Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/358

 for the sum of ten thousand marks. Peace had been arranged between the brothers by Jarento, abbot of Dijon, whom Pope Urban II had sent to England for that purpose, directly after the council of Clermont (November 1095). Robert set out in October; Jarento accompanied him as far as Pontarlier (Doubs), where he met his brother-in-law, Count Stephen of Chartres, and his cousin, Robert of Flanders (, ap., viii. 474–5). They crossed the Alps, saw Pope Urban at Lucca, and passed through Rome into Apulia, where the Norman Count Roger welcomed the duke ‘as the head of his race.’ Lack of shipmen forced the brothers-in-law to winter in Calabria. They sailed from Brindisi on Easter-day, 5 April 1097, landed on the 9th at Dyrrhachium, and thence made their way to Constantinople, where, like the other crusading chiefs, they swore fealty to the Emperor Alexius. Early in June they joined the other crusaders at the siege of Nicæa. When, after leaving this place, the host divided into two bodies, the first onset of the Turks (1 July) fell at Dorylæum upon that in which Robert was with the other Norman princes. The Christians were all but overcome when Robert, baring his head, waving his gilded banner, and shouting ‘Normandy!’ and ‘God wills it!’ rallied his flying comrades (cf., c. 22, and , 1. iii. cc. 8–10). Tradition adds that he levelled his spear at a Turkish captain with such force that it went through the man's shield and his body too ( 1. vii. c. 7), while he despatched to the other division of the host a message which brought it to the rescue, and thus won for the crusaders their first victory in the field ( 1. iv. c. 357). On the march from Artah to Antioch he led the advanced guard. During the siege of Antioch (October 1097–June 1098) his wealth and his valour alike made him an important personage. The Counts of Vermandois, Blois, Aumale, Mons, and St. Pol ‘were all bound to him by gifts, and some of them by homage.’ He took part in several fights outside the town, especially one on 31 Dec. 1097, when he, Bohemond, and the Count of Flanders, with only 150 knights, routed a large body of Turks. Soon afterwards he withdrew to Laodicea. At this place—the only town in Syria still subject to the Byzantine emperor—there had landed twenty thousand pilgrims ‘from England and the other isles of the ocean,’ chief among whom was Edgar Atheling. The Laodiceans welcomed the pilgrims, and were persuaded by Edgar to offer the command of the place to his friend the Conqueror's son. Robert then established himself with all his forces at Laodicea. The other crusaders regarded this as a desertion; for though out of the stores which reached Laodicea from the west he sent them lavish supplies for the poor, he himself fell back into his old ways of life, and gave himself up to ‘idleness and sleep.’ Twice he was vainly recalled to the camp. At last a threat of excommunication brought him back (cf. l. x. c. 11;, c. 58; and , in , vol. clv. col. 952 D). He seems to have returned in time to take part, at the beginning of Lent, in a battle near Antioch, where Henry of Huntingdon (l. vii. c. 10) says he commanded the first line, and with one stroke of his sword cleft a Turk in twain through head, neck, and shoulders down to the chest. A similar exploit was recorded of Godfrey de Bouillon. In the great battle with Corbogha beneath the walls of Antioch, on 28 June 1098, Robert commanded the third (or second, according to some) of the six battalions into which the Christians were divided. His forces consisted of Normans, Englishmen, Bretons, and Angevins. The newly discovered (fragment) ‘Chanson d'Antioche en Provençal’ gives a description of them: ‘They bear English axes and javelins to hurl.’ ‘When they are in battle array and begin to strike, no one can resist them.’ Richard the Pilgrim sings how, ‘mounted on a lyart charger, the duke sprang like a leopard into the thick of the fight,’ and unhorsed Corbogha in the first onset (Chanson d'Antioche, ii. 245–6), and William of Malmesbury tells how at the close of the day, when a rally of the flying Turks had almost wrested victory from the crusaders, it was secured to them by the valour of Robert and two of his followers, by whom another Turkish chief was intercepted and slain ( l. iv. c. 389). According to William, this chief was Corbogha himself. But Corbogha was certainly not killed in this battle; and the ‘Chanson d'Antioche’ (ii. 261) gives the name of the captain whom Robert did slay—‘the Red Lion,’ i.e. Kizil-Arslan. Robert joined in a letter written from Antioch by some of the crusaders to Urban II, just after the death of Ademar of Le Puy in August 1198 (, clv. 847–9). The duke is called ‘Robertus Curtose’ in a description of the siege of Antioch, written at Lucca from materials supplied at the end of 1098 by Bruno, a citizen of Lucca, who left the crusaders' camp immediately after Corbogha's defeat.

Robert assisted Raymond of St. Gilles at the siege of Marra, November–December 1098. In a quarrel which ensued between Raymond and Bohemond, Robert sided with