Page 78 - All About History - Issue 186-19

Greatest Battles

La he my to victory days, the Muslim advance guard had captured
el oe at Antioch the outerworks, including the Tower of the Iron
Bridge, and invested the city. Small detachments
of Seljuk foot soldiers took up positions outside
the city’s main gates. “[The] Turks hemmed in
our
Fren d
the
Af
reinf
esta
and western w
relief army’s i
failed, time w
were at a disti
lacked sufficie
Morale was lo
over the walls and made their way to the port of
St Symeon at the mouth of the Orontes in the hope
of g
ri g r
m re t o er
B pi c
merchants who were hoarding grain give up half ranks. Ironically, Kerbogha’s army arrived on the have received divine instruction from God of the
of their supply to the garrison commander. This plain outside the city on 4 June, the day after the existence of the Holy Lance — the point of which
rankled the wealthy merchants. crusaders had secured the city. He established his had pierced Christ’s body while he was on the
An Armenian officer and merchant named Firouz, main camp three miles north of the city in the cross — telling him that it was buried beneath the
a convert to Islam, believed that the edict threatened Orontes Valley. Cathedral of St. Peter. Bartholomew and some other
his family’s livelihood. He turned over half of his Kerbogha’s first order of business was to capture volunteers excavated the floor of the cathedral in
grain begrudgingly. As an officer of the garrison, the crusader outposts outside the city. After three search of the relic.
Firouz was responsible for guarding a section of
the western wall. He was so embittered that he Robert of Normandy helped
turned traitor. “He looked to his own salvation,” lead the crusader vanguard
wrote Norman chronicler Ralph of Caen. “He would
avenge his injuries by betraying the whole city.” One
night Firouz snuck out of the city and met with
Bohemond. When Firouz offered to let the Normans
climb over his section of the wall under cover of
darkness, Bohemond readily accepted the offer.
On the night of 2 June, Firouz allowed
Bohemond’s Normans to seize an unguarded
tower in the western part of the city. Once inside,
the raiders opened a secondary gate for the main
crusader force to enter the city. In the early morning
hours of 3 June the crusaders ran amuck through
the city, indiscriminately slaughtering everyone they
came across. The Turkish soldiers who survived the
initial onslaught hastily withdrew to the citadel on
Mount Silpius.
Kerbogha was a Mamluk slave soldier who
governed Upper Mesopotamia on behalf of Seljuk
Sultan Barkyaruk. He assembled 30,000 troops
for the offensive. The Seljuk relief army set out in
early May. En route to Antioch, Kerbogha besieged
Edessa, which was held by Godfrey’s younger
brother, Baldwin of Boulogne. Baldwin had split off
from the main army in eastern Anatolia, seeking to
carve out a fiefdom for himself from the Armenian
lands at the headwaters of the Euphrates River. After
squandering three weeks in a poorly planned siege,
Kerbogha resumed his march to Antioch.
As the Seljuk general marched through northern
Syria, another 10,000 Turkish troops joined his

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