Jerusalem: The Biography

The princes were already bickering over the spoils. The two ablest had grabbed their own principalities: Bohemond of Taranto had been left to hold Antioch while Godfrey’s dynamic brother Baldwin had seized Edessa, far away on the Euphrates. Now the rapacious Tancred demanded Bethlehem for himself, but the Church laid claim to the site of the Nativity. The heat was unforgiving, the sirocco blew, water was short, men too few, morale low, and the Egyptians were approaching. There was no time to lose.

A divine message saved the day. On 6 July, a visionary priest announced that he had (not for the first time) been visited by Adhemar of Le Puy, a revered bishop who had died at Antioch, but whose spirit now urged the Franks to hold a procession around the walls as Joshua had around Jericho. The army fasted for three days then on 8 July, led by priests bearing holy relics, they marched barefoot around the walls of Jerusalem, ‘with trumpets, banners and arms’, as the Jerusalemites mocked them from the battlements, hurling insults at the crucifixes. The Joshuan circuit completed, they assembled on the Mount of Olives to be addressed by their chaplains and to witness the reconciliations of their leaders. Ladders, siege-engines, mangonels, missiles, arrows, fascines – everything had to be ready, and everyone worked day and night. Women and old men joined the effort by sewing the animal hides for the siege-engines. The choice was stark: death or victory on the ramparts of the Holy City.

TANCRED: CARNAGE ON THE TEMPLE MOUNT

By night on 13 July, the Crusaders were ready. Their priests preached them into a ferment of ferocious and sanctimonious determination. Their mangonels catapulted cannonballs and missiles at the walls, from which the defenders had suspended sacks of cotton and hay to soften the blows until the ramparts resembled giant washing lines. The Muslims fired their own mangonels. When the Christians discovered a spy in their midst, they catapulted him alive over the walls.

The Crusaders worked all night to fill the ditches with fascines. Three siege-machines were brought forward in parts, then assembled like giant flatpacks, one for Raymond on Mount Zion, the other two in the north. Raymond was the first to position his siege-machine against the walls, but the Egyptian governor, commanding the southern sector, put up determined resistance. At almost the last moment, Godfrey of Bouillon identified the weakest point in the defences (east of today’s Herod’s Gate, opposite the Rockefeller Museum). The Dukes of Normandy and Flanders, along with Tancred, swiftly moved their forces to the northeastern corner. Godfrey himself ascended his siege-tower as it was pushed forward at the ideal spot: he emerged at the top wielding a crossbow as the armies traded salvoes of arrows and bolts, and the mangonels rained missiles on the walls.

As the sun rose, the princes used flashing mirrors on the Mount of Olives to co-ordinate their moves. Simultaneously Raymond attacked to the south and the Normans in the north. At dawn on Friday the 15th, they renewed their attacks. Godfrey rode the rickety wooden tower, shooting bolts over the walls while the defenders unleashed their Greek Fire – but not enough to stop the Franks.

At midday, Godfrey’s engine finally closed on the walls. The Franks threw planks across and two brothers climbed into the city, with Godfrey following them. They claimed to have seen the late Bishop Adhemar fighting among them: ‘Many testified he was the first to scale the wall!’ The dead bishop ordered them to open the Gate of the Column (Damascus Gate). Tancred and his Normans burst into the narrow streets. To the south, on Mount Zion, the Count of Toulouse heard the cheering. ‘Why do you loiter,’ Raymond scolded his men. ‘Lo, the Franks are even now within the city!’ Raymond’s men broke into Jerusalem and pursued the governor and garrison to the Citadel. The governor agreed to surrender to Raymond in return for the lives of his garrison. Citizens and soldiers fled to the Temple Mount, pursued by Tancred and his men. In the fray, the Jerusalemites slammed shut the gates of the Temple Mount and fought back, but Tancred’s warriors smashed their way on to the sacred esplanade, crowded with desperate people.