Crusade

by Stewart Binns

  I was moved by the great man’s words.

  They made me feel humble, but very proud.

  27. Battle of Dorylaeum

  The vast army of Pope Urban’s Holy Crusade began to march east only a few days after it had been ferried across the Bosphorus. It was already mid-May and as hot as Hell. I had experienced the heat of Sicily, but few of the Crusaders had been that far south. What was even more disconcerting was to be told that beyond Anatolia, where we would turn south to Palestine, the heat of the day would be unbearable from spring until autumn. God help our men and horses.

  Nevertheless, we were a fine sight – a rich tapestry woven from the many shades of bay, black and grey of our horses, the shimmering silver of our armour and the vivid crimson of our emblem, Christ’s crucifix. The seamstresses would be put to work to record scenes like these as soon as the Princes returned to Europe. At the front of the column, the crest of every hill provided an opportunity to look back and admire the spectacle.

  In the far distance a rising veil of dust threatened to obscure the sun. The air around us was filled with sounds – from the piercing clamour of armour and weapons and the soft hum of more than two dozen languages, to the deep rumble of carts and the relentless thunder of horses. Mingled together it was sufficient to make the ground shake and the birds flee.

  At no vantage point was it possible to see the back of the mass of soldiers and all the paraphernalia of war that accompanied them. There were few cities that came close in number to even a third of the size of our massed ranks, yet we were on the move.

  Every time I saw our long tail of humanity stretching into the distance, I revised my calculations, until, at over 75,000, I gave up and decided our multitude was too big to be counted. There can have been no force of its size to have left Europe since the days of Rome’s legions. We were a holy behemoth, woken from its long slumber and now making the world tremble.

  The fortress at Nicaea was not far from the narrow strip of Byzantine territory on the Anatolian side of the Bosphorus, but it was a formidable obstacle. Its lord, Qilich Arslan, the Seljuk Sultan of Rum, was taken by surprise at the appearance of another Christian army so soon after the destruction of the army of Peter the Hermit. He was away with his army, far to the east, settling a small local dispute. A brave and resourceful leader, he had made a grave error of judgement, letting our vast army surround his city unopposed.

  Scaling ladders, platforms, mangonels and springalds were prepared for the assault and, true to his word, the Emperor supervised the supply route from a base at Pelekanum on the coast. He also committed 2,000 of his elite soldiers under the command of Tacitius, one of the most renowned leaders of his army.

  The first major encounter of the Holy War initially went well. The Council of War functioned as intended; the siege of Nicaea was well planned and the attacks efficiently coordinated. Both traditional siege tactics were employed simultaneously: a complete encirclement of the city to enforce a slow strangulation of all life’s necessities and to break the will of the defenders; and an all-out, frontal attack by siege engines, battering rams and manned assaults of the walls to bludgeon the beleaguered inhabitants into submission. But the Seljuks did not lack mettle, and the siege continued for several weeks.

  Then, just when we thought we were unassailable, the tenacity and organization of the Christian army were put to the test. A lone spy was discovered in the Christian camp – a wily Seljuk soldier, speaking Greek and passing himself off as one of Tacitius’s men. Under some painful interrogation and the threat of yet more hideous torture, he revealed that Qilich Arslan had just returned from the east with a huge army and was poised to strike. He was camped only a few miles away, and final preparations had begun.

  The Council of War met that night to plan the response. Under orders to prepare in total silence, the army began to get into position from 2 a.m. By first light that morning, we were in position to ambush our ambusher.

  The contingents of Raymond of Toulouse and Baldwin of Boulogne were to hold their ground in the north, at what was anticipated would be the centre of the Seljuk attack, while Bohemond of Taranto and Godfrey of Bouillon were to lay in wait to the east, ready to spring the trap. Robert’s contingent was to keep up the pressure on the city, while my small group was assigned the role of battlefield reconnaissance, reporting directly to Bohemond of Taranto.

  The Seljuks appeared within an hour of the time we had calculated, swarming down from the hills like marauding ants. Their strategy was awe-inspiring, but predictable. Surge upon surge of closely grouped mounted archers cascaded down the slopes, loosing rapid volleys at speed from their small, highly manoeuvrable Steppes horses. Normally an onslaught that proved deadly to its opponents, it was a futile assault against a force of our magnitude with the resolve of its Norman and Frankish backbone.

  Raymond and Baldwin’s position held firm. As soon as the entirety of the Seljuks’ attack had floundered against the Christian bulwark, Bohemond and Godfrey launched their heavy cavalry against the now static Seljuk army. Mayhem ensued and, realizing that his position was hopeless and his elite regiments were being carved into disparate and increasingly vulnerable groups, Qilich Arslan ordered an immediate withdrawal, prudently saving his army from complete annihilation.

  Sweyn and Adela were riding to Robert’s position with news that the battle had turned in our favour when a large column of Seljuks wheeled round towards them in a desperate search for an escape route from the battlefield. A group of about ten saw the two isolated Christian knights and bore down on them. Sweyn and Adela turned and rode back towards us at a gallop, but their attackers had too much momentum and would soon overhaul them. I immediately ordered our force to go to their aid, but knew we had little chance of reaching them before they were overwhelmed.

  Sweyn’s horse fell under a hail of arrows, one of which struck it in the neck, throwing Sweyn to the ground with a sickening thump. By the time he got to his feet he was still stunned and the Seljuks were almost on top of him, but Adela had ridden back to get him and offered him her hand to help him on to her horse. With no chance of escape, she turned her mount towards the Turks and managed to get one arrow away. It was an outstanding shot that took the leading cavalryman right out of his saddle. Adela’s mount then started to panic and reared up as it saw the Turkish horses only yards away, tipping Sweyn off its back and unseating Adela.

  Sweyn hurt his shoulder in the fall and could not get up, so Adela stood over him with her sword drawn. She managed to deal with the first Seljuk to reach her by crippling his horse. After swaying away at the last moment to avoid the cavalryman’s lance, she crouched low to slice his mount’s fetlocks with her blade, bringing horse and rider crashing to the ground. By then, two more were about to strike. She managed to avoid the first lance by deflecting it with her sword, but the second one caught her on the top of her helmet.

  She stumbled away before collapsing, blood streaming down her face, just as Sweyn, now getting to his feet, managed to use his shield to defend himself against the next attacker before he was caught across the back of the shoulder by a blade swung by a Turk who had come up behind him. He cried out in pain and fell forwards in a heap.

  Adela, unable to see through the stream of blood running from a deep gash to her head, threw off her helmet and wiped the blood away with her sleeve. She then ran back to protect Sweyn, screaming obscenities as she went. The Seljuk, who had appeared behind her and was about to strike with his sabre, hesitated when he realized the Christian knight beneath him was a woman.

  Adela turned and the two foes looked one another in the eye momentarily. Adela, covered in blood and with the fierce look of a determined warrior, set herself to defend the blow. But the Turk put up his hand to his comrades, returned his sabre to its scabbard and blessed himself before taking off his helmet and acknowledging Adela with a long and deliberate nod of his head. A handsome, swarthy man with a thick, curly black beard, he sported the red silk pennons of an officer tied to
his conical helmet. Even though Adela was badly shaken, she nodded her head in reply and the Turk replaced his helmet. We were now only yards away ourselves; the Seljuks galloped off to seek their own escape.

  Neither Adela nor Sweyn had suffered life-threatening wounds. Sweyn’s mail hauberk had absorbed most of the impact, but the bruising to his back was severe and there was the possibility of a broken shoulder blade.

  Adela’s injury looked much worse, because of the amount of blood. She had a deep gash above her hairline, which would have left her hideously scarred had it been much lower. After the bleeding had stopped and she had been cleaned up, the damage did not appear too severe – other than to her helmet, which was in great need of the care and attention of the armourer.

  Hereward was very impressed with the resolve they had shown and their martial skills.

  ‘You have been well trained and showed great courage. Adela, you saved your husband’s life; he should be very proud of you.’

  ‘I am, Hereward. And fear not, Adela will remind me of it every day!’

  ‘I feel honoured to be part of your Brethren. I would have had you both in the Varangian Guard in the blink of an eye.’

  Adela did not complain of either dizziness or nausea, so it appeared her skull had not been damaged, but we knew from many battlefield injuries to the head that the full impact could well reveal itself later. As a precaution, she and Sweyn were sent back to the battlefield infirmary at the supply base established by the Emperor at Pelekanum.

  When the Seljuk defenders at Nicaea saw what had happened to Qilich Arslan’s relieving army, they soon sued for peace. At this point, the first fissure occurred in the delicate relationship between Alexius and the leadership of the Crusaders. Led by Count Raymond, all the Latin Princes, except Robert and I, wanted to sack the city and exact revenge for the massacre of Peter the Hermit’s followers. When we tried to point out that it was the Christians who had initiated the brutal killing, our pleas fell on deaf ears. The Latins wanted blood and plunder – Muslim blood and Muslim treasure.

  In a remarkable example of fortitude, the Emperor’s man, Tacitius, faced them down. Following strict orders from Alexius, he announced that the Christians were not to enter the city, that he would take the surrender on behalf of the Emperor, there would be no looting, and Qilich Arslan’s wife and family would be given safe escort to the east. He posted Byzantine guards at the doors of the Seljuk treasury, and the city gates were barred.

  The Latin Princes fumed with anger. But, once again, Alexius played his hand well. Within hours, a huge convoy of carts appeared, laden with chests of gold and silver coin for the lords and knights, gifts of silk, jewellery and perfume for the women, and purses of bronze coin for the foot soldiers and non-combatants.

  The stick of Tacitius had come close to creating a mutiny, but the gilded carrot had saved the day.

  Wisely, the Emperor waited for two days to let the victorious Latins drink themselves into a stupor and then recover before summoning the Princes to Pelekanum to plan the next phase of the campaign. Again, the Council of War worked efficiently. Its main decision was to split the army in two for the long journey through Anatolia. The supply line would be getting longer, and so local foraging would be more important, putting huge pressure on local stocks of food and water. Two smaller armies on different routes would be less demanding. It was agreed that the two forces would join again at an old Byzantine fortress at Dorylaeum, just over a hundred miles to the south.

  Qilich Arslan was still licking his wounds, but had not been idle. He had recruited his allies – Hassan of Cappadocia, several Persian princes and the Caucasian Albanians. He had swallowed his pride and appealed to his long-term enemies, the Danishmendid Turks, from the east, led by Prince Ghazi ibn Danishmend, promising them half the Crusader booty if they would help him achieve victory. Knowing that the Crusaders were carrying not only their own treasuries, but also the vast wealth that Alexius had bestowed on them, the offer was too good to turn down.

  When Sultan Arslan learned that the Christians had split their army, he knew they had given him a chance for revenge.

  Accompanied by Tacitius and his cohort of Byzantines, Duke Robert and Bohemond of Taranto headed the vanguard of the first half of the Crusader army on the march to the south at the end of June. Robert again asked us to act as a mobile corps, to do reconnaissance and act as liaison between the two armies. Other than the appalling heat, which was causing many casualties among the old and sick, the first two days were uneventful.

  Sweyn had recovered well, as had Adela, although where the surgeons had had to shave her hair in order to stitch the gash on her head she now had a large bald patch. The ugly scar and three-inch-wide causeway from her forehead to the top of her head did little for her allure, but she cared not and covered it only when the midday sun became unbearable.

  Then, early in the morning of the 1st of July 1097, a date I will remember all my days, Qilich Arslan and the massed ranks of the combined armies of all the Turks of Anatolia struck.

  There had been no reports from our scouts, and our patrols had seen nothing untoward. We were in the centre of a wide, open plain with hills all around, not far from Dorylaeum, when we first became aware of an attack. The first hint was like a distant roll of thunder, but one that was continuous and quickly became much more ominous as the ground beneath us began to shudder.

  ‘Cavalry!’ shouted Hereward. ‘Thousands of them!’

  With the formidable Bohemond acting as his mouthpiece, bellowing orders up and down the column, Robert coolly and calmly took control. Our entire force was corralled into a tight circle, with the baggage train, women, children and clerics in the middle, surrounded by a solid ring of knights and foot soldiers.

  ‘Like an English shield wall!’ cried Bohemond.

  The order was repeated like an echo by every captain and sergeant.

  Hereward rode up to Sweyn.

  ‘I hear you were the best horseman in Duke Robert’s service. Ride to Count Raymond’s army. Tell them to hurry.’

  With that, Hereward slapped the flank of Sweyn’s horse to send him away at a gallop. Adela saw him go and was in his wake in seconds.

  Hereward then signalled to me and Edwin. We rode over to Robert, who was still calmly marshalling his forces.

  Hereward spoke first.

  ‘Robert, I have sent Sweyn and Adela off to alert Count Raymond.’

  ‘I have already sent riders.’

  ‘I’m sure you have, but I wanted at least two of my rapidly diminishing family to see out the day. What’s about to come over those hills is a horde the like of which would make God quake.’

  Hereward then addressed the three of us.

  ‘You have troops to command. With your permission, I’d like to stay with Estrith, who is with the civilians, trying to calm them. I abandoned her and her sister once before on the cusp of a battle. I don’t want to do it again.’

  Robert turned to me as we watched the great man ride away. ‘Was he as fearsome as the storytellers would have us believe?’

  ‘No, much more so. And, I suspect, he still is.’

  Hereward was right about the impending onslaught. The sun was still low in the east, so what crested the ridge and poured over the hills beneath appeared like a wall of water in silhouette. Like the flow of hot pitch, it filled the gullies and valleys first, then spread out over the flatter ground until the whole perspective of our eastern quadrant was made black with men and horses. Even the green of their Islamic war banners became menacing dark shadows against the glare.

  The sound became deafening as the chilling war cries of the Turks added a piercing shrill to the ever-deepening thunder of thousands of galloping horses. I had never seen anything like it and estimated we were facing an army at least twice the size of ours, perhaps as many as 60,000, not counting the ones who had yet to come into view.

  In an extraordinary illustration of Norman military discipline, Robert and Bohemond and all their se
nior knights rode around the defensive ring, appealing for courage and calm. Robert issued a command to help morale, which was repeated by every Crusader present: ‘Stand fast together, trusting in Christ and the victory of the Holy Cross!’

  There was sheer terror in the centre, where the monks and nuns said prayers and heard the confessions of the non-combatants. Volley after volley of arrows, like showers of heavy rain, fell from the clear-blue sky, killing hundreds, especially the civilians without armour. Javelins and spears flew through the air, hurled from horseback by the Turks with great force and deadly accuracy, killing anyone in their path, with or without armour. But they were only the pinpricks of the battle; the real pain was inflicted by a whirlwind of slashing sabres as the Turkish cavalry tried to hack its way through our defensive ring.

  As one wave of attackers exhausted itself, Sultan Arslan withdrew it to regroup and sent in fresh replacements. There was no such respite for our defensive wall, which, with the sun rising ever higher in the sky, had to endure the onslaught without rest. Squads were organized to clear the dead and wounded, and young boys hurried forward with pails and ladles to allow the men to slake their thirst.

  As our numbers dwindled, Edwin and I had been filling gaps in our defences for some time, until eventually Robert, Bohemond and Tacitius were also in the thick of the fray. The time for issuing orders had passed; even the most senior of us had to fight for our lives.

  We had held our ground for over five hours. Old men, boys and the injured began to pick up weapons and join the defensive wall, while Estrith and Hereward led the women to clear the bodies and help the wounded. I looked along our lines; we were at breaking point. I wanted our Brethren to be together at the end and was trying to decide when would be the best time to send Edwin to bring Estrith and Hereward to stand with us in a final redoubt, when I saw a cloud of dust to the north.

  Moments later, thousands of crimson Christian crosses painted the distant horizon the colour of the setting sun. As soon as the Turks realized that the advancing phalanx was the balance of the Christian army, they fled as rapidly as they had appeared.