So I've been thinking a lot about how to give a two or three sentence summary of the Crusades.
Some people might need some context.
The Crusades: a failed colonization of the Holy Land, ultimately rebuffed over centuries.
There were a lot of Crusades.
Maybe eight, but people count them differently.
Of that eight plus, the First Crusade was by far the most successful - like there wasn't
even a close second.
And of the First Crusade, the most successful moment was the capture of Jerusalem in 1099.
It's kind of the crown jewel of the First Crusade.
So, the Crusaders had captured a lot of territory to the North of the city, and up to this point
were kind of undefeated.
In June, the Crusaders arrived outside the city walls.
It was the middle of summer, and they didn't really have many supplies left.
The Fatimid commander of Jerusalem had ordered all of the water wells outside of the city
poisoned.
There's also one account saying that he had all of the trees outside of the city cut down
as well, but I find that kind of dubious.
Either way, he was preparing for a siege, and knew that the Crusaders were going to
arrive exhausted.
He was right, they had very little water and very little food.
If they sat around and waited for the city to fall, people were going to start dropping
dead.
The Crusaders consulted a local holy man / hermit to figure out how to take he city.
After speaking with him, they knew exactly what to do.
The entire Crusader army marched around the city barefoot, singing religious songs.
They then went to Mount Zion, The Mount of Olives, and the Garden of Gethsemane, listening
to sermons and losing themselves in religious extract.
The Crusader army was decentralized, with a bunch of Dukes and Counts and no strong
figurehead.
The Dukes of Normandy, Flanders, and Boullion formed up on the north side of the wall, while
the Count of Toulouse took his men to the south wall.
The first attack was made with no preparations beyond religious observances, and as you can
imagine they were easily driven back.
They probably thought that this was a Jericho situation, with all of the marching around
the walls and singing.
That didn't happen.
What did happen is that following this, English and Genoese ships showed up at exactly the
right time.
The Crusaders boarded the ships and stripped them bare.
They took food, water, supplies, and then they tore the actual ships apart and took
the wood.
A few days later, the Crusaders formed up again, except this time they had two siege
towers, one to the north and one to the south.
The southern tower, the one under the command of the Count of Toulouse was set on fire by
the defenders, rendering it unusable.
The men attacking the North Wall, specifically the men under the Duke of Boullion, reached
the wall, and broke through.
The defenders pulled back to the Al-Aqsa mosque, and the Crusaders simply fell upon the city,
indescriminately slaughtering civillians.
The sources are all over the map on how many were killed during this massacre, but it seems
that at least tens of thousands died.
The Duke of Boullion, who had spearheaded the attack and more or less took the city,
was crowned the King of Jerusalem.
Things essentially could not have gone better for the Crusaders.
They achieved their goals with some setbacks, but really it was a remarkable victory.
They would hold Jerusalem for some 90 years, but the Crusader States would linger for centuries.
What I think is interesting about this event is that under normal circumstances, the Crusaders
probably would have died outside the walls of Jerusalem.
It was really dumb luck that the English and the Genoese arrived when they did.
The Crusaders were sitting out there with no water or food, just expecting the city
to fall into their hands.
Without the capture of Jerusalem there probably wouldn't have been any later Crusades.
It's really interesting that history took this improbable left turn and allowed them
to establish a foothold in the Holy Land.