Antioch: 28 June 1098

[MengJiao]

  The First Crusade is a mess at this point.  Antioch has mostly fallen (the Seljuk Turks still hold the citadel), but there aren't many horses left and the Turks are closing in from all sides.
The Turkish commander believes that he might as well let all the Franks come out of the city for battle so that he can wipe them all out once and for all:

[Gusington]

Ooh very cool.

[MengJiao]

Ooh very cool.

   Might be interesting.  It made me look into the Seljuks of Rum and the Crusader State of Antioch/Edessa.  After this little interlude around Antioch, the Turks spent most of their energy trying to
conquer Georgia and failed.  Edessa held on as a player in the complex power politics of the region since the Turks were usually busy elsewhere, though they did occasionally return to capture
and ransom Tancred and Bohemond and company and/or whatever Byzantines happened to be on hand.  It was the Mongols who seemed to be about to put an end to all that -- but in the end,
the Egyptians defeated the Mongols and the rest is history.  Anyway, back to Antioch in 1098, when, historically, the Crusaders managed to avoid being wiped out and the Turks went elsewhere since
the Egyptians had just taken Ascalon and Jerusalem which made the Crusaders their problem and Antioch/Edessa a possibly useful ally of the Turks.

[MengJiao]

Ooh very cool.

   Might be interesting.

   And Bohemond obliterates the Syrian cavalry.  Maybe Qaradja shouldn't have left his pikemen behind (I know its really my fault -- but getting a lot of medium cavalry up on the Frankish
flank was jus so tempting -- but how was I to know the Franks were going to roll the die like demons?).  Qaradja did do okay and turn back the first onslaught, but who knew Bohemond would
roll a continuation?  And then roll up the whole line of slightly disrupted retreating Syrians?  Oh well -- it all looks like this when it is all over:

 

[Gusington]

^The Mongols threatened the Crusader States but never conquered them. Then the Mongols regrouped further back in Central Asia in the 13 century as the Mamluks rose in Egypt around the same time and then Mongol successors finally clashed with the Mamluks in the 14th century. We need more books on that last part And a movie.

[MengJiao]

^The Mongols threatened the Crusader States but never conquered them. Then the Mongols regrouped further back in Central Asia in the 13 century as the Mamluks rose in Egypt around the same time and then Mongol successors finally clashed with the Mamluks in the 14th century. We need more books on that last part And a movie.

  Doesn't Christopher Marlowe's Tamulane cover some of that?  Anyway, meanwhile -- The heavy cavalry of Damascus drives back the knights:

[Gusington]

^If it does I have some Amazoning to do.

[MengJiao]

^If it does I have some Amazoning to do.

   if you can stand pre-Shakespearian Elizabethan Drama.  I guess the Tragical History of Doctor Faustus is okay.

[Gusington]

Err I’ll pass on that one.

[MengJiao]

  The heavy cavalry of Damascus drives back the knights.

    but the Crusaders seem to be gaining slowly even gainst the Seljuks heavy cavalry: