Written by: Pedro Gaião

Massacres of Jews, Muslims and Eastern Christians; breaking of oaths to take over conquered lands; extortion and despoiling of European Jewish communities. The First Crusade, alone, accumulates a large amount of dark and well-known episodes.

Surprisingly, its episodes of cannibalism receive almost marginal attention in relation to the other dark chapters of this military pilgrimage; more than that, the religious and apologetic connotation given by the religious themselves on the expedition receives very little, if not almost, nonexistent attention.

But an addendum is needed here: Christianity, like other Abrahamic faiths such as Islam and Judaism, repudiates the practice of eating human flesh in any condition. And although episodes of cannibalism took place during “contexts of deprivation”, their presence in a Holy Crusade, by soldiers of Christ and in the contexts in which they occurred contribute greatly to the scorn of any remnants of credit for their justification.

First of all, it is necessary to explain the historical phenomenon of the First Crusade itself. Contrary to what most lay people suppose, the First Crusade bears little resemblance to the more stereotyped view of a classic medieval war. All of this because, as obvious as it can be, we are talking about the First Crusade, that is, the first time that a war was waged for fundamentally religious reasons by the highest leader of the Christian religion. In addition to a war, the First Crusade was also seen as a pilgrimage; an armed and warmongering pilgrimage, certainly, but still a religious pilgrimage.

In addition to knights, nobles and soldiers, there was also an immense mass of pilgrims, preachers, clergy and even prostitutes. And although they did not constitute any military element of consideration, these pilgrims and priests were all still armed with stones, sticks or, in the best cases, some military weapon such as bows or spears.

In this heterogeneous and misshapen mass, the soldiers and horsemen of the so-called “Baron’s Crusade” constituted about 125 thousand men, a surprisingly massive number for the war conditions of Catholic Europe at the time. In order to have a better understanding of these numbers, it is important to compare that major battles of the period, such as Stamford Bridge and Hastings (1066), did not have more than 12 thousand men in the most optimistic estimates; Paris, the most populous city in the Catholic world, was inhabited by about 50,000 to 65,000 people, roughly 50% of what the pilgrim mass of the Barons’ Crusade held only of Soldiers. Constantinople itself, at the time of the arrival of the expeditionaries, had about a quarter of a million inhabitants; which corresponded to no more than twice the number of Catholic soldiers stationed there; it is not surprising, in view of these enormous numbers and the very challenging stance of the Catholic crusaders in the imperial court, that the Byzantine emperor himself feared that his own capital would be taken (as indeed it would be at the time of the Fourth Crusade, in 1204).

In addition to the problem of numbers, there was also the problem of organization: while medieval armies were organized and led by a visible authority, present or represented at the top of a chain of command, nothing similar existed in the First Crusade: the role of Pope Urban was merely calling for a Crusade, not organizing or leading one. All this decentralized aspect in its organization meant that everyone, whether pilgrims, soldiers, knights or nobles, met on their own; it is clear that they generally organized around the entourages of a local noble or in brotherhoods of military cooperation (a primitive antecedent of Military Orders like that of the Templars), but this was still far from the militarily acceptable. Historiographically, there were two movements that are part of what we can call the “First Crusade”:

1 The so-called Baron’s Crusade, composed of a good number of knights and soldiers, who accompanied the entourages of nobles of high caliber, such as Duke Robert of Normandy, Prince Bohemuod of Taranto, Count Raymond of Toulouse, Duke Godfrey of Boullion of Lower Lorraine, among dozens and dozens of counts and lords with some leadership participation.

2 The People’s Crusade, composed mostly of pilgrims with terrible weapons, commanded by the preacher Peter the Hermit and nobles such as Count Emicho of Rhineland and Baron Walter the Penniless.

Not surprisingly, a Crusade of Beggars was virtually destroyed in the first conflict in enemy territory, with the rest of its members being dispersed or merged with a better equipped and organized Crusade of Barons. But, by the way, even the Barons’ Crusade had nothing close to a centralized chain of command, or even shared leadership. Therefore, one should not speak of an army of the First Crusade, but of armies, many of them.

This multifaced aspect, aligned with a completely deficient and poorly organized supply chain, was seriously decisive in the course of the events that would follow.

Since all of the supplies for the crusader army in the Middle East came either from plunder or foreign aid, usually Byzantine, tasks like sieging enemy cities were extremely difficult. The Crusaders did not carry any siege equipment with them, so that even to build stairs or siege towers, Byzantine help was needed to supply the wood. In addition, while they can be done in a matter of hours, sieges are almost always months-consuming operations. With the myriad of mouths to be fed daily in the crusader camp, it was quite often the case that it was precisely the besiegers who felt besieged, surrounding well-supplied and strengthened cities that they themselves were unable to besiege. In this type of scenario, hunger would prove to be a persistent companion. Despite these ailments, it was faith – and in some cases greed itself – that kept the hosts on their feet while they lacked of about their most fundamental needs.

This is precisely the case with the Siege of Antioch (1097-8), which lasted for about eight months. Eventually, a crisis in the supply happened: not even military incursions to collect food nor the trade with local Christians were qualified to supply as a necessity for the besiegers. As Michaud states: “men, horses and pack animals died of hunger, thirst and fatigue” (MICHAUD, 1956, p. 273).

Without food, horses were the first to be sacrificed; at the end of the siege, only 700 horses survived the desperate predation of the hungry crusaders. As an eyewitness reports:

So much did our people suffer from thirst that some opened the veins of their horses and donkeys to drink their blood; others asked a companion to collect urine with their hands, to relieve thirst; still others dug the damp soil, lay down and spread dirt on their chests, such was their thirst (FRANCO, 1981, p. 40).

But that was not all of it:

Whoever found a dead dog or cat ate it with great pleasure. They ate some horses, but they had to be kept for battles. They ate leather, grass and even prisoners – except for their heads, which they placed on large poles in the sight of their enemies (DUCHÉ, 1964, p. 383).

Although there is a considerable wing of lay people and even historians who try to despise the idea of cannibalism being committed in the siege of Antioch, the reality of these episodes are immortalized by the eyewitnesses themselves: “If any of our people left the camp and found someone, also ours, one would kill the other to strip him” (LINS, 1944, p. 317)

Some of the primary sources that mention cannibalism in Antioch are Chanson d`Antioche, the historian and archbishop William of Tyre and the English writer William of Malmesbury (RUBENSTEIN, p. 537); the latter adds some details to the events:

And there were some who feasted on their bodies with corpses, eating human flesh, but [doing it] too far in the mountains, so that others would not be offended by the smell of cooked meat (MALMESBURY, Gesta regum Anglorum).

The main crusader commanders in the Siege of Antioch also indicated the existence of cannibalism in the siege, according to their own letter to the Pope in September 1099:

The hunger in the city had grown to such an extent that many had difficulty refraining from feasting on human flesh (RUBENSTEIN, p. 538).

As Rubestein notes:

The letter addressed to the Pope and the admonition of the preacher Peter Bartholomew both refer to Christians eating Christians, not Muslims.

[…]

Princess Anna Komnene claims that cannibalism happened even before that [ie. of the Siege of Antioch], with the People’s Crusade led by Peter the Hermit. As his ragged army ravaged the lands around Nicaea, she writes in terms similar to Ralph and Gilo [chroniclers of the First Crusade]: “they cut some of the babies into pieces, impale others on wooden stakes and cook others on fire; the elderly are subjected to all kinds of torture” (RUBENSTEIN, P. 539).

Like her father, Emperor Alexios Komnenos, Princess Anna Komnene saw the Frankish pilgrims as true barbarians. And in the light of the facts, well, we could hardly disagree with them.

In his Les Croisades, Brentano still notes:

Finding no more, around their immense camp, herbs, barks and roots that appeased their hunger, they started to eat their horses, donkeys, camels, dogs and even the rats they managed to catch, arriving at the village – the famous people of the roi Tafur from the contemporary epic – Chanson d`Antioche – devouring the corpses of the Saracens killed in their meetings, some going to the point of unearthing them in the cemetery, which was outside the walls of Antioch (LINS, 1944, p. 317)

After eight months of siege, the crusaders managed to bribe someone named Firouz, a rich Armenian Christian merchant who had converted to Islam, to open them to the city through the tower he guarded. Despite this, the city was devastated by iron and fire, even though the vast majority of the population was still made up of Christians, given that it only fell into Turkish rule in 1085, twelve years before it was besieged by the Crusaders.

Amin Malouf describes a little of the brutality committed after the conquest of Antioch:

The city itself was a scene of blood and fire. Men, women, and children tried to flee through muddy alleyways, but the knights tracked them down easily and slaughtered them on the spot. The last survivors’ cries of horror were gradually extinguished, soon to be replaced by the off-key singing of drunken Frankish plunderers. Smoke rose from the many burning houses. By midday, a veil of mourning enveloped the city (MAALOUF, p. 35)

Few prisoners were taken, but only to maim and reduce them to perpetual slavery. Bastos describes that “it was with satisfaction that feudal barons cut the noses and lips of the Turks they imprisoned” (BASTOS, 1983, p. 92).

Once Antioch was conquered and secured, it was not returned to Byzantine authority, with Bohemond of Taranto claiming that they had “betrayed” Catholics by failing to provide adequate support for the siege. However, Duché writes that “taking Antioch was a personal matter for Bohemond. That is, tried to take it for him. And the other barons, realizing that they could do nothing without that devil of man, consented to it” (DUCHÉ, 1964, 382).

While the crusader army was not able to advance because of the spoils of the barons in the dispute for the ruling of the city, several crusaders tried to keep going forward on their own, whether for more religious reasons or for more earthly causes, as Hilário Franco describes: “each crusader leader engaged in isolated actions seeking to achieve a territorial conquest for their own benefit” (FRANCO, 1981, p. 43). Of these initiatives, the Siege of Maara stands out, by a knight in the retinue of Count Raymond of Toulouse.

Maara functioned as a warehouse on the trade routes that led to the rich and powerful capital of the mighty Emirate of Damascus. Despite having little more than civilians and militias of little military value, the city was able to repel the crusader assaults for about two weeks. Although small, the fact that the crusader army surrounded the city in winter and with few provisions would be decisive in the destiny that the population of the city would have.

On December 11, a joint action allowed the defensive walls and towers to be taken. Although both armies stopped fighting at nightfall, the poorest pilgrims took advantage of the crusader conquests to plunder the interiors of the city. On the morning of the 12th day, before the fighting resumed, the city garrison negotiated its surrender with Prince Bohemond of Taranto, obtaining the right of safe conduct.

Despite this, as soon as the Muslims surrendered, the crusaders broke their oath and launched themselves vigorously against the city, plundering and massacring its population.

The Frankish commander promised to spare the lives of the inhabitants if they would stop fighting and withdraw from certain buildings. Desperately placing their trust in his word, the families gathered in the houses and cellars of the city and waited all night in fear. The Franks arrived at dawn. It was carnage. For three days they put people to the sword, killing more than a hundred thousand people and taking many prisoners (MAALOUF, p. 35)

If the Crusaders hoped to find adequate supplies for the winter, they ended up being frustrated. The long dispute between Raymond of Toulouse and Bohemond of Taranto for the possession of Antioch only embittered the misery of the conquerors, who had to resort to cannibalism.

As another letter from the barons to the Pope reveals: “a terrible famine plagued the army in Ma’arra and imposed the cruel need to feed on the bodies of the Saracens”

Ralph of Caen, an eyewitness to the episode, describes in his Gesta Tancredi in Expeditione Hierosolymitana: “In Ma’arra our troops boiled pagan adults in cooking-pots; they impaled children on spits and devoured them grilled.” (MAALOUF, p. 47)

The profane banquet, rather than something impulsive or innocent, seems to have actually been premeditated well before the massacre itself: “[…] for example, fanatical Franks, the Tafurs, roam through the countryside openly proclaiming that they would chew the flesh of the Saracens and gathering around their nocturnal camp-fires to devour their prey” (Ibd).

Baudri, the archbishop of Dóle, defended cannibalism under the theological justification that “eating the bodies of infidels is still making war on them” (Ibid)

Lins declares that the crusaders devoured the bodies of Muslims “even in an already state of putrefaction” (LINS, p. 317).

A chaplain from Count Raymond of Toulouse, also an eyewitness, comments that “the crusaders of the popular class have eagerly devoured the bodies of decomposed and already fetid Saracens, who have been in the swamps near the city for fifteen and more days” (Ibid, p. 322-323).

Frank chronicler Albert of Aix stated that “Not only did our troops not shrink from eating dead Turks and Saracens; they also ate dogs!” (MAALOUF, p. 47).

As noted by Rubenstein, there are about 10 primary sources on cannibalism in Ma’arra. But they apparently diverge from when there was cannibalism: “most sources, seven of the ten examined so far, place the episode of cannibalism after the siege of Ma’arra. But when we consider one of the sources derived from the Gesta and three other sources that consider cannibalism during the siege, they being highly independent of one another, we are left with a much larger margin” (RUBENSTEIN, p. 537).

A solution to this apparent problem may be that cannibalistic attacks occurred during and after the battle, this does not exactly postulate any major problems. What is absurd, by the way, is that it is still denied that the crusaders practiced cannibalism in the First Crusade, in view of the large number of sources and the very religious defense that a bishop in the siege made of the practice.

Bibliography:

– RUBENSTEIN, Jay. Cannibals and Crusaders. French Historical Studies, 2008. 

– MAALOUF, Amin. As Cruzadas Vistas Pelos Árabes. 4 ed. Rio São Paulo: brasiliense, 2001.

– LINS, Ivan. A Idade Média – A Cavalaria e as Cruzadas. 2 ed.Rio de Janeiro: Pan-Americana, 1944.

– FRANCO, Hilário. As Cruzadas. 1 ed. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 2001.

– BASTOS, Plínio. História do Mundo – Da Pré-História aos Nossos Dias. 3 ed. Rio de janeiro: Livraria Império, 1983. 

– MICHAUD, Joseph François. História das Cruzadas, vol. 2. São Paulo: Editora das Américas, 1956. 

– DUCHÉ, Jean. Historia de la humanidade II – El Fuego de Dios. 1 ed. Madri: Ediciones Guadarrama, 1964.