Jack Ludlow: Prince of Legend

Bohemund de Hauteville, Count of Taranto and leader of the Apulian Normans, stood on the narrow glacis before the massive and forbidding fortress that dominated the skyline. The citadel of Antioch had been the lynchpin of the city during the eight-month siege and a position from which Yaghi Siyan, the Turkish governor, had coordinated every act of the tenacious defence.

Designed for a twin purpose, it formed part of the mighty outer walls of the city but also served as a place to which the garrison could retreat if the mass of Antiochene citizens, Armenian Christians, broke out in revolt. The citadel was a stronghold with its own water cistern and storerooms that they could hold until the time came to reassert control.

Tancred of Lecce, Bohemund’s nephew, stood with him, both Crusaders covered from head to foot in the blood of the numberless victims they had slaughtered in a night of bloody mayhem that had brought the siege of the city to an end. It had been a sore trial of a contest, in which they had experienced both the abundance of food as well as near starvation, summer heat and winter chill, and fought battles against the near impenetrable walls as well as far to the east in open country, this to drive off two attempts at relief by the Seljuk Turks. Now, finally, the crusading army were inside, if not completely in control.

That last point was one of some importance and it did not merely apply to the Turks: prior to the fall, Bohemund had engaged in a battle of wills with his fellow crusading magnates as to who should have possession of Antioch when it fell, he insisting the law of conquest must apply — that whosoever could first breech the walls then raise their standard above the city, by long custom, should have possession of it.

A proposition originally and vehemently denied, especially by Counts Raymond of Toulouse and Hugh of Vermandois, it had only been acceded to when the position of the besiegers became so desperate that any means of achieving a result, in what was a rapidly deteriorating outlook, must be accepted.

A call went up to the new Turkish leader, who stood on the barbican that protected the gate, the demand simple: that he should open that portal and surrender. Shams ad-Daulah, eldest son of the now deceased governor, spoke neither the Frankish tongue nor Latin and Greek, so these words had to be translated into his own tongue, this carried out by the fellow who had aided Bohemund in the capture of the city.

A Muslim convert called Firuz, he had commanded one of the towers on the southern wall with a body of his fellow Armenians, initially with as much zeal as any of his Turkish contemporaries, only to find his efforts not appreciated by Yaghi Siyan, who had, to keep him loyal, stripped him of his possessions, an act that had rebounded spectacularly. Firuz had conspired with Bohemund and allowed his tower to be used as the point of entry.

‘You know who I am?’

‘Who could fail to recognise mighty Bohemund?’ the Greek-speaking interpreter replied, following his master’s lead.

There was truth in that; given his height and build, massive even for one of Norman blood, as well as his flaxen-coloured hair, not to mention his fame, he could be identified easily even at a distance. Bohemund stood head and shoulders above his peers, wherever they came from, even those from his father’s Normandy birthplace. Tancred, his mother a de Hauteville and of towering height himself, still conceded half a hand to his uncle.

‘On yonder high battlement you will see my banner.’

The pointed finger was hardly necessary; the huge red flag, with its diagonal bar showing the blue and white chequer of the de Hauteville family, flew stiff in a strong breeze and was easily visible from anywhere on the wide expanse of the River Orontes plain, lit as it was by the blazing morning sun.

‘We have possession of the city and we have the body of your father, who failed to make good his escape. If you wish that to be respected, and if you wish yourself to live, grant us possession of this fortress and march out with all honour.’

Two heads came close and composed the reply, which occasioned much discussion before the interpreter spoke once more. ‘My Lord esteems his father still, but says if he is dead, then his body is of no account, for his soul will surely be welcomed into paradise.’

‘Where your master shall join him,’ Bohemund responded.

This got a furious reaction from Shams ad-Daulah when translated, which his interpreter sought to pass on by a form of shouting strangely devoid of a similar level of passion.

‘Idle boast, Christian, you have got inside the walls of our city, but My Lord holds this citadel. Allah be praised, it is written that you will die here, for an army of the faithful is coming that will crush you like a fly.’

That had Tancred swiftly crossing himself, that being no idle boast: a Turkish relief force, led by a general with a fearsome reputation called Kerbogha, famed across Asia Minor for both the application of terror and military success, was marching towards Antioch, leading an army of such staggering reported numbers that made the notion of meeting them in open battle seem suicidal, given the crusading army was now a much reduced force, fully half the number it had been when they set out from Constantinople.

The Atabeg of Mosul, Kerbogha had, with the active support of the Sultan in Baghdad, united the many disparate elements of the interior, Turkish, Arab and Persian tribes that normally fought each other, melding them into a body large enough to annihilate these troublesome western invaders.

It was the approach of these forces that had prompted swift action from the Frankish princes in both pressing home the siege and accepting the law of conquest, for they feared to be crushed between the anvil of Yaghi Siyan’s stout defence of his city and the approaching host. Yet it was telling, and a testament to the strength of Antioch, that only internal betrayal had provided the key to its fall.

In essence, when it came to Kerbogha, the Crusaders were a victim of their own success: brought east by a plea from Pope Urban to aid Greek Byzantium in its century-old conflict with the Seljuk Turks, the true task was to proceed on to Palestine and free from the control of Islam the Holy Places of Christendom, visited each year by Christians in their thousands and from which came, regularly, tales of those pilgrims being maltreated — robbed, women molested, both they and their menfolk sometimes killed.

The fury engendered by such tales had come in the wake of yet another entreaty from the Emperor Alexius Comnenus — there had been dozens over the previous decades — claiming that the faith in the east, the Greek Orthodox Church, was in danger of annihilation from these Turkish infidels. Byzantium had gained much from the arrival from Europe of a truly formidable host, the cream of Europe’s fighting men, Alexius Comnenus directing them first to invest that which he saw as the greatest threat to Constantinople, the formidable city of Nicaea.

Turkish held and only three days’ march from Constantinople, Nicaea was a vital bastion that threatened the very heart of an empire that had failed to recapture it in three attempts and had little hand in taking on this occasion. Thanks to the efforts of the Crusader Host, the imperial banner now flew from its battlements, which in turn secured the safety of the imperial capital.

From there the Crusade moved south: originally seen as an irritant when Nicaea succumbed, they had impinged more and more upon the Sultan’s concerns the further they progressed, winning battles and taking possession of populous regional centres without a fight, stinging him especially hard when one of their number, Baldwin of Boulogne, acting independently of the Crusade and keen to line his own purse, had invested and captured the important city of Edessa on the far side of the River Euphrates.