Jerusalem: The Biography

Urban saw his life’s mission as the restoration of the power and reputation of the Catholic Church. He devised a new theory of holy war to reinvigorate Christendom and the papacy, justifying the cleansing liquidation of the infidel in return for the remission of sins. This was an unprecedented indulgence that created a Christian version of Muslim jihad, but it dovetailed with the popular reverence for Jerusalem. In an age of religious fervour, a time of holy signs, Jerusalem was Christ’s city, seen as both supreme shrine and celestial kingdom, yet familiar to every Christian, evoked in sermons, in tales of pilgrimages, in passion plays, paintings and relics. But Urban also passionately stoked the rising anxiety about the security of the Holy Sepulchre, citing the massacre of pilgrims and the Turkoman atrocities.

The moment was ripe for thousands of people, high and low, to answer Urban’s call: ‘violence held sway among the nations, fraud, treachery and chicanery overshadowed all things,’ observed the Jerusalemite historian William of Tyre. ‘All virtue had departed, every kind of fornication was practised openly, luxury, drunkenness and games of chance.’ The Crusade offered personal adventure, the removal of thousands of troublemaking knights and freebooters, and escape from home. But the modern idea, promoted in Hollywood movies and in the backlash after the disaster of the 2003 Iraqi war, that crusading was just an opportunity for enrichment with sadistic dividends, is wrong. A handful of princes created new fiefdoms and a few Crusaders made their careers, whereas the costs were punishing and many lives and fortunes were lost in this quixotic and risky but pious enterprise. A spirit was abroad that is hard for modern people to grasp: Christians were being offered the opportunity to earn the forgiveness of all sins. In short, these warrior-pilgrims were overwhelmingly believers seeking salvation on the battlements of Jerusalem.

The crowds at Clermont answered the pope: ‘Deus le volt! God wills it!’ Raymond of Toulouse was one of the first to take the Cross. Eighty thousand people, some in disciplined contingents led by princes, some in rampaging gangs led by adventurers, and others in pious crowds of peasants under holy hermits, took the Cross. As the first wave crossed Europe heading for Constantinople, they forced the conversion or massacred thousands of Jews in vengeance for the killing of Christ.

The Byzantine Emperor Alexios, half-horrified by these Latin ruffians, welcomed them – and hurried them on towards Jerusalem. Once in Anatolia, hordes of European peasants were killed by the Turks, but the organized, committed and experienced knights of the main armies routed the Seljuks. The enterprise was a triumph of faith over experience and reason: from the beginning but with rising intensity as they neared the Holy Land, the military campaign was guided and encouraged by divine visions, angelic visitations and the discovery of sacred signs that were just as important as military tactics. But fortunately the Europeans were attacking a region that was fatally divided between warring caliphs, sultans and amirs, Turks and Arabs, who placed their own rivalries above any concept of Islamic solidarity.

The fall of Antioch was the Crusaders’ first real success, but they were then besieged inside the city. Faced with starvation and stalemate, the Crusade almost ended there. At the height of the crisis at Antioch, Peter Bartholomew, one of Count Raymond’s men, dreamed that the Holy Lance lay under a church: they dug down and duly found the Lance. Its discovery boosted morale. When Bartholomew was accused of being a fraud, he underwent an ordeal by fire. He survived his walk across what was usually nine feet of red hot irons and claimed no ill effects. But he died twelve days later.

The Crusaders survived Antioch and, as they marched southwards, the Turkish and Fatimid amirs of Tripoli, Caesarea and Acre made deals with them. The Fatimids abandoned Jaffa, and the Crusaders cut inland towards Jerusalem. When the contingents were establishing themselves around the walls, a hermit on the Mount of Olives, inspired by a vision, told the Crusader warlords to attack immediately. On 13 June, they attempted to storm the walls but were easily repulsed, suffering heavy losses. The princes realized that success required better planning, more ladders, catapults and siege-engines, but there was not enough wood to build them. They got lucky. On the 17th, Genoese sailors docked at Jaffa and hauled the timbers of their dismantled ships to Jerusalem to build wheeled siege-machines equipped with catapults.