First Crusade

The First Crusade, from 1096 to 1099, was a military expedition of western European Christians, launched by Pope Urban II, which ended with the capture of Jerusalem in July 1099. It was the first of the Crusades and the only one before the thirteenth century to achieve its main goal. It led to the founding of four crusader states in the Levant that lasted, in shrinking form, for almost two centuries.

After the Byzantine defeat at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, Turkish groups had overrun most of Anatolia. In March 1095 envoys of the emperor Alexios I Komnenos asked a church council at Piacenza for western soldiers to help against the Turks. In November 1095, at Clermont in France, Urban II preached a sermon calling on knights to march east to help the eastern Christians and free Jerusalem. Those who went were promised the remission of penance for their sins. The response was far larger than expected, and the cry "God wills it" became the expedition's slogan.

Before the organised armies were ready, popular preachers such as Peter the Hermit gathered large crowds of poorly armed pilgrims and knights. Some bands attacked Jewish communities in the Rhineland towns of Speyer, Worms and Mainz in the spring of 1096, killing many people and forcing others to convert. The main body reached Constantinople in the summer and was ferried into Asia, where Turkish forces destroyed it near Civetot in October 1096.

The main armies, led by great nobles such as Godfrey of Bouillon, Raymond of Toulouse, Bohemond of Taranto and Robert of Normandy, travelled separately and gathered at Constantinople in 1096 and 1097. Most leaders swore oaths to Alexios to return former Byzantine territory to him. Together with Byzantine troops they besieged Nicaea, which surrendered to the Byzantines in June 1097. On 1 July they defeated the Seljuk sultan Kilij Arslan at Dorylaeum and then made a gruelling march across Anatolia in summer heat. Baldwin of Boulogne left the main army and took control of Edessa, founding the first crusader state.

The crusaders besieged the great city of Antioch from October 1097. After months of hunger, Bohemond arranged with a commander inside to open a tower, and the city fell on 3 June 1098. Days later the crusaders were themselves besieged by a large relief army under Kerbogha of Mosul. Encouraged by the claimed discovery of the Holy Lance, they marched out and defeated him on 28 June. Bohemond kept Antioch for himself, angering the Byzantines and other leaders.

The Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt had taken Jerusalem from the Turks in 1098. The much reduced crusader army, perhaps 12,000 to 15,000 fighting men according to common modern estimates, reached the city in June 1099 and stormed it on 15 July after building siege towers. The capture was followed by a massacre of many of its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants; the number killed is uncertain and has been disputed since medieval times. Godfrey of Bouillon became ruler, avoiding the title of king, and in August the crusaders defeated a Fatimid army at Ascalon.

Most crusaders then went home. Four states were established: the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the Kingdom of Jerusalem and, after 1109, the County of Tripoli. Their success owed much to divisions among the Muslim powers of Syria. The crusade strained relations with the Byzantine Empire, set a precedent for later crusades and left a lasting memory in Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities.

Our 1100 map shows the Levant shortly after the crusade, alongside the Seljuk Empire and the Fatimid Caliphate.