The Crusade of 1101
The Lombards March
The Lombards left from Milan on 13 September 1100. They crossed through Carinthia and into Hungary, spending the winter in Bulgaria. They had already heard about the "treacherous Greeks" and relations with the Byzantines were sour from the beginning. They quarreled with the locals all along the route and when they finally arrived at Constantinople, Emperor Alexius, by now quite fed up with rag-tag Latin armies, refused to allow them to enter the city.
The Lombards cooled their heels for two months outside the city while their leaders negotiated for supplies and for transport across the Bosporus. They were such violent and demanding guests that Alexius finally ferried them over to get them out of his hair (21 April 1101). The Lombards waited at Nicomedia, having been advised they should not set out into Asia Minor without additional troops.
In the meantime, the crusaders learned of a great calamity that had befallen Outremer: the great Prince of Antioch, Bohemond, had been captured by the Turks. Moreover, it was learned, he was being held in Khorassan (in Pontus). The Lombards naturally felt specially called to rescue their countryman. Before they set out, they were joined by the Burgundians, northern Frenchmen under Stephen of Blois, and a small group of Provençals under Raymond of Toulouse (being nursed to health after a serious illness by the Emperor's own doctor).
The French urged the Lombards to wait, but they could not prevail. Rather than see them go unaided, the French agreed to accompany them. It did not help that St. Gilles was urging caution, for the Lombards were convinced that he was the Emperor's lackey and that the Emperor would like nothing better than to let Bohemond languish in a Turkish prison.
The Turks, for their part, had managed to put aside their differences to meet this new invasion. They had learned their lesson from the previous disasters and were determined that the Christians should not get through. Kilij Arslan, who had personal grievances with the Franks, led the united tribes. The Lombards set out in June, and from Chankiri onward the Turks harassed them unmercifully. No one really knew where Bohemond was being held, and their guides proved somewhat unreliable (or so the Christian sources report), and the crusade wandered a bit though it headed generally eastward.