II After Bohemund’s death Tancred kept a tight hold on Antioch for he considered that it belonged to him, so he kept the Emperor entirely out of it. The Emperor meanwhile reflected that the barbarian Franks had broken their oaths in the case of this city, that he himself had spent a great deal of money and suffered many inconveniences in transporting those myriad hosts from the Western countries into Asia, in spite of his finding them a stiff-necked and sharp-tempered people. He had also sent many Roman armies out with them to fight against the Turks, and this for two reasons, firstly, to prevent their falling a prey to the Turkish sword (for being Christians he was concerned for them), and secondly, in order that they with our co-operation should destroy some of the Ishmaelites’ cities, and give others under a truce to the Roman Emperors, and in this way the portions of the Romans would be enlarged.
Emperor’s unending care of the Franks
But no good had accrued to the Roman rule from these innumerable toils and dangers and gifts, for the Franks kept a tight hold on the city of Antioch, and did not give us back the other cities either so he felt he could not bear it nor restrain himself any longer from returning evil for evil and taking revenge for their horrible inhumanity. For that Tancred should enjoy those countless presents and those heaps of gold and the Emperor’s unending care of the Franks and the quantities of armies lie had sent as auxiliaries to them, whilst the Roman kingdom reaped no benefit from all this and the Franks considered the prize their own and disregarded and counted as naught the treaties and oaths they had made with him-this thought [363] rent his soul asunder and he did not know how to bear the insult.
Consequently he sent ambassadors to Tancred the governor of Antioch, to accuse him of injustice and the violation of oaths and to say that he would no longer submit to being despised by him but would take vengeance upon him for his ingratitude to the Romans.. For it would be disgraceful, and more than disgraceful, if after spending countless sums of money, and sending the finest regiments of the Roman army with them to take the whole of Syria and Antioch itself, and striving with all his heart and might to enlarge the boundaries of the Roman Empire, it should be Tancred who luxuriated in his, the Emperor’s, money and labours.
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