War · 1096 – 12 August 1099
First Crusade
In 1095 the Byzantine emperor Alexios I asked the West for help against the Seljuk Turks, who had overrun most of Anatolia. At the Council of Clermont that November, Pope Urban II called for an armed pilgrimage to aid the Eastern Christians and recover Jerusalem.
The first, poorly organised bands attacked Jewish communities in the Rhineland and were destroyed by the Turks in Anatolia. The main armies, led by princes from France, Lorraine and Norman Italy and numbering perhaps 100,000 with non-combatants, gathered at Constantinople, took Nicaea with Byzantine help, beat the Seljuks at Dorylaeum and endured an eight-month siege of Antioch. Divisions and rivalries among the Muslim rulers of Syria helped them. In July 1099 they stormed Jerusalem, then held by Fatimid Egypt, and killed many of its inhabitants. Four crusader states, Edessa, Antioch, Jerusalem and later Tripoli, were founded, and a Fatimid counter-attack was beaten at Ascalon.
- Dates
- 1096 – 12 August 1099
- Casualties
- No reliable total exists; tens of thousands of crusaders and pilgrims died of battle, hunger and disease, perhaps only about 12,000 fighting men reached Jerusalem, and modern estimates put the dead of the Jerusalem massacre alone at 3,000–10,000.
The sides
Crusaders and Byzantine allies
- Byzantine Empire 1097–1098
- County of Edessa 1099
- Principality of Antioch 1099
- Kingdom of Jerusalem 1099
Seljuk Turks
- Sultanate of Rum 1096–1097 · part of Seljuk Empire and Sultanate of Rum
- Danishmendids 1097
- Great Seljuk Empire 1097–1098 · part of Seljuk Empire and Sultanate of Rum
Fatimid Caliphate
- Fatimid Caliphate 1099
Timeline of the First Crusade
- Crusading bands massacre Jews in the Rhineland
Urban II's call at Clermont on 27 November 1095 set off popular preaching across Europe. Months before the official departure date, unofficial bands turned on Jewish communities: in May 1096 followers of Emicho of Flonheim attacked the Jews of Speyer and Worms and destroyed the community of Mainz, and violence followed in Cologne, Trier, Metz and elsewhere. Some bishops tried to protect the Jews. The massacres were never church policy, but they left a lasting scar.
- People's Crusade destroyed by the Turks at Civetot
Thousands of mostly poor pilgrims, with some knights, followed the preacher Peter the Hermit and Walter Sans Avoir to Constantinople, pillaging along the way. Alexios quickly ferried them across the Bosporus, where they raided towards Nicaea, the capital of Kilij Arslan's Seljuk Sultanate of Rum. In October 1096 Turkish archers ambushed and annihilated the main body at Civetot; Walter was killed and only a few survivors later joined the princes' armies.
- The princes' armies gather at Constantinople
The main armies left in late summer 1096 under Godfrey of Bouillon, Raymond of Toulouse, Bohemond of Taranto, Robert of Normandy, Robert of Flanders and others, and reached Constantinople between November and April. Alexios wanted them in Asia Minor quickly and, in return for supplies, required the leaders to swear fealty and promise to return former Byzantine lands. Most did, after tense clashes outside the city; Raymond only promised to do the empire no harm.
- Nicaea surrenders to the Byzantines after a crusader siege
The crusaders besieged Nicaea while Kilij Arslan was away fighting the Danishmendids; his relief attack on 16 May was driven off. Because the city was supplied across Lake Iznik, Alexios had boats hauled overland to close the lake. Fearing a storm, the Turkish garrison surrendered to the Byzantines instead of the crusaders, who were barred from looting it. The emperor rewarded them with money, but the episode planted distrust between Franks and Greeks.
- Crusaders defeat Kilij Arslan at Dorylaeum
Marching across Anatolia in two groups, the crusaders were attacked near Dorylaeum by Kilij Arslan and his Danishmendid ally with a larger army of mounted archers. Bohemond's vanguard formed a tight defensive camp around its non-combatants and held out until the rear division under Godfrey and Raymond arrived and the legate Adhemar struck the Turks from behind. The Turks fled, burning the country as they went, and the crusaders crossed Anatolia almost unopposed but suffered badly from heat and hunger.
- Siege of Antioch begins
Antioch, a huge walled city held for the Seljuks by its governor Yaghi-Siyan, was too large to surround completely. The siege dragged on through the winter; hundreds or thousands of crusaders died of hunger and many deserted. Relief armies sent separately by the Seljuk brothers Duqaq of Damascus and Ridwan of Aleppo in December and February were beaten, helped by divisions among the Muslim rulers, while supplies arrived through captured ports and by sea.
- Baldwin of Boulogne becomes the first Count of Edessa
Baldwin had left the main army and was invited by the Armenian lord Thoros of Edessa to help him against the Seljuks; Thoros adopted him as son and co-ruler. When local nobles rose and murdered Thoros and his wife on 9 March, Baldwin did nothing to stop them, and the next day the townspeople accepted him as ruler. The County of Edessa, the first crusader state, protected the flank of the army at Antioch and supplied it.
- Crusaders take Antioch by treachery and sack it
Bohemond arranged with Firouz, an Armenian commander of a stretch of wall, to let a small party in during the night. On 3 June they opened a gate, the city's Christian majority opened others, and the crusaders poured in. In the sack they killed most of the Muslim inhabitants and many Greek, Syrian and Armenian Christians in the confusion. The citadel held out, and within a day a huge relief army was approaching.
- Crusaders break Kerbogha's siege of Antioch
Kerbogha, the Turkish ruler of Mosul, arrived with a coalition army of perhaps 40,000 from Syria, Iraq and Anatolia and trapped the starving crusaders inside Antioch. Morale was lifted by the claimed discovery of the Holy Lance. On 28 June the crusaders marched out in four divisions; Kerbogha's coalition, divided by rivalries, attacked in disorder and broke. Alexios, told by deserters that all was lost, had turned back, and Bohemond kept Antioch for himself.
- Siege of Ma'arrat al-Numan; reports of cannibalism
The leaders argued for months over Antioch while plague killed many, including the legate Adhemar on 1 August. In December, after besieging and taking Ma'arrat al-Numan in northern Syria, starving crusaders, by the accounts of Latin chroniclers, ate the bodies of the dead; no contemporary Muslim chronicle records this. Restless soldiers threatened to march on without their quarrelling leaders, and in January 1099 Raymond resumed the march south, barefoot as a pilgrim.
- Crusaders fail to take Arqa and march down the coast
Raymond besieged Arqa in northern Lebanon, hoping to win a state of his own around Tripoli, but after three months the crusaders left empty-handed. Local rulers, such as the emir of Tripoli, preferred to supply them rather than fight. The Fatimids of Egypt, who had retaken Jerusalem from the Seljuks the year before, offered free passage to pilgrims if the crusaders stayed out of their lands; the offer was refused, and the army passed Beirut and Tyre in May.
- Crusaders begin the siege of Fatimid Jerusalem
The Fatimid governor Iftikhar al-Dawla expelled the city's Christians and poisoned wells around it. With perhaps 12,000 men and 1,500 cavalry left, the crusaders could not blockade Jerusalem and had to storm it. A first assault on 13 June failed. Genoese sailors arriving at Jaffa on 17 June brought engineers and timber for siege towers, and on 8 July the army made a barefoot procession around the walls.
- Jerusalem stormed; much of its population massacred
After two days of assault the crusaders captured the inner wall on the north side and the defenders abandoned the walls. Muslims were killed indiscriminately, including people who had sought refuge on the Temple Mount, and Jews died when their synagogue was burned. The governor surrendered the citadel for safe passage. Some inhabitants escaped or were ransomed; modern estimates put the dead at 3,000–10,000, far below the figures in later chronicles.
- Godfrey of Bouillon chosen to rule Jerusalem
A council in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre met on 22 July to decide how the city would be governed. Raymond of Toulouse refused a crown, saying only Christ could wear one there, and Godfrey of Bouillon, backed by the large army from Lorraine led by him and his brothers, was elected with the title Defender of the Holy Sepulchre. Raymond, angered, tried to hold on to the Tower of David. Pope Urban II died on 29 July, before news of the victory reached Rome.
- Crusaders rout the Fatimid army at Ascalon
The Fatimid vizier al-Afdal Shahanshah landed an army of about 20,000 at Ascalon to retake Jerusalem. Godfrey led some 10,200 crusaders south and attacked the Egyptian camp at dawn, catching it unprepared, and the Fatimid army fled. Quarrels between Godfrey and Raymond meant Ascalon itself stayed in Fatimid hands. Most crusaders now went home, leaving only a few hundred knights to hold the new kingdom.