Raymond of Toulouse, as the oldest and richest of the leaders, was expected to become Jerusalem’s ruler, but refused the honour, which fell to Godfrey of Bouillon. Godfrey would not call himself king, preferring instead the title Defender of the Holy Sepulchre.Two of the great leaders were not present at the thanksgiving service of 1099. Godfrey’s brother Baldwin of Boulogne had diverted at Antioch and made himself Count of Edessa, while Bohemund – after a quarrel with Raymond – had remained at Antioch and established his independent principality. In Constantinople the news of Jerusalem’s recovery was greeted with delight, although Alexius did not expect to receive the ancient patriarchy into his hands. Still, it had been in Muslim hands for almost four centuries and was distant enough not be concerned about. Antioch, however, was another matter.
The city, having been retaken from the Arabs in 969, had been an integral part of the empire, and its inhabitants were overwhelmingly Greekspeaking Orthodox Christians. Now it was in the hands of a Norman adventurer who, despite his oath, clearly had no intention of surrendering it to Byzantine authority. Bohemund’s immediate enemies, however, were the Turks, and on one of his several raids into the surrounding regions, he was captured in the summer of 1100 and his nephew Tancred became regent.
In July of the same year, Godfrey died to be succeeded by his brother Baldwin, who handed the County of Edessa to his cousin, Baldwin of Le Bourg. Unlike Godfrey, Baldwin had no qualms about taking the title King of Jerusalem. He then negotiated the ransom of Bohemund from the Turks. In the intervening period between his capture and ransom in 1103, Byzantine forces managed to retake several coastal cities including Adana and Tarsus, and from Latakia down to Tripoli.This, plus a crushing defeat by the Turks at Harran in 1104, decided Bohemund to leave Tancred in charge of the principality while he returned to Italy to raise reinforcements.
This he did, but after having succeeded in persuading Pope Paschal II that the real enemy of the Crusader States was not the infidel Turk but Alexius Comnenus, Bohemund turned his new army towards the Adriatic and another invasion of the empire.This started in 1107, but Bohemund was not to succeed. Greatly strengthened, the mighty fortress of Durazzo held out against him, and while a Byzantine fleet blockaded the Normans from the Adriatic, Alexius brought his army up and surrounded them. His forces reduced by famine and disease, Bohemund surrendered in September on the banks of the River Devol. By treaty, he acknowledged the emperor’s suzerainty over the Principality of Antioch and retired to obscurity in Apulia.There, he died three years later and his three-year-old son Bohemund II succeeded him.
Arms of the crusaders, swords, bows, etc..
