A 12th-century plan if Christian-held Jerusalem and its environs. In the bottom register, crusaders are shown driving off Muslims.
“THE BLOOD OF PAGANS”
In his exultant account of the fall of Jerusalem, Raymond of Aguilers celebrates the slaughter visited upon the city’s Muslims, seeing it as God’s vengeance on those who had defiled the Holy City:
“It is sufficient to relate that in the Temple of Solomon [the Aqsa mosque] and the portico crusaders rode in blood to the knees and bridles of their horses. In my opinion this was poetic justice that the Temple of Solomon should receive the blood of pagans who blasphemed God there for many years. Jerusalem was now littered with bodies and stained with blood…. A new day, new gladness, new and everlasting happiness, and the fulfillment of our toil and love brought forth new words and songs for all.”
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Jerusalem stands on a ridge with steep slopes to east and west. The city’s north wall was much more vulnerable, but at that time it was reinforced with a ditch and an outer wall. Zion Gate, on the south wall, opens on to a small plateau but this too had a ditch. Before the crusaders arrived outside Jerusalem on 6th June 1099, the Egyptians had strengthened the garrison in the Tower of David on the west wall, and had devastated the area about the city, destroying all timber that could be used for siege machinery and blocking wells.
Knowing that the Egyptians would send a relief force, the crusaders launched an attack on 13th June, despite having only one assault ladder, built with wood found in a cave. This failed and they began to prepare a more systematic onslaught. Then, on 17th June a crusader fleet putting into Jaffa was surprised by Egyptian ships and forced to beach, but the crews salvaged the cargoes of food and ships’ timbers which they took to Jerusalem.
It was decided to make a two-pronged assault. The northern French built a siege tower at the northwest corner of the city, and also a ram to break down the outer wall. Raymond hired a Genoese ship’s captain, William Ricau, to build a tower outside Zion Gate and fill in the ditch. Both contingents constructed catapults. Foraging parties found light wood for ladders and mantlets (shields big enough to protect a man against arrows fired from the walls), and brought water, much of it foul, from a distance. Jerusalem’s defenders strengthened the walls opposite the two crusader forces and brought up fourteen catapults, of which nine were directed against Raymond.
On 8th July the crusaders processed around Jerusalem like Joshua before Jericho, and the leaders were publicly reconciled. The decisive event came on the night of 9thloth July, when the French dismantled their tower, ram, and catapults and moved them east to a weak point on the north wall. This was a huge task but to counter it the defenders had to start from scratch to reinforce the walls and build new catapults-and they were, in any case, divided by the need to keep a force on the south wall. On 13th July the assault began. In the north the French ram breached the outer wall. By 14th July the tower was approaching the inner wall, where the knights in the tower would provide cover for an escalade (assault by ladder) and attempts to undermine the wall. But in the south, by the morning of 15th July, the defenders’ catapults had wrecked Raymond’s tower. This and the sustained Muslim assault demoralized the crusaders.
In the north, though, Godfrey of Bouillon had brought the siege tower up to the wall and the knights inside it were able to build a bridge onto the wall itself. Godfrey’s men at once poured across the bridge and into the city, followed by Tancred’s men, who occupied the Temple Mount while Godfrey opened the city gates. When news of this reached the south, the city’s governor fled with his entourage into the Tower of David, but agreed to surrender the citadel to Raymond in return for safe passage out of the city. Most of the population fled and those who failed to do so were massacred.
THE MASSACRE OF 1099: MYTH AND REALITY
The slaughter that took place during and after the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 has become notorious, partly because later Muslim sources exaggerated the event in order to whip up the spirit of jihad. But the slaughter was not total. Many Muslims escaped, taking with them an important Quran, and created their own suburb of Damascus. The crusaders burned the synagogue over the heads of the hundreds of Jews who had fled there for safety, but surviving letters from the Jewish community in Cairo show that some Jews were captured and held for ransom.
The worst single atrocity took place on the morning after the fall. Tancred had given a group of Muslims protection on the roof of the Aqsa mosque (”Solomon’s Temple”), but before he could ransom them they were killed by other crusaders. Apart from this massacre, most of the killing took place when the crusaders broke into the city, and this must be seen in the context of the age. The earlier a city or castle surrendered, the better the terms for its population. The people in a stronghold that held out to the bitter end were “at mercy,” and in the heat of battle there was likely to be little of that as the victors rushed through the streets in search of enemy troops and plunder.
By the same token, however, the chaos of battle could allow many to escape, and the east and west walls of Jerusalem were virtually unguarded by the crusaders. The fall of Jerusalem was certainly accompanied by terrible bloodshed, but not by all the imagined horrors of later generations.
The crusaders celebrated their triumph, and completed their pilgrimage, in the church of the Holy Sepulcher. On 22nd July Godfrey was chosen as ruler of the city with the title advocate (protector) of the Holy Sepulcher. On 1st August Arnulf of Chocques, Robert of Normandy’s chaplain, became the city’s new Latin patriarch. However, the leaders were aware of an Egyptian force building up at Ascalon on the coast. Emboldened by a sense that God was on their side, on 12th August the crusaders surprised and defeated the Egyptian army. For now, the crusader foothold in the Holy Land was secure, and most of the victorious army could return home.
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