“The siege lasted forty days. The Franks built two towers to command the walls of the town, one in the direction of the gate of Sidon, the other in that of the gates of Asbat and Amud, or the gates of the Tribes and of the Column. The besieged succeeded in burning the tower near the gate of Sidon; the second was brought up close to the walls. Then the Franks set all their machines to work at the same time; attacking like one single man, they put the Moslems to flight and entered the town by force. The inhabitants took refuge in the mosque Alacsa and its dependencies; the Franks, following them there, killed it is said one hundred thousand persons, and made an equal number prisoners. They did not even spare the aged of both sexes.
“In this spot immense riches were stored. They found seventy lamps, twenty of which were of gold and the others of silver; they also carried off a tennur or large silver lamp, weighing forty Syrian pounds. The Jews they shut up in their synagogue, and burned them there. Jerusalem had been in the power of Islam without a break since the reign of Caliph Omar, in the sixteenth year of the Hegira (637 A.D.). A Moslem author named Ibn Zulak,[d] thinking no doubt to give greater importance to this event, declares that at the moment when the Christians entered the Holy City the sun was eclipsed, the earth was hidden in darkness, and the stars appeared in broad daylight.”[d]
The Moslem poets describe the horrors of massacre in vehement terms, bewailing the butchery of the women and the children and the fate of their fathers who “but lately masters of Syria, now found no other refuge than the backs of swift camels or even the entrails of the vultures!”[a]
GODFREY ELECTED KING (1099 A.D.)
[1099-1147 A.D.]
Eight days after this memorable event, which Pope Urban did not live to hear, the Latin chiefs proceeded to the election of a king to guard and govern their conquest in Palestine. The jealousy and ambition of Raymond were condemned by his own followers; and the free, the just, the unanimous voice of the army proclaimed Godfrey de Bouillon the first and most worthy of the champions of Christendom. His magnanimity accepted a trust as full of danger as of glory; but in a city where his Saviour had been crowned with thorns, the devout pilgrim rejected the name and ensigns of royalty; and the founder of the kingdom of Jerusalem contented himself with the modest title of Defender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre. His government of a single year, too short for the public happiness, was interrupted in the first fortnight by a summons to the field by the approach of the vizir or sultan of Egypt, who had been too slow to prevent, but who was impatient to avenge, the loss of Jerusalem. His total overthrow in the battle of Askalon sealed the establishment of the Latins in Syria, and signalised the valour of the French princes, who in this action bade a long farewell to the holy wars.
After suspending before the Holy Sepulchre the sword and standard of the sultan, the new king (he deserves the title) embraced his departing companions, and could retain only, with the gallant Tancred, three hundred knights and two thousand foot soldiers, for the defence of Palestine. His sovereignty was soon attacked by a new enemy, the only one against whom Godfrey was a coward. Adhemar, bishop of Puy, who excelled both in council and action, had been swept away in the last plague of Antioch; the remaining ecclesiastics preserved only the pride and avarice of their character; and their seditious clamours had required that the choice of a bishop should precede that of a king. The revenue and jurisdiction of the lawful patriarch were usurped by the Latin clergy; the exclusion of the Greeks and Syrians was justified by the reproach of heresy or schism; and, under the iron yoke of their deliverers, the oriental Christians regretted the tolerating government of the Arabian caliphs. Daimbert, archbishop of Pisa, had long been trained in the secret policy of Rome; he brought a fleet of his countrymen to the succour of the Holy Land, and was installed, without a competitor, the spiritual and temporal head of the church. The new patriarch immediately grasped the sceptre which had been acquired by the toil and blood of the victorious pilgrims; and both Godfrey and Bohemond submitted to receive at his hands the investiture of their feudal possessions. Nor was this sufficient; Daimbert claimed the immediate property of Jerusalem and Joppa; instead of a firm and generous refusal, the hero negotiated with the priest; a quarter of either city was ceded to the church; and the modest bishop was satisfied with an eventual reversion of the rest, on the death of Godfrey without children, or on the future acquisition of a new seat at Cairo or Damascus.
A Crusader
(From an effigy on a tomb in Florence)