Jerusalem, 1099

The battle, stage by stage

1. 7 June 1099

   Before the walls

   Three years after leaving Europe, the First Crusade reaches Jerusalem — by modern estimates about 1,300 knights and 12,000 foot, plus non-combatants (chroniclers' figures are higher and disputed). The city is held for the Fatimid caliph of Egypt by its governor, Iftikhar al-Dawla, with a garrison of perhaps a few thousand men, reportedly including about 400 elite Egyptian cavalry. He has expelled the city's Christians, filled or poisoned the wells outside and stripped the countryside of timber. Deep valleys guard the east, south and west, so the Crusaders camp where the ground is level: Robert of Normandy and Robert of Flanders on the north near the church of St Stephen, Godfrey of Bouillon and Tancred round the north-west corner, Raymond of Toulouse on the west by the Tower of David.

2. 13 June 1099

   The first assault

   Urged on by a hermit on the Mount of Olives to attack at once, the Crusaders storm the northern walls with almost no equipment — reportedly a single ladder. They break through the outer wall, but the few men who climb the main wall (one, Raimbold of Chartres, loses a hand, by one account) cannot hold it, and the attack is abandoned. The exact point of the assault is not recorded; it is drawn here schematically.

3. 17 June – 7 July 1099

   Timber and towers

   Genoese ships put into Jaffa on 17 June; their crews strip them for timber, ropes and nails and come up under escort. More wood is hauled from the hills near Nablus. Under Guglielmo Embriaco and Gaston of Béarn the army builds two great wheeled siege towers, a ram, ladders and screens, while suffering badly from thirst in the summer heat — water comes from the Siloam pool under fire or from springs miles away. Raymond moves his camp to Mount Zion, outside the Fatimid wall, beside the church of Hagia Sion. Inside, the garrison raises the walls opposite the towers and sets up its own mangonels. News arrives that an Egyptian relief army is coming.

4. 8 July 1099

   Procession round the walls

   On the advice of a priest who reported a vision of the late papal legate Adhemar, the army fasts and walks barefoot in procession round the city behind the clergy and their relics, out of bow range. From the walls, by the Latin accounts, the defenders jeer and mock crosses. On the Mount of Olives, which looks down on the city across the Kidron, Peter the Hermit and Arnulf of Chocques preach, urging the quarrelling princes to reconcile; the procession returns by way of Mount Zion.

5. About 10 July 1099 (night)

   Godfrey's tower moves east

   The defenders have strengthened the wall opposite Godfrey's tower. In a single night — usually dated to about 10 July, though accounts differ — Godfrey has the tower taken to pieces and re-erected about a kilometre to the east, facing the weakly held stretch of the north wall between the Flowers Gate (today's Herod's Gate) and the north-east corner. At dawn the garrison finds it in a new place; the northern contingents shift east to support it, while Raymond's men keep filling the ditch on Mount Zion — the count reportedly paid a penny for every stone thrown in.

6. 14 July 1099

   Ram and towers

   The general assault opens on both fronts. In the north the ram batters through the outer wall; it is then set on fire so that Godfrey's tower can be pushed up to the inner wall. On Mount Zion Raymond's tower reaches the wall, but here Iftikhar has concentrated his best men and most of his mangonels — reportedly about fifteen — and the Provençals make little progress. Both sides throw incendiaries: the defenders burning naphtha ('Greek fire') against the towers, the attackers burning bales and wooden screens.

7. 15 July 1099, about noon

   Over the wall

   By midday Godfrey's tower is against the wall. Fire set to stuffed sacks hung over the wall to cushion it drives the defenders back in smoke, and a bridge is let down from the tower. The brothers Letold and Engelbert of Tournai are named as the first across; Godfrey and Eustace follow, with ladders going up alongside. The defenders of the northern walls give way, a gate is opened from inside, and Tancred, the two Roberts and their men pour into the city. The breach lay close to today's Herod's Gate; its exact point is not known.

8. 15–16 July 1099

   The fall of the city

   The garrison on Mount Zion holds briefly, then flees. Iftikhar al-Dawla shuts himself in the Tower of David and surrenders it to Raymond, who has him and his men escorted out to Ascalon — almost the only defenders to leave alive. In the city the Crusaders kill indiscriminately: the eyewitness Latin accounts describe bloodshed on the Temple Mount, and refugees on the roof of al-Aqsa who had been given Tancred's banner are killed the next morning. Ibn al-Qalanisi reports Jews burnt in their synagogue. Ibn al-Athir's figure of 70,000 dead is generally rejected; the contemporary Abu Bakr ibn al-Arabi gives about 3,000, and modern estimates vary widely. Godfrey becomes ruler on 22 July; on 12 August the Crusaders defeat the Egyptian relief army at Ascalon.