BEFORE ANTIOCH.
The crusading hosts passed, with incredible toil and suffering, through
the remainder of Asia Minor. The perils of the Taurus chain of mountains
nearly brought them to despair. Borne down with their heavy arms,
encumbered with thousands of women and children, they passed along paths
which the practised feet of mountaineers were alone fitted to tread. In
the defiles were left many who could not climb the precipitous rocks,
which thus became the walls of their tomb. At the base of the palisades
were heaps of armor, which their wearers were too spiritless to recover.
But in spite of the despair of many, the leaders evidently did not leave
the spoil of war to rust or decay in the cañons of the Taurus. Stephen
of Blois wrote to his wife a few weeks later than the events we are
describing: “You may know for certain, my beloved, that of gold, silver,
and many other kinds of riches I now have twice as much as your love had
assigned to me when I left you.”
At length the survivors emerged to look down from the mountains upon the
borders of Syria. The sight inspired them as that from Pisgah did the
invader of old. Courage revived, and with joy they hastened southward.
Hard by was the battle-field of Issus, where Alexander the Great, the
man from the West, had broken the power of the East under Xerxes—an omen
of its repetition. Soon Antioch, the city built to commemorate the fame
of Antiochus, one of Alexander’s generals, stood before them. The rumor
of their invincibility had served the crusaders in the stead of battles,
and October 21, 1097, they sat down unmolested for the siege of the
Syrian capital.
This city, where a thousand years before believers were first called
Christians, still wore in the reverence of all the world the honor of
that initial christening. It was called the “Eldest Daughter of Sion,”
and was the seat of one of the original patriarchates into which the
early church was divided. It had been the third city of the Roman world,
and those who were unimpressed with its sacred story could imagine its
splendor when it was called the “Queen of the East.” Paganism once
worshipped obscene divinities in its famous groves of Daphne. About it
still stood the enormous wall built by the Emperor Justinian five
hundred years before, on every tower of which were mementos of sieges
when it had been captured alternately by Saracen and Greek, and now, but
thirteen years before the crusaders’ coming, by Solyman, the Turk.
The natural defences of Antioch, supplemented by those of art, made it
impregnable, except to the enthusiastic faith of such men as now essayed
its capture. On the north it was guarded by the river Orontes, on the
south by natural heights of several hundred feet, on the west by the
great citadel, and on the east by a castle. The wall which bound
together the various fortifications was nine miles in extent,
strengthened by three hundred and sixty towers. A deep cleft in the
southern height poured a mountain torrent through the city to the
Orontes. Accian, grandson of Malek-Shah, had twenty thousand Turks
within the walls, who behind such battlements were presumably the match
for the three hundred thousand crusaders who are said to have been
without.
To the sanguine enthusiasm of the Christians the city seemed like a
ripened fruit ready to fall into the hand at a touch. Guards appeared
upon the walls, but the challenge of their camps provoked no response.
This the Christians interpreted as a sign of the feebleness and dismay
of the garrison. They were disposed to wait for the fruit to fall of
itself. The genial influence of the climate soon wrought its softness
into nerve and spirit. Discipline was relaxed; knights whose shields
showed many a dent of conflict spent the hours among the vineyards,
where the luscious clusters still hung upon their stems. Adventure found
its pastime in discovering the vaults in which the peasants had hidden
their grain. If we could believe the theory that good and evil people
leave in the places they frequent an atmosphere of virtue or vice, to
invigorate or infect the souls of those who come after them, we might
think that the soldiers of the cross had succumbed to the influence of
the votaries of Venus and Adonis, who anciently revelled in the grove of
Daphne; for the Christian host became infatuated with unseemly
pleasures; they were given over to intemperance and debauchery. An
arch-deacon was not ashamed to be seen in dalliance with a Syrian nymph.
If the leaders did not yield to the prevalent vice, they seem to have
been infected with that intellectual dulness and lethargy of purpose
which follows license. They neglected to prepare their siege machinery,
and when a momentary enthusiasm led them to attack the walls they paid
for their temerity with failure. The enemy became correspondingly
emboldened, and retaliated with fearful forays through the Christian
lines. With the approach of winter the crusaders had exhausted their
provisions, and the country about furnished no more. Heavy rainfalls
reduced their camps to swamps, in which the bow lost its stiffness, and
the body its vigor, making the men the prey of diseases which kept them
busy burying their dead.
Stories of disasters to the cause elsewhere floated to them, until the
air seemed laden with evil omens. Sweno, Prince of Denmark, had advanced
through Cappadocia. At his side was Florine, daughter of Count Eudes of
Burgundy, his affianced bride. Together they fought their way through
countless swarms of Turks, until, with all their attendant knights, they
were slain. The body of this heroic woman showed that seven arrows had
penetrated her armor. News also came that fleets of Pisans and Genoese,
their allies, had withdrawn from the coast, lured by better prospects of
gain than in bringing succor to what seemed a ruined cause.
Such was the moral depression that Robert of Normandy deserted for a
while, until shame brought him back. His example was followed even by
Peter the Hermit, “a star fallen from heaven,” says Guibert, the
eye-witness and chronicler. Peter, however, returned at the entreaty of
Tancred, whose heart was as true in trouble as his eye was keen in the
mêlée. The Hermit was made to take oath never again to desert the cause
he had once so eloquently proclaimed. The piety of Adhemar, Bishop of
Puy, instituted fasts and penitential processions around the camp, to
purge it of iniquity and to avert the wrath of Heaven. The practical
judgment of the chieftains enacted terrible punishments to curb the
unreasoning debauchery. The drunkard was cropped of his hair, the
gambler branded with a hot iron, the adulterer stripped naked and beaten
in the presence of the camp. The Syrian spies who were caught were, by
order of Bohemond, spitted and roasted, and this proclamation was posted
over them: “In this manner all spies shall make meat for us with their
bodies.”
About this time there arrived in the camp an embassy from the caliph of
Egypt. The race of Ali hated the Turks as the usurpers of the headship
of their faith, and proposed alliance with the Christians to expel them
from Jerusalem. They stipulated for themselves the sovereignty of
Palestine, and would grant to the disciples of Jesus perpetual privilege
of pilgrimage to the sacred places. If this offer of the caliph was
declined, the ambassadors presented the alternative of war, not only
with the Turks, but with the combined Saracen world from Gibraltar to
Bagdad. The Christian reply was bold. Their orators taunted the
Egyptians with the diabolical cruelty they had once practised when
Jerusalem was under Hakim, and declared that they would brave the wrath
of the Moslem world rather than permit a stone of the sacred city to be
possessed by an enemy of their faith. This reply was saved from seeming
bravado by an opportune victory. Bohemond and Raymond met and cut to
pieces a Moslem force of twenty thousand horsemen, who were advancing
from the north for the relief of Antioch. As the ambassadors of Egypt
were embarking, they were presented with four camel-loads of human
heads, to impress their master with the sincerity of the Christian
boast, while hundreds more of these ghastly tokens were stuck upon pikes
before the walls or flung by the ballistæ into the city to terrorize the
defendants.
The fearfulness of their extremity animated the courage of the Turks as
it had often done that of the Christians; for brave hearts are the same,
under whatever faith and culture. They sallied from the gates, which by
the orders of Accian were closed behind them until they should return as
victors. At nightfall, however, but few lived to seek the entrance.
Their valor was doubtless as fine as that of the Christians, the
exploits of whose leaders have come to us in story and song. Tancred’s
deeds were so great that, either from excessive modesty or the fear that
nobody would believe such wonders, he exacted a promise of his squire
never to tell what his master had wrought. If his great actions were
like most reported of his comrades, we can admire his wisdom as well as
his humility; for the legends of the battle tell, among other wonders,
of a monster Turk who was cloven in twain by the sword of Godfrey, and
one half of whose lifeless body rode his charger back to the gate. A
less glorious exploit is mentioned. The Christians rifled by night the
new-made graves of the Moslems, and paraded the next day in the clothes
of the fallen braves, carrying upon their pikes instead of garlands
fifteen hundred heads they had severed from the corpses. A more romantic
scene makes a pleasant foil to this: the children of either side,
drilled by their seniors, engaged in battle in presence of both armies.
Hands that could not use the sword thrust with the dagger, and the
poisoned tip of the arrow was not less deadly because it was sent from a
tiny bow.