Chapter Four - The First Crusade (a.k.a. Beginner’s Luck)

CHAPTER FOUR

The First Crusade (a.k.a. Beginner’s Luck)

AFTER THE DISASTER of the People’s Crusade, nobody expected much from the next wave.

But this wasn’t a wave.
This was a storm.

The First Crusade proper began in 1096, and unlike Peter the Hermit’s barefoot apocalypse, this one had muscle.
Thousands of knights. Real armies. Siege engines. Warhorses. Banners. Chainmail. Strategy.

And ambition.

Four main leaders emerged. Godfrey of Bouillon, Raymond of Toulouse, Bohemond of Taranto, and Count Baldwin. Each had their own army, their own ego, and their own idea of what “holy war” meant. Spoiler: none of them were in it for purely spiritual reasons.

They all claimed the cross.
But they also saw opportunity.
Land. Power. Maybe even a crown.

After marching through Europe and bottlenecking at Constantinople, the armies crossed into Asia Minor. Right into the heart of Turkish-controlled territory.

And then, somehow, impossibly, they started winning.

The Seljuk Turks were fierce riders and brilliant tacticians, but they were in disarray. Mostly because of infighting, leadership gaps, and having no unified defense.

The Crusaders took Nicaea. Then Dorylaeum. They hacked their way through Anatolia, carving a bloody path toward the Levant like it was a side quest gone too far.

But the real test came in 1098:
Antioch.

A massive, fortified city. Impenetrable walls. Brutal siege. No supplies.
The Crusaders camped outside for months. They were starving, freezing, and dying from disease. Some began eating rats, shoe leather, and later, even corpses.

Desperate and delirious, they prayed. And then because of miracle or madness, a peasant named Peter Bartholomew claimed he had a vision.
He said the Holy Lance, the spear that pierced Christ’s side, was buried beneath the city’s cathedral.

They dug.

They found something.

The Crusaders erupted in religious ecstasy. They believed God was with them.
And somehow… they took the city.

Then, they got trapped inside.
A Muslim relief army arrived. Siege turned into counter-siege.

So what did the Crusaders do?
They charged out the gates in a full-frontal assault half-starved, half-naked, high on faith and violence. And they won again.

It made no sense.
But it worked.

One year later, they reached their true goal:
Jerusalem.

And what happened next would burn into history like a scar.

July 1099.

The city was surrounded.
Walls tall, defenders ready, and supplies thin.

The Crusaders launched a siege with siege towers built from wood they’d dragged in from ports and scavenged wherever they could find it.
They breached the walls.
And when they entered… they didn’t stop.

They massacred.

Men, women, children, Muslim, Jewish, sometimes even Christian.
Blood ran through the streets. Eyewitnesses claimed it reached the ankles. Probably exaggerated. Still horrific.

It was not a battle. It was vengeance disguised as holiness.

Knights climbed the rooftops of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and killed everyone inside.
They took the Dome of the Rock and planted a cross.
They said they were liberating the city for God.

What they did was butcher it.

And when the killing finally stopped, they crowned Godfrey of Bouillon as the ruler of Jerusalem, though he humbly refused the title “king,” calling himself Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre. As if that made the blood on his sword cleaner.

The First Crusade had done the impossible.

They took Jerusalem.
They won.

And yet, no one knew what to do next.

The Crusaders had no supply lines. No long-term plan. No ability to rule.
They were warriors, not governors.
But they tried anyway.

And so began the strange, doomed experiment of the Crusader Kingdoms. Tiny European outposts in a land that wanted them gone.

But that’s a story for the next chapter.