Jack Ludlow: Prince of Legend

Yet the main body had come to worry the Sultan more: they had swept aside one attempt to check them at the Battle of Dorylaeum, then, with seeming impunity, had marched across Anatolia and Armenia to invest mighty Antioch, once the third greatest city in the Roman Empire, and this had provoked a spirited reaction. Both the sons of the Sultan had separately tried to relieve Antioch — they hated each other too much to combine — and had been fought off and forced to flee. What was coming now was of a different order of magnitude.

Safety lay with the walls and that had now been achieved, yet if going from months of investing Antioch to possession of the city was change enough, to also turn from besieger to being besieged was singular. To simultaneously be both was the strangest state of all for they must contain this citadel and its garrison, a bane throughout the months of siege, standing, as it did, on such an elevated mountain top location as to give it a clear sight of any preparations being made for an assault on gates or walls.

Likewise, any gathering and movement of mobile forces on the Antiochene Plain had to take place in plain view, allowing the late Yaghi Siyan to send out his mounted archers to counter any threat, or to merely ensure that the gates or section of the walls the besiegers were aiming to attack were both closed and well defended. This made worse what was an already gruelling task, for the defences of Antioch were legendary in their construction.

No pilgrim knight, on the return journey from Jerusalem, failed to mention to his avid home listeners how formidable they were. Sat at the base of two mountains and with the River Orontes on Antioch’s western flank, the walls were held to be impregnable. Not only did they restrict the attacker on the riverside, constricting the area in which a besieger could operate, but the high and multi-towered walls rose up the steep mountainsides in a way that made them impossible to overcome; the citadel, if it did not enjoy these advantages to the same degree, was nevertheless a redoubtable fortress in its own right.

‘There is no taking this place but by ladders,’ said Tancred, in response to the retort by Shams ad-Daulah, the way that was said testimony to how hard such an assault would be.

The response from his uncle was equally grim in tone. ‘Yet take it we must.’

The truth of Tancred’s assertion was self-evident: the walls were high, the garrison that had escaped into the fort from the lower city likely to be numerous and aware their sole options were surrender or death. From the gate before which they stood ran a winding path that led down into the teeming city and that would need to be held at all costs, while the single piece of flat ground before it was the one on which both these knights stood, the rest being surrounded by screed-covered inclines which would not allow for the application of any other form of siege equipment.

Bohemund’s response that it must be taken was just as apposite: the main threat was not from within the walls of the citadel but before the main defences of the city, yet there was no doubt Shams ad-Daulah would essay out to do battle if he were allowed, which meant a split in the forces opposing him.

Those two difficulties were confounded by the fact that Antioch was not in a good state of supply. Eight months of diminishing provisions — slowly the besiegers had increased their stranglehold on the city gates — had left it short of food. In eight months the Crusaders had near stripped the locality bare and with Kerbogha approaching fast there was little time for the Crusaders to forage, of necessity far and wide, and make good that combined dearth.

‘Then let us hope for another betrayal, nephew, that there is someone within the walls that wants so badly to live that he will deny his faith.’

Bohemund turned to engage the Armenian who had facilitated his entry, a man who spoke good Greek. ‘Firuz, put your best efforts to making contact with someone, anyone inside.’

‘Lord Bohemund!’

That call forced him to face an approaching messenger, clearly intent on delivering a communication of some import judging by the speed of his approach and his concerned expression, as well as his sweaty demeanour.

‘Count Raymond of Toulouse has taken possession of the Bridge Gate and his standard flies above it.’

Bohemund uttered a hissed curse, for if anyone had stood in the way of his claim of conquest it was the aforesaid Raymond. He looked beyond him to see the truth of the words spoken, for the gate was visible from where he stood, as was every feature of the huge city. Then he turned once more to gaze up at the solid and impressive walls of the citadel. Softly he addressed Tancred, who would also know the importance of that information.

‘Not all our fights, it seems, will be here in the coming weeks.’

The bright red standard with the gilded Occitan cross, the flag of the Count of Toulouse, fluttered from the Bridge Gate barbican to taunt Bohemund the closer he approached. The most powerful, as well as the wealthiest of the crusading princes, this Provencal magnate had never been happy with the application of the right of conquest, for the fear it would not fall to him. He had chosen well if he intended to dispute possession of the city with the leader of the Apulian Normans as well as the banner high above the city that proclaimed it as a fief for Bohemund.

Outside the Bridge Gate lay the only crossing of the River Orontes, while over that arched stone bridge ran the roads that led north and south as well as to the coast and the port of St Simeon. These were all the points from which any supplies could come to what was now becoming a Crusader garrison and one Toulouse could choke off from resupply if he so chose.

As of this moment the Bridge Gate, like the rest of the entries to Antioch, was wide open: knights who had spent months outside Antioch — Provencal, Normans, Apulians and Lotharingians in their thousands — were busy moving all their possessions into the city and behind them would come their foot-slogging milities , then those who provided support for an army on campaign: camp wives, sutlers, farriers, armourers, harness and saddle makers, as well as the drovers who looked after food on the hoof, people without which no host could hope to survive in the field.

Last to enter would be the mass of non-combatant religious pilgrims who had increasingly swelled the numbers travelling to Palestine in the wake of the fighting men, all intent on finding remission for past sins as promised to them by Pope Urban. Useless mouths, who nevertheless demanded to be fed, they could not be left outside: Kerbogha would simply massacre them.

To observe the army, as it trickled through the gates, was to cast an eye over a much diminished force, for it was no longer the all-powerful entity that had crossed the Bosphorus from Constantinople the previous year; siege warfare, battles in the field, disease, loss of faith in the crusading ideal leading to desertion had plagued them prior to Antioch.

The long siege had only multiplied every one of those difficulties tenfold and nowhere was that more obvious than in their lack of horses. The main advantage for western knights in combat lay in their ability to impose their will by a shock charge when mounted, the foot soldiers used more as an aid to that than a body able to affect the outcome of a battle on their own.

Now that force of knights could barely muster one horse for every tenth lance and in terms of quality they could not compare with the kind of mounts with which they had set out from home; too many of those had died on the way. The Normans, in particular, whether from the rain-washed north or sun-baked Southern Italy, were reckoned the most fearsome warriors in the known world but that reputation rested on animals they no longer possessed, the sturdy destriers as fearless as the men who rode them.