| First Crusade | |||||||||
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| Part of the Crusades | |||||||||
 The capture of Jerusalem marked the First Crusade's success |
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
| Christendom: | Saracen:
Great Seljuq Empire |
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| Commanders | |||||||||
 Guglielmo Embriaco
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Kilij Arslan I Yaghi-Siyan |
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| Strength | |||||||||
Crusaders: 30,000 men[1]
Byzantines: 2,000 men[2] |
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The First Crusade was launched in 1095 by Pope Urban II with the dual goals of conquering the sacred city of Jerusalem and the Holy Land and freeing the Eastern Christians from Islamic rule. What started as an appeal by Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus for western mercenaries to fight the Seljuk Turks in Anatolia quickly turned into a wholescale Western migration and conquest of territory outside of Europe. Both knights and peasants from many nations of Western Europe travelled over land and by sea towards Jerusalem and captured the city in July 1099, establishing the Kingdom of Jerusalem and other Crusader states. Although these gains lasted for less than two hundred years, the First Crusade was a major turning point in the expansion of Western power, as well as the first major step towards reopening international trade in the West since the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
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The origins of the crusades in general, and of the First Crusade in particular, stem from events earlier in the Middle Ages. In western Europe, the breakdown of the Carolingian Empire in previous centuries, combined with the relative stability of European borders after the Christianization of the Vikings and Magyars, gave rise to an entire class of warriors who now had little to do but fight among themselves.[3]
The random violence of the knightly class, and often knighthood itself, were regularly condemned by the church, and the Peace of God was established to prohibit fighting on certain days of the year. At the same time, the reform-minded Papacy came into conflict with the secular world, resulting in the Investiture Controversy, and popes such as Gregory VII needed theological justification for the subsequent warfare. It became acceptable for the Pope to utilize knights in the name of Christendom, not only against political enemies of the Papacy, but also against Muslim Spain, where church-sanctioned warfare took place throughout the eleventh-century, or, theoretically, against the Seljuk Turks, who invaded the Byzantine Empire in 1071.[4] In 1074, Pope Gregory VII called for the milites Christi ("soldiers of Christ") to go to the aid of the Byzantine Empire in the east. This call, while largely ignored and even opposed, combined with the large numbers of pilgrimages to the Holy Land in the 11th century, focused a great deal of attention on the east.[5]
Christianity, which had spread throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East in the early Middle Ages, was by the early eighth century limited to Europe after the rapid spread of Islam. The Umayyad Caliphate had conquered Syria, Egypt, and North Africa from the predominantly Christian Byzantine Empire, and Spain from the Christian Visigothic Kingdom.[6] The Reconquista in Spain was intermittently ideological, as evidenced by the Epitome Ovetense written at the behest of Alfonso III of Asturias in 881, but it was not a proto-Crusade.[7] Increasingly in the eleventh century foreign knights, mostly from France, visited Spain to assist the Christians in their efforts.[8]
Other Muslim kingdoms emerging from the collapse of the Umayyads in the 8th century, such as the Aghlabics, had entered Italy in the 9th century. The Kalbid state that arose in the region, weakened by dynastic struggles, became prey to the Normans capturing Sicily by 1091. Pisa, Genoa, and Aragon began to battle other Muslim kingdoms for control of the Mediterranean, exemplified by the Mahdia campaign and battles at Majorca and Sardinia.[9]
According to the "Erdmann thesis", developed by German historian Carl Erdmann, the origin of the crusades was not the rise of these Islamic states, but was directly linked to the eleventh-century internal reform movements of the Catholic Church; exportation of violence to the east, and assistance to the struggling Byzantine Empire were the primary goals, with Jerusalem a secondary, popular goal.[10]
Generally speaking, historians have either followed Erdmann or expanded upon him by claiming that the crusade was an attempt by a reformed church to expand its power; or, more recently, they have seen the crusade as a response to the rise of Islam. According to Steven Runciman, there was no immediate threat from Islam, for "in the middle of the eleventh century the lot of the Christians in Palestine had seldom been so pleasant."[11] The crusade was a combination of theological justification for holy war and a "general restlessness and taste for adventure", especially among the Normans and the "younger sons" of the French nobility who had no other opportunities.[12] Thomas Asbridge argues that the crusade was simply Pope Urban II's attempt to expand the power of the church, and to reunite the churches of Rome and Constantinople, which had been in schism since 1054. The spread of Islam was unimportant, because "Islam and Christendom had coexisted for centuries in relative equanimity."[13] Thomas Madden represents the opposite end of the spectrum; while the crusade was certainly linked to church reform and attempts to assert papal authority, it was most importantly a pious struggle to liberate fellow Christians who "had suffered mightily at the hands of the Turks."[14] Christopher Tyerman incorporates both arguments; the crusade developed out of church reform and theories of holy war as much as it was a response to conflicts with Islam throughout Europe and the Middle East.[15]
The idea that the spread of Islam was the true cause of the crusades dates back at least as far as twelfth-century historian William of Tyre, who began his chronicle with the fall of Jerusalem to Umar ibn al-Khattab.[16] Although the original Islamic conquests took place centuries before the First Crusade, there were more recent events that European Christians still remembered. In 1009 the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was destroyed by the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah; Pope Sergius IV supposedly called for a military expedition in response, and in France, many Jewish communities were even attacked in misplaced retaliation. Nevertheless, the Church was rebuilt after al-Hakim's death, and pilgrimages resumed, including the Great German Pilgrimage of 1064–1065.[17]
By this time the Turks had arrived in the Middle East; though Islam and Christianity may have coexisted for centuries, the influx of Islamicized Turkic nomads was greatly disruptive, especially when they came into conflict with the Fatimids in Palestine and Syria. The Christian holy sites were now located in a dangerous war zone. The Turks had also invaded Byzantium, causing Emperor Alexius I Comnenus to request western mercenaries from Pope Urban II at the Council of Piacenza in March of 1095. Urban II's subsequent travels throughout France culminated in the Council of Clermont in November, where he, according to the various speeches attributed to him, graphically detailed the fantastic atrocities being committed against pilgrims and eastern Christians.[18] Urban's speech was well-planned; he had discussed the crusade with Adhemar, Bishop of Le Puy, and Raymond IV of Toulouse, and instantly the expedition had the support of two of southern France's most important leaders. Adhemar himself was present at the Council and was the first to "take the cross." The rest of the audience was spurred on by the famous slogan Deus vult! ("God wills it!").[19]
Western Europe's immediate neighbour to the southeast was the Byzantine Empire, fellow Christians but who had long followed a separate Orthodox rite. Under Emperor Alexius I Comnenus, the empire was largely confined to Europe and the western coast of Anatolia, and faced many enemies: the Normans in the west and the Seljuks in the east. Further east, Anatolia, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt were all under Muslim control, but were politically, and to some extent, culturally fragmented at the time of the First Crusade, which certainly contributed to the Crusade's success.[20] Anatolia and Syria were controlled by the Sunni Seljuks, formerly in one large empire ("Great Seljuk") but by this point divided into many smaller states. Alp Arslan had defeated the Byzantine Empire at Manzikert in 1071 and incorporated much of Anatolia into Great Seljuk.[21] However, this empire was split apart after the death of Alp Arslan in 1072. The same year, Malik Shah I succeeded Alp Arslan and would continue to reign until 1092. During this period, the Seljuk empire faced internal rebellion. In the Sultanate of Rüm in Anatolia, Malik Shah I was succeeded by Kilij Arslan I and in Syria by his brother Tutush I, who died in 1095. Tutush's sons Radwan and Duqaq inherited Aleppo and Damascus respectively, further dividing Syria amongst emirs antagonistic towards each other, as well as Kerbogha, the atabeg of Mosul.[22] These states were on the whole more concerned with consolidating their own territories and gaining control of their neighbours, than with cooperating against the crusaders.[23]
Elsewhere in nominal Seljuk territory were the Ortoqids in northeastern Syria and northern Mesopotamia. They controlled Jerusalem until 1098. In eastern Anatolia and northern Syria, a state was founded by Danishmend, a Seljuk mercenary; the crusaders did not have significant contact with either group until after the Crusade. The Hashshashin were also becoming important in Syrian affairs.[24]
When Palestine was under Persian and early Islamic rule, Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land were generally treated well.[citation needed] The early Islamic ruler, Caliph Umar, allowed Christians to perform all of their rites – minus any overt pomp.[25] But beginning in the early eleventh century, Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah began to persecute the Christians of Palestine. In 1009, he destroyed Christianity's holiest shrine the Holy Sepulcher.[26] He eventually relented and instead of burning and killing, he implemented a toll tax for Christian pilgrims entering Jerusalem. The worst was yet to come. A group of Turkish Muslims, the Seljuks, very powerful, very aggressive and very stringent followers of Islam, began their rise to power. The Seljuks viewed Christian pilgrims negatively as pollutants and ‘cracked down’ on Christians in Palestine.[citation needed] Barbaric stories of persecution began to filter back to Latin Christendom; rather than having the effect of discouraging pilgrims, this made the pilgrimage to the Holy Land even that much more holy.[citation needed] Not even the changing of the pilgrimage stories of wondrous amazement to barbaric persecutions deterred Christians.[citation needed]
Egypt and much of Palestine were controlled by the Arab Shi'ite Fatimids, whose empire was significantly smaller since the arrival of the Seljuks;[27] Alexius I had advised the crusaders to use the divisions within the Muslim ranks to the crusaders' and Alexius' advantage.[28] The Fatimids, at this time ruled by caliph al-Musta'li (although all actual power was held by the vizier al-Afdal Shahanshah),[27] had lost Jerusalem to the Seljuks in 1076,[29] but recaptured it from the Ortoqids on 26 August 1098 while the crusaders were on the march.[30] The Fatimids did not, at first, consider the crusaders a threat, assuming they had been sent by the Byzantines and that they would be content with recapturing Syria, leaving Palestine alone; they did not send an army against the crusaders until they were already at Jerusalem.[24]
In March 1095, Alexius I sent envoys to the Council of Piacenza to ask Pope Urban II for aid against the Turks. Urban responded favourably, hoping to heal the Great Schism of 40 years prior and re-unite the Church under papal primacy as "chief bishop and prelate over the whole world" (as he referred to himself at Clermont),[31] by helping the Eastern churches in their time of need.[32] According to Steven Runciman, Alexius did not intend to ask for a crusade, and he received a great deal more "help" from the Franks than he expected.[citation needed] Alexius' subsequent dealings with the unexpectedly large and undisciplined force that arrived bear this out.[33]
The Council of Piacenza solidified the pope’s authority in Italy during a period of a papal crisis (over 3,000 clergy and approximately 30,000 laity showed up; as well as ambassadors of the East who implored all of the ‘aid of Christendom against the Unbelievers’). With Pope Urban II’s goal of reasserting his authority in Italy accomplished, he was now able to fully concentrate on addressing and laying a course of action for a Crusade which the Eastern ambassadors from the Byzantine Empire had primarily come for. Urban was also aware that Italy was not the land which would, “awaken to a burst of religious enthusiasm at the summons of a Pope; one, too, with a still contested title."[citation needed] His urges to persuade "many to promise, by taking an oath, to aid the emperor most faithfully as far as they were able against the pagans"[citation needed] came to little.
At the Council of Clermont, assembled in the heart of France on 27 November 1095, Urban gave an impassioned sermon to a large audience of French nobles and clergy.[citation needed] He summoned the audience to wrest control of Jerusalem from the hands of the Muslims. France, he said, was overcrowded and the land of Canaan was overflowing with milk and honey. He spoke of the problems of noble violence and the solution was to turn swords to God's own service: "Let robbers become knights."[31] He spoke of rewards both on earth and in heaven, where remission of sins was offered to any who might die in the undertaking. Urban promised this through the power of God that was invested into him. The crowd was stirred to frenzied enthusiasm and interrupted his speech with cries of Deus lo volt! ("God wills it!").[citation needed]
Urban's sermon is among the most important speeches in European history.[citation needed] There are at least four versions of the speech on record, but all were written after Jerusalem had been captured, and it is difficult to know what was actually said and what was recreated in the aftermath of the successful crusade.[33] However, it is clear that the response to the speech was much larger than even the Pope, let alone Alexius, expected.[citation needed] For the rest of 1095 and into 1096, Urban spread the message throughout France, and urged his bishops and legates to preach in their own dioceses elsewhere in France, Germany, and Italy as well.[34] Urban tried to forbid certain people (including women, monks, and the sick) from joining the crusade, but found this nearly impossible. In the end most who took up the call were not knights, but peasants who were not wealthy and had little in the way of fighting skills, but whose millennial and apocalyptic yearnings found release from the daily oppression of their lives, in an outpouring of a new emotional and personal piety that was not easily harnessed by the ecclesiastical and lay aristocracy.[35]
Urban planned the departure of the crusade for 15 August 1096, the Feast of the Assumption, but months before this a number of unexpected armies of peasants and petty nobles set off for Jerusalem on their own. They were led by a charismatic priest named Peter the Hermit of Amiens. The response was beyond expectations: while Urban might have expected a few thousand knights, he ended up with a migration numbering up to 40,000 Crusaders— albeit mostly unskilled fighters, including women and children.[36]
Lacking military discipline, and in what likely seemed to the participants a strange land (Eastern Europe), they quickly landed in trouble, in Christian territory. The problem faced was one of supply as well as culture: the people needed food, and they expected host cities to give, or at least sell it to them at a reasonable price. Unfortunately for the Crusaders, the locals did not always agree, and this quickly led to fighting. Following the Danube, Peter's supporters looted the surrounding territory and were attacked by the Hungarians, the Bulgarians, and even a Byzantine army near Nish. Ten-thousand, around a quarter of Peter's followers, were killed,[citation needed] but the rest arrived largely intact at Constantinople in August. Cultural and religious differences and a reluctance to supply such a large number of incoming people led to further tensions. Moreover, Peter's followers soon joined with other crusaders from France and Italy. Alexius, not knowing what else to do with such a large assembly of people, quickly ferried all 30,000 crusaders across the Bosphorus.[36]
After crossing into Asia Minor, the Crusaders began to quarrel and the armies broke up into two separate parties.[citation needed] The experience of the Turks was overwhelming; most of the People's Crusade —exhibiting their supreme lack of any practical knowledge in battle — were massacred upon entering Seljuk territory.[37] Peter survived, however, and would later join the main Crusader army.[38] Another army of Bohemians and Saxons did not make it past Hungary before splitting up.
The First Crusade ignited a long tradition of organized violence against Jews in European culture.[citation needed] While anti-Semitism had existed in Europe for centuries, the First Crusade marked the first mass organized violence against Jewish communities.[citation needed] In Germany, certain leaders understood this war against the infidels to be applicable not only to the Muslims in the Holy Land, but also against Jews within their own lands.[39] Setting off in the early summer of 1096, a German army of around 10,000 Crusaders led by Gottschalk, Volkmar, and Emicho, proceeded northward through the Rhine valley, in the opposite direction of Jerusalem, and began a series of pogroms which some historians call "the first Holocaust".[40] This understanding of the idea of a Crusade was not universal, however, and Jews found some refuge in sanctuaries, with one example being the Archbishop of Cologne's attempts to protect the Jews of the city from the slaughter carried on by the city's population.[39]
The preaching of the crusade inspired further anti-Semitism.[41] According to some preachers, Jews and Muslims were enemies of Christ, and enemies were to be fought or converted to Christianity.[citation needed] The general public apparently assumed that "fought" meant "fought to the death", or "killed".[citation needed] The Christian conquest of Jerusalem and the establishment of a Christian emperor there would supposedly instigate the End Times, during which the Jews were supposed to convert to Christianity.[citation needed] In parts of France and Germany, Jews were thought to be responsible for the crucifixion, and they were more immediately visible than the far-away Muslims. Many people wondered why they should travel thousands of miles to fight non-believers when there were already non-believers closer to home.[citation needed] The crusaders moved north through the Rhine valley into well-known Jewish communities such as Cologne, and then southward. Jewish communities were given the option of converting to Christianity or being slaughtered. Most would not convert and, as news of the mass killings spread, many Jewish communities committed mass suicides in horrific scenes.[citation needed] Hundreds of Jews were massacred, despite attempts by local clergy and secular authorities in some places to shelter them.[41] The massacres were justified by the claim that Urban's speech at Clermont promised reward from God for killing non-Christians of any sort, not just Muslims.[citation needed] Although the papacy abhorred and preached against the purging of Muslim and Jewish inhabitants during this and future crusades, there were numerous attacks on Jews following every crusade movement.
The Princes' Crusade, also known as the Barons' Crusade, set out later in 1096 in a more orderly manner[citation needed], led by various nobles with bands of knights from different regions of Europe. The four most significant of these were Raymond IV of Toulouse, who represented the knights of Provence, accompanied by the papal legate Adhemar of Le Puy; Bohemond of Taranto, representing the Normans of southern Italy with his nephew Tancred; The Lorrainers under the brothers Godfrey of Bouillon, Eustace and Baldwin of Boulogne; and the Northern French led by Count Robert II of Flanders, Robert of Normandy (older brother of King William II of England), Stephen, Count of Blois, and Hugh of Vermandois the younger brother of King Philip I of France, who bore the papal banner.[42] King Philip himself was forbidden from participating in the campaign as he had been excommunicated.[43] The entire crusader army consisted of about 30,000-35,000 crusaders, including 5,000 cavalry.[44] Raymond IV of Toulouse had the largest contingent of about 8,500 infantry and 1,200 cavalry.[45]
Leaving Europe around the appointed time in August, the various armies took different paths to Constantinople and gathered outside its city walls between November 1096 and May 1097.[42] Accompanying the knights were many poor men (pauperes) who could afford basic clothing and perhaps an old weapon. Peter the Hermit, who joined the Princes' Crusade at Constantinople, was considered responsible for their well-being, and they were able to organize themselves into small groups, perhaps akin to military companies, often led by an impoverished knight.[citation needed] One of the largest of these groups, comprising of the survivors of the People's Crusade, named itself the "Tafurs."[46]
The Princes arrived in Constantinople with little food and expected provisions and help from Alexius I. Alexius was understandably suspicious after his experiences with the People's Crusade, and also because the knights included his old Norman enemy, Bohemond.[citation needed] At the same time, Alexius harbored hopes of exercising control over the crusaders, who he seems to have regarded as having the potential to function as a Byzantine proxy.[28] The gates of the city where not open to them as friends for their army was large enough to take the city.[citation needed] Only the leaders of the crusaders were allowed to come in. Thus, in return for food and supplies, Alexius requested the leaders to swear fealty to him and promise to return to the Byzantine Empire any land recovered from the Turks. Without food or provisions, they eventually had no choice but to take the oath, though not until all sides had agreed to various compromises, and only after warfare had almost broken out in the city.[citation needed] Only Raymond avoided swearing the oath, cleverly pledging himself to Alexius if the emperor would lead the crusade in person. Alexius refused, but the two became allies, sharing a common distrust of Bohemond.[citation needed]
Alexius agreed to send out a Byzantine army under the command of Taticius to accompany the crusaders through Asia Minor. Their first objective was Nicaea, an old Byzantine city, but now the capital of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rüm under Kilij Arslan I. Meanwhile, Arslan was campaigning against the Danishmends in central Anatolia having left behind his treasury and his family having underestimated the Crusaders.[47] The city was subjected to a lengthy siege, which was somewhat ineffectual as the crusaders could not blockade the lake on which the city was situated, and from which it could be provisioned. When Arslan heard of the siege, he rushed back to Nicaea and attacked the Crusader army on the 23 May but was driven back with heavy losses being suffered on both sides.[48] Seeing that he would not be able to save the city, he advised the garrison to surrender if their situation became untenable.[citation needed] Alexius, fearing the crusaders would sack Nicaea and destroy its wealth, secretly accepted the surrender of the city; the crusaders awoke on the morning of 19 June 1097 to see Byzantine standards flying from the walls. The crusaders were forbidden to loot it, and were not allowed to enter the city except in small escorted bands.[citation needed] This caused a further tension between the Byzantines and the crusaders.[citation needed] The crusaders now began the journey to Jerusalem and Stephen of Blois writing home to his wife Adela, stated he believed it would take five weeks.[49] In fact, the journey would take two years.[50]
The crusaders, still accompanied by some Byzantine troops under Taticius, marched on towards Dorylaeum, where Bohemond was pinned down by Kilij Arslan. At the Battle of Dorylaeum on 1 July, Godfrey broke through the Turkish lines, and with the help of the troops led by the legate Adhemar - who attacked the Turks from the rear - defeated the Turks and looted their camp.[48] Kilij Arslan withdrew and the crusaders marched almost unopposed through Asia Minor towards Antioch, except for a battle, in September, in which they again defeated the Turks.[citation needed] Along the way, the Crusaders were able to capture a number of cities such as Sozopolis, Iconium and Caesarea although most of these were lost to the Turks by 1101.[51][52]
The march through Asia was unpleasant. It was the middle of summer and the crusaders had very little food and water; many men died, as did many horses.[53] Christians, in Asia as in Europe, sometimes gave them gifts of food and money, but more often the crusaders looted and pillaged whenever the opportunity presented itself. Individual leaders continued to dispute the overall leadership, although none of them were powerful enough to take command; still, Adhemar was always recognized as the spiritual leader.[citation needed] After passing through the Cilician Gates, Baldwin of Boulogne set off on his own towards the Armenian lands around the Euphrates. In Edessa early in 1098, he was adopted as heir by King Thoros, an Armenian Greek Orthodox ruler who was disliked by his Armenian subjects for his religion. Thoros was soon assassinated and Baldwin became the new ruler, thus creating the County of Edessa, the first of the crusader states.[54]
The crusader army, meanwhile, marched on to Antioch, which lay about half way between Constantinople and Jerusalem. On 20 October 1097 the crusader army set Antioch to a siege which lasted almost eight months,[55] during which time they also had to defeat two large relief armies under Duqaq of Damascus and Ridwan of Aleppo.[citation needed] Antioch was so large that the crusaders did not have enough troops to fully surround it, and thus it was able to stay partially supplied.[56]
In May 1098, Kerbogha of Mosul approached Antioch to relieve the siege. Bohemond bribed an Armenian guard named Firuz to surrender his tower, and in June the crusaders entered the city and killed most of the inhabitants.[57] However, only a few days later the Muslims arrived, laying siege to the former besiegers.[58] At this point a minor monk by the name of Peter Bartholomew claimed to have discovered the Holy Lance in the city, and although some were skeptical, this was seen as a sign that they would be victorious.[59]
On 28 June 1098 the crusaders defeated Kerbogha in a pitched battle outside the city, as Kerbogha was unable to organize the different factions in his army.[60] While the crusaders were marching towards the Muslims, the Fatimid section of the army deserted the Turkish contingent, as they feared Kerbogha would become too powerful if he were to defeat the Crusaders.[citation needed] According to legend, an army of Christian saints came to the aid of the crusaders during the battle and crippled Kerbogha's army.[citation needed]
Bohemond argued that Alexius had deserted the crusade and thus invalidated all of their oaths to him.[citation needed] Bohemond asserted his claim to Antioch, but not everyone agreed, notably Raymond of Toulouse, and the crusade was delayed for the rest of the year while the nobles argued amongst themselves.[citation needed] It is a common historiographical assumption that the Franks of northern France, the Provençals of southern France, and the Normans of southern Italy considered themselves separate "nations" and that each wanted to increase its status.[citation needed] This may have had something to do with the disputes, but personal ambition was just as likely to blame.[citation needed]
Meanwhile, a plague broke out, killing many, including the legate Adhemar, who died on 1 August.[30] There were now even fewer horses than before, and Muslim peasants refused to give them food.[citation needed] In December, the Arab town of Ma'arrat al-Numan was captured after a siege, which saw the first occurrence of cannibalism among crusaders.[61] The minor knights and soldiers became restless and threatened to continue to Jerusalem without their squabbling leaders.[citation needed] Finally, at the beginning of 1099, the march was renewed, leaving Bohemond behind as the first Prince of Antioch.
Proceeding down the coast of the Mediterranean, the crusaders encountered little resistance, as local rulers preferred to make peace with them and give them supplies rather than fight.[62] On 7 June the crusaders reached Jerusalem, which had been recaptured from the Seljuks by the Fatimids of Egypt only the year before.[63] Many Crusaders wept on seeing the city they had journeyed so long to reach.[citation needed]
As with Antioch, the crusaders put the city to a siege, in which the crusaders themselves suffered many casualties, due to the lack of food and water around Jerusalem.[63] By the time the Crusader army reached Jerusalem, only 12,000 men including 1,500 cavalry remained.[45] Faced with a seemingly impossible task, their morale was raised when a priest, by the name of Peter Desiderius, claimed to have had a divine vision instructing them to fast and then march in a barefoot procession around the city walls, after which the city would fall, following the Biblical example of Joshua at the siege of Jericho.[63] On 8 July 1099 the crusaders performed the procession as instructed by Desiderius. The Genoese troops, led by commander Guglielmo Embriaco, had previously dismantled the ships in which the Genoese came to the Holy Land; Embriaco, using the ship's wood, made some siege towers and seven days later on 15 July, the crusaders were able to end the siege by breaking down sections of the walls and entering the city. Some Crusaders also entered through the former pilgrim's entrance.[citation needed]
Over the course of that afternoon, evening and next morning, the crusaders murdered almost every inhabitant of Jerusalem.[64] Muslims, Jews, and even eastern Christians were all massacred.[citation needed] Although many Muslims sought shelter in Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Jews in their synagogue by the Western wall, the crusaders spared few lives.[64] According to the anonymous Gesta Francorum, "...the slaughter was so great that our men waded in blood up to their ankles..." According to Raymond of Aguilers "men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins." However, scholars John and Laurita Hill discovered in 1969 that this line was taken directly from biblical passage Apocalypse 14:20.[65] The chronicle of Ibn al-Qalanisi states the Jewish defenders sought refuge in their synagogue, but the "Franks burned it over their heads", killing everyone inside.[66] Tancred claimed the Temple quarter for himself and offered protection to some of the Muslims there, but he was unable to prevent their deaths at the hands of his fellow crusaders.[citation needed] According to Fulcher of Chartres: "Indeed, if you had been there you would have seen our feet coloured to our ankles with the blood of the slain. But what more shall I relate? None of them were left alive; neither women nor children were spared".[67]
The Gesta Francorum states some people managed to escape the siege unharmed. Its anonymous author wrote, "When the pagans had been overcome, our men seized great numbers, both men and women, either killing them or keeping them captive, as they wished."[68] Later it is written, "[Our leaders] also ordered all the Saracen dead to be cast outside because of the great stench, since the whole city was filled with their corpses; and so the living Saracens dragged the dead before the exits of the gates and arranged them in heaps, as if they were houses. No one ever saw or heard of such slaughter of pagan people, for funeral pyres were formed from them like pyramids, and no one knows their number except God alone." [69]
On 22 July, a council was held in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Raymond of Toulouse at first refused to become king,[70] perhaps attempting to show his piety but probably hoping that the other nobles would insist upon his election anyway. Godfrey, who had become the more popular of the two after Raymond's actions at the siege of Antioch, did no damage to his own piety by accepting a position as secular leader. Raymond was incensed at this development and took his army out into the countryside. The exact nature and meaning of Godfrey's title is somewhat of a controversy. Although it is widely claimed that he took the title Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri ("advocate" or "defender" of the Holy Sepulchre), this title is only used in a letter which was not written by Godfrey. Instead, Godfrey himself seems to have used the more ambiguous term princeps, or simply retained his title of dux from back home in Lower Lorraine. According to William of Tyre, writing in the later 12th century when Godfrey was already a legendary hero in crusader Jerusalem, he refused to wear "a crown of gold" where Christ had worn "a crown of thorns".[71]Robert the Monk is the only contemporary chronicler of the crusade to report that Godfrey took the title "king".[72] In the last action of the crusade, Godfrey defeated an invading Fatimid army at the Battle of Ascalon. He died in July 1100, and was succeeded by his brother, Baldwin of Edessa, the first to take the title King of Jerusalem.
Having captured Jerusalem and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the crusading vow was now fulfilled.[73] However, there were many who had gone home before reaching Jerusalem, and many who had never left Europe at all.[citation needed] When the success of the crusade became known, these people were mocked and scorned by their families and threatened with excommunication by the clergy.[citation needed] Many crusaders who had remained with the crusade all the way to Jerusalem also went home; according to Fulcher of Chartres there were only a few hundred knights left in the newfound kingdom in 1100.[citation needed]
In 1101, another crusade set out, including Stephen of Blois and Hugh of Vermandois, both of whom had returned home before reaching Jerusalem. This crusade was almost annihilated in Asia Minor by the Seljuks, but the survivors helped reinforce the kingdom when they arrived in Jerusalem.[74] In the following years, assistance was also provided by Italian merchants who established themselves in the Syrian ports, and from the religious and military orders of the Knights Templars and the Knights Hospitaller which were created during Baldwin I's reign.
The success of the First Crusade was unprecedented.[citation needed] Newly achieved stability in the west left a warrior aristocracy in search of new conquests and patrimony, and the new prosperity of major towns also meant that money was available to equip expeditions.[citation needed] The Italian maritime city states, in particular Venice and Genoa, were interested in extending trade. The Papacy saw the Crusades as a way to assert Catholic influence as a unifying force, with war as a religious mission.[citation needed] This was a new attitude to religion: it brought religious discipline, previously applicable only to monks, to soldiery—the new concept of a religious warrior and the chivalric ethos.[citation needed]
The First Crusade succeeded in establishing the "Crusader States" of Edessa, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Tripoli in Palestine and Syria (as well as allies along the Crusaders' route, such as the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia).
Back at home in western Europe, those who had survived to reach Jerusalem were treated as heroes.[citation needed] Robert of Flanders was nicknamed "Hierosolymitanus" thanks to his exploits.[citation needed] The life of Godfrey of Bouillon became legendary even within a few years of his death.[citation needed] In some cases, the political situation at home was greatly affected by crusader absences: while Robert Curthose was away, England had passed to his brother Henry I of England, and their conflict resulted in the Battle of Tinchebrai in 1106.
Meanwhile the establishment of the crusader states in the east helped ease Seljuk pressure on the Byzantine Empire, which had regained some of its Anatolian territory with crusader help, and experienced a period of relative peace and prosperity in the 12th century. The effect on the Muslim dynasties of the east was gradual but important.[citation needed] In the wake of the death of Malik Shah I in 1092 the political instability and the division of Great Seljuk, that had pressed the Byzantine call for aid to the Pope, meant that it had prevented a coherent defense against the aggressive and expansionist Latin states.[citation needed] Cooperation between them remained difficult for many decades, but from Egypt to Syria to Baghdad there were calls for the expulsion of the crusaders, culminating in the recapture of Jerusalem under Saladin later in the century when the Ayyubids had united the surrounding areas.
Pope Urban II’s reasons for calling for a Crusade to the Holy Land were to regain Papacy supreme spiritual authority in Latin Christendom while expanding his realpolitik power.[citation needed] He failed to bridge the growing schism between the East and West and inadvertently, with the sacking of Constantinople during the later crusades, actually solidified the schism.[citation needed] The Crusades also militarily assisted the weakening Byzantine Empire by repulsing the growing Seljuk menace from the Holy Lands and setting up small individual kingdoms.[citation needed]
Although it is called the First Crusade, no one saw himself as a "crusader".[citation needed] The term crusade is an early 13th century term that first appears in Latin over 100 years after the first crusade.[citation needed] Nor did the crusaders see themselves as the first, since they did not know there would be later crusades. They saw themselves simply as pilgrims (peregrinatores) on a journey (iter), and were referred to as such in contemporary accounts.[citation needed]
Taking an oath to the church to complete the journey, and punishment by excommunication if one failed to do so, were the solidifying factors of making the crusade an official pilgrimage.[citation needed] Crusaders were to swear that their journey would only be complete once they set foot inside the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.[citation needed] Pilgrimages were open to all those who wished to take part; undesirable candidates, women, the elderly and the infirm, were discouraged from joining but there was no way to stop them.
The first Crusade attracted the largest number of peasants and what started as a minor call for military aid turned into a mass migration of peoples.[citation needed] The call to go on crusade was very popular.[citation needed] Two medieval roles, holy warrior and pilgrim, were merged into one.
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