The desire of repairing one error led them into another. They resolved to scale the walls of Antioch, before they had provided themselves with either ladders or machines of war. Vengeance and fanaticism animated both leaders and soldiers, but they could make no impression upon the walls of the city, or disturb the security of its inhabitants. Several other assaults proved equally useless. Experience, for whose lessons they always paid so dearly, taught them that they must invest the place, and prevent the arrival of any foreign succour.
They established a bridge of boats across the Orontes, and passed over some troops towards the western side of the city. All methods were had recourse to to check the sorties of the enemy; sometimes fortresses of wood were erected close to the ramparts, sometimes they planted balistæ, which launched large stones at the besieged. To close the gate of the Dog they were obliged to heap large beams, stones, and pieces of rock against it. At the same time they intrenched their camps, and took every precaution against surprise from the Saracens.
The blockade of the city was now their object; but, as in all such cases, the tediousness of a siege did not accord with the impatience of warriors with an ulterior object in view. On their arrival before Antioch, they thought they should never again know want, and they wasted in a few days provisions for several months; they thought about nothing but meeting the enemy in the field of battle, and, confident of victory, they neither provided against the rigours of winter nor against a fast-approaching want of provisions.
The latter was not long in arriving. As soon as winter set in, the unfortunate Crusaders found themselves a prey to all sorts of calamities. Torrents of rain fell every day, and the plains, which had recently been so delightful, were almost covered with water. The camp, particularly in the valley, was submerged several times; tempests and rains carried away the pavilions and tents; humidity relaxed the bows; rust gnawed the lances and swords. Most of the soldiers were left destitute of clothes. Contagious complaints carried off men and animals. Rains, cold, famine, and epidemics made such ravages, that, according to William of Tyre, the Crusaders wanted time and space to bury their dead.
Amidst the general distress, Bohemond and the duke of Normandy were charged with the task of scouring the country in search of provisions. In the course of their incursions they beat several detachments of the Saracens, and returned to the camp with considerable booty. The provisions they brought, however, could not long supply a numerous army. Fresh incursions were made every day, and every day they became less fortunate. All the countries of Upper Syria had been ravaged by the Turks and the Christians. The Crusaders on these parties often put the Saracens to flight; but victory, which was almost always their only resource in the moment of want, could not bring back abundance into the camp. As a completion of their misery, all communication with Constantinople was cut off; the Pisan and Genoese fleets no longer coasted along the shores occupied by the Christians. The port of St. Simeon, situated at three leagues from Antioch, now saw no vessel arrive from Greece or the West. The Flemish pirates who had taken the cross at Tarsus, after gaining possession of Laodicea, had been surprised by the Greeks, and several weeks before had been made prisoners. The most melancholy future threatened the Christians; they talked of nothing but the losses they had experienced, and the evils which hung over them; every day the most afflicting news was spread through the army.
It was related that the son of Sweno, king of Denmark, who had taken the cross, and who was leading to the holy war fifteen hundred knights, had been surprised by the Turks whilst advancing rapidly across the defiles of Cappadocia. Attacked by an enemy superior in numbers, he had defended himself during a whole day, without being able, by his courage or the axes of his warriors, to repulse the attack of the infidels. Florine, daughter of Eudes I., duke of Burgundy, who accompanied the Danish hero, and to whom he was to be married after the taking of Jerusalem, had valiantly fought by his side. Transpierced by seven arrows, and fighting still, she was endeavouring, with Sweno, to open for herself a passage to the mountains, when they were overwhelmed by their enemies. They fell together upon the field of battle, after having seen all their knights and faithful servants perish around them. “Such was the news brought to the Christian camp,” says William of Tyre, “full of sadness and grief, and with which, more than before, were the hearts of all oppressed.”
Famine and disease increased; the Syrians who brought provisions were so extortionate in their prices, that the common soldiers could not purchase any. And not the smallest of their griefs was the daily, almost hourly loss of companions, countrymen, partakers of toils and dangers, to whom a common lot and object had endeared them. Desertion was soon added to the other evils. Most of the army began to lose all hope of reaching the Holy City or even of subduing Antioch; and some went to seek an asylum under Baldwin, in Mesopotamia, whilst others stole away to the cities of Cilicia, subject to the Christians.
The duke of Normandy retired to Laodicea, and did not return until he had been thrice summoned by the army, in the name of the religion of Christ. Tactius, the general of Alexius, left the camp with his troops, promising to return with reinforcements and provisions. His departure was not regretted, and no hopes were built upon his promises. The desertion became common even with the most brave and the most zealous; not only did the stout warrior, the viscount de Melun, whose use of the axe in battle had gained him the name of “the carpenter,” turn his back upon famine and his suffering comrades, but even the devotion of Peter the Hermit, the great cause of this monstrous removal of the West to the East, was not proof against the misery all endured, and he fled away secretly. This desertion, says a chronicler, caused great scandal among the Christians, “and did not astonish them less than if the stars had fallen from the heavens.” But the indefatigable Tancred, the truest knight of all the Crusades, pursued them, and brought back both the carpenter and the hermit. Peter was bitterly reproached, and was compelled to swear on the Gospel never to repeat his offence.
But Peter might have urged a better plea than fear for his flight: the Christian camp was the resort of all the vices. “Strange and inconceivable spectacle,” says an eye-witness, “beneath the tents of the deliverers of Sion, were strangely grouped famine and voluptuousness, impure love, a mad passion for play, and all the excesses of debauchery mingled with the most horrid images of death.” The pilgrims seemed so debased by their misfortunes as to disdain the consolations of piety and virtue. The clergy exerted themselves, and punishments were devised; but of what use could these prove, when many of the priesthood were as guilty as the soldiers, and when those who ought to have carried out the inflictions of the law, themselves hourly merited them?
Syrian spies, likewise, stole into the camp, who circulated in the neighbouring cities exaggerated accounts of the distress, the despair, and the vices of the Christians. In order to deliver the army from this annoyance, Bohemond, whom Mr. Gibbon too favourably styles the Ulysses of the Crusades, devised a plan fit even to disgust barbarians. He commanded some Turks, who were his prisoners, to be brought to him. These he ordered to be immediately executed, and their bodies to be roasted over a large fire, like meat preparing for the supper of himself and his people; directing it to be answered, if any one asked what was the cause of the preparations and the smell: “The princes and governors of the camp have decreed in council that, from this day forward, all Turks or spies found in the camp shall, in this manner, be forced to make meat of their bodies, as well for the princes as the army.” Bohemond’s servants followed his instructions, and the strangers in the camp were soon attracted by the report and the stench to the prince of Tarentum’s quarters. “When they saw what was going on,” says an ancient author, “they were marvellously terrified, and fled away to circulate through Syria an account of the cannibalism of the Christians.” Bohemond’s plan, however, succeeded; no more spies were seen in the camp.