The age of the crusades

by James M. Ludlow

Jerusalem Delivered, canto xiii.

To avoid the burning atmosphere which drained their blood, men buried themselves naked in the ground. At night they sought to gather the dew, with which to moisten their lips. Those who found some tiny pool fought among themselves for the possession of its foul water. It seemed that the very “stars fought in their courses” against the people of God, as once against Sisera. The occasional raids of Moslems upon defenceless bands of Christians, as they wandered in search of relief, were magnified by general fear into the approach of vast armies. It was rumored that Egypt had massed its power and was approaching from the south.

But for opportune relief it is probable that the crusaders would have been compelled to raise the siege. At the most critical moment some Genoese ships entered Jaffa. Three hundred of the bravest knights fought their way through the Moslems who obstructed the road to the coast, and succeeded in bringing to the camp before Jerusalem a quantity of provisions and material for siege machinery, as well as a number of skilled engineers and artisans. They were unable to prevent the ships being destroyed by the enemy. Gathering new courage from this reinforcement, a band penetrated to the forests of Samaria, full thirty miles distant, and cut timber, which, with incredible toil, they brought back for the construction of battering-rams, catapults, and strong roofs under which to conduct their renewed operations. Among the most formidable contrivances was the movable tower, three stories high, within the base of which men worked with levers to move the structure close to the walls, while on the upper floors soldiers were massed, who at the lowering of the drawbridge descended upon the ramparts.

Encouraged by this material aid, the crusaders again sought the heavenly succor. They remembered that Joshua combined faith with valor, and that, having invested Jericho with prayers and psalms, its walls fell down. They would now repeat the experiment. For three days they held a solemn fast. On the fourth, preceded by the priests bearing images of the saints, with song and cymbals and trumpet, and burnished arms flashing in the hot air, they set out for the mystic investment of the frowning walls of Jerusalem. Beginning on the west, the procession moved northward. The entire army worshipped prostrate at the tombs of St. Mary and St. Stephen. Bending their course to the southeast, they wept at the reputed garden of Gethsemane. They then went up the Mount of Olives, and there, on the spot whence Christ had ascended, held a grand convocation. At their feet lay the landscape, hallowed by the exploits of Hebrew patriots and prophets, but chiefly by the footprints of the Son of God. On the one hand gleamed the Jordan and the Dead Sea; on the other was Jerusalem, like an altar overturned and desecrated by the presence of the heathen. Their most eloquent orator, Arnold de Rohes, harangued them as he pointed to the dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the grand objective of all their toil, heroism, and piety. Chieftains who had long cherished mutual animosity, like Tancred and Raymond, stood together in the embrace of forgiveness and the pledge to forget all their differences, while their hearts were reunited as in a celestial flame.

The Moslems themselves added fuel to the fire of Christian enthusiasm by parading on the walls of the city with crosses, which they saluted with blasphemous gestures and cries. Peter the Hermit voiced the fresh fury which swayed all breasts. He cried, “Ye see, ye hear, the blasphemies of the enemies of God. Swear to defend the Christ, a second time a prisoner, crucified afresh. I swear by your faith, I swear by your arms, that these mosques shall again serve for temples of the true God.”

Descending from the Mount of Olives, the procession moved southward, paying reverence at the Pool of Siloam and the tomb of David. As the red sun was setting in the white gleam of the Mediterranean, the host returned to their camps on the west of the city, chanting the words of Isaiah: “So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west, and His glory from the rising of the sun.” In strange attestation of the unity of religious sentiment in antagonistic faiths, the songs of the Christians were echoed from the city by the voices of the muezzins, who, from the minarets of mosques, called their faithful to prayer.

During the night Godfrey made a rapid change in his point of attack, so that in the morning the bewildered Moslems saw the walls threatened where they had made little preparation for defence. A great ravine which thwarted the operations of Raymond was quickly filled by the multitude, who rushed amid the thick rain of arrows, carrying stones, which they threw into it.

At daybreak, July 14, 1099, as from a single impulse, the rams began their blows; the catapults and ballistæ filled the air with flying stones and blazing combustibles, and a storm of arrows swept the walls. The assault was met with equal skill and courage, and night fell upon an indecisive engagement. Raymond’s tower had been destroyed, and those of Godfrey and Tancred were injured so that they could not be moved.

The 15th of July witnessed a repetition of the carnage. The priests kept up an unceasing procession of prayer around the city, a pious exhibition, which was matched by the appearance on the walls of two Moslem sorceresses, who, as the Christians said, invoked the aid of nature and demons. In vain was the heroism and sacrifices of the crusaders. Their towers were burned and fell, burying their defenders beneath the blazing fagots. The host was beginning to withdraw from the seemingly useless slaughter. Suddenly the cry, “Look! look!” directed all eyes towards the Mount of Olives. The imagination of some one had seen—or his shrewdness, recalling the ruse of the Holy Lance at Antioch, had invented—the apparition of a gigantic knight on the sacred mount, waving his shield. The cry of “St. George! St. George!” rent the air. A timely change in the wind blew the flames and smoke of the Christians’ remaining towers towards the walls. The Moslems were blinded and choked as by the breath of unearthly spirits. Godfrey’s men rushed upon them, drove them from their defences, and, climbing over the wall, pursued them down through the streets of the city. Tancred obtained a similar advantage, and in another torrent poured his contingent over the northern end of the ramparts. The Christians within the city opened the gates, and new tides of slaughter and victory rolled among the houses. Last of all, Raymond carried the battlements which opposed him; thus the various bands met within the city. One rally of the Moslems checked but for an instant the inevitable result.

The valor of this last effort of the defendants might have elicited the magnanimity of the victors for so worthy a foe, but it only enraged their brutality. They who paused long enough in the carnage to remember that it was Friday, and the very hour when Christ died in love for all men, did not remember the simplest precepts of their holy religion, and visited their now unresisting enemies with slaughter unsurpassed in the annals of cruelty. Neither age nor sex was spared. Children’s brains were dashed out against the stones, or their living bodies were whirled in demoniacal sport from the walls. Women were outraged. Men were prodded with spears over the battlements upon other spears below, or were reserved to be roasted by slow fires amid the mockeries of their captors. In the letter sent by Godfrey and others to the Pope occur these words: “If you desire to know what was done with the enemy who were found there, know that in Solomon’s porch and in his temple our men rode in the blood of the Saracen up to the knees of their horses.”