"History of the Principality of Antioch (1098 - 1268)" Topic

"The Principality of Antiochia is the second of the Christian states founded by the Crusaders during the 1st Crusade in the territory of modern Syria and Turkey. The state was founded in 1098 after the conquest of Antioch by Bohemond I of Antioch.

While Baldwin I of Jerusalem and Tancred of Taranto stayed in Cilicia and Mesopotamia, where Baldwin founded the county of Edessa, the rest of the Crusaders continued their offensive to the south and on October 21, 1097, under the leadership of Bohemond I, and besieged Antioch. The city, whose thick walls were securely fortified by four hundred towers, was truly impregnable, and the siege lasted throughout the winter of 1098.

Warriors, as wrote in a letter to Adélie's wife Stephen Blois, "throughout the winter suffered for our Lord Christ from the unreasonable frost and terrible downpours". Then illnesses and hunger came to the camps of the Crusaders. The situation of the Christians was so desperate that according to witnesses, the chroniclers, they were forced to put their own horses on the meat. There are records that sometimes it came down to cannibalism and starving warriors ate the bodies of their deceased companion….."
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