Free A History of the Crusades-Vol 2 by Steven Runciman

their usual tactics. When their first cavalry onrush was
driven back by the Franks they retired to lure the enemy on; but they were
unable to re-form their ranks for a second charge, and meanwhile their infantry
was cut down by the Frankish knights. At the failure of their plans they
panicked. Ridwan and his bodyguard rode off in flight to Aleppo, and most of
his cavalry followed. The remainder and the foot-soldiers were butchered on the
battle-field.
    The victory enabled Tancred to reoccupy all the
territory lost in the previous year. The Seldjuk garrison abandoned Artah to
him, while his troops pursued the fugitives to the walls of Aleppo and
plundered many of the civilian population as they fled in terror from the city.
Ridwan sued for peace. He agreed to give up all his territory in the Orontes
valley and to pay a regular tribute to Tancred. By the end of 1105 Tancred’s
dominion stretched once more as far south as Albara and Maarat an-Numan.
     
    1106: The
Capture of Apamea
    In February 1106 the emir of Apamea, Khalaf ibn
Mula’ib, who had been not unfriendly to the Franks, was assassinated by
fanatics from Aleppo. The murderers then quarrelled with their chief ally
within the town, Abu’l Fath, who had assumed its government, and now asked for
help from Ridwan. Tancred, invited by the local Armenians, judged it opportune
to intervene. He marched south and began to besiege the town. But Abu’l Fath
restored order; and the emirs of Shaizar and Hama promised help. Tancred was
obliged to retire after three weeks, giving as his excuse that he must succour
the garrison at Lattakieh, which, after an eighteen months’ blockade by the Byzantines,
was faced with famine. He revictualled it and returned to Antioch. A few months
later one of Khalaf’s sons, Musbih ibn Mula’ib, who had escaped his father’s
fate, appeared at Antioch with a hundred followers and persuaded Tancred to
attack Apamea once again. With Musbih’s help he reinvested the town, digging a
ditch all round to prevent ingress or egress. None of the neighbouring emirs
came to Abu’l Fath’s assistance; and after a few weeks, on 14 September 1106,
the Moslems capitulated on the condition that their lives should be spared.
Tancred agreed to their terms and entered the town; whereupon, to please
Musbih, he put Abu’l Fath and three of his companions to death. The other
Apamean notables were taken to Antioch, where they remained till Ridwan
arranged for their ransom. A Frankish governor was installed at Apamea; while
Musbih was enfeoffed with an estate near by. Soon afterwards the Franks
reoccupied Kafartab. It was put into the charge of a knight called Theophilus,
who soon made himself the terror of the Moslems of Shaizar.
    With his eastern and southern frontiers thus
secured, Tancred could turn against the foe that he hated the most, Byzantium.
In the summer of 1107, when Bohemond’s attack on the European provinces was
imminent, Alexius was obliged to remove troops from the Syrian frontier in
order to face what was a more serious menace. Cantacuzenus was recalled with
many of his men from Lattakieh, and Monastras from Cilicia, which was put under
the control of the Armenian prince of Lampron, the Sbarabied Oshin. In the
winter of 1108, or early in 1109, soon after Bohemond’s humiliation in Epirus,
Tancred invaded Cilicia. The Emperor’s judgment of men had failed him. Oshin
came of high lineage and had been famed in his youth for his courage; but now
he had become luxurious and lazy. The key to Cilicia was the fortress of
Mamistra, on the river Jihan. When Tancred’s forces advanced by land over the
Amanus range and by water up the river to besiege the town, Oshin did nothing
to stop them. Mamistra fell after a short siege; and it seems that during the
next months Tancred re-established his rule over Adana and Tarsus, though
western Cilicia remained in imperial hands. Oshin himself retired to his lands
in the Taurus.
    Lattakieh had already been