The Siege of Jerusalem: Crusade and Conquest in 1099

by Conor Kostick

  Within the chaotic swirling motion of the crowds and the fl eeing citizens several distinct currents could be discerned. Th

  e more military-minded among

  the defenders of the city strove to make their way to the ‘Sanctuary of David’

  and although Ift ikhār dared not resume fi ghting in order to assist them, in time a sizeable knot of Fatimid archers and foot soldiers organized themselves in the streets beside the west wall. Th

  ey were more than capable of fending off the

  rioting crowds and even though there was no doubt about the fi nal outcome, they put up a very spirited resistance against the Provençal knights who eventually formed up to attack them. Th

  ese Muslim warriors fought to the very last

  with no thought of surrender; they fully understood there was no hope of survival and preferred to die with weapon in hand. Th

  e fact that the crusaders

  controlled all the nearby walls and towers meant that this stubborn resistance

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  was eroded away by the rocks and arrows of the Christian soldiers without their being able to infl ict many casualties on the attackers, who nevertheless were impressed and sobered by the defi ance they encountered long aft er the city seemed to have been won.

  On the opposite side of Jerusalem another pattern was discernable in the movement of those running through the streets. Many of the Jewish citizens hurried to the synagogue in the hope it would be respected as a place of sanctuary. A faint hope. Gathered together in fear and prayer were elderly men and women, mothers with babies and small children. Once the north-eastern gate of the city had been barged open the crowd of crusaders who had rushed in to the Jewish quarter had enveloped the synagogue, cutting it off from those who were arriving too late to gain entry and were slaughtered in the streets.

  Th

  e doors of the synagogue were closed and barricaded, but ominously the roars outside and thuds against the doors did not abate. Soon tendrils of smoke crept in under the door and a great heat could be felt from the entrance. Th e

  Christians had piled up wood against the building and set fi re to it. Inside, neighbours and friends looked at one another with horror. Th

  ey were going to

  be burnt, destroyed along with their place of worship. 20

  Not all the Christian troops were engaged in acts of destruction or participants in the inchoate scramble for plunder. Tancred and Gaston of Béarne, along with their 70 knights, had long planned for this moment. During the siege Tancred had cultivated the sympathy of those Christians who had been expelled from Jerusalem by Ift ikhār, they had provided him with valuable information about the state of aff airs within the city and – even more valuable – introduced him to two Muslim citizens anxious to ingratiate themselves with the Christian prince for a reward and the safety of their lives. Th

  ese men had told Tancred of

  the existence of Jerusalem’s greatest treasure: the silver and gold ornamentation of the Dome of the Rock.

  Letting only Gaston in on his scheme, as soon as Tancred saw the entry to Jerusalem had been forced he rushed to the siege tower and he and his men forced their way through the press, not to join with those quelling the last pockets of resistance or butchering civilians, but to fi nd this treasure. Th ey ran,

  scattering the fl eeing crowds around them, straight for the Haram es-Sharif complex, the large walled off area that contained the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsā mosque, their guides showing them the quickest route.

  A double iron gate at the entrance to the Haram, through which refugees were streaming, was hastily closed and locked in the face of the crusaders. But it off ered no great resistance to determined blows by Tancred and Gaston’s knights, and soon they were through. Th

  e vast crowd in the yard fl ed to the

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  mosque and the Dome, those slow to do so being cut down as they ran.

  Inside the Dome of the Rock was a sight to satisfy the most avaricious of hearts.

  Hanging from the roof by silver chains was a vessel made of gold, weighing nearly 50 kilograms. Placed around the interior were 40 silver lamps, each weighing around 10 kilograms. Even better, the interior wall glittered with a band of silver that made its way around the entire circuit. Th

  is band was about

  45 centimeters wide and as thick as a thumb. When torn from the walls it would amount to a vast weight of silver bullion: over 25,000 kilograms. Decorating the rest of the walls were beautifully ornate designs studded with precious stones and jewels. Plus there were innumerable pieces of costly fabric. It would take six camels to carry the treasure back to the camp, where Tancred – wisely

  – gave a portion to his nominal overlord, Duke Godfrey and also made a distribution of alms for the poor. Even so, this seizure of such enormous wealth by so few was to lead to a major row among the princes. 21

  Tancred and Gaston were rich, incredibly so. As their men happily obeyed the order to strip the building, the two princes were calculating what this fortune meant in terms of paying off their debts to their knights, re-equipping everyone with new horses, arms and armour and obtaining new followers.

  Wealth for a medieval Christian prince was hardly ever considered an end in itself, a means for personal ease, rather it was a mechanism through which to raise armies. Tancred’s piratical eye was gazing on power, not luxury.

  While Count Raymond secured the citadel of Jerusalem and Tancred the most concentrated treasure of the city, Godfrey too had a goal to fulfi l once there was no doubt that the Christian army had control of Jerusalem. Although the single largest body of troops was that of the Provençal army, the sum total of all other contingents was greater still. Th

  e question of who would be ruler in

  the Holy City was therefore wide open. By his actions throughout the crusade Godfrey had won the respect of the neutrals. Even over the course of the last two days there had been a clear diff erence in Godfrey’s willingness to brave the bombardment of the siege tower in order to lead from the front and Count Raymond’s more distant generalship.

  It was almost certain that Robert of Normandy, Robert of Flanders and the unaligned French lords would back Godfrey for the rule of Jerusalem. But what of the non-military crusaders? Th

  e clergy and the huge crowds of non-

  combatants were less impressed by chivalric deeds than devout ones and a greater proportion of them had gathered on the southern side of the city than the north. Given that no one could direct the rampaging Christian crowds, Godfrey put away his sword once the gates of Jerusalem were open and the plundering had begun in earnest.

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  Keeping only a small bodyguard of his seneschal (steward of his household), Baldric; his chamberlain, Stabelo; and Adelolf, a third knight from his closest followers, Godfrey took off his hauberk and boots. Th

  e four knights then left

  the city through the broken gate facing the Mount of Olives and undertook their own procession, with Godfrey humble and barefoot, giving thanks to God. Having completed the circuit of the city and taken note of the Provençal banners over the Tower of David, they made their way to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Godfrey spent the aft ernoon in tears, off ering prayers and praising God for allowing him to fulfi l his greatest desire, the sight of the Holy Places. It was a most astute performance and perhaps as he prayed Godfrey’s heart really was fi lled with a spirit of gratitude to his God. Aft er all, he had survived a very long and hazardous journey to be at this famous place.

  In any case, the pious and self-abnegating gesture did him no harm in an age where to lust aft er power was considered a sin.

  To the Christians now beginning to gather at the church and those Christian citizens of Jerusalem who had wisely taken refuge in the one building that was guar
anteed to be undisturbed by the violent scenes outside, Stabelo explained that the behaviour of the Duke demonstrated the realization of prophecy that had come to the Chamberlain in a dream. Stabelo had seen a golden ladder stretching all the way from heaven to earth, which Duke Godfrey was attempting to climb in the company of a steward, Rothard, who carried a lamp in his hand. But half way up the ladder the lamp was extinguished and the ladder became worn away, obliging Rothard to return to the ground, too afraid to continue. Th

  ere Stabelo rekindled the lamp and confi dently pushed past the

  unworthy steward to climb with the Duke all the way to the court of heaven, where a table of all sorts of sweet delicious foods awaited them. Th e Duke and

  everyone else worthy of being chosen reclined at the table, enjoying the feast at their leisure. 22

  Outside of the oasis of relative calm that was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the city was in turmoil. While the rampaging Christian army was hacking apart Muslim and Jewish citizens all over the city, it was the Haram complex that became the focus of a last stand by the defenders of Jerusalem.

  Despite the fact that Tancred’s men had earlier broken down the gates, hundreds of refugees streamed inside the walls of the holy site in the hope of fi nding sanctuary, invading Christians hard on their heels.

  Th

  ose who ran in to the Dome of the Rock found the Normans desecrating the walls, prising away silver and jewels, but they also found respite from the mob. Human wealth too was a factor in Tancred’s calculations. Provided they surrendered themselves for ransom, Muslims were allowed up to the roof where

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  300 of them gathered on the ledge that surrounded the great dome. Th ere they

  held Tancred and Gaston’s banners as a sign that they were prisoners of these knights. By contrast, those who turned left , northwards, aft er entering the Haram found only death. Some were hunted down inside the complex; others ran through the exit in the northern wall that led down some steep stairs to a great cistern. Th

  ere the fi rst to gather were pushed into the water as more and

  more panicked citizens ran down in the hope of escape. Th

  e marble pillars of

  the cistern supported an arched roof that was at ground level. Th ere were many

  openings in this roof and now as those below were cut down or drowned in the cistern, others who had attempted to run across the roof but had fallen through one of the openings fell on top of them. Some Christian pursuers were so eager that they too could not avoid plunging down the shaft s and, if they did not break their necks or tear their guts open on masonry, they too drowned in the bloody lake.23

  It was at the al-Aqsā mosque, to the south of the Haram site, that the city’s Muslim civilians rallied themselves and led counter-attacks, taking advantage of the fact that there was almost no leadership at all among the nearest crusaders.

  By late aft ernoon a crowd of Muslim fi ghters had gathered what weapons they could and had formed improvised militia that struck back with some success.

  Th

  e doors of the mosque had been shattered by the early Christians arrivals, who were now caught searching inside the building for treasure by the reorganized Muslim crowd. Th

  e eagerness of these crusaders for booty became their

  doom as they were hunted down and killed. In turn the crusaders in the vicinity rallied and abandoning the search for plunder, fought back so savagely that the militia retreated. But they were not broken and as word of their resistance spread, more citizens and remnants of the Fatimid garrison joined with them.

  Th

  e balance of the battle around the mosque once more moved in favour of the defenders of Jerusalem and the Christians withdrew.

  Th

  e confl ict at the mosque raged back and forth as the crowds rushed one another in a massive disorganized melee, both sides lacking direction and commanders. In time, however, a particular group of Christian knights, with a great deal of practice in the sacking of towns and killing of civilians arrived at the scene. Th

  ese warriors were uninterested in the scramble for housing for they intended to return to their castles and manors as soon as they could: all that mattered to them was the fame they were acquiring as the conquerors of Jerusalem.

  Th

  ese knights were the unaligned French champions formerly grouped around Hugh the Great, a band that included Drogo of Nesle, Everard of Le Puiset, Th

  omas of Marle and their wounded hero Raimbold Crotton. Now in their element, staying together as a cohesive party, they were systematically butchering

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  the entire non-Christian population of the city. It was these knights and, in particular, Everard of Le Puiset who dealt with the increasingly dangerous counter-attack. Covered in blood, Everard strode through the disputed terrain, protected from arrows by his long chainmail hauberk and a great shield.

  When he encountered hundreds of fi ghters from the militia bearing down upon him with their spears raised, Everard did not fl inch but called out to his companions not to run. Th

  ey had faced more dangerous blows in tournaments;

  indeed, even boys and girls could stand against this crowd who were no more dangerous than a fl ock of sheep. Everard’s shouts served their purpose, encouraging the Christian forces by drawing their attention to the lack of military training of the opposing crowd and reminding the knights that although they were considerably outnumbered, it would be shameful for experienced warriors to give ground to an improvised army consisting mostly of civilians.

  Taking the off ensive the French knights ran into the cluster of spears and clubs. Surprised and hindered by their own press of numbers, the citizens of Jerusalem fought poorly. While the blows of the Muslim weapons were impeded and those that landed were rarely lethal – the knights being protected by iron hauberks – the sharp blades of the Christian soldiers were deadly. Hacking all about them, the swords of the knights cut through ribs and necks, stabbed through groins, backs and stomachs, forcing a path right in among the crowd.

  Despite their determination to sell their lives dearly, the Muslim militia could not hold together in the face of such a tightly organized and well-equipped troop. Th

  ey scattered and the last opposition to the conquerors of the city was at an end. For the rest of the evening until nightfall, all the subsequent violence was simply butchery.

  So many Muslims had fl ed into the mosque that the scene there was hellish.

  Blood was splashed all up the walls, over doors, seats, tables, columns. It was impossible to move through the building without walking through streams of blood and those who did so were soaked in gore up to their knees. Even aft er the massacre was fi nished, when some of the Provençal clergy made their way to the famous building, which they mistakenly believed to be the Temple of Solomon, they could not believe how much blood was sloshing around the fl oor. Th

  ose familiar with the classical authors considered the sacking of Jerusalem bloodier than Caesar’s victory over Pompey; than the battlefi elds of Troy; or the civil war between Marius and Sulla. 24

  Despite the shocking scene, the clergy felt like rejoicing. For them it seemed only proper that the pagans who had blasphemed in this spot for so many years should now purify it with their blood. Full of cheer and enthusiasm, the Christian clergy then gathered at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where,

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  as night fell, they joined together in celebration, clapping their hands and – in addition to chanting well known Offi

  ces, such as that of the Resurrection –

  singing a newly created song to the Lord for the occasion. Whether Lotharingian, Provençal, French, English, Italian, all the clergy were united in a cathartic moment. God’s will had been done and they, who smiled at one another with tearful eyes, w
ere fortunate enough to have been his instrument. Everyone present felt the historic importance of the moment and they knew that this day, 15 July 1099, would be famous thereaft er. Like Easter and Christmas, this would surely become one of the great celebratory dates of the Christian calendar. Th e

  clergy whose arduous journey was at a triumphant end, gave thanks that they had lived to see such an important event. 25

  In fact this sense of completion, of having been chosen to do God’s will, was not to become an event as celebrated in the Christian world as those singing in the church that night were anticipating. It was hard for later generations to be quite so celebratory about the destruction in a matter of hours of some 40,000 people. Th

  e massacre in Jerusalem at the end of the crusade was grim

  even by medieval standards. Within two generations even Christians living in Jerusalem would describe events at the Temple on 15 July with a sense of horror rather than pride, while the Muslim and Jewish world naturally came to mark the date with an indelible sense of appalling tragedy.

  Chapter 9

  Th

  e Aft ermath

  When the tumult of the ransacking of Jerusalem had quietened down, the princes of the Christian army made their way to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

  Th

  ere, despite the celebratory activities of the clergy, they shared a sense of unease at the dispersed and disorganized state of their troops. It was just possible that the rumoured Egyptian army was close and as matters stood the city was no state for a defensive battle. One by one they listed the towers and gates of the city and assigned guards to each of them. Th

  is arrangement, it was made

  clear, was only an ad hoc precautionary defence and was only to last until one of them became ruler of Jerusalem. Th

  ereaft er, the disposition of the city’s

  defences would be entirely at the command of whoever took power. To be assigned a tower for the night ahead was not become its owner. Th e signifi -