The First Crusade occurred from 1096 to 1099 when Pope Urban II assembled a Christian Western European military expedition to reclaim the Holy Lands in the Levant from the Islamic Fatimid Caliphate and assist the Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire in recapturing territories which had been lost to the Turkish Seljuk Empire in the mid-11th century. 35,000 men, mostly drawn from present-day France, Germany, and Italy, were led into Anatolia and the Levant by a coalition of Western European nobles who were motivated by promises of honor, lands, and spoils. The First Crusade resulted in the Byzantine reconquest of much of western Anatolia with the help of the Crusaders, while the Christian nobles conquered Jerusalem, Antioch, Edessa, Tripoli, and several other major Levantine cities and established the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Edessa, and the County of Tripoli, the "crusader states".
Background[]
In 1071, the increasingly powerful Turkish Seljuk Empire defeated the Byzantine Empire in the decisive Battle of Manzikert, which precipitated the Turkish conquest of much of Anatolia. However, the Seljuk Empire began to disintegrate as many of its newly-conquered lands were divided among several Turkic warlords who feuded amongst each other. In 1073, the Shia Muslim Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt conquered the holy city of Jerusalem from the Seljuks, disrupting the flow of Christian pilgrims into the city. The Fatimid takeover of Jerusalem shocked the Western Christians, who feared for the safety of the pilgrims on their voyages. In 1095, Emperor Alexius I Comnenus called on Pope Urban II for military assistance against the Muslim states of the Levant, and, in the ensuing Council of Clermont, Pope Urban appealed to the rulers of Western Europe to contribute soldiers to a military expedition to reconquer the Holy Land for Christendom, ending his stirring speech with the famous words deus vult ("God wills it"). Motivated by promises of plunder, glory, absolution of sins, and lands in the Levant, several nobles from France, the Holy Roman Empire, and Norman southern Italy agreed to contribute their armies to the cause of Christendom, and they raised a total of 35,000 troops with the purpose of reconquering Jerusalem. Many of the knights who participated in the crusade were the younger sons of lords, and, aware that they would be passed over for the inheritance, they decided to take part in military adventures in the name of the powerful Christian faith. These knights, devoutly religious and motivated by personal piety, stitched red crosses onto their white tunics, and the term "Crusade" derived from these crosses.
War[]
People's Crusade[]
As the crusading armies assembled, the French monk Peter the Hermit decided to gather several peasants from the countryside and lead them on a "People's Crusade", planning to march across Europe and into Anatolia ahead of the princes' armies. This rag-tag assortment of illiterate peasants and a few zealous knights was without military training or supplies, so they turned to looting local communities as a means of survival; they carried out massacres of the Jews of Speyer and Worms in the Rhineland and even attempted to loot Constantinople after being welcomed into the Byzantine capital. Upon arriving in Anatolia, they fell into a Seljuk trap, and the inexperienced peasants were massacred.
Princes' Crusade[]
Map of the First Crusade in Anatolia
From November 1096 to April 1097, the Frankish princes' armies assembled outside of Constantinople. In the first half of 1097, the Crusader armies crossed over into Anatolia, where they were joined by Peter the Hermit and the scattered remnants of his army. Assisted by the Byzantine generals Tatikios and Manuel Boutoumites, the Crusader army besieged the major city of Nicaea, which the Seljuk Sultan Kilij Arslan I had converted into his new capital. The Crusaders and Byzantines worked together to recapture Nicaea, although the Byzantines claimed the city for themselves and refused to allow the Crusaders to loot the city, causing enmity between the two forces. At the end of June 1097, the Crusaders resumed their march through Anatolia, where they were ambushed by the Turks in the Battle of Dorylaeum on 1 July. The Turks did not anticipate that they would fight against the entire Crusader army, and they were ultimately forced to withdraw. Nonetheless, the Turks used scorched earth policies to deprive the Crusaders of food, shelter, or water as they advanced through Anatolia, and many men and horses died en route. After the Crusader army reached Cilicia, Baldwin of Boulogne split from the main Crusader army and instead marched on the city of Edessa, where he instigated an Armenian uprising against the Orthodox Christian ruler Thoros of Edessa (who had adopted him as his son) and became ruler of Edessa in March 1098; he then created the County of Edessa, the first of the crusader states.
On 20 October 1097, shortly after arriving in the northern Levant, the Crusaders laid siege to the important city of Antioch, which lay halfway between Constantinople and Jerusalem. During an eight-month siege, the Crusaders defeated two large relief forces sent by the Seljuks to break the Crusader siege, and, on 4 March 1098, a Saxon fleet arrived to assist the Crusaders in taking Antioch. In May 1098, the Crusaders bribed an Armenian tower guard to open the gates to the Christian army, which proceeded to storm the city and massacre its inhabitants. A few days later, the Christians themselves were besieged in the city by another Muslim army, but the alleged rediscovery of the "Holy Lance" by the monk Peter Bartholomew inspired the Crusaders, who truly believed that God was on their side. On 28 July 1098, the Crusaders attacked Kerbogha's besieging army, which had fallen apart due to a rivalry between its commanders. A plague then broke out in Antioch, and the crusaders' legate Adhemar of Le Puy died on 1 August. During the crusader siege of Ma'arrat al-Numan, the crusaders were reduced to cannibalism, as the local Muslim villagers refused to supply the Crusaders with food or horses. The crusader army almost fell apart due to rivalries between their leaders, but, at the beginning of 1099, they decided to appoint Bohemond of Taranto as Prince "Bohemond I of Antioch", creating the Principality of Antioch and focusing their sights on a new target, Jerusalem.
The march of the crusader army from Syria to Jerusalem as largely unimpeded, but the Fatimid governor Iftikhar ad-Daula poisoned most of the wells of the area and expelled the Christian inhabitants of Jerusalem to prevent them from assisting the besiegers. In June 1099, the crusader army laid siege to Jerusalem, briefly attempting to repeat Joshua's tactics at the Battle of Jericho (circling around the city while barefoot and sounding trumpets) before resorting to typical siege tactics. From 13 to 15 July, the Crusaders launched a major assault on the city, and, on 15 July, the city's northern walls fell, motivating the remaining Fatimid defenders to abandon the walls and flee to Temple Mount. The Crusaders went on to massacre tens of thousands of Muslims and Jews across the city, plundering the city before assaulting the al-Aqsa Mosque and negotiating Iftikhar ad-Daula's surrener and safe passage to Ascalon. On 22 July 1099, Godfrey de Bouillon was named the first ruler of the new "Kingdom of Jerusalem", the largest and most powerful of the crusader states. On 10 August, Godfrey led the crusader army to face an army of 50,000 Seljuk Turks, Arabs, Persians, Kurds, and Ethiopians under the Fatimid vizier al-Afdal Shahanshah in the Battle of Ascalon, where the crusaders ambushed and defeated the Muslim army. Shahanshah fled into the city of Ascalon with his army, and the crusaders went on to pillage his camp and return to Jerusalem.
Aftermath[]
The First Crusade led to the establishment of the four crusader states: the Kingdom of Jerusalem and its vassals, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Edessa, and the County of Tripoli. Godfrey died in 1100, leading to Baldwin of Edessa becoming the new King of Jerusalem and uniting the two crusader states. From 1099 to 1147, the Crusader states fought against Muslim attempts at reconquest, and they were assisted by the Italian merchant republics and the arrival of Western Christian settlers. The rise of the Zengids and the Muslim reconquest of Edessa in 1144 led to the declaration of the Second Crusade in 1147.