A skirmish took place for the position on the mountains, but the Christians obtained it with little difficulty; and thus cut off the enemy from the town.[334] The Turks were forced to fight once more; but they were opposed no longer by an undisciplined crowd; and the Chivalry of Europe never displayed that almost superhuman valour[335] which distinguished them, with greater effect. Allowing even for the exaggeration of eulogy, the efforts of the knights must have been extraordinary. Godfrey is reported to have mown the heads of the Turks as a mower strikes down the thistles; and all the authorities of that day repeat the tale of his having at one blow severed an armed infidel in twain, though protected by his cuirass.[336] Every chief rivalled the other; and, beyond all doubt, several of the infidels must have fallen by the hand of each knight. While thus the sword raged among the Turkish host, many made their way to the bridge, and rushed across it in such crowds, that hundreds were thrust over into the water. On the other side, too, Boemond, with a large body of pikemen on foot, opposed their passage,[337] and hurled them at the point of the lance into the river, the banks of which were lined with the crusaders, who repelled even those that swam to land.[338] Thus lasted the fight till the sun going down put a stop to the carnage; and the Christians, with songs of victory and loaded with spoil, returned to their camp for the night. More than two thousand men, several of whom were of high rank, were left by the Turks on the field of battle: a multitude found death in the Orontes; but the number of the fallen was never correctly ascertained,[339] although the Christians, with the characteristic barbarity of the time, dug up many of the dead bodies that the Turks had buried during the night.[340]
Various efforts both from within and without were made to raise the siege, but in vain. On one occasion an immense body of Saracens, Arabs, and Turks was defeated by seven hundred Christian knights, to which small number[341] the disposable cavalry of the army was reduced. Famine, however, disease, and tempests did more to alarm and destroy the crusading force than all the efforts of the infidels. The winds[342] became so high that the tents even of the chiefs were blown down, and for some time they were forced to sleep in the open air. An earthquake[343] was felt towards the beginning of the year, and was of course considered as an omen. A comet,[344] too, blazed through the sky; but as the superstitious fancied they beheld in it the form of the Cross, this rather increased than abated their hope. In the midst of these circumstances Stephen,[345] Count of Blois, never very famous for his valour, pretended illness, and retired from the army of the crusade, accompanied by four thousand men, whom he led to Alexandretta. A more serious desertion, also, was threatened, though no design ever existed of its execution: Boemond[346] himself began to murmur at the length of the siege. He was poor, he declared: he had given up every thing in his native country for the Cross, and he could not waste his blood and treasure, and see all his soldiers fall in a siege which was to be productive of no advantage to himself. Such murmurs had their object, and might perhaps spring, in some degree, from a weak quarrel with Godfrey of Bouillon, on the subject of a tent, which had been sent to the duke by the Prince of Armenia, but which had been waylaid by Pancrates, the Armenian I have had occasion to mention in speaking of Baldwin; and had by him been given to Boemond. The Prince of Tarentum had been obliged to yield it by the decision of all the leaders; but though this was a subject of irritation, he had more ambitious projects in view.