Ah, the Crusades! Knights in shining armor, smiting swarthy Saracens (with their scimitars!) on the sands of Syria! The Christian take on the concept of the holy war, the code of chivalry in practice! The stuff of Hollywood epics and high school mascots!
Conservatives are flipping out (yeah, yeah, and the sun came up this morning, too) over President Obama’s mention of the Crusades at the National Prayer Breakfast last week. Among other things, our President said “remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” but the fact that he’s not wrong has done nothing to dissuade the Moron Brigade from their attacks [warning: Breitbart link]. To wit: Governor Bobby Jindal wrote up a snotty little note (on official State of Louisiana letterhead, no less) assuring the President that the “Medieval Christian threat is under control,” while streiff – RedState’s self-anointed answer to an actual historian – opined that “Obama’s criticism of the Crusades is really bizarre…To look at the Crusades as Western aggression is something only a community organizer could do.” [warning: RedState link]
Clearly a trip to the scrolls is in order, so onward, Christian soldiers, into the Cave of the Moonbat, where we can take a look at some moldering documents (moldering documents! yay!) and dispel some of the silly notions that our Republican friends are currently proffering regarding the Crusades. As a certain war-mongering Pope might say, God wills it!
This diary was originally published on April 2, 2006, under the title History for Kossacks: The First Crusade. This version has been updated to reflect the current kerfuffle, and a number of Bush-era references have been removed for the sake of keeping the argument somewhat focused.
On our side of the planet, popular history remembers the Crusades as religious wars so distant in place and time, so mired in antiquity and complicated by lots of dates and people and unfamiliar places, that they become an historical side note. They’re fodder for cheesy melodrama. In our schools, they’re a “unit” to be sandwiched between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance – or worse, only part of a chapter subsection, in which the entire 200-year period is presented in 4 pages (of 7, the remainder being shared with “Monastic Revival and Church Reforms” – see McDougal/Littell, World History: Patterns of Interaction, 2003, pgs 341-347). It is not so in other parts of the world, where the idea of the “crusader spirit” carries an entirely different set of far more historically-based connotations.
Today, evoking the word “crusade” causes such a visceral reaction in the Arab world that George W. Bush, who would likely have loved to use no other word more than “crusade” to describe his vision of global democratization, had to avoid it like the plague. Justifying a movement or action by calling it a crusade sounds to Arab ears the same way our Mexican neighbors would hear it if we suddenly started talking about Manifest Destiny and muttering darks hints about 1916 as part of the “immigration discussion.” Somewhere along the way, many in the West seem to have divorced the religious connotations of the Crusades from the reasons why they occurred and from the people who took part in them, not to mention the manner in which those people conducted themselves in war.
Finally, the antiquity and obscurity of the Crusades allows for a broader-than-usual dissemination of misinformation. There is tendency among those who would instruct our conservative friends to hit the historical fast-forward button whenever it’s convenient – most often in timelines like this one, which notes, “863: In a rare break from the pattern of this era, the Byzantines go back on offensive, with mixed results over the next 200-300 years of warfare, or this one, which includes the timeless (and history-less) phrase, “300 years later the Turks were on the march.”
This kind of obfuscation – much of which is built around the idea that the Muslim hordes were engaged in a sustained effort to conquer the whole of Christendom – can be seen in articles like ABC News’ Historians Weigh in on Obama's Comparison of ISIS Militants to Medieval Christian Crusaders (includes the opinions of a mere two historians, btw), in which Thomas Madden of the University of St. Louis claims,
The initial goal of the Crusades was to give back lands to Christians that been conquered, due to Muslim conquests.
This is technically correct, but only insofar as the “Muslim conquests” of Jerusalem and the Levant had occurred nearly 400 years before; it’d be more accurate to note that the more immediate Muslim conquests had been of Orthodox lands in what is now Turkey, and that contemporaneous opinions of what lands needed to be “given back” to whom varied widely.
Calling in the Goons
The Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comnenus in 1094 had a problem. There were Seljuks– Sunni Muslim Turks – on his borders, and they were exerting considerable pressure on his eastern flank. Indeed, the borders of what remained of the Eastern Roman Empire were receding before these Turks. Compounding the problem was the fact that the Byzantines were lovers, not fighters – a fact decisively proven to them by said Turks at the Battle of Manzikert twenty-three years earlier. The result of that fight had been the rapid loss of virtually all of Asia Minor - within ten years of Manzikert, the Seljuks had captured Nicaea, from which they could see the Byzantine capital of Constantinople.
What the Emperor needed was an army to fight on his side, but the late 11th century proved a little sparse in terms of acceptable, accessible allies. The Seljuks held the Holy Land and, after Manzikert, most of Turkey; the Fatamids occupied Egypt; the Russ in the north were too powerful to demand tribute from anymore; and the Europeans had divvied up their tiny parcel of the world among a bunch of petty warlords, none of whom could supply more than a few dozen knights, even if he were so inclined (which he probably wouldn’t be). No, Alexius had to find a new angle, one that would coax large numbers of Europeans to rally together and do the bidding of Constantinople. A daunting task, even for history’s Romulans.
There’s a reason “Byzantine” carries the connotations its does in our language, though, and as the Emperor thought about potential solutions to his problem, he hit on the one force that his pretty-much-easternized Roman descendents still sorta-shared in common with the Europeans, the one force that had the potential to unite all the petty warlords and kings under the banner of a single idea: Religion. He appealed for assistance to his Roman Catholic peer, Pope Urban II. It was a good choice – but then again, those Byzantines always were pretty cagey judges of character.
Urban, like most of the pontiffs of this period, was all about the secular power. Excommunication was a political weapon, and the popes used the threat of it judiciously to obtain the temporary loyalty of this or that king, but no matter how much power they wielded in the push-pull politics of the Holy Roman Empire or the other Catholic states, no pope before Urban II was able to command all the Christians of Europe. The appeal from the Emperor, delivered the Council of Piacenza in the summer of 1095, is what gave him the means to do it.
Neocons, circa 1095
The Pope realized that no matter how highly they thought of themselves, every king in Europe was obliged to pay serious lip service to the Church, of which he, as the Bishop of Rome, was the titular head. The problem was, they didn’t necessarily obey his every command when it came to things like who got to name Church officials, whether or not the Church could be taxed, and who should go to war with whom. Urban II played on the fact that, beholden as they were to at least the public perception of super-piety, the knights and lords of Europe would have little choice but to commit themselves to papal whim in the surprising event that the Pope should call for a holy war to save their fellow (if wayward) Christians and free the Holy Land from (heretofore non-problematic) heathen domination.
Several texts exist for the speech Urban II gave in November, 1095; this one is representative of the lot. It’s by a guy with the rather unassuming name of Robert the Monk. He writing perhaps 25 years after the speech, and may have been recalling events at which he was present; here he first quotes the Pontiff, then narrates a bit:
“…But if you are hindered by love of children, parents and wives, remember what the Lord says in the Gospel, "He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me." "Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my name's sake shall receive an hundredfold and shall inherit everlasting life." Let none of your possessions detain you, no solicitude for your family affairs, since this land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the seas and surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population; nor does it abound in wealth; and it furnishes scarcely food enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder one another, that you wage war, and that frequently you perish by mutual wounds. Let therefore hatred depart from among you, let your quarrels end, let wars cease, and let all dissensions and controversies slumber. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves.
That land which as the Scripture says "floweth with milk and honey," was given by God into the possession of the children of Israel. Jerusalem is the navel of the world; the land is fruitful above others, like another paradise of delights. This the Redeemer of the human race has made illustrious by His advent, has beautified by residence, has consecrated by suffering, has redeemed by death, has glorified by burial. This royal city, therefore, situated at the centre of the world, is now held captive by His enemies, and is in subjection to those who do not know God, to the worship of the heathens. She seeks therefore and desires to be liberated, and does not cease to implore you to come to her aid. From you especially she asks succor, because, as we have already said, God has conferred upon you above all nations great glory in arms. Accordingly undertake this journey for the remission of your sins, with the assurance of the imperishable glory of the kingdom of heaven.”
When Pope Urban had said these and very many similar things in his urbane discourse, he so influenced to one purpose the desires of all who were present, that they cried out, "It is the will of God! It is the will of God!" When the venerable Roman pontiff heard that, with eyes uplifted to heaven he gave thanks to God and, with his hand commanding silence, said:
Most beloved brethren, today is manifest in you what the Lord says in the Gospel, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them." Unless the Lord God had been present in your spirits, all of you would not have uttered the same cry. For, although the cry issued from numerous mouths, yet the origin of the cry was one. Therefore I say to you that God, who implanted this in your breasts, has drawn it forth from you. Let this then be your war-cry in combats, because this word is given to you by God. When an armed attack is made upon the enemy, let this one cry be raised by all the soldiers of God: It is the will of God! It is the will of God!
(emphasis mine – u.m.)
Those who took the oath placed a sign of the cross (“crusader” = bearer/wearer/follower of the cross) on the right breast, to indicate to all the world that they were a ballsy oath-taker. Overnight, it seemed, the sign of the cross was imbued with yet another layer of hidden meaning, for by the time of the second wave of crusaders in 1101, strutting about France or Germany with a cross on your breast and no sandpocked sunburn or notches on your sword was seen as a bit chickenhawkish.
The religious fervor instilled by Urban’s speech electrified Europe, and united its factions in a way only a call to arms by the Vicar of God possibly could. Urban played to that, and had refined his message a bit by the time he wrote this letter to the knights who were assembling in the winter of 1095-96, preparing to set out crusadin’ in the spring:
Urban, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to all the faithful, both princes and subjects, waiting in Flanders; greeting, apostolic grace, and blessing.
Your brotherhood, we believe, has long since learned from many accounts that a barbaric fury has deplorably afflicted and laid waste the churches of God in the regions of the Orient. More than this, blasphemous to say, it has even grasped in intolerable servitude its churches and the Holy City of Christ, glorified by His passion and resurrection. Grieving with pious concern at this calamity, we visited the regions of Gaul and devoted ourselves largely to urging the princes of the land and their subjects to free the churches of the East. We solemnly enjoined upon them at the council of Auvergne (the accomplishment of) such an undertaking, as a preparation for the remission of all their sins. And we have constituted our most beloved son, Adhemar, Bishop of Puy, leader of this expedition and undertaking in our stead, so that those who, perchance, may wish to undertake this journey should comply With his commands, as if they were our own, and submit fully to his loosings or bindings, as far as shall seem to belong to such an office. If, moreover, there are any of your people whom God has inspired to this vow, let them know that he (Adhemar) will set out with the aid of God on the day of the Assumption of the Blessed Mary, and that they can then attach themselves to his following.
(emphasis mine – u.m.)
The Seljuk Turks had muscled their way into the eastern Abbasid Caliphate (that story moonbatified
here) beginning in the early 11th century, and were at the height of their power when the Crusaders descended upon them. They were devoutly Sunni (kinda makes sense: since their ethnicity left it extremely unlikely that they could ever claim descent from the family of Muhammad, traditional avenues to power among the Shi’a were closed to them), and in their time ruling over Jerusalem before the arrival of the First Crusade they lived and administered according to the laws set forth in the Quran, which included special provisions and a sort of protected status for Christians and Jews residing in their domain (they were known as “People of the Book,” and subjected to a tax in lieu of conversion). The Saracens, as they were known to the Euro-hordes, were not barbarians who burned churches and committed atrocities, though you wouldn’t have known it from the rumors that circulated around the Frankish kingdom and the Holy Roman Empire as the date of departure grew near.
Anatomy of a fanatic army
The Crusaders had whipped themselves into a righteous frenzy by the spring of ’96. Predictably, the alpha types among them had begun to jockey for political position – and its attendant favor with the Pope – even before the first knight set off to the east. Opportunities suddenly abounded for the opportunistically inclined, like one of the leaders of the spontaneously-assembled People’s Crusade, Walter the Penniless, a knight who was far from penniless.
A real piece of crap was a guy named Count Emicho, who used his influence among a small group of Crusaders to launch anti-Jewish attacks all along the army’s route. He was by no means the only Soldier of Christ to see in the Pope’s command a license to kill and oppress Jews:
The undisciplined mobs accompanying the first three Crusades attacked the Jews in Germany, France, and England, and put many of them to death, leaving behind for centuries strong feelings of ill will on both sides. The social position of the Jews in western Europe was distinctly worsened by the Crusades, and legal restrictions became frequent during and after them. They prepared the way for the anti-Jewish legislation of Innocent III., and formed the turning-point in the medieval history of the Jews. . . . Jews of the Rhine district were decimated: it has been calculated that about 4,000 were killed or slew themselves [rather than convert].
Jewish Encyclopedia h/t to another American, who pointed me to this fascinating 1906 source in the comments attached to the original diary)
Just as predictably, the Church lost control of the monster it had created. The peasantry itself got swept up in the furor, as many of its membership genuinely liked the sound of the whole all-sins-forgiven-if-you-do-your-part thing. Likewise, they took Urban’s admonition that “poverty should not be an excuse” – a papal hint meant to reduce the number of suddenly-too-poor-to-go knights – to heart, thinking he was talking about them. In droves, these untrained peasants (to call them militia is too charitable) volunteered with their feet, showing up at Cologne around Easter, 1096, prepared to walk to the Holy Land. That they did, behind leaders like the aforementioned Sir Walter and one Peter the Hermit, whose was widely respected because he was an insane ascetic who thought he had been ordained by God to personally liberate the Holy Sepulcher from the infidel.
(Historiorant: Consider what sort of passions, what sort of imagination, the idea of the Crusades must have sent through all levels of European civilization. For all, it was the adventure of a lifetime – the greatest mass movement in centuries of European history – and it came at a time when life was short, brutal, and dully repetitive.
Consider, too, that even today, an American blessed with all the modern wonders of transportation and communication can live a rich, full life without ever hearing a foreign tongue spoken or without setting foot in a foreign land. Now try to think in terms of an illiterate peasant a millennia ago, being told by the authority figures of the day that God would look favorably upon him if he left his miserable hovel and joined a mighty host that was going to free from the grasp of evil itself the lands of the Bible.)
Shields of faith alone do not stop swords
The People’s Crusade left in two groups, with Peter’s enormous army (probably the largest assembled in Europe since the time of Rome) of commoners and knights following a few days behind a smaller band of hotheads led by Walter the Penniless. Even his host was huge by the standards of the day, and no one had bothered to tell anyone along the route to expect it. When they approached Belgrade, on the outskirts of Byzantine territory, the early group of People’s Crusaders was insulted by the local governor’s delay in granting them a market (it was traditional to grant armies that were passing through on friendly terms a market; to not do so was a clear diplomatic signal that the army was not welcome), and they took to pillaging the countryside. One town fought back against the “requisitioning” of their supplies; its residents stripped 16 knights of their armor and nailed it to their walls as a warning to others.
Tensions were running pretty high when Peter’s horde passed through Belgrade, hurried along by a nervous hermit who sensed danger in the air. He wasn’t fast enough: in the rear, an argument over the price of shoes turned into a full-fledged battle that resulted first in the storming of Semlin (the town with the armor on its walls), then – after the army had devolved into a virtually leaderless mob – Belgrade itself. Thousands of civilians and elite-but-outnumbered Petchneg troops were slaughtered before the army could be brought back to some semblance of order.
The provincial governor had fortified Nish, the next major town on the Crusader’s route, and when they arrived he told them to keep right on moving. Peter attempted to comply, but some insults as the rear of his army (where was located a treasury wagon now heavy with loot from Belgrade and Semlin) passed by the walls of Nish led to the Byzantines sallying and killing about a quarter of Peter’s army. They also helped themselves to the treasury.
The mob of an army arrived at Constantinople on August 1, 1096, but Alexius did not grant them entrance to the city. He did give them a market, but the prices were said to be a little high, and so the thievery began. The situation degraded as the hot summer days wore on and tensions mounted.
This wasn’t at all what Alexius had wanted. He was thinking a few hundred mercenaries, a couple of thousand well-trained knights that could turn the tide in a pinch, y’know? Not the 15,000 peasant-zealots and soldier-monks who were now before his gates, making the somewhat-truthful claim that he, having requested them, ought to be welcoming them as saviors.
Alexius moved quickly; by August 6, the first of the Crusaders were being hustled onto the Asian side of the Bosporus, heading inland (toward Seljuk territory) to their new camp at Civetot. There Peter hoped to wait and rendezvous with the main Crusader force that had recently departed from Germany, but he was powerless to prevent his erstwhile subordinates from launching preemptory raids into Turkish territory.
The Franks drew first blood, scorching an indiscriminate path of looting and pillaging across Muslim and Orthodox Christian settlements alike. They drove as far as Nicaea, capital of the local badass warlord, who was (fortunately for the Crusaders) off with his army crushing a rebellion in a remote province. Though they were unable to take Nicaea (a sally by the city guard was sufficient to drive them off), they came back bragging, which inspired a bunch of Germans to charge into Turkish territory and stake their claim in an abandoned hilltop fortress called Xerigordon.
No sooner had they finished congratulating themselves on their good fortune than the Germans found themselves surrounded and cut off from the castle’s water supply by a Turkish army that appeared from nowhere. Those who survived the resultant 8-day siege were offered the convert-or-die option, with those choosing to convert being sold into slavery and those who did not becoming martyrs for their cause.
The end of the People’s Crusade is no less fraught with military ineptitude. Marching on Nicaea to avenge the defeat at Xerigordon, Peter’s army encountered the aforementioned badass warlord, Kilij Arslan, who had returned in secret and had laid a cunning ambush for the invaders. There were only about 3000 survivors, and the People’s Crusade ended with their evacuation from western Turkey. Peter the Hermit and a few others rejoined the Crusade at Constantinople, but many just gave up and made their way dejectedly back to their hovels.
If the people lead, the leaders follow
The main Crusader military forces, under Godfrey of Bouillon in the north and Raymond of Toulouse in the south, left at different times. After skirmishing with the Byzantines all the way across the Balkans, Raymond’s army arrived in Constantinople by early May. Godfrey, leading the bulk of the coalition army, didn’t even leave Germany until the middle of August and was accorded little hospitality along its way (heavily armed escort across Hungary, that sort of thing), until they arrived at Constantinople. There, a few hostage-related matters were quickly smoothed over, and the Crusaders reunited piecemeal with the variously-arriving contingents for the remainder of the winter.
Beginning as early as the arrival of Raymond the previous spring, Emperor Alexius had been insisting that each of the Crusading lords take an oath that any Byzantine lands liberated by the Crusaders should be returned to him; such was to be the nature of their Christian allegiance. Alexius knew well that many of the Franks had petty kingdoms on the brain, and he was obligated to negotiate separate deals with each and every one of them. The lords, of course, resented and fought against the implications of being forced to take such an oath, and the knights on the streets, well, they just acted badly – imperious demands, pushed-over carts, minor riots, stuff like that. It was enough to force Alexius into making concessions he wouldn’t have otherwise made, all in the name of getting “his” army of questionably-loyal Western barbarians out of his city before things really boiled over.
They went straight to Nicaea, where Kilij Arslan was receiving the accolades of the Muslim world for his destruction of Peter’s invading zealot army. Perhaps he was just cocky and distracted after his easy victory, or maybe he wasn’t expecting a second army of Latin Christians to appear that summer – in any event, he did not intercept the force before it arrived at his walls, and the Crusaders promptly invested the town. The Turks could not withstand a prolonged siege, and so made preparations (with a great deal of trepidation) to surrender to the Franks. The Crusaders were salivating at the thought of plundering Nicaea – sacking towns was a standard practice of time, and loot was counted upon as a means of financing campaigns – but the night before the Nicaeans were due to hoist the white flag, an ambassador of the Emperor slipped in and, not wanting to see a town which had been Byzantine only a few years earlier fall into the hands of victory-crazed barbarians, cut a deal with the Turks. When the sun rose the next morning, Byzantine colors were flying from the ramparts of Nicaea, and the Western Crusaders knew once and for all that Alexius, Christian or not, was in this for Alexius’ sake every bit as much as they were in it for their personal stakes. In short, they were on their own.
There was some discussion of returning to Constantinople and sacking it in retaliation for the betrayal, but in the end the Crusaders struck off into southeastern Turkey on their own. Their spirits were raised early in the march across Anatolia, when they defeated a much larger force led by Kilij Arslan, who was suffering from an overconfidence born of his experience with the earlier group of Crusaders. Still, it was not until late October, 1097, that they arrayed themselves before Antioch, ancient gateway to Syria, whose impregnable walls had not been breached since being built by Justinian 500 years earlier.
The Politics of Siege
Besieging a city is a long, slow process in any time period, but this is especially true in eras wherein defensive technologies are superior to offensive ones. We live in a time in which our offensive siege technology (cruise missiles, smart bombs, radar-guided artillery, etc.) usually outstrips its defensive counterparts, which are still largely based on the WWI idea of deep holes with lots of concrete and rebar. This was not the case in the middle ages, when the destructive capability of the siege engines (trebuchets and such) was often no match for the long-perfected art of piling stones atop one another.
Intrigue and the ability to fight off relief armies as often as not determined the outcome of these battles. In the north, a knight named Baldwin struck off on his own and intrigued himself into the lordship of Edessa, thus forming the first Crusader State. Along the way, he fought other Crusaders, usurped a rightful king and threw him to a mob, and held Edessa against a three-week siege by a Turkish army that should have been on its way to relieve Antioch.
There, the Crusaders successfully repelled a couple of sallies and relief attempts, but made no progress against the walls. All looked hopeless – by June, 1098, the besiegers were running low on supplies and a massive Turkish army was approaching from Mosul– when a knight named Bohemond revealed that he had cut a deal with the captain of the Antioch guard, a guy named Firuz. Slipping into the city under cover of darkness, the Crusaders easily captured the starving, sleeping city, then joyfully celebrated their great victory by slaughtering every Turk they could get their hands on. Shortly thereafter, they found themselves besieged and attacked by the arriving army of Mosul, which was in dire logistical straits of its own.
Meanwhile, back in Anatolia, Emperor Alexius was marching at the head of an army, making sure the Crusaders had passed through Byzantine lands as promised, when he ran into a bunch of deserters from Antioch. These deserters told him the situation was hopeless, and that his army would be destroyed if he took it there. Based on this misinformation, Alexius turned back to Constantinople, in the process re-branding himself a betrayer and ensuring that the cowardly deserters would be ostracized back in France for their role in leaving their comrades out to dry.
Things were happening fast at Antioch. The Muslim army was starving, and internal dissention among its various leaders threatened to tear it apart. The Crusaders, trapped inside their recent prize, were aware of this, but felt unable to exploit it owing to insufficient numbers. Lucky for them, it turns out there was a holy relic buried beneath the church at Antioch, and it was just the thing they needed to rally behind for a fierce, orderly attack.
The Holy Lance (the actual bit of sharpened Roman iron that pierced Christ’s side on the Cross) appeared in a vision to a guy named Peter Bartholomew, who got enough movers and shakers on his side that excavations were commenced in the floor of the Church. They dug feverishly, finding nothing, until finally Peter Bartholomew himself went alone into the hole and emerged about 20 minutes later, miracle of miracles, with the Holy Lance, exactly as he had predicted.
The Papal Legate (a powerful bishop whose death of plague later that summer left many unanswered questions about what role the Church might have played after the conquest of Jerusalem) thought Peter Bartholomew a fraud, but since the army seemed willing to follow the Lance in lieu of anything else, he kept his mouth shut. With the Lance as their standard, the Crusaders sallied, then kept good order through repeated Muslim charges. They maintained good discipline as they ignored the temptation to loot the Turkish camp after the army had broken and fled; by pursuing and annihilating the Turks at flight, they probably saved their Crusade.
Lurching through the Promised Land
Over the fall and winter of 1098, the Crusaders argued over who would rule Antioch. Bohemond and his Normans did a better job of orchestrating things in his favor, and wound up staying there when the rest of the army pressed forward in early 1099. They accepted surrenders and tribute from most of the towns and emirs they encountered, though they did pause to lay siege to a couple of places en route to Jerusalem. At one of these sieges, Peter Bartholomew, who was still receiving instructions from St. Andrew, advocated (well, told the army that God demanded) a suicidal frontal assault. The lords, figuring that God would never authorize such poor tactical advice, finally felt confident in branding Peter Bartholomew a fraud. He denied the accusations to the point of volunteering to go through an Ordeal by Fire, and died of his burns 12 days after his trial.
In 1099, Jerusalem sat in the middle of a desert, ringed by walls and perfectly able to withstand prolonged siege. The few wells outside the walls were poisoned in preparation for the Crusader’s arrival, and the nearest forests (for the construction of siege engines shown necessary by a disastrous storming of the walls on June 12) were at Samaria, 20 miles away. Even more hopeful to the Muslims of Jerusalem was the knowledge that the Fatamids of Egypt had finally gotten over the whole we’re-Arab-Shi’as-and-they’re-Turkish-Sunnis thing and decided to send an army to defend the holy city from the infidel invaders. Their army, which took ponderous weeks to mobilize, would clearly outnumber the 1500 knights and 12,000 infantry the Crusaders had brought.
In response, the Crusaders got religion. In accordance with the dictates of a vision of the Papal Legate, the army fasted and marched, Joshua-style, around the city walls before assembling on the Mount of Olives on July 8. There, Peter the Hermit, Raymond of Toulouse, and other leaders since the beginning gave their best Gipper preaches, impassioning their veterans one final time, their goal in sight before them.
The next two days were spent getting three siege towers into place. These, under cover of artillery bombardment from recently-constructed Crusader engines, began advancing on July 10; 4 days later, the one under the command of Sir Godfrey of Lorraine was close enough to bridge the wall and breach the defenses. Franks poured through Godfrey’s foothold, and began slaughtering the inhabitants of the city even as defenders continued to try to hold other sections of the wall. Raymond d’Aguiliers, who was there, described best what happened next:
Strange to relate, however, at this very time when the city was practically captured by the Franks, the Saracens were still fighting on the other side, where the Count was attacking the wall as though the city should never be captured. But now that our men had possession of the walls and towers, wonderful sights were to be seen. Some of our men (and this was more merciful) cut off the heads of their enemies; others shot them with arrows, so that they fell from the towers; others tortured them longer by casting them into the flames. Piles of heads, hands, and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city. It was necessary to pick one's way over the bodies of men and horses.
But these were small matters compared to what happened at the Temple of Solomon, a place where religious services are ordinarily chanted. What happened there? If I tell the truth, it will exceed your powers of belief. So let it suffice to say this much, at least, that in the Temple and porch of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. Indeed, it was a just and splendid judgment of God that this place should be filled with the blood of the unbelievers, since it had suffered so long from their blasphemies. The city was filled with corpses and blood. Some of the enemy took refuge in the Tower of David, and, petitioning Count Raymond for protection, surrendered the Tower into his hands.
Now that the city was taken, it was well worth all our previous labors and hardships to see the devotion of the pilgrims at the Holy Sepulchre. How they rejoiced and exulted and sang a new song to the Lord! For their hearts offered prayers of praise to God, victorious and triumphant, which cannot be told in words. A new day, new joy, new and perpetual gladness, the consummation of our labor and devotion, drew forth from all new words and new songs. This day, I say, will be famous in all future ages, for it turned our labors and sorrows into joy and exultation; this day, I say, marks the justification of all Christianity, the humiliation of paganism, and the renewal of our faith. "This is the day which the Lord hath made, let us rejoice and be glad in it," for on this day the Lord revealed Himself to His people and blessed them.
What followed was an orgy of pillaging and murder that remains unforgiven by the Muslim world. The princes of Europe lost all control of their men, who proceeded to slaughter virtually every inhabitant of the city, probably around 40,000. They were secure in the knowledge that all of the defenseless people they were killing were either Jews or Muslims; as Jerusalem’s Christians had been expelled prior to the siege; thus, who to execute was a “non-starter” issue. The carnage only ended when there was no one left to kill.
The late-arriving Fatamids were unprepared to lay siege and went away, and there was much preening, pouting, manipulating, and thumping of chests around vanquished Jerusalem. The Crusaders had achieved their objectives, and the politics of the occupation settled out over the next couple of months (predictably, the knight most qualified to be called a “good guy,” Raymond, finished last). Their victory, such as it was, turned out to be the high water mark in the 200-year series of wars that were the result of their aggression.
The First Crusade set in motion a series of cultural interactions almost unparalleled in human history. In a very real sense, it defined the rationale under which wars were to be fought during its era, as well as the manner in which subsequent wars were to be conducted. It also solidified cultural perceptions of enemies and allies alike, and left an historical legacy that is angrily maintained to this day.
But you know what they say: The first crusade is always the hardest.