The First Crusade Collapses

Around midday on July 15th, 1099, two Flemish knights, Litold and Gilbert of Tournai, fought their way from the top of a siege tower onto the walls of Jerusalem. As they cleared the walls of defenders more Crusaders crossed from the tower or clambered up scaling ladders. They quickly seized the Gate of the Column and opened it to the rest of the Crusader army. As the ecstatic Crusaders flooded into the holy city they began to slaughter its panic-stricken Muslim and Jewish population. The killing continued throughout the afternoon and the following night, ending only the next morning with the massacre of a group of Muslims who had taken refuge on the roof of the al-Aqsa mosque. How many died is unknown; many certainly escaped and a lucky few succeeded in ransoming themselves, but it took the Crusaders the best part of a week to clear the city of bodies. With Jerusalem taken, the unity of the Crusaders, always fragile, began to break down and it was an acrimonious meeting that finally elected Godfrey de Bouillon 'Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre' on July 22nd. Jerusalem was to remain in Christian hands for the next eighty eight years.

The capture of Jerusalem was the culmination of an expedition which had begun three years before, following a call by Pope Urban II to aid the Christians of the east against the Turks and free the holy places from Muslim control. Of the 60,000 or more Crusaders who set out from western Europe in 1096, barely a fifth were still with the army when it arrived at Jerusalem on June 7th, 1099. Death from wounds, disease and starvation accounted for most of the losses, but many simply could not endure the constant hardships and deserted, while others had remained in Antioch and Edessa, taken earlier in the expedition. The Crusader army was far too small to invest Jerusalem completely and its well supplied garrison was confident of being able to hold out for the couple of months it would take for a relief army to arrive from Egypt. Most medieval fortresses fell, if they fell at all, by treachery or negotiation after a long siege. Direct assaults rarely succeeded, but the Crusaders had little choice. Assured of success by a holy hermit, they launched a rash assault on June 12th, using scaling ladders. It was easily beaten off by the defenders.