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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Serie: Crusades
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012
1096. The Pope has called for a crusade to free Jerusalem, and half the warriors of Europe have responded. Among them is the Norman, Count Bohemund, one-time enemy of Byzantium. In company with his warrior nephew, Tancred of Lecce, Bohemund must once more cross the Adriatic to the lands of the Byzantine Empire. His first task, pushing back the infidel Turks, calls for an uneasy alliance with old enemy Emperor Alexius. But can the Crusaders trust the wily Emperor? With old tensions arising, and the violent battles of the People's Crusade bringing destruction upon middle Europe, the strength of this reluctant truce, and the de Hauteville dynasty itself, is truly put to the test. Bohemund is faced once again with the opportunity to gain power, land and riches for himself, but do the risks of doing so outweigh the rewards? The Crusaders must contend with sieges, open battles, hunger and want on their journey to mighty Antioch, where they face the stiffest test of their mettle.
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SOLDIEROF CRUSADE
JACK LUDLOW
To Richard & Marguerite friends through thick, thin and all the bits in between
Contents
PROLOGUE
The defenders of Durazzo knew the Apulians were coming and, if they had eased the passage of the first forces that had landed on the Adriatic shore under the French nobleman, the Count of Vermandois, they were less inclined to welcome the next to arrive for the very sound reason that they entirely mistrusted their motives. The knights and nobles accompanying Vermandois had been seen as honest Crusaders, needing to traverse the lands of Romania with no prior aim other than to aid Byzantium in throwing back the infidel Seljuk Turks from the very borders of Constantinople, the ultimate aim to then move on and free Jerusalem and the Holy Places of Palestine from the grip of Islam.
The armies of Southern Italy were different; led by a member of the family of de Hauteville, whose collective military prowess had kicked Byzantium out of Italy, the mounted Norman lances they commanded counted as the most formidable warriors in Christendom. Many of the foot soldiers were Lombards who, if they marched for pay and plunder, would be fully trained to do battle and loathed the old Eastern Roman Empire for the hundreds of years of what they saw as the suppression of their right to rule themselves. Such a combination had breached the eastern boundary of Romania twice in the last fifteen years as invaders not friends and, even worse, they had enjoyed a high degree of success in both battle and conquest.
The walls on which the watchers of Byzantium now stood, as well as many other castles and towns, added to great swathes of the lands of ancient Illyria, had been taken from them, only wrested back after much blood and even more treasure had been expended. The Apulians, always inferior in numbers, had been commanded by men of genius and if the now dead father, Robert, Duke of Apulia, had been seen as the devil incarnate throughout Romania then he was not in present times to be outshone in black-heartedness as well as ability by the present leader, his natural, first-born son, Bohemund of Taranto.
‘I am told he is such a giant, this Bohemund, that he can pick up and consume a man whole, Father.’
‘Children’s tales,’ John Comnenus replied to his too impressionable son. ‘To demand the likes of you cease chattering and go to sleep, but it is true he is reputed to be a meaty fellow. Your great uncle the Emperor had a sight of him outside these very walls before you were born, and if you can mark one man for his size in the heat and confusion of a great battle, that tells you of his stature. It is said that he even made look human the giants of the Imperial Guard.’
‘What is it that they feed these Normans that they are so tall as a race?’
‘They are raised on a diet of arrogance and greed.’
‘Odd that,’ replied the ten-year-old Comnenus, his tone deadly serious, ‘I heard it was apples.’
The laughter that produced echoed off the formidable walls of the port city but the humour was not long-lasting; it was known the fleet bearing Bohemund and his army had departed Otranto and Brindisi three days previously, so given the distance and even sailing easy to allay seasickness, it should be in sight by now. Unlike the approach of Vermandois, the foppish brother of the King of France, who had come close to losing his life by drowning in stormy seas, the Adriatic was flat calm and those who knew how to read the weather, master mariners who had sailed these waters all their lives, pronounced that with the nature of the sky added to the direction of the wind such conditions would likely hold for days.
John Comnenus, topoterites of Durazzo, had been given a task to perform and it was one to be applied only to the host from Southern Italy, more specifically to Bohemund. Prior to landing he must swear an oath to the Emperor Alexius that would bind him to the aims of the papal crusade and, if possible, imperial service; in short, the Count of Taranto must make assurances that he had come to aid Byzantium and not under the guise of assistance to attempt that which had failed before: outright conquest.
The Norman leaders of Southern Italy had eyes on the imperial purple, hankering after it as an adornment for their own shoulders. As a race they were avaricious for land and plunder, no better than the Viking forbearers who had settled along the banks of the River Seine and so harried the Frankish king that he had been obliged to cede to them the whole peninsula from which they now took their name. That had not stilled their appetite; formidable warriors, they had become a permanent menace instead of an occasional one and had increased so much in numbers that they threatened not only France but also neighbouring Anjou and ultimately their own suzerain, the Duke of Normandy.
Those who first came south to Italy were the rebellious, the landless and the discontented, amongst who were the first two de Hautevilles, subsequently to be joined by five more brothers. Employed as mercenaries to fight for Lombard independence they had, in less than fifty years, cast aside their erstwhile paymasters, then wrested the centuries-held provinces of Langobardia and Calabria from imperial control, before invading and conquering Saracen Sicily. Despite the odd reverse, they had bested Byzantium in battle after battle to become, first, counts of Apulia, and then, after papal recognition – that body too had suffered more than one military defeat at the hands of the Normans – had become acknowledged in their ducal titles.
Never likely to be sated they had turned their gaze east, seeing the remains of the old Roman Empire as weak and ripe for a fall. If they had tried and failed, that had not dented their desire – what better way to introduce the force necessary to accomplish total conquest than under the guise of this religious endeavour called a crusade? So the man who commanded at Durazzo was not about to let such a puissant general as Bohemund ashore without that pledge of loyalty.
To aid his cause John had the ability to deny them a landing at the western end of the Via Egnatia, the road to Constantinople, added to the lure of a trouble-free passage with plentiful supplies provided en route that would obviate the need to forage or, more importantly, oblige the Norman leader to raid his own chests of gold to pay for the things necessary to keep his army fed. Given such advantages he was sure he could impose the imperial will on Count Bohemund as well as his senior captains. The man who spoilt this comfortable illusion of security came while the topoterites was eating in his own chamber.
CHAPTER ONE
‘One of the piquet boats approaches, Your Honour, and she is flying an alarm pennant.’
Comnenus was confused and it showed both on his face and in his reply to the messenger from the battlements. ‘If we are not overburdened with friends, I cannot think who would be an enemy so threatening as to cause a piquet boat to hoist an alarm pennant?’
‘The Norman devils?’
That answer had about it the air of, ‘Who in the name of the Lord else, you fool?’
Comnenus carried the burden of having his place by family connection rather than experience and that showed in an occasional lack of due respect from those whom he commanded.
‘They are supposed to be coming in peace, fellow – and even if they are not, how would ill intent show while they are still afloat? I fear our sailor has overplayed what he might have seen. Still, we cannot ignore what it says. Send to the captain of the garrison to man the walls.’
‘It was he who sent me to you, Your Honour, and he has already ordered that done.’
The thought for the titular commander could not be avoided: such a precaution had been carried out without the courtesy of informing him, just as the message regarding the approaching piquet boat had first gone to his second in command. Was it that which induced a knot in his gut or the notion that there may well be an approaching threat? Durazzo was a prize after which many lusted and one any man who held it for the empire feared to lose.
Enemies outside of Apulians he could easily conjure up: the Venetians or the Genoese with their great fleets, Saracens from North Africa or any of those in alliance with Bohemund. For the nephew of the Emperor, Durazzo was an even heavier burden, so an impatient John Comnenus was at the quayside when the fast-sailing sandalion, having unseated its mast and laid it along the thwarts, slid through under the water gate portcullis, the man in the prow shouting his message.
‘The demons have landed at Avona.’
‘Have landed?’
‘The whole Apulian host is ashore, My Lord, and the first companies are already marching inland.’
‘Headed to where?’
‘I did not hang around to find out – some of their galleys came to seek me out and I ran.’
Aware that all eyes were upon him Comnenus was quick to respond. ‘Then that we must find out first.’
Horses were quickly saddled and a party of lances gathered to escort the topoterites as he rode out to locate what might be an army more intent on conquest and one which would find scant force to contest its passage. On a coast dotted with smaller ports, deep bays and open beaches there were many places to land but Bohemund had chosen well, for too many of those led nowhere but into a barren hinterland of impassable mountains. Comnenus did not know the topography as well as many of those he led; he was soon made aware that Avona provided a route, albeit a hard one, through the high coastal hills to a point where the Apulians could join the road to Constantinople at a point well inland.
As he rode he was cursing himself, even if he lacked sufficient force, for not providing the numerous places with the kind of protection that would have at least alerted him prior to them getting ashore, a landing he could have then rendered more of a risk, while being acutely aware that such an opinion probably existed among his subordinates. Now he was working to catch up with events, not, as he wanted to be, in control of them.
Forced to push their horses beyond what was wise it was a weary and dusty party of riders that overlooked the newly set up encampment, a mass of smoking campfires, tents, horses and fighting men that filled the well-watered plain and soon made any attempt to count their numbers futile. John Comnenus felt less than stately as he made his way, with only two attendants, one an interpreter, through the Apulian lines to approach the great pavilion above which flew the banner of the Count of Taranto.
Blood-red, it was crossed with the blue and white chequer of his de Hauteville family and there was no doubt, even if he had never clapped eyes on the man, who was waiting at the entrance to greet him; he had not, since he arrived to command at Durazzo, been left short of descriptions but, even so, the dimensions of the man shocked him and Bohemund was not alone in that.
Not himself small, Comnenus was aware of being in the presence of not one giant but two, though there was a small margin of difference between Bohemund and the very much younger fellow at his side, he being the shorter by three finger widths. If they overawed in size while he was astride his weary horse, that was made more manifest when Comnenus dismounted to find he had to tilt his head well back to engage the eye of either. Both were bareheaded, the youthful fellow’s skin a deep bronze from exposure to the sun, his hair blond above a handsome face.
The to easy-to-recognise Bohemund was fair too, but with the reddened countenance of his northern race. They were a match in style and dress, both in chain mail hauberks, wearing over that the white surplice dominated by a single red cross that Pope Urban had designated as the device to be worn by the men he had called to Crusade, this to underline that they were Christian warriors who, if they came from different locations, were dedicated to the same holy cause.
‘Does the topoterites of Durazzo address the Count of Taranto?’ the interpreter asked, in the Frankish tongue.
Bohemund looked at the speaker before lazily letting his eyes turn back to Comnenus, it being an act designed to underline his authority as well as his indifference. ‘You may speak in Greek if you wish, I was born and grew up among those who used to be your subjects.’ He turned to introduce his younger associate as the eyes of the topoterites flicked in that direction. ‘As was my nephew, Tancred, Lord of Lecce and Monteroni.’
That caused the Greek leader’s eyes to linger on the younger fellow, for he had heard of Tancred, son of the late Marquis of Monteroni, known as ‘the Good’, a Lombard loyal to the Norman cause who had married Bohemund’s sister, Emma. The tale told of Tancred spoke of a similar fidelity to his uncle, as well as a fighting ability and sharp mind that underlined his maternal bloodline.
‘Then you will know that when you land unannounced on the shores of Romania that I see it as a hostile act.’
Bohemund let a smile play about his lips. ‘Hostile or unfriendly?’
‘Is there a difference?’
‘There is, topoterites, for if I were hostile you would be still inside yours walls of Durazzo and I would be encamped without them.’
‘To no purpose but death and starvation.’
It was Tancred who replied, his tone a lot less civil. ‘My uncle has been inside those walls before, topoterites, and has slept many nights in the chamber you now occupy. Do not doubt he has the means to do so again.’
Comnenus looked around him at the men gathered to listen to what should be a private exchange, foot soldiers, not lances, and by their colouring Lombards, all of whom would speak Greek. ‘Am I to conduct a negotiation in public?’
‘What negotiation?’ Bohemund enquired.
‘Regarding the conventions you must obey if you are to cross Western Romania to meet up with your confrères in the capital.’
‘I have an army and a route, why do I need conventions?’
‘The Emperor commands it, just as he commands that you take an oath of allegiance to him before you can march.’
Bohemund made great play of looking around, and his men close by, knowing he was preparing a jest, began to chuckle. ‘I see no emperor, so where have you hidden him?’
‘You cannot expect such an eminent person to come to you.’
‘No, topoterites, I cannot and neither can he ask of me that I swear to anything when he is not present.’
‘Then I must forbid your passage.’
‘With what?’ Tancred snapped.
Comnenus felt safe enough to reply with open disdain. ‘I hold the key to the supplies you need to progress and they will not be released to you if I do not permit it to be so. It is a long way to Constantinople and you might find all that awaits you in the mountains is hunger.’
‘Supplies?’ Bohemund said, his hand going to the point of his chin. ‘I will tell you this, we come on the call of Pope Urban to aid your Emperor to push back the Turks, a request he sent to the synod held last year at Piacenca.’
‘The cross you wear on your breast speaks of another purpose.’
Bohemund responded with a distinct growl and short points accompanied by a fist slapping into a huge hand. ‘The infidels stand between us and Palestine. The Pope has tasked us to aid the empire on the way to Jerusalem. If we respond to that it is only justice that in such an act Alexius Comnenus, your uncle, I know, should feed us. The supplies are there, so we will take what we need and I promise you we will take no more.’
‘And if I contest that?’
‘Then prepare to spill blood.’
There was silence then, for there was an unspoken truth known to all: Comnenus did not have the power to impede this Apulian host and Bohemund was as aware of the fact as he. Even to try to sting them he would have to denude Durazzo of any protection, which, given it must remain defended, would be a deep dereliction of his duty to his uncle. He had the option of making the progress of Bohemund and his host a difficult one, or as easy as such an inherently fraught enterprise could be.
‘Which would be a waste, topoterites,’ Bohemund added, ‘given we have come to coat the earth with the blood of your uncle’s enemies, not that of his own men and certainly not that of his family.’
‘I am minded to provide an escort.’
‘Something,’ Tancred replied, ‘given to those in need of succour, like pilgrims. We are not pilgrims.’
‘We move out on the morrow, topoterites,’ Bohemund pronounced, ‘our aim to join the Via Egnatia at Vedona, and be assured I know the terrain well. I will give no trouble to those who do not trouble me. Now, allow me to offer you some refreshment in my tent.’
After, Comnenus thought, you have humiliated me in front of your Greek-speaking army.
‘I must decline,’ he said, ‘for I have the command of Durazzo and that I must protect.’
‘No doubt you will send to Alexius to tell of our arrival.’
‘I shall.’
Bohemund could not keep the wry tone out of his voice. ‘News to delight him, I’m sure.’
The despatch John Comnenus sent off to his uncle that night was full of foreboding about the intentions of the Apulians and while he was careful in his recommendations – he did not ask for troops with which to contest their passage for the very sound reason they did not exist – he did ask for gold with which to bribe Bohemund’s half-brother and primary enemy, the reigning Duke of Apulia, Roger de Hauteville, known as Borsa.
Rendered a bastard by the papal annulment of his father’s first marriage on the grounds of consanguinity, Bohemund saw himself as the rightful heir to his father’s domains; Borsa, first son of the second wedding to Sichelgaita of Salerno, had claimed his rights as the legitimate successor and his formidable mother had secured that for him. The two sons of Robert had contested that right over many years and Bohemund had wrested much of the Apulian domains from his half-sibling, who was, militarily, no match for him in the field or in the loyalty he could command from his subjects. Thus he would be easily tempted to stir up trouble.
If Borsa could be bribed to take up arms, that might force Bohemund to look to save his Italian possessions; in short it might oblige him to hurry home with his army, a repeat of the well-funded upheavals that had saved the empire in the past. This he did on the grounds that such an army and such a presence on the soil of Romania, regardless of the stated cause, was too dangerous for imperial security.
He also felt obliged to send ahead messengers to deny the Apulians easy access to supplies and, for all the weakness of the forces he commanded and the responsibilities thereof, Comnenus despatched in his wake a strongly armed party to ensure that they continued to progress east and did not succumb to the temptation to set down in any one place. That it was no more than a gesture Comnenus knew, but he thought it one worth making.
The despatch from Durazzo reached a ruler who had enough troubles without worrying about Bohemund of Taranto, though his arrival, as well as the method of it, underlined a difficulty that would be the devil to deal with. In calling for help from the Christian powers of the West, Emperor Alexius Comnenus had already got a great deal more than he had bargained for and the primary part of that was standing before him now, a charismatic preacher called Peter the Hermit.
On his own Peter was not a problem; he was a holy man with the simple tastes of his title, ascetic enough to fast regularly, humble in his person, a man happy to live wholly by the tenets of his Lord Jesus Christ and who even looked – tall and thin, with his great beard and the way he leant on his full-length crook – like an Old Testament prophet.
The problem was the nature of the multitude he had inspired with his sermons, for, if there was a body of knights amongst those he had led to the East, the mass was an unruly mob containing, amongst the pious majority, some of the dregs of Europe. This host had come to the capital of Byzantium in their onward search for absolution for the entirety of their sins, this to be granted to them when Jerusalem was once more a Christian city.
From what Alexius Comnenus knew – he would admit his knowledge was incomplete and would remain so until a papal legate arrived – Pope Urban had talked only of the remission of past sins for those who took part in his Crusade. Peter, in his enthusiasm for the cause, had elevated that promise to a guarantee of entry to paradise for any who took up the challenge, which, if it had enthused many thousands of the genuinely devout, had also gathered to him those with a great deal to gain from such a pledge, a mass of ne’er-do-wells with crimes against their name from which they needed pardon if they were not to burn for eternity in the pits of Hell.
‘My people are good simple folk, Your Eminence, easily led astray.’
They are not all that, Alexius thought, though he was too much the diplomat to say so. There are murders, rapists, thieves of every sort included in your rabble and they are beyond control even by a saintly fellow such as yourself. That was not a criticism of Peter, who saw only good where other men saw a less palatable truth, and the evidence of his error had reached imperial ears long before his followers saw the walls of the city.
Peter’s so-called ‘People’s Crusade’ had left a swathe of destruction all across the lands of middle Europe – the Jews in their path had suffered most, with much slaughter of those who refused to convert added to the burning of synagogues. It had even led to armed conflict once they were inside the boundaries of the empire as they ravaged the countryside through which they passed. On coming to Constantinople they had posed a threat to the city itself and even more to the public peace, added to which Alexius had been required to feed them while they committed arson as a cover for their manifest transgressions.
He was still doing so but now at a pleasing distance; recognising that matters would not improve he had them shipped across to the town of Civetot, on the southern shores of the Gulf of Nicomedia where their depredations were out of his sight as well as those of the inhabitants of his capital. Yet it was far from being without concern given their continued dismal behaviour; he felt a responsibility, if not for their well-being at least for their survival, and the reports he had told him that their conduct had not changed – they were doing to northern Bithynia what they had been stopped from doing within the walls of Constantinople.
Having made his statement in support of the masses he had led here, Peter was obliged to wait for a spoken response – that was the way it should be: no man, however saintly, had the right to hurry a Roman emperor in his musings.
‘It concerns me,’ Alexius said finally, ‘that your people do not confine themselves to the area around Civetot that I have granted to them and in which they may reside till the crusading armies arrive. They raid out from the lands around the port and risk, in their foraging and, dare I say it, plundering, to upset the Turks of Nicaea, who will not sit idly by and let the lands they control be ravaged.’
‘Your lands, Eminence, Christian lands.’
Tempted to underline the nature of possession, Alexius demurred; Peter held a simple view that all lands were the property of his Christian God, while the Emperor knew that the sword of Islam held greater sway.
‘While the supplies you send us are adequate,’ Peter continued, ‘and you are to be thanked for your Christian charity in providing such, there are those who have come to expect, given they are set upon God’s work, that they deserve more.’
‘What is it you require, Peter?’ Alexius asked suppressing a sigh. Tempted to tell Peter to go to the devil he knew that bribery was so much easier than condemnation.
‘More grain, a better supply of meats and also wine.’ Peter was about to go on, when the noisy arrival of a high Byzantine official obliged him stop; the fellow, a much trusted aide and close imperial advisor called Manuel Boutoumites was obviously intent on speaking to the Emperor without delay, which he did when signalled to speak.
‘Majesty, news has come from Xerigordos. A party of knights has attacked the town and taken the fortress there. It is reported they intend to use it as a base to raid deeper into the Sultanate of Rüm.’
If Peter the Hermit was astonished at the language such news produced and from a man said to be as pious as Alexius, it was a measure of the shock and anger the Emperor felt, even if this had been something he feared. Xerigordos was well beyond the range of any previous raid, and worse, it was a Turkish fortress, if not a very important one. Such an act was both premature and dangerous: the last thing Alexius wanted was to stir up trouble on his borders when he was too weak to easily contain it and the military aid he expected from Europe was yet to arrive. He did not count the knights who had come with the People’s Crusade to be that, a fact Alexius made plain to the Hermit once he had established the size of the force engaged, a mere five hundred men in all, the majority foot soldiers.
‘The Turks will not let that stand.’
Peter was taken aback and it was plain on his face. ‘Can you not support them, Eminence?’
‘No I cannot, so it falls to you, good man, or a messenger sent by you, to tell them to withdraw at once.’
CHAPTER TWO
It had all started so well for the men who took the Castle of Xerigordos, as it had for the whole People’s Crusade. The fertile northern plains of Bithynia seemed entirely clear of any defence and Kilij Arslan, the Turk who had taken to himself the title of the Sultan of Rüm, remained within the formidable walls of Nicaea and seemed passive regarding the arrival of these thousands of pilgrims as well as indifferent to their activities.
Having settled around Civetot it was only days before marauding parties set out from the coastal town to bring mayhem and destruction to the surrounding countryside, in much the same manner as they had done on the way to Constantinople. Much of that pillaging, in terms of distance, was constrained by the lack of suitable transport for the mostly foot-bound and untrained host, but that did not apply to parties led by well-armed and mounted knights, most notably those raiding under the banner of Reinald the Alemanni.
Ranging further afield they had enjoyed complete freedom to despoil any settlements they found while paying scant attention to the religious or vassalage ties of their victims; it mattered not whether they were Christian Greeks or Turks and infidels. They represented booty for men who had come to the East seeking to gain profit from the Crusade as well as forgiveness. Finally the old and badly repaired fortress of Xerigordos, as well as the town that had grown around it, fell to Reinald and so easily that he, as well as the force he led, saw it as divine approval. The desire to partake of the fruits of that capture led to their downfall.
Three days of feasting, some pleasant slaughter of the menfolk and violation of the women, ended when a force of Kilij Arslan’s Turks appeared that outnumbered them three to one, the men Reinald led forced to take refuge in the run-down castle. There was no time to gather supplies of any kind, not that the town could provide much after it had been pillaged, but the real difficulty came when the Crusaders found that there was no water supply within the walls, a crippling handicap in a part of the world where, even in early October, the temperatures could be scorching.
Such a debilitating predicament was not aided by the need to constantly man the walls and, over several days, fight off well-coordinated attacks, which meant hails of deadly arrows from the numerous archers to which the defenders, with only lances and swords, had no way of replying. Reinald’s casualties, for that reason alone, had been bad from the first day of siege and had worsened since, till the number of shallow graves multiplied. Men became too weary to bother to bury their dead, and bodies, thrown over the parapet, were now rotting at the outer base of the castle walls.
Then there was the choking smoke, behind which Turks advanced to the very walls to set ladders against the parapet and engage in close combat – to a man already suffering from thirst, that on the lungs had a doubly nauseating effect, yet despite such tactics they repulsed assault after assault by deeds that would have been valorous in a better cause. But the need for liquids was the greatest drawback; after eight days, when the blood of their now dead horses was no longer available to ease their thirst, when they were reduced to dropping their leather girdles into the sewers then sucking them for a modicum of relief, or using what little urine their bodies produced to try to assuage their rasping throats, it was time to talk.
‘Do you think they know how badly we are placed?’
Reinald croaked this to one of his knights, a Lombard called Argyrus who, having served with the Normans, knew the Frankish tongue, as he watched his enemies prepare another assault. Really the question was: can you think of anything by which we can negotiate that I might have missed?
‘It was their castle, Reinald, they must know. That was why the garrison was too small to hold out against us, why we found it so easy to capture in the first place.’
‘There is no sign that anyone is coming to our relief.’
‘Do they even know we are under siege?’
Reinald conjured up enough saliva to sound as he had done a week before, arrogant and angry. ‘They must know, Argyrus, but they do not care.’
‘What will you offer?’
‘Only our swords, it’s all we have. Prepare a truce flag.’
The man in command of the Turks, a general called Elchanes, came within hailing distance, but he was not so trusting of Christians that he would come close enough to be struck down by a lance – not that the defenders had many of those kind of weapons left; too many had been cast at the men seeking to overcome the walls – with what followed being long-winded and confusing.
Elchanes had a Greek interpreter who could communicate with the likes of the Lombard Argyrus; he, in turn, had to translate for Reinald, though in truth there was little to discuss. To stay inside the walls was to die; to leave their protection was to rely on the word of the Turkish commander who seemed willing to accept them into military service as long as they came as a body.
Yet if Reinald was the leader of his small force it was far from homogenous – his men came from many different lands and nor was he so respected that he could issue orders and demand they be obeyed. They had a say in their fate and that led to a great deal of argument, with many reluctant to take up arms against their co-religionists, the very people with whom they had traversed many hundreds of leagues in order to seek salvation, set against those who were prepared to set that aside for a chance to live, on the very good grounds that their all-seeing God would observe they had no choice and thus forgive them their sin. A few even claimed that having come on Crusade, they enjoyed prior absolution.
‘And let me see a way to escape, brothers, and, with God’s aid, I will take it.’
That cry from a lone voice swayed the meeting and gave Reinald the right to offer them into the service of Kilij Arslan, a message Reinald sent from the walls just before he ordered the gates to be opened and for all of his men to stay gathered in the castle courtyard where they had debated their fate. The Turkish archers, who fought on both foot and mounted, trotted in on their small, fleet ponies heading right and left, an arrow nestled in each bow and eyes on the gathering that meant the slightest untoward move would result in a swift release.
Once they had fully encircled the Crusaders their general entered, surrounded by men with drawn swords, and Reinald, dragging Argyrus with him, walked forwards to execute a low bow. A hand signal from the Turk brought forward a man bearing a skin of water from which, much to the chagrin of their watching followers, the two men greedily drank. There was no sympathy in the act; Elchanes wanted them to be able to speak clearly.
‘He wants to know why we have come to this place, Reinald,’ Argyrus said, when the first words were spoken.
Reinald was looking at Elchanes, without his metal and leather helmet now, so his dark eyes, being unshaded, were visible. There was not much of an expression in either those or on his round and dark-skinned face, with skin heavily marked by pox. The lips were close to being as black as those eyes, thin and unsmiling.
‘He must know that already.’
‘I suggest,’ Argyrus replied, ‘that it would be wise to humour him.’
‘Tell him that we came to save our souls from eternal damnation.’
That was twice translated and the reply came back. ‘Such a wish is a simple matter, all you have to do is acknowledge the Prophet.’
‘We are Christians.’
That needed no translation and by saying it Reinald got a clear reaction, a look of real hate crossing that cratered Turkish face. The shout that came from Elchanes had every bow up and pointing, each archer picking a target, and Argyrus was obliged to tell Reinald that the order had come to lay down their weapons on the ground.
‘Weapons with which we have offered to serve the Sultan.’
Those words had no effect; the reply came back to do as they were commanded or die. While most complied, a goodly number declined only to suffer immediately as each took at least one arrow in the upper body and many of them several, which hastened those who had hesitated. The Turkish general then yelled a command accompanied by a huge sweep of the arm for the Christians to move out through the gate that rendered translation superfluous.
Bereft now of swords, daggers and shields, Reinald led his men out of the gate to where the main body of the Turkish force, weapons at the ready, was stretched out facing the curtain wall, against which the captured Christians were obliged to line up, the archers from within the fortress taking station on the parapet above their heads. Elchanes rode though the gate and yelled out another order, which had Argyrus, once it was given to him in Greek, crossing himself as he spoke.
‘We have a choice, Reinald, to convert to Islam or to die where we stand.’
‘He accepted our terms.’
‘Look at his eyes, Reinald. If he ever did, he does not do so now.’
What followed was horrible to observe. One at a time men were dragged forward and asked to forswear the religion into which they had been born. Those who accepted were spared, had their hands tied and were led away, those who refused immediately had their throats cut to the neck bone with a dying prayer on their lips, their bodies dragged away to be thrown onto a rising mound of dead flesh. Reinald and Argyrus, when their turn came, took the same course as the majority and forswore.
‘Ask what is to become of us, Argyrus, now that we have converted to Islam?’
The reply came back, once translated, with an accompanying laugh, to tell the survivors that the Sultanate of Rüm always had need of slaves.
Word reached Civetot within two days, and if the fact that men had died was enough to enrage the multitude, the forced conversions to Islam were even more maddening to the more vocal priests and the deeply religious amongst the host, preachers every bit as inspiring as Peter the Hermit. A council was immediately called with the general opinion, much pushed by the divines, being that such an infamy could not be allowed to pass. The whole of the People’s Crusade in their thousands should shoulder their weapons and move out to attack the city of Nicaea, many loudly acclaiming that they had stayed passive long enough.
A few voices demurred, but they were wiser than the mob or the priests, for they tended to be the men who knew about warfare, mounted knights, amongst whom the most vocal and respected was the Frenchman, Walter Sansavoir. He pointed out that the city they were proposing to assault had repelled several attempts by the armies of Byzantium to overcome its formidable walls. Those who disagreed with him, and some of them shared his fighting experience, argued that by moving they would oblige those very same Byzantine forces to come to their aid and the combination must overwhelm the defences.
In the end it was the prospect of plunder that swung the vote towards action, indeed the very nature of many of the people that made up the People’s Crusade. Stark indeed was the truth when set against what had gone before, which was in too many cases no more than rank religious hypocrisy designed to mask naked greed, this from adventurers who had thought of nothing since setting out from their European hovels and manor houses other than the fabled riches of the East. The more honest pilgrims were souls with no fear of death; had not Peter the Hermit promised that if they perished on this venture their entry to heaven was assured? So overwhelming was the sentiment to march that those who disagreed could not stand against it.
The host that set out next day was indeed formidable if seen from a distance and spread across the landscape: three hundred plus mounted knights trained in the art of war, at least the same number who at some time in their lives had borne arms in battle as milities, able to use pikes for defence and axes as well as sharp daggers in close combat. The remainder, and they were several thousand in number, were stave- and pitchfork-carrying peasants so fired by their faith to be sure that when they came to the walls of Nicaea, they would, like those of Jericho, tumble to the sound of their combined prayers.
In such a ragged army there was scant discipline and if Walter Sansavoir had agreed to take the lead, he did not have anything like overarching control; what he had was dispute if he even attempted to issue an order, so that midway through the second day, as much due to heat as disorderliness, the host utterly lacked any kind of cohesion and that was exposed when before them they could observe, on an open plain with no protection from a flank assault, a large force of disciplined Turks advancing to meet them and one of which they had gained no prior warning.
‘We should have tried to withdraw,’ reported a Lombard knight called Sigibuld, his torn, cross-bearing surplice still covered in his own blood, mixed with those with whom he had fought, the whole overlain with dirt of a battlefield and a long and dangerous flight. ‘Many suggested it but Walter Sansavoir asked how it could be done with a rabble over which we had little control when advancing.’
‘The enterprise was foolish,’ Alexius replied, his voice weary. ‘You should never have gone beyond Civetot.’
‘We did not expect to meet Kilij Arslan in open battle,’ Sigibuld protested.
‘The Sultan led them in person?’
‘They cried out his name when they attacked.’
‘What a price to pay for a lesson known to every soldier,’ said Manuel Boutoumites, titled Curopalates and thus high enough in rank as a trusted advisor to speak unbidden in the presence of his Emperor. ‘Never underestimate your enemy.’
Alexius nodded and a lifted finger was a signal for Sigibuld to continue, which he did in a voice devoid of emotion.
‘We tried to form up as best we could. Walter had we knights take up position to the front, mixed with the men who knew how to use weapons so that we could present a defence, the aim to let the Turks know that any attack would cost them dear. The rest we sought to keep to the rear but they would not listen, so convinced were they, egged on by the priests, that God would surely smite their enemies before they even came within longbow shot. I think they expected bolts of lightning to come from the sky.’
‘The Bible tells us it has been so,’ intoned Peter the Hermit, which got him a look from a more secular emperor. ‘The Old Testament tells of many times when God has interceded to protect his flock. Think of the parting of the Red Sea …’
That had the courtiers in attendance shifting uncomfortably, for if they were good sons of the Church they were also men who knew that miracles were caused more by imagination than divine intervention. There were soldiers of the empire amongst them too, like Boutoumites, and they had to work hard not to scoff at the old man’s words. Alexius gave Peter a look that, if it was gentle, demanded his silence, then indicated that Sigibuld should continue with his tale.
‘The priests had them kneel and entreat before the Turks launched their assault, as if the power of prayer alone would stop them from attacking. They were still at their devotions when the first arrows landed amongst them, and packed as they were the bolts did great slaughter. It was as if the shock broke their spirit, for they set up a great wailing and gnashing, many claiming that God had deserted them. They began to rush about both in front and behind we fighting men and lost what little unity they had possessed.’
‘Easy meat for the Turkish archers?’
Sigibuld dropped his head when Alexius said that, his voice seeming now to come from the depths of his belly.
‘We could not move to break up their formations without we trampled our own people, this while the mounted archers got to our rear, dashing forward to fire an arrow then withdrawing before we could inflict any damage upon them. Kilij Arslan then sent his swordsmen into the melee of pilgrims. Many who died were on their knees begging for forgiveness, the rest began to scatter, running in all directions, which left we fighting men to face a full assault from a force greater than our own with the need to do battle on both flanks as well as to our front.’
‘How many survived?’ Alexius asked, cutting across Sigibuld.
He did not want to hear what this Lombard was about to tell him, of the butchery which followed and how it was achieved; he had fought the Turks too many times himself, had seen their mounted archers ride forward and, while still moving, launch a flood of arrows at a defensive line cowering under shields. In his mind’s eye he could see how that would, on an open battlefield, pin the defenders so that their enemy could get round their flanks and begin to crush them between twin pincers in a way that meant resistance would be flattened.
‘If there is indeed place in heaven,’ Sigibuld continued, avoiding the direct question, ‘for those who perish on this venture, then surely the likes of Walter will gain entry and glory when they do. Many knights fought on even when their bodies were pierced by the Turkish bolts and took many of the infidel with them before they finally fell.’
‘And you, Sigibuld, how did you get clear?’
That made the Lombard pull himself up to his full height; there was in the question the accusation of him being less of a man than those he had named. ‘We were still mounted and when those we had chosen to lead were slain it was obvious that no other choice presented itself but flight. The Turkish horses were blown from their previous exertions and sluggish in pursuit, but more in our favour was the way their compatriots fell upon the bodies of the dead to strip and mutilate them.’
‘How many got away?’
‘Around seventy knights.’
‘And the pikemen?’
‘They, being on foot, were less fortunate. Some did survive by throwing away their weapons and hanging on to our stirrup leathers.’
‘And where are they now?’
‘Defending Civetot, Highness, which is why I have come on here and in haste, stopping not even to remove the blood and filth from my person. The town and the remaining pilgrims are at risk if the Turks keep advancing, for there is nothing of a fighting nature to prevent it. I have come to ask that you either provide men to defend the town or send ships to withdraw the people left behind, the women and children as well as those too old or infirm to fight.’
They could smell Civetot long before any of the boats sent to bring off the remaining pilgrims ever sailed into the Gulf of Nicomedia, the great bight, on the southern arm of which the wretched town sat. Never a place of beauty it was ravaged now, the churches burnt shells and the homes of those who had lived here torn down into dust. Rotting carcasses of flesh leave a high odour in a warm climate, yet it was testament to the amount of slaughter that it could be discerned so far from the shore that there could be no doubt what the sailors would find when they set foot on the beach.
Kilij Arslan had indeed come on from the massacre described by Sigibuld, to attack a settlement bereft of any means of resistance. There were survivors, but few, the kind who had rushed into the sea and managed to stay afloat as the butchery was accomplished on land. There were also those the Turks had thought dead, buried so deep in a pile of bodies that the fact of their still breathing was undetectable, a few dozens from the many thousands to tell the tale of what had occurred, about a host who had no interest in conversion to Islam but only in killing what they saw as a plague.
There had been others who avoided the massacre: young women and boys who could be sold into carnal servitude, the few fit men who had not marched off with the army able to work as slaves aboard galleys or in quarries. For the rest they were killed; women not of tender years were of no use and neither were small children, infants and newly born babies. The old were despatched as a matter of course and the Turks had gathered those they had slain into a great mound of suppurating flesh that had left the ground around it, where their tuns of blood had leached out from the ferociously administered wounds, as soggy as a bog.
Peter the Hermit had come as well and many wondered at his silent thoughts as he surveyed the death of both his hopes and his Crusade. Was his faith still intact? Did he think, like the victims over whose bodies he prayed must have thought, that their dreams were delusions? Or did he believe these souls to be martyred and already in paradise? No one asked Peter and he was not speaking.
‘Go back to Constantinople,’ said the man Alexius had put in command of the ships, ‘and tell the Emperor that the People’s Crusade is no more.’
CHAPTER THREE
The Apulian army was unaware of what had happened ahead of them and would have shown indifference if they had been told – what else could be expected of a force of peasants? Many were experienced mercenary soldiers who had previously marched along the ancient Via Egnatia, as were the mailed and mounted Norman knights who moved east with them, not least their leader. Just over ten years previously the then Duke of Apulia, Robert de Hauteville, had been obliged to curtail a second bite at conquest, required to go home to suppress an insurrection of his ever-discontented barons, whose natural bellicosity had been watered by Byzantine gold.
Bohemund had been entrusted to continue his father’s invasion, and given that he had suffered an ultimate reverse, not all of his memories of this land were ones to be covered in a golden glow. The memory dimmed even more as he recalled that the deeper he had pushed into Macedonia and Thessaly the greater became the difficulties for the forces he had led, as much from the terrain as from enemy action to slow his progress, as well as the determination of the Emperor Alexius Comnenus to bring him to battle on a field of his choosing.
If there had been many successes, in the end he had been beaten by a combination of factors: campaign weariness after endless forced marches, a dearth of plunder and a lack of reinforcements added to that staple weapon of the enemy he faced – wealth with which to bribe his father’s Apulian subjects as well as Bohemund’s captains in the field. Both led men who fought for no higher cause than their own personal gain, a right his followers had exercised when he had been forced to absent himself from the campaign at the same time as an emissary, a fellow Norman in the imperial service, appeared from the Emperor Alexius laden with treasure, an act which broke the cohesion of a tired army and led to an ignominious retreat.
Unlike on his previous incursion Bohemund had no desire to push his men in the kind of swift march required to seek and wrong-foot an opponent, he being in no hurry to get to Constantinople. Other large bodies of Christian knights were on the way from Northern Europe and Germany, one of which, from the Duchy of Lower Lorraine, should already be near the capital having taken the route through Hungary. They would join those who had embarked from the ports of Bari and Brindisi under Hugh of Vermandois.
Bohemund, busy gathering his own forces in the port cities which he controlled, had met to talk with and entertain Vermandois, as well as to seek some measure of his opinions on the forthcoming campaign, only to find himself conversing with a vainglorious fool who had never independently led men in a real battle. This boded ill for the future since, given his royal connection to the King of France, Vermandois saw himself as the leader by right of the whole enterprise. That was not an opinion Bohemund accepted and he had enough respect for Alexius Comnenus, even if he had never met him, to believe he too would smoke that Vermandois was a dolt.
It was most certainly not one likely to be shared by the other powerful warlords who would follow in the wake of Vermandois, especially the contingents from Toulouse and Provence, reputed to be commanded by the men who had first responded to a personal plea from Pope Urban. Likewise, those from Normandy, Flanders and England would have men in their ranks who would not readily take commands from another, for they included amongst their number the second son of William the Conqueror. It was good fortune that Count Hugh’s brother, the King, clearly a man of some sagacity, had sent with Hugh his constable, Walo of Chaumont, who was both a good soldier and, being a high official of the French Court, a practised diplomat.
So, several bodies were reported to be ahead of the Apulians and would thus be earliest to the Byzantine capital, there to meet with Alexius and to have set the terms by which the Western armies would help to reconquer imperial lands, news of which would come to Bohemund before he reached Constantinople. Prior knowledge of what would be asked for would allow the Apulian leader to play a better hand, for, if Palestine was the ultimate aim, that presaged a long, arduous campaign over hundreds of leagues and difficult terrain, fraught with as many difficulties as opportunities.
Unlike some of the other leaders who would answer Pope Urban’s call to Crusade Bohemund was too experienced a warrior and general to be blinded by the mysticism of the enterprise. If the aim was sacred the task was military and that required those who undertook it to be pragmatic. Added to that he was a near neighbour and recent enemy who knew Byzantium too well to just accord them the kind of Christian brotherhood likely to be spoken of in other bands of warriors, most tellingly its troubled history and endemic lack of stability.
No one who aspired to or wore the imperial diadem could ever feel safe and that had been too often proved over centuries in a court full of intrigue, where either violence or poison lay behind every marble column. He had grown up with tales of both in execution; the deposed ruler if he was not killed was at least rendered harmless by having his eyes put out.
Alexius Comnenus, now in his fifteenth year of rule, had lasted longer than most. He might have come to power through a kinder deposition, but he had acceded to the throne in a palace coup that saw his predecessor, himself a usurper, despatched with eyes intact to live out his days in a monastery. It was just as likely that there were plots being hatched to remove the present incumbent of the imperial throne regardless of his abilities, which were manifestly high. That was the nature of the polity and had been since the time of Constantine, founder of the city that bore his name.
Whoever ruled Byzantium was required to be well versed in the devious arts of intrigue as well as deception and Alexius would be no exception. Bohemund surmised he would seek to use the forces granted to him by Western religious fervour to further the aims of the Eastern Empire. That he would do so was not to be despised; no ruler who wished to secure his throne could afford to behave in any other fashion. Yet it was as well to be aware that such priorities would colour every act of Byzantine support; Bohemund was prepared to sup with his one-time enemy Alexius, but he would do so with a long spoon.
The first task once all the contingents converged would be to push back the Seljuk Turks. They had been advancing west over many decades, as much an enemy to their Mohammedan co-religionists as the Greeks, Jews and Armenians over whom they now ruled. They had steadily eaten into the Eastern Empire, making their most telling gains after the disastrous Battle of Manzikert a quarter of a century previously. There the flower of the Byzantine army had gone down to a disastrous and total defeat that included the capture of the then emperor, Romanos Diogenes.
That reverse proved so comprehensive that Constantinople had never recovered the initiative, indeed it had struggled to hold on to what it still possessed on the southern side of the Bosphorus and had asked, many times and to no avail, for help from their Christian brethren of the West. These pleas for aid were sent to Roman pontiffs who had enough trouble on their own doorstep, often from the Normans, more regularly from the King of the Germans, to even think of what was happening in the East.
Added to that there was a definite schism that was far from being healed around certain disagreements about priestly celibacy, the proper way to conduct the Mass and the use of unleavened bread to denote the body of Christ. More tellingly divisive was a refusal from the Patriarch of Constantinople to acknowledge the Vicar of Rome as head of the entirety of the Christian Church, both Orthodox and Latin, these matters now fifty years in dispute.
Left to its own devices, Byzantium had struggled. The Turks had expanded their gains against a weakened empire to become a threat to the imperial capital itself, in possession of the heavily fortified city of Nicaea, within three days’ marching distance of Constantinople, having established what they called the Sultanate of Rüm, an Arabic corruption of Rome, which went some way to establish their aims. One day they aspired to take all of the Eastern Roman Empire; what kept them in check now was not Byzantine resistance but their own ability to fall out amongst themselves.
