History Ch_The Crusades Crescent and the Cross_1of4_The First Crusade_Part 1
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00:00For thousands of years, the holy lands of the Middle East have run with blood.
00:11Here, the scars of battle fought between three of the great religions of the world are etched
00:17into the earth.
00:18But the deepest wound was made by a war between Christian and Muslim, begun at the close of
00:24the 11th century, and fought for 200 years.
00:31At stake, a tiny strip of land just a few hundred miles long, but with the greatest
00:37prize.
00:39Jerusalem.
00:51Now this holy war has passed into legend.
00:56But there were those who saw it with their own eyes.
01:01Great chroniclers from two different worlds.
01:06Christian and Muslim, who wrote of great deeds, great battles, great warriors.
01:14Of men who would lay down their lives for their God.
01:25This was the collision of two great faiths.
01:28The clash between the crescent and the cross.
01:32This was the Crusades.
02:02Of all the cities in the world, Jerusalem has the most troubled past and the most troubling
02:12future.
02:13To the Jews, it is the site of the great temples of Herod and Solomon.
02:18To Muslims, the place where Mohammed ascended to heaven.
02:22To Christians, the place where their Messiah was crucified.
02:27After his death, the word of Jesus Christ took root, and Jerusalem slowly shed almost
02:33four centuries of Roman occupation to embrace Christian rule.
02:38But in the 7th century, the holy city was forcibly seized by a new faith, Islam.
02:45Now, 400 years later, the Christians wanted Jerusalem back.
03:00Across Europe, some 60,000 warriors were gathering, readying themselves for battle.
03:07One of the leaders was veteran warlord Duke Godfrey of Bouillon.
03:12He would head up his own army on what would become a three-year crusade across 3,000 miles
03:19to reclaim Jerusalem in the name of God.
03:24Godfrey was more than just an acclaimed fighter.
03:27A generous benefactor of the Catholic Church, he was also an immensely pious man.
03:33As far as I'm concerned, there's one key thing that's driving people to take up the cross.
03:39And that is that they actually believe that this crusade is a spiritual war,
03:43and that it's going to purify their souls of sin.
03:46And yes, I'm sure they've got other agendas, they've got other things they're looking for at the same time,
03:50but if there's one thing that's at the core, and that it's across the largest range of people,
03:54it's spirituality, it's religion that's driving this.
03:58The Franks, which was the catch-all word for everyone who participated in the crusades,
04:05were regarded for many centuries until this day as barbarians who came to destroy the peak of Islamic civilization.
04:17And this is a very strong thing which goes down right to this day.
04:21So the word crusade is electric, and people know it.
04:24They know what happened in that world.
04:28There was good reason why men would risk everything
04:32to journey to a distant land from which they might never return.
04:36Blighted by famine and wracked by petty wars, their European homeland was a cursed place.
04:45They craved a better life in this world, and the next.
04:51I think if you were to take a time machine back to the late 11th century,
04:55the first thing that would probably strike you is what a violent society it was.
04:59We're at a time when sort of central government's not very well organized,
05:02the great monarchies of France and Spain haven't developed.
05:05It's petty lordships, local castellans, they raid, they fight, they scrap one another.
05:10It's a time of endemic lawlessness.
05:15One of the most learned men in Christendom painted a disturbing picture
05:19of this chaotic world.
05:23A senior archbishop and a consort of kings,
05:26William of Tyre wrote the history of the Crusades as he saw it.
05:35In nearly all the circle of the earth, belief had failed.
05:40The fear of the Lord no longer prevailed among men.
05:44Justice had perished from the world.
05:47Violence held sway among the nations.
05:50Fraud, treachery and chicanery overshadowed all things.
05:56All virtue had departed and ceased to exist as useless.
06:02Evil reigned in its stead.
06:11There was only one organization with the potential to stem this anarchy.
06:18The Church.
06:25The Catholic faith dominated 11th century Western Europe.
06:33The world of the Middle Ages was a world that was deeply concerned with matters of religion.
06:38And it's almost impossible for us in a secular age today to overestimate how concerned they were.
06:43It's almost impossible for us to understand how concerned they were.
06:46People are bombarded with the fact that they are threatened by sin from all forms of life.
06:53Just about everything they can do in life is potentially sinful.
06:56It's literally as if the air they're breathing is contaminated with sin.
07:05The Church could absolve a man of his sins,
07:08but it lacked the political muscle to wash away the ills of an entire society.
07:18Feuds with the secular rulers of Europe had pushed the papacy to the sidelines.
07:23Until 1088, when a new Pope arrived in Rome.
07:29Pope Urban II.
07:32Pope Urban was an astute individual.
07:35A man who understood the political and social and religious currents and needs of his time.
07:39Someone who knew how to bring those things together and channel them into productive outlets.
07:46Pope Urban needed a master plan to put the Catholic Church back on the political map.
07:53The answer to his prayers would come in the form of a desperate plea for help
07:57from an old rival.
08:08In 1095, a desperate call for help was dispatched to the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Urban II.
08:15Sent from the imperial court of Constantinople,
08:18it came from his eastern Christian rival,
08:21the political master of the Greek Orthodox Church.
08:24The political master of the Greek Orthodox Church.
08:27The Byzantine emperor, Alexios I.
08:32The power of Alexios' empire was slipping.
08:35The influence of his Orthodox Church had once stretched as far as the Holy Land of the Middle East.
08:47Islam was now the dominant force in the region.
08:55The Seljuk Turks were recent converts to Islam.
08:59They had emerged from the steppes of Central Asia
09:02and swept down into the Middle East in search of land.
09:06Fearsome warriors.
09:08Their armies numbered tens of thousands.
09:12They seized control of the Muslim territories of Persia, Syria and Palestine
09:17and finally captured the holy city of Jerusalem.
09:21Then they turned their gaze north
09:24and stormed their way to the doorstep of the great Byzantine capital, Constantinople.
09:32The status quo, the existing power politics, the power balance of the region was changed.
09:37The Byzantines had lost a great area of taxation,
09:40of recruitment for troops.
09:42They'd lost a lot of prestige as well.
09:45By 1095, the emperor Alexios was desperate to strike back.
09:52But he couldn't do it alone.
09:55He appealed to the Pope, in the spirit of Christian brotherhood,
09:59to send an elite force of knights to help him keep the Turks at bay.
10:04It presented Pope Urban with the perfect opportunity to enhance his political power.
10:18You've got to understand that the Popes of that period were politicians.
10:24Much more so than they are now.
10:26Even now, the current Pope intervenes in politics.
10:29Much more so than they are now.
10:31Even now, the current Pope intervenes in politics all the time.
10:35But at that time, the Popes were big players.
10:39Scheming, manipulating, intriguing, politicking.
10:45They were basically the politicians of the Church.
10:52Pope Urban was set to hijack the misfortune of the Byzantine Empire.
10:56He would launch his own holy war against Islam.
11:01A crusade that would strengthen his papacy
11:04and put Rome back at the centre of the world political stage.
11:11The idea of the crusade satisfies a number of particular agendas for the Pope.
11:16It allows him to increase his authority over the knighthood of Western Europe
11:19at the expense of other secular rulers.
11:21It directs the violent knights away from their practices of brutalising the Church in the West.
11:26It also rolls back the infidel.
11:28It begins to allow the Christians to reclaim the holy places.
11:33In November 1095, the Pope performed a spellbinding open-air sermon
11:38outside the town of Clermont in France.
11:42It was a rallying call to princes, knights, clerics and the common man
11:47to wage a war under the banner of the Catholic Church.
11:52Urban must have been a remarkably charismatic and effective speaker.
11:56Being at his speech must have been like being at some kind of mass rally,
12:00a Billy Graham crusade, a pop concert,
12:03elements of all of those things together.
12:05There were thousands and thousands of people there.
12:09His sermon was a cunningly crafted piece of religious spin.
12:14Spiced with exaggerated tales of Muslim atrocities
12:17against Christian pilgrims living in the Holy Land,
12:20it demonised the Turks
12:22and presented the crusade as the apocalyptic war of two faiths.
12:29Choir singing
12:41His words seemed to proceed from God
12:44and were received by young and old alike eagerly
12:47as a command from on high.
12:53The cradle of our faith,
12:55the native land of our Lord
12:57and the mother of salvation
12:59is now forcibly held by a people without God.
13:06For many years now the wicked race of Saracens,
13:09followers of unclean practices,
13:12have oppressed with tyrannical violence
13:15the holy places where the feet of our Lord rested.
13:20Dogs have entered into the holy places.
13:23Priests have been slain in the sanctuaries.
13:26Virgins forced to choose
13:28between prostitution and death by torture.
13:35The emotional intensity of the moment was very high
13:38and when the end of the speech was reached,
13:40Urban gave an appeal
13:42and people came forward from the crowd
13:44to take the cross,
13:46literally to take strips of cloth
13:48and put them on their clothing,
13:50over their breast, over their heart perhaps,
13:53and to indicate that they were taking vows
13:55and were going to go to the east
13:57to rescue their brothers.
14:01Inspired by the possibility of great prestige and honor,
14:05tens of thousands of men and women,
14:07families, even whole villages,
14:10took vows to join Pope Urban's crusade.
14:13But for many,
14:15like the young knight who wrote an eyewitness account
14:17of his journey to Jerusalem,
14:19there was another attraction,
14:21the promise of great riches.
14:23Our Lord the Pope said
14:25if anyone wished to save their souls,
14:27they must not hesitate to undertake
14:29with humble spirit the way of the Lord.
14:31And if he did not have a great deal of money,
14:34divine mercy should provide for him.
14:38Then he said,
14:39take the road to the Holy Sepulchre,
14:41rescue that land from a dreadful race,
14:44rule over it yourselves,
14:45for that land floweth with milk and honey.
14:49Nothing is ever motivated purely
14:52by religion or ideology.
14:55They knew perfectly well
14:57that there was a lot of wealth
14:59in that part of the world.
15:01It was the centre of trade.
15:03All the trading caravans passed through this world.
15:06And so they wanted the money.
15:09It was as simple as that.
15:12But the lure of unimaginable wealth
15:14and the chance to seize lands
15:16that was said to flow with milk and honey
15:18was just the beginning.
15:22News soon spread of an even greater incentive.
15:27Pope Urban took an unprecedented step.
15:30He offered to those
15:32who pledged their souls to the crusade
15:34a ticket directly to heaven.
15:38For those of you who once fought
15:40against brother and relative,
15:42now rightfully fight against the barbarians.
15:45Know then,
15:47that whoever sets out on this journey
15:49not out of lust for worldly advantage,
15:53but only for salvation of his soul
15:56and liberation of the church,
15:59is remitted in entirety
16:02all penance for his sins.
16:07Pope Urban marketed the crusade brilliantly.
16:09He struck a number of chords
16:11that the knights of Western Europe wanted to hear.
16:13He said, look, you're living these violent lives.
16:15If you don't atone for your sins,
16:17you're going to go to hell.
16:18What the crusade offered
16:20was a way of carrying on fighting
16:22and also receiving a spiritual reward.
16:24That was the deal.
16:25If you went on crusade,
16:26you got the remission of all your sins.
16:28You would not go to hell.
16:33The pope's sermon pushed the boundaries
16:35of Christian teaching.
16:39In his holy war,
16:41the crusader now had the blessing of God
16:43to ignore the sixth commandment.
16:45Thou shalt not kill
16:47as long as he was an infidel.
16:50This is violence which God actually wants.
16:52And he wants it so much
16:54that he's actually going to give a spiritual reward
16:56to people who participate in it.
16:58It's literally like opening Pandora's box.
17:00I'm not sure he's actually conscious
17:02of how dangerous an idea he's tampering with at Clermont.
17:06But what it leads to
17:08is a very powerful upsurge
17:10of a sense of hatred of the outsider,
17:13if you like, in Western Europe,
17:15and a turning against anyone who seems to be
17:17other than what is the accepted norm,
17:19a Western Christian.
17:24Before the crusade had even left Europe,
17:26Christian fanatics swept up by the pope's words
17:29hankered to spill blood.
17:34To these fundamentalists,
17:36any non-Christian was an infidel.
17:39And the infidels were all around.
17:47But the Pilgrims rose up
17:49in a spirit of cruelty against the Jews.
17:53They inflicted a most cruel slaughter on them,
17:56claiming that the killings would be of service
17:58against the enemies of Christianity.
18:01They attacked them,
18:03decapitated many.
18:08They destroyed their homes and synagogues,
18:11and even divided all the looted money amongst themselves.
18:32Across Europe,
18:34thousands of Jews were massacred
18:36in the name of God.
18:41Murder and slaughter of the innocent
18:43had become the hallmarks
18:45of the first crusade.
18:55In the autumn of 1096,
18:57almost a year after the pope's sermon,
19:00armies from France, Germany and Italy
19:03set out on the epic 3,000-mile march
19:06to aid their Christian brothers
19:08and liberate the Holy Land from Muslim rule.
19:13At the helm of the largest army from Northern Europe
19:16was Duke Godfrey of Bouillon.
19:20Godfrey was one of the senior leaders of the first crusade.
19:23He was a very pious man.
19:25In fact, we know that he brought a number of monks with him
19:27on the expedition to help him in his daily prayers.
19:29He was also a great warrior.
19:31He'd won repute before the crusade
19:33for his feats in single combat,
19:35and he was a respected man
19:37who the leaders of the expedition felt they could all deal with.
19:41At Godfrey's side was his younger brother Baldwin,
19:44the Count of Boulogne.
19:46Ruthless to the core,
19:48Baldwin had once been destined for the priesthood,
19:50but had turned instead
19:52to a love of women and war.
19:55Writers talk about him being plagued by lust
19:58and the sins of the flesh.
20:00He used to be quite discreet about all of this,
20:02but it is an aspect of his character.
20:04He was also a very pragmatic man
20:06and somebody who would not hesitate
20:08to brush aside others if they crossed him.
20:12Following in the footsteps of Duke Godfrey and Count Baldwin,
20:15military historian John France
20:18uses 11th-century sources as his guidebook.
20:22These medieval records
20:24reveal the harsh realities
20:26of life on crusade.
20:30To take the cross must have been very, very expensive.
20:33We know that people sold land,
20:36we know that they mortgaged land.
20:38They seem to have tried to raise
20:40about six years' income
20:42just to live through the crusade.
20:48A rich man would have had a whole retinue.
20:51He'd have come with his household,
20:53with everybody who would normally accompany him,
20:56and possibly wives.
20:58It's often forgotten that many wives
21:00came with their husbands
21:02because they too were inspired
21:04by this remarkable opportunity for salvation.
21:09So what you have on the crusade
21:12is a sort of city,
21:14as a whole society
21:16moving eastwards towards Jerusalem.
21:19The problems of feeding that
21:21are absolutely immense.
21:23I mean, it is almost inconceivable
21:25how they did it.
21:27We would guess that they stole stuff,
21:30but fundamentally they were probably
21:32buying from the local peasants
21:34who would be glad to sell,
21:36but at very high prices.
21:40For almost six months,
21:42Godfrey's crusader army lumbered
21:44across thousands of miles,
21:46over the rivers and mountain ranges
21:48of Eastern Europe.
21:50They finally joined forces
21:52with other Christian armies from the south
21:54at the agreed rendezvous point,
21:57the spiritual heart of Eastern Christianity,
22:00Constantinople.
22:06Constantinople is today known as Istanbul,
22:09the bustling showpiece of modern Turkey,
22:12and a largely Muslim city.
22:14But 900 years ago,
22:16perched on the most easterly tip of Europe,
22:19it was the last Christian city
22:21before the crusade ventured across the Bosphorus
22:23into enemy territory.
22:28Then, the jewel of the city
22:30was the great Orthodox Christian cathedral
22:33of Saint Sophia.
22:38Covered in mosaics of burnished gold,
22:40it was a vivid testament
22:42to the legendary wealth of Constantinople.
22:49But the crusaders would scarcely get a glimpse of it.
22:56The Byzantine capital was surrounded
22:58by two concentric rings of thick stone wall,
23:01more than 10 miles round and 30 feet high.
23:09To friends of his realm,
23:11the emperor would throw open the triumphal gates
23:14and usher them into the heart of his city.
23:20But to the mass of crusaders,
23:23they remained firmly closed.
23:26Well, here are the remains of the magnificent Golden Gate,
23:29one of the ten entrances to the city of Constantinople.
23:32This was originally a triumphal arch.
23:34You can see the three elements of the arch here.
23:37It reminds one a little bit of the Arc de Triomphe.
23:40Atop this structure, you would have had four bronze elephants,
23:43and around it, there would have been a series of figures
23:46depicting the deeds of the classical heroes of antiquity.
23:49When the crusaders arrived out here,
23:51these doors would have been shining and dazzling
23:54and, of course, closed before them.
24:00The gates had been sealed on direct orders of the emperor Alexius.
24:06He was furious.
24:08A Catholic army of 60,000 was not what he had in mind
24:11when he asked Pope Urbanus
24:13to send an elite team of mercenaries.
24:18What he required was a group of about 300 knights,
24:21well-trained, well-armed,
24:23that he could direct where he felt the threat was greatest.
24:26What he got was something completely different,
24:29something that he did not remotely, in his wildest dreams,
24:32expect to receive.
24:34Tens of thousands of fanatical armed men
24:37who descended upon him like a series of pests,
24:40locusts coming down, in fact, is how one chronicler describes it.
24:44And they came down and they approached his great city
24:47wave after wave after wave.
24:49The swarm of soldiers sent by his rival, the pope,
24:52and now camping outside the gates,
24:55was large enough to mount an attack on the city.
24:58He couldn't afford to offend them.
25:01But Alexius could see a way
25:04to manipulate events to his own advantage.
25:07The emperor Alexius was a wicked and crafty man.
25:12He played the part of a scorpion,
25:15which when met face to face is harmless,
25:18but the tail of which is barbed with a poisonous sting,
25:22it is well to avoid.
25:37The emperor invited the principal commanders of the crusade
25:40into his lair, the inner sanctum of the imperial palace.
25:48Alexius was confident he could win over Duke Godfrey
25:51and his brother Baldwin.
25:53But they had now been joined by another crusade commander.
25:57Bohemond of Toronto was the aggressive eldest son
26:00of a family of Norman mercenaries
26:03who had recently taken control of southern Italy.
26:07He was somebody who attracted attention
26:10through his appearance and through his bearing.
26:12He was perhaps the greatest warrior of the whole expedition.
26:15He was said to have the ferocity of a lion, a starving lion,
26:19charging into a group of sheep.
26:22Bohemond's experience in war was invaluable.
26:26He had already battled against the Muslims in Sicily and won.
26:31But for years he had also been fighting with the Byzantines.
26:36But Bohemond, like the other crusader leaders,
26:39was a better soldier than a politician.
26:41They were all about to be outwitted.
26:45When the emperor heard that Bohemond,
26:47that most distinguished man, had arrived,
26:50he ordered for him to be received with proper ceremony.
26:53Then, once he'd settled in,
26:56with the Duke Godfrey and his brother Baldwin,
26:58he invited him to a secret conference.
27:02He planned how to entrap these Christian knights
27:05by fraud and cunning.
27:11Alexius had lost much of his empire to the Turks.
27:14He wanted to win these lands back,
27:16not see them passed on to this rival Catholic army.
27:22The emperor still had one trump card up his sleeve.
27:27When they are in his lands, the one thing that they need is food.
27:30They're an army that is unprepared.
27:32It doesn't have supply chains like modern armies do.
27:35It's not all planned out ahead.
27:37They've got to live off the land.
27:39So Alexius can control and give them markets if they play the game.
27:44If they don't play the game with him,
27:46then he can withdraw those markets
27:48and they are going to start suffering quite badly.
27:50It may provoke an outburst of bad behaviour from them.
27:52They might start trying to ravage the land.
27:54But they realise sooner or later,
27:56because he has all the food,
27:58they've got to start doing business with Alexius.
28:00He knows that and they know it too.
28:03In return for his promise to supply food,
28:06each of the three crusader leaders
28:08was forced to swear an oath of allegiance to the emperor.
28:14By that oath, they granted Alexius a commanding role
28:18over the whole campaign
28:21and vowed to return to his empire and the Eastern Orthodox Church
28:25any lands that they might win back from the Turks.
28:33The entire crusader army was ferried across the Bosphorus
28:37by their new partners, the Byzantines.
28:42Soon they would be in enemy territory for the first time
28:45and this fragile alliance would be put to the test.
28:51With Constantinople behind them,
28:58the crusaders still had over a thousand miles of hostile territory to cross
29:02before they reached Jerusalem.
29:07After only a few weeks, in May 1097,
29:11they reached the first enemy-held city.
29:14Nicaea, today known as Iznik, had once been a Byzantine city.
29:19But 20 years earlier, it had been seized by Turkish warlords
29:24and was now the fortress capital of the new sultan, Kilij Arslan.
29:30Over the northern hills is where the crusader army came from.
29:34They marched down from Constantinople, over the hills
29:39and fanned out round the city, clamping it in an iron siege.
29:44Finally, the moment of conflict.
29:46And they must have been pretty excited, pretty hepped up.
29:49This was the enemy. This is where it's all going to start.
29:53Breaking their way into Nicaea would not be easy.
29:56A thick three-mile long wall enclosed three sides of the city.
30:03Attacking a city like this is really pretty difficult
30:06because these walls are very formidable.
30:09You can see them here, 10 meters high roughly.
30:12The towers here, 30 meters apart.
30:15That means whatever way you approach the wall,
30:18people have got you in their sights as a very good, very easy target.
30:25For six weeks, the crusaders besieged Nicaea.
30:29The fighting was intense.
30:31But morale in the Christian camp was high.
30:33They were on the verge of their first victory.
30:40Though the crusaders had promised to return the city
30:43to the Byzantine emperor Alexis' control,
30:46they expected to keep the riches of Nicaea for themselves.
30:52But their Byzantine allies were about to pull the rug from under their feet.
31:02Along the western flank of the city lay the great Ascanian lake.
31:07Here, early on June 18th, 1097,
31:11emissaries of the Byzantine emperor initiated a secret plan to take the city.
31:16And it spoils for themselves.
31:22The Byzantines had brought their ships onto the lake to help in the siege.
31:26But they used their ships for a quite different purpose.
31:31They secretly contacted the Turks within the city.
31:35They would much sooner surrender peacefully to the Byzantines
31:39than be chopped up into little pieces by the crusaders
31:42who were obviously thirsting for their blood.
31:45And when morning breaks, there on the battlements of the city
31:50are the imperial flags flying.
31:53The city has surrendered.
31:55The site of the Byzantine emperor's death
31:59The site of the Byzantine imperial banner
32:02flying above the city ramparts incensed the crusader army.
32:06They had been double-crossed by their so-called Christian brother,
32:10Emperor Alexius.
32:13When Alexius did that deal with the Turks and took Nicaea for himself,
32:17the crusader army felt utterly betrayed.
32:19They were furious.
32:20The man who they trusted, who was supposed to be their ally,
32:23who they would have to trust on the future fights through Turkey
32:26and into the Holy Land had gone behind their backs.
32:29This was a very, very bad sign
32:31for the future of the Byzantine crusader alliance.
32:36Robbed of the spoils of Nicaea,
32:38the crusaders packed up their camp
32:40and ventured deeper into enemy territory,
32:43heading towards Jerusalem.
32:47But they were not alone.
32:50From the hills, the Turkish sultan Kilij Arslan shadowed their every step.
32:57He had just lost his fortress city.
33:00Now he wanted revenge.
33:05Kilij Arslan, mindful of the injury done him,
33:09constantly brooded over the fact
33:12that through the Christians,
33:14he had lost the excellent city of Nicaea.
33:17With all his heart and soul,
33:19he was determined to avenge his brother,
33:22the excellent city of Nicaea.
33:25With all his heart, he yearned to retaliate
33:28and determined to lay an ambush for his enemy.
33:33The Turkish leader would unleash the full might of his fighting force,
33:37more than 50,000 men.
33:41Scouting the land just ahead of the crusader army,
33:44he found the perfect site for a surprise attack.
33:48The epic clash that took place here
33:51has become part of crusader lore.
33:54It is known as the Battle of Dorylaeum.
34:01Though many have tried,
34:03to date, no one has found the real battle site.
34:07But John France has spent years sifting for clues
34:11and now thinks he can pinpoint its exact location.
34:17We know certain things about this battle,
34:20but finding it is a different matter.
34:23We know that it took place at a junction of two valleys.
34:27We know there was a marsh.
34:29But the thing that we really know is
34:32that this junction of two valleys
34:34must have provided an immense amount of space
34:37because at one stage, both armies deployed in full battle array
34:42and that takes a lot of room.
34:47Professor France is taking the same road used by the crusaders in 1097.
34:53Back then, it was so narrow,
34:56they could only travel five abreast.
34:59With 60,000 men,
35:01the procession took three days to pass any given point.
35:05As a result, a vanguard of 20,000 men led by Bohemond
35:09became separated from the main body of the army.
35:14They ended up camping alone and vulnerable
35:17in the very valley chosen by Kilij Arslan for his ambush.
35:26This is really getting very flat and open.
35:29I think this looks like a place where two valleys meet.
35:33In fact, it really looks like a place where two valleys meet.
35:3835 miles from Nicaea,
35:41John France reveals for the first time
35:44the long-lost site of the Battle of Dorylaeum,
35:48the first major battle of the crusades.
35:53This really is it.
35:55You've got to take away all the modern earthworks,
35:58this road, this is a flat plain of the junction of two valleys.
36:05It fits all the pictures, it's even slightly damp underfoot.
36:09This is it. This is where the battle took place.
36:12We're standing on one of the really decisive battlefields
36:15of the crusading era.
36:23At dawn on July 1st, 1097,
36:26tens of thousands of Turks mounted a head-on attack
36:29against Bohemond's vanguard force
36:31camped alone on the valley bed.
36:35At last, on the real battle site,
36:38Professor France can see exactly how the epic struggle unfolded.
36:42They were all mashed up in the camp here by the jeep,
36:46desperately trying to get their defences up
36:49and charging up at them, up the valley floor, are the Turks.
37:02For one man who fought at Dorylaeum,
37:05it was a day he would never forget.
37:08Bohemond said to his men,
37:10Gentlemen, brave soldiers of Christ,
37:13you can see that we are encircled
37:15and that a hard battle lies ahead.
37:17Therefore, let all knights go out like men and meet the enemy.
37:23With the Turks streaming through the camp,
37:26the crusaders were pinned down.
37:28No matter how many Turks they killed,
37:30they were losing more men.
37:41As wave after wave of Turkish cavalry swept towards them,
37:45they now faced a style of warfare they'd never encountered before.
37:53These were no ordinary riders.
37:56These were no ordinary riders.
37:58These were archers mounted on horseback.
38:04The Seljuk Turks were really first class archers
38:07and very courageous.
38:09They attacked very quickly.
38:11They were very light, unlike the Western European knights.
38:16They have smaller horses.
38:18They don't carry too much armours.
38:20They were really clever in shooting arrows from the back of the horse,
38:25riding at a very fast speed.
38:29This startling new tactic
38:31was decimating Bohemond's vanguard force of 20,000 men.
38:37But mounted archers were not the only surprise the Turks had in store.
38:42The Turks surrounded us on all sides,
38:44throwing darts, casting javelins,
38:47and shooting arrows from an astonishing range.
38:56Just how the Turks fired from so far away
38:59has never been understood.
39:02But buried away in a little-known Muslim text of the time,
39:06Dr. Taif al-Azhari
39:08has discovered an obscure reference written in ancient Arabic
39:11that may solve the mystery.
39:14The Naukiya.
39:18The Naukiya were a battalion inside the Turkish army
39:21of arrow foot soldiers.
39:24The soldier lay down with his back to the ground
39:27and he used a huge bow with both muscles of his legs
39:31and fired a couple of hundred metres away.
39:38Sometimes in the sources we have stories
39:41like the sunlight disappeared for a couple of seconds
39:44because of the sheer number of the arrows.
39:56Bohemond had already lost some 4,000 men
40:00and now the Turks were closing in for the kill.
40:03Desperately, he ordered his men to hold the lines around the camp.
40:08But from beyond the valley, help was at hand.
40:14A greater part of the army,
40:16under those illustrious and splendid men,
40:19Duke Godfrey, his brother Baldwin,
40:22and other warriors devoted to God,
40:25was advancing swiftly to the aid of their brethren.
40:38With the armies of Godfrey and Baldwin pouring into the valley,
40:42the crusader force swelled to 55,000 men.
40:56The Turks found themselves, potentially at least,
40:59between an anvil and a hammer.
41:02And rather than face that, they broke and fled, very sensibly.
41:08The sheer number of the combined crusader force
41:12had overwhelmed the Turks.
41:17But it has to be said, the Turks fought brilliantly.
41:21Who would ever have praised so much the Turks,
41:26said one of the crusaders, who were such fine soldiers,
41:30and had they been but Christians, would have been the equal of us.
41:38The crusaders believed they were now invincible.
41:42One confidently wrote home to his wife to say,
41:45they should all be at the gates of Jerusalem in just five weeks.
41:50He couldn't have been more wrong.
41:53In just over a month, he would still be hundreds of miles from the Holy City,
41:58and hundreds more would be dead,
42:01not from battle, but from the perils of the journey itself.
42:07To be continued