The Handy Military History Answer Book. Samuel Willard Crompton

nobles speaking French and Latin rather than English.

THE FIRST CRUSADE

      How important was Pope Urban II’s speech?

      Without this speech, there would have been no First Crusade. In 1095, Pope Urban II (c.1042–1099) traveled to Clermont, in south-central France, to speak to a gathering of almost 10,000 men, most of them French and German knights. The Pope spoke outdoors, and, very likely, there were “relay” men who shouted his words to those in the far back. His message was that a “new accursed group” of infidels had taken over the Holy Land, preventing pilgrims from visiting to holy sites in Jerusalem. Using every rhetorical trick available, the Pope called on the knights to go east and recapture the Holy Land. Pope Urban had never been to the Holy Land, but he called it a land of “milk and honey,” suggesting that there would be economic as well as spiritual rewards. When he had finished, there was a moment or two of silence; then a slow-building chorus began as the knights chanted “Deus Volt! Deus Volt!” (“God wills it!”)

      Did the knights realize the enormous task it would be to accomplish what the Pope asked?

      They did. They, therefore, spent nearly the entire next year in preparation. Food was gathered, wagons were built, and the knights drafted horses. All this took time, and while the knights were engaged in these preparations, some of the lower-class Europeans decided to take matters into their own hands. Incredible as it seems, one preacher seems to have accomplished most of the work. His name was Peter the Hermit.

      No one knew whether he was French or German or where he had spent his time as a hermit. He was not, to anyone’s knowledge, an ordained leader in the Roman Catholic Church; rather, he was a self-proclaimed holy man (there were quite a few of these at the time). Within just three months of preaching to crowds, Peter had gathered an army—or really a large group of armed men—and set off for the Holy Land. This is called the Peasants’ Crusade.

      Did the average person really have time in his life for ventures such as this?

      Generally speaking, he did not. Crops had to be planted, guarded, and then harvested. Shelters had to be built. Something about the Crusade movement, however, had the power to jolt people out of their mundane lives and persuade them to do something extraordinary. So it was with the roughly 30,000 men who joined the Peasants’ Crusade in 1095–1096.

      Peter was acknowledged as the spiritual leader of the crusade; military matters were handled by a council of leaders. This democratic spirit enthused the men of the Peasants’ Crusade, but we cannot let some of their less admirable qualities pass by without comment. On their way to the Holy Land, the peasant crusaders attacked and even destroyed numerous houses and villages belonging to Jews. The rationale was that the Jews had killed Christ and that the crusaders, who were on their way to liberate the Holy Land, should take vengeance on the Jews. Of course, it did not hurt the cause that the Jews often had extra supplies of food, which were promptly confiscated.

      What happened to the Peasant Crusaders?

      The Peasant Crusaders had neither the organization nor the military skill for what awaited them. The Seljuk Turks ambushed them in the mountains of Turkey, killing perhaps a third. The others fled, some by way of Constantinople and others by way of the Gallipoli Peninsula. Peter the Hermit, rather miraculously, survived and became one of the midlevel tier of leaders of the Knights’ Crusade.

      How long did it take the Knights’ Crusade to get moving?

      Not until the summer of 1196 were the Knights ready, and it was somewhere along the way to Constantinople that they learned of the disaster which had befallen the Peasant Crusaders. Arriving at Constantinople, the Knights were impressed by the architecture and beauty of the place, and the Emperor Alexius was deeply frightened of what the Knights might do to his beloved city. Just how he managed it remains a mystery, but Alexius persuaded all the major leaders of the Knights’ Crusade to bend the knee and swear that all their land conquests in the Holy Land would be held in fief to him.

      The Knights were ferried across the Bosporus and commenced the long, hard march through the mountains of Turkey. Plenty of ambushes and traps were set by the Turks, but the Knights either evaded these or triumphed over them, and in the early summer of 1097, the Knights’ Crusaders arrived in the city of Antioch, close to the border between modern-day Turkey and Syria. This was a natural stopping place, and the Knights were pleased, even delighted, to find it mostly empty. They were in Antioch for only a few days before a large army of Turks, comprised primarily of cavalry, arrived to block them in. Antioch was a strongly fortified city, but it looked as if it had the capacity to be the death of the Knights’ Crusade.

      A statue of St. Peter the Hermit stands near the cathedral of Amiens, France.

       Did they use modern-day nomenclature, calling each other Europeans and Turks?

      No. Because the Turks encountered French knights most often, they generally labeled all Christian crusaders “Franks.” Equally, because there were so many ethnic and racial groups in the Middle East fighting under the banner of Islam, the Christian Crusaders called all of them “Saracens,” meaning descendants of the biblical Sara.

      Is there any truth to the story of the “Holy Lance”?

      The veneration, indeed worship, of relics was particularly strong during the Middle Ages, and many people on both sides of the conflict regarded them as inordinately valuable. While the Turks besieged the Knights in Antioch, a rumor spread that the “Holy Lance”—which had pierced Christ’s side while he was on the Cross—was somewhere in Antioch. A major search was launched, and eventually a wooden lance was brought forth. To say that this encouraged the Knights is to diminish the truth: they were ecstatic. A few days later, when they issued forth from Antioch, they beat the Turks in open battle, and as long as someone held the “Holy Lance,” the Christian crusaders would not be defeated.

      Peter the Hermit played a major role in this episode, and he later claimed that he had found the “True Cross,” composed of fragments of wood from the cross on which Christ died at Calvary. Whether one gives any credence to these claims is not very important because the Crusaders did.

      How long did it take the Crusaders to get from Antioch to the outskirts of Jerusalem?

      It took nearly another whole year, and it was in June 1099 that the Crusaders arrived outside the Holy City. They were weary from their journey, but they also saw the need for haste because the Turks had poisoned many of the wells within a ten-mile radius. Once more, the holy men were asked for advice, and the leaders learned that it was necessary for the army to be purified in order to enter the Holy City. Three days were spent in fasting and prayer before the attack commenced on July 15, 1099.

      The fighting was intense, with the heat making things worse. By the time the Knight Crusaders got inside the city—having burrowed under one of the gates—they were in a furious mood, and a wholesale massacre ensued. No one can say how many men, women, and perhaps children died that day, but some estimates run as high as 20,000. The heat of the battle led to the Crusaders making no social or ethnic distinctions: Christians, Jews, and of course Arabs and Turks perished that day.

      Did this massacre throw a cloud over the whole crusading movement?

      It should have, but it did not. The reports sent back to Europe sanitized the worst of what had happened, and most Christians learned only that the four-year-long crusade had ended in a glorious victory. Pope Urban lived just long enough to learn of Jerusalem’s capture: he died soon afterward.

      If the city and its holy sites had been the only consideration, Jerusalem might have remained Christian for only a short time and then been transferred to Arab or Turkish rule. Commerce, however, became nearly as important as religion and many victorious Christian knights settled in Jerusalem, becoming merchants in spice, carpets, oil, and the like. As a result, the First Crusade—while tainted with the blood of many innocents—was viewed as a shining success in the eyes