Last week I described the origins of the crusades. As I
described, after centuries of Muslim expansion, in which Muslims conquered the Holy Land,
Cyprus and much of Asia Minor, the Byzantine Emperor hoped to reverse the tide by appealing for aid from the
West. The Pope was receptive and called for knights and men-at-arms to embark upon an armed
pilgrimage to free the holy places of Christianity from Muslim rule.
The response to the Pope’s appeal was overwhelming. It is
believed that over 100,000 people, an enormous number given the population of
Western Europe at this time, took part in this first crusade. First, an
estimated 20,000 common people without particular organization or planning
followed a self-proclaimed prophet, Peter the Hermit, thinking he would lead
them to a kind of paradise on earth in Jerusalem. After plundering their way
through the Balkans, they were completely destroyed by a Turkish army just
beyond the Bosporus. The real crusading army, consisting of roughly 35,000
fighting men, set out on the official First Crusade several months later. This
force was led by some of the most powerful noblemen of Western Europe at the
time, including the Dukes of Flanders and Normandy and Count Raymond IV of
Toulouse.
While some of the leaders, notably the Count of Toulouse and
Godfrey de Bouillon, were men with land and riches at home, whose motives for
embarking on such a dangerous and difficult expedition were largely pious, the
same cannot be said of all crusaders. Bohemond, the Prince of Otranto, and
Baldwin of Boulogne, for example, proved their interests were largely venal by
setting themselves up as princelings in conquered territory even before
reaching Jerusalem. As for their followers, as Richard Barber writes in The Knight and Chivalry: “The Papacy saw
the crusades as a way of harnessing the concept of knighthood to spiritual ends;
the knights saw them as a solution to earthly ills, with the promise of
absolution and heavenly reward as well …. Furthermore, by removing the
discontented knights from their homes in the West, the popes believed that they
would bring peace to Europe as well as helping their fellow Christians in
Palestine and Byzantium.”[i] In short, many men went on
crusade for practical more than religious reasons: to avoid debts, taxes, and
feudal duties, for adventure, for spoils, in hope of a better future in the
Holy Land ….
The First Crusade reached Constantinople in April 1097. Here
the leaders dutifully swore fealty to the Byzantine Emperor, in whose name they
continued as soldiers of an Emperor seeking to re-take territory that had
belonged to his predecessors. The crusaders then crossed into Muslim-held
territory for the first time (modern Turkey) and confronted Seljuk forces on
July 1. The crusaders routed the Seljuk army in a intelligently and courageously fought engagement involving combined tactics. They then continued east until they came
to Antioch.
Here, after an eight-month siege, Antioch fell to the
crusaders – who promptly found themselves under siege by a much larger Muslim
army. The crusaders appealed desperately for aid from the Byzantine Emperor,
their ‘overlord,’ who had sent them on this mission and promised them support.
In fact, the Byzantine Emperor had moved his troops in behind the crusaders,
“mopping up” what remained of the Seljuk forces and re-establishing Byzantine
control over Asia Minor. But, unfortunately for Christianity, one of the
crusaders, Stephan of Blois, had deserted the crusader cause and on his way home
told the Byzantine Emperor that the crusaders were defeated, Antioch already lost. The
Emperor therefore decided to consolidate what he had and returned to
Constantinople, leaving the crusaders on their own.
Trapped in Antioch, on the brink of starvation, the crusaders
discovered a relic, which one of the priests identified as the lance that
pierced Christ’s side before the Crucifixion. This “miracle” inspired the
crusaders to undertake what turned out to be a decisive sortie that drove the
besiegers off. But the survivors no longer trusted the Byzantine Emporer. His failure to come to their aid ended, in their eyes, the feudal oath they had taken, because he had not upheld his end of the bargain. Instead, two of the leaders (Bohemond of Otranto and Baldwin of Boulogne) established two independent
kingdoms, at Edessa and Antioch. The hard-core of the crusaders, however, pressed
on for Jerusalem itself. A year later, the weary, much
decimated, ill-equipped, and half-starved crusading army reached Jerusalem.
This army had suffered extreme privation during its march,
notably thirst so intense that according to the chaplain of the Count of
Toulouse, at one pool “those who were strong pushed and shoved their way in a
deathly fashion through the pool, which was already choked with dead animals
and men struggling for their lives …. Those who were weaker sprawled on the
ground beside the pool with gaping mouths, their parched tongues making them
speechless, while they stretched out their hands to beg water from the more
fortunate ones.”[ii]
The army was no longer large enough to encircle the city of Jerusalem, so no
proper siege was possible. Furthermore, the leaders believed that a Muslim
relief army from Egypt was on its way, which made a rapid victory all the more
important. The crusaders therefore attempted to take the city by storm almost
at once, but without sufficient ladders the assault was
repulsed. An imperfect siege began, during which the Christians secured
materials to build siege engines. On the night of July 13, 1099, a new assault
was launched, but it was not until the afternoon of July 15 that a breakthrough
was achieved.
The crusaders reportedly poured into Jerusalem. At this
moment of their greatest triumph, the crusaders committed the atrocity that has
besmirched the very words “crusades” and “crusaders” ever since. Knowing the
Christians had been expelled before the siege, the crusaders killed every
living human found within the holy city until, allegedly, their horses waded up
to their fetlocks in running blood.
[i] Barber, Richard W., The Knight and Chivalry, p. 254.
[ii] Hopkins, Andrea, Knights: The Complete Story of the Age of
Chivalry, from Historical Fact to Tales of Romance and Poetry, p. 85.
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