Chapter III: The First Crusade (2)

Nine or ten months later Peter Barthelemy paid the penalty of his life for his fraud or his superstition. A bribe taken by his master Raymond brought that chief into ill odour with his comrades, and let loose against his chaplain the tongue of Arnold, the chaplain of Bohemond. Raymond had traded on fresh visions of his clerk; and Arnold boldly attacked him in his citadel by denying the genuineness of the Holy Lance. Peter appealed to the ordeal of fire. He passed through the flames, as it seemed, unhurt. The bystanders pressed to feel his flesh, and were vehement in their rejoicings at the result which vindicated his integrity. He had really received fatal injuries. Twelve days afterwards he died, and Raymond suffered greatly in his dignity and his influence.

[Sidenote: Battle of Antioch.]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1098. June 28.]

[Sidenote: Defeat of Kerboga.]

[Sidenote: Antioch made a principality for Bohemond.]

The infidel was doomed; but the crusaders resolved to give him one chance of escape. Peter the Hermit was sent as their envoy to Kerboga to offer the alternative of departure from a land which St. Peter had bestowed on the faithful, or of baptism which should leave him master of the city and territory of Antioch. The reply was short and decisive. The Turk would not embrace an idolatry which he hated and despised, nor would he give up soil which belonged to him by right of conquest. The report of the hermit raised the spirit of the crusaders to fever heat; and on the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul they marched out in twelve divisions, in remembrance of the mission of the twelve apostles, while Raymond of Toulouse remained to prevent the escape of the Turks shut up in the citadel. The Holy Lance was borne by the papal legate, Adhemar, bishop of Puy; and the morning air laden with the perfume of roses was now regarded as a sign assuring them of the divine favour. They were prepared to see good omens in everything; and they went in full confidence that departed saints would, as they had been told, take part in the battle and smite down the infidel. The fight (one of brute force on the Christian side, of some little skill as well as strength on the other) had gone on for some time when such help seemed to become needful. Tancred had hurried to the aid of Bohemond who was grievously pressed by Kilidje Arslan; and Kerboga was bearing heavily on Godfrey and Hugh of Vermandois, when, clothed in white armour and riding on white horses, some human forms were seen on the neighbouring heights. ‘The saints are coming to your aid,’ shouted the bishop of Puy, and the people saw in these radiant strangers the martyrs St. George, St. Maurice, and St. Theodore. Without awaiting their nearer approach the crusaders turned on the enemy with a force and fury which were now irresistible. Their cavalry could do little. Two hundred horses only remained of the sixty thousand which had filled the plain a few months before. But the hedge of spears advanced like a wall of iron, and the Turks gave way, broke, and fled. It was rout, not retreat; and with the crusaders victory was followed by the massacre of men, women, and children. The garrison in the citadel at once surrendered. Some declared themselves Christians and were baptized; those who refused to abandon Islam were taken to the nearest Mohamedan territory. The city was the prize of Bohemond; and in his keeping it remained, although Raymond of Toulouse had made an effort to seize it by hoisting his banner on the walls. The work of pillage being ended, the churches were cleansed and repaired, and their altars blazed with golden spoils taken from the infidel. The Greek patriarch was again seated on his throne: but he held his office at the good pleasure of the Latins, and two years later he was made to give place to Bernard, a chaplain of the bishop of Puy.

[Sidenote: Mission of Hugh of Vermandois to Constantinople.]

Ten months had passed away after the conquest of Antioch when the main body of the crusading army set out on its march to Jerusalem. They had wished to depart at once, but their chiefs dreaded to encounter waterless wastes at the end of a Syrian summer, and for the present they were content to send Hugh of Vermandois and Baldwin of Hainault as envoys to the Greek emperor, to reproach him with his remissness or his want of faith. But the miseries endured by Christians and Turks were the pleasantest tidings in the ears of Alexios, for in the weakening of both lay his own strength; and he saw with satisfaction the departure of Hugh, not for Antioch, but for Europe, whither Stephen of Chartres had preceded him.

[Sidenote: Death of Adhemar, bishop of Puy.]

[Sidenote: Siege and capture of Marra.]

Winter came; but the chiefs still lingered at Antioch. Some were occupied in expeditions against neighbouring cities: but a more pressing care was the plague which punished the foulness and disorder of the pilgrims. A band of 1,500 Germans, recently landed in strong health and full equipments, were all, it is said, cut off; and among the victims the most lamented perhaps was the papal legate Adhemar. A feeling of discouragement was again spreading through the army generally. The chiefs vainly entreated the pope to visit the city where the disciples of St. Peter first received the Christian name; the people were disheartened by the animosities and the selfish or crooked policy of their chiefs. Raymond still hankered after the principality of Antioch, and insisted that Bohemond and his people, like the men of the three trans-jordanic tribes in the days of Joshua, should share in the last great enterprise of the crusade. More disgraceful than these feuds were the scenes witnessed during the siege and after the conquest of Marra. Heedlessness and waste soon brought the assailants to devour the flesh of dogs and of human beings. The bodies of Turks were torn from their sepulchres, ripped up for the gold which they were supposed to have swallowed, and the fragments cooked and eaten. Of the besieged many slew themselves to avoid falling into the hands of the Christians; to some Bohemond, tempted by a large bribe, gave an assurance of safety. When the massacre had begun, he ordered these to be brought forward. The weak and old he slaughtered; the rest he sent to the slave-markets of Antioch.

[Sidenote: A. D. 1099. May march of the crusaders from Antioch.]

A weak attempt made by Alexios to detain the crusaders only spurred them to more vigorous efforts. They had already left Antioch, and Laodicea was in their hands, when he desired them to await his coming in June. The chiefs, remembering the departure of Tatikios (p. 62) with his Byzantine troops for Cyprus, retorted that he had broken his compact, and had therefore no further claims on their obedience. Hastening on their way, they crossed the plain of Berytos (Beyrout), overlooked by the eternal snows of Lebanon, along the narrow strip of land whence the great Phenician cities had sent their seamen and their colonists, with all the wealth of the East, to the shores of the Adriatic and the gates of the Mediterranean. Having reached Jaffa, they turned inland to Ramlah, a town sixteen miles only from Jerusalem. Two days later the crusaders came in sight of the Holy City, the object of their long pilgrimage, the cause of wretchedness and death to millions. As their eyes rested on the scene hallowed to them through all the associations of their faith, the crusaders passed in an instant from fierce enthusiasm to a humiliation which showed itself in sighs and tears. All fell on their knees, to kiss the sacred earth and to pour forth thanksgivings that they had been suffered to look upon the desire of their eyes. Putting aside their armour and their weapons, they advanced in pilgrim’s garb and with bare feet towards the spot which the Saviour had trodden in the hours of his agony and his passion.

[Sidenote: June. Siege of Jerusalem.]

[Sidenote: July. Storming of the city.]

But before their feelings of devotion could be indulged, there was other work to be done. The chiefs took up their posts on those sides from which the nature of the ground gave most hope of a successful assault. On the northern side were Godfrey and Tancred, Robert of Flanders, and Robert of Normandy; on the west Raymond with his Provencals. On the fifth day, without siege instruments, with only one ladder, and trusting to mere weight, the crusaders made a desperate assault upon the walls. Some succeeded in reaching the summit, and the very rashness of their attack struck terror for a moment into their enemies. But the garrison soon rallied, and the invaders were all driven back or hurled from the ramparts. The task, it was manifest, must be undertaken in a more formal manner. Siege engines must be made, and the palm and olive of the immediate neighbourhood would not supply fit materials for their construction. These were obtained from the woods of Shechem, a distance of thirty miles; and the work of preparation was carried on under the guidance of Gaston of Bearn by the crews of some Genoese vessels which had recently anchored at Jaffa. So passed away more than thirty days, days of intense suffering to the besiegers. At Antioch they had been distressed chiefly by famine: in place of this wretchedness they had here the greater miseries of thirst. The enemy had carefully destroyed every place which might serve as a receptacle of water; and in seeking for it over miles of desolate country they were exposed to the harassing attacks of Moslem horsemen. Nor had visions and miracles improved the morals or discipline of the camp; and the ghost of Adhemar of Puy appeared to rebuke the horrible sins which were drawing down upon them the judgments of the Almighty. Better service was done by the generosity of Tancred, who made up his quarrel with Raymond; and the enthusiasm of the crusaders was again roused by the preaching of Arnold (p. 68) and the hermit Peter. The narrative of the siege of Jericho in the book of Joshua suggested probably the procession in which the clergy singing hymns preceded the laity round the walls of the city. The Saracens on the ramparts mocked their devotions by throwing dirt upon crucifixes: but they paid a terrible price for these insults. On the next day the final assault began, and was carried on through the day with the same monotony of brute force and carnage which marked all the operations of this merciless war. The darkness of night brought no rest. The actual combat was suspended, but the besieged were incessantly occupied in repairing the breaches made by the assailants, while these were busied in making their dispositions for the last mortal conflict. In the midst of that deadly struggle, when it seemed that the Cross must after all go down before the Crescent, a knight was seen on Mount Olivet, waving his glistening shield to rouse the champions of the Holy Sepulchre to the supreme effort. ‘It is St. George the Martyr who has come again to help us,’ cried Godfrey, and at his words the crusaders started up without a feeling of fatigue and carried everything before them. The day, we are told, was Friday, the hour was three in the afternoon (the moment at which the last cry from the cross announced the accomplishment of the Saviour’s passion), when Letold of Tournay stood, the first victorious champion of the cross, on the walls of Jerusalem. Next to him came, we are told, his brother Engelbert: the third was Godfrey. Tancred with the two Roberts stormed the gate of St. Stephen; the Provencals climbed the ramparts by ladders, and the conquest of Jerusalem was achieved. The insults offered a little while ago to the crucifixes were avenged by Godfrey’s orders in the massacre of hundreds; the carnage in the mosque of Omar swept away the bodies of thousands in a deluge of human blood. The Jews were all burnt alive in their synagogues. The horses of the crusaders, who rode up to the porch of the temple, were (so the story goes) up to the knees in the loathsome stream; and the forms of Christian knights hacking and hewing the bodies of the living and the dead furnished a pleasant commentary on the sermon of Urban at Clermont.

[Sidenote: Adoration of the crusaders in the church of the Sepulchre.]

[Sidenote: Exaltation of Peter the Hermit.]

From the duties of slaughter these disciples of the Lamb of God passed to those of devotion. Bareheaded and barefooted, clad in a robe of pure white linen, in an ecstasy of joy and thankfulness mingled with profound contrition, Godfrey entered the church of the Holy Sepulchre and knelt at the tomb of his Lord. With groans and tears his followers came, each in his turn, to offer his praises for the divine mercy which had vouchsafed this triumph to the armies of Christendom. With feverish earnestness they poured forth the vows which bound them to sin no more, and the excitement of prayer and slaughter, perhaps of both combined, led them to see everything which might be needed to give effect to the closing scene of this appalling tragedy. As the saints had arisen from their graves when the Son of Man gave up the ghost on Calvary, so the spirits of the pilgrims who had died on the terrible journey came to take part in the great thanksgiving. Foremost among them was Adhemar of Puy, rejoicing in the prayers for forgiveness and the resolutions of repentance which promised a new era of peace upon earth and of good will towards all men. With departed saints were mingled living men who deserved all the honour which might be paid to them. The backsliding of the hermit Peter was blotted out of the memory of those who remembered only the fiery eloquence which had first called them to their now triumphant pilgrimage, and the zeal which had stirred the heart of Christendom to cut short the tyranny of the Unbeliever in the birth-land of Christianity. The assembled throng fell down at his feet, and gave thanks to God who had vouchsafed to them such a teacher. His task was done, and in the annals of the time Peter is heard of no more.

[Sidenote: Second and deliberate massacre in Jerusalem.]

On this dreadful day Tancred had spared three hundred captives to whom he had given a standard as a pledge of his protection and a guarantee of their safety. Such misplaced mercy was a crime in the eyes of the crusaders. The massacre of the first day may have been aggravated by the ungovernable excitement of victory: but it was resolved that on the next day there should be offered up a more solemn and deliberate sacrifice. The men whom Tancred had spared were all murdered; and the wrath of Tancred was roused not by their fate but by an act which called his honour into question. The butchery went on with impartial completeness, old and young, decrepit men and women, mothers with their infants, boys and girls, young men and maidens in the bloom of their vigour, all were mowed down, and their bodies mangled until heads and limbs were tossed together in awful chaos. A few were hidden away by Raymond of Toulouse; his motive, however, was not mercy, but the prospects of gain in the slave-market. After this great act of faith and devotion the streets of the Holy City were washed by Saracen prisoners; but whether these (like the women servants whom Odysseus strung up like sparrows after the slaughter of the suitors) were butchered when their work was ended we are not told.

[Sidenote: Compassion of Omar and Godfrey.]

Four centuries and a half had passed away, when these things were done, since Omar had entered Jerusalem as a conqueror and knelt outside the church of Constantine, that his followers might not trespass within it on the privileges of the Christians (p. 13). The contrast is at the least marked between the caliph of the Prophet and the children of the Holy Catholic Church.

[Sidenote: Election of Godfrey to the sovereignty of Jerusalem.]

[Sidenote: Battle of Ascalon.]

[Sidenote: Return of the pilgrims to Europe.]

When, the business of the slaughter being ended, the chiefs met to choose a king for the realm which they had won with their swords, one man only appeared to whom the crown could fitly be offered. Baldwin was lord of Edessa; Bohemond ruled at Antioch; Hugh of Vermandois and Stephen of Chartres had returned to Europe; Robert of Flanders cared not to stay; the Norman Robert had no mind to forfeit the duchy which he had mortgaged; and Raymond was discredited by his avarice, and in part also by his traffic in the visions of Peter Barthelemy. But in the city where his Lord had worn the thorny crown, the veteran leader who had looked on ruthless slaughter without blanching and had borne his share in swelling the stream of blood would wear no earthly diadem, nor take the title of king. He would watch over his Master’s grave and the interests of his worshippers under the humble guise of Baron and Defender of the Holy Sepulchre; and as such, a fortnight after his election, Godfrey departed to do battle with the hosts of the Fatimite caliph of Egypt, who now felt that the loss of Jerusalem was too high a price for the humiliation of his rivals. The conflict took place at Ascalon, and the Fatimite army was miserably routed. Godfrey returned to Jerusalem, to hang the sword and standard of the sultan before the Holy Sepulchre and to bid farewell to the pilgrims who were now to set out on their homeward journey. He retained, with 300 knights under Tancred, only 2,000 foot soldiers for the defence of his kingdom; and so ended the first act in the great drama of the crusades.