and the indignation. Tancred hurried after the fugitives and brought then back; and they swore on the Gospel never again to abandon the cause which they had preached and served so well. It was clearly indispensable to take measures for restoring amongst the army discipline, confidence, and the morals and hopes of Christians. The different chiefs applied themselves thereto by very different processes, according to their vocation, character, or habits. Adhdmar, bishop of Puy, the renowned spiritual chief of the crusade, Godfrey de Bouillon, Raymond of Toulouse, and the military chieftains renowned for piety and virtue made head against all kinds of disorder either by fervent addresses or severe prohibitions. Men caught drunk had their hair cut off; blasphemous and reckless gamesters were branded with a red-hot iron; and the women were shut up in separate tents. To the irregularities within were added the perils of incessant espionage on the part of the Turks in the very camp of the crusaders: and no one knew how to repress this evil. “Brethren and lords,” said Bohemond to the assembled princes, “let me undertake this business by myself; I hope, with God’s help, to find a remedy for this complaint.” Caring but little for moral reform, he strove to strike terror into the Turks, and, by counteraction, restore confidence to the crusaders. “One evening,” says William of Tyre, “whilst everybody was, as usual, occupied in getting supper ready, Bohemond ordered some Turks who had been caught in the camp to be brought out of prison and put to death forthwith; and then, having had a huge fire lighted, he gave instructions that they should be roasted and carefully prepared as if for being eaten. If it should be asked what operation was going on, he commanded his people to answer, ‘The princes and governors of the camp this day decreed at their council that all Turks or their spies who should henceforth be found in the camp should be forced, after this fashion, to furnish meat of their own carcasses to the princes as well as to the whole army!’ ” “The whole city of Antioch,” adds the historian, “was stricken with terror at hearing the report of words so strange and a deed so cruel. And thus, by the act and pains of Bohemond, the camp was purged of this pest of spies, and the results of the princes’ meetings were much less known amongst the foe.”
Bohemond did not confine himself to terrifying the Turks by the display of his barbarities; he sought and found traitors amongst them. During the incidents of the siege he had concocted certain relations with an inhabitant of Antioch, named Ferouz or Emir-Feir, probably a renegade Christian and seeming Mussulman, in favor with the Governor Accien or Baghisian, who had intrusted to him, him and his family, the ward of three of the towers and gates of the city. Emir-Feir, whether from religious remorse or on promise of a rich recompense, had, after the ambiguous and tortuous conversations which usually precede treason, made an offer to Bohemond to open to him, and, through him, to the crusaders, the entrance into Antioch. Bohemond, in covert terms, informed the chiefs, his comrades, of this proposal, leaving it to be understood that, if the capture of Antioch were the result of his efforts, it would be for him to become its lord. The count of Toulouse bluntly rejected this idea. “We be all brethren,” said he, “and we have all run the same risk; I did not leave my own country, and face, I and mine, so many dangers to conquer new lord-ships for any particular one of us.” The opinion of Raymond prevailed, and Bohemond pressed the matter no more that day. But the situation became more and more urgent; and armies of Mussulmans were preparing to come to the aid of Antioch. When these fresh alarms spread through the camp, Bohemond returned to the charge, saying, “Time presses; and if ye accept the overtures made to us, to-morrow Antioch will be ours, and we shall march in triumph on Jerusalem. If any find a better way of assuring our success, I am ready to accept it and renounce, on my own account, all conquest.” Raymond still persisted in his opposition; but all the other chiefs submitted to the overtures and conditions of Bohemond. All proper measures were taken, and Emir-Fein, being apprised thereof, had Bohemond informed that on the following night everything would be ready. At the appointed hour three-score warriors, with Bohemond at their head, repaired noiselessly to the foot of the tower indicated; a ladder was hoisted and Emir-Feir fastened it firmly to the top of the wall. Bohemond looked round and round, but no one was in a hurry to mount. Bohemond, therefore, himself mounted; and, having received recognition from Emir-Fein, he leaned upon the ramparts, called in a low voice to his comrades, and rapidly re-descended to reassure them and get them to mount with him. Up they mount; that and two other neighboring towers are given up to them; the three gates are opened, and the crusaders rush in. When day appeared, on the 3d of June, 1098, the streets of Antioch were full of corpses; for the Turks, surprised, had been slaughtered without resistance or had fled into the country. The citadel, filled with those who had been able to take refuge there, still held out; but the entire city was in the power of the crusaders, and the banner of Bohemond floated on an elevated spot over against the citadel.
In spite of their triumph the crusaders were not so near marching on Jerusalem as Bohemond had promised. Everywhere, throughout Syria and Mesopotamia, the Mussulmans were rising to go and deliver Antioch; an immense army was already in motion; there were eleven hundred thousand men according to Matthew of Edessa, six hundred and sixty thousand according to Foucher of Chartres, three hundred thousand according to Raoul of Caen, and only two hundred thousand according to William of Tyre and Albert of Aix. The discrepancy in the figures is a sufficient proof of their untruthfulness. The last number was enough to disquiet the crusaders, already much reduced by so many marches, battles, sufferings, and desertions. An old Mussulman warrior, celebrated at that time throughout Western Asia, Corbogha, sultan of Mossoul (hard by what was ancient Nineveh), commanded all the hostile forces, and four days after the capture of Antioch he was already completely round the place, enclosing the crusaders within the walls of which they had just become the masters. They were thus and all on a sudden besieged in their turn, having even in the very midst of them, in the citadel which still held out, a hostile force. Whilst they had been besieging Antioch, the Emperor Alexis Comnenus had begun to march with an army to get his share in their successes, and was advancing into Asia Minor when he heard that the Mussulmans, in immense numbers, were investing the Christian army in Antioch, and not in a condition, it was said, to hold out long. The emperor immediately retraced his steps towards Constantinople, and the crusaders found that they had no Greek aid to hope for. The blockade, becoming stricter day by day, soon brought about a horrible famine in Antioch. Instead of repeating here, in general terms, the ordinary descriptions of this cruel scourge, we will reproduce its particular and striking features as they have been traced out by contemporary chroniclers. “The Christian people,” says William of Tyre, “had recourse before long, to procure themselves any food whatever, to all sorts of shameful means. Nobles, free men, did not blush to hungrily stretch out the hand to nobodies, asking with troublesome pertinacity for what was too often refused. There were seen the very strongest, those whom their signal valor had rendered illustrious in the midst of the army, now supported on crutches, dragging themselves half-dead along the streets and in the public places; and, if they did not speak, at any rate they showed themselves, with countenances irrecognizable, silently begging alms of every passer-by. No self-respect restrained matrons or young women heretofore accustomed to severe restraints; they walked hither and thither, with pallid faces, groaning and searching everywhere for somewhat to eat; and they in whom the pangs of hunger had not extinguished every spark of modesty went and hid themselves in the most secret places, and gnawed their hearts in silence, preferring to die of want rather than beg in public. Children still in the cradle, unable to get milk, were exposed at the cross-roads, crying in vain for their usual nourishment; and men, women, and children, all threw themselves greedily upon any kind of food, wholesome and unwholesome, clean and unclean, that they could scrape together here and there, and none shared with another that which they picked up.” So many and such sufferings produced incredible dastardliness; and deserters escaped by night, in some cases throwing themselves down, at the risk of being killed, into the city-moat; in others getting down by help of a rope from the ramparts. Indignation blazed forth against the fugitives; they were called rope-dancers; and God was prayed to treat them as the traitor Judas. William of Tyre and Guibert of Nogent, after naming some, and those the very highest, end with these words: “Of many more I know not the names, and I am unwilling to expose all that are well known to me.”
“We are assured,” says William of Tyre, “that in view of such woes and such weaknesses, the princes, despairing of any means of safety, held amongst themselves a secret council, at which they decided to abandon the army and all the people, fly in the middle of the night, and retreat to the sea.” According to the Armenian