Continue : July 15 1099 – One Of The Great Days In History. Jeru-salem Retaken

By Author: Craig Read
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As Nicolle relates the main issue with all the Crusades including the First, was that there never was a proper command structure or unified command. Some exceptions to this general rule are plain, but overall one of the great weaknesses of the Crusades was the lack of a singular leader and commander – one who could manage men from many different countries with different self-interests and ambitions. Thus in the First Crusade we have a motley collection of leaders including: the Normans Duke Bohemund of Taranto, his nephew Tancred, and Duke Robert of Normandy, along with Count Reymond of Toulouse, Duke Godfrey de Bouillon of Lorraine, his brother Baldwin, Duke Hugh of Vermandois, brother of the king of France, Count Stephan of Blois, and Count Robert of Flanders. Different men, different regions, different languages in some respects, and different self-interests and motivations.

From the start there were tensions between these leaders, but at least until his death, the Papal legate, Bishop Adhemar de Puy, was able to keep these tensions from causing too many problems. Thus the Church became the overarching authority ...
... – but in the field of battle and in all the complexities of fielding 50.000 heavily armored men, knights and their attendants, a lack of clear decisive leadership was always to plague the progress of the Crusades. In any event as Nicolle details, the various groups under their varied barons agreed to assemble at Constantinople, and each group travelled separately, some traveling along the Danube, others down the Dalmatian coast, and still more down Italy and then by sea to Greece.

The assembly at Constantinople was troublesome. Byzantine Emperor Alexius had not expected an army of 50,000 enthusiasts, having probably hoped for a few thousand mercenaries, and over the winter of 1096-7 the two sides bickered. Alexius wanted to re-conquer Anatolia, lost after 1071, but that was of little interest to the crusaders, but eventually they came to an agreement, with Alexius agreeing to aid their march to the Holy Land, while the crusaders agreed that any lands they conquered would be held from the Byzantine Empire, a promise they probably never intended to honour.

Finally, in the spring of 1097 the crusaders came to grips with the 'Moslems' or Turks. Despite their lack of interest in the re-conquest of Anatolia, the crusaders still had to cross it, and the Turks controlled most of the area. The first target for the crusaders was Nicaea, dangerously close to Constantinople. The siege of Nicaea lasted from 14 May-19 June 1097, and just when the crusaders were about to break into and sack the city, Alexius negotiated its surrender and managed to get troops into the city, once again souring relations between the Byzantines and the crusaders. The crusaders now began their march across Anatolia, marching in two parallel columns, with no overall command. At the battle of Dorylaeum (1 July 1097), Bohemund's column was nearly annihilated by a much larger Turkish force, and was only saved by the arrive of Godfrey and Reymond from the other column. Soon after, the first contingent left the army, when Baldwin left to carve out his own principality centred on Edessa. Meanwhile the main crusader army reached Antioch.

The resulting siege of Antiioch lasted from 21 October 1097 to 3 June 1098. Once again, the crusade came close to disaster, this time from starvation, and was only saved by late arriving English and Pisan fleets, before finally capturing the city with the aid of a Turkish traitor on 3 June, only two days before a 75,000 strong Turkish army arrived, trapping the crusaders inside the city, where they were themselves besieged from 5-28 June. The siege was ended on 28 June, when the massively outnumbered crusaders sallied from the city, with at most 15,000 combatants. Despite being heavily outnumbered, the crusaders won the resulting battle of the Orontes (28 June 1098). At this point disaster stuck, with the death of Bishop Adhemar, after which tensions between the leaders grew worse. When the crusaders moved on to march against Jerusalem, Bohemund and the Normans remained in Antioch, where they founded their own principality.

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