The Christians, however, defended themselves valiantly. This resistance at first astonished their enemies, and soon produced discouragement; in vain the sultan endeavoured to reanimate his soldiers, in vain he ordered that all who fled should be beaten back with clubs, and placed several emirs in chains for deserting their posts; neither the dread of chastisements, nor the hopes of reward, could revive the courage of the Mussulmans. Bibars would have been obliged to raise the siege, if discord had not come to his assistance. He himself took great pains to give birth to it among the Christians; in the frequent messages sent to the garrison, perfidious promises and well-directed threats sowed the seeds of suspicion and mistrust. At length the divisions burst forth; some were anxious that they should surrender, others that they should hold out to death: from that moment the Mussulmans met with a less obstinate resistance, and renewed their own attacks with greater ardour; whilst the Christians accused each other of treacherous proceedings or intentions, the war-machines made the walls totter, and the Mamelukes, after several assaults, were upon the point of opening themselves a road into the place. At length, one Friday (we quote an Arabian chronicle), the cadi of Damascus was praying for the combatants, when the Franks were heard to cry from the top of their half-dismantled towers, “O Mussulmans, spare us, spare us!” The besieged had laid down their arms, and fought no longer—the gates were immediately opened, and the standard of the Mussulmans floated over the walls of Sefed.
A capitulation granted the Christians permission to retire wherever they wished, upon condition that they should take away with them nothing but their clothes. Bibars, when seeing them defile before him, sought for a pretext to detain them in his power. Some were, by his orders, arrested and accused of carrying away treasures and arms; and the command was instantly issued to stop all. They were reproached with having violated the treaty, and were threatened with death if they did not embrace Islamism. They were loaded with chains and crowded together in a mass upon a hill, where they expected nothing but death. A commander of the Temple and two Cordeliers exhorted their companions in misfortune to die like Christian heroes. All those warriors, whom discord had divided, now reunited in one common evil, had only one feeling and one thought;[10] they wept as they embraced each other, they encouraged each other to die becomingly; they passed the night in confessing their sins towards God, and in deploring their errors and their differences. On the morrow, two only of these captives were set at liberty; one was a brother Hospitaller, whom Bibars sent to Ptolemaïs, to announce to the Christians the taking of Sefed; the other was a Templar, who abandoned the faith of Christ, and attached himself to the fortunes of the sultan; all the others, to the number of six hundred, fell beneath the sword of the Mamelukes. This barbarity, committed in the name of the Mussulman religion, appears the more revolting, from the Franks never having given an example for it, and that amidst the furies of war, they were never known to require the conversion of infidels, sword in hand.[11]
It is impossible to describe the despair and consternation of the Christians of Palestine, when they learnt the tragical end of the defenders of Sefed. Their superstitious grief invented or blindly received the most marvellous accounts, which the Western chroniclers have not disdained to repeat; it was said that a celestial light shone every night over the bodies of the Christian warriors that remained unburied.[12] It was added that the sultan, annoyed by this prodigy, which was every day renewed before his eyes, gave orders that the martyrs of the Christian faith should be buried, and that around their place of sepulture high walls should be built, in order that nobody might witness the miracles operated in favour of the victims he had immolated to his vengeance.
After the taking of Sefed, Bibars returned into Egypt, and the Franks hoped for a few days of repose and safety; but the indefatigable sultan never gave his enemies much time to rejoice at his absence. He only remained in Egypt till he had recruited his army with fresh troops, and soon brought back additional desolation to the states of the Christians. In this campaign, Armenia was the point to which his anger and the power of his arms were directed; he reproached the Armenian monarch with forbidding Egyptian merchants to enter his dominions, and could not pardon him for preventing his own subjects from obtaining merchandise from Egypt. These differences were quickly settled on the field of battle; one of the sons of the king of Armenia lost his liberty, and the other his life: the army of Bibars returned loaded with booty, and followed by an innumerable multitude of captives.
As, after each of his victories, the sultan presented himself before Ptolemaïs, the capital of the Christian states, he did not fail on his return from this last expedition, to exhibit before the walls of this city the spoils of the people of Armenia, together with his own machines of war; but the moment was not yet arrived in which such a great undertaking as the capture of Ptolemaïs could be attempted. After terrifying the inhabitants by his appearance, he suddenly departed, for the purpose of surprising Jaffa. This city, the fortifications of which had cost Louis IX. a considerable sum,[13] after a very slight resistance, fell into the hands of Bibars, who caused all the walls to be levelled with the ground. During this excursion, the sultan of Cairo obtained possession of the castle of Carac and several other forts, and then marched towards Tripoli. Bohemond having sent to demand of him what the purpose of his coming was: “I am come,” replied he, “to gather in your harvests; in my next campaign I will besiege your capital.” Nevertheless, he concluded a truce with Tripoli, in the midst of these hostilities; foreseeing that a treaty of peace would serve as a veil for the project of another war, and that he should soon find an opportunity of violating the truce with advantage.
The author of the life of Bibars, who was sent to Bohemond, count of Tripoli and prince of Antioch, says that the sultan was in the train of the ambassador, in the character of a herald-at-arms. His project was to examine the fortifications and the means of defence of the city of Tripoli. In drawing up the treaty, the Mussulman deputies only gave Bohemond the title of count, whilst he claimed that of prince; the discussion becoming warm, the envoys of Bibars naturally turned their eyes towards their master, who made them a sign to yield.[14] On his return to his army, the sultan laughed heartily with his emirs at this adventure, saying, “The time is come in which God will curse the prince and the count.”
By this, Bibars alluded to his project of conquering and ruining the principality of Antioch. The Egyptian army received orders to march towards the banks of the Orontes; and but very few days had passed away before this same army was encamped under the walls of Antioch, badly defended by its patriarch, and abandoned by most of its inhabitants. Historians say very little of this siege, in which the Christians made but a feeble resistance, and appeared more frequently as suppliants than as warriors: their submission, their tears, their prayers, however, made no impression upon a conqueror whose sole policy was the destruction of the Christian cities.
As the Mussulmans entered Antioch without a capitulation, they gave themselves up to all the excesses of license and victory. In a letter which Bibars addressed to the count of Tripoli, the barbarous conqueror takes a pleasure in describing the desolation of the subdued city, and all the evils which his fury had caused the Christians to undergo.[15] “Death,” says he, “came among the besieged from all sides and by all roads: we killed all that thou hadst appointed to guard the city or defend its approaches. If thou hadst seen thy knights trampled under the feet of the horses, thy provinces given up to pillage, thy riches distributed by measures-full, the wives of thy subjects put to public sale; if thou hadst seen the pulpits and crosses overturned, the leaves of the Gospel torn and cast to the winds, and the sepulchres of thy patriarchs profaned; if thou hadst seen thy enemies, the Mussulmans, trampling upon the tabernacle, and immolating in the sanctuary, monk, priest, and deacon; in short, if thou hadst seen thy palaces given up to the flames, the dead devoured by the fire of this world, the Church of St. Paul and that of St. Peter completely and entirely destroyed, certes, thou wouldst have cried out: Would to Heaven that I were become dust!”
Bibars distributed the booty among his soldiers, the Mamelukes reserving as their portion, the women, girls, and children. At that time, says an Arabian chronicle, “there was not the slave of a slave that was not the master of a slave.” A little boy was worth twelve dirhems, a little girl, five dirhems. In a single day the city of Antioch lost all its inhabitants, and a conflagration, lighted by order of Bibars, completed the work of the barbarians. Most historians agree in saying that seventeen thousand Christians were slaughtered, and a hundred thousand dragged away into slavery.
When we recall to our minds the first siege of this city by the Crusaders, and the labours and the exploits of Bohemond, Godfrey, and Tancred, who founded the principality of Antioch, we are afflicted at beholding the end of all that which the glory of conquerors had produced. When, on the other side, we see a numerous population, inclosed within ramparts, making but a feeble defence against an enemy, and allowing themselves to be slaughtered without resistance, we cannot help asking what can have become of the posterity of so many brave warriors as had defended Antioch, during almost two centuries, against all the Mussulman powers.