At length the decisive moment arrived. The night was dark, and a rising storm increased the depth of the obscurity. The wind, which rattled among the roofs of the buildings, and the peals of thunder, prevented the sentinels from hearing any noise around the ramparts. The heavens seemed inflamed towards the west, and the sight of a comet which then appeared in the horizon, seemed to announce to the superstitious minds of the Crusaders the destined moment for the ruin and destruction of the infidels.[114]
They awaited the signal with impatience. The garrison of Antioch was plunged in sleep; Phirous alone watched, and meditated his conspiracy. A Lombard named Payen, sent by Bohemond, mounted the tower by a ladder of leather. Phirous received him, telling him all was ready; and as an evidence of his fidelity, pointed to the dead body of his brother, whom he had just slain. Whilst they were conversing, an officer of the garrison came to visit the posts. He presented himself, with a lantern in his hand, before the tower Phirous commanded. The latter, without appearing the least disturbed, made the emissary of Bohemond conceal himself, and went forward to meet the officer. After receiving praise for his vigilance, he hastened to send Payen back with instructions for the prince of Tarentum. The Lombard, on his return to the army, related what he had seen, and, on the part of Phirous, conjured Bohemond not to lose another moment.
But all at once fear took possession of the soldiers; at the moment of execution all saw the whole extent of the danger, and not one of them put himself forward to mount the rampart. In vain Godfrey and the prince of Tarentum employed by turns promises and threats; both leaders and soldiers remained motionless.[115] Bohemond himself ascended by a ladder of ropes, in the hope that he should be seconded by the most brave; but nobody felt it his duty to follow in his footsteps. He reached the tower alone, where Phirous reproached him warmly for his delay. Bohemond hastily descended to his soldiers, and repeated to them that all was ready to receive them. His discourse, and still more, his example, at length reanimated their courage, and sixty of them commenced the escalade. They ascended by the ladder of leather, led on by one Foulcher de Chartres, whom the historian of Tancred compares to an eagle conducting her young ones, and flying at their head.[116] Among these sixty brave men was the count of Flanders, together with several of the principal chiefs. Very soon sixty more Crusaders quickly pressed upon the heels of the first,[117] and these again were followed by such numbers and with such precipitation, that the parapet to which the ladder was fixed tottered, and at length fell with a loud crash into the ditch. Such as were nearly attaining the summit of the tower fell upon the lances and swords of their companions who were following them. Disorder and confusion prevailed among the assailants, nevertheless the leaders of the plot viewed everything with a tranquil eye. Phirous embraced his new companions over the bloody corpse of his brother; he even yielded to their swords another brother who happened to be with him, and then surrendered to the Crusaders the three towers intrusted to his command. Seven other towers soon fell into their hands, and Phirous loudly summoned the whole Christian army to his aid. He fixed a new ladder to the rampart, by which the most impatient ascended, and he pointed out to others a gate which they might easily burst open, and by it crowds rushed into the city.
Godfrey, Raymond, and the duke of Normandy were soon in the streets of Antioch at the head of their battalions. All the trumpets were sounded, and from the four hills the city resounded with the terrible cry of “It is the will of God! It is the will of God!” At the first report of the tumult, the Christians dwelling in Antioch all believed that their last hour was come, and that the Mussulmans were about to sacrifice them. The latter, half asleep, poured out of their houses to ascertain the cause of the noise they heard, and died without knowing who were the traitors, or by whose hands they were slain. Some, when aware of the danger, fled towards the mountain upon which the citadel was built, whilst others rushed out at the gates of the city. All who could not fly fell beneath the swords of the conquerors.
In the midst of this bloody victory, Bohemond did not neglect taking formal possession of Antioch, and at dawn his red standard was seen floating over one of the highest towers of the city. At the sight of this the Crusaders who were left in charge of the camp broke into loud acclamations of joy, and hastened to take a part in this fresh conquest of the Christians. The slaughter of the Mussulmans was continued with unabated fury. The greater part of the Christians of Antioch, who, during the siege, had suffered much from the tyranny of the infidels, joined their liberators, several exhibiting the fetters by which they had been loaded by the Turks, and thus further provoking the vindictive spirit of the victorious army. The public places were covered with dead bodies, and blood flowed in torrents in the streets. The soldiers penetrated into the houses; religious emblems pointed out such as were Christians, sacred hymns indicated their brethren; but everything that was not marked with a cross became the object of vengeance, and all who pronounced not the name of Christ were massacred without mercy.
In a single night more than six thousand of the inhabitants of Antioch perished. Many of those who had fled into the neighbouring fields were pursued and brought back into the city, where they found either slavery or death. In the first moments of the confusion, Accien, seeing that he was betrayed, and no longer daring to trust any of his officers, resolved to fly towards Mesopotamia, and go to meet the army of Kerboghâ. Escaping through one of the gates, he proceeded without an escort over mountains and through forests, till he fell in with some Armenian woodcutters. These men at once recognised the prince of Antioch, and as he bore upon his countenance marks of depression and grief, they judged that the city must be taken. One of them, drawing near to him, snatched his sword from him, and plunged it into his body. His head was carried to the new masters of Antioch, and Phirous had an opportunity of contemplating without fear the features of him who, the day before, might have sentenced him to death. After having received great riches as the reward of his treachery, this renegade embraced the Christianity he had abandoned, and followed the Crusaders to Jerusalem. Two years afterwards, his ambition not being satisfied, he returned to the religion of Mahomet, and died abhorred by both Mussulmans and Christians, whose cause he had by turns embraced and betrayed.
When the Christians were tired of slaughter, they prepared to attack the citadel; but as it was built upon a mountain, inaccessible on most sides, all their efforts were useless. They contented themselves with surrounding it with soldiers and machines of war, in order to confine the garrison, and then spread themselves throughout the city, giving way to all the intoxication which their victory inspired. The pillage of Antioch had yielded them immense riches; and although they had found but a small stock of provisions, they abandoned themselves to the most extravagant excesses of intemperance and debauchery.
These events passed in the early days of June, 1098; the siege of Antioch had been begun in the month of October of the preceding year. After this victory, three days passed quickly away in the midst of rejoicings, but the fourth was a day of fear and mourning.
A formidable army of Saracens was drawing near to Antioch. From the earliest period of the siege, Accien, and the sultan of Nice, whom the Christians had despoiled of his dominions, had applied to all the Mussulman powers to procure assistance against the warriors of the West. The supreme head of the Seljoucides, the sultan of Persia, had promised to aid them; and at his voice all Corassan, says Matthew of Edessa, Media, Babylon, a part of Asia Minor, and all the East, from Damascus and the sea-coast to Jerusalem and Arabia, had arisen at once to attack the Christians.[118] Kerboghâ, sultan of Mossoul, commanded this army of the Mussulmans. This warrior had fought for a length of time, at one period for the sultan of Persia ’Barkiarok), at others for the various princes of the family of Malek-Scha, who contended for the empire. Often defeated, and twice a prisoner, he had grown old amidst the tumults of civil war. As full of contempt for the Christians as of confidence in himself, a true model of the fierce Circassian celebrated by Tasso, he considered himself the liberator of Asia, and traversed Mesopotamia with all the pomp and splendour of a conqueror. The sultans of Nice, Aleppo, and Damascus, with the governor of Jerusalem and twenty-eight emirs from Persia, Palestine, and Syria, marched under his command. The Mussulman soldiers were animated by a thirst for vengeance, and swore by their prophet to exterminate all the Christians. On the third day after the taking of Antioch, the army of Kerboghâ pitched its tents on the banks of the Orontes.
The Christians were made aware of its arrival by a detachment of three hundred horsemen, who came to reconnoitre the place, and advanced even under the walls. Inquietude and alarm succeeded immediately to festivity and rejoicing. They found that they had not stores to sustain a siege; and several of their leaders were sent with their troops towards the port of St. Simeon, and into the neighbouring country, to collect all the provisions they could find; but the territory of Antioch had been so completely ravaged during many months, that they could not procure anything like enough for the maintenance of a numerous army. The return of all who had been sent in quest of provisions completed the terror of the Christians. At the very moment of their arrival the infidels attacked the advanced posts of the Crusaders; and, even in these early contests, the Christian army had to lament the loss of several of its bravest warriors. Bohemond was wounded in a sortie; in vain Tancred and Godfrey performed prodigies of valour; the Mussulmans forced the Christians to shut themselves up in a place of which the latter had but just made themselves masters, and in which they were soon closely besieged in their turn.