Antioch, Edessa, Jerusalem – were peripheral. As Tutush had discovered, rule of Syria counted for little against the forces of Iraq and Iran. Given the nature of their enterprise, the Christian expeditionary force rarely constituted a genuine threat to local dynasts. Despite the loss of Nicaea and defeats by the crusaders in 1097, the sultanate of Rum and the power of the Danishmends remained intact if dented. Only where Turkish authority had already eroded or collapsed – as in Cilicia or parts of northern Syria, including Antioch – did the crusaders threaten existing structures of authority. This new, fanatical, single-minded force apparently of Byzantine mercenaries fitted easily into a world dominated by armies of foreign hirelings – Kurdish, Turcoman or Armenian. The First Crusade was well suited to contemporary Near Eastern politics.
Such insights were far from apparent to the members of the expedition as they set out to cross Anatolia in late June 1097. Within days of leaving the area of Nicaea, the army was almost defeated, its vanguard overrun and nearly destroyed, by Kilij Arslan’s field army. Four years later, similar western contingents were serially annihilated by local forces, leaving merely uneasy rumours of their fate. Such could easily have been the fate of the 1097 host. The battle, conventionally called of Dorylaeum, but actually fought over twenty-five miles to the north, attracted vivid if confused memories, recalling fear (‘huddled together like sheep in a fold… we had no hope of surviving,’ remembered one), recognition that it had been a close-run thing and certainty that victory had been God- given.8
By the early morning of 1 July 1097, the Christian vanguard, perhaps 20,000 strong, comprising the contingents of Bohemund, Robert of Normandy, Stephen of Blois and Robert of Flanders, with the Byzantine troops under Tatikios, had advanced about forty-five miles south-east of Nicaea, reaching a valley just under three miles north of the modern Bozuyuk. There they were confronted by Kilij Arslan and his new ally the Danishmend emir. The Turkish force was mounted and probably outnumbered the western knights in the vanguard, which had become detached from the main body of crusaders under Raymond of Toulouse and Godfrey of Bouillon, around 30,000 strong, who were still some three miles away when battle was joined. On seeing the size of the Turkish army, Bohemund, his generalship skill already recognized, ordered the infantry, priests and other non-combatants to make a defensive camp, awkwardly with its back to a marsh, while the mounted knights advanced towards the enemy. Immediately things went badly, the mobile Turkish mounted archers driving the knights back to the camp, which became assailed on all flanks. Surrounded, the vanguard fought ferociously in dogged, bloody close combat, sustained by their close formation, lack of alternatives and a burgeoning
While the largely nomadic Turkish forces of Kilij Arslan and the Danishmends could not be destroyed in one set-piece defeat, such a reverse undermined the sultan’s authority, especially over the towns of Anatolia with large Christian populations, and his recently constructed prestige amongst his Turkish supporters. Towns and cities across Anatolia repudiated the sultan, many welcoming the passing crusaders. The sheer size of the westerners’ force invited respect. In crossing central Anatolia, its main enemy was heat by day and, in the uplands, sharp cold by night, thirst, lack of supplies and fatigue. There was an almost unstoppable haemorrhaging of horses: one veteran suggested they lost most of them in a few weeks after the battle, a potentially fatal blow. While Tancred and Baldwin of Boulogne separately pressed on directly towards Konya, the main army, moving at times as little as five miles a day and never much more than ten, took a detour into more fertile territory around Pisidian Antioch to the south to allow effective foraging. Reunited at Konya in mid-August, the great army was showing signs of depletion. Goats, sheep, even dogs were pressed into service as pack animals, their backs soon lacerated with sores, while knights rode cows or walked. In high and late summer temperatures could soar to over 30 degrees. Some recalled hundreds dying, mainly of thirst; the true figure may have been thousands. New-born babies were abandoned by their mothers. The march across Anatolia scarred the memories of the survivors. The leaders were not immune, Raymond of Toulouse falling so gravely ill that he received the last rites and Godfrey of Bouillon apparently being attacked and injured by a bear.10 The requirements of food and water were paramount, determining the routes and behaviour of the army. Without cowed Turkish opponents and the general uprising against the sultan in Christian towns, the westerners could hardly have survived. The only serious military resistance encountered was at Ereghli (Heraclea) about a hundred miles east of Konya, around 10 September.
After Heraclea, the great army divided, a decision displaying awareness of regional political conditions, local geography and topography, diplomatic opportunities, and prospects for collective and personal gain. Byzantine interests remained influential. Confronted by the formidable barrier of the Taurus mountains, the ordinary route for travellers to Syria led south-east through the steep, narrow pass known as the Cilician Gates (at its tightest about thirty yards across) down into the fertile Cilician plain, past Tarsus, Adana, Mamistra to Alexandretta and the Belen pass through the Ammanus mountain range, thence to northern Syria and Antioch, a journey from Heraclea of some 220 miles. This route was taken by two separate contingents, led by Tancred and Baldwin of Boulogne, acting on orders of the whole command or, possibly, as surrogates for Bohemund and Godfrey of Bouillon. Despite bitter, at times violent rivalry once in Cilicia, these forays in September and early October cleared opponents from the southern flank of the main army and established access to significant areas for supply and forage while denying them to the Turks of Antioch. Although Tancred and Baldwin came to blows at Tarsus, the latter being implicated in the Muslim massacre of 300 knights sent by Bohemund to reinforce his nephew,11 and again at Mamistra, they left behind sympathetic local rulers and garrisons: Baldwin’s at Tarsus, Tancred’s at Mamistra and possibly Baghras in northern Syria. The evidently self-interested campaigns of these two youthful, well-connected, skilful but landless adventurers materially aided the attack on Antioch and the protection of longer-term western interests in Syria.
The main army turned northwards from Heraclea towards Caesarea in Cappadocia (Kayseri), crossing the mountains by steep but broader passes before turning south-east to Coxon (Goksum) and Marasch, through defiles almost as precipitous and narrow as those of the Cilician Gates, to approach Antioch from the north, a distance from Heraclea of just under 400 miles, a long, agonizing trek through inhospitable, barren high country, the road reaching over 5,500 feet, with the risk of snow at higher altitudes. The march from Heraclea to Antioch took about seven weeks, averaging about eight miles a day; losses in the Taurus mountains were great. The reason for this apparent diversion lay in the need to encourage Armenian Christian support and to secure the hinterland of Antioch by clearing the Taurus approaches of hostile Turks. Byzantine authority was restored in some places; at Comana, the Italian Norman Peter of Alipha or Aups, a veteran in Byzantine service, assumed command of the city ‘in fealty to God and the Holy Sepulchre and to our leaders and the emperor’.12 At others local Christians resumed control, as the Armenian Simeon at an unnamed town in Cappadocia, and Tatoul at Marasch. Tatoul was a supporter of the Greek emperor; Simeon had accompanied the army providing it with local knowledge and political contacts. The diversion to Caesarea and Marasch thus served Greek interests by liberating local Christians from Turkish dominion under the imperial aegis. Militarily, approaching from the north isolated Antioch by freeing the mountain cities, capturing the strategically important city of Artah, which controlled the city’s eastern approaches, and establishing a presence in the fertile Ruj valley, east of the Orontes, on which Antioch stands. Combined with the Cilician activities of Tancred and Baldwin, the westerners stood well placed to attack Antioch.
3. The Siege of Antioch, October 1097–June 1098
This two-pronged attack on northern Syria territorially reconstituted much of the principality carved out by a renegade Greek commander, Philaretus Brachamius, between 1077 and the Turkish occupation of Antioch in 1085 and had been accomplished with the support of local Armenian lords, with whom there had been contact since Nicaea.13 One of them, Bagrat, persuaded the restless Baldwin of Boulogne, with whom he had travelled since Nicaea, to try his luck further east towards the Euphrates, also in lands once controlled by Philaretus. Leaving the army again after a brief stay in mid-October, with a small contingent of knights Baldwin moved on Tell-Bashir where he was welcomed by local Armenians as their lord. Having established military overlordship of the region up to the Euphrates, in a fashion familiar from Greek and Turkish precedents, in February 1098 Baldwin received an invitation from Thoros, the Armenian ruler of Edessa, forty-five miles east of the
