The Siege of Jerusalem: Crusade and Conquest in 1099 Read online

  e capital of the Fatimid Caliphate was 264 miles from

  Jerusalem. Supposing that al-Afdal’s preparations were nearly complete, that might give the crusaders as little time as a fortnight to take the city or else having to risk battle with an active enemy either side of them.

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  e morale of the army was a cause for anxiety too. For the moment everyone was deeply committed to the siege, but with the fl ush of excitement at having arrived at their long yearned for destination having passed, dissention was already spreading through the separated camps. Not unreasonably, it had dawned on some crusaders that the reward for their extraordinary march might not be a triumphant entry into Jerusalem but their own destruction. Th ey

  began to complain to one another that all the battles had been in vain. All their hunger at Antioch had been in vain too. And while the more spiritual crusader took consolation in the thought that the additional hardship they were now experiencing would help earn them salvation in the end, the battle-hardened military leaders focused their discussion on the necessary steps required to launch an attack on the city, measures that had a realistic prospect of breaking through in the short space of time they had at their disposal.

  Among the leaders of the Christian army were knights with a great deal of experience at siege warfare. Robert, duke of Normandy, had fought for three years against no less a fi gure than his father, William the Conqueror. Th e Vexin

  in northern France, the location of their sieges and battles, was at the forefront of castle-building technology and no warrior pursuing a career there would have failed to pay attention to the science of siege warfare. Similarly, standing on rocky heights that dominated the River Semois, was the heart of the domain of Duke Godfrey of Lotharingia: the castle of Bouillon. Soon aft er his succession to the city, in 1076, Godfrey had been obliged to fi ght for his life and his patrimony by defending the castle and town from an attack from a powerful local rival, Albert III, count of Namur. Not only did Godfrey successfully defend himself, but he was able to take the off ensive, attempting to establish his authority through battles and sieges against his enemies. Th

  e lesser princes

  in the northern camp also knew much about the techniques for the capture of cities. Tancred had come away from the siege of Bari to join the crusade with his uncle. Even more relevant to their current situation, Gaston of Béarne had previously campaigned against Muslim cities in Iberia. On the southern side of Jerusalem were Provençal leaders with just as much experience in the strategies and tactics that had to be employed in the capture of towns and castles; although Count Raymond’s own experience of siege warfare was limited to rather minor confl icts in Languedoc. In any case the entire army, from the veteran commanders of wars between the European nobility to the lowliest pauper, had seen how those who had expertise in such matters had successfully set about Nicea, Antioch and Ma’arra.

  Once the prospect of conducting a long siege that would starve the garrison into surrender was ruled out, there were essentially two ways to capture the

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  city: batter down a section of the walls down or climb in over them. Th e defences

  of the city were strong, but not as intimidating as those of Nicea or Antioch.

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  e main obstacle preventing the capture of Jerusalem was its inner wall, a tall – between 12 and 15 metres in height – but not especially thick wall, the course of which had been drawn up by Fatimid governors following an earthquake in 1033. Th

  e foundations of sections of the walls, especially on the east

  and west sides, might have been Byzantine, or even more ancient, but the line as it stood in 1099 refl ected the decline in the population of the city. Rather than try to encompass all the advantageous terrain at the cost of having to enclose a great number of abandoned buildings and empty spaces, the Fatimids drew the wall much closer to the city, taking stones from ruined buildings and Christian churches outside the new boundaries. One drawback of this new shape to the city was that Mount Zion and the Pool of Siloam were outside the defences, but this was more than off set by the sturdy new wall and a shorter perimeter that could be more easily manned.

  Aft er their conquest of Jerusalem in 1073, a succession of Seljuk governors –

  Atsiz b. Uwaq, Turtush, Artuq and his sons Īlghāzī and Suqmān – not only maintained the wall with stone obtained by destroying monasteries and other remaining buildings outside the city, but they also considerably improved the defences of Jerusalem. To help protect the walls of the city from being scaled or approached by a siege tower a deep ditch was constructed that ran outside for most of the circuit. Th

  ere was no need for a ditch on the east side of the city; the

  Kidron valley more than served the purpose there. But, initially to strengthen the defences of David’s Tower, a substantial dry moat was dug around the tower, cutting off the stronghold from the city proper: to cross from the city to the tower now meant using a bridge. Th

  is ditch was then extended northwards

  along the west wall, around the corner and east as far as the ‘Goliath Citadel’, a sturdy defensive point on the corner with the northern wall. As the land along the north wall became less rocky and a little soft er, the ditch was continued as a formidable obstacle, up to 7 metres deep and 19 metres wide, stretching along to the Kidron valley. A similar ditch, too, protected the southern wall, so that where nature had not provided defence through height, human engineering had done all it could to deter assault upon the walls of the city.

  Moreover the Seljuk governors had completed an extra line of defences just inside the ditch in the form of outlying strongpoints – salients – and an outer wall. Th

  e outer wall was not a great obstacle to attackers, on the twelft h of June the crusaders had brought down a section with pick axes, before running on to the tall inner wall with their one ladder. It did serve, though, to obstruct the line of fl ight of stones cast on low trajectories from mangonels, preventing

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  the missiles from striking low down on the inner wall. Th

  is smaller outer wall

  was not free standing, but connected to the city at various points, creating narrow areas of enclosed ‘no-mans land’ between the two walls.

  In 70 AD, when Titus Flavius Sabinus Vespasianus (later Emperor Titus) brought his legions to besiege Jerusalem, the technology of stone throwing machines was not advanced enough to throw missiles of suffi

  cient weight to

  damage the walls. Th

  eir tormenta were mainly anti-personnel devices, such as ballista, which fl ung round stones and darts with a fair degree of accuracy. Th ey

  could keep up a discouraging fi re against the defenders of a city, but they were not heavy enough missiles to cause a breach in the walls. For that the most eff ective Roman device was the heavy ram. A thousand years later though, as the crusaders had proved at Nicea, stone-throwing machines were capable of fl inging suffi

  ciently heavy rocks against the walls of a city, over and over, until they began to crack. In part this was due improvements in the mangonel, the device driven by rope torsion that fl ung its rocks forward from the release of a giant wooden spoon. But even more eff ective at weakening defensive walls was the trebuchet.

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  e trebuchet was essentially a giant sling. It stood upright from the ground and had a sling dangle from one end of an arm that was attached to the frame of the machine by a pivot. Pulling down sharply on the other end of the arm caused the sling to swing up and over, casting its contents forwards. Th e knowledge of such devices came from China, where they were used as early as the fi ft h century BC. Th

  e early versions of the trebuchet relied on raw human power

  for energy. Teams of people would haul on
ropes to bring down the arm as fast as they could and so cast the missile from the sling. Th

  e rocks thrown in such a

  crude fashion, however, were not so heavy as to threaten the walls of cities; they were best used against formations of foot soldiers. Th

  e full potential of the

  trebuchet would be realized about a hundred years aft er the First Crusade, when instead of human muscle powering the device it was discovered that releasing a great weight – fi rst ratcheted high off the ground – would bring down the arm of the sling with far greater violence but also, vital for repeatedly hitting the same spot, with far greater accuracy.

  Such ‘counter-weight’ trebuchets were unknown in 1099, even to the crusading engineers and sailors most adept at construction. But they did know that a balancing weight on the other side of the arm to the missile made it a lot easier to fl ing the contents when they hauled on the ropes. Th

  ese devices were ‘hybrid’

  trebuchets, they used weights to assist in the pulling down of the throwing arm, but they still relied on teams of people hauling on ropes to set the sling in motion. Trebuchets, because of their advantage in range over the mangonel,

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  were what the Christian army needed for the artillery battle ahead. Of course mangonels too, would be useful. But unless the crusaders were able to make very many machines they would be at a disadvantage. For inside the city Ift ikhār had a great many mangonels left in the city aft er al-Afdal’s bombardment of Jerusalem the previous year. Enough that he could form a considerable battery and, if the Christians brought their machines into range, defeat them in a rock-throwing duel.

  Along with the stone-throwing machines, the leaders of the Christian army also wanted to construct a ram. Josephus’ account of how Titus had broken into the city was well known to literate members of the Christian army and the inner walls, while tall, were not so thick as to discourage the idea of using this most direct form of attack on them. A good stout timber with an iron head could do a great deal of damage to such stonework, provided it could be positioned at the wall and provided those working it had protection while they swung the heavy ram back and forth. Above all, however, the crusading princes wanted siege towers. Even with trebuchets and a ram, it could take precious weeks, months even, to create suffi

  cient damage to the walls that they disintegrated to

  the point where an assault could hope to succeed. With siege towers, on the other hand, it would be possible to try to storm the city whenever they chose.

  At the end of the council of 15 June there was unanimous accord among the Christian leaders. No more futile attempts would be launched at the city, instead the priority of the crusader army was the construction of the machines necessary for a serious assault. Th

  is was all very well, but for two problems. Th

  e poor,

  both non-combatants and foot soldiers, were too distracted by their struggle to meet their daily needs to attend to such constructions and moreover, there was no wood available for the crusaders to fashion into the necessary devices.

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  e Christian army at Jerusalem was severely hampered in its newfound resolution by a lack of timber for the construction of siege equipment. Th is was

  a consequence of the Fatimid siege of the city the previous autumn. Not only were all orchards and major copses cut down for miles around Jerusalem, but even nearby buildings had been left derelict and depleted of timber. Th e local

  Christians, currently gathered for their safety in Bethlehem, reported of two sources of wood. Th

  e nearest was a copse some six or seven miles away that had

  a number of trees; the quality of the wood, however, was barely adequate for serious construction. More useful was a trail that led to over the hills north of Jerusalem to a good-sized wood near Nablus. Th

  is wood had cypress trees,

  silver fi rs and pines, but it was over 60 kilometres away in territory where there was a signifi cant danger that large numbers of Muslim cavalry from Damascus would be encountered. Nothing was done, therefore, until the arrival of the

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  Genoese sailors and their equipment at the southern camp galvanized the whole army.1

  Count Raymond set to work at once on a massive siege tower. Th

  e sailors

  were brought to the southern camp by Raymond Pilet to be greeted with enthusiasm by the grizzled Provençal leader. William Embracio shook hands on an agreement that off ered him and his men a generous allowance from Count Raymond’s treasury. In return, they would build a most impressive wooden tower. With the arrival of the sailors and their willingness to serve him, the count enjoyed the very tangible prospect of becoming the knight who captured Jerusalem for Christ. Th

  e sailors had brought all their tools with them from

  Jaff a, but they had only modest supplies of timber. Th

  e count had a solution to

  this diffi

  culty. Suff ering more than any Christian from hunger and thirst were throngs of captive Muslims brought along with the Provençal army to be ransomed or sold as slaves if circumstances permitted. Circumstances had not permitted and a use was now found for these unfortunate prisoners. Th ey were

  set work in slave gangs of 50 or 60, carrying on their shoulders timbers that even four pairs of oxen would have struggled to drag. 2

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  e person assigned with the responsibility of leading the slaves out to bring timber to the Provençal camp was Peter of Narbonne, the recently created bishop of Albara, appointed following the capture of the city by Count Raymond (12 December 1098). Peter was formerly a chaplain to the count and as his candidate for the bishopric remained loyal to him. When the poor had mutinied, concerned that placing garrisons in every captured city would lead to the disintegration of the main army, they had torn down the walls of Ma’arra so that there could be no question of a garrison remaining safely behind. Peter had done his best to prevent this, touring the walls with his men and using force on those they caught tumbling the walls. But no sooner was the bishop out of sight, than the crowds had set to work once more; no matter how elderly or infi rm, they had crawled the walls to assist in their destruction. As a result, Peter abandoned his new see and – on the orders of Count Raymond – having sent for the 7 knights and 30 footmen he had left to garrison Albara, took up a position with Tancred at the head of the Christian army as they all marched south.3

  Peter of Narbonne was a good choice of commander for the labour needed to bring timbers to the southern camp. He had the military resources to protect his charges, but as one of the most senior voices within the clergy, he also was in a position to encourage a major voluntary eff ort by the considerable numbers of poor who clung to the Provençal contingent. His urgings met with willing hands, for it was clear to the entire Christian army that the sooner the siege

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  tower was built the sooner their hardship would end. As a consequence it seemed like the will of God was at work among them. From having made only a desultory contribution to the siege, a renewed optimism fi lled the poor and fuelled a considerable eff ort by the Christians to bring to the camp all the materials that the Genoese sailors needed. Even though only the sailors and the knights protecting the camp were being paid, many enthusiastic volunteers from among the poor laid out the foundations of a giant wooden tower. By the end of June, Count Raymond could cast his eye over the proceedings with a certain sense of satisfaction.

  In the northern camp a similar sense of urgency galvanized the army, with an additional desire for haste injected by a desire not to fall behind the achievements of the Provençals on Mount Zion. Robert of Flanders and Robert of Normandy took camels, now the most invaluable pack animal of the crusade, to the hidden copse a few miles from Jerusalem
to cut the timber that had been shown them by a local Christian. Accompanying the two Roberts on this journey was a notable warrior among the Christian forces, Gerard of Quierzy.4

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  ere were many French knights who had come on the crusade as inde-

  pendent fi gures, owing vassalage to none of the major leaders and, indeed, sometimes bringing a few followers of their own. For a while they had been loosely affi

  liated to Hugh the Great, brother of the king of France. But Hugh had never returned from an embassy to Alexius aft er the defeat of Kerbogha.

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  ese knights therefore gravitated towards the company of one or other of the senior princes. For reasons of language and temperament Gerard preferred to ride with the two Roberts, where he was very welcome. He had a fi ne reputation among the Christian army, partly for the excellence of his horse, but also from his deeds at the battle of Dorylaeum. Th

  ere, aft er the main body of Qilij Arslān’s

  troops were scattered, a particularly bold Turkish warrior remained on a ridge, refusing to retreat. Gerard rode for this defi ant cavalryman and skilfully defl ecting a potentially lethal arrow with his shield, plunged a lance into the warrior’s lungs. 5

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  e story of Gerard was to echo that of Agamemnon, particularly in regard to the manner of his death. For aft er his triumphant return to France, his energy in pursuit of war made him a great man, despite his small stature and lean body. He was one of the barons of the region of Soissons and held the title of guardian of the convent of Saint-Jean of Laon. Gerard’s tongue, however, was rather too free and the fact that on getting married he spurned his former lover, Sybille, countess of Coucy, earned him the fi erce hatred of the countess.

  Plotting with Bishop Gaudry of Laon, Sybille arranged for Gerard’s murder. On 7 January 1110, Gerard, who was known for his devotion to the Church, rose at

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  dawn and made for Notre-Dame Cathedral. Th

  ere, two carefully chosen knights

  were ready to ambush the veteran warrior. But they still feared the celebrated crusader. Waiting until Gerard was praying, they rushed to him and pulled his purple cloak tight around his body, to prevent him from wielding his sword.