The Dream and the Tomb by Robert Payne

employed to pull the baggage carts. It was high summer; in the pestilential heat so many fell ill that it sometimes seemed that the Crusade would have to be abandoned somewhere in the heart of Asia Minor. The Count of Toulouse was so sick that the Bishop of Orange gave him extreme unction. Godfrey, who had a passion for hunting, was wounded by a bear he had obviously hoped to eat. Even falcons and hunting dogs were eaten. Bread and water had given out. Crusaders were seen walking with their mouths open in the hope that a breath of air would cool their parched tongues. Occasionally they came upon patches of sugarcane; they squeezed out the sweet liquid and drank it ravenously.
    Then the rains came, and they were more unhappy and bewildered than ever. The rain lasted for four or five days, a cold rain that numbed their senses. The animals were also numbed by it and could not move. But as they neared Iconium, the modern Konya, they came to fertile valleys and friendly villagers. Apparently there was no Turkish garrison at Konya and they entered it freely, the inhabitants helping them in every way. The author of the
Gesta Francorum
remembered that the people were especially concerned that the Crusaders carried no waterskins. They showed how the waterskins could be made, and thereafter the Christian army was never without them.
    At Heraclea, the next important town on their journey, a large Turkish garrison was waiting for them. The Christians had overwhelming numbers and decided to attack immediately. Bohemond commanded the assault force, and the Turks fled, says the chronicler, “as quickly as an arrow shot by a strong hand flies from the bowstring.” Here the Crusaders rested for four days. During this time they argued violently about the route to be followed to Antioch, far away in the southeast, defying the most elementary law of all armies: united they stand, but divided they fall. The divisiveness that was to become characteristic of the Crusaders had made its first appearance.
    Both Tancred and Baldwin were far less interested in the Crusades than in acquiring great estates, cities, and farmlands that would produce wealth and a submissive peasantry. Tarsus, the birthplace of St. Paul, was within easy distance, and they decided independently to take possession of the city and establish themselves there. Tancred, with a hundred knights and two hundred infantry, lightly armed and therefore capable of great speed, set out from Heraclea about September 14, to be followed a few hours later by Baldwin, his cousin Baldwin of Le Bourg, and about five hundred knights and two thousand infantry. Tancred hoped to win Tarsus by speed, surprise, and sheer effrontery, while Baldwin hoped to smash the Turkish garrison troops with his heavily armed cavalry, leaving the infantrymen to mop up the survivors and take physical possession of the town. Tancredand Baldwin, both junior members of princely families, had much to win and little to lose in these dangerous adventures.
    Tancred was, not surprisingly, the first to reach Tarsus, then largely inhabited by Greek and Armenian Christians who were sympathetic to the Crusaders. But the garrison troops had been ordered to stand fast. Seeing Tancred’s small column advancing, the Turks took up positions outside the walls and waited. Tancred charged, there was a lot of close fighting, and the Turkish garrison was gradually thrown back on the town. Meanwhile Tancred had summoned reinforcements from Bohemond’s army, which was still in Heraclea. He set up his camp outside the gates of Tarsus, and through spies he was able to learn that the Christians inside the walls were doing everything possible to ensure a Christian victory. He was afraid Baldwin would soon be arriving to snatch victory away from him. And in fact, after Tancred had been encamped for three days outside the town, Baldwin arrived and immediately offered to share the town with him. Since Baldwin’s troops were far