In the fog of war the failure of Raymond’s attack looked like a setback too far; there was no point in the construction of a replacement tower, never mind the time it would take to build, given the way the first one had so spectacularly failed. Added to that, such a fiasco could only embolden the defenders, given the part morale played in battle.
Yet through that thick mist, if only the Count of Toulouse could have gazed, he would have seen that the two-pronged attack, albeit brought about by discord rather than strategy, had achieved more than was obviously visible.
Godfrey de Bouillon nearly died well before his tower got anywhere near the northern wall, where it adjoined the gate tower, the top of that set at a slightly higher elevation than the ramparts. The man standing beside him on the top platform, employed by archers to suppress the defence, was killed instantly by a huge rock that crushed his head and cracked his neck like an eggshell.
The Duke was holding a crossbow and was quick to retaliate and kill one of his opponents, but even he could see the sense that for him to be in such an exposed position, loading a weapon that took time, was folly: if he fell, such was the regard in which he was held, the whole endeavour might do so as well.
For all that he had to be dragged to the steps that went down to the next level, where he joined Tancred and Robert of Flanders, as well as the party of the twenty knights who would commence the initial assault if the tower could get into the right position. On this platform he was blind, before him a stout wooden screen, riddled with metal spikes on the face that would drop onto the ramparts at the right moment and hopefully pinion some of the defenders. From there he was unable to see if Gaston of Bearn’s other innovations were aiding the assault.
The usual practice was to line the exterior of the tower with wattle screens and animal skins, which Gaston had done, but, and this was different, he had made them with stout frames and created angles so that they protruded out from the siege engine on all sides. This rendered useless most of the inflammables hurled at his construct for they glanced off instead of sticking and fell to the ground.
Yet it was nip and tuck as the rocks rained down, for they were harder by far to deflect and some crashed through his defences. Added to that, however well built was Gaston’s tower it still had the inherent defects of all such weapons of war. Heavy stones and the movement over uneven ground were likely to put excessive pressure on the joints and cause them to fail.
The fighting men knew when they had reached an arc of relative safety, merely by the diminution of the noise, the lack of thundering cracks as the mangonel rocks fired by the Fatimids battered their crawling conveyance. Yet that also told them they were close, which had knights tensing muscles and taking practice sweeps with their swords, thudding them on the screen before their faces. Tancred, holding his axe in one hand, a lance in the other, remained stationary and in prayer.
‘Greek fire!’
That shout had him open his eyes, for there was good reason to be fearful of such a weapon, a fluid that once ignited could not be doused by water. It was a piece of good fortune that had given them information that it might be employed as a last line of defence, this from the Christians Iftikhar had expelled from the city. That made possible for them to have ready the one substance that could counter it: impervious to water it might be but vinegar, which they had in tubs on each floor, was able to quench Greek fire.
An increase in the swaying motion, though it had never been still and was exaggerated by the height at which they stood, told Godfrey and Tancred that they were passing through the gap cleared of rubble where had once stood the curtain wall and the charred remains of their battering ram. Soon it would be time to let go their screen and begin to fight against massively unfavourable odds until behind them more knights would rush up the internal ladders to their aid.
The cry came from those who could see and the men tasked to drop the screen released the ropes that held it in place. Down it crashed onto heads and bodies that could not get clear of its spikes for the numbers crowding onto the parapet eager to engage, their screams of pain the first thing to register. The second thing to register was more sobering, for to their front as they advanced onto that platform stood a mass of screaming Fatimids, who had only one aim: to kill as many of these Latins as they could.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The first task was to advance to near the leading edge then to hold the platform, which was resting on the very top of the crenellated battlements, not easy as the defenders quickly employed long pikes kept on the parapet to prevent that very manoeuvre, the points of these countered by both broadswords and swinging axes lopping off spikes aimed at taking away their legs. At the same time shields had to be held high to protect against arrows, loosed over Fatimid heads, potentially dangerous given they were being fired at short range.
That meant a tight line in which advance, once the primary moves had been completed, was secondary; let the enemy die as they sought to clamber up to make contact at a level much higher than their fighting parapet, leaving them vulnerable at a time when their weapons could not be properly employed. That they did so, despite the risks, was either testimony to their zeal or the same quality of those to their rear, so eager to get into battle that they pushed their own men onto the Crusader weapons.
Those initially pierced by a lance, or in a second wave taken by sword and axe, presented a barrier to the mass of their fellows, who solved this problem by seeking to shift them out of their path, regardless of the fact that to do so was to heave them off the platform edge into thin air, the screams of those still living adding to the cacophony of noise, that silenced as they hit the pile of rubble below.
Once fully supported from below, Godfrey, Robert, Tancred and their confreres, the most puissant knights from each of their contingents, could seek to advance, which was carried out in the standard tactic of one pace at a time and that only possible when the whole line could move as one; a dog-leg here was more dangerous now than the same predicament on an open field, until they got to the very edge and from there sought to clear enough space to get onto the walls themselves.
To aid the whole endeavour, Gaston of Bearn had fashioned another innovation, the ability to cast off the wattle screens on the next floor down, deliberately made wider than the top storey, and from there, using extension planks and ladders, to get men onto the flanks in order to stretch a defence that was short on numbers, it being forced to do battle on two fronts so far apart that mutual support was not possible.
That was about to become more telling in a wider sense too: with the siege tower fully employed and sucking in the enemy defenders, the mass of the attackers, hitherto idle, could assault the walls using stout ladders with which to clamber up to the level of the ramparts, the situation and stretched defence giving them a good chance of getting over the battlements and onto the wooden parapet.
Once there in sufficient numbers, complete success became a real possibility, not that it was ever guaranteed, for it was an axiom of such an action that the defence would always outnumber the attackers, and if the Muslims held their nerve and fought with brio, to drive the Latins back off again was achievable. Perception was alclass="underline" if men thought they were losing, whichever side they were on, they would slacken off their efforts, half concerned with escape rather than wholly committed to victory.