The Great Sieges of History

by William Robson

Placed between the vast Mussulman army and the garrison of the citadel, the position of the Crusaders was awful. Kerbogha took possession of the port of St. Simeon, so that no provisions could reach them by sea, and famine very quickly began to exercise cruel ravages upon the besieged.

At the very commencement of the siege, the commonest necessaries were worth their weight in gold. A moderate-sized loaf was worth a byzant, an egg as much as six Lucchese deniers; a pound-weight of silver was given for the head of an ox, of a horse, or of an ass. Godfrey gave fifteen silver marks for a lean camel, and three marks for a goat, which, at other times, would have been disdained by the meanest soldier of his army. Our readers will not fail to observe that these prices did not only bespeak the scarcity of provisions, they announced the abundance of money;—the army was rich with the late plunder of the city. After having slaughtered most of their horses, they were obliged to have recourse to unclean animals. The soldiers and the poor who followed the army lived upon leaves and roots; some even went so far as to devour the leather of their bucklers and shoes: the most destitute exhumed the bodies of the Saracens, and, to support their wretched existence, disputed his prey with Death. In this frightful distress, agonized mothers could no longer support their children, and with them died of despair and hunger. Princes and knights, whose pride had been most conspicuous, were debased to the asking of charity. The count of Flanders went about the streets and to the houses of Antioch, begging for the grossest food, and which he frequently could not obtain. More than one leader sold his equipments and his arms to purchase food for a single day. As long as the duke of Lorraine had anything eatable left, he shared it with his companions; at length he made the sacrifice of his last war-horse, and was, like the other Crusaders, reduced to the most cruel necessity.

Many of the Crusaders endeavoured to fly from a city which presented nothing but the image and the prospect of death; some fled towards the sea, through a thousand dangers; others cast themselves amongst the Mussulmans, where they purchased a morsel of bread by abandonment of Christ and his religion. The soldiers lost courage at seeing the count de Melun fly, for the second time: he could brave any dangers in the field of battle, but he could not endure hunger and misery. His desertion was preceded by that of the count de Blois, who bore the standard of the Crusaders, and presided in council. He had quitted the army two days before the taking of Antioch; and when he learnt the arrival of Kerbogha, marched towards Constantinople. The deserters escaped during the darkness of night. Sometimes they precipitated themselves into the ditches of the city, at the risk of their lives; and others slipped down the rampart with the aid of ropes. The Christians found themselves every day abandoned by a great number of their companions; which added to their despair. Heaven was invoked against these cowards; God was implored that in another life they might share the punishment of the traitor Judas. The ignominious epithet of rope-dancers was affixed to their names, and devoted them to the scorn of their contemporaries. William of Tyre refuses to name any of these fugitives, as he considers them razed from the Book of Life. The ill-wishes of the Christians directed against these fugitives were but too completely fulfilled; most of them perished of want, and the rest were killed by the Saracens.

Stephen, count of Chartres, more fortunate than his companions, arrived safely at the camp of Alexius, who was advancing at the head of an army towards Antioch. To excuse his desertion, he did not fail to paint in the darkest colours the ills and perils of the Christians, and to make it evident by his recital that God had abandoned the cause of the Christians. The despair of some Latin pilgrims who followed the army of the Greeks was so violent, that it inspired them with horrible blasphemies. They demanded with groans why the true God had permitted the destruction of His people? why He had allowed to fall into the hands of His enemies those who came to deliver the tomb of His Son? Nothing was heard among the Latin Crusaders but these strange speeches; the most violent in his despair being Guy, the brother of Bohemond. In the excess of his grief, he blasphemed more than any of the rest, and said he could not understand the mysteries of Providence, which betrayed the cause of the Christians.

The emperor Alexius, who had advanced as far as Philomelum, terrified at all he heard, did not dare to continue his march towards Antioch. He thought, says Anna Comnena, that it would be rash to endeavour to succour a city whose fortifications had been ruined by a long siege, and had no defenders but soldiers reduced to the lowest misery. Alexius still further reflected, adds the same historian, upon the indiscretion and the inconstancy of the Franks, upon their manner of making war without either art or rules; upon the imprudence with which, after having conquered their enemies, they allowed themselves to be surprised by the very people they had conquered. He thought likewise of the difficulty he should have in making his arrival known to the Crusaders, and of the still greater difficulty of agreeing with their leaders respecting the measures to be taken in order to save them.

All these motives were one-sidedly reasonable. Alexius hated the Crusaders quite as much as he did the Turks, and no doubt rejoiced to see them destroy each other. He returned towards Constantinople, dragging in his train half the inhabitants of the countries he passed through, they being afraid of being left to the mercy of the Mussulmans.

The news of this retreat completed the despair of the Christians: hope was gone; deaths increased awfully; their enfeebled hands could scarcely wield the lance or the sword; they had neither the strength to defend their lives nor to bury the dead. Amidst such frightful misery, no more tears were seen to flow, no more groans were heard, the silence was as complete in Antioch as if it had been perpetual night, or that no one was left in it. The Crusaders were abandoned even by the courage of despair. The last feeling of nature, love of life, became fainter in their hearts every day; they dreaded to meet each other in the public places, and remained concealed in the interior of their houses, which they looked upon as their tombs.

The towers and ramparts were almost without defence. Bohemond, as lord of the place, in vain endeavoured by words and exertions to keep up the courage of the Crusaders; the summons of the serjeant-at-arms, or the trumpet-call, was equally unresponded to. Whilst the army without and the garrison of the citadel within renewed their assaults daily, the Christian warriors remained motionless in their dwellings. In order to rouse them, Bohemond set fire to several quarters of the city, destroying, as a pompous poet said, churches and palaces built with the cedar of Lebanon, in which shone marble from the Atlas, crystal from Tyre, brass from Cyprus, lead from Amathonte, and steel from England. The barons, unable to command the obedience of their soldiers, had not the strength to set them an example. And then came the melancholy reflections of home! They thought of their families, their castles, the wealth, the comforts they had abandoned to carry on this unfortunate war; they could not comprehend how such reverses should happen to them, and that the enemies of Christ should triumph, and almost, says William of Tyre, accused God of ingratitude for having rejected so many sacrifices made to the glory of His Son.

They offered to give up the city, upon being permitted to return to their country; but Kerbogha would listen to nothing but unconditional surrender, which implied all the horrors of barbarous revenge. The European invasion of Asia was such an extraordinary event, that the Saracens, perhaps wisely, deemed a severe lesson necessary. If the Roman Catholics of France were to invade England out of reverence for St. Thomas of Canterbury, we should not think such madmen deserving of much mercy.

But some of the leaders, who knew how the minds of many of the Crusaders had been worked upon to undertake the enterprise, had recourse in this extreme distress to similar motives of action: they industriously circulated accounts of visions and supernatural revelations, all pointing to a happy issue.