The First Crusade
The first was largely a French enterprise, spurred by Pope Urban II. In a famous speech he said to his fellow Christians: "wrest that land from a wicked race, and subject it to yourselves". Duke Godfrey of Bouillon heard him loud and clear, and led the charge (joined by tens of thousands) in April 1096. They pillaged and killed every non-Christian in their wake. As they advanced through Europe, antisemitism was at a high point, and the Christian population welcomed the events—some even thinking it desirable to kill all the Jews of Europe before proceeding to Jerusalem. They advanced through Speyer (May 3rd), Mainz (May 27th), Trier (June 1st), Cologne (June), Worms (August), Metz, Regensburg, Prague, and other cities. Everywhere the story was the same; Jewish people were dragged into Churches and ordered to accept baptism. Many committed suicide rather than submit. Some Bishops tried to protect them, but mobs rose, burned Jewish homes and threatened to burn the churches who were protecting them—forcing them out or driving them to suicide. A swifter death fell upon those who didn't find such protection. In Worms alone, some 800 Jewish people lost their lives. Similar numbers were seen in most of the affected cities. Four years later, Godfrey finally arrived at Jerusalem with a reduced and fatigued army of 12,000. By the humor of history, the Turks whom they had come to fight had been expelled from the city by the Fatimids a year before. Nonetheless, they demanded an unconditional surrender and when denied, proceeded to take the city. It was a brutal event; women were stabbed to death, suckling babes were snatched by the leg from their mothers' breasts and flung over the walls, or had their necks broken by being dashed against posts. 70,000 Moslems remaining in the city were slaughtered. The surviving Jews were herded into a synagogue and burned alive. An eye witness writes that "wonderful things were to be seen. Numbers of the Saracens were beheaded... others were shot with arrows, or forced to jump from the towers; others were tortured for several days and then burned in flames. In the streets were seen piles of heads and hands and feet. One rode about everywhere amid the corpses of men and horses". After all this horrendous massacre, they established the precarious Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.
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Source: Durant, Will, 1885-1981, The Age of Faith: A History of Medieval Civilization, Christian, Islamic, and Judaic, From Constantine to Dante, A.D. 325-1300. Simon and Schuster, 1950.
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Full disclosure, I may occasionally borrow a sentence from Will Durant's Story of Civilization. I absolutely love that collection!