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History Today, April 1997 v47 n4 p37(6)
COPYRIGHT 1997 History Today Ltd. (UK)

On Tuesday, June 7th, 1099, the First Crusade arrived before the city of Jerusalem and began a siege which would end with its capture on Friday July 15th. It was a moment of great rejoicing in the crusader host. because Jerusalem was the Holy Place for whose liberation they had set out on the long and bitter journey some three years before.

After Pope Urban's appeal for a military expedition to the East in November 1095, Western Europe had been swept by a wave of enthusiasm which inspired about 100,000 men, women and children to leave their homes. Many turned back, others died even as they began their journey: Fulcher of Chartres saw 400 drown at Brindisi when a pilgrim ship sank. Even so the group of armies which gathered before Nicaea in June 1097 was some 60,000 strong, including roughly 6-7,000 knights. Not since Roman times had such a host gathered in Europe, though this was not a single army like that of Rome, but a collection of armed bands massively encumbered with non-combatants.

There were people of so many nationalities on the crusade that they found it difficult to understand one another, and since there was no overall commander the crusade was run by a committee of its most important members, presided over by the papal legate Adhemar of Le Puy who died, however, on August 1st, 1098. The result was a host of quarrelling nationalities presided over by bickering lords: the only unity came from the sense of a common mission reinforced by the dire peril to which they were exposed in the hostile Middle East. But even this mission was a cause of strife. Urban II had wanted his great expedition to aid the Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus in his struggle with the Turks who had seized Asia Minor, to rescue the Christians of the East from their captivity under Islam and to liberate Jerusalem. But many of the crusaders came to regard Alexius as little more than a traitor who had failed to live up to his promises of help: the Count of Toulouse, commander of the biggest army, disagreed and was permanently at odds with his fellows. Few of the crusaders had a high opinion of the native Christians. As a result Jerusalem became the sole focus of their endeavours because it was the one objective on which they could all agree.

Travel in the Middle Ages was hazardous and in such a context to undertake an ordeal voluntarily was admired as a commitment to Christ. The pilgrim took a public vow to complete his journey and assumed a special dress and badges. He left behind his loved ones, submitted to a self-denying discipline and went to a place where heaven and earth met - the shrine of a holy saint - to atone for his sins. Of all pilgrimages the most distant, difficult and therefore respected, was that to the holiest of all places, Jerusalem, which was regarded as wiping a man's slate clean of sin. When Urban launched his crusade he offered to all who participated this special `remission of sins'. He offered a vision of Jerusalem suffering under the tyranny of Islam and demanded that the military aristocracy avenge Christ for this suffering and recapture His most holy place. This was an opportunity for a warlike class to expunge their sins by a single convulsive act of violence.

In this `new religion' the business of fighting and killing was meritorious, equal to the traditional `good works', prayer, fasting and charity to the poor. Those who went on this fighting pilgrimage regarded their sufferings as part of a ritual which freed individuals from sin and purified the army as a whole to be the `chosen of the Lord' - and their ultimate trial was Jerusalem. Of course there were other motives. One eye-witness noted that as they approached the Holy City only `a few who held God's command dear marched along barefooted, sending up deep sighs to God', while many others indulged in `a mad scramble caused by our greed to seize castles and villas', but even these could have argued that righteous war meant rightful plunder. The army which rejoiced as it reached the gates of Jerusalem on that June day was driven by a heady cocktail of greed and devotion.

In their self-righteousness the crusaders gave little thought to the fact that this same Jerusalem was sacrosanct to Jew and Muslim also.

For Jerusalem is sacred to Islam: its name al-Kuds, `the city of the sanctuary', refers to the important shrine we now call the Dome of the Rock, built in 691, whence the angel Gabriel took Mohammed through the heavens. Its great golden dome and the magnificent al-Aksa mosque built nearby in 780 dominate the enormous structure of the Temple Mount which towers over Jerusalem: its western wall is the famous `Wailing Wall' sacred to Judaism.

The Jews had their own quarter in the north-east of the city and they were probably aware that Christian fanatics had massacred the Jews of the Rhineland cities even before setting out on the crusade, because Jews manned the walls in their own quarter and perished in the great massacre which followed the crusader capture. But the crusaders were not interested in the claims of other religions. Most of those from northern Europe would have known nothing of Islam before their journey to the East and the circumstances of that journey would not have encouraged curiosity. The defenders of the city stood in the way of their path to salvation, loot and land. In later years when they ruled Jerusalem the Dome of the Rock became the Temple of the Lord and the al-Aksa, the Palace of Solomon. History was rewritten to obliterate the memory of Islam, and the despised Jews were excluded from the city.

As news of this breakthrough spread [the Crusaders breach the walls of the City], resistance to the Provencals melted away and the garrison of the Tower of David surrendered in return for their lives. In the north there was a massacre as the crusaders poured through the Jewish quarter where the main synagogue was burned over the heads of those who took refuge there. Muslims fled to the Temple Mount where so many were killed that crusaders `rode in blood to the knees and bridles of their horses'. Tancred offered quarter to those who took refuge on the al-Aksa roof, doubtless hoping to ransom them, but in the morning, and much to his anger, they too were massacred. After a week in which they cleared the corpses from Jerusalem, the bickering crusader leaders elected Godfrey de Bouillon on July 22nd, as Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre `so that he might fight against the pagans and protect the Christians'. The conquest, however, remained provisional until, on August 12th, the crusader army surprised the relief force led by the Vizier of Egypt, al-Afdal, at Ascalon and destroyed it. Afterwards, the greater part of the host returned to the West.

However horrible it may seem, what happened in Jerusalem was not then exceptional. The city had a strong garrison which could hope for relief - until the last minute they were receiving messages of support from Ascalon. Possibly they had heard exaggerated stories of crusaders' cannibalism at Ma`arrat an Nu`man in Syria, a wholly exceptional event, which may well have stiffened their resistance. The truth was that in the Middle Ages any garrison which held out to the bitter end was liable to bring down massacre on its stronghold. This could hardly be prevented, for armies were poorly disciplined and, in the heat of a breakthrough, impossible to control. In 1057 the Turks massacred or enslaved the whole population of Christian Melitene. William the Conqueror harried the north of England so savagely that a contemporary thought 100,000 had perished, and so ruthlessly did he destroy Mantes in 1087 that many believed his death there was the vengeance of God.

It is not simply the fact of the massacre and its scale which is shocking, but the fact that the crusaders rejoiced in it, as Raymond of Aguilers, who was present at the fall of Jerusalem, describes:

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 labour and devotion,
drew forth from all new words
and new songs. 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.

This passage may shock, but it should not surprise us. Each crusader was convinced that every Muslim he cut down represented a step nearer to paradise, for the essence of Urban's message, which was the driving force of the whole expedition, was that killing Muslims was meritorious. To hack down a child, as many must have done in Jerusalem, was an act whose merit was equal to that of the Good Samaritan. These were rational people performing what they believed to be the will of God and certain that it would contribute to their own salvation. Such absolute self-righteousness cloaked much self-interest. Tancred seized Bethlehem as a prize of war as the army neared Jerusalem, and during the sack he plundered the treasures of the Dome of the Rock.

But the real horror of the sack of Jerusalem is its legacy to us all. In the short-run the Christian crusade revived in ever fiercer form the Muslim jihad, which soon had plenty of massacres to its credit. Before the crusade most Western Christians had only a vague knowledge of Islam, which was not really relevant to their daily lives. Centuries of crusade propaganda changed that to a latent hatred. Islam and Christianity were in contact in Spain before the crusade, and relations between the two had never been simply characterised by conflict. On July 10th, 1099, as the crusaders prepared to attack Jerusalem, El Cid, Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, died. He was well-versed in Islamic law and culture and had carved out a great career for himself in the service of Muslim and Christian alike. In the twelfth century his life had to be rewritten to make him a champion of Christendom and a worthy hero of the Spanish Reconquista in the new age. For the spirit of crusade, symbolised by the fall of Jerusalem, insisted on an absolute hatred of Islam.

The inheritance of the crusades in the West is one of deep suspicion, very evident in our media's portrayal of `Islamic Fundamentalism'. The inheritance of the capture of Jerusalem in the East is that it is fatally easy for those who would defend Islamic culture to be fearful of the West and to see in any intrusion evidence of a new crusade, and to react in the same way as they did to the old.

J.A. Brundage, The Crusades, a documentary survey (Milwaukee, 1962); S.B. Edgington, The First Crusade, Historical Association `New Appreciations in History' No. 37 (London, 1996); J. France, Victory in the East: a Military History of the First Crusade (Cambridge, 1994), A. Maalouf, The Crusades through Arab eyes (London, 1984); J. Riley-Smith, The Crusades: a short history (London, 1987).

John France is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Wales and author of Victory in the East: a Military History-of the First Crusade listed above.