By Conor Kostick
The tale of the ultimate conflict of the 1st campaign
The such a lot remarkable siege in medieval heritage all started with the coming of a Christian military at Jerusalem at the sunrise of Tuesday, 6 June, 1099. different sieges can have lasted longer, concerned larger numbers of troops, and deployed extra siege engines yet not anything else within the whole medieval interval compares to the extreme trip that the besiegers had made to get to their target and the heady non secular enthusiasm one of the troops.
This was once the end result of the 1st campaign, an army pilgrimage that had visible millions of guys, ladies, and kids go away their houses in Western Europe, march for 3 years over hundreds of thousands of miles, and suffer super problem to arrive their longed-for objective: Jerusalem. No different medieval military had made the sort of trip and no different military had this kind of strange make-up. there have been 1000's of unattached negative girls, accumulated from the margins of Northern French cities by means of the charity of the charismatic preacher, Peter the hermit, and given a brand new course of their lives during the day trip to Jerusalem. there have been farmers who had bought their land and houses, positioned all their property in two-wheeled carts, and marched along their oxen. Bards got here and earned their hold via composing songs in regards to the occasions they have been witnessing, from songs concerning the heroic fees of the nobles to bawdy satires at the lax habit of a few of the senior clergy. obviously, knights and foot squaddies have been on the middle of the struggling with forces, yet even right here there has been a wierd fluidity to the military, with the prestige of a warrior emerging or falling reckoning on his skill to maintain his horse alive and his armor in sturdy order.
The Siege of Jerusalem deals a brilliant and interesting account of the occasions of that siege; the foremost figures, the turning issues, the non secular ideals of the individuals, the deep political rivalries, and the bloodbath of the population, which left any such deep scar within the horrified mind's eye of these who realized approximately it, that it nonetheless conjures up passionate emotions approximately one thousand years later.
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Extra info for The Siege of Jerusalem: Crusade and Conquest in 1099
Sample text
While the chainmail armour of the Christian knight could deflect a spent arrow, those fired from close range or those flying into unprotected flesh – such as an eye – began to take their toll. The sun slowly mounted the sky, obscured by the dust and a mist created by the heaving breath of thousands of horses. Again and again, clashes along the front line led to casualties, until even the hardiest of the Normans were wavering. Robert of Normandy, though, was in his element. Seeing a growing reluctance among the Italian knights around him to take their place in the battle line, he tore off his helmet, so all could recognize him, before shouting that no one could hope to return to the towns of their birth by retreating: flight meant death.
By the time the army had reached Constantinople, Raymond was seething. His rage was such that he contemplated assaulting the city, but all the other Latin princes insisted that it would be the height of folly for Christian to fight Christian and Bohemond went further, stating that he would take arms on the side of Alexius should it come to that. 21 When it came to taking an oath of fealty to Alexius, Raymond baulked. In part this was because in the politically fragmented south of France he was much more familiar with oaths of security, taken between equals, than oaths of fealty, taken between vassals and lords.
17 With plentiful supplies being sent to the Lotharingian army, which had now taken ship across the Bosphorus, soon all was harmony between the crusaders IN THE BEGINNING 17 and the Byzantines. From Alexius’s point of view, this was just as well, for the negotiations had dragged on for weeks and no sooner had they finished than Bohemond’s army arrived in Byzantine territory, having sailed safely across the Adriatic. The Normans were marching at great speed along the road from Durrazo. And only a few days behind Bohemond were Count Raymond of Toulouse and Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy, whose Provençal army had taken the land route through Albania.