History Ch_The Crusades Crescent and the Cross_2of4_The First Crusade_Part 2
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00:00For thousands of years, the holy lands of the Middle East have run with blood.
00:10Here, the scars of battle fought between three of the great religions of the world are etched
00:16into the earth.
00:17In July of 1097, two mighty armies, Kilij Arslan's fierce Turks and the Christian forces
00:30led by Bohemond, Duke Godfrey and Baldwin collided in an epic battle at Dorylaeum.
00:40Thousands of men were felled on both sides, Muslims and Christians who laid down their
00:46lives for their God.
00:49As the Turks retreated into the hills, the Christians, feeling indomitable, marched onward,
00:55resolute to the object of their quest, the holy city of Jerusalem.
01:08This was the collision of two great faiths, the clash between the crescent and the cross.
01:16This was the Crusades.
01:41The Crusaders had successfully defeated the Turkish army of Kilij Arslan at Dorylaeum.
01:48But their leaders feared another ambush.
01:53Instead of following the most direct route to the holy land, they opted for a more securitous
01:58path that would take the whole procession across the anti-Taurus mountains.
02:10A few years later, one young knight recalled the perilous journey.
02:16We began to cross a damnable mountain, which was so high and steep that none of our soldiers
02:22dared to overtake one another on the mountain path.
02:26Horses fell over the precipice and one beast of burden dragged another down.
02:41Compelled to travel in single file, it took them three weeks to cross the mountains.
02:51And the worst was yet to come.
02:55Already exhausted, they headed down onto the arid plains of Pisidia, at ninety degree heat.
03:06The land was deserted, waterless and uninhabitable.
03:09We suffered greatly from hunger and thirst and found nothing at all to eat.
03:18More than five hundred of both sexes died at this time, frustrated by suffering.
03:24Most serious of all, their trusty steeds, companions in battle, on whom their masters
03:30depended for their own safety and whose glory should be seen in prancing hoof and gleaming
03:36teeth, gave way like common beasts of burden.
03:50After months of this torturous journey, there was one notable casualty, Godhilda, the wife
03:56of one of the chief commanders of the crusade, Baldwin, the Count of Bologna.
04:03Godhilda was a very, very wealthy woman.
04:05She would have held estates and had finances that Baldwin, as her husband, would have had
04:11a root into.
04:12If she died, these would go back to her family.
04:15He wouldn't have access to her.
04:16They would stay with her bloodline.
04:20Her death means that his chances of becoming rich when he went back home had gone.
04:26His mindset would change.
04:27He was now potentially on the lookout for lands, for territory, for wealth of his own.
04:32Within a day or so of her death, his policy became one of acquisition and greed.
04:40The chroniclers make no mention of his grief, only that Baldwin took a few hundred nights
04:46and left the main army on a solo mission.
04:51If he was to make up for the loss of his wife's wealth, the easiest course would be to seize
04:57a city of his own.
05:00A hundred miles to the east was the perfect target, Edessa.
05:07Edessa is a wealthy city.
05:09It generates its own income through metalwork.
05:12It's a very fertile region.
05:13It's very close to the Euphrates River.
05:15It's also on the trade routes, so you've got spices and luxury cloths coming across from
05:19the east, passing through it, and then going to the Mediterranean for further trade.
05:23It's a really, really good spot for Baldwin to base himself.
05:36The problem for Baldwin was that Edessa was not in Muslim hands.
05:41It was a Christian city that had held out against the Turks, but the people of Edessa
05:49had grown weary of constant attacks by the Muslims.
05:53When news spread that a great crusader prince was close by, the citizens pleaded with their
05:59governor, Thoros, to invite Baldwin to come to their aid.
06:04The governor of the city was a Christian Armenian called Thoros.
06:12He was a feeble old man without child of either sex.
06:18He was a useless overlord.
06:21He was unable to protect his citizens from wrongs or to procure them relief from the
06:27dangers of attack from these cursed infidels.
06:34Baldwin's help would come at a price.
06:36He would protect Edessa from the Turks in return for the keys to the city.
06:42This naively promised to make Baldwin the new ruler, but only after his death.
06:50The old man then sealed his own fate by adopting Baldwin as his son.
06:56For Baldwin, Thoros' death would not come soon enough.
07:02Baldwin discovered evil counsellors in Edessa, traitors who plotted with him to have Thoros
07:08murdered and who promised to hand Edessa over to him.
07:13Thoros realised too late that he had been deceived.
07:20He ran for his life.
07:25He took a rope and let it down from the tower.
07:33Immediately, his destroyers shot him down into the middle of the street.
07:39Cutting off his head, they carried it on a spear through the quarters of the city for
07:44everyone to mock.
07:47It's not a good start for crusading ideology, it has to be said.
07:51This is not a great moment in the idea that Christianity is going to come to save Eastern
07:59Christendom from the threat of Islam.
08:01The reality is that Baldwin has come with an eye to gaining territory and I think he's
08:06prepared to remove physically and politically a figure who's Christian from power to get
08:14his own territory.
08:15If there had been no Islam in that world, but you had had Eastern Christianity, which
08:20you had after all before the rise of Islam, exactly the same thing would have happened,
08:25but they would have had to find a different ideological colouring for it.
08:29They probably would have said, these are not proper Christians, we're the true Christians,
08:34like religious fundamentalists of all hues say.
08:38So from that point of view, many Christians in that region also regarded the crusaders
08:46as essentially Christian fundamentalist barbarians from the uncivilized lands of the North.
08:55As Baldwin celebrated his successful takeover of Edessa, a hundred and fifty miles to the
08:59southwest, the main crusader army arrived at the great walled city of Antioch.
09:07Since the time of the Apostle Saint Peter, it had become a thriving Christian city, but
09:12in 1085, the Turks had seized control.
09:16This would be a prize second only to Jerusalem, a prize worth dying for.
09:29The splendour of Antioch is hard to see today.
09:32The once majestic city now lies in ruins in the hill country of Eastern Turkey.
09:39But for one knight, who after a year on crusade caught his first glimpse of the ancient capital
09:44in 1097, it was awe inspiring.
09:50The city is surrounded by two walls, one of which is very high and amazingly broad.
09:57It's built with huge stones, and there are set upon it 450 towers.
10:05It's shut in by four mountains, and alongside the city walls runs a deep river.
10:14And everything about the city is beautiful.
10:16I think the crusaders want to take the city for a whole range of reasons.
10:22First and probably foremost is strategic.
10:25Antioch is literally the gateway to Syria and the gateway to the Holy Land.
10:28If they leave the city behind them, their route for escape and certainly their route
10:33for resupply and reinforcement is going to be cut off.
10:37Spiritually, it's almost the equal of Jerusalem in many ways, as a goal, because Antioch was
10:44in Christian tradition the site of the founding of the very, very first Christian church by
10:48Saint Peter, the Apostle of Christ.
10:51So this gave it a real spiritual power and a spiritual cachet that I think the crusaders
10:55were very empowered by.
10:59The majority of Antioch's inhabitants were Armenian and Greek Orthodox Christians.
11:05Their Turkish rulers granted them total freedom to worship.
11:09But this was not enough for the crusaders outside the city walls.
11:13They wanted to remove the Turks from power and return the city to Christian rule.
11:19But taking it back wouldn't be easy.
11:23Antioch is a very well defended city indeed.
11:27The walls surrounding the city, here high on the mountain, going down to the plain are
11:34very massive.
11:35You can see that, the construction here, a strong, stout, thick inner core faced with
11:43this fine exterior, reinforced, of course, with a system of towers.
11:48The towers interlock with one another.
11:51This is the kind of wall you don't shift with a battering ram.
11:58The Christian chroniclers weren't alone in recording the tale of the bloody struggle
12:02for Antioch.
12:05Even Aletheer travelled far and wide collecting tales of the great Muslim heroes who resisted
12:11the crusaders.
12:12The Franks, as he called them.
12:16His celebrated history tells of the spirited Turkish leader of Antioch, Yaghi Siyan.
12:23Yaghi Siyan, the ruler of Antioch, showed unparalleled wisdom and courage, strength
12:32and judgment.
12:35If all the Franks who died attacking his city had survived, they would have overrun all
12:42the lands of Islam.
12:48Even Aletheer would recount how Yaghi Siyan, a man fabled for his big hairy ears and thick
12:53grey beard, did his utmost to keep the enemy out.
12:58But he knew any of the local Christians might be persuaded to let the Franks in.
13:06When he heard the approach of the Franks, he was not sure how the Christian people of
13:13the city would react.
13:16So he sent all the Muslims outside the city walls to dig trenches.
13:22And the next day, he sent the Christians by themselves to do the same task.
13:29When they were ready to return home at the end of the day, he refused to allow them in.
13:36Antioch is yours, he said, but you have to leave it to me until I find out what happens
13:43between us and the Franks.
13:46Yaghi Siyan believed he had made Antioch unassailable.
13:53He then turned his attention to the crusader army amassing outside his city walls.
13:58Yaghi Siyan is praised by all the sources about his good organization of the defense
14:05night and day, night shifts, night guards, throwing oil at the crusaders, depriving them
14:11from food supplies, sending guards during the night to attack their camps, burn some
14:19of their tents, depriving them of water supplies.
14:23He really confronted the crusaders alone and he fought vigorously to defend his city.
14:29His efforts paid off.
14:31After eight arduous months, the crusaders were no closer to getting in, and conditions
14:36in the camp were utterly desperate.
14:40Food had always been scarce, and they had the expelled Christians to feed as well.
14:46As the siege dragged on, the crusaders had virtually nothing left to eat.
14:56The Christian chronicler William of Tyre told how the crusaders were forced to drain blood
15:02from their own horses and drink it.
15:16Day by day, the shortage of provisions continued and the famine grew, and as a result of pestilence
15:24broke out among the legions in the camp, so fatal that there was now scarcely room to
15:29bury the dead.
15:32With the loss of those who had wasted away through hunger and disease, and of others
15:36who had perished by the sword, the army had diminished to such an extent, it seemed as
15:43if barely half our numbers had survived.
15:48The suffering of the crusaders was about to get worse.
15:58In a medieval Islamic text, Dr. Taif Al-Azari has discovered how the leader of Antioch,
16:04Yagi Shiyan, was able to summon reinforcements right under the nose of the crusaders.
16:11The answer was this, a pigeon.
16:17The Seljuk Turks were the first ones to invent the postal service, the kind of DHL of today.
16:25They would attach a message to the bird's leg and set it free.
16:28In a matter of hours, the message would come across and the help would arrive from anywhere
16:34in the Muslim world.
16:41Two months later, Christian scouts reported that a massive Turkish army was on its way.
16:47The crusaders had no time, they needed to break into the city quickly.
16:53It was Bohemond who found the weak spot in the city's defences, a traitor in the Muslim
16:58ranks.
17:00He was an armourer, a maker of breastplates named Firuz.
17:07He walked at the tower that stood over the riverbed where the water flowed from the city
17:12into the valley.
17:17He had long served the ruler of Antioch, Yagi Shiyan, but he sealed a pact with the Franks.
17:26They bribed him with a fortune in money and lands.
17:31Firuz was the commander, not only of one tower, but of three towers.
17:37Bohemond really hit gold dust.
17:41For whatever reason, he was ready to betray the city.
17:46And as so often happens, it was betrayal that let the enemy in, not a storming of the city.
17:55All the preparations were made.
17:58In the storm, the knights and the foot soldiers began to approach the towers of which Firuz
18:02was warden.
18:03And our captain Bohemond said to us, go on, strong in heart and lucky in your comrades,
18:09and scale the ladders into Antioch, for by God's will, this city shall be in our power
18:15in a trice.
18:27What I'm looking for is what I've always wanted to find, which is Firuz's tower.
18:35Now, this is the foundation of a major tower, right on the angle of the wall where it plunges
18:45down to the south defences, and I don't think there can be anywhere else that this can be
18:52except the tower of Firuz.
18:55The crusaders had plenty of cover.
18:57They came up the hill beyond here, massed over this shelf.
19:08Firuz leaned over the wall and he swung a lantern.
19:18We took the ladders and lashed them to the battlements of the city.
19:24An amazing number of men began to climb.
19:28But then, of course, disaster.
19:33The ladder broke.
19:39It was too late to turn back now.
19:42More crusaders were scrambling up the remaining ladders into Firuz's tower.
19:46Within minutes, they were streaming down the battlements into the city and opening the
19:51gates for the rest of the knights waiting outside.
19:59They flung the gateway open and the men funnelled into the city.
20:16Eight months of starvation and disease left the crusaders in no mood for mercy.
20:36Guided by the local Christians of Antioch, they flushed the Muslims out from their homes,
20:41the city streets and the mosques, and killed them indiscriminately.
20:50The shrieks of countless people rose, making a terrifying noise throughout the city.
20:56But Bohemond did not waste any time on this account and ordered his glorious banner to
21:00be carried and set up on top of a wall opposite the citadel.
21:07Every street on every side was full of corpses, so that no one could endure to be there because
21:12of the stench, nor could they walk along the narrow paths of the city, except over the
21:18bodies of the dead.
21:25Everyone was really massacred, was killed.
21:28The Jews, the Christians, the Muslims, and then sparely children or women or elderly,
21:34they were really avenging and proving that they are really superior and they are the
21:39true and new master to the territory.
21:43The one inhabitant of Antioch the crusaders didn't manage to find was its Turkish ruler,
21:50Yagisiyan.
21:53He managed to escape.
21:55Yagisiyan was told they had taken the citadel.
22:02Panic seized him, and he opened the gates and fled with an escort of thirty pages.
22:08When he recovered his self-control, he repented, having rushed to safety, instead of staying
22:14there and fighting to the death.
22:18He started groaning and weeping.
22:21When he was at his last gasp, a shepherd passed by, killed him, cut off his head, and took
22:28it to the Franks at Antioch.
22:33Yagisiyan's head on a stick was small consolation.
22:37Bohemond had much more to worry about.
22:45Yagisiyan's message had gotten through.
22:47The day after his execution, the Turkish reinforcements finally arrived.
22:58The Christian besiegers would now become the besieged.
23:10In June 1098, after an eight-month siege, the crusaders had finally taken the ancient
23:16city of Antioch.
23:17Ironically, they had traded places with their enemy.
23:22The Christians were now the ones imprisoned behind its walls.
23:27The Turks, on the outside, ready to besiege.
23:43This is a pretty desperate situation, morale is rock bottom, everybody is frightened, and
23:48quite reasonably so, they look as though they're dead.
23:53And in this desperate situation, the basic motivation of the crusaders comes out.
24:01Their belief, the belief of the leading members, that somehow God is on their side.
24:20The crusaders prayed for a miracle.
24:24And they got one.
24:26News spread that God had sent word to a crusader in a vision.
24:32Well, we have to distinguish visions from imaginations.
24:38A real vision comes from God, actually.
24:44It is the work of the Holy Spirit.
24:50The crusader was only a lowly priest from France.
24:55But his vision would inspire an entire army.
25:04He was a pilgrim by the name of Peter Bartholomew.
25:07One night, so he said, St. Andrew the Apostle appeared to him and said,
25:13Know, my son, that if you go to the church of the Blessed Peter in the city of Antioch
25:17there, you shall find the Holy Lance, the spear with which our savior Jesus Christ was
25:23pierced when he was hanging on the cross.
25:25And he swore that the whole story was true.
25:31The real spear that pierced Christ's side has not been seen in centuries.
25:38To find the Holy Lance now, at a time of deep crisis, would be to establish a powerful connection
25:44between the crusaders and Christ.
25:49There can't be the real relics of Christ, because Jesus rose from the dead.
25:56And he went up to his father in heaven, so there are no remains.
26:01So it cannot be only what has touched him, or what he has touched,
26:09like the cross or the Holy Lance.
26:16It's very significant that he seizes upon the idea of a simple relic, nothing complex,
26:22a simple relic, a signal from God that everybody can focus on, that is unarguable, undisputable.
26:29It isn't a story, it isn't just a vision, it's a solid metal token of God's will.
26:39Peter Bartholomew handpicked his own band of 12 disciples and dashed to the small church
26:48to dig up the floor where he claimed the Holy Lance was buried.
26:56After a day and night of frantic digging, hope had begun to fail.
27:10But Peter himself leaped into the pit inside the church and pulled out a piece of rusty metal.
27:26He claimed he had found the elusive Holy Lance, a claim Arab historians have ridiculed.
27:41The holy man who proclaimed that the Messiah had the Lance buried in the church was an
27:46extremely wily monk. He told them all, if you find it, you'll be victorious.
27:56Otherwise you'll face a certain death. But before saying this, he went and buried
28:04the Lance in the soil under the church and then he covered his tracks.
28:15The holy relics is a very interesting thing because as the crusading armies went, the
28:21number of holy relics multiplied and people who wanted to make the equivalent of a quick
28:28buck went and found more and more holy relics. As to what these objects really were is, you
28:36know, one can imagine anything but the fact that they needed them shows that these holy
28:41relics became a primitive form of propaganda. It's a matter of faith what I say now. There
28:49are people with special gifts from God who can distinguish in holy things and also in
28:57relics which can say this is authentic, the other thing is not authentic. But it's a matter
29:04of faith. The people in the army recovered their morale,
29:08their fighting will. This is a moment of violent religious exaltation. The mood in the army
29:16changes. Aggression replaces defeatism. This is an army ready to fight.
29:28Six lines of battle were drawn up by those of us inside the city. We closed our ranks
29:33and protected by the sign of the cross, we went out by the gate.
29:40When the Turks saw our squadrons so well drawn up, coming out one after the other, they said
29:46let them come so that we may have them more surely in our power. But once we were all
29:52outside and the Turks saw how great was the force of the Franks, oh, they were much afraid.
30:02The crusaders had just 200 horses left but they still rode out to face the Turks head
30:07on. The holy lance held high. One eyewitness spoke of yet another vision, an army of spirits
30:17sent by God. Then appeared a countless host of men on
30:22white horses whose banners were all white. When our men saw this, they did not understand
30:28what was happening or who these men might be until they realized this was the blessed
30:34help sent by Christ. The Turks fled in terror and with God's help we defeated them.
30:56Whether the visions were real or just an elaborate hoax to boost morale, the city of Antioch
31:02was once again in Christian hands. But it would never be returned to the control of
31:07the Eastern Church of the Byzantine Emperor. Bohemond reneged on the promise he had made
31:18to Alexios a year before and crowned himself Prince of Antioch.
31:25When Bohemond decided to hold on to Antioch, he had completely broken his promise to Alexios.
31:30The idea that he would return lands that he conquered to the Byzantine Emperor was
31:34in tatters. He had also fractured and destroyed one of the basic ideas, one of the pillars,
31:40the catalyst of the First Crusade. The idea of Pope Urban that the Western Church would
31:45work with the Byzantines to defeat the Muslims of the Near East was no longer sustainable.
31:51Great swathes of territory were now in Crusader hands. Baldwin controlled all the land around
31:57Edessa and Bohemond the territory around Antioch. Both were now very rich men.
32:05By the end of 1098, as the leaders became increasingly consumed by running their new
32:09principalities, they began to stall on whether to continue the march on to Jerusalem.
32:16There are huge arguments right across the range of the leaders, all the way through
32:21different levels of the army, about where the Crusade should go next. Should they immediately
32:27try to march on Jerusalem? Should they recover their strength? How long should they wait?
32:31What route should they take? And the potential is for the army to literally just fall apart,
32:37to go into different directions, for people to start returning home, to lose their impetus
32:41entirely. And it comes very close to this.
32:47As the Crusade leaders squabbled, the troops demanded that the army march southward to
32:53Jerusalem. To them, the true goal of the Crusade had been forgotten. Their anger and frustration
33:00finally boiled over in a small town two days' ride from Antioch, called Marat al-Numan.
33:08So this is where the legacy of the First Crusade really took place. I think it's a landmark
33:18for any historian to visit this place. This is where the First Crusader really made their
33:24violent legacy.
33:27It would be here the Christians would commit the most evil atrocity of the Crusade.
33:38This is Dr. Taif al-Azari's first visit to Marat al-Numan, the site of the most shocking
33:49atrocity of the First Crusade. Tucked away in the northwest corner of Syria, this eleventh-century
33:56citadel has been all but forgotten. Its ruins are now little more than a playground to the
34:03children who emerged to shadow his tour.
34:11I think we are really making our way into the citadel of Marat, and to the left the
34:16remains of the mosque, and to the right hand the remains of the little palace for the ruler
34:23of the city.
34:34Probably this was a church serving the Christian population of Marat al-Numan, who were living
34:44peacefully side by side with their fellow Muslims. And of course the Crusaders were
34:49really indiscriminate about killing all the inhabitants of Marat, regardless of their
34:54faith or their religion.
35:00As the Crusaders consolidated their hold on the land around Antioch, a small contingent
35:06arrived here in November 1098, under the leadership of Bohemond.
35:12We came to the city named Marat, not far off, in which many Turks and Saracens lived. Bohemond
35:20sent an interpreter to the Saracen leaders to tell them if they, with their wives and
35:24children and goods, would take refuge in a palace just above the city gates, he would
35:30spare them from death. All our men entered the gates, and each of them seized his own
35:37share of whatever goods he could find in all the houses and cellars. And towards dawn,
35:48everybody was killed.
35:50The sources really tell us about the suffering of the people of Marat.
36:00The suffering for all the inhabitants. Some of them were really lit in fire, and people
36:05were really just fried inside, burned alive inside. Some managed to escape. Of course
36:10they cannot really escape the butchery of the Crusaders, decapitated or knifed a thousand
36:15times. Twenty thousand, twenty-five thousand were really massacred inside the town.
36:23Not only the Muslims were massacred, also Christians as well. Not only soldiers, but
36:28also children, elderly women met their violent fate. So it was really a war crime place,
36:38kind of an ethnic cleansing.
36:59Treachery, followed by massacre, had become the calling cards of the Crusader army.
37:19But as Christian witnesses revealed, it was what happened after the killing finally stopped,
37:26and sets the story of Marat al-Numan apart.
37:33The Franks stayed in the city for one month and four days. And while we were there, some
37:40of our men could not satisfy their needs. Either because we were there too long, or
37:48because they were so hungry, for there was no plunder to be had outside the city walls.
37:56So they ripped up the bodies of the dead, and others cut the dead flesh into slices
38:03and cooked it to eat. Our troops boiled pagan adults in cooking pots. They impaled children
38:11on spits to devour their flesh.
38:26There is no such thing as a spiritual war. When you fight a war, the aim of that war
38:32is to defeat your enemy. They involve violence, they involve threats, they involve propaganda,
38:39and they involve, let's put it like this, shock and awe. And the eating of human flesh
38:49was designed to strike fear in the heart of the enemy. Here we are, we are strong, we
38:57are tough, and if necessary we'll eat you up alive. And to a certain extent, that succeeded.
39:04I mean, there was a wave of horror and fear. They eat us, and if they're eating us dead
39:10tomorrow they might eat us alive.
39:14To the leaders of the crusade, the barbarity that took place at Marat proved that their
39:19troops wouldn't tolerate any more delays. The time had come to fulfill their vows and
39:25seize the city that had inspired them to risk everything in the name of God. It made no
39:31difference that Jerusalem had recently fallen into the control of a far more conciliatory
39:36Muslim power, the Fatimids of Egypt, and that they were calling for peace.
39:44In June 1099, 13,000 crusaders, less than a quarter of the number that had originally
39:51set out from Europe, arrived at the gates of the city where Jesus Christ had died.
40:02When the crusaders reached the walls of Jerusalem, they finally arrived at their goal. After
40:06three years, 3,000 miles marching, the most incredible suffering, terrible, terrible losses,
40:13they'd arrived at the holy city. Some were so overwhelmed with emotion they wept, others
40:17prostrated themselves on the ground. But now, of course, the hardest task of all faced them.
40:23They had to break in.
40:32After three years of fighting, the crusader army prepared to attack Jerusalem. The walls
40:40were 50 feet high and 10 feet thick. To scale them, they would need ladders and siege towers.
40:49But the Muslim defenders had razed the entire surrounding area of trees. The Christians
40:57sent out foraging parties to scavenge for wood. Hidden in a hole in the ground, they
41:03found 400 pieces of ready-prepared timber. It seemed, once again, God was giving them
41:11a helping hand. It was enough timber to build two 50-foot siege towers with which to attack
41:19the walls of Jerusalem. Everything was in place for the final showdown.
41:27On the 14th of July, 1099, the crusaders launched a two-pronged assault. Two siege towers were
41:44rolled into place, one to the northwest and the other to the south of the city. The Muslim
41:50defenders knew if just one tower breached the walls, Jerusalem would fall. You can look
41:59up at these walls and imagine missiles, stones, arrows raining down upon you. The fighting
42:07was barbaric and intense. And at one point, the crusaders gave the phrase, live ammunition,
42:24its literal meaning. They captured a Muslim, strapped him to a catapult and fired him back
42:28over the walls. To the south, the Muslims pelted the first siege tower with fire and
42:36with pots of oil and flaming bolts, until finally it went up in flames. Now, only one
42:52siege tower was left, to the northwest of the city, under the command of the revered
42:57crusader general, Duke Godfrey. Godfrey decided upon a change of plan. I've got here an eyewitness
43:05account written by a man called Raymond of Aguille. This is what he said. Godfrey moved
43:11to a position between the church of the blessed Stephen and the valley of Josaphat. Godfrey's
43:16plan was inspired. He had found the weak spot in the Muslim fortifications, but it was over
43:23a mile round to the northeast of the city. In the course of just a few hours, and under
43:29the cover of darkness, he had his men wheel the whole siege tower to the less defended
43:34part of the wall. Here we are, the spot that the crusaders broke into Jerusalem.
44:00The Muslims mounted one last ditch attempt to destroy Godfrey's siege tower. They used
44:06grappling irons to try and snare the tower, to use the hooks to catch the wood, and then
44:11remarkably to pull the thing over. To counter this, the crusaders had an enormous scythe
44:17made that would cut through these ropes. At one moment, there was a brief fire there up
44:22on the walls. Godfrey saw this and lowered a makeshift bridge from his tower onto the battlements.
44:38The walls were breached, and the Muslim defenders ran for their lives. The Christians, at last,
44:45could seize the holy city of Jerusalem.
44:52We chased the Saracens, and killed them all the way up to Solomon's Temple. Before long,
44:59its walls were streaming with blood. We killed both men and women, cutting off their heads
45:07with our drawn swords. The surviving Saracens dragged the dead bodies out in front of the
45:14city gates, and piled them up in mounds as high as houses. We killed them all.
45:36No one has ever seen, or heard, such slaughter of pagans. For they burnt them on pyres as
45:45high as pyramids. No one knew how many there were. Except God.
45:56Jerusalem is ours.
45:59The fact that, against all the odds, seemingly in a miracle, this crusade took Jerusalem
46:06and achieved what it had set out to do, that seemed a very clear indication that God's
46:12hand was at work, and that its participants in all of Western Europe suddenly thought,
46:17this is true. God really does want a crusade to happen. God really is behind this venture.
46:30Almost three years after he left his homeland in Northern Europe, Duke Godfrey would become
46:39the new Christian ruler of Jerusalem. Humbly, he refused to be crowned king in the city
46:46where Jesus Christ had reigned. A year later, he died in the holy city. Baldwin, the treacherous
46:54lord of Edessa, rushed to fill his shoes. He didn't share his brother's theological
46:59qualms. He readily took the title, King of Jerusalem. News sped back to Europe of the
47:08extraordinary success of the first crusade. But the inspiration for 60,000 men to travel
47:143,000 miles, Pope Urban, died before learning that Jerusalem was back in Christian hands
47:21for the first time in 400 years. Jerusalem is less than half a mile wide. Within her
47:32walls, the crusaders had massacred an estimated 30,000 Muslims and Jews. News of the slaughter
47:41shocked the Islamic world. The crusades had a very deep impact on Arab society. One, they
47:51were seen as a barbarian incursion and stories of those crusades are still told in cafes
47:59and in families as if they happened yesterday. This is something quite striking. And so whenever
48:05the West has invaded that region again, people say it's another crusade, which is why after
48:12the awful events of 9-11, when the American president inadvertently, one assumes, said
48:19we now have to wage a crusade to stop this, a shiver went down the collective spine of
48:26the Islamic world because they felt they knew what was coming. As the crusaders reveled
48:34in victory and plotted how to consolidate their hold on the Holy Land, slowly, steadily,
48:40the Muslims prepared to strike back. It would not be long before the wrath of Islam was
48:46unleashed on the fledgling Christian kingdom of Jerusalem.