The successes of Tancred cleared the way for the advance of the main army. Nothing interposed to stop them ; provisions were plentiful, and their march was unimpeded by any enemy. Count Eobert of Flanders led the advance corp3. At Artasia, a town about a day's march from Antioch, the gates were thrown open to them ; and though the garrison of Antioch threw out flying squadrons of cavalry, they were not able to check the advance of the army, which swarmed along the roads, in numbers reduced, indeed, by one half, from the six hundred thousand who gathered before Nicaea, but still irresistible. The old bridge of stone which crossed the Orontes was stormed, and the Crusaders were fairly in Syria, and before Antioch. The present governor of this great and important town was Baghi Sevan, one of the Seljukian princes. He had with him a force of about twenty-five thousand, foot and horse ; he was defended by a double wall of stone, strengthened by towers ; he was plentifully supplied with provisions ; he had sent messengers for assistance to all quarters, and might reasonably hope to be relieved ; and he had expelled from the town all useless mouths, including the native Christians. Moreover, it was next to impossible for the Crusaders to establish a complete line round the city, and cut him off from supplies and reinforcements. It was late in the autumn when the Christian army sat down before the first place. For the first two or three weeks the country was scoured for provisions, and the soldiers, improvident and reckless, lived in a luxury and abundance which they had never before experienced. But even Syria, fertile and rich, could not long suffice for the daily wants of a wasteful army of three hundred thousand men. Food began to grow scarce ; foraging parties brought in little or nothing, though they scoured the whole country ; bands of Turks, mounted on fleet and hardy