After the battle of Dorylaeum, the way lay open to the south towards Antioch, towards Jerusalem. But the Turks, though beaten, were far from broken. In their retreat, they stripped the land and laid waste to anything they couldn't take with them. And as the crusade moved south the heat intensified. Kilij Arslan, the Seljuk sultan, had ordered the wells along the path destroyed. And in the sun scorched plains of Anatolia, thirst began to stalk the ranks of the crusade. Parched animals laid by the roadside to die. Men chewed thorns for moisture. The crusade left a trail of the dead, but finally, the crusade crossed into the fertile valleys of Iconium, where they restocked and made the trek across to Heraclea. Here, the council of princes met to discuss their next move. 2 paths lay open to them. One dangerous, but quicker, through the Taurus mountains. And the other a slower, but less risky path, over the confusingly named Anti-Taurus Mountains. The majority of the army chose to follow the safer route, but Tancred and Baldwin's set out on the harder trek. Tancred brought a few hundred knights with him, while Baldwin detached over 2,000 soldiers from his brother Godfrey's army for the adventure. Tancred's group set off first, and soon, came upon the port town of Tarsus. After quickly driving the garrison back into the city, he realized he had a problem; He had nowhere near enough men to take a walled city like Tarsus. So, Tancred sent word back to his uncle Bohemond to send along reinforcements. But as the rider was heading back to the main force with the message, Tancred had a flash of brilliance. He quickly had his men surround the town and make it look like they were preparing for a siege. Then he sent word to the Turkish garrison, that he was but the vanguard of an enormous force of crusaders, who would soon sweep over Tarsus, and do horrible things to any Turks defending its walls. Most of the Turkish Garrison quietly snuck out of the town that night. The rest offered to surrender in the morning. Now you remember a couple episodes ago how Tancred had managed to slip through Constantinople without swearing an oath to the Byzantine emperor? Well, the Garrison flew Tancred's banner over the town and he declared it his city. This lasted all of about 15 minutes before Baldwin arrived. Baldwin who was much less concerned with subtlety and apparently oaths saw the banner and basically said, Hey, what a fabulous idea, I love it! But I have 2,000 men, so why don't you let me have that City instead? Tancred grumbled under his breath about how he had both beaten back the Garrison and trick them into abandoning the city But he couldn't really fault Baldwin's logic. 2000 was indeed more than a few hundred. So he packed up his camp and grumpily started to head east. With Tancred gone, Baldwin's banner now flew over the city but guess who shows up? The reinforcements Tancred had sent for before coming up with that ruse to take the city. Now these men must have been a little miffed to have trekked all that way for nothing but Baldwin never a very secure man and never want to miss an opportunity to add insult to injury refused to even let them into the city for the night, instead forcing them to take camp outside the City walls. Then to add real injury to insult to injury, remember how the Turkish Garrison had slipped out in the middle of the night? Well, they were still out there, and in the middle of the night they descended on the crusaders camped outside the walls and slaughtered them as they slept. Those Turks really got a lot done at the middle of the night. Bunch of night owls. As you can imagine, when the town woke up and saw a few hundred dead crusaders outside, well, no one was very happy with Baldwin. In response, he heroically locked himself in a building and refused to come out until people calmed down Tancred, meanwhile, was off conquering the next town. This time though, when Baldwin caught up and arrived outside the walls, things went a little differently. Tancred had augmented his forces with local Armenian volunteers, and by the time Baldwin showed up at this new City Tancred was well entrenched inside the City walls. So when Baldwin asked to be let in, it was Tancred's turn to say, Mmm, nah, I think you get to sleep outside. But, not content with letting Baldwin go off so lightly after letting their compatriots die, some of Tancred's knights ended up charging Baldwin's camp, and the crusaders started a brawl outside the newly conquered city. And then, Baldwin basically wandered off and abandoned the crusade. Baldwin headed east. He met an heirless king. He got the heirless king to adopt him. He promptly let the heirless king be assassinated. He ordered the man who introduced him to said king, who was theoretically his friend to be tortured to death. And he declared himself Count of Edessa. And thus the first crusader state is born. Oh, and in case you're wondering yes, Edessa had once been part of the Byzantine empire. Yes, Baldwin had sworn the oath, and no he was not going to give it back. And not to spoil future series But he ends up becoming king of Jerusalem Anyway, Tancred meanwhile rejoined the main crusade and captured a few more towns relevant to the effort along the way. When he rejoined though the crusade was a bit worse for wear. Mail armor and mountain climbing don't mix, and the Safer road through the Anti-Taurus mountains had only proven to be slightly safer. At this point they'd lost most of their horses to the heat, and abandoned much of their armor in the mountains. And in front of them stood the great and ancient city of Antioch, a city founded under Alexander, made great by Rome and fortified by Justinian It was the last great obstacle between the crusaders and Jerusalem But the massive walls constructed by Justinian were too much for the crusaders. The walls, which flew off from the city like wings high into the mountains, made the City impossible to encircle. The massive stones and impressive towers Justinian's men had built were more than these crusaders could breach. So the crusaders decided on a plan, albeit one of the oddest siege plans I've ever heard of. They were going to have contingents blockade most but not quite all of the city's gates, which would seem to defeat the point of a siege But some of those gates lay high atop the nearby mountains and others lay behind a river which would split the crusaders' forces So the crusaders decided to simply block what gates they could and wait. But as the weeks and then months passed and fall turned into winter, the crusade began to starve. The local area was stripped bare, so any foraging party would have to go far afield and risk being ambushed if they were to resupply the army. So the princes decided on a daring plan Bohemond and Robert of Flanders would take a sizable part of the Army with them to forage in force, while the remnants of the crusader army would try to maintain the siege. So Robert and Bohemond headed off. But as their foraging party reached the tiny village of Albara, what did they see? A large Muslim army marching down the very road to Antioch they were heading up to forage. The Muslim force was as surprised as the crusaders, and after a few minutes of everyone just blinking at each other in shock, the crusaders, though outnumbered and laden with forage, charged. When the dust cleared, many were dead on both sides. There was no clear victor and the crusaders had lost all the forage they'd set out to acquire. But in one of the strange twists of luck that accompanied the first crusade, the commander of the relieving Muslim force, who was never that into being a relieving force, looked at the casualty list and decided, Well, so much for that! and packed up his army and went home. Antioch's reinforcements were gone. The crusaders were still starving though, and that's not all. There were earthquakes and comets Even auroras. And crusaders were generally the superstitious type. So after seeing all that, a lot of them began to slink off and abandon the crusade, including none other than Peter the Hermit. Bishop Adhemar quickly hauled some of these recalcitrant crusaders back to Antioch, including Peter, And then followed up with a brilliant plan. He called for a fast to regain the favor of God. Which is a pretty clever way to improve morale and solve your supply problems. At long last and much worse for wear, the crusaders made it through to spring and the food situation started to improve. And then Bohemond got tricky. He convinced the leader of the Byzantine contingent that there was a plot to kill him. When the Byzantines reacted by going back to Constantinople, Bohemond accused them of cowardice and abandonment, treacherous behavior, which he claimed, freed him of his oath to emperor Komnenos. Now with another Turkish reinforcing army bearing down on the crusade, he threatens to abandon the siege of Antioch unless he was allowed to keep the city when they took it. Godfrey and Raymond grumbled about this, but there was only so much they could do, as the lesser knights loved Bohemond. You have to give Bohemond some credit though because after this, he proceeded to lay out and execute a plan that not only thrashed the second Turkish relief army headed for Antioch but also inflicted a great number of casualties on the garrison. And thus, the siege survived to drag on into summer. Then the Turks assembled a third great army to relieve Antioch, this one far too large for the crusaders to meet an open battle. But Bohemond hadn't spent the months idly. He managed to find a guard commander in the city who was bribable, and just before the arrival of the Turkish army the bribed commander let the crusaders over the walls in the dead of night. The massacre was horrific and indiscriminate but by dawn, with many civilians amongst the dead, the Crusaders had captured all of Antioch except the citadel, which stood atop a mountain at the end of its long walls. Join us next time as the besiegers become the besieged, as we witness the epitome of horror, and as, at last,
the crusaders make it to Jerusalem...
