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

  Aft er securing the release of some, the military orders departed the city with their remaining wealth. 18 Seeing the plight of the Christian poor, Saif al-Dīn, Saladin’s brother, asked for 1,000 slaves as a reward for his role in the conquest of Jerusalem. Th

  is was agreed to, whereupon Saif al-Dīn let them all go as an

  act of charity in the name of God. 19

  Another group who benefi ted from Saladin’s sense of honour and mercy were the women of those knights who had fought with Guy at Hattin. Wives and daughters now without guardians came to the sultan in a body and begged him to aid them. When Saladin saw their weeping, he felt pity for their plight

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  T H E S I E G E O F J E R U S A L E M

  and had his scribes take a note of the missing men. Th

  ose still in captivity

  were released, while the women of those who had died in the battle were given a payment so generous that they praised the kindness of their conqueror.20

  All this testimony to Saladin’s merciful behaviour is not simply contemporary Muslim propaganda designed to enhance his reputation, as it comes to us from a Christian source, the history known as Th

  e Old French Continuation

  of William of Tyre. Th

  e Muslim sources for Saladin’s conquest of Jerusalem

  support the same view, that the sultan was exceedingly humane, escorted the ransomed Christians to safety, allowed the non-Latin Christians to continue to live in the city and kept none of the money that the Muslim army had gained for himself. 21

  Less than 100 years aft er its foundation, the Kingdom of Jerusalem was eff ectively at an end, although it lingered on in name even aft er 1291, when Acre, the last Latin ruled city of the region was conquered.

  Th

  e victors of the siege of Jerusalem in 1099 thought that their deeds would be remembered forever. In a way they were right, but not at all in the sense that they would have imagined. For the Christian conquerors, especially the clergy, the victory on 15 July was an event whose only parallels could be found in biblical descriptions of God’s people overcoming mighty enemies. Even more impressive than the deeds of Moses or Judas Macabeus, the Christians at Jerusalem had endured a journey whose length and hardship was without precedent. Th

  at they had succeeded in regaining the Holy City from the infi del was an extraordinary triumph and surely a display of God’s power. When they put their achievements in perspective, the crusaders were so moved by the evidence of divine favour that they felt certain the anniversary of the capture of Jerusalem would became a day of major celebration in the Christian calendar.

  Th

  e events of 15 July are remembered, but as an atrocity rather than as a cause for exultation. Naturally, in the Muslim world, the conquest of Jerusalem is the archetype example of Western barbarity. But even in the Christian world the memory of the massacres that took place when the city fell soon began to taint the glorious image of success promoted in the aft ermath of 1099 by song and chronicle. As early as 1184, William of Tyre was sounding a sombre, rather than celebratory note, in his account of events.

  Despite the loss of Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187, the concept of crusading continued to form an important aspect of the medieval world. But with the emergence of fi rst reforming and then anti-clerical, secular, values in Europe, the whole idea of crusading – of waging war under papal direction – became discredited. One of the criticisms that Europe’s sixteenth-century reformers

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  directed towards the papacy was against the involvement of the church in warfare. As Martin Luther expressed it: ‘if in my turn I were a soldier and saw in the battlefi eld a priest’s banner or cross, even if it were the very crucifi x, I should want to run away as though the devil were chasing me!’22 Th e bloody

  scenes that took place on the fall of Jerusalem in 1099 were not celebrated for long in the Christian world – far from it – they became a source of shame.

  To look back at the fall of Jerusalem with modern eyes is to feel a sense of revulsion. Yet, without sympathizing at all with the crusaders, it is possible to understand them and understand the frenzy with which the slaughter of the citizens took place. Long held religious desires meshed with material ambition and an accumulation of rage and frustration to produce an explosion. Th e

  crusader running through the streets of Jerusalem that day was gaining glory for God, property for themselves, and venting the fear and wrath that their enemies had created in them.

  All warfare requires humans to look upon one another without empathy.

  In the context of the religious beliefs of the besiegers, their insecurities, their ambitions, and the distinctly alien culture that faced them, such lack of empathy for the Muslim and Jewish population of the city by the crusaders was inevitable. Under the circumstances, none of the crusading princes could have restrained the army, even if they had wanted to.

  While it is the massacre of the citizens of Jerusalem that the siege of 1099 is remembered for, the violence has overshadowed other extraordinary features of the confl ict. Th

  at the besiegers were split into two antagonistic camps was

  remarkable; that they not only had to cope with deep rivalries between the secular princes, but also between the lords and the clergy too, meant the conduct of the crusading army was very untypical for the era. Again, the presence of such a huge number of non-combatants was rare in a medieval besieging army. But perhaps the most distinctive feature of the siege of Jerusalem was in the mentality of the besieging force. Here was a geographically and socially disparate army that had come together across thousands of miles to capture the city that stood at the heart of their theology. Th

  e journey itself was worthy of

  an epic. Th

  ey were camped outside Jerusalem for 39 days, the resistance of the garrison and the citizens a fi nal obstacle to the achievement of their longed-for goal. Th

  eirs was a unique experience and a unique story, one that despite the horror of their deeds deserves to be told and to be understood.

  Appendix

  Th

  e Sources

  Writing a narrative of historical events means having to make choices at almost every point. It is not possible to even begin a book like this without making a number of major decisions. When some sources say, for example, that Peter the Hermit was the originator of the crusade, while others refer only to Pope Urban II, how can they be reconciled? Perhaps the pope and the preacher reached the conclusion that a military expedition to the Holy Land was called for at more or less the same time and independently of each other? Perhaps Peter the Hermit’s communications on return from his pilgrimage to Jerusalem infl uenced the thinking of the pope? Or perhaps there should be no reconciliation: Peter the Hermit’s role in initiating the movement could have been pure invention by poets wishing to give a coherent and personalized framework for their song of the crusade.

  Modern historians tend to favour the reader with a discussion of the sources alongside each controversial point and on the whole readers appreciate this kind of history. If a conclusion is reached, it comes aft er a presentation of the evidence that draws attention to the circumstances in which the source text was written, the readership it was intended for, and therefore its biases. Very oft en it is not possible to reach fi rm conclusions and therefore, quite properly, academic historical works are fi lled with sentences beginning, ‘perhaps’, ‘possibly’,

  ‘it is likely that’ and so forth. Th

  is is a healthy corrective to history writing of an

  earlier era where the sequence of events is depicted as though no doubts at all existed as to what actually happened, or as though the particular way in which the historian assembled their material was the only possible one.

  It might seem that this book belongs to the earlier tradition of historical writing. Th

  is is because I have striven in the writing to impart
a sense of dynamism and coherence to the account that would have been lost if at every diffi

  -

  culty or at every attempt to assess the character of the persons under discussion I had paused to explain my reasoning and introduce the qualifi cations that strictly speaking should have appeared in most sentences. One of the key tests of the validity of the choices made by a historian writing narrative history is

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  how convincing their account is as a whole. Th

  e benefi t of leaving a discussion

  of the sources to the appendix is that the main body of the text therefore is focused entirely on a reconstruction of events and the ‘bigger picture’. But, unlike those earlier authors who were so confi dent in the authority of their assertions, I fully acknowledge that this account of events refl ects my choices and that other historians might make from the same material a diff erent pattern. Not an entirely diff erent pattern, certain undisputable events took place at very defi nite times.

  But the meaning of the events, the dynamics that led to them, the assessment of the characters involved, in a word, the ‘colouration’ of the narrative, very much depends on the historian.

  Take the example of Count Raymond of Toulouse. Th

  ere is complete agree-

  ment among historians about such matters as: where the Provençal army was deployed; that on the fall of Jerusalem the count made haste to secure the Tower of David; that he failed to obtain control of the city and took himself off to the Jordan to bathe in its waters. It is possible to write about these events and portray the count as farsighted, magnanimous, self-sacrifi cing and noble. 1 I have taken a rather diff erent view based on my interpretation of the material that suggests a faction of the former followers of the papal legate, Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy, emerged to hamper Raymond’s ambition from within the Provençal forces. Here Raymond is depicted as a relatively cautious military commander, a clumsy politician, and a man who became frustrated in his desire to have the reputation and responsibilities of a fi gure like Moses. One of these assessments is closer to the historical count than the other, but it would be a daring, if not rash, person who could be confi dent that 900 years aft er the man was alive, their interpretation was right in all respects. Most likely there are elements in both views that touch on the actual character of Count Raymond.

  It is absolutely certain that if I were given the opportunity to travel back in time and the language skills to understand what I was seeing, I’d fi nd many divergences between the actual events and this account. Nevertheless, I’m not a ‘relativist’ in that I do not believe all historical narratives are equally valid.

  Some capture the sense of events more accurately than others. In aspiring to come as close possible to depicting the actual course of events of the medieval past it is necessary to work with source material that is at times contradictory, to make informed choices that fi ll in the gaps where crucial information is missing, and to draw on what modern scholarship can tell us about the less obvious meanings and contexts of the documents under discussion to understand as precisely as possible what our medieval authors, whether consciously or unconsciously, are telling us.

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  For the reader interested in the technical aspects of understanding medieval history, much of the academic reasoning and analysis that lies behind the narrative arrived at here can be found in my earlier book, Th e Social Structure

  of the First Crusade (Leiden, 2008). Furthermore, I was enormously helped in formulating this account by the considerable scholarship that now exists in regard to the First Crusade and two works in particular stand out: Joshua Prawer’s article ‘Th

  e Jerusalem the Crusaders Captured: A Contribution to the

  Medieval Topography of the City’ in P. W. Edbury ed . , Crusade and Settlement (Cardiff , 1985) and John France’s magisterial book Victory in the East. A Military History of the First Crusade (Cambridge, 1994).

  But it is not necessary to be an academic specialist to appreciate the relative value of the information given in this book. Moreover, the reader will want assurance that all the specifi c incidents described in the text, no matter how outlandish, appeared in contemporary or near contemporary accounts. I therefore off er my assessment of the value of the sources for the First Crusade in this appendix with the intention of giving some transparency to how I arrived at the choices I made.

  Although not necessarily the most informative, the key account of the First Crusade is the Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum. At the time of writing, a new edition of this history is in preparation by Marcus Bull, but in the meantime the most recent version of the text is that of Rosalind Hill (1962), which was issued with an accompanying English translation and which was used for this book (GF in the footnotes). 2 Th e anonymous author of the Gesta

  Francorum was a crusader who travelled from Italy as far as Antioch in the contingent of Bohemond. It was completed shortly aft er the last event that it described, the victory of the Christian forces near Ascalon against al-Afdal, on 12 August 1099. But much of the history was probably written up earlier, aft er the siege of Antioch, with the historian resuming his account having returned to Jerusalem aft er participating in the battle against the vizier of Egypt.

  Th

  ere is quite a considerable debate about whether the author was a knight or a cleric. I favour the view that sees him as a knight. 3 But irrespective of this debate, the Gesta Francorum has to be considered a fi rst class source due to the fact it is the work of an eyewitness, set down very soon aft er the events it described. Any historian departing from this account has to have very good reasons for doing so.

  Th

  ere is a history of the First Crusade by a Poitevin priest called Peter Tudebode, which is almost identical to that of the Gesta Francorum: the Historia de Hierosolymitano Itinere. Again, a lively debate exists among crusading historians about this text. Namely what is the relationship between the work of Peter and the work of the anonymous author? Th

  e problem is that while there

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  are certain features of the account that make it look like Peter took the Gesta Francorum and made a few amendments to it, from time to time Peter seems to have access to a version of the Gesta Francorum that is slightly fuller than we have in any manuscript that survives today. In any case, the new information Peter adds is always of interest and since he was a crusader and an eyewitness a great deal of confi dence can be given to the information derived from him.

  Th

  e edition used here is that printed in the Recueil des historiens des croisades, Historiens occidentaux series (PT in the footnotes). J. H. Hill and L. L. Hill provided an English translation of the work. 4

  Another eyewitness account and one that has just as good a claim to authority as the Gesta Francorum and the Historia de Hierosolymitano Itinere is Raymond of Aguilers’s Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem. Th e edition of this text that I prefer, as it is based upon a careful reading of all the known manuscripts, is that provided by John France for his 1967 Ph.D. thesis (RA in the footnotes); unfortunately this thesis has not been published, perhaps because of the publication of an edition in 1969 by J. H. Hill and L. L. Hill.

  Because it is not easy to access France’s edition, I have also given references in brackets to the more readily viewable edition in the Recueil des historiens des croisades.5 Th

  e Hills have provided a rather free and not entirely satisfactory English translation of the Historia Francorum.6

  Raymond of Aguilers was a canon of the cathedral church of St Mary of Le Puy, in the Auvergne region of France. He participated on the expedition with the Provençal contingent, probably that of Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy, the papal legate, to judge by the bias of his detail. Having earlier been raised to the priesthood during the course of the expedition, Raymond of Aguilers subsequently joined the chaplaincy of Count
Raymond IV of Toulouse. 7

  As with the two sources mentioned above, the Historia Francorum was written very soon aft er the end of the First Crusade: shortly aft er the battle of Ascalon. Th

  e fi nal version of the history was based on notes or longer extracts that Raymond wrote during the course of the expedition. In contrast to the terse narrative of events in the Gesta Francorum, Raymond was given to fi lling out his core account with additional colourful incidents, especially those that supported the idea that there was a divine will supporting the crusaders. Th e

  miracles and visions that fi ll the Historia Francorum have led some later historians to treat Raymond as someone who invented such incidents to convince readers of his viewpoint. But there is an important diff erence in faithfully reporting what he believed to have happened and making up material.

  What gives the modern historian confi dence in Raymond’s account is the fact that although Raymond desired to believe in the miraculous powers of the Holy Lance, he reported his own doubts in the relic in a confessional and

  178 A P P E N D I X

  candid passage. Th

  e particular strength of Raymond’s history is that it gives

  an insight into the political dynamics within the Provençal army and more than any other source it pays attention to the thoughts and actions of the poor crusader.

  Slightly less valuable, both because it is rather brief in its account of the siege of Jerusalem and also because it is not the work of an eyewitness is Fulcher of Chartres’s Historia Hierosolymitana, the defi nitive edition of which is that by Heinrich Hagenmeyer in 1913 (FC in the footnotes). 8 Fulcher was born in 1058 or 1059 in Chartres and was a participant in the First Crusade. His description of the departure of the various contingents makes it clear that he set out with Duke Robert II of Normandy and Count Stephen of Blois. When, on 17 September 1097, Baldwin of Boulogne detached his forces from the main body of the Christian army and marched towards Tarsus, Fulcher was with him. Fulcher stayed with Baldwin aft er the Lotharingian prince became ruler of Edessa, on 10 March 1097, and therefore missed the siege of Jerusalem.