by Robert Payne
For some time the Count of Toulouse had been eyeing one of the great southern towers of the city. He decided to mine it and bring it down. His sappers advanced under a testudo, dug down to the foundation of the wall, cut away some of the stones, inserted beams and wooden joists, and then set fire to them. The sappers and crossbowmen retreated to a safer place and had the pleasure of watching the tower crumbling. By this time it was dark, and it was impossible to make an entrance into the city amid the rubble of a broken tower. In the morning when they awoke, they were surprised to see the tower standing straight and tall. The Turks had worked through the night, and they had somehow built a new tower.
Such labors testified to the determination of the garrison troops to hold out and resist to the uttermost. They, too, had advantages. Hemmed in on three sides, they were able to bring in supplies on the fourth side. The west wall, facing the lake, was provided with watergates through which passed an endless supply of food, fodder, fish, wood, and building materials. There were fishing vessels on the lake and a small fleet. The princes consulted with Butumites, and it was agreed to send messengers to Pelecanum to beg the emperor to send ships to the Ascanian lake. This meant assembling a fleet in the harbor of Civetot (which was just outside Nicaea) and then carrying the ships on bullock carts over the mountains and through the dense forests.
The emperor at once gave the order for the ships to be assembled, and in a surprisingly short time, at a secret hiding place on the shores of the lake, the ships were all brought together and prepared for launching. The launches took place at night. At dawn, from their high towers, the Turkish guards of Nicaea saw the Byzantine fleet sailing across the lake, every ship filled with soldiers. Drummers and trumpeters filled the air with their music. The ships advanced relentlessly. Raymond of Aguilers, who saw them, wrote that the appearance of the ships did more than anything else to inspire fear in the defenders and bring about the surrender.
The surrender, however, did not come about immediately. Butumites himself entered the city secretly under a safe-conduct, offering terms of surrender that were unusually generous. The emirs, the high officials, and the court nobility would receive handsome gifts from the emperor; they would be given pensions and honors according to their rank. Some of the emirs were smuggled out of the city and taken to Pelecanum, where the emperor greeted them cordially and reaffirmed that the lives of all the garrison troops would be spared and no Turk would be harmed if they surrendered. A few details of these negotiations were known to the Crusading princes but not all of them. The garrison commander held out, believing that the sultan might yet come to his aid. Butumites decided upon a show of force. A general assault was ordered. The towers with their grappling hooks were brought closer to the walls; the siege engines were brought forward; the armies took up their stations. But on the morning the assault was to begin, the Crusaders saw imperial banners waving over the city. During the night Nicaea had fallen to the negotiator.
At first the Crusaders felt cheated. They had hoped to gather up all the treasure of Nicaea and carry it with them to Jerusalem. The soldiers were hungry for loot and women. The princes, forgetting that they had sworn on oath to respect the emperor’s interest in the cities that had formerly belonged to his empire, felt injured by the emperor’s generosity to the garrison troops and all the Turks in Nicaea. Raymond of Aguilers calls the emperor “false an iniquitous” for permitting them to leave unharmed. It would be more accurate to say that, at Nicaea, the emperor was demonstrating his mastery of psychological warfare.
To the Crusaders the emperor was more than generous. Every Crusading soldier received a gift of food. The princes were invited to Pelecanum where they were lavishly entertained and were presented with gold and jewels from the sultan’s treasure chamber.
After these ceremonies the emperor bade the Crusaders farewell. Taticius was ordered to accompany them on their march through Asia Minor. The next stage of the march would be supremely dangerous because Kilij Arslan commanded immense forces and it was inevitable that he would attempt to take revenge against the Crusaders for the fall of Nicaea and the loss of his treasury.
At a village called Leuce, on the road to Dorylaeum, the princes held a council of war and decided to divide the army into two parts. It was a dangerous move. There were now two armies marching a day’s journey apart, the first led by Bohemond, who was already seeing himself as the leader of the Christian host, and the second by the Count of Toulouse. The first army was composed of the Normans of southern Italy and northern France, with Stephen of Blois and the Count of Flanders and the detachment of Byzantine troops under the command of Taticius. The Greeks provided engineers, scouts, and guides, and since many Greeks knew the country well and many of their countrymen were still living in the lands conquered by the Seljuk Turks they were able to send spies into the hinterland who returned with accurate reports. The second army, under the Count of Toulouse, was composed of Provençals and the Lotharingians under Godfrey. There was also a small French force under Hugh the Great. Godfrey and the Count of Toulouse became close friends, aiding one another whenever it was possible.
The Sultan Kilij Arslan had been following the movements of the Christian army ever since it left Nicaea. On June 30 his well-hidden army was waiting for the Crusaders in the valley of Dorylaeum. Bohemond’s army was encamped on the plain on the other side of the hills. At sunrise on the following day the Turks swooped down the hills, making the loud and frightening noises that always accompanied an attack; and above these noises there could be heard very clearly the battle cry, “Allah Akbar”— “God is great.”
Bohemond was now in extraordinary danger: his army was outnumbered by the enemy and was a day’s march from the army of the Count of Toulouse. He ordered his men to form a hollow square, the knights facing outward, the infantry behind them, and the women and noncombatants at the center of the square where, as it happened, there were fountains of fresh water. “The women of our camp were a great comfort to us that day,” wrote theauthorof the Gesta Francorum, “for they brought water for our soldiers to drink and they were always vehemently encouraging those who were fighting for them and defending them.” From the hillside the Turks were showering arrows into Bohemond’s army in such numbers that the sky darkened. The Turks were well trained at saturation firing on a massive scale, something the Crusaders had never experienced before.
Bohemond sent a messenger to the second army to make all speed to the battlefield, and it arrived just in time to save the camp from being overrun, but Bohemond was beginning to fear whether even with the two armies joined together he had the manpower to resist the endless waves of Turks who came over the mountains. He had almost lost hope when he saw a relief force, led by Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy, come over another mountain to take the Turks from the rear. The sudden appearance of a fresh army at their rear threw the Turks into a panic. They fled, leaving behind them a vast amount of booty in gold, silver, horses, camels, oxen, and sheep. Until sunset, the Turks ran, and the Christians ran after them.
At the end of the day Bohemond had to reflect that a battle he almost lost was saved by the Bishop of Le Puy, who had thought out his stratagem without help from any soldier. He had found the guides to take his troops over the mountain, and he had somehow timed his intervention in a way that would have the greatest effect on the course of the battle.
In the battle at Dorylaeum the Crusaders for the first time fought the Turks on an enormous scale, whole armies pitted against whole armies. Here they took the measure of the enemy, admiring his courage and steadfastness. The author of the Gesta Francorum noted that the Turks threw 360,000 men into the battle. No doubt this is how many they seemed to be. Clearly, they were worthy opponents. Taticius and his guides continued to work with the Crusaders, giving advice on the roads to be traveled and the villages where they were likely to find supplies. But supplies were running low and soon the journey across Asia Minor became a nightmare. They entered a land of salt marshes and thornbushes; th
ey could not drink the marsh water and thornbushes were very nearly inedible. Many of their horses fell and were eaten. Some of the knights were reduced to walking on foot; others rode on oxen; sheep, goats, and dogs were employed to pull the baggage carts. It was high summer; in the pestilential heat so many fell ill that it sometimes seemed that the Crusade would have to be abandoned somewhere in the heart of Asia Minor. The Count of Toulouse was so sick that the Bishop of Orange gave him extreme unction. Godfrey, who had a passion for hunting, was wounded by a bear he had obviously hoped to eat. Even falcons and hunting dogs were eaten. Bread and water had given out. Crusaders were seen walking with their mouths open in the hope that a breath of air would cool their parched tongues. Occasionally they came upon patches of sugarcane; they squeezed out the sweet liquid and drank it ravenously.
Then the rains came, and they were more unhappy and bewildered than ever. The rain lasted for four or five days, a cold rain that numbed their senses. The animals were also numbed by it and could not move. But as they neared Iconium, the modern Konya, they came to fertile valleys and friendly villagers. Apparently there was no Turkish garrison at Konya and they entered it freely, the inhabitants helping them in every way. The author of the Gesta Francorum remembered that the people were especially concerned that the Crusaders carried no waterskins. They showed how the waterskins could be made, and thereafter the Christian army was never without them.
At Heraclea, the next important town on their journey, a large Turkish garrison was waiting for them. The Christians had overwhelming numbers and decided to attack immediately. Bohemond commanded the assault force, and the Turks fled, says the chronicler, “as quickly as an arrow shot by a strong hand flies from the bowstring.” Here the Crusaders rested for four days. During this time they argued violently about the route to be followed to Antioch, far away in the southeast, defying the most elementary law of all armies: united they stand, but divided they fall. The divisiveness that was to become characteristic of the Crusaders had made its first appearance.
Both Tancred and Baldwin were far less interested in the Crusades than in acquiring great estates, cities, and farmlands that would produce wealth and a submissive peasantry. Tarsus, the birthplace of St. Paul, was within easy distance, and they decided independently to take possession of the city and establish themselves there. Tancred, with a hundred knights and two hundred infantry, lightly armed and therefore capable of great speed, set out from Heraclea about September 14, to be followed a few hours later by Baldwin, his cousin Baldwin of Le Bourg, and about five hundred knights and two thousand infantry. Tancred hoped to win Tarsus by speed, surprise, and sheer effrontery, while Baldwin hoped to smash the Turkish garrison troops with his heavily armed cavalry, leaving the infantrymen to mop up the survivors and take physical possession of the town. Tancred and Baldwin, both junior members of princely families, had much to win and little to lose in these dangerous adventures.
Tancred was, not surprisingly, the first to reach Tarsus, then largely inhabited by Greek and Armenian Christians who were sympathetic to the Crusaders. But the garrison troops had been ordered to stand fast. Seeing Tancred’s small column advancing, the Turks took up positions outside the walls and waited. Tancred charged, there was a lot of close fighting, and the Turkish garrison was gradually thrown back on the town. Meanwhile Tancred had summoned reinforcements from Bohemond’s army, which was still in Heraclea. He set up his camp outside the gates of Tarsus, and through spies he was able to learn that the Christians inside the walls were doing everything possible to ensure a Christian victory. He was afraid Baldwin would soon be arriving to snatch victory away from him. And in fact, after Tancred had been encamped for three days outside the town, Baldwin arrived and immediately offered to share the town with him. Since Baldwin’s troops were far more numerous, the offer could be regarded as a friendly gesture, but it was refused. That night, without engaging in any fighting, the Turks slipped away and the people of Tarsus came streaming out of the gates to welcome the Crusaders. Even as they were being welcomed, Baldwin and Tancred quarreled bitterly; but Tancred, seeing himself vastly outnumbered, had the grace to retire and set off with his small army to capture some castles and towns in the neighborhood, while Baldwin held fast to Tarsus.
About this time the main army at Heraclea began its advance into Lesser Armenia, a province carved out of southeastern Asia Minor only a few years earlier. Armenians forced out of Armenia by the Seljuk Turks had fled under Prince Roupen over the Taurus Mountains and established themselves in an area where they believed they could defend themselves and retain their national culture. At this time Lesser Armenia consisted of many principalities under Armenian princelings who were little more than chieftains busily carving out fiefdoms for themselves. The boundaries were continually changing as the Seljuk Turks made inroads or were fought back. Lesser Armenia was in a state of permanent war with the Turks.
All through the history of the Crusades the kings of Lesser Armenia and their armies played a prominent role. They were devout Christians and superb fighters. Like the Copts and the Abyssinians they were Monophysites, and therefore at odds with both the Catholic and the Orthodox churches.
From the point of view of the Crusaders the southern march of the Armenians toward Cilicia and the areas bordering on the Euphrates was a godsend. The Armenians provided a protective wall to the north of the Holy Land. Lesser Armenia extended deep into Asia, and their farflung outposts enabled them to discern the coming invasions long before the Seljuks were on the march. The Crusaders advanced into Lesser Armenia without too much difficulty; quite often towns were ungarrisoned. Baldwin, who abandoned Tarsus after placing a handpicked garrison in charge, began to march east, abandoning the army for adventures among the Armenian principalities. Taking only eighty knights with him and perhaps two hundred foot soldiers together with a new chaplain, the historian Fulcher of Chartres, he marched toward the Euphrates with the firm intention of becoming a prince over a principality large enough to offer him ample rewards. The leaders of the Crusade had evidently given him permission to take possession of as many principalities as he pleased on condition that they serve the purposes of the Crusaders. In fact, he obtained the principality of Edessa, one of the largest and most powerful. Baldwin became coprince with Prince Thoros, took charge of the combined army, and then conspired against Thoros, who belonged to the Orthodox Church and owed his position to the Emperor Alexius Comnenus. Historians are agreed that Thoros was unpopular because he was old, childless, did not belong to the Armenian Church, and was a loyal subject of the Byzantine emperor. But it is in the nature of princes to be unpopular, and there is no evidence that he was more unpopular than most. He had fought well against the Turks and served his people for a long time. He did not deserve the fate Baldwin had reserved for him.
Returning from a battle at Samosata that he had lost, Baldwin was determined to retain his power in Edessa. As the historian Matthew of Edessa tells the story, Prince Thoros knew there was a conspiracy against his life, and he had therefore taken refuge with his bodyguard in the citadel, and from there sent a message to Baldwin, begging to be allowed to go free on condition that he resign all his powers and become a simple citizen. Baldwin swore on the Bible and in the name of God, the archangels and the saints that the life of the prince would be spared. Thereupon the prince came out of the citadel but was promptly seized by the mob and stabbed to death. The body was thrown off a parapet and what remained of it was dragged through the streets for all to see. Prince Thoros was dead, and there was now only Prince Baldwin of Edessa.
By capturing Edessa with eighty knights Baldwin had the satisfaction of knowing that he had penetrated more deeply into Asia than any Westerner since the time of Alexander the Great. Edessa lay on an important trade route and had acquired wealth and treasure far beyond the expectation of the knights who so casually made their way to this provincial city. After the death of Thoros, Baldwin found the treasury intact. He became rich beyond his utmost dreams
. His citadel was ornamented with Corinthian columns fifty feet high, and at the foot of Citadel Rock were pools once sacred to the ancient goddesses of Mesopotamia. In this exotic place, inhabited by Armenians, Turks, Jews, and merchants from Central Asia, Baldwin established a Crusader princedom which would serve as the eastern bulwark of the Crusaders for half a century.
Meanwhile the main Crusader army under Bohemond, Godfrey, and the Count of Toulouse continued its march through Asia Minor, having more difficulty with the terrain than with the Turks. The Turks indeed refused battle. Bohemond heard of a powerful Turkish army, went in search of it, and failed to find it. Perhaps it never existed; it is more likely that it simply fled at the approach of the Crusaders, who were gathering momentum and speed for the inevitable attack on Antioch. At Coxon, where the people opened the gates and entertained the Christian army for three days, they heard rumors that the Turkish garrison had been withdrawn from Antioch and the way was thus clear to Jerusalem. The Count of Toulouse held a council of war, and it was decided to send five hundred knights ahead in order to verify the rumor, which proved to be untrue. Antioch was being heavily fortified. The Christians inside the city were being persecuted and the largest church had been desecrated, being used as stables for the reigning emir.
