THE CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM.
The Egyptian commandant of Jerusalem had not idly awaited the slow
approach of its assailants. He had stored it abundantly with provisions,
strengthened the walls with masonry and defensive machines, and by
appeals to Moslems everywhere had completed its garrison. The suburban
country was reduced to a desert, stripped of all vegetation which could
furnish food for man or beast; all standing trees, and the timber in
houses that might be wrought into machinery of assault, were destroyed.
The wells in the valleys were filled with stones, and poison thrown into
the cisterns where water had been stored.
Possibly the knowledge that the district about Jerusalem could furnish
them no help led the leaders to listen to the counsel of a solitary
hermit who dwelt on the Mount of Olives, and who promised in Christ’s
name a successful assault if undertaken at once. It does not seem clear
how an army without siege apparatus could take a place so strongly
fortified. On the east the vast walls, rising from the valley of
Jehoshaphat, were too lofty to tempt the most daring. Those on the
south, overlooking the Kidron, were not less impregnable. The crusading
army took every possibility of approach into consideration, and in
imitation of Vespasian and Titus a thousand years before, stretched
their lines on the north and west of the city. But only a blind faith in
divine assistance could have led to the assault, even on these sides,
without battering-rams or scaling-ladders. Yet at the trumpet’s call the
Christians advanced. They joined their shields into a roof, which was a
poor defence against the stones and boiling oil that descended upon
them. Still the front ranks dug into the walls with pikes and axes,
while the rear ranks of archers and slingers endeavored to drive the foe
from the ramparts above. A few, finding a solitary ladder, mounted the
walls, but were unable to withstand the crowd of Infidels who met them.
In deep discouragement, they abandoned the assault, having learned the
lesson that, even at Jerusalem, Heaven assures no enterprise which is
conceived regardless of human discretion.
Events soon occurred which turned this distrust of miraculous
intervention into a belief that Heaven was actually fighting against the
Christians. It was a summer of fearful heat even for that land. Tasso’s
description of those fiery days is as truthful as it is poetic:
“The fair flowers languish, the green turf turns brown,
The leaves fall yellow from their sapless sprays;
Earth gapes in chinks; th’ exhausted fountain plays
No more its music; shrunk the stream and lakes;
The barren cloud, in air expanded, takes
Semblance of sheeted fire, and parts in scarlet flakes.
Not a bird’s fluttering, not an insect’s hum,
Breaks the still void; or, on its sultry gloom
If winds intrude, ’tis only such as come
From the hot sands, sirocco or simoom,
Which, blown in stifling gusts, the springs of life consume.”
_Jerusalem Delivered_, canto xiii.
To avoid the burning atmosphere which drained their blood, men buried
themselves naked in the ground. At night they sought to gather the dew,
with which to moisten their lips. Those who found some tiny pool fought
among themselves for the possession of its foul water. It seemed that
the very “stars fought in their courses” against the people of God, as
once against Sisera. The occasional raids of Moslems upon defenceless
bands of Christians, as they wandered in search of relief, were
magnified by general fear into the approach of vast armies. It was
rumored that Egypt had massed its power and was approaching from the
south.
But for opportune relief it is probable that the crusaders would have
been compelled to raise the siege. At the most critical moment some
Genoese ships entered Jaffa. Three hundred of the bravest knights fought
their way through the Moslems who obstructed the road to the coast, and
succeeded in bringing to the camp before Jerusalem a quantity of
provisions and material for siege machinery, as well as a number of
skilled engineers and artisans. They were unable to prevent the ships
being destroyed by the enemy. Gathering new courage from this
reinforcement, a band penetrated to the forests of Samaria, full thirty
miles distant, and cut timber, which, with incredible toil, they brought
back for the construction of battering-rams, catapults, and strong roofs
under which to conduct their renewed operations. Among the most
formidable contrivances was the movable tower, three stories high,
within the base of which men worked with levers to move the structure
close to the walls, while on the upper floors soldiers were massed, who
at the lowering of the drawbridge descended upon the ramparts.
Encouraged by this material aid, the crusaders again sought the heavenly
succor. They remembered that Joshua combined faith with valor, and that,
having invested Jericho with prayers and psalms, its walls fell down.
They would now repeat the experiment. For three days they held a solemn
fast. On the fourth, preceded by the priests bearing images of the
saints, with song and cymbals and trumpet, and burnished arms flashing
in the hot air, they set out for the mystic investment of the frowning
walls of Jerusalem. Beginning on the west, the procession moved
northward. The entire army worshipped prostrate at the tombs of St. Mary
and St. Stephen. Bending their course to the southeast, they wept at the
reputed garden of Gethsemane. They then went up the Mount of Olives, and
there, on the spot whence Christ had ascended, held a grand convocation.
At their feet lay the landscape, hallowed by the exploits of Hebrew
patriots and prophets, but chiefly by the footprints of the Son of God.
On the one hand gleamed the Jordan and the Dead Sea; on the other was
Jerusalem, like an altar overturned and desecrated by the presence of
the heathen. Their most eloquent orator, Arnold de Rohes, harangued them
as he pointed to the dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the grand
objective of all their toil, heroism, and piety. Chieftains who had long
cherished mutual animosity, like Tancred and Raymond, stood together in
the embrace of forgiveness and the pledge to forget all their
differences, while their hearts were reunited as in a celestial flame.
The Moslems themselves added fuel to the fire of Christian enthusiasm by
parading on the walls of the city with crosses, which they saluted with
blasphemous gestures and cries. Peter the Hermit voiced the fresh fury
which swayed all breasts. He cried, “Ye see, ye hear, the blasphemies of
the enemies of God. Swear to defend the Christ, a second time a
prisoner, crucified afresh. I swear by your faith, I swear by your arms,
that these mosques shall again serve for temples of the true God.”
Descending from the Mount of Olives, the procession moved southward,
paying reverence at the Pool of Siloam and the tomb of David. As the red
sun was setting in the white gleam of the Mediterranean, the host
returned to their camps on the west of the city, chanting the words of
Isaiah: “So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west, and His
glory from the rising of the sun.” In strange attestation of the unity
of religious sentiment in antagonistic faiths, the songs of the
Christians were echoed from the city by the voices of the muezzins, who,
from the minarets of mosques, called their faithful to prayer.
During the night Godfrey made a rapid change in his point of attack, so
that in the morning the bewildered Moslems saw the walls threatened
where they had made little preparation for defence. A great ravine which
thwarted the operations of Raymond was quickly filled by the multitude,
who rushed amid the thick rain of arrows, carrying stones, which they
threw into it.
At daybreak, July 14, 1099, as from a single impulse, the rams began
their blows; the catapults and ballistæ filled the air with flying
stones and blazing combustibles, and a storm of arrows swept the walls.
The assault was met with equal skill and courage, and night fell upon an
indecisive engagement. Raymond’s tower had been destroyed, and those of
Godfrey and Tancred were injured so that they could not be moved.
The 15th of July witnessed a repetition of the carnage. The priests kept
up an unceasing procession of prayer around the city, a pious
exhibition, which was matched by the appearance on the walls of two
Moslem sorceresses, who, as the Christians said, invoked the aid of
nature and demons. In vain was the heroism and sacrifices of the
crusaders. Their towers were burned and fell, burying their defenders
beneath the blazing fagots. The host was beginning to withdraw from the
seemingly useless slaughter. Suddenly the cry, “Look! look!” directed
all eyes towards the Mount of Olives. The imagination of some one had
seen—or his shrewdness, recalling the ruse of the Holy Lance at Antioch,
had invented—the apparition of a gigantic knight on the sacred mount,
waving his shield. The cry of “St. George! St. George!” rent the air. A
timely change in the wind blew the flames and smoke of the Christians’
remaining towers towards the walls. The Moslems were blinded and choked
as by the breath of unearthly spirits. Godfrey’s men rushed upon them,
drove them from their defences, and, climbing over the wall, pursued
them down through the streets of the city. Tancred obtained a similar
advantage, and in another torrent poured his contingent over the
northern end of the ramparts. The Christians within the city opened the
gates, and new tides of slaughter and victory rolled among the houses.
Last of all, Raymond carried the battlements which opposed him; thus the
various bands met within the city. One rally of the Moslems checked but
for an instant the inevitable result.
The valor of this last effort of the defendants might have elicited the
magnanimity of the victors for so worthy a foe, but it only enraged
their brutality. They who paused long enough in the carnage to remember
that it was Friday, and the very hour when Christ died in love for all
men, did not remember the simplest precepts of their holy religion, and
visited their now unresisting enemies with slaughter unsurpassed in the
annals of cruelty. Neither age nor sex was spared. Children’s brains
were dashed out against the stones, or their living bodies were whirled
in demoniacal sport from the walls. Women were outraged. Men were
prodded with spears over the battlements upon other spears below, or
were reserved to be roasted by slow fires amid the mockeries of their
captors. In the letter sent by Godfrey and others to the Pope occur
these words: “If you desire to know what was done with the enemy who
were found there, know that in Solomon’s porch and in his temple our men
rode in the blood of the Saracen up to the knees of their horses.”
Both Latin and Oriental historians give seventy thousand as the number
of Mussulmans who were massacred after the capture, besides those who
fell in the fight. It is certain that the entire population that did not
escape from the city were intended for death, for such was the
deliberate decree of the council of chiefs. The blood-crazed soldiers
extended the scope of this outrageous mandate to include the Jews, who
perished in the flames of their synagogue. From their hiding-places in
mosques, homes, and the vast underground vaults, the citizens were
plucked out by the point of the lance and sword. Thus many a Moslem died
in the confirmed belief of the superior humanity of his own religion,
though it was called the religion of the sword.
The only apology for this cruelty that can be given is the brutality of
manhood in these dark ages. The gentler Christianity of earlier days had
been sadly changed by the propensities of the semi-barbaric Northern
conquerors who embraced it. The church had as yet been able to affect
the masses with only its dogmas and ritual, not with its deeper and more
truly religious influence for the restraint of passion and the tuition
of the sentiment of love. The military spirit, too, had allied itself
with the ecclesiastical; as Milman says, “The knight before the battle
was as devout as the bishop; the bishop in the battle no less ferocious
than the knight.” The truth of this is evident from the fact that
contemporary writers do not attempt to excuse it, but glory in sights
the imagination of which appals our modern sensibilities. Raymond
d’Agiles, an eye-witness, speaks with pleasantry of the headless trunks
and bodies dancing on ropes from the turrets. The ghost of the dead
Adhemar was seen in his ecclesiastical robes partaking of the triumph,
but those who describe the vision report no rebuke from his lips for the
carnage. Tancred and Raymond of Toulouse alone seem to have raised any
voice of mercy, and they suffered the imputation of mercenary motives
for their clemency.
Jerusalem was given over to the Christian spoilers. Every man secured
possession of the dwelling upon which he first set his mark or name. To
Tancred’s share fell the entire furniture of the mosque of Omar, six
chariot-loads of gold and silver candelabra and other ornaments. With
characteristic generosity, he divided the booty with Godfrey and many
private soldiers, reserving fifty marks of gold for the redecoration of
the Christian churches. But most precious to their credulity was the
True Cross, alleged to have been miraculously discovered by Helena, the
mother of Constantine, in the fourth century, which, having been stolen
by Chosroes the Persian, had been restored to the sacred city by
Heraclius.