First Crusade (1096-1099): From Clermont to Jerusalem

The First Crusade (1096–1099) was a military expedition from Western Europe to the eastern Mediterranean, launched by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in November 1095. After a gruelling three-year march across the Byzantine Empire, Anatolia and Syria, the crusaders captured Jerusalem on 15 July 1099. They founded four Latin states in the Levant and began two centuries of crusading warfare that shaped relations between Christian Europe, Byzantium and the Muslim world.

Background: Byzantium, the Seljuks and the papacy

In the eleventh century the Seljuk Turks built an empire stretching from Central Asia to Syria. After the Byzantine defeat at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, Turkish groups occupied most of Anatolia. By the 1090s a Seljuk ruler, Kilij Arslan I, held Nicaea, barely 100 kilometres from Constantinople.

The Muslim Near East itself was fragmented. Rival Seljuk princes ruled Aleppo and Damascus, the Shi’ite Fatimid caliphate of Egypt competed with them for Palestine, and the deaths of several leading rulers around 1092–1094 left the region divided. This disunity would prove crucial.

In the West, the reforming papacy sought to assert its moral leadership of Christendom and to heal the split with the Greek Church of 1054. Warfare was a constant part of aristocratic life, and the Church had long tried to channel it through movements such as the Peace of God.

Urban II and the call at Clermont

In March 1095 envoys from Emperor Alexios I Komnenos appeared at the Council of Piacenza asking for Western soldiers to fight the Turks. Urban II then travelled through France, and on 27 November 1095, at the close of the Council of Clermont, he preached in an open field to clergy and knights.

No verbatim record survives. The four main accounts of the sermon were written years later, after Jerusalem had fallen, and they differ in detail. They agree that Urban described the sufferings of Eastern Christians, urged knights to stop fighting each other and promised that the journey would count as full penance for their sins. Some chroniclers report that the crowd cried “Deus vult” (“God wills it”).

Those who vowed to go sewed cloth crosses onto their clothing. Urban set the departure for 15 August 1096, the Feast of the Assumption, and sent preachers across France, while the movement quickly spread to Germany, Italy and beyond.

The People’s Crusade and the Rhineland massacres

Popular preachers, above all Peter the Hermit, raised large crowds who set off in spring 1096, months before the official armies. This People’s Crusade crossed Hungary and the Balkans, reached Constantinople in August and was destroyed by the Turks near Civetot in October 1096.

Other bands, notably that of Count Emicho, attacked Jewish communities in the Rhineland in May and June 1096. Many Jews were killed at Speyer, Worms, Mainz and elsewhere, despite attempts by some bishops to protect them. These massacres were the first large-scale violence against European Jews associated with crusading.

The princes’ armies and Constantinople

The main armies left in late summer and autumn 1096. There was no overall commander. Godfrey of Bouillon, duke of Lower Lorraine, led a force from the Low Countries and Rhineland with his brother Baldwin of Boulogne. Raymond IV, count of Toulouse, the richest of the leaders, travelled with the papal legate Adhemar, bishop of Le Puy.

Bohemond of Taranto, a Norman from southern Italy who had fought the Byzantines, came with his nephew Tancred. Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy, Robert II of Flanders, Stephen of Blois and Hugh of Vermandois, brother of the king of France, led other contingents.

The armies gathered at Constantinople between late 1096 and spring 1097. Alexios, wary of so many armed Westerners, persuaded most leaders to swear to return to him any former Byzantine lands they captured. In return he supplied food, guides and troops.

The course of the crusade

The campaign that followed fell into three phases: the crossing of Anatolia in 1097, the long struggle for Antioch in 1097–1098, and the final advance on Jerusalem in 1099. Each brought the army close to collapse, and each was decided partly by divisions among its Muslim opponents.

The march across Anatolia

In May 1097 the crusaders and Byzantine forces besieged Nicaea, which surrendered to Alexios on 19 June. On 1 July 1097 the crusaders defeated Kilij Arslan at the Battle of Dorylaeum, opening the road across Anatolia.

The summer crossing of the interior was punishing. Heat, thirst and lack of fodder killed many horses, and some knights rode oxen or went on foot. In October Baldwin of Boulogne left the main army to intervene in Armenian politics further east; in March 1098 he became ruler of Edessa, founding the first crusader state.

Antioch: the great ordeal

The main army reached Antioch in October 1097 and besieged it for more than seven months through a winter of famine. On 3 June 1098 the city fell when Firuz, a commander of one of its towers, let Bohemond’s men in by night. Days later the crusaders were themselves besieged by a large relief army under Kerbogha, the atabeg of Mosul.

Starving and demoralised, the crusaders were heartened by the discovery of what was claimed to be the Holy Lance that had pierced Christ’s side. On 28 June 1098 they marched out and defeated Kerbogha’s divided coalition. After months of quarrelling, Bohemond kept Antioch for himself, breaking the oath to Alexios and founding the Principality of Antioch.

Jerusalem and Ascalon

The march south resumed in January 1099. The army, by then much reduced, reached Jerusalem on 7 June 1099. The city had been taken from the Turks by the Fatimids only the year before and was strongly defended by its governor, Iftikhar al-Dawla.

After building siege towers with timber from Genoese ships, the crusaders stormed the walls on 15 July 1099. A massacre of Muslim and Jewish inhabitants followed. Godfrey of Bouillon was chosen ruler, taking the title Defender of the Holy Sepulchre rather than king. On 12 August 1099 the crusaders defeated a Fatimid relief army at Ascalon, securing their conquest.

Key people

• Pope Urban II (c. 1035–1099): French-born reforming pope who launched the expedition; he died on 29 July 1099, probably before news of Jerusalem’s fall reached Rome.
• Alexios I Komnenos (emperor 1081–1118): sought mercenaries and gained Nicaea and western Anatolia, but fell out with the crusaders over Antioch.
• Godfrey of Bouillon (c. 1060–1100): first Latin ruler of Jerusalem.
• Bohemond of Taranto (c. 1054–1111): the ablest general, who engineered the capture of Antioch and kept it.
• Raymond IV of Toulouse (c. 1041–1105): the wealthiest leader and Bohemond’s chief rival; his campaign led to the County of Tripoli.

By the numbers

All figures are modern estimates; medieval chroniclers often gave much larger numbers.

Consequences

The crusade created four Latin states: Edessa (1098), Antioch (1098), the Kingdom of Jerusalem, whose first crowned king, Baldwin I, took the throne on Christmas Day 1100, and Tripoli (completed in 1109). Italian cities such as Genoa, Pisa and Venice gained trading privileges in their ports.

The success encouraged further expeditions, beginning with the disastrous Crusade of 1101. Military religious orders such as the Templars and Hospitallers soon emerged to defend the new states. Relations with Byzantium were soured by the dispute over Antioch, a distrust that culminated in the sack of Constantinople in 1204.

In the Muslim world the initial response was limited, but the loss of Jerusalem gradually fed a revival of jihad ideology under Zengi, Nur al-Din and Saladin. The last major crusader stronghold, Acre, fell in 1291.

Myths and facts

Myth: Crusaders were mainly landless younger sons seeking fortunes. Research based on charters shows that crusading was extremely expensive. Many participants sold or mortgaged land to pay for the journey, and most survivors went home rather than settling in the East. Religious motives, especially the penitential reward, were central.

Myth: They called it a crusade. Contemporaries spoke of a pilgrimage, a journey or an expedition, and of those who had “taken the cross”. Words equivalent to “crusade” spread only from the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Timeline

• 1095, March: Byzantine envoys ask for help at the Council of Piacenza.
• 1095, 27 November: Urban II preaches the crusade at Clermont.
• 1096, May–June: Massacres of Jewish communities in the Rhineland.
• 1096, August–October: Princes’ armies depart; the People’s Crusade is destroyed near Civetot.
• 1097, 19 June: Nicaea surrenders to the Byzantines.
• 1097, 1 July: Crusader victory at Dorylaeum.
• 1098, March: Baldwin of Boulogne becomes ruler of Edessa.
• 1098, 3–28 June: Antioch captured; Kerbogha defeated.
• 1099, 15 July: Jerusalem taken by assault.
• 1099, 12 August: Fatimid army defeated at Ascalon.

Why it matters

The First Crusade was the only one of the major crusades to the East that achieved its main goal. It created a lasting Latin presence in the Levant, transformed ideas of holy war in Europe, deepened the rift with Byzantium and left memories of conquest and massacre that still colour how the crusades are remembered in both the West and the Middle East.