grave doubt. It also inflicted grievous damage to Count Raymond’s reputation. Raymond tried to hold on to power, but by early May, with even his own southern French supporters clamouring for the march south into Palestine to continue, he was forced to back down, abandoning Arqa and his Lebanese project. As the Franks set out from Tripoli on 16 May 1099, the phase of Provençal domination of the crusade came to end; from now on Raymond would, at best, have to share power with his fellow princes. At last, after more than ten months of delay and disillusionment, the First Crusade began its final advance on the Holy City of Jerusalem.33
3
THE SACRED CITY
As the last phase of the march to Jerusalem began, the First Crusaders were possessed by a new sense of urgency. Any thoughts of conquering other towns and ports on the journey through Lebanon and Palestine were abandoned, and the Franks, now driven by the determined desire to complete their pilgrimage to the Holy City, advanced with resolute speed. It was not devotion alone that drove the Frankish pace; strategic necessity also played its part. Back in the spring, during the siege of Arqa, the issue of diplomatic relations with Egypt had re-emerged when Latin emissaries sent to the Vizier al-Afdal a year earlier rejoined the expedition in the company of Fatimid representatives. Much had changed in the intervening period. Capitalising upon the tremors of fear that shook the Sunni Seljuq world after Kerbogha’s defeat at Antioch, al-Afdal had seized Jerusalem from the Turks in August 1098. This radical transformation in the balance of Near Eastern power prompted the crusader princes to seek a negotiated settlement with the Fatimids, offering a partition of conquered territory in return for rights to the Holy City. But talks collapsed when the Egyptians bluntly refused to relinquish Jerusalem. This left the Franks facing a new enemy in Palestine and a race against time. The crusaders now had to cover the remaining 200 miles of their pilgrimage with maximum rapidity, before al-Afdal could muster an army to intercept them or properly organise Jerusalem’s defences.
As they traced the Mediterranean coastline south, the crusaders’ passage was eased by the willingness of local semi-independent Muslim rulers to negotiate short-term truces, even on occasion to offer markets in which to purchase food and supplies. Cowed by the Latins’ reputation for brutish invincibility earned at Antioch and Marrat, these emirs were happy to avoid confrontation. Passing by the major settlements of Tyre, Acre and Caesarea, the Franks encountered only limited resistance and were deeply relieved to find a succession of narrow coastal passes unguarded. In late May the expedition turned inland at Arsuf, taking a direct route across the plains and up into the Judean hills. They paused only briefly when approaching Ramla, the last real bastion on the road to the Holy City, but found it abandoned by the Fatimids. At last, on 7 June 1099, Jerusalem came
into view. One Latin contemporary described how ‘all the people burst into floods of happy tears, because they were so close to the holy place of that longed-for city, for which they had suffered so many hardships, so many dangers, so many kinds of death and famine’. Al-Afdal’s inaction had allowed the expedition to advance south from Lebanon in less than a month.34
IN HEAVEN AND ON EARTH
After nearly three years, and a journey of some 2,000 miles, the crusaders had reached Jerusalem. This ancient city, Christendom’s sacred heart, pulsated with religion. For the Franks it was the holiest place on Earth, where Christ had suffered his Passion. Within its lofty walls stood the Holy Sepulchre, the church erected in the fourth century CE under the Roman Emperor Constantine to enclose the supposed sites of Golgotha and of Jesus’ Tomb. This one shrine encapsulated the very essence of Christianity: the Crucifixion, Redemption and Resurrection. The crusaders had marched east from Europe in their thousands to reclaim this church–many believing that if the earthly city of Jerusalem could be recaptured it would become one with the heavenly Jerusalem, a Christian paradise. Feverish prophecies abounded of the imminent onset of the Last Days of Judgement centred on the Holy City, imbuing the Latin expedition with an apocalyptic aura.
But across more than 3,000 years of history, Jerusalem had become immutably entwined with two other world religions: Judaism and Islam. These faiths also treasured the city, reserving particular reverence for the area known either as the Temple Mount, or Haram as-Sharif, a raised enclosure in its eastern reaches, containing the Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa mosque, and abutted by the Wailing Wall. To Muslims this was the city from which Muhammad made his ascent to heaven, the third-holiest site in the Islamic world. But it was also the seat of the Israelites, where Abraham offered to sacrifice his son and the two Temples were built.
The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land Page 9
