The Dream and the Tomb (12 page)

The days after their return from Albara were nightmarish. The earth trembled; the aurora borealis glittered in the shimmering sky; and soon the rain began to fall incessantly and the temperature dropped so low that they were all shivering. The suffering was so extreme that Bishop Adhémar ordered his army to fast for three days in the hope that God would have pity on his soldiers. The order may have seemed redundant to the starving soldiers.

Then, as the Crusaders received help from the Armenians in Cilicia and ships loaded with provisions and building materials reached the port of St. Symeon, the tide slowly began to turn. The Turks did their best to blockade the road leading to the seaport; Bohemond and the count of Toulouse broke through and some supplies were brought to the Crusader camps. But when an effort was made to bring a large caravan of supplies to Antioch, the Turks sent out strong columns to capture the caravan. The Crusaders lost three hundred men, but not the caravan. They had fought with desperation and renewed vigor because they knew that failure would mean death from starvation and the abandonment of the Crusade.

When spring came, there was a new excitement in the air. Bohemond still dreamed of making Antioch his own. He let it be known that he could no longer remain in Syria; he must return immediately to Italy. It was a ruse. He wanted the other leaders to let him set his own conditions for staying; so he said that if they gave him Antioch he would regard it as payment for his services and compensation for his absence from Italy. Bishop Adhémar, the Count of Toulouse, and Duke Godfrey remained unimpressed. Had the Crusaders come to the Holy Land for private profit? Was one man to benefit in a cause for which thousands upon thousands had died? Bohemond's followers argued that their handsome Norman had made himself the war-chieftain and deserved the prize.

In all his actions Bohemond showed that he possessed a fierce imagination and an absolute ruthlessness. When it was becoming evident that too many spies were coming out of Antioch, many of them disguised as Armenians, he acted in character. He ordered his cooks to prepare a meal of
captured spies. The cooks obeyed him. The throats of the prisoners were cut, they were then spitted, and the cooks set about roasting them. When asked whether he really intended to eat Turkish spies, Bohemond answered that he was serving them up in a good cause. Everyone in the camp came running up to see the spies being turned on the spit, marveling at Bohemond's solution to a problem that had plagued the Crusader army for some time. That night all the remaining spies made their way secretly back to Antioch.

Bohemond had his own spies in Antioch among the Armenian Christians. There were some Christians who had been forced to embrace Islam and wanted to become Christians again. Among them was a certain Firouz, who commanded three towers and was in communication with Bohemond. After some coaxing, he offered to surrender his towers to Bohemond's forces. Bohemond addressed the council of princes and once more made claim to the city, saying that it was only proper to grant full possession of the city to one who conquered it or was able to bring about its downfall. The princes smelled a rat and decided against him, saying that the city should not be granted to a single man but to all, “for as we had had equal labor, so we should have equal honor.”

Meanwhile, Kerbogha, Atabeg of Mosul, was at last bringing a large army to the relief of Antioch. The princes learned of the coming of Kerbogha and became frightened. There was a very real danger that they might be overwhelmed. Once more Bohemond addressed the council of princes, this time even more urgently exhorting them to grant him the city if he was the first to enter it. Adhemar appears to have demurred; the Count of Toulouse rejected the plan; Duke Godfrey accepted it. At this moment, with Kerbogha only three days' march away, Bohemond prepared to put in action the plan that had been delayed for so long. His spies went into the city, there were secret meetings with Firouz, and it was arranged that Bohemond's men should climb up a leather ladder slung from the Tower of the Two Sisters, near St. George's Gate. Antioch, attacked unsuccessfully for so many months, would be won by a single act of treachery.

Everything happened as Bohemond wanted it to happen. Sixty men climbed up the ladder, captured three towers, opened a gate, killed many Turks and caused widespread havoc even before Bohemond was aware of what was happening. Seeing that he was not on the walls, one of his soldiers went in search of him. Bohemond was surprised, followed the soldier into the city, and took command. His chief aim now was to plant his standard on the citadel, thus providing physical evidence that he possessed it. Soon the Gate of the Bridge and the Gate of St. George opened wide, and the Crusaders streamed in. It was shortly before dawn on June 3, 1098. Because Kerbogha was approaching, the Crusaders acted with the utmost speed, once they had taken the city. By the end of the day there was scarcely a single living Turk left in Antioch.

Antioch belonged to Bohemond: only the citadel refused to surrender. On the following day, the army of Kerbogha came up to the walls. It was at once obvious that this new army was large enough and strong enough to maintain a close blockade. The besiegers were now besieged. The Christians, who had suffered famine during the winter, when they were free to move about in the countryside, suffered all the more when they were enclosed within the great double walls.

From wild elation the Crusaders descended to despair. As Kerbogha's ring around the city tightened, the joy over the conquest of the city was exchanged for a melancholy knowledge that they could hold out only for a few weeks and would be forced to surrender.

There were dead Turks in all the alleyways, and the stench was so terrible that people walked about with squares of cloth covering the lower part of their faces. Astronomical prices were paid for food. Kerbogha let it be known that a special fate was reserved for the Crusaders: they would be marched to distant Khorassan and then sold in the slave markets.

On the day before Kerbogha began the encirclement of Antioch, one of the Crusader princes, Stephen, Count of Blois and Chartres, slipped out of the city, taking with him many members of his private army. He left the city partly because he was afraid, partly because he thought he could intervene with the emperor, Alexius Comnenus, and partly because he was at odds with Bohemond. In a letter to his wife he described the siege of Antioch as he saw it, before Kerbogha came to wreck the Crusaders' plans.

EXCERPTS FROM A LETTER FROM STEPHEN, COUNT OF BLOIS AND CHARTRES, TO HIS WIFE, ADELE, FROM ANTIOCH, MARCH 29, 1098.

. . . Together with all the chosen army of Christ, endowed with great valor by Him, we have been continually advancing for twenty-three weeks toward the home of our Lord Jesus. . . .

. . . Hastening with great joy to the aforesaid chief city of Antioch, we besieged it and very often had many conflicts there with the Turks; and seven times with the citizens of Antioch and with the innumerable troops coming to its aid, whom we rushed to meet, we fought with the fiercest courage, under the leadership of Christ. And in all those seven battles, by the aid of the Lord God, we conquered and most assuredly killed an innumerable host of them. In those battles, indeed, and in very many attacks made upon the city, many of our brethren and followers were killed and their souls were borne to the joys of paradise.

We found the city of Antioch very extensive, fortified with incredible strength and almost impregnable. In addition, more than 5,000 bold Turkish soldiers had entered the city, not counting
the Saracens, Publicans, Arabs, Turcopolitans, Syrians, Armenians and other different races of whom an infinite multitude had gathered together there. In fighting against these enemies of God and of our own we have, by God's grace, endured many sufferings and innumerable evils up to the present time. . . .

When truly Caspian, the emir of Antioch—that is, prince and lord—perceived that he was hard-pressed by us, he sent his son Sensodolo by name to the prince who holds Jerusalem, and to the prince of Calep, Rodoam, and to Docap, prince of Damascus. He also sent into Arabia to Bolianuth and to Carathania to Hemelnuth. These five emirs with 12,000 picked Turkish horsemen suddenly came to aid the inhabitants of Antioch. We, indeed, ignorant of all this, had sent many of our soldiers away to the cities and fortresses. . . . But a little before they reached the city, we attacked them at three leagues' distance with 700 soldiers on a certain plain near the “Iron Bridge.” God, however, fought for us, who were faithful to Him, against our enemies. For on that day we fought with the strength given to us by God and conquered them, killing a great multitude—God was continually at our side—and we returned with more than 200 heads, so that the people might rejoice at the sight of them. . . .

On the day following Easter, while Alexander, my chaplain, was writing this letter in great haste, a party of our men were lying in wait for the Turks, fought well against them, killed sixty horsemen and brought their heads back to the army.

These things I am writing to you, dearest, are only a few of the things we have done; and because I cannot tell you, my darling, all that is in my heart, I charge you to do right and to watch carefully over your land, and to do your proper duty to your children and your vassals, for you will certainly see me as soon as I can come to you.

Farewell.

IT was during the siege of Antioch that for the first time we see the strange tribe of Tafurs. They had been there from the beginning, invisible only because the chroniclers thought so little of them that they were mentioned very rarely. Nearly everything we know about them comes from the
Chanson d'Antioche
, an enormously long poem written by Richard the Pilgrim and Graindor of Douai. There is not the least doubt that the Tafurs existed and played an important role in the Crusade. We see them in battle and sometimes we are aware of their presence even when they cannot be seen clearly. Sometimes we have a glimpse of their faces: hollow cheeks, burning eyes, ragged beards, wild hair falling to their shoulders. If we could look closely into their eyes we would see spiritual exaltation and terrible despair.

The Tafurs were the expendables, the poor devils who followed the army to pick up the scraps; they were unskilled laborers, poor peasants, men who would hold a bridle and expect a crust of bread for their pains. They were the scavengers of the battlefield but they were also to be found among the most daring of the warriors. They marched barefoot, sometimes naked, or clad in rags, covered with sores and filth, too poor to afford swords and lances, armed only with knives, clubs, pointed sticks, axes, and scythes. They never rode on horseback and were always kept at a distance from the main army in a kind of ghetto. In their own eyes they were the
plebs pauperum
, the poor people of Christ, the Chosen Ones. They were never paid, they expected no reward except the blessing of Christ and a place in the Heavenly Jerusalem, and they fought like scrawny lions. They were the rabble that accompanied all medieval armies, but with a difference. At a word from their king they became shock troops, and they sometimes won the battles that were credited to the Crusading knights.

The Tafurs were both well organized and without any visible organization. They had no training but were trained in battle. Their most remarkable quality after their poverty was their absolute indifference to danger.
They were all equal but they possessed a king,
le roi Tafur
. He was a Norman knight who had deliberately put aside sword and armor to wear sackcloth and wield a scythe. In the
Chanson d'Antioche
he appears as a formidable presence, towering over his naked rabble and leading them during their sudden onslaughts against the enemy. The king of the Tafurs had taken the vow of poverty and insisted that everyone in his army should do the same. If he found any Tafurs with money, he would order them to buy weapons and join the main army: to have money was a disgrace. A Tafur who put on the silk raiment he found in a Muslim house could expect to be drummed out of the Tafur kingdom.

Around the king of the Tafurs there gradually emerged a kind of collegium of men who were devoted to the laws of poverty and obedience. Significantly it was Bohemond, the wildest and most unscrupulous of the princes, who most often attempted to take the Tafurs under his command.

Yet the princes and the knights seem to have been in awe of the Tafurs. In battle they formed a human wave; they were mown down, but they continued to march against the enemy. When they entered a conquered town, they raped and murdered in a wild frenzy; and when the Emir of Antioch complained about their excesses, he was told, “All of us together cannot tame King Tafur.”

They despised the princes who thought only of possessing principalities and kingdoms, and they despised the knights in their shining armor who rode on caparisoned horses. In their nakedness and poverty they regarded themselves as the true princes and the true knights, the only ones among the Crusaders who were sure of entering heaven. Cutthroats dressed in rags, they saw themselves as Christlike.

Guibert of Nogent is one of the few chroniclers who pays serious attention to the Tafurs. He had evidently seen them and had a deep feeling for them. Even at the time, people wondered whether they served a useful purpose or whether they were not more dangerous to the Christian army than to the Turks. Guibert of Nogent answered that they were absolutely essential to the conduct of the war against the Turks: they carried burdens uncomplainingly, guarded the pack animals, and he noted especially that they were adept at overturning the enemy's ballistas and siege engines by throwing rocks at them. They were a rabble in arms, lawless, terrible in their insolence and pride, and most terrible of all when they were in the greatest danger.

Because the Tafurs did not fit neatly into the categories of history, and because they were a living force of incalculable power and energy, they entered legend. There came a time during the siege of Antioch when the entire Christian army was living on starvation rations. Everyone suffered, even the knights, and the Tafurs suffered most of all. Desperate measures had to be taken. According to the
Chanson d'Antioche
the Tafurs resorted to cannibalism, eating dead Turks wherever they could find them: