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found the wells dry or blocked. Philomelium was deserted, and
they pillaged it. The Turkish garrison at Konya, which had withstood the
Nivernais, abandoned the city before this larger army; but before they left
they collected and took with them all the foodstuffs there and stripped bare
the orchards and gardens in the suburbs. The Crusaders found little to refresh
them. It was about this moment that a hundred miles ahead Kilij Arslan and
Malik Ghazi were massacring the men of Nevers.
     
    1101: The Battle
of Heraclea
    The Crusaders struggled on from Konya, hungry
and thirsty, through the desert towards Heraclea. Turkish horsemen now appeared
on their flank, firing arrows into their midst and cutting off foraging parties
and stragglers. Early in September they entered Heraclea, which they found
deserted as Konya had been. Just beyond the town flowed the river, one of the
few Anatolian streams to flow abundantly throughout the summer. The Christian
warriors, half-mad from thirst, broke their ranks to rush to the welcoming
water. But the Turkish army lay concealed in the thickets on the river banks.
As the Crusaders surged on in disorder, the Turks sprang out on them and
surrounded them. There was no time to reform ranks. Panic spread through the
Christian army. Horsemen and infantry were mixed in a dreadful stampede; and as
they stumbled in their attempt to flee they were slaughtered by the enemy. The
Duke of Aquitaine, followed by one of his grooms, cut his way out and rode into
the mountains. After many days of wandering through the passes he found his way
to Tarsus. Hugh of Vermandois was badly wounded in the battle; but some of his
men rescued him and he too reached Tarsus. But he was a dying man. His death
took place on 18 October and they buried him there in the Cathedral of St Paul.
He never fulfilled his vow to go to Jerusalem. Welf of Bavaria only escaped by
throwing away all his armour. After several weeks he arrived with two or three
attendants at Antioch. The Archbishop Thiemo was taken prisoner and martyred
for his faith. The fate of the Margravine of Austria is unknown. Later legends
said that she ended her days a captive in a far-off harem, where she gave birth
to the Moslem hero Zengi. More probably she was thrown from her litter in the
panic and trampled to death.
    The three Crusades of the year 1101 had come
each of them to a disastrous finish; and their disasters affected the whole story
of the Crusading movement. The Turks had avenged their defeat at Dorylaeum.
They were not, after all, to be ejected from Anatolia. The road across the
peninsula remained unsafe for Christian armies, Frankish or Byzantine. When the
Byzantines wished later to intervene in Syria, they had to operate at the end
of communication lines that were long and very vulnerable; while Frankish
immigrants from the west were afraid to travel overland through Constantinople,
except in vast armies. They could only come by sea; and few of them could
afford the fare. And instead of the thousands of useful colonists that the year
should have brought to Syria and Palestine, only a small number of quarrelsome
leaders who had lost their armies and their reputations on the way penetrated
through to the Frankish states, where there was already a sufficiency of
quarrelsome leaders.
    Not all the Christians, however, had cause to
regret the disasters of the year 1101. To the Italian maritime cities the
failure to secure the land-route across Asia Minor meant an increase in
influence and wealth. For they possessed the ships that provided an alternative
means of communication with the Frankish states of the East. Their co-operation
was all the more necessary; and they insisted on payment in commercial
concessions. The Armenians in the Taurus mountains, particularly the Roupenian
princes, welcomed circumstances that made it difficult for Byzantium to
re-establish its Empire over the districts where they lived; though the
Armenians farther to the east had