The discovery of this small metal shard, an apparent relic of Christ’s Passion, was long believed to have had an electrifying effect upon the crusaders’ state of mind. Interpreted as an irrefutable indication of God’s renewed support, an assurance of victory, it supposedly spurred the Latins to take up arms and confront Kerbogha in open battle. Another Frankish eyewitness described the impact of this Holy Lance: ‘And so [Peter] found the lance, as he had foretold, and they all took it up with great joy and dread, and throughout all the city there was immense rejoicing. From that hour we decided on a plan of attack, and all our leaders forthwith held a council.’²⁷

In fact, the impression fostered by this account–that the Christians, their spirits suddenly rejuvenated by an ecstatic outpouring of faith, made an urgent and immediate move to engage their enemy–is profoundly misleading. Two whole weeks separated the discovery of the Lance from the battle eventually fought against Kerbogha.

Peter Bartholomew’s ‘discovery’ certainly had some effect on crusader morale. To modern sensibilities the story of his visions might seem fantastical, his claim to have uncovered a genuine remnant of Christ’s own life fraudulent, even ludicrous. But to eleventh-century Franks, familiar with the concepts of saints, relics and miraculous intervention, Peter’s experiences rang true. Conditioned by a well-ordered system of belief, in which the saintly dead acted as God’s intercessors on Earth, channelling His power through sacred relics, most were willing to accept the authenticity of the Holy Lance. Among the leaders of the crusade only Adhémar of Le Puy seems to have harboured any doubts, and these probably stemmed from Peter’s lowly social status. But buoyed though their spirits may have been by the advent of this relic, the Latins remained paralysed by fear and uncertainty through the second half of June. The unearthing of the Lance was not the overwhelming catalyst to action, much less a focal turning point in the fortunes of the First Crusade.²⁸

By 24 June the crusaders were on the brink of collapse and so dispatched two envoys to seek parley with Kerbogha. Historians have tended to follow uncritically the Latins’ own explanation for this embassy, characterising it as an exercise in bravado. In reality, it was more probably a forlorn attempt to negotiate terms of surrender. A non-partisan eastern Christian source described how ‘the Franks became threatened with a famine [and thus] resolved to obtain from Kerbogha a promise of amnesty on condition that they deliver the city into his hands and return to their own country’. A later Arabic chronicle appears to substantiate this version of events, asserting that the crusader princes ‘wrote to Kerbogha to ask for safe conduct through his territory, but he refused, saying: “You will have to fight your way out.”’

With this, any chance of escaping Antioch evaporated. Recognising that their only hope now lay in open battle, no matter how bleak the odds, the Latin princes initiated preparations for a final, suicidal confrontation. In the words of one Latin contemporary, they had decided that ‘it was better to die in battle than to perish from so cruel a famine, growing weaker from day to day until overcome by death’.²⁹

In those final days the Christians carried out last-ditch preparations. Ritual processions, confessions and communion were undertaken by way of spiritual purgation. Meanwhile, Bohemond, now elected commander-in-chief of the army, set about concocting a battle plan. On paper, the Franks were hopelessly outclassed, numbering perhaps 20,000 including non-combatants. Their elite force, the heavily armoured mounted knights, had also been crippled by a dearth of horses, and most were now forced to fight astride pack animals or on foot. Even the German Count Hartmann of Dillingen, once a proud and wealthy crusader, was reduced to riding a donkey so diminutive that it left his boots dragging in the dirt. Bohemond thus had to develop an infantry-based strategy designed to confront the enemy with maximum speed and ferocity.

For all its size, Kerbogha’s army did have two potential weaknesses. With the bulk of his force still cautiously encamped some distance to the north, the troops encircling Antioch were relatively thinly spread. At the same time, Kerbogha’s men lacked the Latins’ sense of a desperate common cause, being bound by only the thinnest veneer of unity. Should the Muslims start to lose confidence in their general, cracks might appear.

By 28 June 1098 the crusaders were ready for battle. At dawn that day they began marching out of the city while clergy lining the walls offered prayers to God. Most believed that they were marching to their deaths. Bohemond had chosen to sally out of the Bridge Gate, crossing the Orontes to confront the Muslim troops guarding the plains beyond. If they were to avoid being stopped in their tracks and cut down to a man, rapidity and cohesion of deployment would be essential. As the gates opened an advance guard of Latin archers let fly raking volleys of arrows to beat back the enemy, clearing the way across the bridge. Then, with Bohemond holding the rear, the Franks marched forward in four closely ordered battle groups, fanning out into a rough semi-circle and closing to engage the Muslims.

As soon as the Bridge Gate was opened, Kerbogha, encamped to the north, was alerted by the raising of a black flag above the Muslim-held citadel. At this moment he could have committed his main force, hoping to catch the crusaders as they exited the city and shatter their formation. As it was, he hesitated. This was not, as legend later had it, because he was frivolously engaged in a game of chess. Rather, Kerbogha hoped to strike a killer blow, allowing the Franks to deploy outside the city so that he could crush them en masse, bringing the siege of Antioch to a swift and triumphant conclusion. This strategy had some merit, but it required a cool head. Just when the general should have held his position, letting the crusaders advance to fight a battle on ground of his choosing, he lost his nerve. Sensing that the Latins were gaining a slim advantage in the fracas beside the city, he ordered his entire army to make a panicked and disordered advance.

His timing was appalling. The Franks had survived a succession of searing counter-attacks from the Muslim forces that had been blockading Antioch, including a potentially lethal assault from the rear by troops left to guard the southern gateway of St George. Christian casualties were mounting, but Bohemond nonetheless pressed forward to seize the initiative, and Muslim resistance began to collapse. Kerbogha’s main force arrived just as the tide of battle was turning. Unnerved by their failure to overrun the supposedly bedraggled Latin army, the Muslims fighting near the Bridge Gate took flight. They ran straight into the serried ranks of their advancing comrades, causing havoc. At this, the defining moment of the battle, Kerbogha failed to rally his men. With their formation in tatters, one by one the various Abbasid contingents cut their losses and fled the field. The brutal shock of the crusaders’ indomitable resolve had exposed the fractures embedded within the Muslim army. An outraged Muslim chronicler later wrote that: ‘The Franks, though they were in the extremity of weakness, advanced in battle order against the armies of Islam, which were at the height of their strength and numbers, and they broke the ranks of the Muslims and scattered their multitudes.’³⁰

Barely a fraction of his mighty host had been slain, yet Kerbogha was forced into a shameful retreat. Abandoning the riches of his camp, he fled in disgrace towards Mesopotamia. In the wake of the battle the Muslim garrison of Antioch’s citadel surrendered. The huge city was, at last, truly in Latin hands. The Battle of Antioch was a stunning victory. Never before had the crusade come so close to destruction, and yet, against all expectation, Christendom had triumphed. Not surprisingly, many saw the hand of God at work, and an array of spectacular miracles was reported. An army of ghostly Christian martyrs, clad all in white and led by soldier saints, appeared out of the mountains to aid the Franks. Elsewhere, Raymond of Aguilers himself carried the Holy Lance in among the southern French contingent led by Bishop Adhémar. It was later said that the sight of the relic paralysed Kerbogha. With or without such divine intervention, piety played a central role in these events. The crusaders unquestionably fought amid an atmosphere of fervent spiritual conviction, urged on by priests marching among them, chanting and reciting prayers. Above all, it was their shared sense of devotional mission, fused with an almost primal sense of desperation, which bound the Latins together during this terrible confrontation and enabled them to withstand and even repel their fearsome enemy.