DELAY AND DISSIPATION

In the immediate aftermath of this remarkable success, hopes grew of a swift and triumphant conclusion to the crusade. As it was, the expedition lost direction and momentum as its leaders squabbled over the spoils of Syria. The heat of midsummer ignited an epidemic of disease, and many in the army who had survived the terrible privations of the preceding months now died from illness. Even the nobility were not immune and, on 1 August, Adhémar of Le Puy, who in his role as papal legate had been a voice for reason and conciliation, succumbed.

Throughout this period, the expedition was gripped by an embittered dispute over Antioch’s future that stalled any further progress towards Palestine. Bohemond wanted the city for himself and was now strongly placed to press his claim. It was he who had engineered Antioch’s fall in the crusade’s hour of need; his banner that flew above the city walls at dawn on 3 June. Within hours of Kerbogha’s defeat he had cemented his position by seizing personal control of the citadel, despite Raymond of Toulouse’s best efforts to beat him to the prize. Bohemond now sought unequivocal recognition from his fellow princes of his legal right of possession, in spite of the promises they had made to the Byzantine emperor. Mindful of the fact that Alexius had forsaken them at Philomelium, most acquiesced, but once again it was Raymond who offered opposition, trumpeting the expedition’s outstanding obligations to the Greeks. An embassy was dispatched to Constantinople entreating the emperor to lay claim to Antioch in person, but when he failed to appear an impasse was reached.

Bohemond has often been cast as the villain of this episode–his greed and ambition contrasted with Raymond’s selfless dedication to justice and the crusading cause. Although Bohemond undoubtedly had an eye to personal advancement, the situation was not quite so clear-cut. In the absence of Greek reinforcement, one of the Frankish princes would need to stay behind in Syria to govern and garrison Antioch, lest the Frankish blood spilled in the name of its conquest be squandered. From one perspective it could be argued that the crusaders were lucky that Bohemond was willing to shoulder this burden, forgoing the immediate completion of his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. At the same time, Raymond of Toulouse’s altruistic reputation does not bear close scrutiny. He may have been willing to deliver Antioch to Byzantium, but he was also driven by dreams of power. For the remainder of the crusade the count’s behaviour was governed by two entwined, sometimes conflicting aspirations: the desire to carve out a new lordship of his own in the Levant, and a concomitant wish to be recognised as the crusade’s leader.

It was with the latter goal in mind that Raymond cultivated a close association with the visionary Peter Bartholomew and the cult of the Holy Lance. Inspired by what appears to have been authentic devotion to this relic, the Provençal count took Peter under his wing and became the Lance’s chief supporter. In the coming months, as the crusaders looked back over the dramatic events of Antioch’s second siege and their seemingly miraculous victory over Kerbogha, Raymond and his supporters helped to promote the idea that the Lance had played a critical role in securing their survival. At the same time, Peter continued to report an ongoing succession of visions and was soon acting as the self-styled mouthpiece of God. According to the peasant prophet, St Andrew had revealed to him that ‘the Lord gave the Lance to the count’ in order to single out Raymond as the leader of the First Crusade.³¹

In August, the evolution of the Lance’s cult and attendant promotion of Raymond’s political career took rather macabre turns. In life, Adhémar of Le Puy had expressed doubts about the Lance’s authenticity. But just two days after the papal legate’s death, Peter Bartholomew proclaimed that he had experienced his first visitation from Adhémar’s spirit and the process of appropriating his memory began. The bishop was buried in the Basilica of St Peter, within the very hole in which the Holy Lance had been discovered. The physical fusion of the two cults–a masterstroke of manipulation–was reinforced once Peter began relaying Adhémar’s ‘words’ from beyond the grave, revealing that he now recognised the Lance as genuine and that his soul had been severely punished for the sin of having doubted the relic, suffering whipping and burning. Alongside this apparent volte-face on the Holy Lance, the bishop’s spirit began to back Count Raymond’s political ambitions. Indeed, Adhémar soon ‘declared’ that his former vassals should transfer their allegiance to the count and that Raymond should be authorised to hand-pick the expedition’s new spiritual leader.

As the First Crusade idled away that long Syrian summer, the cult of the Holy Lance took hold and the popularity and influence of Raymond of Toulouse and Peter Bartholomew rose in tandem. Even so, by early autumn the count still had not managed to oust Bohemond from Antioch, nor was he in a position to declare himself outright leader of the crusade. What Raymond needed was greater leverage. From late September onwards he led a series of campaigns into the fertile Summaq plateau region to the south-east. These operations have often been misrepresented as foraging expeditions, even as attempts to initiate an advance on Palestine, but in reality Raymond’s goal was the establishment of his own independent enclave to counter and threaten Bohemond’s control of Antioch.

Part of this process involved the conquest of Marrat, the region’s major town. It surrendered after a hard-fought winter siege and Raymond swiftly initiated a programme of Christianisation and settlement, converting mosques and installing a garrison. But shortly afterwards the Latin lines of supply faltered, and some of the count’s poorest followers began to starve. This moment saw one of the crusade’s most appalling atrocities. According to one Frank:

Our men suffered from excessive hunger. I shudder to say that many, terribly tormented by the madness of starvation, cut pieces of flesh from the buttocks of Saracens lying there dead. These pieces they cooked and ate, savagely devouring the flesh while it was insufficiently roasted.

A Latin eyewitness noted that ‘this spectacle disgusted as many crusaders as it did strangers’. Uncomfortable as it may be to acknowledge, these chilling acts of barbarism–which even Frankish chroniclers saw fit to condemn–did bring the Latins some short-term benefit. Among Syrian Muslims the crusaders’ reputation for savagery now gained currency, and in the succeeding months many local emirs sought to negotiate with their fearsome new enemies rather than risk annihilation.³²

Meanwhile, as the months of dispute and inaction ground on and a succession of councils of the Latin princes proved unable to resolve the argument over Antioch, popular sentiment among ordinary crusaders began to harden. Pressure was growing for the princes to put aside their differences and focus instead upon the interests of the expedition as a whole. Events came to a head at Marrat in early January 1099 with an extraordinary outbreak of civil disobedience. Dismayed by the fact that even Raymond of Toulouse, champion of the Holy Lance, preferred to contest control of Syria rather than march on to Jerusalem, a mob of poor Franks began to demolish Marrat’s fortifications with their bare hands, ripping down its walls stone by stone. Facing this protest, Raymond finally recognised that he could not hope to lead the crusade and rule Antioch at the same time. On 13 January he made the symbolic gesture of marching south from Marrat barefoot, clad simply as a penitent pilgrim, leaving the town and his hopes of conquest in ruins behind him. Bohemond, meanwhile, remained at Antioch. The dream of achieving independent rule of the city had at last been realised, but his ambition had contributed to months of destructive delay for the crusade, and more importantly, caused severe and enduring damage to Latin relations with the Byzantine Empire.