Anatolia became a Turkish homeland through a succession of defensive victories and counterstrokes rather than through any single triumph. One link in that chain, close to the Black Sea, was forged in August 1101 around Merzifon. The first of the new Latin armies to march east after the First Crusade was broken here by the combined forces of the Anatolian Seljuk Sultan Kilij Arslan I and the Danishmendid lord Gümüştekin Gazi. The battle was the first of three defeats the Crusaders suffered in Anatolia within a short span, and Ahmet Kavas refers to it in his article as "the first strike against the Crusaders."

Europe After the First Crusade

The capture of Jerusalem in 1099 set off great enthusiasm across Western Europe. Pope Paschal II renewed the earlier threat of excommunication against those who had taken the cross but not departed, and he sent legates into France. Archbishop Anselm of Milan had already begun preaching a new expedition in Lombardy in the spring of 1099. The regions that had largely stood aside from the first crusade carried the weight this time: Lombards, Burgundians, men from Nevers and Aquitaine, Bavarians. Some of the participants were people who had been criticized for abandoning the first crusade on the road home and leaving their vows unfulfilled; Count Stephen of Blois and Count Hugh of Vermandois stand first among them. Because Paschal was at odds with the Holy Roman emperor Henry IV and his son Henry V, no king answered the call, but dukes and counts set out.

As in the first crusade, the expedition had no single commander. The armies marched at different times and by different routes. The pope had named Archbishop Anselm as leader, but just as before, no commander with real authority emerged. Most of those who took part were untrained poor people, women and children; well-trained knights were few. The objective was not clear either. Most meant to help the Kingdom of Jerusalem, while certain signs suggest that some planned to enter Iraq and even to advance on Baghdad.

Bohemond's Captivity and the Departure of the Lombards

The event that shaped the expedition's course in Anatolia was the capture of Bohemond, Prince of Antioch, by the Danishmendids. Gabriel, the Armenian lord of Malatya, had taken the city from the Danishmendids in the spring of 1100. When Gümüştekin Gazi, the ruler of Sivas, prepared to recover it, Gabriel appealed to Bohemond for help. Bohemond gathered his army and set out, but in August 1100 he was ambushed and taken prisoner in the hills near Malatya. Gümüştekin carried him off to Niksar and imprisoned him there. The Byzantine emperor Alexios I offered Gümüştekin 260,000 bezants for Bohemond; because no share was offered to Kilij Arslan, the bargain came to nothing and created a separate tension between the Seljuks and the Danishmendids.

News of the captivity had a great echo in Europe, especially in Italy. His exploits in the first crusade had made Bohemond a popular hero among the Lombards. The Lombard army under Anselm left Milan on 13 September 1100. The sources give an exaggerated figure of fifty thousand men; more cautious estimates speak of at least ten thousand. Passing through Carinthia and Hungary into Bulgaria, the Lombards spent the winter there and quarreled with the local population along the way. When they reached Constantinople, Emperor Alexios did not admit them to the city but kept them outside the walls for about two months. On 21 April 1101 he ferried them across the Bosporus, and the Lombards began to wait at Nicomedia.

Into the Interior of Anatolia

At Nicomedia the Lombards were joined by the French under Count Stephen of Blois, by the Burgundians, by a contingent under a German commander named Conrad, and by a small group from Provence. The Provençals were with Count Raymond IV of Toulouse, who had passed through Anatolia in the first crusade. Raymond had recovered from a serious illness thanks to the emperor's physicians, and as someone who knew Anatolia he took command of the army. The French advised the Lombards to wait but could not persuade them. The Lombards regarded Raymond as the emperor's man and believed that Alexios did not want Bohemond freed. The French therefore set out with them so as not to leave them alone.

The army first advanced toward Dorylaeum (Eskişehir), along the route of the first crusade. At the Lombards' insistence, the direction was turned east, into the interior of Anatolia. On 23 June 1101 Ankara was taken and returned to Byzantium. Heading from Ankara toward Çankırı, the Crusaders met the scorched-earth tactics employed by Kilij Arslan. The Turks emptied villages, burned the provisions they could not carry, poisoned wells and cisterns, and struck constantly at foraging parties and supply lines. The Crusaders besieged the strongly garrisoned Çankırı without taking it; Turkish reinforcements detained them in the region until July, and the army suffered under the oppressive heat. Raymond proposed advancing on Kastamonu. It is suggested that this was meant to reach the Black Sea coast and find supplies in Byzantine territory, and also that he wished to win the emperor's favor, since the Komnenos family came from Kastamonu. When the army arrived there it was exhausted by hunger and thirst. Knights drawn into ambushes by feigned retreats were being killed one by one in scattered groups.

The most reasonable course was to descend to the coast and enter Byzantine Paphlagonia and Pontus. But the Lombards, determined to rescue Bohemond, would not agree, and the army was turned east again, toward Niksar. By the end of July there was neither food nor water, and soldiers carrying heavy equipment were failing in the extreme heat. Crossing the Kızılırmak (the Halys), the Crusaders had now entered Danishmendid territory. There they plundered a village inhabited by Greek Christians; Anna Komnene calls the attack senseless. In August the army encamped halfway between the Kızılırmak and Niksar, near the village of Merzifon.

Preparations on the Turkish Side

Kilij Arslan did not underestimate the Crusaders as he had in the first crusade. İznik had been taken from him and his army had been defeated at Dorylaeum, and he had paid for it. After 1097 he worked to build an alliance against the Crusaders. It included the Seljuk sultanate, the Danishmendids, who held Sivas and its surroundings, and Fakhr al-Mulk Ridwan, the emir of Aleppo. In his article Kavas treats Kilij Arslan's tactics from İzmit to Merzifon, his cooperation with the Danishmendids, and the support he drew from southern Anatolia and northern Syria as the principal causes of the victory.

The region of Amasya and Merzifon was then under Danishmendid rule. Kavas names the lord of the region, Melik Gazi Gümüştekin, among those who fought the Crusaders. A confusion of names should be noted here. Danishmend Ahmed Gazi, regarded as the founder of the Danishmendids, had died around 1084, and the man at the head of the principality in 1101 was his son Gümüştekin. Some sources also call Gümüştekin "Danishmend Bey," so in accounts of the crusade the name "Danishmend Gazi" is sometimes confused between father and son. According to the sources, Kilij Arslan was joined by Malik Ghazi, the ruler of Sivas, as well as by Karaja of Harran.

Five Days Before Merzifon

As the Crusader army approached Merzifon it advanced in five divisions. In front marched the Lombards and other Italians under Anselm, followed by Raymond with his Pecheneg cavalry. Behind them came Count Stephen I of Burgundy and Duke Odo I of Burgundy, then Conrad's Germans, and last of all the French of Stephen of Blois. Horses, soldiers and the crowd of non-combatants following the army were all weakened; the size of the army slowed communication between the divisions and made the march uncoordinated. Kilij Arslan, for his part, had long since determined the direction in which the Crusaders would advance and had chosen the battlefield himself. The battle was fought on dry, barren ground, well suited to horsemen, at the foot of the Paphlagonian mountains.

On the first day the Turks cut off the Crusaders' advance and surrounded the army. The Crusaders piled their wagons and every kind of baggage around the camp to form a barrier; they placed the non-combatants inside and drew up the fighters around the perimeter. Turkish archers took up positions on the flanks of the camp, loosed dense volleys of arrows with shouting, then withdrew quickly and gave way to other groups, which repeated the same tactic from another direction. Despite speaking different languages, the Crusaders held their ranks and beat off the first attacks. The next day Conrad tried to break through the Turkish lines with his German contingent. He failed and, worse, lost contact with the main force; many of his men were killed, and Conrad and the survivors took refuge in a nearby fortress. Those waiting in the camp began to fear that Conrad had abandoned them, as Hugh and Stephen had done in the first crusade. On the third day there was no significant fighting.

On the fourth day Anselm addressed the soldiers; he brought forward the Holy Lance, believed to have been found at the siege of Antioch, and a relic of Saint Ambrose. The Italians then tried to break through the Turkish lines from the east. They inflicted heavy losses on the Turks but lost so many men themselves that they fell back. Meanwhile reinforcements reached Kilij Arslan: Danishmendid lords, Ridwan, the emir of Aleppo, and many Syrian Turkmen. The sources differ on the day the reinforcements arrived; Kavas, for his part, places the battle on 5 August 1101. The strengthened Turks attacked the tired and demoralized Crusaders. The Lombards broke; Albert of Biandrate fled with many Italian knights, leaving behind the camp and the crowd that followed the army. The Italian infantry tried to flee as well but could not keep ahead of the Turkish horses and were struck down one by one. The Pechenegs abandoned the fight. Before long the Turks were entering the camp from every direction while the French and Germans fell back. In the confusion Raymond was pinned beneath a rock and was rescued by the two Stephens.

Collapse and Losses

According to some accounts, the noble commanders left the army that night and fled in small groups toward the mountains. When the Turks attacked the camp the next morning, most of the knights were gone and the army was defenseless. The camp was taken. Those without horses, especially the Lombards, could not get far and were hunted like game. Women, children and priests were either killed or enslaved. Duke Odo I of Burgundy was among the dead. The Holy Lance is also said to have fallen into Kilij Arslan's hands.

Those who escaped were mostly knights with horses. Raymond, with a small escort and the two Stephens, reached the port of Bafra at the mouth of the Kızılırmak and crossed from there to Constantinople in a small ship. Other knights reached Sinop and traveled to Constantinople by the same route. Anselm fled wounded to Constantinople and died soon afterwards. Many of the Crusaders blamed Alexios and Byzantium for the failure; yet Alexios, although he received Raymond courteously, did not conceal his disappointment. Some even claimed that the emperor had warned the Turks because he did not want Bohemond, whom he disliked, to be freed.

Casualty figures differ greatly in the sources. Kavas writes that four-fifths of the 20,000-strong force of Lombards, French and Germans were put out of action. In other accounts the Turkish force is given as 20,000, and the Crusaders are said to have been far more numerous and to have lost more than fifty thousand. Some estimates based on Turkish sources are higher still. Medieval numbers are generally inflated, and no exact figure can be given here; what nearly every account shares is that most of the Crusader army was destroyed and that the survivors were chiefly mounted nobles.

The Crusader Armies That Followed

After Merzifon, other Crusader forces came up against Kilij Arslan. The French under Count William II of Nevers had reached Constantinople in June and followed the Lombards as far as Ankara. Having lost their trail, they turned toward Konya, besieged the city in mid-August, and gave up after three days against the strong Seljuk garrison. Advancing toward Ereğli, this army suffered severely in a dry region where the Turks had burned the provisions and poisoned the wells, and then fell into an ambush. The mounted knights managed to escape; the infantry and the crowd that followed the army were killed or enslaved. William II managed to reach Antioch. About a week later the third army, in which Duke William IX of Aquitaine and Duke Welf of Bavaria marched together, met a similar fate on the same route near Ereğli in early September. Count Hugh of Vermandois fled wounded to Tarsus and died there on 18 October.

Thus within two months three great Crusader armies were destroyed in the interior of Anatolia. The surviving commanders gathered at Constantinople and crossed to Syria in ships provided by the emperor; at Tarsus Raymond was arrested by a knight on the charge of having fled from Merzifon and was handed over to Tancred at Antioch. Those who reached Jerusalem to fulfill their vows visited the holy places in the spring of 1102. Count Stephen of Blois died in May 1102 at Ramla, fighting beside King Baldwin I against the Egyptian army.

Consequences of the Battle

The most direct consequence of Merzifon was the disappearance of the Lombard, French and German army that had gone to rescue Bohemond. No one was left to free Bohemond, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem did not receive the reinforcement it was expecting. The Crusader states were left to their own resources, which pushed them toward relations with neighboring Muslim lords and toward cooperation with the Italian maritime cities, whose strong fleets promised regular supply. Because the land route from Constantinople to Jerusalem was no longer safe, the sea route came to the fore. In Europe, a new general call for a crusade was not made until 1145, after the fall of Edessa, and the struggle between the papacy and the empire had a share in that delay.

For the Turkish side the consequences were more lasting. The victory showed that the Crusaders were not invincible, as they had appeared to be in the first crusade. Kilij Arslan regained his standing and strengthened his relations with the Danishmendids, and he moved his capital to Konya. In later crusades too, the Crusaders met similar difficulties crossing Anatolia. In Kavas's assessment, this success was one of the developments that made the Turks' struggle for existence in Anatolia permanent.

A Forgotten Victory

The battle has also been largely passed over by European historians. Because the expedition of 1101 ended in complete disaster in three stages, it was almost forgotten in Europe; Kavas notes that the defeat of the first group has been treated by most European historians as if it had never happened. The same researcher calls it a great neglect that not the slightest memory of this battle is kept alive today in the region of Amasya and Merzifon. It is also recorded that some historians present the two separate destructions near Ereğli and Konya as a single battle. Among the principal sources relating the battle from the Latin side are the Historia Hierosolymitana of Albert of Aachen and the history of William of Tyre.

Chronology

August 1100: Bohemond is taken prisoner by Gümüştekin Gazi near Malatya.

13 September 1100: The Lombard army under Anselm leaves Milan.

21 April 1101: The Lombards are ferried across the Bosporus and wait at Nicomedia.

23 June 1101: The Crusader army takes Ankara and returns it to Byzantium.

July 1101: The siege of Çankırı fails; the army advances toward Kastamonu.

5 August 1101: The Battle of Merzifon (according to Kavas).

Early September 1101: The armies of Nevers and Aquitaine are destroyed near Ereğli.

18 October 1101: Count Hugh of Vermandois dies at Tarsus.

May 1102: Count Stephen of Blois dies at Ramla.

Bibliography

Academic studies

  • Kavas, Ahmet. "Haçlılara Vurulan İlk Darbe: Merzifon Muharebesi (5 Ağustos 1101) ve Türk Tarihindeki Yeri." İSMUS Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi Dergisi 2/1 (2017): 1-36. dergipark.org.tr
  • Knox, Ellis L. "The Crusade of 1101." ORB: The Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies.

Books

  • Runciman, Steven. Haçlı Seferleri Tarihi. Trans. Fikret Işıltan. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu.
  • Demirkent, Işın. Haçlı Seferleri. Istanbul: Dünya Yayıncılık, 1997.
  • Maalouf, Amin. Arapların Gözüyle Haçlı Seferleri. Trans. Mehmet Ali Kılıçbay. Istanbul: Telos, 1998.
  • Setton, Kenneth M. (ed.). A History of the Crusades, Vol. I: The First Hundred Years. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969.

Other sources

  • Albertus Aquensis. Historia Hierosolymitana.

Online sources