The age of the crusades

by James M. Ludlow

At length the survivors emerged to look down from the mountains upon the borders of Syria. The sight inspired them as that from Pisgah did the invader of old. Courage revived, and with joy they hastened southward. Hard by was the battle-field of Issus, where Alexander the Great, the man from the West, had broken the power of the East under Xerxes—an omen of its repetition. Soon Antioch, the city built to commemorate the fame of Antiochus, one of Alexander’s generals, stood before them. The rumor of their invincibility had served the crusaders in the stead of battles, and October 21, 1097, they sat down unmolested for the siege of the Syrian capital.

This city, where a thousand years before believers were first called Christians, still wore in the reverence of all the world the honor of that initial christening. It was called the “Eldest Daughter of Sion,” and was the seat of one of the original patriarchates into which the early church was divided. It had been the third city of the Roman world, and those who were unimpressed with its sacred story could imagine its splendor when it was called the “Queen of the East.” Paganism once worshipped obscene divinities in its famous groves of Daphne. About it still stood the enormous wall built by the Emperor Justinian five hundred years before, on every tower of which were mementos of sieges when it had been captured alternately by Saracen and Greek, and now, but thirteen years before the crusaders’ coming, by Solyman, the Turk.

The natural defences of Antioch, supplemented by those of art, made it impregnable, except to the enthusiastic faith of such men as now essayed its capture. On the north it was guarded by the river Orontes, on the south by natural heights of several hundred feet, on the west by the great citadel, and on the east by a castle. The wall which bound together the various fortifications was nine miles in extent, strengthened by three hundred and sixty towers. A deep cleft in the southern height poured a mountain torrent through the city to the Orontes. Accian, grandson of Malek-Shah, had twenty thousand Turks within the walls, who behind such battlements were presumably the match for the three hundred thousand crusaders who are said to have been without.

To the sanguine enthusiasm of the Christians the city seemed like a ripened fruit ready to fall into the hand at a touch. Guards appeared upon the walls, but the challenge of their camps provoked no response. This the Christians interpreted as a sign of the feebleness and dismay of the garrison. They were disposed to wait for the fruit to fall of itself. The genial influence of the climate soon wrought its softness into nerve and spirit. Discipline was relaxed; knights whose shields showed many a dent of conflict spent the hours among the vineyards, where the luscious clusters still hung upon their stems. Adventure found its pastime in discovering the vaults in which the peasants had hidden their grain. If we could believe the theory that good and evil people leave in the places they frequent an atmosphere of virtue or vice, to invigorate or infect the souls of those who come after them, we might think that the soldiers of the cross had succumbed to the influence of the votaries of Venus and Adonis, who anciently revelled in the grove of Daphne; for the Christian host became infatuated with unseemly pleasures; they were given over to intemperance and debauchery. An arch-deacon was not ashamed to be seen in dalliance with a Syrian nymph.

If the leaders did not yield to the prevalent vice, they seem to have been infected with that intellectual dulness and lethargy of purpose which follows license. They neglected to prepare their siege machinery, and when a momentary enthusiasm led them to attack the walls they paid for their temerity with failure. The enemy became correspondingly emboldened, and retaliated with fearful forays through the Christian lines. With the approach of winter the crusaders had exhausted their provisions, and the country about furnished no more. Heavy rainfalls reduced their camps to swamps, in which the bow lost its stiffness, and the body its vigor, making the men the prey of diseases which kept them busy burying their dead.

Stories of disasters to the cause elsewhere floated to them, until the air seemed laden with evil omens. Sweno, Prince of Denmark, had advanced through Cappadocia. At his side was Florine, daughter of Count Eudes of Burgundy, his affianced bride. Together they fought their way through countless swarms of Turks, until, with all their attendant knights, they were slain. The body of this heroic woman showed that seven arrows had penetrated her armor. News also came that fleets of Pisans and Genoese, their allies, had withdrawn from the coast, lured by better prospects of gain than in bringing succor to what seemed a ruined cause.

Such was the moral depression that Robert of Normandy deserted for a while, until shame brought him back. His example was followed even by Peter the Hermit, “a star fallen from heaven,” says Guibert, the eye-witness and chronicler. Peter, however, returned at the entreaty of Tancred, whose heart was as true in trouble as his eye was keen in the mêlée. The Hermit was made to take oath never again to desert the cause he had once so eloquently proclaimed. The piety of Adhemar, Bishop of Puy, instituted fasts and penitential processions around the camp, to purge it of iniquity and to avert the wrath of Heaven. The practical judgment of the chieftains enacted terrible punishments to curb the unreasoning debauchery. The drunkard was cropped of his hair, the gambler branded with a hot iron, the adulterer stripped naked and beaten in the presence of the camp. The Syrian spies who were caught were, by order of Bohemond, spitted and roasted, and this proclamation was posted over them: “In this manner all spies shall make meat for us with their bodies.”

About this time there arrived in the camp an embassy from the caliph of Egypt. The race of Ali hated the Turks as the usurpers of the headship of their faith, and proposed alliance with the Christians to expel them from Jerusalem. They stipulated for themselves the sovereignty of Palestine, and would grant to the disciples of Jesus perpetual privilege of pilgrimage to the sacred places. If this offer of the caliph was declined, the ambassadors presented the alternative of war, not only with the Turks, but with the combined Saracen world from Gibraltar to Bagdad. The Christian reply was bold. Their orators taunted the Egyptians with the diabolical cruelty they had once practised when Jerusalem was under Hakim, and declared that they would brave the wrath of the Moslem world rather than permit a stone of the sacred city to be possessed by an enemy of their faith. This reply was saved from seeming bravado by an opportune victory. Bohemond and Raymond met and cut to pieces a Moslem force of twenty thousand horsemen, who were advancing from the north for the relief of Antioch. As the ambassadors of Egypt were embarking, they were presented with four camel-loads of human heads, to impress their master with the sincerity of the Christian boast, while hundreds more of these ghastly tokens were stuck upon pikes before the walls or flung by the ballistæ into the city to terrorize the defendants.

The fearfulness of their extremity animated the courage of the Turks as it had often done that of the Christians; for brave hearts are the same, under whatever faith and culture. They sallied from the gates, which by the orders of Accian were closed behind them until they should return as victors. At nightfall, however, but few lived to seek the entrance.

Their valor was doubtless as fine as that of the Christians, the exploits of whose leaders have come to us in story and song. Tancred’s deeds were so great that, either from excessive modesty or the fear that nobody would believe such wonders, he exacted a promise of his squire never to tell what his master had wrought. If his great actions were like most reported of his comrades, we can admire his wisdom as well as his humility; for the legends of the battle tell, among other wonders, of a monster Turk who was cloven in twain by the sword of Godfrey, and one half of whose lifeless body rode his charger back to the gate. A less glorious exploit is mentioned. The Christians rifled by night the new-made graves of the Moslems, and paraded the next day in the clothes of the fallen braves, carrying upon their pikes instead of garlands fifteen hundred heads they had severed from the corpses. A more romantic scene makes a pleasant foil to this: the children of either side, drilled by their seniors, engaged in battle in presence of both armies. Hands that could not use the sword thrust with the dagger, and the poisoned tip of the arrow was not less deadly because it was sent from a tiny bow.