Jack Ludlow - Soldier of Crusade

Soon the whole Apulian host was hacking out and joining up frames while others cut and fashioned reeds in bundles thick enough to stop, or at the very least take the sting out of, a speeding arrow. Once erected the tents were moved into their shade, which had a double benefit of keeping out the sun for part of the day while a watch was kept on the hillside for a repeat, which was bound to come, it being so seemingly risk-free for the garrison. They had reckoned without the son of the Guiscard .

At night, in a thick heat haze that obscured both moon and stars, they could move without being observed and Bohemund led a party of his men in a wide arc and up the hill as silently as was possible, well away from the hearing of the sentinels on the walls. The aim was to find a bush behind which to conceal themselves, using their cloaks for added camouflage, the command to stay still and not move pressed home many times. The same band of Turks, at first light, no doubt using as an exit the Iron Gate, came over the brow of the mountain and began to slither down to that ledge from which they had launched their previous attack, making no attempt at subterfuge.

With the sun in the east and not yet fully risen, and the peak of Mount Staurin so high, the whole of the western slope was in deep shade, which helped to keep the knights hidden. Bohemund waited till he heard orders being issued, indicating they were getting ready to attack, before he stood up and called for his men to do likewise, immediately rushing forward and yelling like a banshee. At this elevation and given the incline it was not easy, running with one foot so much lower than the other, but it was possible and the Normans had surprise on their side.

The startled Turks, with their bows still on the shoulders, panicked instead of acting as they should and they were not aided by the fellow obviously in command shouting orders that seemed to be causing more confusion rather than less. Now it was the turn of the Turks to seek to scrabble to safety and quite a few, some dozen in number, did not get clear, falling to great swipes by flashing Norman swords as well as a pair of well-aimed axes; there was no jeering now, just screaming and much of that was coming from those fleeing.

Bohemund knew he dare not linger; the battlements were not far off and his party was in range of archery from there. It would not take long to muster the men needed to turn his attack into an untidy and potentially fatal retreat. His command to move came with an instruction to kick the dead Turks so they rolled down the slope ahead of them, and if the knights descending appeared inelegant, sometimes failing to keep their feet, they came back to ground level with the cheers of their confreres ringing in their ears.

‘Now, we need a permanent piquet at the brow of the slope,’ Bohemund gasped. ‘One that will stop them ever attempting that again.’

If such a tactic was easily advanced it was far from easily carried out and nor was it safe; it required the building of a drystone enclosure high enough to stop anyone just leaping over to slit the throats of those who were sent to man it. Every night it had to be resupplied with food, water and men, those left to hold it rotated from what was an isolated and extremely dangerous duty. But it worked; the Turks knew they would have to fight first to get into position and such attacks as had happened originally diminished, if they did not entirely cease.

Having begun to act the Turks expanded their efforts over the following weeks, employing mounted archers to inflict casualties on the Crusaders, small highly mobile squadrons who knew exactly the dispositions of their enemies and could see when certain groups were too remote from the main host to benefit from quick support, and such raids happened around the whole perimeter. Any companies caught outside the St George’s Gate were obliged to flee for the distant river crossing, while those knights caught to the east of the mountains seeking to stop up the Iron Gate were being attacked by flying columns from a force based outside and to the east of the city.

But such actions happened right in front of the western walls too, for there was only a narrow strip of land between the Gate of the Duke and the Orontes in which to operate and too many times men were being trapped there and decimated, either killed by arrows and swords or else they drowned in the river trying to get clear. A frustrated Godfrey de Bouillon, whose knights were suffering the most, decided to build a pontoon bridge over the river using boats, so that the main body of men from his camp, of necessity on the far bank, could get across to aid their hard-pressed confreres.

This was only a partial solution given that aid came best from mounted and mailed knights; to ride a horse across an unstable platform was difficult and that imposed a strict limit on how many could use the pontoon at the same time — the greater the number who tried simultaneously, the greater the movement under the horses’ hooves — which led to crowding on the west bank as frustrated warriors sought to get at their rampaging enemies.

Henry of Esch, he one of the pair who came up with the ridiculous bombardment screen which fell apart at Nicaea, became so frustrated he rode into the river, sinking ever more until his head was under the water and he was despaired of. God was with him, it was later claimed, as he emerged, still mounted and dripping water, to urge his mount up onto the far bank. Still soaked he went straight into action and did good service.

Of greater concern, as time went on, was the diminution of supplies; such a huge number of mouths — fighting men and pilgrims — required feeding on a scale that even the fertile plains to the west of the Orontes could not support, while bringing in food and fodder from the well-disposed Armenians was slow and difficult given it all had to be carried by oxen or donkeys and was subjected to raids by bands of Turkish warriors.

Those same bands made foraging difficult to near impossible, so from being a place of plenty the region in which they were encamped soon looked to be on the way to becoming a wasteland, and that was before the weather, hitherto benign, turned for the worse. Lashed by heavy rain and battered by strong winds the siege lines turned into an area of hard-to-negotiate mud and made everyone’s life a misery, the Turks quick to take advantage of that by sending out short sharp raids to further lower the spirits of those they faced.

After days of such downpours the sky cleared, the wind dropped and news came from St Simeon that a fleet of Genoese ships had arrived in the harbour with supplies, and not just provender: there were new Crusaders too, if in no great number, but more importantly the Great Count Roger had responded to his nephew’s request and sent from Sicily his most experienced artisans, men who had campaigned with him on the island and helped to take many a Saracen fortress.

Their first task was to turn Bohemund’s temporary bastion on the slopes of Mount Staurin into a more robust fortress and if it could not match in strength the walls of Antioch it was well built enough to completely secure that flank and obviate the risk of what many feared, a mass attack being launched down that slope in an attempt to sweep the Crusaders into the river. Needing to be named, as did everything structured in the siege, the men who manned it called their temporary fort Malregard, a reference to the fact that it was still an exposed and dangerous position.

Yet if that arrival lifted the spirits it soon became clear just how short a period any food they had brought would last, and the ships were quick to depart once unloaded, with those who knew of the sea aware that they would not be seen again till spring, so dangerous was the Mediterranean for lengthy winter voyages. They still had Cyprus, much closer, but even there the crossing could be suspended for weeks due to storms, and in anticipation of dearth Bohemund sent half his horses away to the north where there was more pasture, an act which his fellow princes declined to emulate.