Victory in the East

by John France

  Fig. 17a Jerusalem, initial deployment of the Crusader army. 7–12 June 1099

  Fig. 17b Jerusalem, the attack of 13 June 1099

  Fig. 17c Jerusalem, final attack of 13–15 July 1099

  The crusaders approached Jerusalem from the north-west along the Jaffa road and came to the city on the side where its fortifications are at their most impressive. The Quadrangular Tower and the Citadel by the Jaffa Gate dominated the treble line of defences to the north, while the steep slope up to the walls from the vale of Hinnom made difficult any attack south of the citadel. Albert of Aix describes a rather curious order of siege. Godfrey stood before the Tower of David with Tancred to his left and the count of Toulouse to his right and Robert of Flanders and Hugh of St Pol behind, while Robert of Normandy and Conan of Brittany encamped before the Damascus Gate to the north. It seems unlikely that this was ever an order of siege, for there is a deep topographic confusion in Albert’s account. He presents Godfrey camped outside the Citadel and later tells us that the great siege tower used by Godfrey was built in this very place, when it is certain that it was constructed much further to the north and east. Albert seems to have confused the two great strong-points of the defences, the Citadel and the Quadrangular Tower to the north, in the general vicinity of which Godfrey was definitely to be found a few days after the arrival, on the occasion of the attack of 13 June.39 Ralph of Caen says that Robert of Normandy and Robert of Flanders encamped outside the Damascus Gate (also called the St Stephen Gate) with Tancred to their right; he was on lower ground than they but his position sloped upward to the west where Godfrey took position adjacent to him. The Anonymous confirms this, but does not indicate the relative positions of Godfrey and Tancred, merely making it clear that they were to the west of the two Roberts. Raymond of Aguilers does not mention Tancred but says that Godfrey and the two Roberts faced the northern wall between the St Stephen Gate and the Quadrangular Tower, and adds that Raymond of Toulouse at first set his army adjacent to Godfrey’s, all down the west side of the city. It would seem, therefore, that the initial order of siege was as follows: the two Roberts were directly outside the St Damascus Gate with Tancred to their right and Godfrey beyond him, while the large Provençal army stood along the west face of the city before the Citadel (see fig. 17a).40 The deployment of the Provençal force was unsatisfactory because they stood opposite the most formidable fortifications and the steeply sloping southern sector of the west wall. Very soon after the arrival of the army Count Raymond reconnoitred and decided that Mt Zion was a better place to attack. This decision was challenged by his own men, many of whom remained in the original camp, and the count was obliged to pay to find a garrison for the new position.41 There were good reasons for both the decision and the opposition to it. The west wall was far too strong to attack and the level ground outside the Zion Gate offered better prospects especially as the adoption of that position divided the defence, was close enough to the Citadel to distract its garrison, and, as Albert makes clear, enabled the count to keep some forces on the Mount of Olives and patrols in the valley of Josaphat (see fig. 17a). On the other hand, the new camp was dangerously exposed, placed, as it was, in the space of only some fifty metres between the church of St Mary of Mt Zion and the wall. So close were they to the wall that a machine placed within the Zion Gate was able to set fire to the crusader camp as well as attack machines in the last climax of the siege. But the resistance to the move had other causes, for there appears to have been considerable tension within the Provençal camp which later resulted in his own people rumour-mongering about the Count of Toulouse in order to prevent him from being made ruler of Jerusalem, and it is possible that such factors led Gaston of Béarn to take service with the North French.42 Raymond of Aguilers says that some of the other leaders objected to this redeployment, but they do not seem to have pursued the matter; perhaps after the tensions of the march south such a separation suited all parties.

  On 12 June the leaders met and were urged by a local hermit who had already spoken to Tancred to make an immediate attack on the city which God would deliver to them.43 However persuasive he may have been, the leaders had probably resolved on this course of action anyway. Their position was difficult. The army was so small that they could not properly besiege the city when the western and eastern walls were guarded only by pickets. The Provençals probably blockaded no more than 250–300 metres of the long southern wall, while the rest of the army was concentrated in 600 metres, or rather less than half of the north face of the city. If they had attempted to stretch the army further they would have been vulnerable to sallies. Furthermore they feared the imminent arrival of an Egyptian relief force. The main objection to such a coup was the lack of siege equipment, and indeed they were only able to muster a single assault-ladder, so short was the time of preparation and so scarce was wood in the vicinity of Jerusalem. The Anonymous and Raymond of Aguilers say that this attack on 13 June broke through the outer wall and set a siege ladder against the inner before being aborted. Ralph of Caen says that because he had found the wood for the one siege ladder Tancred was able to insist that the attack be against his section of the wall, though he was persuaded that Reybold of Chartres, and not he, should be first up the ladder. In the event, Reybold’s hand was cut off and he was taken back to Tancred’s camp for treatment. It is thus pretty certain that the army attacked the section of the wall just to the east of the Quadrangular Tower besieged by Tancred. Albert says that the crusaders attacked under cover of a ‘tortoise’ of interlocked shields and, in a hail of missiles thrown by both sides, did terrible damage to the outer wall, suffering heavy losses for little achievement. Tudebode adds one detail to the Anonymous’s story; that Reginald, dapifer of Hugh of Liziniac, was lost in this attack.44 Its failure depressed the Christian host and on 15 June the leaders met once more in conference and resolved on a more methodical preparation for the next attack.

  They resolved, according to Albert of Aachen, on the building of heavy siege machinery, in the event siege-towers, rams and projectile-throwers. This had the important effect of narrowing the ground of their attack to such points along the wall as were level. On the southern defences this meant the area of Mt Zion alone while even to the north attacking positions would have to be chosen carefully for a tower perilously balanced could be easily cast down by the enemy. Effort was centred on two great wooden towers which were to crush the defences. But this once more brought the army face to face with the problem of lack of wood. As we have seen, this was solved by at least one chance find, by sending out foraging parties under escort and by the arrival of the fleet at Jaffa on 17 June. Their problem was to find heavy structural timber and it was probably in this respect and the provision of skilled labour that the arrival of the fleet was so important. In the event it was Provençal forces which brought back the equipment and men and Count Raymond employed one of the Genoese, William Ricau, to construct his tower.45 In the accounts of the building of the North French tower given by Ralph of Caen and Albert of Aachen, no mention is made of the coming of the ships, while the Anonymous reports their arrival and the fighting which cleared the way for their journey to Jerusalem, but nothing more. The tower built by the northerners was constructed in stages which were scarfed together because they lacked heavy timbers. It was, perhaps, no coincidence that the northerners’ tower sagged badly during the attack, while that of Count Raymond stood up to a ferocious assault until it was burned.46 It would seem as if the army were now divided into two groups, each of which made its own way; earlier the Provençals played no role in the assault of 13 June which, the language of Raymond of Aguilers implies, was a purely North French affair. Count Raymond employed William Ricau as his engineer and set the bishop of Albara in charge of the enemy prisoners and others bringing in wood and supplies; perhaps he enjoyed the help of the emissary from Tripoli in this. The northerners used Gaston of Béarn as their engineer and set Robert of Flanders to ensure supplies. The skilled artisans who worked on Raymo
nd’s tower were paid from his own purse, while those of the North French received their wages from a common fund.47 To attack from different directions was good tactics and this meant that preparations had to be separate but there was considerable friction within the army and this exploded at the meeting of the leaders in early July over the question of Tancred’s seizure of Bethlehem and the governance of the city after its capture as we have noted. However, the actual process of preparation seems to have been very well organised. Raymond reports that Gaston used division of labour to speed up the work and we have already noted the careful preparations amongst the southerners. Shortly after this meeting, an assembly of the people on 6 July decided to organise a solemn procession around Jerusalem in a manner recalling that of Joshua at Jericho. There had been a number of visions during the siege which Raymond of Aguilers mentions, but the procession was commanded in a vision of Adhémar to Peter Desiderius which he revealed to his lord Isidore count of Die and Adhémar’s brother, William Hugh of Monteil, and they seem to have called the assembly, though it was unlikely that they would have done so without the agreement of the princes. The moral effects of such an exercise as a spiritual preparation for the impending assault are evident, but it is to be noted that reconciliation was a major part of the purpose according to Raymond of Aguilers, and Albert says that the occasion was used to patch up friendship between Tancred and Raymond of Toulouse.48 On 8 July the procession duly took place culminating in sermons on the Mount of Olives. The way was clear for the assault on Jerusalem, the final climax of the crusade.

  The tempo of preparations was now stepped up with light materials being gathered to be woven into mantlets with the old, young and women lending a hand and each pair of knights was given the task of providing one mantlet or one ladder. A raid on the area around Nablus presumably provided food for the attackers (see fig. 16).49 But the decisive act in this period of preparation came on the night of 9–10 July. The North French had built a tower, ram and other siege equipment in the camp of Godfrey close to the Quadrangular Tower.50 On that night it was dismantled (or perhaps reduced to partially fabricated sections) and moved to a section of the wall almost at the northeastern corner of the city (see fig. 17c). All the forces on the northern edge of the city concentrated there. Raymond of Aguilers tells us that the enemy had anticipated an attack close to the building point and had so strengthened the wall that any attack appeared hopeless. Flat ground, he tells us, gave easy access to the walls in the new position, and its defences had been neglected. The whole erection was transported over a mile, he says with pardonable exaggeration. Ralph of Caen says that the leaders had had this in mind for some time and had deliberately ignored this sector, the weakness of which was known to them, so as to deceive the enemy.51 This may well be true in a sense, for as the siege went on the leaders must have become more and more familiar with the defences, and we know that they received information from informers. Moreover, Raymond of Aguilers makes it clear that the move came as a total surprise to him, again pointing to the divorce between the two sets of attackers. The defenders had watched the construction of the siege equipment with anxiety and ‘built up the city wall and its towers by night’. From what we know of the resistance to the attack later we can envisage the strengthening of the defences with balks of wood, the stockpiling of ammunition and the provision of padding and ropes for use against the attacking machinery. Now these careful preparations had to be improvised in a new position; thus was their discomforture maximised by the dramatic way in which the Schwerpunkt of the attack was changed overnight. According to the Anonymous this new position was towards the eastern end of the northern wall and Raymond’s suggestion that the siege-tower was moved almost a mile (in fact about one kilometre) from the point of construction in Godfrey’s camp by the Quadrangular Tower supports this, as does later medieval tradition.52 Therefore, to find the point of the assault we need to locate an area of flat ground abutting the wall towards its eastern end. This is not easy because the local topography has been fairly radically changed by modern buildings and the development of the Sultan Suleiman Road which skirts the northern defences. However, rocky outcrops eliminate many places and Prawer has favoured the point at which the Wadi Zahira meets the city wall about 100 metres east of Herod’s Gate. Just to the east of this, however, and before the rocky area between the Rockefeller Museum and the wall, there seems to have been a totally flat zone twenty-five to thirty metres wide at a point where the present Ottoman walls have a major salient, and this is the location suggested here (see fig. 17c).53

  The French still had to rebuild their machines, fill in a ditch and level off the ground before they could attempt to break down the forewall and bring the siege-tower up to the main line of defence which is why the main assault was not launched till 13 July. However, the value of the surprise stolen by the northerners is very evident, for Count Raymond had no room for any such manoeuvre and his preparations signalled his intentions very clearly for he was forced to spend three days filling in the southern moat: his attack would have a very difficult time indeed. With the ground properly prepared the North French set up the siege-tower, a mighty ram and three mangonels whose fire could clear the walls and launched their assault on Wednesday 13 July. Their systematic tactics now became apparent. As the huge ram manned by large numbers of people was dragged up to the outer wall the enemy lowered bags of straw and ropes and fired off clouds of arrows. The crusaders replied in kind with the three mangonels and lighter weapons. Godfrey used his cross-bow to set fire to the padding protecting the wall. The emplacement of the ram and destruction of the forewall seems to have occupied 13 and much of 14 July, for it was only on that Thursday (the fifth day) that the tower was ready for action and brought up behind it.54 The battle for the forewall was very savage as the enemy tried to burn the ram with every kind of device including Greek fire and the Franks were forced to expend precious water to prevent this. Once the forewall was broken through another problem presented itself. The mighty ram which had opened the breach now blocked the route for the mobile tower aligned behind it. The ram was a very substantial structure and it was mounted either on rollers or wooden wheels – we do not know which. In the circumstances in which it was built it is unlikely to have been well-balanced or free-moving. The sources are not very clear on timing but it seems likely that much of 13 and some of 14 July was spent simply bringing it up to engage the wall. Once it had done its job it was useless for its crew would be horribly exposed to fire from the higher inner wall of the city with its towers which in any case the crusaders probably judged too strong for battering. The inner and outer wall were very close to one another so it could not be dragged through and turned aside. Simply to disengage it would have taken almost as much time as to engage it in the first place, thus spoiling the momentum of the attack. To disengage and then reengage to widen the gap was unthinkable. Moreover, the size of the ram and of the tower which crawled after it meant that they had to be assembled as close as possible to the point of attack. Thus it was that the ram was fired. At this point the constricted nature of the battlefield becomes all too clear, for the enemy who had previously tried to fire the ram now tried unsuccessfully to put out the fire set by the attackers, by throwing water from the wall: ‘Twice was the ram set on fire, twice drowned in water twice was Muhammed defeated, twice was Christ victorious’.55