Jerusalem, the City of Herod and Saladin

by Walter Besant; Edward Henry Palmer

While they were rejoicing, the enemy was acting. The defeated Turks, retreating southwards, by the way which the Christians must follow, devastated and destroyed every thing as they traversed the country, procuring one auxiliary at least in the shape of famine. They had two more—thirst and heat.

The Crusaders, once more on the march, resolved not to separate again, and formed henceforth but one army. But they journeyed through a desert and desolate country; there was no food but the roots of plants; their horses died for want of water and forage; the knights had to walk on foot, or to ride oxen and asses; every beast was converted into a beast of burden, until the time came when the beasts themselves perished by the way, and all the baggage was abandoned. Their path led through Phrygia, a wild and sterile country, with no fountains or rivers; the road was strewn as they went along by the bodies of those who died of sunstroke or of thirst; women, overcome by fatigue and want of water, lay down and were delivered of children, and there died, mothers and infants; in one terrible day five hundred died on the march; the falcons and hawks, which the knights had been unable to leave behind, fell dead from their perches; the hounds deserted their masters, and went away to seek for water; the horses themselves, in which the hope of the soldier was placed, lay down and died. At last they came to a river; even this timely relief was fatal, for three hundred killed themselves by drinking too much. They rested, after this disastrous march, at Antiocheia, the former capital of Pisidia. Here Raymond fell ill, but happily recovered, and Godfrey was dangerously wounded in a conflict with a bear. To account for the discomfiture of the prince, it is recorded that the bear was the biggest and most ferocious bear ever seen.

During their stay at Antiocheia, Tancred and Baldwin—the former with a detachment of Italians, the latter with one of Flemings—were sent to explore the country, to bring help to the Christians, and report on the means of obtaining provisions. They went first to Iconium; finding no enemies, they went southwards, and Tancred, leading the way, made an easy conquest of Tarsus, promising to spare the lives of the garrison. Baldwin arrived the next day, and on perceiving the flag of Tancred on the towers, insisted, on the ground that his own force was superior in numbers, on taking it down and replacing it by his own. A violent quarrel arose, the first of the many which were to disgrace the history of the Crusades. Neither would give way. They agreed at last to refer the dispute to the inhabitants. These, at first, gave the preference to Tancred; but at last, yielding to the threats of Baldwin, transferred their allegiance to him, and threw Tancred’s flag over the ramparts. Tancred withdrew, indignant, and marched with all his men to Adana, an important place some twenty miles from Tarsus. This he found in the possession of a Burgundian adventurer, who had got a company of pilgrims to follow him, and seized the place. History does not deign, unfortunately, to notice the exploits of the viri obscuri, but it is clear enough, that while the great princes were seizing states and cities, bands of armed soldiers, separated from the great army, were overrunning the country, taking possession of small forts and towns, where they lived at their own will and pleasure, till the Turks came and killed them all. The Burgundian was courteous to Tancred, and helped him with provisions on his way to Malmistra, a large and important place, before which he pitched his camp.

But a terrible calamity had happened at Tarsus. Baldwin got into the town, and, jealous of his newly-acquired possession, ordered the gates to be carefully closed and guarded. In the evening, a troop of three hundred Crusaders, sent by Bohemond to reinforce Tancred, arrived at the town, and asked for admission. Baldwin refused. They pleaded the extremity of fatigue and hunger, to which a long march had reduced them. Baldwin still refused. His own men urged him to admit them. Baldwin refused again. In the morning they were all found dead, killed in the night by the Turks, who took advantage of their sleep and exhaustion. At this spectacle the grief and rage of the soldiers were turned against the cause of their comrades’ death. Baldwin took refuge in a tower, but presently came out, and, lamenting the disaster of which he alone was the cause, pointed his soldiers to the towers where the garrison of the Turks (prisoners, but under promise of safety) were shut up. The Christians massacred every one.

Here they were joined by a fleet of pirates, who, after having been for ten years the terror of the Mediterranean, were desirous of expiating their crimes by taking part in the Crusade. Their leader, Guymer, was a Boulogne man, and readily brought his men as a reinforcement to the troops of Baldwin, his seigneur. Baldwin left a garrison in Tarsus, and set out to rejoin Tancred. But the death of the three hundred could not so easily be forgotten. Tancred and his army, maddened at the intelligence of Baldwin’s approach, clamoured for revenge, and Tancred, without much reluctance, gave the order to attack Baldwin’s camp. A sanguinary battle followed, in which Tancred’s forces, inferior in numbers, were worsted, and obliged to withdraw. The night brought reflection, and the next morning was occupied in reconciliation and promises of friendship. Malmistra was taken, and all the Mohammedans slaughtered, and after a few more exploits, Tancred returned to the army. Baldwin, however, whose ardour for the recovery of Jerusalem had yielded by this time to his ambition, only saw, in the disordered state of the country, the splendid opportunities which it presented to one who had the courage to seize them. Perhaps the sight of the successful Burgundian of Adana helped him to form projects of his own; perhaps the remarks of an Armenian named Pancrates, who was always whispering in his ear of the triumphs to be won by an independent line of action. He returned to Godfrey, indeed, but only to try his powers of seduction among the soldiers, whom he incited to follow him by magnificent promises. The princes were alarmed at the first news of his intended defection; at a council hastily assembled, it was resolved to prohibit any Crusader, whatever his rank, from leaving the army. Baldwin, however, the very night on which this resolution was carried, secretly marched out of the camp, at the head of some twelve hundred foot-soldiers and two hundred knights, accompanied by his Armenian friend. His exploits, until he was summoned back to Jerusalem, hardly concern us here. After taking one or two small towns, and quarrelling with Pancrates, whom he left behind, he pushed on to Edessa, which, by a series of lucky escapes, he entered with only a hundred knights, to become its king. Here he must for the present be left.

Meantime, the great army of the Crusaders was pressing on. For the moment it was unmolested. Both Christian and Saracen had begun to conceive a respect for each other’s prowess. The latter found that his innumerable troops of light cavalry were of little use against the heavily-armed and disciplined masses of the Crusaders: while these, harassed by the perpetual renewal of armies which seemed only destroyed to spring again from the earth, and convinced now that the recovery of the Holy City would be no holiday ramble in a sunny land, marched with better discipline and more circumspection. But the Saracens, unable to raise another army in time, fled before them, leaving towns and villages unoccupied. The Christians burnt the mosques, and plundered the country. Even the passes of Mount Taurus were left unguarded, and the Christian army passed through defiles and valleys, where a very small force might have barred the passage for the whole army. They suffered, however, from their constant enemies, heat and thirst. On one mountain, called the “Mountain of the Devil,” the army had to pass along a path so narrow that the horses were led, and the men could not walk two abreast. Here, wearied with the ascent, faint with thirst, hundreds sank, unable to proceed, or fell over the precipices. It was the last of the cruel trials through which they were to pass before they reached the land of their pilgrimage. From the summit of the last pass, they beheld, stretched out at their feet, the fair land of Syria. Covered with ruins, as it was—those ruins which exist to the present day—and devastated by so many successive wars, nothing had been able to ruin the fertility of the soil; and after the arid plains through which they had passed, no wonder the worn and weary soldiers rejoiced and thanked God aloud, when they saw at last the very country to which they were journeying. The ordeal of thirst and heat had been passed through, and their numbers were yet strong. Nothing now remained, as they fondly thought, but to press on, and fight the enemy before the very walls of Jerusalem.

The successes of Tancred cleared the way for the advance of the main army. Nothing interposed to stop them; provisions were plentiful, and their march was unimpeded by any enemy. Count Robert of Flanders led the advance corps. At Artasia, a town about a day’s march from Antioch, the gates were thrown open to them; and though the garrison of Antioch threw out flying squadrons of cavalry, they were not able to check the advance of the army, which swarmed along the roads, in numbers reduced, indeed, by one half, from the six hundred thousand who gathered before Nicæa, but still irresistible. The old bridge of stone which crossed the Orontes was stormed, and the Crusaders were fairly in Syria, and before Antioch.

The present governor of this great and important town was Baghi Seyan, one of the Seljukian princes. He had with him a force of about twenty-five thousand, foot and horse; he was defended by a double wall of stone, strengthened by towers; he was plentifully supplied with provisions; he had sent messengers for assistance to all quarters, and might reasonably hope to be relieved; and he had expelled from the town all useless mouths, including the native Christians. Moreover, it was next to impossible for the Crusaders to establish a complete line round the city, and cut him off from supplies and reinforcements.

It was late in the autumn when the Christian army sat down before the first place. For the first two or three weeks the country was scoured for provisions, and the soldiers, improvident and reckless, lived in a luxury and abundance which they had never before experienced. But even Syria, fertile and rich, could not long suffice for the daily wants of a wasteful army of three hundred thousand men. Food began to grow scarce; foraging parties brought in little or nothing, though they scoured the whole country; bands of Turks, mounted on fleet and hardy horses, intercepted straggling parties, and robbed them of their cattle; the fleet brought them very small supplies; Baldwin had as yet sent nothing from Edessa, and famine once more made its appearance in the camp. The rains of winter fell, and their tents were destroyed. The poor lived on what they could find, bark and roots; the rich had to spend all their money in buying food; and all the horses died. Worse still, there was defection among the very leaders; Robert of Normandy went to Laodicea, and was persuaded with great difficulty to come back. Peter the Hermit fairly ran away, and was brought back a prisoner to the army which his own voice had raised. And when Bohemond and Tancred went out, with as large a force as could be spared, to procure provisions, they were attacked by superior numbers, and obliged to return empty-handed. Bishop Adhémar, seeing in the sins of the camp a just cause for the punishments that were falling upon it, enjoined a three days’ fast, and public prayers. The former was superfluous, inasmuch as the whole camp was fasting. But he did more. He caused all women to be sent away, and all games of chance to be entirely prohibited. The distress continued, but hope and confidence were revived; and when, early in the year 1098, supplies were brought in, the army regained most of its old bravoure. A victory gained over a reinforcement of twenty-five thousand Turks aided in reviving the spirit of the soldiers: it was in this action that Godfrey is reported to have cut a Turk completely through the body, so that his horse galloped off with the legs and lower part of the trunk still in the saddle. The camp of the enemy was taken, and for a time there was once more abundance. But the siege was not yet over. For eight months it lingered on, defended with the obstinacy that the Turks always displayed when brought to bay within stone walls. It was not till June that the town, not the citadel, was taken, by the treachery of one Pyrrhus, an Armenian renegade. He offered secretly to put the town, which was in his charge, into the hands of Bohemond. The Norman chief, always anxious to promote his own interests, proposed, at the council of the Crusaders, to take the town on condition that it should be given to him. Raymond of Toulouse alone objected—his objection was overruled; and on the night of the 2nd of June, Pyrrhus admitted the Christians. They made themselves masters, under cover of the darkness, of ten of the towers round the walls; and opening the gates to their own men, made an easy conquest of the town in the morning, slaughtering every Mussulman they could find. Baghi Seyan fled, and, being abandoned by his guards, was murdered by some Syrian woodcutters, who brought his head to the camp. And then, once more, untaught by their previous sufferings, the Crusaders for a few days gave themselves up to the enjoyment of their booty. But the citadel was not taken, and the host of Kerboga was within a short march of the town. He came with the largest army that the Christians had yet encountered. Robert of Flanders defended the bridge for a whole day with five hundred men, but was obliged to retire, and the Christians were in their turn the besieged.

And then, again, famine set in. The seashore was guarded by the Turks, and supplies could not be procured from the fleet; the horses, and all the beasts of burden, were slaughtered and eaten; some of the knights who were fainthearted managed to let themselves down by ropes from the walls, and made their way to Stephen of Blois, who had long since separated from the main army, and was now lying at Alexandretta. They brought such accounts of the misery of the army, that Stephen abandoned the cause as hopeless, and set sail with his men for Cilicia. Here he found Alexis himself, with a large army, consisting chiefly of those who had arrived too late to join the army of Godfrey. The newcomers heard with dismay the accounts given by Stephen; they gave themselves up to lamentation and despair; they blasphemed the God who had permitted His soldiers to be destroyed, and for some days would actually permit no prayers to be offered up in their camp. Alexis broke up his camp, and returned to Constantinople. And when the news arrived in Antioch, the Crusaders, too wretched to fight or to hope, shut themselves up in the houses, and refused to come out. Bohemond set fire to the town, and so compelled them to show themselves, but could not make them fight.