by Jack Ludlow
‘It cannot be done without great loss,’ Normandy agreed.
‘When we need our strength for what is to come,’ added Godfrey de Bouillon, his mind ever fixed on the Holy Places.
That induced much consideration if not quite gloom as each leader contemplated what would be required. In an attritional siege the aim, starvation apart, was to inflict casualties on the defenders until they could no longer man the whole perimeters. The points of access were several high gates on the far side of that double ditch, which surrounded the city on three sides. Reached by narrow causeways that canalised any attack, the doors were so studded with iron bolts they would be near impossible to break down, the wood well seasoned and no doubt secured by great baulks of timber on the inside, while there would also be tubs of water on the parapet above to play upon the gates should the Crusaders manage to set the wood alight, as well as boiling oil to skin alive the attackers.
The towers could not be described as weak spots unless the besiegers could secure one and hold it, not easy when it required a force of knights to climb ladders or ropes under assault from rocks and burning oil, to then engage the defence at the top so successfully that one would fall into their hands. Siege towers seemed to offer the only way to get at the defenders at anything like equal strength, but were only possible if the ditch before the walls could be so filled in as to allow the passage across, something which the defence would not only challenge – they would sally out at night to clear any work done in daylight. Added to that, all the time they would look east to the horizon for sight of Kilij Arslan and his army returning to raise the siege.
‘So,’ Bohemund insisted, when all of these obstacles had been aired, ‘do we agree it makes sense to try to talk?’
These men were not to be pushed into making a decision; each took his time before assenting, and when they had they also agreed that such a mission would be best undertaken by the man who had negotiated with them previously, with the Apulian leader tasked to instruct him in what was required.
‘Offer them terms, Curopalates. They may march out with their weapons and move east to join their Sultan.’
‘The city is home to Kilij Arslan’s treasury and his family,’ Boutoumites replied. ‘They will not leave without those.’
‘It is possession of the city your master wants and from what I have seen he has little need of gold.’ When the Byzantine nodded, Bohemund added, in a firm voice, ‘I have not been open with the others about the purpose of your previous efforts but they might suspect you will not act truthfully.’
‘Then why task me with this?’
‘You know them, you have met them, you speak enough of their language to sense their mood, we do not. Tell them that if we are many now we will be more soon and that the city will be cut off and assaulted. If it is, and it will be, all will die.’
Sensing doubt in the man’s demeanour, Bohemund pressed home the point. ‘Nicaea will fall, Boutoumites, for we will not go from here until it has and if you disbelieve that, think on this: we cannot pass on to the Holy Land without this city falls and so it will, if we have to take it apart stone by stone.’
‘It may take time, days perhaps, the Turks will not be rushed.’
‘Time spent is better than blood spilt, but I and my peers will want to know that progress is being made. Arrange to come to the walls and pass on a message of any developments, and if there is none, leave.’
CHAPTER NINE
Under a truce flag for the second time, Manuel Boutoumites approached the main gate and was invited to enter, which prompted from Tancred the obvious question.
‘Do you trust him?’
‘I have no need. He has a clear set of instructions and this time the force outside the walls is large and about to grow.’ A messenger arrived to tell that Raymond of Toulouse had broken camp and was now marching south. ‘Once the Turks are convinced we will not, and cannot, let them hold Nicaea, and have enough strength to entirely surround the land walls as well as the means to stay here indefinitely, I think they will see the only hope of life is to agree to surrender the city.’
If it sounded simple it did not work out that way; negotiation proceeded at the pace of a sick snail, with petty demands being put forward to Boutoumites by the Turkish commander Acip Bey – these passed on to the princes to be agreed. Kilij Arslan’s family, left behind, must be afforded special treatment, they and his treasury should depart ahead of the garrison, who would leave when they knew the Sultan had received his wives, sons and his gold, silver and precious jewellery. The Muslim non-combatants must be given free and unfettered passage too and an escort of Christian knights to protect them.
Adémar baulked at the demand that no mosque should be converted to Christian worship, agreeing only to respect those places that had not previously been cathedrals, churches, abbeys or monasteries. Nicaea had an abundance of such religious establishments – it was, after all, at the very core of the Christian religion, nearly as important as Jerusalem, being the city where, seven hundred years previously, the Emperor Constantine had forced the warring bishops of the faith, not one of whom agreed with the other, to agree a statement of belief to which all could adhere. The Nicene Creed had held since, albeit there was still the ongoing dispute between Greek Orthodoxy and Rome.
Each evening, as the sun sank in the west, Manuel Boutoumites would come to the northern parapet and report on his progress, if it could be called that, given he always postulated some fresh demand from Acip Bey. Yet he was far from discouraged; certain matters were progressing to a conclusion, and he hinted, since he could not say so openly, that the person with whom he spoke each day took more pleasure in the bargaining than they were ever likely to take in the finale.
‘I grow tired of this,’ Vermandois said, on the fourth day. ‘Perhaps a few ladders on the walls and the need to fight might bring them to their senses.’
It was his brother’s constable who checked him. ‘We have an envoy inside, Count Hugh, who will suffer if we act.’
‘What is the life of one man, Walo?’
‘Perhaps,’ asked Stephen of Blois softly, ‘you would care to replace him.’
‘How I wish my brother had come. Matters would soon be resolved if he was here.’
The implication of that remark was obvious and galling to those assembled, but no one was about to mention how badly the King of France stood with the papacy, caused by the difficulties of a bigamous marriage. Yet if Philip, a reigning monarch, had been present, it might have been hard to deny him outright leadership.
Technically, Robert of Normandy was a vassal of the French king regardless of how many times the duchy had fought whoever held the throne in Paris; by the same convention Bohemund, being a de Hauteville, still owed allegiance to whoever held the title of Normandy, as had his father and uncles before him. It would have been then, and was now, more of a myth than a reality, but certainly it was one to which lip service was paid, if for no other reason than to anchor the family in the Norman firmament.
‘Could it be that this Acip Bey is just playing with us?’ asked Bishop Adémar.
‘Boutoumites would smoke that,’ Bohemund suggested, ‘and break off negotiations. If Alexius places so much faith in him he cannot be a fool.’
‘And where,’ Vermandois demanded, ‘is our fabled emperor?’
‘At his forge,’ scoffed Robert of Normandy, ‘fashioning rings.’
That reminder of his treatment was enough to send Vermandois out of the council tent, Walo obliged to follow, yet no sooner had he departed than a monk entered to say that Manual Boutoumites had been seen exiting the main gate of the city. Called upon to listen, the princes could just hear what sounded like jeers. This proved to be the case when, standing outside, they saw the walls of Nicaea packed with the garrison, all waving and shouting and in such a manner as to leave no doubt that it was derisory.
‘I cannot comprehend it,’ Boutoumites explained, once they had reconvened, the returned Vermandois looking pa
rticularly smug. ‘Everything was proceeding well and I sensed Acip Bey and I were close to agreeing final terms, then suddenly there were armed men in my chamber, I was led to my already saddled horse and sent through the gate with clods of mud aimed at my back.’
‘They were toying with you,’ Vermandois snorted, looking to Adémar as if to say that if others had not seen it, he had.
‘No, Count Hugh, I would have sensed that immediately.’
‘What has changed, then?’ Bohemund enquired, the Byzantine responding with a look of bemusement.
‘Let us accept,’ the Duke of Normandy said, ‘that we are no further adrift of our goal than we were when our courageous friend undertook his mission.’
‘Hardly courageous, My Lord.’
‘Not so,’ Robert insisted. ‘I have had one occasion to send an envoy into a fortified place which my brother’s forces have taken from me. The only thing that came back was a severed head.’
Adémar cut in. ‘Perhaps they will see sense when Toulouse arrives.’
‘Possible, but we have no choice but to continue with our own preparations.’
The news that a force of Byzantine soldiers was approaching raised the spirits on a day of gloom, until it was realised just how token it was, no more than two thousand men and with no sign, as Bohemund had surmised, of their Emperor leading them. The fact that such an absence upset his fellow princes, as well as the papal legate, underlined to him again just how little they understood their nominal ally, though Bohemund did not think it either tactful or wise to point up such a failure.
An imperial general called Tacitus, according to Boutoumites a highly regarded mixed-race mercenary, who held the imperial rank of prōstratōr, led the Byzantines. Half Arab, half Greek he had lost his nose when captured in some previous campaign and replaced it with one of precious metal. His greatest asset, aside from the amusement caused by his golden snout, was that he had been present at two previous sieges of Nicaea and he was thus able to give sound advice that would cut down on the possibility of errors of application by the Westerners, misjudgements he had observed before.
Less welcome was his assertion that he had come to take over the command on behalf of Alexius, which led many of Bohemund’s fellow princes to express even more disappointment, which again showed they still had a very shallow grasp of the aims and pressures under which a Byzantine emperor laboured. He persuaded his peers to let Tacitus assume leadership, it being more formal than real; he could not, after all, with the few men at his disposal, do anything to which they did not agree.
More important than his troop numbers or his experience, Tacitus brought in trained carpenters and metal workers who set about the construction of a massive siege tower that would match the defence in height, while others were put to fashioning boulder-firing mangonels with which to bombard the defenders. Soon the ground before Nicaea resounded to the sawing of baulks of wood and the driving home of tight dowels, while metal was heated, shaped and bent to provide rims for the great wooden wheels.
The Christian soldiers, all other activities put aside, gathered stones of the right size for the mangonels and fashioned more by heating and splitting boulders. Others worked to provide the fascines that would act as protection for the various floors of the siege towers, while the supply ships were stripped to provide the cables by which they would be pulled up to the walls. For all their expertise and effort, such massive constructs took time to build, periods in which martial impatience wore upon the nerves of many of the leading knights, it being obvious that those with the least experience suffered from that most, a dangerous brew when they were intent on achieving the kind of glory about which men would talk for generations.
‘Let us mount an assault with ladders first,’ Tancred demanded, ‘to test the quality of their defence.’
‘Do not let your eagerness cloud your judgement.’
‘It is not just I, Bohemund – you must have noticed how fretful some of our lances have become?’
‘I have observed that the youngest ones are keen on activity, but I also see none of the men who have faced such walls many times, as have you, being easily tempted to test them. Remember you are a leader, not a follower, and a man who should know better than to allow those you command to press you.’
As he said that he looked over Tancred’s shoulder, to where stood Robert of Salerno. He would be keen for glory and would happily see a blood sacrifice by others to achieve it, albeit he was no coward himself. Tancred, without turning round, guessed who was responsible for the frown on his uncle’s face.
‘You say that as a man who has much, Uncle. Try to see it from the view of those who have nothing.’
The response was quiet. ‘So Robert is pushing to attack.’
‘He is keen to win his spurs, but he is not alone.’
Still looking at the Lombard, who was studiously avoiding looking back, Bohemund understood what made Robert act so. He was the grandson of Prince Gisulf, who, if he had been a vainglorious windbag and a disaster both as a ruler and a soldier, had also been the reigning Prince of Salerno until he was deposed by the Guiscard. His profligacy left his heirs with little but their name and, since the recovery of the prosperous port city of Salerno was never going to be possible – both it and the title were held by Roger Borsa – then the need to make something of oneself became paramount. The trouble was it became so to the point of foolhardiness.
‘I do not lack sympathy, Tancred.’
‘I doubt that will assuage his pride.’
‘I will speak with him.’
Bohemund was about to say he should be fetched over when his attention was taken, as was that of everyone in earshot, by a great commotion and his height allowed him to see what was happening, though not with any clarity. Men were abandoning their various tasks to make a sort of ragged avenue, through which a man was being dragged by some of the Byzantine levies of Tacitus, both victim and charges in black and yellow surcoats. They were heading for their Prōstratōr’s tent and the same noise that had alerted Bohemund had alerted him, Tacitus coming out, bareheaded, to stand, hands on hips, his golden nose glinting in the sun, soon followed by Manual Boutoumites.
‘Robert must wait, let us see what this is about.’
Close to the Byzantine General’s tent, the crowd following the fellow being dragged and pummelled had stopped, which showed that if there was one roped and staggering, there was another being hauled along as a dead weight, his surcoat more red dust than black and yellow. As Bohemund and Tancred strode towards the scene, Tacitus stepped forward and was obviously in receipt of some kind of explanation, that causing him to kick the inert body hard, before he turned to the other man, now on his knees and shaking his head at the question to which he had just been subjected, first as a whisper then as a shout.
‘Turkish spies,’ Boutoumites explained when the two Normans got close enough, ‘caught counting our numbers.’
Tancred was bemused. ‘That could be done from the walls by anyone with good eyes.’
Just then another Byzantine soldier elbowed his way to the front of the crowd and pushed on to hand something to Tacitus, which proved, when unrolled, to be a scroll. Following Boutoumites the two Normans edged closer, and when it was held out for them to see, it showed various lines and symbols as well as the outline of the lakeshore. It only took a second to work out the lines were of the defences of the southern edge of the siege lines, a shallow ditch deep enough only to slow a mounted assault, various drystone walls hastily thrown up to break up an attack, not comprehensive given they did not need to be; no threat was expected from that quarter.
‘Not only have they ceased to talk,’ Boutoumites opined, ‘it seems they wish to sally out and attack us.’
Bohemund slowly shook his head. ‘If they do they have chosen a stupid place to mount an assault.’
‘One they could not get close to without crossing the front of half our host,’ Tancred added, referring to the gate from which they would hav
e to sally out, then the open flank. ‘They would be slaughtered.’
Obviously reacting to a previously given order, the live prisoner had been lashed to the pole from which flew the black eagle standard of Byzantium. Even caked with dust it was plain the captive was young, clear-skinned and had a cast to his eye that spoke of some status. Added to that he would have to speak Greek to be of any success as a spy, as well as understand and make sense of any the besiegers dispositions, which probably put him among the more senior ranks of the garrison, if not the very highest.
Tacitus was now standing before him with a knife in his hand, the prisoner’s eyes fixed on that even as he shook his head to refuse an answer to another question. The knife was used slowly to cut through his garments until his naked torso was exposed, what was visible, his scrunched genitals and black pubic hair, the subject of much ribald comment from the crowd.
Tacitus dropped the knife to the tip of the man’s limp cock and used the blade to lift it, then looked directly at the fellow, who had shuddered, with those watching imagining a grim smile on their general’s face. Not wishing to set in train anything not in the Byzantine’s mind, Bohemund moved very slowly to get closer until he could hear the words being used. Understanding Greek only got him so far; Tacitus was a ruffian, a half-breed, and his accent demonstrated it, but through what he understood and what he guessed the gist had to be that the fellow should tell all or be rendered a eunuch.
‘Ask him what time the attack will come,’ said Bohemund softly.
Tacitus half turned, the sneer on his face that would have told another interloper to stay out of things disappearing instantly. Bohemund was pleased to observe, and he was sure of this, that it was not fear that made the Byzantine alter his expression but a degree of respect. Like most men who fought for Alexius, the mercenary had heard of Bohemund of Taranto and so knew of his stature as a fighter and a general. Maybe he and Tacitus had at one time shared opposite sides of a battlefield, though it would have been before the fellow lost his nose, that shining feature being too memorable to forget.
