The History of Chivalry

by G. P. R. James

In the mean while, the plains round Nice offered a spectacle of the most extraordinary brilliancy. The glittering arms of the knights, their painted shields, and fluttering pennons—the embroidered banners of the barons, their splendid coats-of-arms and magnificent mantles—the gorgeous robes of the Latin priests, who were present in immense numbers, and the animated multitude of bowmen and foot-soldiers, mingled with thousands of that most beautiful of beasts, the horse, all spread out in the unclouded brightness of an Asiatic sky, formed as shining and extraordinary a scene as the eye could look upon.

Not frightened, however, by the terrific splendour that surrounded them, the Turks continued to defend their battlements with persevering valour. Every attack of the Christians was met with dauntless intrepidity, and every laboured attempt to sap the wall, or its towers, was frustrated with unwearied assiduity. Those who approached near were either slain by poisoned arrows,[223] or crushed under immense stones; and the moment any one was killed at the foot of the wall,[224] “it was horrible to see the Turks,” says an eyewitness, “seize upon the body with iron hooks let down from above, and lifting it up through the air strip it completely, and then cast it out from the city.” Innumerable artifices were resorted to by the assailants to force their way into the town; and none of the chiefs seem to have been more active and ingenious than the Count of Toulouse,[225] who once succeeded in undermining a tower, and casting it to the ground. Before this work was concluded, however, night had fallen over the army, and ere the next morning the laborious activity of the Turks had repaired the damage which their wall had suffered.

Two of the principal[226] German barons, also, contrived a machine of wood, to which they gave the name of the fox. It was capable of containing twenty knights, and was secured by its immense solidity from all the efforts of the enemy. When this was completed, a vast multitude began to push it towards the part of the curtain which they intended to sap, but the inequality of the ground and the great weight of the machine itself caused some of the joints to give way, when the whole fabric fell to pieces, crushing under its ruins the unhappy knights within.

The arrival[227] of Robert of Normandy brought a vast accession of strength to the besiegers; notwithstanding which, during the remainder of the siege of Nice, the immense numbers of the crusaders did not produce that scarcity of provision which ultimately fell upon them; for Alexius, interested more than any one in the capture of the city, took care, after the first few days, that the supplies should be ample and unremitted.

Nevertheless the courage of the garrison did not at all decrease, and for five weeks they still continued to return the assailants combat for combat, the whole day being consumed in a storm of arrows from the bows and arbalists, and of stones from the catapults and mangonels.[228]

Numerous instances of extraordinary personal courage, shown on both sides, are of course recorded, and each different historian has his own hero, whose deeds are lauded to the sky. One Turk in particular signalized himself by an immense slaughter of the crusaders, showing himself exposed upon the battlements, and plying his terrible bow, which winged death in every direction. The Christians became so fearful of him, that that most imaginative passion, terror, began to invest him with some supernatural defence.[229] The best-aimed arrows proved totally ineffectual, and reports spread rapidly that he might be seen, still sending destruction around from his hand, while twenty shafts—each carrying the fate of a common mortal—were sticking unheeded in his flesh. Godfrey of Bouillon, to end the panic that this man occasioned, at length took a crossbow himself, though that machine[230] was considered but a fit weapon for a yeoman, and directing the quarry with a steadier hand than those which had before aimed at the Turkish archer, he sent the missile directly to his heart.[231]

A multitude of the noblest crusaders had now fallen before the bows of the enemy, and many more had yielded to the effects of a climate totally different from their own. “Thus,” says one of the followers of the Cross, “nothing was to be seen on the highways, in the woods, and the fields, but a crowd of tombs,[232] where our brethren had been buried.”

At last, the leaders perceived the existence of a circumstance, their neglect of which, in the very first instance, showed how much the art of warfare was then in its infancy. One evening, after a fierce assault, the soldiers stationed near the water, who, in common with the rest of the host, usually rested from the labours of the siege during the night, suddenly perceived boats upon the lake Ascanius, and it immediately became evident that the Turks received every kind of supply by this easy means of communication. As soon as this was discovered, various vessels were brought from Constantinople, and being drawn to the lake over a narrow neck of land which separated it from the sea, were filled with imperial archers;[233] and the blockade of the town was thus rendered absolute. This was executed during the night, and all hope abandoned the Turks from the next morning, when they beheld that which had proved their great resource suddenly cut off.

The crusaders now hoped to force the city to surrender at discretion; and their expectations of such an event were much raised by the fact of the sultauness, the wife of Soliman, who had hitherto courageously undergone all the miseries and dangers of a siege, being taken in endeavouring to make her escape by the lake.[234]

By this time the besieged had determined to surrender; but Alexius had taken care to send with the army of the Cross an officer on whose art and fidelity he could depend, to secure for the imperial crown a city which he would probably have rather seen still under the dominion of the Turks, than in the hands of the Latins.