IT HAPPENED JUST THAT WAY nearly every day.

Assault upon assault.

Death after meaningless death.

The siege took months. For a while, it seemed as if our glorious Crusade would end in Antioch, not Jerusalem.

Our catapults flung giant missiles of fiery rock, yet they barely dented the massive walls. Wave after wave of frontal attacks only increased the death toll.

Finally, we constructed enormous siege engines, as tall as the highest towers. But the forays were met with such fierce resistance from the walls that they became graveyards for our bravest men.

The longer Antioch survived, the lower our spirits fell. Food was down to nothing. All the cattle and oxen had been butchered; even the dogs had been eaten. Water was as scarce as wine.

All the time, rumors reached us of Christians inside the city being tortured and raped. And holy relics desecrated.

Every couple of days, a Moslem warrior would hurl some urn down from the towers and it would shatter on the ground, spilling blood. That is the blood of your useless Savior, he would taunt. See how it saves you now. Or, lighting a cloth afire and tossing it to the earth, This is the shroud of the whore who gave him life.

At intervals, Turk warriors made forays outside the city walls. They charged our ranks as if on a holy mission, yelping and hacking at those who met them, only to be surrounded and chopped to bits. They were unafraid, even heroic. It made us realize even more that they would not easily give in.

Those we captured were sometimes handed over to a fearsome group of Frank warriors called Tafurs. Barefoot, covered in filth and sores, the Tafurs were distinguished by the ragged sackcloth th............