The First Crusade, 1095 – 1102

by Angel Reckless Rodent

The story of the First Crusade is the story of one of the most extraordinary military enterprises ever undertaken. What started off as nothing more than a rabble-rousing sermon by Pope Urban II at Clermont in 1095 soon mushroomed into one of the most important movements of the medieval period, largely thanks to the success of the First Crusade. Had the Crusaders been defeated, then it’s almost inconceivable that further expeditions would have been launched. The astounding success, however, served to ingrain the need to serve God by military means onto the medieval psyche. To some extent, the legacy of the Crusades is still with us today.

But let us concern ourselves not with the present, but rather the past. On 27th November 1095, Pope Urban II stood up in front of a crowd at Clermont, in central France, and called upon the faithful to undertake an expedition to the Holy Land to aid the tottering Byzantine Empire in its centuries-long struggle with the Turks. If we are to believe the accounts of the Council of Clermont (which is quite hard to do, since all were written after 1099, and so bathed in the reflected glory produced by the capture of Jerusalem in that year), the crowd surged forward and demanded that they should be allowed to participate in the hazardous expedition. Buoyed up by the response, Urban II continued his preaching tour around south-eastern France, preaching the Crusade wherever he went.

The first group to respond to the call were the ordinary peasants. Already in Spring 1096, they were on the move Eastwards, led by Peter the Hermit and an obscure knight called Walter Sansavoir. As they travelled towards Constantinople, they left destruction in their wake, especially in Germany, where they encountered large Jewish communities and extracted terrible vengeance for what they believed was the complicity of the Jewish people in the execution of Christ. So dreadful were the massacres that they are often termed the “first holocaust”. They also gathered some more experienced knights and other soldiers as they moved East. This all counted for nothing, however, when they reached Constantinople. Differences arose between the different groups, and the expedition split up, with disastrous consequences. Each party was picked off one-by-one by the Turks as they crossed Asia Minor.

The second wave of Crusaders began to leave Europe in August 1096, under the leadership of some of the greatest magnates of the day – men like Hugh of Vermandois (brother of the King of France), Godfrey of Bouillon (the duke of Lower Lorraine), Bohemond of Taranto (the disinherited son of the Norman conqueror of Southern Italy), Count Stephen of Blois, Raymond of St Gilles (the count of Toulouse) and Duke Robert of Normandy. By April 1097 they had crossed the Bosphorous and were making good progress towards the Holy Land. On 1st July, they won their first major victory over the Turks at the battle of Dorylaeum. 2 months later, they routed a major Turkish force at Ereghli. One group now split off from the main force and headed towards the city of Edessa, where Baldwin of Boulougne, brother of Godfrey of Bouillon, set himself up as its ruler on 10th March 1098, thus founding the first Latin state in the East.

By the time the County of Edessa came into existence, the main body of Crusaders had been besieging the Levantine city of Antioch for several months. On 3rd June 1098, the city fell, but the Latins’ joy was short-lived – within 4 days, they found themselves being besieged in turn by a large force of Turks. On 28th June, the Christians made a do-or-die sortie, and routed the Muslims, in a victory ascribed by many present to the intervention of God himself. Bohemond of Taranto claimed possession of the city, and thereby created the Principality of Antioch.

There then followed a period of bickering between the leaders, especially Bohemond and Raymond of St Gilles, until the latter was forced by the threat of mutiny to march towards Jerusalem. The Holy City was reached on 7th June and stormed on 15th July, an event which was followed by a terrible massacre of those inside. 7 days later, Godfrey of Bouillon was elected the first Latin ruler of Jerusalem, and he led his forces to a fine victory against an army of Egyptians at Ascalon on 12th August, thus assuring (for the time being, at least) the westerners’ possession of Palestine.

Ultimately, the legacy of the First Crusade was one of failure and long-term Christian-Muslim hostility (something with which we are still living today, a thousand years later). At the time, though, it was considered an extraordinary success, which served to remind many in Western Europe of the importance of God in their everyday lives, and breathed new life into a Catholic Church which had been racked with schism. Future Crusades, however, would be unable to repeat this success, something which only served to magnify the achievements of the First Crusade.

Index
Next