The First Crusade (1095–1099) was the first
of a number of crusades that attempted to
recapture the Holy Land, called for by Pope
Urban II at the Council of Clermont in 1095.
Urban called for a military expedition to
aid the Byzantine Empire, which had recently
lost most of Anatolia to the Seljuq Turks.
The resulting military expedition of primarily
Frankish nobles, known as the Princes' Crusade,
not only re-captured Anatolia but went on
to conquer the Holy Land (the Levant), which
had fallen to Islamic expansion as early as
the 7th century, and culminated in July 1099
in the re-conquest of Jerusalem and the establishment
of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
The expedition was a reaction to the appeal
for military aid by Byzantine Emperor Alexios
I Komnenos.
Urban's convocation of the Council of Clermont
was specifically dedicated to this purpose,
proposing siege warfare against the recently
occupied cities of Nicaea and Antioch, even
though Urban's speech at Clermont in the testimony
of witnesses writing after 1100 was phrased
to allude to the re-conquest of Jerusalem
and the Holy Land as additional goals.
The successful Princes' Crusade was preceded
by the "people crusade", which was a popular
movement
instigated by Peter the Hermit in the spring
of 1096.
Mobs of peasants and laymen travelled to Anatolia
where they came up against the Turks, on the
way attacking populations of Jews in the Rhineland.
They were decisively defeated at the Battle
of Civetot in October.
The Princes' Crusade, by contrast, was a well-organized
military campaign, starting out in late summer
of 1096 and arriving at Constantinople between
November 1096 and April 1097.
The crusaders marched into Anatolia, capturing
Nicaea in June 1097 and Antioch in June 1098.
They arrived at Jerusalem in June 1099 and
took the city by assault on 7 July 1099, massacring
the defenders.
A brief attempt by the Saracens to recapture
Jerusalem was repulsed at the Battle of Ascalon.
During their conquests, the crusaders established
the Latin Rite crusader states of the Kingdom
of Jerusalem, the County of Tripoli, the Principality
of Antioch, and the County of Edessa.
This was contrary to the wishes of the Eastern
Rite Byzantines, who wanted the land that
the Muslims took from them returned, rather
than occupied by Latin Catholics.
After the retaking of Jerusalem, most of the
crusaders returned home.
This left the crusader kingdoms vulnerable
to Muslim reconquest during the Second and
Third Crusades.
== Historical context ==
The causes of the Crusades in general, and
particularly of the First Crusade, is widely
debated among historians.
While the relative weight or importance of
the various factors may be the subject of
ongoing disputes, it is clear that the First
Crusade came about from a combination of factors
in both Europe and the Near East.
Its origin is linked both with the political
situation in Catholic Christendom, including
the political and social situation in 11th-century
Europe, the rise of a reform movement within
the papacy, as well as the military's and
religious confrontation of Christianity and
Islam in the East.
Christianity had been adopted throughout the
Roman Empire in Late Antiquity, but in the
7th to 8th centuries, the Umayyad Caliphate
had conquered Syria, Egypt, and North Africa
from the predominantly Christian Byzantine
Empire, and Hispania from the Visigothic Kingdom.
In North Africa, the Umayyad empire eventually
collapsed and a number of smaller Muslim kingdoms
emerged, such as the Aghlabids, who attacked
Italy in the 9th century.
Pisa, Genoa, and the Principality of Catalonia
began to battle various Muslim kingdoms for
control of the Mediterranean Basin, exemplified
by the Mahdia campaign of 1087 and battles
at Majorca and Sardinia.Between the years
of 1096 and 1101, the Byzantine Greeks experienced
the crusade as it arrived in Constantinople
in three separate waves.
In the early summer of 1096, the first large
unruly group arrived on the outskirts of Constantinople.
This wave was reported to be undisciplined
and ill-equipped as an army.
This first group is often called the Peasants'
Crusade or the People's Crusade.
It was led by Peter the Hermit and Walter
Sans Avoir.
The second wave was also not under the command
of the Emperor and was made up of a number
of armies with their own commanders.
Together, this group and the first wave numbered
an estimated 60,000.The second wave was led
by Hugh I, Count of Vermandois, the brother
of King Philip I of France.
Also among the second wave were Raymond IV,
Count of Toulouse and the army of Provençals.
"It was this second wave of crusaders which
later passed through Asia Minor, captured
Antioch in 1098 and finally took Jerusalem
15 July 1099."The third wave, composed of
contingents from Lombardy, France, and Bavaria,
arrived in Jerusalem in the early summer of
1101.
=== Situation in Europe ===
At the western edge of Europe and of Islamic
expansion, the Reconquista in the Iberian
Peninsula was well underway by the 11th century.
It was intermittently ideological, as evidenced
by the Codex Vigilanus compiled in 881.
Increasingly in the 11th century foreign knights,
mostly from France, visited Iberia to assist
the Christians in their efforts.
Shortly before the First Crusade, Pope Urban
II had encouraged the Iberian Christians to
reconquer Tarragona, using much of the same
symbolism and rhetoric that was later used
to preach the crusade to the people of Europe.The
heart of Western Europe had been stabilized
after the Christianization of the Saxon, Viking,
and Hungarian peoples by the end of the 10th
century.
However, the breakdown of the Carolingian
Empire gave rise to an entire class of warriors
who now had little to do but fight among themselves.
The random violence of the knightly class
was regularly condemned by the church, and
in response, it established the Peace and
Truce of God to prohibit fighting on certain
days of the year.
At the same time, the reform-minded papacy
came into conflict with the Holy Roman Emperors,
resulting in the Investiture Controversy.
Popes such as Gregory VII justified the subsequent
warfare against the Emperor's partisans in
theological terms.
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 Al-Andalus, or, theoretically,
against the Seljuq dynasty in the east.To
the east of Europe lay the Byzantine Empire,
composed of Christians who had long followed
a separate Orthodox rite; the Eastern Orthodox
and Roman Catholic churches had been in schism
since 1054.
Historians have argued that the desire to
impose Roman church authority in the east
may have been one of the goals of the crusade,
although Urban II, who launched the First
Crusade, never refers to such a goal in his
letters on crusading.
The Seljuq Turks had taken over almost all
of Anatolia after the Byzantine defeat at
the Battle of Manzikert in 1071; however,
their conquests were piecemeal and led by
semi-independent warlords, rather than by
the sultan.
A dramatic collapse of the empire's position
on the eve of the Council of Clermont brought
Byzantium to the brink of disaster.
By the mid-1090s, the Byzantine Empire was
largely confined to Balkan Europe and the
northwestern fringe of Anatolia, and faced
Norman enemies in the west as well as Turks
in the east.
In response to the defeat at Manzikert and
subsequent Byzantine losses in Anatolia in
1074, Pope Gregory VII had called for the
miles Christi ("soldiers of Christ") to go
to Byzantium's aid.
This call was largely ignored and even opposed.
The reason for this was that while the defeat
at Manzikert was shocking, it had limited
significance and did not lead to major difficulties
for the Byzantine empire, at least in the
short term.
=== Situation in the East ===
Until the Crusaders' arrival, the Byzantines
had continually fought the Seljuqs and other
Turkish dynasties for control of Anatolia
and Syria.
The Seljuqs, who were orthodox Sunni Muslims,
had formerly ruled the Great Seljuq Empire,
but by the time of the First Crusade it had
divided into several smaller states after
the death of Malik-Shah I in 1092.
Malik-Shah was succeeded in the Anatolian
Sultanate of Rum by Kilij Arslan I, and in
Syria by his brother Tutush I, who died in
1095.
Tutush's sons Fakhr al-Mulk 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.Egypt and much of Palestine
were controlled by the Arab Shi'ite Fatimid
Caliphate, which was significantly smaller
since the arrival of the Seljuqs.
Warfare between the Fatimids and Seljuqs caused
great disruption for the local Christians
and for western pilgrims.
The Fatimids, under the nominal rule of caliph
al-Musta'li but actually controlled by vizier
al-Afdal Shahanshah, had lost Jerusalem to
the Seljuqs in 1073 (although some older accounts
say 1076); they recaptured it in 1098 from
the Artuqids, a smaller Turkish tribe associated
with the Seljuqs, just before the arrival
of the crusaders.
== Council of Clermont ==
Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos, worried
about the advances of the Seljuqs in the aftermath
of the Battle of Manzikert, who had reached
as far west as Nicaea, sent envoys to the
Council of Piacenza in March 1095 to ask Pope
Urban II for aid against the Turk.
Urban responded favourably, perhaps hoping
to heal the Great Schism of forty years earlier,
and to reunite the Church under papal primacy
by helping the Eastern churches in their time
of need.
Alexios and Urban had previously been in close
contact in 1089 and after, and had discussed
openly the prospect of the (re)union of the
Christian church.
There were signs of considerable co-operation
between Rome and Constantinople in the years
immediately before the crusade.In July 1095,
Urban turned to his homeland of France to
recruit men for the expedition.
His travels there culminated in the ten day
Council of Clermont, where on Tuesday 27 November
he gave an impassioned sermon to a large audience
of French nobles and clergy.
There are five versions of the speech recorded
by people who may have been at the council
(Baldric of Dol, Guibert of Nogent, Robert
the Monk, and Fulcher of Chartres) or who
went on crusade (Fulcher and the anonymous
author of the Gesta Francorum), as well as
other versions found in later historians (such
as William of Malmesbury and William of Tyre).
All of these versions were written after Jerusalem
had been captured.
Thus it is difficult to know what was actually
said and what was recreated in the aftermath
of the successful crusade.
The only contemporary records are a few letters
written by Urban in 1095.The five versions
of the speech differ widely from one another
in regard to particulars, but all versions
except that in the Gesta Francorum agree that
Urban talked about the violence of European
society and the necessity of maintaining the
Peace of God; about helping the Greeks, who
had asked for assistance; about the crimes
being committed against Christians in the
east; and about a new kind of war, an armed
pilgrimage, and of rewards in heaven, where
remission of sins was offered to any who might
die in the undertaking.
They do not all specifically mention Jerusalem
as the ultimate goal.
However, it has been argued that Urban's subsequent
preaching reveals that he expected the expedition
to reach Jerusalem all along.
According to one version of the speech, the
enthusiastic crowd responded with cries of
Deus vult!
("God wills it!").
== People's Crusade ==
The great French nobles and their trained
armies of knights, however, were not the first
to undertake the journey towards Jerusalem.
Urban had planned the departure of the first
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,
led by a charismatic priest called Peter the
Hermit.
Peter was the most successful of the preachers
of Urban's message, and developed an almost
hysterical enthusiasm among his followers,
although he was probably not an "official"
preacher sanctioned by Urban at Clermont.A
century later he was already a legendary figure;
William of Tyre believed that it was Peter
who had planted the idea for the crusade in
Urban's mind (which was taken as fact by historians
until the 19th century).
It is commonly believed that Peter's followers
consisted of a massive group of untrained
and illiterate peasants who did not even have
any idea where Jerusalem was, but indeed there
were many knights among the peasants, including
Walter Sans Avoir, who was lieutenant to Peter
and led a separate army.Lacking military discipline,
in what likely seemed to the participants
a strange land (Eastern Europe), Peter's fledgling
army quickly found itself in trouble despite
the fact they were still in Christian territory.
The army led by Walter fought with the Hungarians
over food at Belgrade, but otherwise arrived
in Constantinople unharmed.
Meanwhile, the army led by Peter, which marched
separately from Walter's army, also fought
with the Hungarians, and may have captured
Belgrade.
At Nish the Byzantine governor tried to supply
them, but Peter had little control over his
followers and Byzantine troops were needed
to quell their attacks.
Peter arrived at Constantinople in August,
where his army joined with the one led by
Walter, which had already arrived, as well
as separate bands of crusaders from France,
Germany, and Italy.
Another army of Bohemians and Saxons did not
make it past Hungary before splitting up.This
unruly mob began to attack and pillage outside
the city in search of supplies and food, prompting
Alexios to hurriedly ferry the gathering across
the Bosporus one week later.
After crossing into Asia Minor, the crusaders
split up and began to pillage the countryside,
wandering into Seljuq territory around Nicaea.
The greater experience of the Turks was overwhelming;
and most of this group of the crusaders were
massacred because of it.
Some Italian and German crusaders were defeated
and killed at Xerigordon at the end of August.
Meanwhile, Walter and Peter's followers, who,
although for the most part untrained in battle
but led by about 50 knights, fought a battle
against the Turks at Civetot in October.
The Turkish archers destroyed the crusader
army, and Walter was among the dead.
Peter, who was absent in Constantinople at
the time, later joined the main crusader army,
along with the few survivors of Civetot.At
a local level, the preaching of the First
Crusade ignited the Rhineland massacres perpetrated
against Jews, which some historians have deemed
"the first Holocaust".
At the end of 1095 and beginning of 1096,
months before the departure of the official
crusade in August, there were attacks on Jewish
communities in France and Germany.
In May 1096, Emicho of Flonheim (sometimes
incorrectly known as Emicho of Leiningen)
attacked the Jews at Speyer and Worms.
Other unofficial crusaders from Swabia, led
by Hartmann of Dillingen, along with French,
English, Lotharingian and Flemish volunteers,
led by Drogo of Nesle and William the Carpenter,
as well as many locals, joined Emicho in the
destruction of the Jewish community of Mainz
at the end of May.
In Mainz, one Jewish woman killed her children
rather than see them killed; the chief rabbi,
Kalonymus Ben Meshullam, committed suicide
in anticipation of being killed.
Emicho's company then went on to Cologne,
and others continued on to Trier, Metz, and
other cities.
Peter the Hermit may have been involved in
violence against the Jews, and an army led
by a priest named Folkmar also attacked Jews
further east in Bohemia.
Emicho's army eventually continued into Hungary
but was defeated by the army of Coloman of
Hungary.
His followers dispersed; some eventually joined
the main armies, although Emicho himself went
home.
Many of the attackers seem to have wanted
to force the Jews to convert, although they
were also interested in acquiring money from
them.
Physical violence against Jews was never part
of the church hierarchy's official policy
for crusading, and the Christian bishops,
especially the Archbishop of Cologne, did
their best to protect the Jews.
A decade before, the Bishop of Speyer had
taken the step of providing the Jews of that
city with a walled ghetto to protect them
from Christian violence and given their chief
Rabbis the control of judicial matters in
the quarter.
Nevertheless, some also took money in return
for their protection.
The attacks may have originated in the belief
that Jews and Muslims were equally enemies
of Christ, and enemies were to be fought or
converted to Christianity.
Godfrey of Bouillon was rumoured to have extorted
money from the Jews of Cologne and Mainz,
and many of the Crusaders wondered why they
should travel thousands of miles to fight
non-believers when there were already non-believers
closer to home.
The attacks on the Jews were witnessed by
Ekkehard of Aura and Albert of Aix; among
the Jewish communities, the main contemporary
witnesses were the Mainz Anonymous, Eliezer
ben Nathan, and Solomon bar Simson.
== Princes' Crusade ==
The four main crusader armies left Europe
around the appointed time in August 1096.
They took different paths to Constantinople
and gathered outside its city walls between
November 1096 and April 1097; Hugh of Vermandois
arrived first, followed by Godfrey, Raymond,
and Bohemond.
This time, Emperor Alexios was more prepared
for the crusaders; there were fewer incidents
of violence along the way.
=== Recruitment ===
Urban's speech had been well-planned: he had
discussed the crusade with Adhemar of Le Puy
and Raymond IV, Count 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".
During 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.
However, it is clear that the response to
the speech was much greater than even the
Pope, let alone Alexios, expected.
On his tour of France, 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,
in an outpouring of a new emotional and personal
piety that was not easily harnessed by the
ecclesiastical and lay aristocracy.
Typically, preaching would conclude with every
volunteer taking a vow to complete a pilgrimage
to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; they
were also given a cross, usually sewn onto
their clothes.As Thomas Asbridge wrote, "Just
as we can do nothing more than estimate the
number of thousands who responded to the crusading
ideal, so too, with the surviving evidence,
we can gain only a limited insight into their
motivation and intent."
Previous generations of scholars argued that
the crusaders were motivated by greed, hoping
to find a better life away from the famines
and warfare occurring in France, but as Asbridge
notes, "This image is ... profoundly misleading."
He argues that greed was unlikely to have
been a major factor because of the extremely
high cost of travelling so far from home,
and because almost all of the crusaders eventually
returned home after completing their pilgrimage
rather than trying to carve out possessions
for themselves in the Holy Land.
It is difficult or impossible to assess the
motives of the thousands of poor for whom
there is no historical record, or even those
of important knights, whose stories were usually
retold by monks or clerics.
As the secular medieval world was so deeply
ingrained with the spiritual world of the
church, it is quite likely that personal piety
was a major factor for many crusaders.Despite
this popular enthusiasm, however, Urban ensured
that there would be an army of knights, drawn
from the French aristocracy.
Aside from Adhemar and Raymond, other leaders
he recruited throughout 1096 included Bohemond
of Taranto, a southern Italian ally of the
reform popes; Bohemond's nephew Tancred; Godfrey
of Bouillon, who had previously been an anti-reform
ally of the Holy Roman Emperor; his brother
Baldwin of Boulogne; Hugh I, Count of Vermandois,
brother of the excommunicated Philip I of
France; Robert Curthose, brother of William
II of England; and his relatives Stephen II,
Count of Blois and Robert II, Count of Flanders.
The crusaders represented northern and southern
France, Flanders, Germany, and southern Italy,
and so were divided into four separate armies
that were not always cooperative, though they
were held together by their common ultimate
goal.The motives of the nobility are somewhat
clearer than those of the peasants; greed
was apparently not a major factor.
Runciman (1951) assumed that only younger
members of a family went on crusade, looking
for wealth and adventure elsewhere, as they
had no prospects for advancement at home.
Riley-Smith (1998) has shown that this was
not always the case.
The crusade was led by some of the most powerful
nobles of France, who left everything behind,
and it was often the case that entire families
went on crusade at their own great expense.
For example, Robert of Normandy loaned the
Duchy of Normandy to his brother William II
of England, and Godfrey sold or mortgaged
his property to the church.
According to Tancred's biographer, he was
worried about the sinful nature of knightly
warfare, and was excited to find a holy outlet
for violence.
Tancred and Bohemond, as well as Godfrey,
Baldwin, and their older brother Eustace III,
Count of Boulogne, are examples of families
who crusaded together.
Riley-Smith argues that the enthusiasm for
the crusade was perhaps based on family relations,
as most of the French crusaders were distant
relatives.
Nevertheless, in at least some cases, personal
advancement played a role in Crusaders' motives.
For instance, Bohemond was motivated by the
desire to carve himself out a territory in
the east, and had previously campaigned against
the Byzantines to try to achieve this.
The Crusade gave him a further opportunity,
which he took after the Siege of Antioch,
taking possession of the city and establishing
the Principality of Antioch.The size of the
entire crusader army is difficult to estimate;
various numbers were given by the eyewitnesses,
and equally various estimates have been offered
by modern historians.
Crusader military historian David Nicolle
considers the armies to have consisted of
about 30,000–35,000 crusaders, including
5,000 cavalry.
Raymond had the largest contingent of about
8,500 infantry and 1,200 cavalry.The princes
arrived in Constantinople with little food
and expected provisions and help from Alexios.
Alexios was understandably suspicious after
his experiences with the People's Crusade,
and also because the knights included his
old Norman enemy, Bohemond, who had invaded
Byzantine territory on numerous occasions
with his father, Robert Guiscard, and may
have even attempted to organize an attack
on Constantinople while encamped outside the
city.The crusaders may have expected Alexios
to become their leader, but he had no interest
in joining them, and was mainly concerned
with transporting them into Asia Minor as
quickly as possible.
In return for food and supplies, Alexios requested
the leaders to swear fealty to him and promise
to return to the Byzantine Empire any land
recovered from the Turks.
Godfrey was the first to take the oath, and
almost all the other leaders followed him,
although they did so only after warfare had
almost broken out in the city between the
citizens and the crusaders, who were eager
to pillage for supplies.
Raymond alone avoided swearing the oath, instead
pledging that he would simply cause no harm
to the Empire.
Before ensuring that the various armies were
shuttled across the Bosporus, Alexios advised
the leaders on how best to deal with the Seljuq
armies that they would soon encounter.
=== Siege of Nicaea ===
The Crusader armies crossed over into Asia
Minor during the first half of 1097, where
they were joined by Peter the Hermit and the
remainder of his little army.
In addition, Alexios also sent two of his
own generals, Manuel Boutoumites and Tatikios,
to assist the crusaders.
The first objective of their campaign was
Nicaea, previously a city under Byzantine
rule, but which had become the capital of
the Seljuq Sultanate of Rum under Kilij Arslan
I. Arslan was away campaigning against the
Danishmends in central Anatolia at the time,
and had left behind his treasury and his family,
underestimating the strength of these new
crusaders.Subsequently, upon the Crusaders'
arrival, the city was subjected to a lengthy
siege, and when Arslan had word of it he rushed
back to Nicaea and attacked the crusader army
on 16 May.
He was driven back by the unexpectedly large
crusader force, with heavy losses being suffered
on both sides in the ensuing battle.
The siege continued, but the crusaders had
little success as they found they could not
blockade the lake, which the city was situated
on, and from which it could be provisioned.
To break the city, Alexios sent the Crusaders'
ships rolled over land on logs, and at the
sight of them the Turkish garrison finally
surrendered on 18 June.
The city was handed over to the Byzantine
troops, which has often been depicted as a
source of conflict between the Empire and
the crusaders; Byzantine standards flew from
the walls while the crusaders were forbidden
from looting the city or even entering it
except in small escorted bands.
However, this policy was in accordance with
the previous oaths made to Alexios, and the
emperor ensured that the crusaders were well-paid
for their efforts.
As Thomas Asbridge writes, "the fall of Nicaea
was a product of the successful policy of
close co-operation between the crusaders and
Byzantium."
After handing custody of Nicaea to the Byzantines,
the crusaders resumed their march to Jerusalem.
Stephen of Blois, in a letter to his wife
Adela of Blois wrote that he believed the
journey would take five weeks; in reality,
it took two years.
=== Battle of Dorylaeum ===
At the end of June, the crusaders marched
on through Anatolia.
They were accompanied by some Byzantine troops
under Tatikios, and still harboured the hope
that Alexios would send a full Byzantine army
after them.
They also divided the army into two more-easily
managed groups—one contingent led by the
Normans, the other by the French.
The two groups intended to meet again at Dorylaeum,
but on 1 July the Normans, who had marched
ahead of the French, were attacked by Kilij
Arslan.
Arslan had gathered a much larger army than
he previously had after his defeat at Nicaea,
and now surrounded the Normans with his fast-moving
mounted archers.
The Normans "deployed in a tight-knit defensive
formation", surrounding all their equipment
and the non-combatants who had followed them
along the journey, and sent for help from
the other group.
When the French arrived, Godfrey broke through
the Turkish lines and the legate Adhemar outflanked
the Turks from the rear; thus the Turks, who
had expected to destroy the Normans and did
not anticipate the quick arrival of the French,
fled rather than face the combined crusader
army.The crusaders' march through Anatolia
was thereafter unopposed, but the journey
was unpleasant, as Arslan had burned and destroyed
everything he left behind in his army's flight.
It was the middle of summer, and the crusaders
had very little food and water; many men and
horses died.
Fellow Christians sometimes gave them gifts
of food and money, but more often than not,
the crusaders simply 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 on their
own, as Adhemar was always recognized as the
spiritual leader.
After passing through the Cilician Gates,
Baldwin of Boulogne set off on his own towards
the Armenian lands around the Euphrates; his
wife, his only claim to European lands and
wealth, had died after the battle, giving
Baldwin no incentive to return to Europe.
Thus, he resolved to seize a fiefdom for himself
in the Holy Land.
Early in 1098, he was adopted as heir by Thoros
of Edessa, a ruler who was disliked by his
Armenian subjects for his Greek Orthodox religion.
Thoros was later killed, during an uprising
that Baldwin may have instigated.
Then, in March 1098, Baldwin became the new
ruler, thus creating the County of Edessa,
the first of the crusader states.
=== Siege of Antioch ===
The crusader army, meanwhile, marched on to
Antioch, which lay about halfway between Constantinople
and Jerusalem.
Described by Stephen of Blois as "a city great
beyond belief, very strong and unassailable",
the idea of taking the city by assault was
a discouraging one to the crusaders.
Hoping rather to force a capitulation, or
find a traitor inside the city—a tactic
that had previously seen Antioch change to
the control of the Byzantines and then the
Seljuq Turks—the crusader army set Antioch
to siege on 20 October 1097.
During the almost eight months of the siege,
they were forced to defeat two large relief
armies under the leadership of Duqaq and Fakhr
al-Mulk Radwan.
Antioch was so large that the crusaders did
not have enough troops to fully surround it,
and as a result it was able to stay partially
supplied.
On 4 March 1098, relief arrived in the form
of a Crusader fleet, the "Saxon Crusade",
bringing much needed supplies from the west.
In May 1098, Kerbogha of Mosul approached
Antioch to relieve the siege.
Bohemond bribed an Armenian guard named Firouz
to surrender his tower, and in June the crusaders
entered the city and killed most of the inhabitants.
However, only a few days later the Muslims
arrived, laying siege to the former besiegers.
According to Raymond D'Aguilers, it was at
this point that a monk named 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.
On 28 June 1098, the crusaders defeated Kerbogha
in a pitched battle outside the city, a victory
caused by Kerbogha's inability to organize
the different factions in his army.
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 were he
able to defeat the Crusaders.
According to Christian eyewitnesses, an army
of Christian saints came to the aid of the
crusaders during the battle and crippled Kerbogha's
army.
Stephen of Blois, a Crusade leader, was in
Alexandretta when he learned of the situation
in Antioch.
It seemed like their situation was hopeless
so he left the Middle East, warning Alexios
and his army on his way back to France.
Because of what looked like a massive betrayal,
the leaders at Antioch, most notably Bohemond,
argued that Alexios had deserted the Crusade
and thus invalidated all of their oaths to
him.
While Bohemond asserted his claim to Antioch,
not everyone agreed (most notably Raymond
of Toulouse), so the crusade was delayed for
the rest of the year while the nobles argued
amongst themselves.
When discussing this period, a common historiographical
viewpoint advanced by some scholars is that
the Franks of northern France, the Provençals
of southern France, and the Normans of southern
Italy considered themselves separate "nations",
creating turmoil as each tried to increase
its individual status.
Others argue that while this may have had
something to do with the disputes, personal
ambition among the Crusader leaders might
just be as easily blamed.Meanwhile, a plague
broke out, killing many among the army, including
the legate Adhemar, who died on 1 August.
There were now even fewer horses than before,
and worse, the Muslim peasants in the area
refused to supply the crusaders with food.
Thus, in December, after the Arab town of
Ma'arrat al-Numan was captured following a
siege, history describes the first occurrence
of cannibalism among the crusaders.
Radulph of Caen wrote, "In Ma'arrat our troops
boiled pagan adults in cooking pots; they
impaled children on spits and devoured them
grilled."
At the same time, the minor knights and soldiers
had become increasingly restless and threatened
to continue to Jerusalem without their squabbling
leaders.
Finally, at the beginning of 1099, the march
restarted, leaving Bohemond behind as the
first Prince of Antioch.
=== Continued march to Jerusalem ===
Proceeding down the Mediterranean coast, the
crusaders encountered little resistance, as
local rulers preferred to make peace with
them and furnish them with supplies rather
than fight, with a notable exception of the
abandoned siege of Arqa.Iftikhar ad-Daula,
the Fatimid governor of Jerusalem, was aware
of the arrival of the Crusaders.
He expelled all of Jerusalem's Christian inhabitants,
to avoid the possibility of the city falling
due to treason from the inside, and he poisoned
most of the wells in the area.
The crusaders reached Jerusalem, which had
been recaptured from the Seljuqs by the Fatimids
only the year before, on 7 June.
Many Crusaders wept upon seeing the city they
had journeyed so long to reach.
=== Siege of Jerusalem ===
Crusaders' arrival at Jerusalem revealed an
arid countryside, lacking in water or food
supplies.
Here there was no prospect of relief, even
as they feared an imminent attack by the local
Fatimid rulers.
There was no hope of trying to blockade the
city as they had at Antioch; the crusaders
had insufficient troops, supplies, and time.
Rather, they resolved to take the city by
assault.
They might have been left with little choice,
as by the time the Crusader army reached Jerusalem,
it has been estimated that only about 12,000
men including 1,500 cavalry remained.
These contingents, composed of men with differing
origins and varying allegiances, were also
approaching another low ebb in their camaraderie;
e.g., while Godfrey and Tancred made camp
to the north of the city, Raymond made his
to the south.
In addition, the Provençal contingent did
not take part in the initial assault on 13
June.
This first assault was perhaps more speculative
than determined, and after scaling the outer
wall the Crusaders were repulsed from the
inner one.After the failure of the initial
assault, a meeting between the various leaders
was organized in which it was agreed upon
that a more concerted attack would be required
in the future.
On 17 June, a party of Genoese mariners under
Guglielmo Embriaco arrived at Jaffa, and provided
the Crusaders with skilled engineers, and
perhaps more critically, supplies of timber
(stripped from the ships) to build siege engines.
The Crusaders' morale was raised when a priest,
Peter Desiderius, claimed to have had a divine
vision, of Bishop Adhemar, instructing them
to fast and then march in a barefoot procession
around the city walls, after which the city
would fall, following the Biblical story of
Joshua at the siege of Jericho.
After a three-day fast, on 8 July the crusaders
performed the procession as they had been
instructed by Desiderius, ending on the Mount
of Olives where Peter the Hermit preached
to them, and shortly afterward the various
bickering factions arrived at a public rapprochement.
News arrived shortly after that a Fatimid
relief army had set off from Egypt, giving
the Crusaders a very strong incentive to make
another assault on the city.The final assault
on Jerusalem began on 13 July; Raymond's troops
attacked the south gate while the other contingents
attacked the northern wall.
Initially the Provençals at the southern
gate made little headway, but the contingents
at the northern wall fared better, with a
slow but steady attrition of the defence.
On 15 July, a final push was launched at both
ends of the city, and eventually the inner
rampart of the northern wall was captured.
In the ensuing panic, the defenders abandoned
the walls of the city at both ends, allowing
the Crusaders to finally enter.
The massacre that followed the capture of
Jerusalem has attained particular notoriety,
as a "juxtaposition of extreme violence and
anguished faith".
The eyewitness accounts from the crusaders
themselves leave little doubt that there was
great slaughter in the aftermath of the siege.
Nevertheless, some historians propose that
the scale of the massacre has been exaggerated
in later medieval sources.After the successful
assault on the northern wall, the defenders
fled to the Temple Mount, pursued by Tancred
and his men.
Arriving before the defenders could secure
the area, Tancred's men assaulted the precinct,
butchering many of the defenders, with the
remainder taking refuge in the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Tancred then called a halt to the slaughter,
offering those in the mosque his protection.
When the defenders on the southern wall heard
of the fall of the northern wall, they fled
to the citadel, allowing Raymond and the Provençals
to enter the city.
Iftikhar al-Dawla, the commander of the garrison,
struck a deal with Raymond, surrendering the
citadel in return for being granted safe passage
to Ascalon.The slaughter continued for the
rest of the day; Muslims were indiscriminately
killed, and Jews who had taken refuge in their
synagogue died when it was burnt down by the
Crusaders.
The following day, Tancred's prisoners in
the mosque were slaughtered.
Nevertheless, it is clear that some Muslims
and Jews of the city survived the massacre,
either escaping or being taken prisoner to
be ransomed.
The Eastern Christian population of the city
had been expelled before the siege by the
governor, and thus escaped the massacre.
=== Establishment of the Kingdom of Jerusalem
===
On 22 July, a council was held in the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre to establish a king
for the newly created Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Raymond of Toulouse at first refused to become
king, 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 controversial.
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 that 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 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".
Robert the Monk is the only contemporary chronicler
of the crusade to report that Godfrey took
the title "king".
=== Battle of Ascalon ===
The crusaders had attempted to negotiate with
the Fatimids during their march to Jerusalem,
but to no avail.
After the crusaders captured Jerusalem from
the Fatimids, they learned of a Fatimid army
about to attack them.
On 10 August Godfrey of Bouillon led the remaining
troops from Jerusalem to Ascalon, a day's
march away.The Fatimids were estimated to
have as many as 50,000 troops (other sources
estimate about 20,000–30,000) entering the
battle.
Their troops consisted of Seljuq Turks, Arabs,
Persians, Kurds, and Ethiopians, led by vizier
al-Afdal Shahanshah.
Opposing them were the crusaders, whose numbers,
estimated by Raymond of Aguilers, were around
1,200 knights and 9,000 infantry.
On 12 August, crusader scouts discovered the
location of the Fatimid camp, which the crusaders
immediately marched towards.
According to most crusader and Muslim accounts,
the Fatimids were caught unaware.
Because of a somewhat ill-prepared Fatimid
army, the battle was fairly short, although
it still took some time to resolve, according
to Albert of Aix. al-Afdal Shahanshah and
his army retreated into the heavily guarded
and fortified city of Ascalon.
The next day the crusaders learned that al-Afdal
Shahanshah had retreated back to Egypt via
boat, so they plundered what remained of the
Fatimid camp.
After returning to Jerusalem most of the crusaders
returned to their homes in Europe.
== Aftermath and legacy ==
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).
However, there were many who had gone home
before reaching Jerusalem, and many who had
never left Europe at all.
When the success of the crusade became known,
these people were mocked and scorned by their
families and threatened with excommunication
by the Pope.
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.
Godfrey himself only ruled for one year, dying
in July 1100.
He was succeeded by his brother, Baldwin of
Edessa, the first person to take the title
King of Jerusalem.
Among the crusaders in the Crusade of 1101
were Stephen II, Count 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 Seljuqs, but the survivors helped
to reinforce the kingdom upon their arrival
in Jerusalem.
In the following years, assistance was also
provided by Italian merchants who established
themselves in Syrian ports, and from the religious
and military orders of the Knights Templar
and the Knights Hospitaller, which were created
during the reign of Baldwin I.
Back at home in Western Europe, those who
had survived to reach Jerusalem were treated
as heroes.
Robert of Flanders was nicknamed "Hierosolymitanus"
thanks to his exploits.
The life of Godfrey of Bouillon became legendary
even within a few years of his death.
In some cases, the political situation at
home was greatly affected by crusader absences.
For instance, while Robert Curthose was away
on crusade the throne of England had passed
to his brother Henry I of England instead,
and their resultant conflict led to the Battle
of Tinchebray in 1106.Meanwhile, the establishment
of the crusader states in the east helped
ease Seljuq 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.
In the wake of the death of Malik Shah I in
1092, political instability and the division
of the Great Seljuq Empire prevented a coherent
defence against the Latin states.
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.The success of the crusade inspired
the literary imagination of poets in France,
who, in the 12th century, began to compose
various chansons de geste celebrating the
exploits of Godfrey of Bouillon and other
crusaders.
Some of these, such as the Chanson d'Antioche,
are semi-historical, while others are completely
fanciful, describing battles with a dragon
or connecting Godfrey's ancestors to the legend
of the Knight of the Swan.
Together, the chansons are known as the crusade
cycle.The First Crusade was also an inspiration
to artists in later centuries.
In 1580, Torquato Tasso wrote Jerusalem Delivered,
a largely fictionalized epic poem about the
capture of Jerusalem.
George Frideric Handel composed music based
on Tasso's poem in his opera Rinaldo.
The 19th-century poet Tommaso Grossi also
wrote an epic poem, which was the basis of
Giuseppe Verdi's opera I Lombardi alla prima
crociata.
== Historiographical debate ==
William of Tyre began his chronicle with the
fall of Jerusalem to Umar.
Although the original Islamic conquest of
the Levant had taken place more than four
centuries before the First Crusade, its immediate
cause was the occupation of Byzantine Anatolia
by the Seljuqs during the 1070s to 1080s.
Following the defeat at Manzikert in 1071,
Muslims had taken half of the Byzantine Empire's
territory, and such strategically and religiously
important cities as Antioch and Nicaea had
only fallen to Muslims in the decade before
the Council of Piacenza.
Moreover, the harrowing accounts of the atrocities
committed by the invaders against the Anatolian
population recorded by Eastern Christian chroniclers
such as John Skylitzes, Michael Attaleiates,
Matthew of Edessa, Michael the Syrian and
others (summarized Vryonis 1971) align with
the primary motivation of relieving the acute
distress suffered by the Byzantine empire.
In addition, the early 11th century saw a
worsening of Muslim-Christian relations in
the Levant; for example, in 1009 the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre had been destroyed by
the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah;
Pope Sergius IV had supposedly already called
for a military expedition in response to this.
Even more recently, in the Great German Pilgrimage
of 1064–1065, pilgrims had continued to
be harassed.
Therefore, the liberation of Jerusalem and
the Holy Sepulchre is presented as the main
motivation of the crusaders by contemporary
historiographers more than providing military
aid to the Byzantin emperor against the Seljuq
onslaught.This situation of multiple possible
causes or motivations for the crusades has
led to extended debates in modern historiography.
A theory proposed by Carl Erdmann (1935),
known as the "Erdmann thesis", links the First
Crusade l to the Gregorian Reform, the series
of reforms initiated by Pope Gregory VII during
c. 1050–80.
These reforms re-established the Western Church,
which had been much weakened during the 10th
century, as a relevant power able to inspire
and co-ordinate the crusades.
The "Erdmann thesis" proposes that the strengthened
Western Church, combined with the weakened
Byzantine Empire, permitted a projection of
power from west to east, with the actual conquest
of Jerusalem figuring at best as a secondary,
popular goal.While it is clear that the motivations
for and causes of the First Crusade are to
be sought both in the East and in the West.
There has still been much debate among historiographers
of the later 20th century on how the relative
impact of such causes should be weighed.
The very influential Steven Runciman (1951)
significantly shaped the popular perception
of the crusades in the later 20th century.
Runciman represents the view that the motivation
for the crusades was primarily that of a "barbarian
invasion" motivated by greed and the desire
for spoils and adventure among the Frankish
nobles.
Runciman argued that the crusade was motivated
by 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.
and goes as far as suggesting that there wasn't
any immediate threat from the Islamic world,
arguing that "in the middle of the 11th century
the lot of the Christians in Palestine had
seldom been so pleasant".
In a similar vein, Thomas Asbridge (2004)
argues that the First Crusade was a strategic
attempt to expand the power of the Western
Church, and reunite the churches of Rome and
Constantinople, which had been in schism since
1054.
According to this view, the Islamic conquests
were of little importance in this, as "Islam
and Christendom had coexisted for centuries
in relative equanimity".On the other hand,
historians of the second half of the 20th
century, such as Speros Vryonis (1971), have
emphasized the importance of the military
threat of Islamic expansion and the atrocities
and attacks against Christians in Anatolia
and the Levant.
Similarly, Moshe Gil (1997) argues against
Runciman on the basis of contemporary Jewish
Cairo Geniza documents, as well as later Muslim
accounts, concluding that the Seljuq invasion
of Anatolia and the occupation of Palestine
(c. 1073–1098) was a period of "slaughter
and vandalism, of economic hardship, and the
uprooting of populations".
Indeed, drawing upon earlier writers such
as Ignatius of Melitene, Michael the Syrian
had recorded that the Seljuqs subjected Coele-Syria
and the Palestinian coast to "cruel destruction
and pillage".Thomas F. Madden (2005) represents
a view almost diametrically opposed to that
of Asbridge (2004); while the crusade was
certainly linked to church reform and attempts
to assert papal authority, he argues that
it was most importantly a pious struggle to
liberate fellow Christians, who, Madden claims,
"had suffered mightily at the hands of the
Turks".
This argument distinguishes the relatively
recent violence and warfare that followed
the conquests of the Turks from the general
advance of Islam in the early medieval period,
the significance of which had been dismissed
by Runciman and Asbridge.Christopher Tyerman
(2006) attempted a resolution by arguing for
compound causes, presenting the First Crusade
as developing out of the Western church reform
and theories of holy war as much as being
a response to conflicts with the Islamic world
throughout Europe and the Middle East.In the
view of Jonathan Riley-Smith (2005), additional
contingencies such as poor harvests, overpopulation,
and a pre-existing movement towards colonizing
the frontier areas of Europe have also contributed
to the crusade; however, he also takes care
to say that "most commentators then and a
minority of historians now have maintained
that the chief motivation was a genuine idealism".Peter
Frankopan (2012) has argued that the First
Crusade has been fundamentally distorted by
the attention paid by historians to western
(Latin) sources, rather than Greek, Syriac,
Armenian, Arabic and Hebrew material from
the late 11th and 12th centuries.
The expedition to Jerusalem, he argues, was
conceived of not by the Pope but by the Emperor
Alexios I Komnenos, in response to a dramatic
deterioration of Byzantium's position in Asia
Minor and also as a result of a state of near
anarchy at the imperial court where plans
to depose Alexios or even murder him were
an open secret by 1094.
The appeal to Pope Urban II was a desperate
move to shore up Emperor and Empire.
Frankopan
further argues that the primary military targets
of the First Crusade in Asia Minor — Nicaea
and Antioch — required large numbers of
soldiers with experience in siege warfare,
precisely the type of force recruited by Urban
in France in his call to arms of 1095/6.
== See also ==
Christian Forces of the First Crusades
The Crusader Army of Godfrey of Bouillon
The Crusader Army of Hugh the Great
The Crusader Army of Robert Curthose
Second Crusade
Battle of Civetot
== Notes ==
== 
References ==
== 
Sources ==
=== 
Primary sources ===
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Primary sources online ====
=== 
Secondary sources ===
=== 
Bibliographies ===
