Soldier of Crusade

CHAPTER TWO

It had all started so well for the men who took the Castle of Xerigordos, as it had for the whole People’s Crusade. The fertile northern plains of Bithynia seemed entirely clear of any defence and Kilij Arslan, the Turk who had taken to himself the title of the Sultan of Rum, remained within the formidable walls of Nicaea and seemed passive regarding the arrival of these thousands of pilgrims as well as indifferent to their activities.

Having settled around Civetot it was only days before marauding parties set out from the coastal town to bring mayhem and destruction to the surrounding countryside, in much the same manner as they had done on the way to Constantinople. Much of that pillaging, in terms of distance, was constrained by the lack of suitable transport for the mostly foot-bound and untrained host, but that did not apply to parties led by well-armed and mounted knights, most notably those raiding under the banner of Reinald the Alemanni.

Ranging further afield they had enjoyed complete freedom to despoil any settlements they found while paying scant attention to the religious or vassalage ties of their victims; it mattered not whether they were Christian Greeks or Turks and infidels. They represented booty for men who had come to the East seeking to gain profit from the Crusade as well as forgiveness. Finally the old and badly repaired fortress of Xerigordos, as well as the town that had grown around it, fell to Reinald and so easily that he, as well as the force he led, saw it as divine approval. The desire to partake of the fruits of that capture led to their downfall.

Three days of feasting, some pleasant slaughter of the menfolk and violation of the women, ended when a force of Kilij Arslan’s Turks appeared that outnumbered them three to one, the men Reinald led forced to take refuge in the run-down castle. There was no time to gather supplies of any kind, not that the town could provide much after it had been pillaged, but the real difficulty came when the Crusaders found that there was no water supply within the walls, a crippling handicap in a part of the world where, even in early October, the temperatures could be scorching.

Such a debilitating predicament was not aided by the need to constantly man the walls and, over several days, fight off well-coordinated attacks, which meant hails of deadly arrows from the numerous archers to which the defenders, with only lances and swords, had no way of replying. Reinald’s casualties, for that reason alone, had been bad from the first day of siege and had worsened since, till the number of shallow graves multiplied. Men became too weary to bother to bury their dead, and bodies, thrown over the parapet, were now rotting at the outer base of the castle walls.

Then there was the choking smoke, behind which Turks advanced to the very walls to set ladders against the parapet and engage in close combat — to a man already suffering from thirst, that on the lungs had a doubly nauseating effect, yet despite such tactics they repulsed assault after assault by deeds that would have been valorous in a better cause. But the need for liquids was the greatest drawback; after eight days, when the blood of their now dead horses was no longer available to ease their thirst, when they were reduced to dropping their leather girdles into the sewers then sucking them for a modicum of relief, or using what little urine their bodies produced to try to assuage their rasping throats, it was time to talk.

‘Do you think they know how badly we are placed?’

Reinald croaked this to one of his knights, a Lombard called Argyrus who, having served with the Normans, knew the Frankish tongue, as he watched his enemies prepare another assault. Really the question was: can you think of anything by which we can negotiate that I might have missed?

‘It was their castle, Reinald, they must know. That was why the garrison was too small to hold out against us, why we found it so easy to capture in the first place.’

‘There is no sign that anyone is coming to our relief.’

‘Do they even know we are under siege?’

Reinald conjured up enough saliva to sound as he had done a week before, arrogant and angry. ‘They must know, Argyrus, but they do not care.’

‘What will you offer?’

‘Only our swords, it’s all we have. Prepare a truce flag.’

The man in command of the Turks, a general called Elchanes, came within hailing distance, but he was not so trusting of Christians that he would come close enough to be struck down by a lance — not that the defenders had many of those kind of weapons left; too many had been cast at the men seeking to overcome the walls — with what followed being long-winded and confusing.

Elchanes had a Greek interpreter who could communicate with the likes of the Lombard Argyrus; he, in turn, had to translate for Reinald, though in truth there was little to discuss. To stay inside the walls was to die; to leave their protection was to rely on the word of the Turkish commander who seemed willing to accept them into military service as long as they came as a body.

Yet if Reinald was the leader of his small force it was far from homogenous — his men came from many different lands and nor was he so respected that he could issue orders and demand they be obeyed. They had a say in their fate and that led to a great deal of argument, with many reluctant to take up arms against their co-religionists, the very people with whom they had traversed many hundreds of leagues in order to seek salvation, set against those who were prepared to set that aside for a chance to live, on the very good grounds that their all-seeing God would observe they had no choice and thus forgive them their sin. A few even claimed that having come on Crusade, they enjoyed prior absolution.

‘And let me see a way to escape, brothers, and, with God’s aid, I will take it.’

That cry from a lone voice swayed the meeting and gave Reinald the right to offer them into the service of Kilij Arslan, a message Reinald sent from the walls just before he ordered the gates to be opened and for all of his men to stay gathered in the castle courtyard where they had debated their fate. The Turkish archers, who fought on both foot and mounted, trotted in on their small, fleet ponies heading right and left, an arrow nestled in each bow and eyes on the gathering that meant the slightest untoward move would result in a swift release.

Once they had fully encircled the Crusaders their general entered, surrounded by men with drawn swords, and Reinald, dragging Argyrus with him, walked forwards to execute a low bow. A hand signal from the Turk brought forward a man bearing a skin of water from which, much to the chagrin of their watching followers, the two men greedily drank. There was no sympathy in the act; Elchanes wanted them to be able to speak clearly.

‘He wants to know why we have come to this place, Reinald,’ Argyrus said, when the first words were spoken.

Reinald was looking at Elchanes, without his metal and leather helmet now, so his dark eyes, being unshaded, were visible. There was not much of an expression in either those or on his round and dark-skinned face, with skin heavily marked by pox. The lips were close to being as black as those eyes, thin and unsmiling.

‘He must know that already.’

‘I suggest,’ Argyrus replied, ‘that it would be wise to humour him.’

‘Tell him that we came to save our souls from eternal damnation.’

That was twice translated and the reply came back. ‘Such a wish is a simple matter, all you have to do is acknowledge the Prophet.’

‘We are Christians.’

That needed no translation and by saying it Reinald got a clear reaction, a look of real hate crossing that cratered Turkish face. The shout that came from Elchanes had every bow up and pointing, each archer picking a target, and Argyrus was obliged to tell Reinald that the order had come to lay down their weapons on the ground.

‘Weapons with which we have offered to serve the Sultan.’

Those words had no effect; the reply came back to do as they were commanded or die. While most complied, a goodly number declined only to suffer immediately as each took at least one arrow in the upper body and many of them several, which hastened those who had hesitated. The Turkish general then yelled a command accompanied by a huge sweep of the arm for the Christians to move out through the gate that rendered translation superfluous.

Bereft now of swords, daggers and shields, Reinald led his men out of the gate to where the main body of the Turkish force, weapons at the ready, was stretched out facing the curtain wall, against which the captured Christians were obliged to line up, the archers from within the fortress taking station on the parapet above their heads. Elchanes rode though the gate and yelled out another order, which had Argyrus, once it was given to him in Greek, crossing himself as he spoke.

‘We have a choice, Reinald, to convert to Islam or to die where we stand.’

‘He accepted our terms.’

‘Look at his eyes, Reinald. If he ever did, he does not do so now.’

What followed was horrible to observe. One at a time men were dragged forward and asked to forswear the religion into which they had been born. Those who accepted were spared, had their hands tied and were led away, those who refused immediately had their throats cut to the neck bone with a dying prayer on their lips, their bodies dragged away to be thrown onto a rising mound of dead flesh. Reinald and Argyrus, when their turn came, took the same course as the majority and forswore.

‘Ask what is to become of us, Argyrus, now that we have converted to Islam?’

The reply came back, once translated, with an accompanying laugh, to tell the survivors that the Sultanate of Rum always had need of slaves.

Word reached Civetot within two days, and if the fact that men had died was enough to enrage the multitude, the forced conversions to Islam were even more maddening to the more vocal priests and the deeply religious amongst the host, preachers every bit as inspiring as Peter the Hermit. A council was immediately called with the general opinion, much pushed by the divines, being that such an infamy could not be allowed to pass. The whole of the People’s Crusade in their thousands should shoulder their weapons and move out to attack the city of Nicaea, many loudly acclaiming that they had stayed passive long enough.

A few voices demurred, but they were wiser than the mob or the priests, for they tended to be the men who knew about warfare, mounted knights, amongst whom the most vocal and respected was the Frenchman, Walter Sansavoir. He pointed out that the city they were proposing to assault had repelled several attempts by the armies of Byzantium to overcome its formidable walls. Those who disagreed with him, and some of them shared his fighting experience, argued that by moving they would oblige those very same Byzantine forces to come to their aid and the combination must overwhelm the defences.

In the end it was the prospect of plunder that swung the vote towards action, indeed the very nature of many of the people that made up the People’s Crusade. Stark indeed was the truth when set against what had gone before, which was in too many cases no more than rank religious hypocrisy designed to mask naked greed, this from adventurers who had thought of nothing since setting out from their European hovels and manor houses other than the fabled riches of the East. The more honest pilgrims were souls with no fear of death; had not Peter the Hermit promised that if they perished on this venture their entry to heaven was assured? So overwhelming was the sentiment to march that those who disagreed could not stand against it.

The host that set out next day was indeed formidable if seen from a distance and spread across the landscape: three hundred plus mounted knights trained in the art of war, at least the same number who at some time in their lives had borne arms in battle as milities, able to use pikes for defence and axes as well as sharp daggers in close combat. The remainder, and they were several thousand in number, were stave- and pitchfork-carrying peasants so fired by their faith to be sure that when they came to the walls of Nicaea, they would, like those of Jericho, tumble to the sound of their combined prayers.

In such a ragged army there was scant discipline and if Walter Sansavoir had agreed to take the lead, he did not have anything like overarching control; what he had was dispute if he even attempted to issue an order, so that midway through the second day, as much due to heat as disorderliness, the host utterly lacked any kind of cohesion and that was exposed when before them they could observe, on an open plain with no protection from a flank assault, a large force of disciplined Turks advancing to meet them and one of which they had gained no prior warning.

‘We should have tried to withdraw,’ reported a Lombard knight called Sigibuld, his torn, cross-bearing surplice still covered in his own blood, mixed with those with whom he had fought, the whole overlain with dirt of a battlefield and a long and dangerous flight. ‘Many suggested it but Walter Sansavoir asked how it could be done with a rabble over which we had little control when advancing.’

‘The enterprise was foolish,’ Alexius replied, his voice weary. ‘You should never have gone beyond Civetot.’

‘We did not expect to meet Kilij Arslan in open battle,’ Sigibuld protested.

‘The Sultan led them in person?’

‘They cried out his name when they attacked.’

‘What a price to pay for a lesson known to every soldier,’ said Manuel Boutoumites, titled Curopalates and thus high enough in rank as a trusted advisor to speak unbidden in the presence of his Emperor. ‘Never underestimate your enemy.’

Alexius nodded and a lifted finger was a signal for Sigibuld to continue, which he did in a voice devoid of emotion.

‘We tried to form up as best we could. Walter had we knights take up position to the front, mixed with the men who knew how to use weapons so that we could present a defence, the aim to let the Turks know that any attack would cost them dear. The rest we sought to keep to the rear but they would not listen, so convinced were they, egged on by the priests, that God would surely smite their enemies before they even came within longbow shot. I think they expected bolts of lightning to come from the sky.’

‘The Bible tells us it has been so,’ intoned Peter the Hermit, which got him a look from a more secular emperor. ‘The Old Testament tells of many times when God has interceded to protect his flock. Think of the parting of the Red Sea …’

That had the courtiers in attendance shifting uncomfortably, for if they were good sons of the Church they were also men who knew that miracles were caused more by imagination than divine intervention. There were soldiers of the empire amongst them too, like Boutoumites, and they had to work hard not to scoff at the old man’s words. Alexius gave Peter a look that, if it was gentle, demanded his silence, then indicated that Sigibuld should continue with his tale.

‘The priests had them kneel and entreat before the Turks launched their assault, as if the power of prayer alone would stop them from attacking. They were still at their devotions when the first arrows landed amongst them, and packed as they were the bolts did great slaughter. It was as if the shock broke their spirit, for they set up a great wailing and gnashing, many claiming that God had deserted them. They began to rush about both in front and behind we fighting men and lost what little unity they had possessed.’

‘Easy meat for the Turkish archers?’

Sigibuld dropped his head when Alexius said that, his voice seeming now to come from the depths of his belly.

‘We could not move to break up their formations without we trampled our own people, this while the mounted archers got to our rear, dashing forward to fire an arrow then withdrawing before we could inflict any damage upon them. Kilij Arslan then sent his swordsmen into the melee of pilgrims. Many who died were on their knees begging for forgiveness, the rest began to scatter, running in all directions, which left we fighting men to face a full assault from a force greater than our own with the need to do battle on both flanks as well as to our front.’

‘How many survived?’ Alexius asked, cutting across Sigibuld.

He did not want to hear what this Lombard was about to tell him, of the butchery which followed and how it was achieved; he had fought the Turks too many times himself, had seen their mounted archers ride forward and, while still moving, launch a flood of arrows at a defensive line cowering under shields. In his mind’s eye he could see how that would, on an open battlefield, pin the defenders so that their enemy could get round their flanks and begin to crush them between twin pincers in a way that meant resistance would be flattened.

‘If there is indeed place in heaven,’ Sigibuld continued, avoiding the direct question, ‘for those who perish on this venture, then surely the likes of Walter will gain entry and glory when they do. Many knights fought on even when their bodies were pierced by the Turkish bolts and took many of the infidel with them before they finally fell.’

‘And you, Sigibuld, how did you get clear?’

That made the Lombard pull himself up to his full height; there was in the question the accusation of him being less of a man than those he had named. ‘We were still mounted and when those we had chosen to lead were slain it was obvious that no other choice presented itself but flight. The Turkish horses were blown from their previous exertions and sluggish in pursuit, but more in our favour was the way their compatriots fell upon the bodies of the dead to strip and mutilate them.’

‘How many got away?’

‘Around seventy knights.’

‘And the pikemen?’

‘They, being on foot, were less fortunate. Some did survive by throwing away their weapons and hanging on to our stirrup leathers.’

‘And where are they now?’

‘Defending Civetot, Highness, which is why I have come on here and in haste, stopping not even to remove the blood and filth from my person. The town and the remaining pilgrims are at risk if the Turks keep advancing, for there is nothing of a fighting nature to prevent it. I have come to ask that you either provide men to defend the town or send ships to withdraw the people left behind, the women and children as well as those too old or infirm to fight.’

They could smell Civetot long before any of the boats sent to bring off the remaining pilgrims ever sailed into the Gulf of Nicomedia, the great bight, on the southern arm of which the wretched town sat. Never a place of beauty it was ravaged now, the churches burnt shells and the homes of those who had lived here torn down into dust. Rotting carcasses of flesh leave a high odour in a warm climate, yet it was testament to the amount of slaughter that it could be discerned so far from the shore that there could be no doubt what the sailors would find when they set foot on the beach.

Kilij Arslan had indeed come on from the massacre described by Sigibuld, to attack a settlement bereft of any means of resistance. There were survivors, but few, the kind who had rushed into the sea and managed to stay afloat as the butchery was accomplished on land. There were also those the Turks had thought dead, buried so deep in a pile of bodies that the fact of their still breathing was undetectable, a few dozens from the many thousands to tell the tale of what had occurred, about a host who had no interest in conversion to Islam but only in killing what they saw as a plague.

There had been others who avoided the massacre: young women and boys who could be sold into carnal servitude, the few fit men who had not marched off with the army able to work as slaves aboard galleys or in quarries. For the rest they were killed; women not of tender years were of no use and neither were small children, infants and newly born babies. The old were despatched as a matter of course and the Turks had gathered those they had slain into a great mound of suppurating flesh that had left the ground around it, where their tuns of blood had leached out from the ferociously administered wounds, as soggy as a bog.

Peter the Hermit had come as well and many wondered at his silent thoughts as he surveyed the death of both his hopes and his Crusade. Was his faith still intact? Did he think, like the victims over whose bodies he prayed must have thought, that their dreams were delusions? Or did he believe these souls to be martyred and already in paradise? No one asked Peter and he was not speaking.

‘Go back to Constantinople,’ said the man Alexius had put in command of the ships, ‘and tell the Emperor that the People’s Crusade is no more.’