All language subtitles for The Crusades.2012.1of3

On a late November morning
in the year 1095, this man,

Pope Urban II,

delivered a sermon that would
transform the history of Europe.

His rousing words transfixed
the crowd gathered here
in the French town of Clermont.

And in the months that followed,

his message
reverberated across the West.

The age of the Crusades had begun.

The Pope proclaimed
a new holy war against Islam...

..for control of the most hallowed
site in the Christian cosmos -

the sacred city of Jerusalem.

Urban's call to arms
initiated a struggle

that would rage for two centuries -

one that fires the imagination

and fuels debate even today.

The story of the Crusades
is remembered as a tale
of religious fanaticism

and unspeakable violence,

of medieval knights
and jihadi warriors,

of castles and kings,
heroism, betrayal, and sacrifice.

This feels like you're touching
the past. It's an amazing feeling.

But now fresh research,
eyewitness testimony,

and contemporary evidence

from both the Christian
and Islamic worlds sheds new light

on how it was
that these two great religions

waged war in the name of God...

..why hundreds of thousands
of Christians and Muslims

answered the call
to Crusade and Jihad...

..and who, ultimately,
won the war for the Holy Land.

From the summer of 1096,

between
60,000 and 100,000 Christians -

men, women and children -
set out to walk some 2,500 miles

across the face of the known world.
Their goal? Jerusalem.

Not since the distant glories
of ancient Rome had
a force of this size been assembled.

Rich, and poor,
peasants and knights,
these were the First Crusaders...

..Christian soldiers who endured
unimaginable suffering and privation

during an armed pilgrimage
that lasted for three years.

So who were they?
And why did they fight?

When Urban II became Pope,
Christianity was in turmoil,

split between the Greek Church
of the East and the Latin West.

The papacy itself
stood on the brink of overthrow,

embroiled in a long-standing feud
with the German Empire.

But Urban had a plan.

Determined to reassert
papal authority,

in the autumn of 1095 he came to
France, where he would launch

a titanic armed pilgrimage, known to
history as the First Crusade.

By November 1095, the Pope
was ready to unveil his plan.

Here in Clermont in Central France,
he gathered 12 archbishops,

80 bishops and 90 abbots

for the largest clerical
assembly of his career.

After nine days of general
ecclesiastical debate,

Urban announced his intention
to deliver a special sermon,

and on the 27th of November,

hundreds of people crowded
into a field outside the town
to hear him speak.

"We want you to know what grievous
cause leads us to your territory.

"A grave report has come
from the lands of Jerusalem

"that a foreign race,
a race absolutely alien to God,

"has invaded
the land of those Christians

"and has reduced the people
with sword, rapine and fire."

Urban's speech was the moment of
genesis for the concept of a crusade.

It was primarily designed
to meet the needs of the papacy.

And it contained
a brilliantly conceived hook.

The coming expedition would target

the greatest pilgrim destination
in the Christian world -

the Holy City of Jerusalem,

which lay in the hands of Islam.

But the Pope had a problem.

Jerusalem had fallen to
Islam more than 400 years earlier,

so he could hardly claim
this as a fresh crime.

To lend urgency to his call,

Urban therefore turned to one
of the most powerful and dangerous
forces in human history -

the idea of otherness,

of an alien enemy guilty of
ghastly crimes who must be repelled.

"These men have destroyed the altars

"polluted by their foul practices.

"They have
circumcised the Christians,

"either spreading the blood
from the circumcisions on the altars

"or pouring it
into the baptismal fonts.

"And they cut open
the navels of those

"who they choose to torment
with loathsome death,

"drag them around
and flog them before killing them

"as they lie prone on the ground
with all their entrails out."

The Pope created an anti-Islamic
onslaught peppered with propaganda.

His graphic imagery bore little
relation to the reality of Muslim
rule in the Holy Land.

Nor was Urban's call to arms

directly inspired
by any recent atrocity in the East.

Nevertheless, his attack
ignited a fire of vengeful passion,

as news of the Crusade resounded
across Western Christendom.

The idea of the Crusade was
unleashed in a spiritual age -

an era that in many ways
is wholly alien to our own.

Today we might be acculturated
to notions of tolerance,

scepticism and religious difference,
but a singular truth

bound together almost every human
being alive in 11th-century Europe,

and that was unconditional
and total belief in Christianity.

At the core of medieval Christianity
were the twinned opposing emotions

of hope and fear,

the promise of salvation
and the threat of damnation.

The Church taught that every human
would face a moment of judgment,

a weighing of souls.

Those found to be pure

would be rewarded with
everlasting paradise in Heaven.

But if you were a sinner,

then you faced certain punishment -

an eternity
of gruesome torment in Hell.

This magnificent sculpture cycle
depicts the Last Judgment

and it's the perfect evocation
of the whole idea

of agony and ecstasy
in medieval Christianity.

It was sculpted, we think, by one
of the masters of medieval art -

a man called Gislebertus.

And we know this
because he's left in his inscription

"Gislebertus hocfecit" -
"Gislebertus made this".

Let's start with the good,
let's start with salvation.

What we see amongst the saved

are three children
being lifted to Heaven by an angle.

And if we look above

we can see beautiful, elongated
angels lifting the saved up
to paradise.

On the other side, on Christ's left
hand, we see those less fortunate,

those who have sinned and will
face an eternity of torment in Hell.

We can see a man bearing a bag,
probably a bag of money,

meaning he's a miser
or a moneylender.

He's amongst the damned.

And there we can see a woman
with a pair of snakes

gnawing on her bare breasts,
showing that she was lusty or lewd.

And perhaps most evocatively of all,

a man with a look
of fear and agony on his face

as a pair of giant demonic hands
reach down to strangle him

and pull him through
the gates of Hell.

This is the tableau
of horror laid out before you.

This is what Gislebertus
wanted his audience to understand -

the consequences of sin
in the medieval world.

Primed to seek redemption,

Western Christians
were thus enthralled when Urban II

announced his expedition
to the Holy Land.

The price would be huge.

The faithful would
have to give up everything

to participate in a terrifying, near
suicidal journey into the unknown,

but in return,
the Pope seemed to be promising

a guarantee of eternal salvation.

Tens of thousands
of ordinary Christians

responded to the Pope's
brilliantly-conceived campaign.

But Urban's target audience was
the aristocracy of Western Europe -

a violent warrior class

fighting for survival in a world
of bloodthirsty lawlessness.

These warlords would
become the Crusades' leaders -

Christian knights
for whom the Pope's call to arms
solved a very particular dilemma.

The Pope knew only too well
the anxiety of Christian warriors

trapped in a worldly profession
imbued with violence,

yet taught by the Church
that bloodshed was sinful.

The real genius
of Urban's crusading ideal
was that it solved this dilemma,

reconciling faith and violence.

Urban spoke of a new sacred struggle,

in which fighting
would not simply be permitted,

but actively encouraged
and even rewarded.

The day after Pope Urban's sermon
at Clermont,

Count Raymond of Toulouse,

the most powerful secular Lord
in Southern France,

became the first nobleman
to commit to the Crusade.

Determined to prepare his soul
for the gruelling expedition ahead,

Raymond then came here,
to this cathedral in Le Puy.

The Count made a large donation

to secure the favourable
intercession of the Virgin Mary,

and according
to one chronicle requested...

"So long as I live a candle
should burn for me incessantly,

"day and night upon the altar

"before the revered image
of the Mother of God."

Some Christian knights may have
embarked upon the holy war believing
they would reap rich rewards

from conquest and plunder
in the East.

But the vast majority
were primarily driven by faith

and the promise of redemption.

It's often argued that Raymond,
and many like him,

joined the Crusade
in search of material gain.

But I think this theory
is simply unsustainable,

given the vast weight
of contemporary evidence
that shows us the exact opposite.

Raymond actually walked away from one
of the richest lordships in Europe
to join this expedition.

And like many
of his fellow Crusaders,

he probably expected to die
in the East.

I think most people
joined this Crusade

because they earnestly believed
that the coming campaign would
cleanse their souls of sin.

They were, I think, looking for
redemption in the fire of holy war.

For noblemen like Raymond,

and the retinues of knights
and infantry that came with them,

the Crusade offered
the promise of eternal salvation,

and, in return, their personal
fortunes would bankroll the sacred
expedition.

Raymond of Toulouse became
the Crusade's elder statesman,

but he was just one of scores
of rich and powerful noblemen

for whom the combined allure
of military conquest and religious
redemption proved irresistible.

There was Godfrey of Bouillon,

a pious duke whose lands
extended from North-Eastern France
into the low countries of Germany.

Despite a long-standing feud
with the papacy,

Godfrey was so enthralled by
the crusading message that he joined
the expedition to Jerusalem.

There was the Southern-Italian
Norman, Bohemond of Taranto,

a guileful military genius, perhaps
the greatest general of his age.

And there was Stephen of Blois
from Northern France,
William the Conqueror's son-in-law.

Stephen left his wife Adela
behind to rule in his stead

and later wrote her
a series of extraordinary letters
from the front line,

describing his adventures
in the East.

"In fighting against these enemies of
God and of our own, we have,

"by God's grace,
endured many sufferings

"and innumerable evils
up to the present time."

'Stephen's words survive as a direct,
eye-witness account of the Crusade.

'But there were
many other contemporaries

'who also sought to chronicle
this remarkable expedition.'

This manuscript is a French copy

of the Histoire d'Outremer.

William of Tyre.

It's illuminated.

It is one of
our most popular manuscripts

for the story of Crusaders.

This feels like
you're touching the past.

It's an amazing feeling.

'This is an illustrated copy,
produced in 1289,

'of the most famous chronicle
of the Crusades,

'written by William of Tyre,

'a Christian historian working in
the Holy Land in the 12th century.'

There's something absolutely
extraordinary about being this close

to an item of this kind of rarity.

Such a precious manuscript -
to actually be able to touch it,

for me, it's almost electrifying.

This is an absolute masterpiece
in terms of depicting

the start of the First Crusade.

And what it shows is a series
of knights riding out from Europe,

preparing for their 3,000-mile
journey to reach Jerusalem.

And we can see
Godfrey of Bouillon himself,

one of the great leaders of
the Crusade, in amongst this group.

And he's against a golden background,

and it's that gold
that really sets this image alight.

It makes it seem as if the horses
themselves are moving,

it gives action,
gives life to the image.

And it's that which conveys this
sense of a journey beginning -
the start of the Crusade.

But this dignified procession
belies the ramshackle reality
of the First Crusade.

For most people, embarking on a
crusade was a colossal leap of faith.

This would be a journey
to a wholly alien and unknown world,

attempted with little or no planning
and no accurate maps.

This was
an extraordinary mass migration

undertaken by over 60,000 people -

an unprecedented tide of humankind.

The first to depart were small groups
of peasants and some knights.

Too poor to pay for ships,
their only option was to walk,

dragging their few belongings
behind on carts,

living hand-to-mouth off the land.

As they marched East,
this rabble of Christian fanatics

became embroiled
in a series of murderous attacks
on the Jews of Europe.

The main contingents
of knights soon followed.

But it was only
in the first months of 1097,

almost a year after
the first pilgrims set out,

that the First Crusade
finally united at Constantinople,

capital of the Byzantine Empire.

For most Crusaders, this was the end
of the world as they knew it -

a mighty metropolis ten times the
size of any city in Western Europe.

And it was the centre
of the Greek Church in the East,

the greatest Christian
superpower of the medieval age.

Constantinople boasted an unrivalled
collection of sacred relics.

It had the Crown of Thorns,
locks of hair from the Virgin Mary,

at least two heads
of John the Baptist,

and the bones
of virtually all the apostles.

And it had this - St Sophia,

undoubtedly medieval Christendom's
most spectacular church.

"I arrived at Constantinople
with great joy by the grace of God.

"The Emperor verily received me
with dignity and honour

"and with the greatest affection
as if I were his own son."

The Crusaders had arrived
at the gateway to the Orient,

the frontier with Islam.

The Byzantine Emperor had,
for some time,

been appealing to the West for help

in defending Christendom's
Eastern border.

With the aid of his troops,
the Crusaders targeted Nicaea,

an Islamic foothold
in Western Asia Minor.

After a month-long siege,
the city was conquered.

The holy war had begun.

But there was no immediate response
to this audacious invasion.

The Crusaders had, inadvertently,
chosen the perfect moment to strike.

The Muslim world
was in a state of disarray,

riven by religious
and ethnic divisions.

As yet, Islam could not draw upon the
same profound sense of shared purpose

that united the Crusaders,

the dream that drove these Christians
on towards their sacred objective.

"I tell you, my beloved,"

wrote Stephen of Blois
to his wife back in France,

"In five weeks,
we will reach Jerusalem."

Because of its vast size,

the Crusade couldn't realistically
move forward as a single force.

A column of 60,000 people
might take an entire day

just to pass a single point.

And foraging for
food and supplies as they went,

they might scour the surrounding
landscape like a plague of locust.

Instead, the Crusaders decided
to divide their army in two.

Led by Bohemond of Taranto,

the first contingent set off, with
a plan to regroup after four days,

here at an abandoned
Byzantine military camp,

100 miles south-east of Nicaea.

But the holy army
never made its rendezvous.

HORSE WHINNIES IN PANIC

As the Crusaders marched
across the plains of Asia Minor,

they were ambushed by a ferocious
band of nomadic warriors...

..their first terrifying taste
of Turkish horsemen in full flight.

One of Bohemond's followers
recalled the moment of horror

as the Turks suddenly came into view

and began to howl and gabble.

HORSE WHINNIES IN PANIC

Another eye-witness, caught
in the thick of the fighting, wrote,

"The Turks were howling like wolves."

"They began
shooting a cloud of arrows.

"We were all stunned by this.

"Because for all of us,
this form of warfare was unknown."

Ranged against a seemingly endless
multitude of Turks,

the Christians were
thrown into disarray.

Instead of chaotic retreat,

Bohemond managed
to establish a defensive formation.

But isolated and exposed,
the Crusaders faced disaster.

"Huddled together
like sheep in a fold,

"we were trembling and frightened,
surrounded on all sides by enemies

"so that we couldn't
turn in any direction,"
one Crusader later recalled.

To strengthen their resolve,

the Crusaders
passed a morale-boosting message
down the line.

"Stand fast, trusting in Christ
and the victory of the cross."

One account described how
the Turks burst into the camp,

striking with arrows
loosed from their horned bows,

killing men, women and children
indiscriminately and sparing no-one
on grounds of age.

Stunned and terrified
by this hideous killing,

girls who were delicate
and nobly born were rushing
to get themselves dressed up

and offering themselves to the Turks.

So that at least,
appeased by their beauty,

they may offer
their prisoners some pity.

This idea of Western women
rushing into their tents

to beautify themselves,

all in the hope that they'd be taken
slave rather than killed on the spot,

can almost sound comical.
But this anecdote is supposed
to tell us something.

It's supposed to reveal that the
Crusaders were absolutely terrified

by what they encountered
at Dorylaeum.

They'd come across an alien enemy -
something they'd never
experienced before.

What's really extraordinary
is that they didn't give up,

they didn't buckle.
Instead they managed to re-group,

re-order their lines and hold
their position for five hours

until crusading reinforcements
arrived.

In the ensuing battle, as many
as 4,000 Christians were killed.

But, crucially, the Crusaders
simply refused to give in.

The Turks
were not defeated at Dorylaeum,

but their resistance was broken,

and the route across
Asia Minor opened up.

Empowered by their faith, the
Western invaders seemed invincible.

In contrast,
Islam's defence lay in the hands

of a disparate array
of squabbling warlords.

But the Crusaders faced
a different kind of enemy

as they marched across Asia Minor,

enduring the blistering heat
of the summer months,

plagued by starvation and thirst.

For the first time, a lack of water
became a real issue.

The death rate skyrocketed
and there's one thing that's

really extraordinary about
this period and that's that
the eyewitness testimony

seems to suggest that the Crusaders
were almost as concerned, if not more
concerned,

about the death of animals
as they were about those men and
women who died through thirst.

We've always thought that
the Crusaders

arrived in the Holy Land with
their cavalry intact, the truth is

that, crossing Asia Minor, almost
all of these Western horses died.

By the time they reached
the Holy Land,

the Crusaders were forced to ride,
sometimes on donkeys

with their feet dragging in
the dirt, others were astride oxen.

So this idea of
an invincible military force,

that the Crusade had at
its fingertips, is an illusion.

Christian numbers were severely
depleted by an epic journey

that concluded with a terrifying
traverse of the Taurus Mountains.

By the time the First Crusade
reached northern Syria,

in the autumn of 1097,

only around half of those who had
left Europe a year earlier survived.

The crossing of Asia Minor had been
an extraordinary feat in itself.

But now, standing at the gateway
to the Holy Land,

the Crusaders faced
a gargantuan task,

one that eclipsed everything that
had gone before.

The conquest of one of the great
cities of the Orient - Antioch.

Antioch was a crucial staging post,
as the Crusade now looked south

to Jerusalem itself, perhaps
less than a month's march away.

But Antioch lay under the rule
of Muslim Turks,

shielded by two great mountains,

and a ring of awesome battlements
that made this

one of the most strongly-fortified
cities in the medieval world.

So this is the iron gate.

I absolutely love this place,
because it's the perfect spot to
come to if you want to

understand what medieval Antioch
would have looked like.

And why the Crusaders thought this
city was going to be impregnable.

This is Antioch's last surviving
gate, part of a series

of formidable defences that made
an immediate attack impossible.

The city was garrisoned by
around 5,000 Turks...

..enough to mount a defence

but not sufficient to confront
the Crusaders in open battle.

The result, an appalling stalemate
that would test

the Christians' faith to the limit.

From the autumn of 1097 onwards,
the Crusaders committed

themselves to the grinding reality
of a medieval encirclement siege -

a devastating war of attrition
that would last for eight months.

That winter would prove to be
a living hell for the Crusaders

camped outside Antioch, facing
illness, disease and starvation.

The height of the Crusaders'
suffering came in January 1098.

Stephen of Blois, who managed to
survive these darkest of days,

later wrote in a letter,

"Throughout that winter
we suffered from excessive cold,

"and enormous torrents of rain. What
some say about the impossibility

"of being able to bear the heat of
the sun throughout Syria is untrue

"because the winters there are very
similar to our own in the West."

That January, hundreds,
perhaps thousands, lost their lives,

not to the edge of a sword,
but to illness,

and malnourishment.

Indeed, according to one account,

food became so scarce that the poor
were forced to eat dogs and rats,

the skin of beasts and
even seeds of grain found in manure.

Many Christians began to question
why God had abandoned
the Crusade, his sacred venture.

And when it seemed that things
couldn't get any worse,

the Muslim world finally
appeared to unite.

Just as the advent of spring
began to shift the balance

of the siege
in the Crusaders' favour,

a dread-laden rumour began to
circulate.

Scouts from the Christian camp
revealed that they'd seen

a Muslim army.

Reportedly swarming over mountain
paths. Like the sands of the sea.

Kerbogha of Mosul,
a fearsome Iraqi general,

and some 40,000 Syrian
and Mesopotamian troops were

on the way, and now they were less
than one week away from Antioch.

This huge relief force, mobilised
in response to desperate appeals

for support from
Antioch's Muslim leaders,

outnumbered the Crusaders
by two to one.

Stranded outside the city,

the Christian army would surely be
crushed against Antioch's walls.

Facing the very real threat of panic
and mass desertion,

the Crusade's leaders convened
an emergency council.

And Bohemond, the military genius who
had taken command at Dorylaeum,
stepped forward.

Bohemond argued that whoever
could orchestrate Antioch's fall

should be given legal rights
to the city.

And it was only after
the bargain had been sealed,

that the wily Bohemond showed
his hand.

Bohemond had made contact
with a renegade inside Antioch,

an Armenian Christian
tower commander named Firuz,

who was willing to betray the city.

Just a few short days after
the Crusaders' emergency council,

a small group of Bohemond's men
stole up to the foot

of an isolated section of the city's
south-eastern walls.

There, Firuz lowered a ladder.

We know from eyewitness testimony
that these men must have been

absolutely terrified, most of them
expecting to be killed as soon as

they reached the top.

As it turned out,
they were able to despatch the guards

at all the three surrounding towers
in almost complete silence,

and soon afterwards
a small gate was opened below.

The calm night air was suddenly
shattered, a shrill bugle sounded

to signal a wave of secondary
attacks on other parts of the city.

And the Christians began screaming
out their battle cry,

"God wills it! God wills it!"

The Muslim garrison was thrown
into a state of utter confusion

and soon Antioch's remaining gates
were thrown open

and the Crusaders poured in.

In the half light of dawn,
a chaotic slaughter began

as the Crusaders unleashed
eight months of pent-up anger
and aggression.

This illumination depicts the fall
of Antioch on the 3rd of June 1098.

And I think it's
an absolutely remarkable image.

One Muslim is having a sword
stabbed through his chest.

Another is about to be decapitated.

And I find this image quite
troubling because in many ways
it's very beautiful.

The colour is extraordinary,
it looks as if it was painted

last week, not 800 years ago.

But, at the same time, it's horrific.

And I think, in a way, this cuts to
the heart of the enigma

of the First Crusade and the Crusades
that would follow,

because this
is about violence that's enacted

in the context of Holy War.

And perhaps in that context the idea
that that violence might be sinful,

that it might be morally
wrong, has been erased.

Because this was now
the work of God.

Having spent eight months battling
to gain entry to Antioch,

the Crusaders now found themselves
ensnared in a bizarre predicament.

The very next day, Kerbogha's
great army began to arrive.

The first Crusaders were now
trapped inside Antioch,

the besiegers had become
the besieged.

Kerbogha's ferocious army formed
a cordon around Antioch.

Trapped inside a city already
bereft of supplies,

the Christians now faced
the greatest test of their faith.

Food very quickly ran short

and starvation became endemic.

It was said that the poor were forced

to eat the leather
of their own shoes,

while others drank the blood
from the few remaining horses
to sustain themselves.

Many Crusaders now deserted.

Lowering ropes from the walls,

and escaping under cover of darkness,
these rope danglers,

as they came to be known,
included many well-known knights.

The Crusaders had
reached their lowest point.

Weakened by hunger, utterly
terrified of the enemy outside

baying for their blood, they were
in a state of total despair.

It seemed that the First Crusade
was about to end in disaster.

Surely only a miracle could save
the Christians now.

In mid-June 1098, a southern French
peasant named Peter Bartholomew
came forward,

announcing that he'd
experienced a series of visions.

In these, St Andrew revealed to him

the resting place of an incredibly
powerful spiritual weapon -
the Holy Lance -

the very spear that had pierced
the side of Christ on the Cross.

Peter Bartholomew led
a group of Crusaders

to the basilica of St Peter's
in Antioch and began digging.

One member of this party, Raymond
of Aguilers, described the scene.

"We'd been digging until evening
when some of us

"began to give up
hope of unearthing the lance.

"But Peter Bartholomew, seeing
the exhaustion of our workers,

"stripped off his outer garments
and, clad only in a shirt

"and bare-footed,
dropped into the hole"

"He then begged us to pray to God,
to return his lance

"and bring strength and victory
to his people.

"Finally, the Lord showed us
his lance,

"and I kissed its point as it barely
protruded from the ground -

"what great joy
and exaltation filled the city."

What Peter Bartholomew supposedly
found was probably no more

than a small shard of metal.

But the idea that God might
manifest his will on Earth

through such sacred objects was part
and parcel of medieval Christianity.

And the ravings of
a religious fanatic

and the discovery of
such a significant relic

had the potential to reignite
the Crusaders' belief

in their holy mission.

Most accounts indicate that
the discovery of the Holy Lance had
an electrifying effect

on the Crusaders' state of mind.

Even though they were exhausted,
starving,

and facing seemingly
insurmountable odds,

this seemingly irrefutable
demonstration of divine support

fired the Crusaders to take up arms
and confront Kerbogha head on.

On that day,
they scored a miraculous victory,

driving Kerbogha's horde
from the field.

Antioch was theirs, and the cult
of the Holy Lance was born -

a cult with the power to shape
the future of the Crusade.

I've always been captivated
by the story of the Holy Lance

and for a long time I believed, like
everyone else, that the discovery

of this relic provided
an electrifying boost
to Crusader morale,

sending them sprinting
out of Antioch to confront Kerbogha.

I'd come to Venice to see
perhaps the oldest surviving copy

of a chronicle
written by Matthew of Edessa,

an Armenian historian who lived
during the time of the First Crusade.

It's really exciting to see
this manuscript.

Poised between the Western Christian
and Muslim perspectives,

Matthew's account offers
a more neutral version of events.

So this is the text.

So one of the reasons
that I've come here

is because Matthew Of Edessa offer us
a unique moment in his text

where he describes what's actually
happening in Antioch in June 1098.

Can you show us
that specific bit of evidence?

This is the part.

And could you read the section
actually in Armenian to me? Yes.

'The Franks became threatened with
a famine, because provisions

'in the city had long
become exhausted.

'More and more hard-pressed, they
resolved to obtain from Kerbogha

'a promise of amnesty on condition
that they deliver the city

'into his hands, and return
to their own country.'

So Matthew's telling us
that the Crusaders

in this month of June, that they
actually tried to negotiate

a surrender to be able to leave
Antioch - to give up effectively?

Yes, yes. And, er...to have
his assurance

that they could turn to their home
in, er...Europe.

For so long,

the Crusaders' reaction to
the discovery of the Holy Lance

has been held up as proof

of their unshakable,
almost blind, piety

but if they did indeed try
to negotiate a surrender,

then we're left with
a very different image -

one of medieval warriors
still wracked by fear and doubt.

For me, Matthew's account is
so important - because it allows us

to construct a more human and more
nuanced image of these Crusaders.

Kerbogha dismissed the Crusaders'
terms of surrender,

leaving the Christians
with a hopeless choice -

to die within the city
from starvation, or to die fighting.

In the end,
the Crusaders did undoubtedly

make an extraordinarily
brave decision -

to confront Kerbogha's hoard head on.

But they seem to have done so

not in a state
of ecstatic religious fervour

but in utter desperation,
expecting to die.

The Christians fought with a primal
sense of desperation.

Ironically, facing certain death,
with nothing to lose, they won...

..defeating an enemy that turned out
to be anything but invincible.

Far from being a united army,

Kerbogha's force was actually a loose
and fragile coalition
of rival warlords,

each suspicious that Kerbogha himself
was hoping to use
the Crusader invasion

as a pretext to seize Antioch
as his own.

That was why the Muslim army
shattered so readily

when struck by the Christians charge,

retreating in headlong defeat.

For most Crusaders, the seemingly
miraculous victory over Kerbogha

was proof of the power
of the Holy Lance,

and the relic's most ardent advocate,
Raymond of Toulouse,

now asserted moral leadership
over the expedition.

But in the months that followed,

some of the Crusades' leaders became
increasingly greedy

for power and plunder.

Bohemond remained to rule Antioch,

and instead of driving on
to Jerusalem,
the expedition's holy goal,

Raymond insisted on pursuing further
conquests in Syria and Lebanon.

For many Christians, these delays
were unforgivable.

Some even began to question
the authenticity of the Holy Lance,

and the integrity of the increasingly
delusional fanatic who had found it.

Facing a barrage of criticism,
Peter Bartholomew actually begged

to undergo a potentially lethal
trial by ordeal,

all to prove his own innocence and
the authenticity of the Holy Lance.

On 10th April 1099,

outside the city of Arqa in Lebanon,

the peasant visionary began
to prepare for a dramatic trial,

the outcome of which would determine
the fate of the First Crusade.

Peter spent the next four days
fasting to purify his soul

and then on Good Friday,

olive branches were stacked
into two pyres,

four feet in height
and 13 feet in length.

With the two pyres set alight,

wearing a simple tunic and bearing
the relic of the Holy Lance,

Peter Bartholomew willingly
walked into the heart of the inferno.

Some of Peter Bartholomew's
supporters later wrote

that he managed to emerge
miraculously from the flames
unscathed,

and it was only subsequently
that a frenzied crowd mobbed him

and broke the bones of his body,

but a very different story was
told by his opponents.

They recorded that he emerged
mortally wounded by burns.

One thing's certain. The man who had
found the Holy Lance in Antioch

had died within 12 days
of his ordeal.

The spell of the Holy Lance
was broken,

and, with it, the reputation
of Raymond of Toulouse.

It was Godfrey of Bouillon
who emerged as the Crusade's
new leader,

as after more than ten months
of delay the Christians advanced
with almost breakneck speed.

Any thoughts of further
conquests in Lebanon
and Palestine were abandoned.

And just three weeks later,

on Tuesday, 6th June,
in the year 1099,

after three years

and more than 2,000 miles,

the First Crusade finally arrived

at the spiritual centre
of the Christian cosmos.

Around 90% of those
who had set out from Western Europe

had been lost along the way,
either to death or desertion.

For those few who managed to make it
this far,

the sight long-awaited
of Jerusalem must have been
incredibly moving.

But it wasn't just
because the journey to get here

had been so long and arduous -

it was because this place was the
most sacred Christian site on Earth.

It was the place in which Christ had
undergone his passion, his life,
his death,

and, perhaps most importantly of all,
his resurrection.

Many Crusaders believed
that if they could conquer this city,

it would become one
with the heavenly Jerusalem,

a glorious Christian paradise.

Jerusalem's walls,
and the Muslim garrison within,

made it an even bigger obstacle
than Antioch.

But for the Crusaders,
having come so far,

defeat here was simply unthinkable.

After a frantic six-week siege,

Godfrey of Bouillon made
the decisive breakthrough,

breaching the city's inner defences.

On the 15th July, 1099,

the first Crusaders finally achieved
their long-cherished dream -

the liberation of Jerusalem.

Surging through these streets
in bloodthirsty ravening packs,

they overran the Holy City.

Fuelled by three years
of unimaginable strife,

privation and yearning,

they unleashed a rampaging torrent
of barbaric
and indiscriminate slaughter.

One Crusader joyfully reported
"With the fall of Jerusalem,

"one could see many marvellous works.

"Some pagans were
mercifully beheaded,

"others pierced by arrows plunged
from towers, yet others,

"tortured for a long time, were burnt
to death in searing flames".

Piles of heads, hands and feet
littered the streets,

and even the soldiers
carrying out the killing
could hardly bear the stench

rising from the blood
lapping at their ankles.

Jews as well as Muslims
were butchered.

This was holy war in all its horror.

Many Muslims fled to Jerusalem's
most hallowed ground,

revered in Islam as the site
of Mohammed's ascent to heaven.

But the Christian warriors
went after them,

cutting them down
as far as the famous Aqsa Mosque...

..where there was such a massacre

that the Crusaders were wading
through their enemies' blood.

The massacre that took place

on the streets of Jerusalem was not
simply a feral outpouring
of pent-up rage.

Instead, it was a much more
calculated and prolonged campaign
of killing,

that lasted at least two days.

It left this city awash
with blood and strewn with corpses.

In a moment that perfectly
encapsulated the Crusade's
extraordinary fusion

of violence and faith...

..at sunset on 15th July, 1099,

the Crusaders, still covered in
their enemies' blood,

gathered here in the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre,

believed to be the site of Christ's
death and resurrection,

to give thanks to their God.

For us today,
the idea that the first Crusaders

could present themselves
as faithful Christians,

even as they carried out
acts of butchery

might seem abhorrent,
almost incomprehensible.

But if we want to understand
the first Crusaders,

then we have to try to see
the world as they saw it,

to appreciate that they had
a distinctly medieval conception
of religion.

All the best eyewitness
and contemporary evidence

indicates that they ardently
believed in what they were doing,

that for them killing for Christ was
itself an act of devotion,

an expression of faith
that would open the gates of heaven.

Four years after Pope Urban II
delivered his dramatic call to arms,

the First Crusaders
had achieved their goal.

Jerusalem was now undeniably
in the hands of Western Christians.

The success of the first Crusades
stunned Christian Europe,

and it became
the most widely-recorded event
of the Middle Ages.

Contemporaries saw Jerusalem's
seemingly miraculous conquest

as an immutable proof
that their God did indeed want them

to embrace the idea of Holy War.

This single moment
of Christian triumph

would fuel enthusiasm for
the Crusades for centuries to come.

But in the decades and centuries
that followed, Islam came to regard

the sack of Jerusalem as the
central act of Crusader barbarity
and defilement.

The Middle East was now locked into
a bitter struggle

that would rage for 200 years,

a conflict in which Muslims
would embrace the cause of Jihad,

uniting in pursuit of vengeance
and the Holy Land's re-conquest.

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